Split-Level

by Sande Boritz Berger

  Praise for Split-Level

  “In her latest novel, Split-Level, Sande Boritz Berger paints a vivid picture of the early 1970s, when the sexual revolution was making its way through the suburbs of America. With equal parts humor and heart, Berger explores the anguish of a marriage coming apart and how some will go to any lengths to mend it.”

  —Laurie Gelman, author of Class Mom

  “Sande Boritz Berger eloquently takes us to a time and place where young marriages reeled with a new playbook. When the husband of New Jersey housewife Alex Pearl upends their ’70s-style suburban bliss with some bad behavior, Alex knows her life might never be the same. Split-Level is a gripping, fast-paced story, perfect for readers of literary fiction who enjoy a mature, nuanced look at the complications of marital relationships.”

  —Betty Hafner, author of Not Exactly Love: A Memoir

  “In a story dotted with Pyrex, Fresca, and dial phones, Sande Boritz Berger sets the stage for a page-turning journey through 1970s suburbia. An unsuspecting trip to ‘Marriage Mountain,’ a healing sanctuary, will have readers rooting for lonely housewife Alex Pearl to take a chance on the life she desires instead of the one she’s settled for.”

  —Elizabeth McCourt, author of Sin in the Big Easy

  “A poignant look back on suburban post-war haze during the swinging ’70s, Berger has written a smart and unpredictably funny novel. Her protagonist, Alex, grappling with marriage, two small children, and the conflicting social mores of that time, is sure to win over your heart.”

  —Susan Tepper, author of Monte Carlo Days & Nights

  and The Merrill Diaries

  “In Split-Level, Berger, a keen observer of suburban angst, takes us back to the early days of the sexual revolution in the ’burbs—to the promise and reality of bed-hopping and marital bliss—as it plays out in the lives of Alex and Donny Pearl and those of a neighboring couple whose marriage is in a parallel state of decline. Hard to put down; hard to forget.”

  —Barbara Donsky, author of award-winning

  Veronica’s Grave: A Daughter’s Memoir and

  the international bestseller Missing Mother

  SPLIT-LEVEL

  Copyright © Sande Boritz Berger 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-555-1

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-556-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018961676

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A version of the first chapter of Split-Level appeared in TriQuarterly, an international journal published by Northwestern University Press.

  for Steve

  my light along the path

  Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals …

  Anaïs Nin

  The Day Before

  Prime rib, rib roast, or is it silver tip? For years I have been an ovolacto vegetarian, but this morning I stand on a line that snakes around three blocks, securing my right of passage into Fernando & Sons Meat Emporium—this being Fernando’s widely advertised yearly blow-out sale. I’m startled when two ruddy-faced workers, in a noisy pickup, hoot and honk, then brake to survey the selection as if we, the women on this line, are the beef in the offering: a curvy leg, perhaps, a lean shoulder or nice rack of ribs. But no one bats a curly lash to acknowledge them. Instead we concentrate through icy eyes, daring someone, anyone, to snag a spot in line.

  Hurrying from the house, after the girls boarded the camp bus, I noticed how the freshly cut grass shimmered with dew, as if gift-wrapped in cellophane. A lazy moth struggled on the cold stone path, its wings heavy with moisture. And once again, I ached for that time: The cool, fragrant air stinging my cheeks, my heart pounding as I struggled uphill to Old Main and art class. Some days, I’d stop to dally among the morning shadows before the sun leapt through branches, capturing me in its honeyed light. True, I was alone then, but never lonely. Now I stand, chin to skull, with nearly a hundred women waiting, all waiting, for this golden opportunity: the chance to save, to stockpile for next winter—provisions made from acts of slaughter. Am I the only one watching the floating sky, streaked like the inside of a conch shell, or the hydrangeas across the road weighing on their branches—violet balloons about to burst?

  I mumble aloud, desperate to memorize the varied cuts of beef, needing to be prepared when it’s my turn to enter Fernando’s. My stomach churns as before final exams, any exam. I will not ask my friend, Rona, no never, and see that flutter of sympathy in her eyes, that downcast look bordering on pity—a look capable of turning me mute. How can I so easily distinguish each Modigliani, a Manet from a Monet, but remain pathetically lost on chuck roast, tenderloin, and filet?

  ONE

  August 1974

  I am breathless from a morning of tedious phone chatter. Long conversations about how the wallpaper is starting to lift in my powder room—a bathroom with a small pedestal sink shaped like a clamshell and a very low commode. No one will ever powder there; it’s hard enough to maneuver your body, let alone relieve yourself in the miniscule space. Still, I like the way “powder room” sounds, and Rona Karl has taught me a great deal about home décor since I moved to Wheatley Heights, New Jersey, a small suburban community that boasts nothing taller than an intrusive water tower standing guard as you enter town.

  The phone receiver is crushed between my ear and shoulder while I paprika a rump roast slumped in a square Pyrex dish. Struggling to stay tuned to the daily Listen to Rona Show, I chop an onion, then mistakenly blot my stinging eyes with a wet dish towel.

