Lola Bensky

by Lily Brett

  Lillian bought herself a short-sleeved cotton blue-and-white gingham dress. It was one of the most subdued dresses in the Chubby Teens department. ‘It really suits you,’ Lola said. And it did. The dress looked cool and youthful and few people would ever guess it came from the Chubby Teens department of a department store. Lola noticed that there were no other 35-year-old women trying on clothes in the Chubby Teens department. She thought it was so smart of Lillian to shop there.

  ‘Why don’t you get it in the green-and-white gingham too,’ Lola said. ‘It really, really suits you.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Lillian said. ‘They’re very cheap.’

  ‘Well, get the brown one too,’ Lola said.

  Lillian and Lola left the Chubby Teens department with Lillian carrying three short-sleeved cotton gingham dresses and looking very pleased with herself.

  ‘I learnt that from Barry Gibb,’ Lola said.

  ‘Learnt what?’ said Lillian. ‘I don’t think Barry Gibb goes shopping in Chubby Teens’ departments.’

  ‘I learned about buying in bulk from him,’ Lola said. ‘He bought four suits in Carnaby Street. They were the same style, but in different colours.’

  ‘He’s a very good-looking guy,’ Lillian said.

  ‘He is,’ said Lola. ‘And he’s a really nice person.’

  ‘Lola, you sound positively middle-aged,’ Lillian said. ‘You’re not supposed to be thinking about what a really nice person a handsome rock star like Barry Gibb is.’

  ‘What am I supposed to be thinking about?’ Lola said.

  ‘How much you’d like to fuck Barry Gibb,’ said Lillian.

  Lola nearly fell over a tall stack of very large men’s overalls. They were now walking through the Tall and Big Men department. She was shocked, firstly, that Lillian could talk like that in the Tall and Big Men section of a very sedate department store, and secondly that Lillian thought that Lola should have been thinking about how much Lola would like to fuck Barry Gibb, instead of being reassured by what a nice human being he was.

  ‘There must be something wrong with me,’ she said to Lillian.

  ‘It’s possibly the same thing that’s wrong with many women,’ Lillian said. ‘They’re just too passive. You’ve got to be aggressive. Aggressive socially, aggressive in the workplace and you’ve got to be sexually aggressive, like a man.’

  Lola felt a bit light-headed. They had just passed through the perfume department. The thick odour of too many scents combined with the notion of being sexually aggressive was making her feel queasy, and a bit dizzy.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Lillian said. ‘You look a bit pale.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lola. ‘I’m okay. It’s just the perfume.’

  Lola wasn’t sure what being sexually aggressive involved. Did it mean you said mean things, or punched the guy? Or did it mean you chased him and had sex wherever and whenever you or the guy wanted to? What if you didn’t want to have sex all that much? Sex was not on Lola’s mind, a lot of the time. Interviews were on her mind. Her diets were on her mind. Her mother and father were on her mind. This made for an already over-crowded mind.

  ‘Let’s have something to eat,’ Lillian said. They stopped at a cafe on Thirty-Sixth Street. ‘They have fabulous non-fat, soft-serve ice-cream here,’ said Lillian.

  Lola had never had non-fat ice-cream. It sounded promising, if not utterly thrilling.

  The cafe had rows of red booths. Lillian chose a booth at the back. Lola thought the booths were a brilliant idea. She assumed that they were designed to give fat people privacy and peace while they ate their non-fat ice-creams. She didn’t realise that half the diners in New York had booths like this and that they were not designed with fat people in mind. They were designed mostly for comfort and economy of seating. ‘You can have non-fat thickshakes here, too,’ Lillian said. Lola ordered a non-fat chocolate thickshake and a tomato and lettuce salad. Lillian ordered the same.

  ‘Are you going back to Australia when you’re finished working in the US?’ Lillian asked her.

  ‘I have to go back to London first and then I’ll go back to Australia,’ she said.

  ‘Why are you going back to Australia?’ Lillian said.

  ‘Because that’s where I live,’ said Lola.

  ‘You don’t just live where you’ve been placed,’ said Lillian. ‘You’re not an immovable object.’

  ‘It’s my home,’ said Lola.

  ‘Lvov was supposed to be my home,’ said Lillian. ‘I’m sure glad I don’t live there.’

