by Laurie Graff
Time was the culprit. Edward and I were no longer new, and the time that had passed required a more intimate reality to set in. And while it was practically impossible to locate the trust to find a friendship, the wanting never wavered.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: To dip or not to dip?
Christmas came a little early at My Theater Workshop with today’s holiday bake-off. My hot artichoke dip won Best Appetizer, and my prize is two tickets to Abandoned, that play, off-Broadway, you wanted to see.
I know how you enjoy theater and hearing about the growth of my illustrious career.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: To dip or not to dip?
I have always, always said that your dip was hot.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re:To dip or not to dip?
Always, always hot, but seems not enticing enough to devour.
Loss of appetite? Dieting? Full from junk food? Attention Dip Disorder? Too spicy, better eating bland? Maybe too good, and can only indulge on occasion?
Should dip be kept warm in oven? Perhaps only delicious to dream of, tucked away in fridge where others can taste, then served with a slight chill.
Cravings; need to eat well and often. Willing to experiment with recipe.
Please advise.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: To dip or not to dip?
Wear a slip. With nothing underneath.
* * *
Edward walked into my apartment and lifted me above our problems. He carried me into my room, awash in candlelight and anticipation. Pulling down the straps of the slip, the silk riding up with his hands, getting closer, coming near, laying me down on my bed. Ready to dip in.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said the next morning when it was time for him to go. “It was a great night, Karrie, let it go. You don’t know how to let things go. That’s a problem of yours, do you know that?” he said, as if the emotional problems might vanish, if only I could let them go.
“I’m only asking questions. I want to know you, for you to know me. I haven’t learned anything more about who you are since the third date.”
“We’re at that point where you want what you want, and I want what I want.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want you to let it go,” he said, and he was gone.
The night before we went to the play, Edward called to invite me to a party afterward at his friend Lynn’s. However, the triumph of being introduced to his close friend was wiped out when Edward proceeded to tell me that Abandoned would be one of the last social engagements he would be able to plan with me for some time.
“What exactly does that mean?” I asked, knowing I should call it. My call, the one to end it, and I should call it over now.
“It means just that and nothing more.”
I was watching my self-esteem, power and all that crap fly out the window because I was unwilling to do it when it wasn’t what I wanted.
“I am asking you to be a friend and talk to me,” I pleaded to deaf ears, angry at myself as I dug into Edward, searching for the nonexistent buried treasure. Knowing all the while Abandoned would only be a prelude to what was going to happen, and the actress in me had made the choice to play out the scene.
It was a night like any other. Edward could not keep his hands off me. His touch served as a firewall blocking the messages that pleaded with me to stop, and I ignored the pop-ups that tried to get through to my brain. We sat close in an engaging tête-à-tête at the party. Lynn was a gracious hostess, charming as she sang her songs before coaxing me to sing along.
“Edward will be so impressed,” she said.
After my plaintive solo rendition of “Moon River,” Edward—dutifully impressed—and I left for home.
It was raining. Hard. Cold, dark, hard rain. We walked for blocks and blocks before it became remotely possible to even try to hail a cab. We rode uptown in silence, two drenched drifters after the same rainbow’s end; the dream maker successfully breaking my heart. Edward paid the driver before we walked into my apartment. Then I left to walk my dog. Coming back I found Edward undressed in my bed. I took off my clothes and joined him.
It all felt the same as Edward told me how beautiful I was and how much he had wanted to make love to me at the party all the time we were sitting on the club chair by the side of the radiator. I allowed Edward’s words and Edward to fill me up because I wanted to get full. Very full. So full I wouldn’t be hungry again for a very long time. Because even I could no longer pretend, when Edward left in the morning and told me he would call.
Eleven
A female frog finds her mate by answering a frog’s mating call.
My aunt Cookie and uncle Sy became engaged three weeks after they met. They married three months after that. They started a life together in the same time frame mine often felt like it just ended. I never understood why three months was significant in the dating arena. But it seemed when it hit that time, it was often the tendency for the man you were dating to vanish like a cloud.
Blessed with a window seat, I stared out at the sky. The plane plowed through clouds that were bold and beautiful before they disappeared, and I calculated that my last date with Edward was practically three months to the day we had met. It made me think about the lecture I attended last week for single women in Manhattan to find out what they were doing that drove the men away.
“What happens at three months, ladies?” the female speaker asked from the podium, intending to teach women to take responsibility for their lives without betting on the prince.
I thought it safe to say I’d never bet on the prince. I couldn’t because I didn’t believe in him. Besides, he wasn’t all that interesting. Even in fairy tales, with his chiseled perfect looks he was without personality or humor. But the frog was funny. The comic relief, quirky and cute. The frog wasn’t all bad; he just had to be good for you.
“Is three months the first time he doesn’t bring you flowers, and instead of letting it go you get in a huff? Is that the first time he wants to kick back and says he’ll wait till the weekend to see you, and instead of being easygoing you demand he see you before?”
I wanted to be a woman torn up over no tulips and dateless Tuesdays. To me, the inability to plan another social engagement for an undetermined amount of time did not say kick back, it said back off.