  “Damn, that hurts. I can barely see!” But Rona has pumped up the volume, grumbling now over the “outrageous” price of her imported porcelain tile. Though my focus is blurred, I can see myself dividing. One of me, confident and cocky, is propped on the kitchen counter—sleek legs dangling, shaking a head of wavy blonde hair while hissing at the other me, who, appearing embarrassed, tries to continue a conversation.

  “So, Rona, I was thinking, I might patch the wallpaper myself, with some Elmer’s.” This is how I often pose a question when speaking with Rona, whose response is usually predictable.

  “Are you nuts, Al-ex? Do you want to ru-in everything you’ve done?”

  “Of course not, you know much better about these things.”

  “Hold on,” Rona says without curbing her exasperation.

  I slide the rusty roast into the brown Magic Chef and slam the oven door. Stretching the phone cord to its uncoiled limits, I move to the den and begin dusting the bookshelves, my feather duster held high like a magic wand. Poof! Make just one wish, Alex. Remember when you had fistfuls of wishes?

  My shoulder bumps an ancient edition of Monopol
y, which sends a slew of frayed, yet dependable, cookbooks cascading to the floor. I rearrange the wobbly shelf and rub grease off the cover of The Fifteen-Minute Quiche. Above the culinary section sits another shelf wholly dedicated to the fine art of gardening, and how I’ve learned to rescue our roses from the cruelty of mealy bugs and aphids. On the bottom shelf is a tower of decorating magazines, which have replaced my fine art books, now in storage, and boast effortless projects like silk flower arranging and chic decorating with sheets. But shoved in the back of this flimsy teakwood wall unit, wrapped in a Wonder Bread bag, is my one little secret—an often-scanned, earmarked copy of A Sensuous Life in 30 Days, which offers a woman’s-eye view, with detailed information, on how to set off fireworks in the bedroom with tantalizing chapters like “The Whipped Cream Wiggle” and “The Butterfly Flick.” I’d bought the book after Becky’s first birthday, not realizing I was already pregnant with Lana. So, for now, I’m sticking to decorating with sheets, giving much less thought to what I could be doing on top of them.

  “Got a pencil?” Rona’s voice blasts through the receiver, and I quickly stuff the book back in its hiding place.

  In the kitchen I fumble through the junk drawer, ripping sales receipts for items purchased well over a year ago. A blonde Barbie head topples out and lands at my feet. Rona’s breathing turns huffy. She has important things on her agenda, like removing finger marks from her white, wooden railings. Still, I think she enjoys being my personal household-hint hotline, sharing her unique bible laden with numbers of service people in a ten-mile radius. Rona never fails to toss out extra tidbits of information and local gossip: like who was last spotted slinking out of the Maplewood Motor Inn with Bernie Salter, the bald, yet incredibly handsome, kosher butcher.

  “My Maybelline eye pencil will have to do,” I say.

  “The number is 377-Pari. You mustn’t fool around. Call them now, Alex!” I love how Rona alternates between her London and Brooklyn dialects—a vernacular that conveniently distances her from her Eastern European heritage. “They must come and repair the wallpaper before your girls discover the open seam. Then you’ll be sorry!”

  For a second, I ponder the tragedy facing the Mylar wallpaper dotted with silver swans curling up the bathroom wall, but remarkably my pulse remains steady.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll call right now.” I’ve learned it’s easier to just go along, even though our banter has me exhausted. To keep Rona as my friend, I dare not scare her by reciting passages that pop into my head at inappropriate moments, like now: This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Lately I fear my world might end precisely like this—talking about nothing consequential on a lemony-yellow wall phone.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.” A girlish giggle escapes my throat.

  Instead of hanging up, I push down the peg to get a dial tone. What I hear is silence and a few seconds of bumpy breathing. I think of slamming the phone down on the dirty caller.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  “Mrs. Pearl?” I am startled by a strange voice and the coincidence of a connection without the phone having rung.

  “Yes, it’s Alex. Who’s this please?”

  “You don’t know me, Mrs. Pearl. I’m Colleen’s mother—Colleen Byrnes, your babysitter?”

  “Oh, is everything all right? Is Colleen sick?” My eyes catch the large calendar taped to the pantry door. I’ve already inked in Colleen for next Saturday night.

  “Mrs. Pearl, this is not a pleasant call for me to make. I’m afraid my daughter will no longer be able to babysit your little girls.”

  Damn. I bet Donny forgot to pay her last night. It’s happened twice before. I am already steaming at him when she continues:

  “Colleen came home last night hysterically crying.”

  Something in her slow, deliberate tone irritates me, but I let her continue while my heart revs up like a new Corvette.

  “Please tell me what happened.”

  “It seems your husband, ah, Mr. Pearl, took my daughter for a little unexpected ride.”

  “A ride? But where?”

  “Well … he drove to the high school parking lot and then he got out of his car, and came around to the passenger seat …”

  My knees start to shake and beads of perspiration pop on my lip. I drag the stretched-out, soiled phone cord over to the sink, fill a Bert and Ernie plastic cup with water, and take a sip. Mrs. Byrnes continues to measure out each word, as if she were baking a cake, as if she’s rehearsed this phone call a hundred times. I look out the kitchen bay window toward the red swing set. Becky and Lana are in day camp; they won’t be home until three, but I swear I hear their squeaky laughter and the familiar rattle of aluminum chains.