  ‘Your parents came from Lvov?’ said Lola.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lillian.

  ‘My parents came from Lodz, which is three-hundred-and fifty miles from Lvov,’ Lola said. Lola knew this because Edek had three aunts who lived in Lvov. He used to talk about Cha Cha Hannah and Cha Cha Taube and Cha Cha Ruchel. Lola loved the sound of all the cha chas and the sound of the words Lvov and Lodz. Several times she had wondered whether she could slip Lvov and Lodz into one of her articles. She knew that one of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Zal Yanovsky, was Jewish. Maybe she could ask him where his family was from and slip Lvov and Lodz into the sentence.

  ‘Not many people I know have heard of Lvov,’ Lillian said. ‘I certainly didn’t expect to meet someone who knew exactly how many miles from Lodz Lvov was. Or is,’ she corrected herself.

  ‘My dad had three aunts who lived in Lvov,’ Lola said.

  ‘Maybe we’re related?’ Lillian said. ‘We used to be the Ropschitzes. My parents were Doctor and Mrs Ropschitz. When I was eight, my parents wanted to change their name in order to become more Australian. I was looking at some rocks and suggested Roxon.’

  ‘You were a smart kid,’ Lola said. ‘We used to be the Berkelmanns. I wanted to change to Beer because all Australians, it seemed to me even then, drank a lot of beer. But my parents said no and we became the Benskys. Renia, Edek and Lola Bensky. We didn’t exactly sound like a gathering of Episcopalians.’

  ‘No, you still sounded like recently arrived Jews,’ Lillian said.

  ‘Not to my parents,’ Lola said. ‘They were convinced they’d Anglicised us.’

  ‘When I get home, I’ll ask my father if the Berkelmanns were related to any Ropschitzes,’ Lola said.

  ‘Why do you have to go back to Australia?’ Lillian said. ‘Why don’t you move to New York? Try it for a year. You are very talented. You shouldn’t be going back to Australia.’ Lola was surprised and bewildered. No one had ever suggested that she was talented. What did Lillian mean, she thought. She knew she couldn’t sing or dance or play the piano or the violin.

  ‘I’ve got a boyfriend in Australia,’ Lola said.

  ‘That’s no reason to go back,’ said Lillian.

  ‘He’s probably already going out with someone else,’ Lola said. She thought that her boyfriend, who played in a popular band, probably was going out with someone else.

  ‘Going out?’ Lillian said. ‘What do you mean going out? Do you mean he’s probably fucking someone else?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Lola.

  ‘He’s an arsehole,’ Lillian said. ‘Why would you want to go back to a boyfriend who’s fucking someone else?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lola.

  She hadn’t missed him. She hadn’t missed talking to him. She wasn’t sure if they did talk much. She tried to list his good qualities and realised she’d never thought about what they might be. She did like him. Or maybe she just liked having a boyfriend. Having a boyfriend did make her feel settled. And normal. He was just part of how things were. He was her boyfriend, and in about six months when she finished her work in America, she was going back to Australia to be with him.

  People had told her that they had seen him with a very quiet, mousy sort of girl. But Lola had somehow filed that information in a part of her brain she had no access to. She seemed to have an unnerving ability to overlook the obvious. When she was sixteen she had gone out with Philip Hughes, an engineering student, for two years. After a
year, she had begun to feel that there was something she didn’t know about him. Something she didn’t trust.

  Renia and Edek had been hoping for an engagement announcement. They liked Philip Hughes. Well, they liked the fact that he was male and taking Lola out. Renia and Edek thought that his parents, Iris and Fred Hughes, were Jewish. They thought they were English Jews, which explained their lack of Yiddish and their bewilderment about Jews not celebrating Christmas. Iris and Fred Hughes had gone along with the deception as they lived with Philip and his sister in a two-bedroom apartment, and Renia and Edek by now had moved into a three-bedroom house. Iris and Fred saw Lola as proof that their son Philip was moving up in the world.

  At a party in a house by the seaside, when Lola was seventeen, someone had told her that Philip Hughes was kissing a boy behind the fridge.

  ‘There’s no room behind the fridge,’ Lola, who was standing in the garden, had replied.