“Is the familiar disappointment of men what you are in love with the most? Do you keep choosing the wrong men so you don’t have to end up with them, ladies?”
It was easy to blame both the frogs and the frogettes! But there was something else. Something she wasn’t addressing. There was no reason to jump from lily pad to lily pad that fast if you had made a substantial connection. She was making the assumption a relationship started because both people really wanted to be in one, and I didn’t believe that was necessarily true.
“At three months you still need to have your own life. You need to have your own plans. You always do.”
I agreed with her there. Okay. So you bought and decorated your apartment, you took that solo vacation. You threw yourself a birthday party and would see a Saturday night movie alone. What then?
“Learn to have a man be just one part of your life. You have a full life. Live your life and he’ll pursue you. Let him call.”
I left. Grabbing my coat and purse I got up and fled the cubicle-sized lecture room so I could be free to think outside that box. Love was not formulaic, I insisted to myself, breathing fresh air when I got outside, filling up with relief and exhaling some of the blame I felt had been laid on women.
I walked west across Fourteenth Street, the boom boxes blasting. At Seventh Avenue a young Hispanic man handed me a flier for bridal gowns starting at $39.95. As I st
uffed it in my pocket it occurred to me that the problem was not what happened when it got to be three months. The problem was what had not happened during them. My God, had I figured something out?
During those three months a man was either courting a woman with intention—he wanted a relationship and his actions said so—or he was dating her, without.
Bear in mind he could be dating her with intention; the intention to date in order to have steady evenings out, companionship and sex. Still, when it hit three months something would intrinsically shift. Something that said to both parties it needed to become something more emotionally connected to continue. To become something you could count on. And if it didn’t start out with relationship intention, at three months, even if he was just kicking back, it would not kick in.
Note: It’s fair to say that women do that, too.
I thought about Edward. Aside from never e-mailing back in the first place, once involved I didn’t know how I could have managed it better. I supposed if you knew you felt legitimately interested, the trick would be to understand his intentions while keeping the wings on yours open and, at the same time, self-protective. Hats off to anyone who can pull off that trick!
We landed. Deplaning with my new theory tucked inside the shopping bag of gifts, I thought there was nothing like going home for the holidays to make a breakup feel a little better and a whole lot worse. I tried to wheel the disappointment of this unromantic holiday season out of the airport with my luggage, and allow myself to be soothed by the balmy West Palm air. I didn’t know whether or not the change would be good for me, but I knew it would be different.
“Hello.” Millie jumped out of her sparkling clean car, unzipping the jacket on her pistachio-green warm-up suit, her face all lit up. “Did you have a good flight? Did you eat anything? Come here, let me hold you,” she said, bypassing me and walking, no running, directly to Charlie while I popped open the trunk and put my stuff in the car.
“Hi, Ma,” I said, leaning in to give her a kiss.
“You were a good boy under the seat?” she said, holding Charlie, who gave Millie a big lick hello. “Did you ask them?”
“Yeah, I asked,” I said while I buckled my seat belt, sticking a piece of Charlie under the strap. “They made me pay for him and he got his own confirmation code but they won’t give him miles. I said my dog is a frequent flier, but they only give miles to the pets that go in cargo.”
“Oh, no,” Millie said, giving Charlie a little pat as we drove past the palm trees and onto the main drag. “My grand-dog doesn’t travel in cargo.”
I wondered what life would have been like if I had married young and given my mother a two-legged grandchild. If I had had a life more like hers. Whenever I came to Florida and spent time with the people in my mom’s retirement community, I was struck by the different steps in the mating dance of the post World War II world.
“I made flanken with the pea soup like you like,” Millie told me when we stopped at a red light. I looked out the window and noticed there was no one out walking on the street. “Tomorrow, if you want, I’ll take you shopping and at night Aunt Cookie invited us for dinner. Cookie and Sy have a big anniversary coming up, you know.”
I knew. I couldn’t even imagine. But their courtship completely proved my point. Plus it was one of my all-time favorite stories.
In August of 1954, Sy Gottlieb took his maroon Pontiac sedan for a ride up to the Catskills to spend a weekend in the Jewish Alps. He was a wiry, athletic guy, living at home in the borough of Brooklyn, and gainfully employed after the war as a salesman for a growing medical supply company. Everything was on track except for the one small detail of a wife. Handsome but shy, Sy did not go out too often. A few months back there was the prospect of a blind date, but that had been put on hold. Seymour’s would-be match had an older unmarried sister, and under no circumstances was the younger sibling to be married off first.
Every Saturday, Grandma Rose and Grandpa Lou had game night with a handful of couples from the neighborhood. They took turns playing in each couple’s house, also taking turns hosting the evening with freshly brewed percolated coffee and home-baked cake. The men played gin rummy in the kitchens; the women occupied the living rooms playing Mah-Jongg. Everyone played and talked. The men only talked about the game, but the women talked about everything else.