  I wrap my fingers around the phone cord and dip it in some pink liquid soap. Grime separates from the rubber, and I hear her say: “he popped in a cassette, some piano concerto, then got out of the car and asked Colleen to slide over to the driver’s side.”

  “What are you insinuating?” I interject.

  “Mrs. Pearl, Colleen is only sixteen, and your husband decided to conduct a driver’s education class at one o’clock in the morning. He insisted he keep his arm around her shoulder while they continually circled the parking lot.”

  I picture Colleen Byrnes’s perfect apple-shaped Irish face, freckles dotting her cheeks like sheer netting. Wisps of her hair blow in the sultry breeze of a warm night. Its fiery hue reminds me of the approaching autumn. She is small-boned and flat-chested, exactly the way I was—and hated being—at sixteen.

  “Could it be your daughter is exaggerating, Mrs. Byrnes? Everyone cuts through that parking lot to avoid the traffic.”

  “Not at that hour, Mrs. Pearl!”

  I walk the phone cord like a dog leash into the powder room. My eyes dart around; my fingers trace the wall. I find the piece of wallpaper that has begun to lift. A dark vacuum sucks up space in my mind. I tug hard, harder. With one quick motion I’ve managed to expose a large pasty patch of wall. The relief is thrilling.

  Last night I’d fallen asleep before Donny—a rare occurrence. I had the beginnings of a migraine from the cheap sangria served at Wheatley Heights’ end-of-season bowling party. I have a vague recollection of opening my eyes, just once, briefly. Donny was standing beside the bed staring at me.

  “What?” I mumbled, startled.

  “Nothing, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  I gaze blankly at the receiver. “My husband would never do anything like you’re describing. Perhaps you should sit Colleen down and make her tell the truth. Why not put her on the phone?” I try to keep my voice even.

  “Sorry, but I do know my own child, Mrs. Pearl. She’d never make anything like this up.”

  “And I know my husband!” I shriek, before slamming the receiver against the wall, instantly filled with remorse. A slideshow of our oldest, Becky, pops in my head. It is as bright and neon as a Warhol poster. She’s maybe fourteen and being driven home from her first babysitting job by somebody’s handsome dad, a man who has leaned in extremely close to offer her a joint.

  My body is in tremor, like a covered soup pot without the vent. Acid from my morning juice rises like a geyser in my throat. I gulp more water, and then with a jumbo sponge, I wipe the already spotless Formica counter, move on to the refrigerator doors, attacking chocolate and ketchup stains made by tiny fingertips. Still, I can’t wipe away the words and bold images tattooed inside my skull. They have magnified, reaching billboard proportion.

  I pace and pace, then mop the kitchen floor twice and must rest to catch my breath. My red vinyl beach bag is propped on the chair next to me. I empty it upside down and find, among loose change and lollipops, a plastic bottle containing a mixture of baby oil and iodine, along with Donny’s makeshift sun reflector—a Bee Gees album covered in aluminum foil. Stepping over the mound of white sand I’ve dumped on the freshly mopped floor, I head for the patio.

  Once outside, I ea
se myself onto the burning cushions of the chaise, and within minutes, the shivering stops. The gardeners have come and gone, so I unbutton my blouse to dot my face and chest with the soothing pink oil. Salty tears slide down my cheeks and linger on my lip. If Donny were here, I wonder if he’d kiss me and lick my tears the way he did when we were first married. I can see his youthful face; I know he’d be furious I had to listen to Mrs. Byrnes’s ridiculous accusations. I bet I’d have to restrain him from going over to Colleen’s house, to force her to admit how she made this whole thing up. But what if … what if she’s telling the truth?

  The phone rings and I don’t budge. I try to block out ghoulish thoughts about the girls: Did they have some catastrophe at camp—get hit in the eye with an airborne rock, choke on a wad of Bazooka during afternoon swim? Or were they kidnapped at gunpoint while their stunned counselors looked on helplessly? No! It’s probably Rona calling to check whether I’ve contacted the folks at Parisian Home Décor. If not her, then Donny asking what’s for dinner. I’ll tell you what’s for dinner, Donny.

  A bumblebee the size of a small passenger jet grazes the tip of my nose. I snap up, fists out, ready to fight. I have no idea how long I’ve been outside, no conception of time. Peeling my damp thighs off the cushions, I head back inside. An aroma of burnt onions wafts through the sliding screen door, competing with the fragrant Queen Anne roses and the freshly mowed grass. I forgot to set the timer and have charred the roast I’d shoved in the oven. A thought invades: Why not serve the black lump to Donny? Hasn’t he always preferred his beef well-done? But knowing him, he’d most likely laugh, which might steal a grin from me, and now I need to remain dead serious. Until we discuss it, he is the only one I can tell about this call. It’s tempting to pick up the receiver and dial Rona, knowing if I shared with her, our friendship might move in a whole new direction. Yet, she’s more likely to brush the incident off like most things which don’t directly concern her.