  She had had to wait until a year later, when she came home one day to the apartment she shared with a Rock-Out colleague, to find Philip Hughes in her bed with an older man. Lola hadn’t been sure whether it was the man’s age or gender that had shocked her most. She did know that it was all over between her and Philip Hughes.

  ‘Don’t get married young,’ Lillian Roxon said to her. ‘It’s a big mistake. Live your life and then get married.’ Lola thought that getting married was living your life. ‘You can come to New York and live with me,’ Lillian said. ‘Think about it.’ Lola did think about it. It seemed like an invitation to become a Martian or turn into a pumpkin. She’d never thought of living anywhere other than Melbourne.

  Lillian’s apartment on East Twenty-First Street was across the road from the Thirteenth Precinct police headquarters, which, Lillian had pointed out, made it a very good location. Despite the location, Lola noticed that Lillian had three locks on the door of her third-floor walk-up apartment. Lola was sure that no one in Melbourne had three locks on their front door.

  ‘I think I’ll have an ice-cream,’ Lola said to Lillian.

  ‘Why not?’ said Lillian. ‘They’re non-fat.’

  ‘It doesn’t say on the menu how many calories they have,’ Lola said.

  ‘How many calories can non-fat ice-cream have?’ Lillian said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lola. ‘I’ve never had non-fat ice-cream before.’

  ‘Do you count the calories of everything you eat?’ Lillian said.

  ‘Only when I’m on a diet,’ said Lola.

  ‘I told you I’m on a diet at the moment,’ Lillian said.

  ‘I’ve been on a diet half my life,’ said Lola. ‘My mother used to serve me meals that always came in under two hundred calories,’ Lola said. ‘She used to give me grilled something and a salad. Grilled chicken and a salad, grilled fish and a salad, grilled liver and a salad, grilled anything and a salad. I had to keep a constant supply of chocolate in my bedroom cupboard so I wouldn’t starve.’

  ‘My father hated me being chubby,’ Lillian said. ‘And I was chubby then, not fat. I was getting ready to go out on my first date, when I was sixteen, when he came into my room and said, “If you could see yourself from behind, you wouldn’t leave the house.”’ When we ate out, he’d say to the waiter, “No potatoes for my fat daughter.”’

  ‘Your father and my mother would have got on very well,’ Lola said. ‘My mother believes in slimness above all else. She doesn’t believe in God, so she doesn’t value godliness. Nothing beats being slim.’

  ‘It’s crazy, and sad,’ said Lillian.

  ‘What went wrong?’ Lola said. ‘I thought we Jews were supposed to be constantly overfeeding our children, our guests and our relatives, if we had any.’

  ‘I think I’ll have an ice-cream too,’ Lillian said.

  ‘It was very good,’ said Lola.

  ‘Next week, I want to take you to see a new group, The Doors,’ Lillian said. ‘They’re going to be huge. Particularly their lead singer, Jim Morrison.’

  ‘I’ve heard of them,’ Lola said.

  ‘Linda is coming too,’ Lillian said. Lola almost mentioned that she’d bumped into Linda while Linda had been photographing Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, in London. But she decided against it.

  Lola had been walking all day. It was another hot day. She had decided that she really liked New York. The city absorbed you. Took you into itself like a sponge or a piece of blotting paper. New York made you feel less aware of being on your own, less aware of being a foreigner, less aware that you weren’t at home. No one asked you why you were in New York. People from everywhere were there. You were just one of them.

  Lola found it easier to arrange interviews here. In London she had to do a lot of talking to persuade people that interviews that would come out in Rock-Out, in Australia, were worth doing. On the whole, the English were suspicious of Australians and looked down on them.

  In New York, no one questioned the value of an interview with an oddly named Australian newspaper. Lola felt unexpectedly at home in this semi-rundown, not quite spick-and-span city. She wasn’t frightened of New York. She wasn’t frightened by the talk of how dangerous the city was. She wasn’t frightened by the police who all carried easily seen guns. She wasn’t frightened of anything. She didn’t yet know that within a decade, she would be frightened of everything. That she would experience panic attacks that would leave her gasping for breath.