“So, Rose, what’s with Seymour?” asked Hannah, picking up a tile she hoped would be a good one and discarding another. “Five crack,” she said, putting the patterned tile face up in the center of the bridge table.
“What could be? He goes to work, he’s healthy. Who knows what else? He’s secretive. Not like Millie,” said Rose, picking up a tile and slipping it next to another on her green rack before discarding one to complete her turn. “Soap,” she said, placing the tile with the picture of a white dragon on the table. Then she turned to look at Emma. “Go.”
“Don’t rush me,” said Emma, taking her sweet time to pick before even deciding what to discard. “Go. You’re always telling everyone but Hannah, go.”
“Well you don’t go fast enough. Go,” repeated Rose.
“I’ll go when I go,” said Emma, pausing long enough to take a drag on her Camel cigarette. Emma inhaled as she studied the tiles on her rack. Slowly and deliberately she blew out the smoke, picking up one tile, changing her mind, and then exchanging it for another. “Okay. Now I’ll go,” she said, ready to discard. “Two bam.”
Everyone looked on with great annoyance as the tile with the blue bamboo sticks finally landed. Next was Frieda, who made an announcement before starting her turn.
“I have news. News that was bad that now is good,” she said, everyone’s curiosity peaked while Frieda picked.
Frieda was a very quiet player, but Frieda was a shark. In addition to whatever it was she had to say, it was also possible Frieda was set, and might have picked the one tile she needed to make Mah-Jongg.
“I don’t want to hear no bad news,” said Rose, who was highly competitive and always wanted to win.
Every week the biggest winner was omitted from having to contribute money to the pushke. Both the men’s and women’s games collected money, and they saved until there was enough for everyone to go out for a celebratory dinner.
“Don’t worry, this won’t hurt,” said Frieda. “I can finally introduce your Seymour to my neighbor’s daughter. Her sister, Evelyn, kaynahora, just got engaged. Mah-Jongg!” she said, flipping over the tiles to show her winning hand.
Frieda collected her winning chips from the other players. Each colored chip had a hole in its center in order to slip through one of the four posts attached to the side of each rack. With her fleshy fingers Frieda slipped the chips through the appropriate posts, watching her winnings stack up.
Emma rotated out, and Charlotte, who had been on the side quietly observing, came in. Starting a new game, the four women at the table turned each tile face down so only the smooth, shiny ivory was exposed. They used their hands to mix them all up, swishing them around and around. They clacked against each other, the cigarette smoke filling the room. At the same time the shuffling of cards and the ping of pennies filled the cigar smoked kitchen.
The front door opened, and in walked Seymour.
“Sy, come ’ere,” called Rose, as he averted his mother’s eyes, hoping to avoid the living room and go directly down the green linoleum hallway into his bedroom. “Frieda has something nice to tell you.”
“Forget it,” he said, after he heard. “I met someone up in the mountains and tonight we got engaged!”
“Engaged! So fast you’re engaged? Who is she?” shrieked Rose.
She didn’t know if this was good news or bad. What could she compare it to? Rose never had any courtship. Lou was her first cousin, five years her senior. He moved into his aunt’s and uncle’s Lower East Side tenement when he arrived from Poland at seventeen years old. Cousin Lou fell in love with Cousin Rose on first sight. Rose was twelve, standing in the parlor whi
le her mother, Lou’s aunt Reba, braided her hair. When she turned thirteen, Lou told Rose when she grew up he would marry her. And five years later he did.
“How long ago did you even meet?” Rose asked her son.
“Three weeks ago,” said Sy. “In Kiamesha. The Lakeview Hotel. You’ll like her, Ma, she’s coming for dinner next week. Cousin Molly’s bringing a diamond to show us for a ring.”
“Oh my God, what am I going to cook? Where’s Millie? She’s too young to be out so late. Lou, get in here, your son just got engaged. What’s this girl’s name? Do you know anything about her family? Sy, where are you going? Come back in here and talk to your father.”
The women continued to talk while they picked, each filling their racks with thirteen new tiles. Then Charlotte, who hadn’t said a word all night, came to life.
“Frieda, if the girl’s so nice, how about she meet my nephew?”
In those days, if a man saw you every weekend and told you how much he liked you and you found you liked him back, you didn’t have to second-guess his intentions. You knew. But I bet some of the urgency of what you did do came from what you didn’t. In three weeks’ time people today just started having sex. Back then they got engaged so they could. Nowadays, we all get the milk for free. And, yes, that has changed the course of commitment but at this point its one that’s moot. Today we have the luxury to think about who we are and what we really want. But then, who had time for that mishigas? Life wasn’t so easy. It was better to do it with someone.
You grew up, got married and raised a family. Unless you couldn’t and if you couldn’t, you didn’t. Perhaps you’d adopt. Otherwise, that was that. No fertility drugs. No surrogates. No in vitro. No one froze their sperm for a rainy day or stored embryos for after the big promotion. The work day ended at five, instead of never. Stores closed on Sundays. The city did sleep. There was more time, less options. Was it better? I don’t know, but it was clear. And maybe that part was better.