  Lola had begun to feel more accommodating towards the cockroaches in her room at the Horwood Hotel. She used to sit and watch them scurrying across the floor. Unlike ants, cockroaches seemed to frequently pause. Lola wondered what they were doing during their pauses. They just seemed to stand very still and then, suddenly, move on again. Maybe they were eating, but their movements were too delicate and refined for Lola to detect any activity.

  Lola had also worked out that if she got up early in the morning, she could usually be guaranteed an empty bathroom that was still clean. She was becoming fond of the Horwood. She and Lillian and Linda Eastman were going to see The Doors at The Scene, a downtown club, that night. They would be a trio of Ls.

  She was meeting Lillian and Linda in an hour. She put on her purple false eyelashes. When she finished positioning and gluing them and painting thick black eyeliner above and below the lashes, she remembered that neither Lillian nor Linda wore make-up. Lola briefly contemplated scrubbing her face, but it had been a long time since she’d gone out anywhere without her pancake make-up, her eye-liner and her lashes.

  The Scene was in the basement of a building on the corner of Forty-Sixth Street and Eighth Avenue. The area was called Hell’s Kitchen and wasn’t the most salubrious part of town. You emerged from The Scene, late at night, to a parade of prostitutes in hot pants on Eighth Avenue. Lola had never seen a prostitute close up before. They looked like ordinary girls only more made-up, more worn out and less clothed.

  The Scene was one of the in places to go. The best bands played there. The 23-year-old owner, Steve Paul, seemed to be able to spot stars well before they were stars. Fleetwood Mac, Traffic, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Young Rascals and Jimi Hendrix had all played there. Tiny Tim, a ukulele player with a very high falsetto-vibrato voice who sang vintage popular songs, was the warm-up act for all the performers.

  A lot of the regulars who frequented The Scene were serious hippies. There was always a clutch of celebrities – Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Sammy Davis Jr, Mick Jagger. And there was also a smattering of uptown people slumming it for the night.

  Linda Eastman didn’t look at all embarrassed to see Lola. She gave her a hug and a kiss. ‘Did you like London?’ she said.

  ‘I did like London,’ Lola said.

  ‘I could easily see myself living there,’ Linda said. Linda really looked like the well-bred, upper-class girl from Scarsdale, New York, that she was. Everything about her was well put together, but unfussy. She clearly didn’t feel the need to embellish herself with jewellery or the latest hairstyle.

  Her s
houlder-length thick blond hair was sensibly cut, and her clothes were well made, subdued and practical. She carried herself with an innate confidence. She spoke with an aristocratic Scarsdale accent and an air of authority. There was a sense of affluence about her and the entitlement that affluence can bring. She stood out from the other habitués of The Scene, most of whom were in kaftans and far from perfectly groomed.

  Linda looked just like the receptionist for the upper-crust Town and Country magazine that she had been. Except for three things. First, the two Nikon cameras that were always hanging around her neck. And second, her determination. She had a determination that was evident in every syllable and consonant that came out of her mouth. And then there was her sexuality. Her sexuality, which was not displayed in low-cut necklines or see-through tops, was clearly visible in the way she looked at certain pop stars. Her gaze was very direct and purposeful.

  Lola knew that Linda’s mother had died in a plane crash five years ago, when Linda was twenty. Linda had become pregnant in the month after her mother died. She had got married three months after her mother died and given birth to her daughter, Heather, six months after that. Lola thought it was hard not to look at those events and to think they were not, to a degree, a consequence of Mrs Eastman dying. Linda divorced Heather’s father when Heather was two and a half.

  ‘Could you really see yourself living in London?’ Lola said to Linda.

  ‘Yes,’ said Linda. ‘I loved London. I really like English people.’

  ‘You should visit Australia,’ Lola said. ‘It’s full of English people.’

  ‘So London must have felt like home to you,’ Linda said.

  ‘Not really,’ said Lola. ‘The English don’t really like Australians. I think they see us as their uncouth relatives.’

  ‘Well, we’re not their relatives,’ Lillian said. ‘Lola’s relatives didn’t come from London and neither did mine. They came from Lvov and Lodz. Lvov and Lodz were in Poland, three-hundred-and-fifty miles from each other. Lvov is now part of Ukrainia.’

  ‘So did your relatives know each other?’ Linda said.