Lily White

by Susan Isaacs

  Although now White, Leonard and his wife, Sylvia, did not abandon the old-world custom of naming a baby for a dead and inevitably boring relative. Leonard and Sylvia called their surprise daughter Lily Rose, after Sylvia’s maternal grandmother, Leah Rivka Mutterperl, a woman who became distraught upon realizing, on her second day aboard the S.S. Polonia, bound for Ellis Island, that she had left her false teeth on a washstand in a hovel in a shtetl about sixty miles due south of Cracow three weeks earlier and who never again was able to regain her equanimity.

  Before Weiss and White, the family’s name had actually been Weissberg until 1948—two years before Lee’s birth—when Leonard shortened it to Weiss. When asked, “Weiss?” by a customer who acted as if she had heard something unpleasant, he replied (too quickly): “Weiss means ‘white.’ It’s actually a very common German name … like White is here.” As the fur trade was in those days an industry of men named Glickstern and Steinberg and Rubin, the knowing smile on his customer’s face mortified Leonard and determined him to be White, although it took him two years to get up the courage to actually do it.

  In any case, until Lee was born, Leonard and Sylvia were so confident in the imminence of a son (whom they planned to name Bartholomew, after Leonard’s grandfather Baruch Weissberg) that they barely gave a thought to what to name a daughter, much less to how silly Lily White sounded, especially when, after a few months it became obvious that the girl’s coloring was going to be decidedly Mediterranean.

  Fortunately, their firstborn’s childish pronunciation of Lily was Lee-Lee, so in a sense, Lee christened herself … although in the case of the Weissberg-Weiss-Whites, christened is obviously not the right word, while “jewed” would be not only a misnomer but might give offense, however unintended—somewhat the way “lily white” began to in 1954, in those months just after Brown v. Board of Education was handed down.

  That Leonard WWW would be sensitive to the feelings of the Negro is not surprising, since he was the incarnation of that old Nixonian saw that Jews live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans. His liberalism, however, was not the usual concern for the underdog. He really didn’t care about the underdog unless the underdog had managed to get a few bucks together and was in the market for a fur garment for his wife or lady friend. No, Leonard’s liberalism was his inescapable inheritance from his card-carrying-Communist father, Nat, a shop steward for the Fur Workers Union, and his big-hearted, big-mouthed mother, Bella.

  Leonard received one further legacy: While Nat could not help his son gain admission to Harvard or obtain a seat on the stock exchange, he was able to secure him a position as floor boy in the back room at Frosty Furs in Forest Hills. Thus began his career: in 1942, seventeen-year-old Leonard—safe from the Army’s clutches because of a quirky kidney—traveled from Borough Park in Brooklyn to Queens. He swept the floors and scoured from workbenches the reeking grease that dripped off untreated raccoon pelts. He stretched lynx skins on a board for the cutter and marked patterns onto garments. He was a hard worker, and an excellent one too. But nothing he did was good enough for his boss. Whenever there were no customers around, his boss, Isadore Frumkin, would growl, “Move yer whatsis, sonny boy!” He would scrutinize Leonard’s every move with the tight-clenched face of the congenitally sadistic.

  Was revenge on Mr. Frumkin the spark that made Leonard determine that someday he would be the boss of Frosty Furs and when he was, he would treat his floor boy like a human being? Who knows what ignites the entrepreneurial fire in a young man? Rebellion against his Trotskyite father? The ignominy of sweeping up scraps of muskrat and cigarette butts as well as the curlicues of oily lettuce that appeared to molt from the wet-breaded sardine sandwich Milton Kuperschmidt, the cutter, devoured every noon? Was it glancing out the window onto Austin Street and seeing Mr. Frumkin’s resplendent 1942 Packard illuminating the February dusk? Or could it have been observing Mr. Frumkin, kneeling on the floor to better gauge the hemline of Mrs. Whitcomb Knoll’s broadtail, casually run his hand up Mrs. Knoll’s pale and silky and Protestant calf?

  In those days, Queens was not yet the vigorous ethnic mishmash it is today. Entire neighborhoods—Douglaston Manor, Forest Hills Gardens—were not merely lily white: even the lightest Jews were prohibited, and, indeed, Catholics—including the fairest, without O’s or Mc’s or excessive offspring—were encouraged to reside elsewhere. To young Leonard, delivering a lapin muff and bonnet for Mrs. William Warren’s little Amanda, or picking up Mrs. Bradley Mercer’s nutria jacket (onto which Mr. Bradley had upchucked five Rob Roys and Welsh rarebit on New Year’s Eve) for a cleaning, Forest Hills Gardens was paradise. A mere three-block walk from the store put him on a street where flaxen-haired angels tossed balls to airborne blond dogs. Velvet lawns encircled four-bedroom, mullion-windowed houses that Leonard was soon to learn were called (albeit redundantly) English Tudor.

  He rarely saw the masters of the house; they were a half world away, fighting Heinies and Japs. Or at least they were in Manhattan, writing advertising copy for stool softeners.

  But the women stayed home in those days, and Leonard moved quickly from being merely enamored to falling in love with them all: the debutante daughters, the newlyweds, the young mothers, the matrons, the menopausal. It was, of course, pure prejudice, the viewing of an entire group as the Perfect One: a woman in tennis whites, with shiny hair and a voice as soft and luxe as lynx. (Clearly, this passion for anything female and Episcopalian was an indication that Leonard had a few unresolved odds and ends in the Oedipal department; they would remain problematical even after he undertook psychotherapy a decade later. It should be noted here, however, that his mother, Bella, a good-hearted, effusive woman who claimed a brief career as a character actress in the Yiddish theater, weighed nearly three hundred pounds and had dyed her frizzy hair the color of a rusty steel wool pad. Bella’s voice was so lacking in mellifluence that a simple “How are you, tataleh?” was, to her son, more agonizing than a thousand pieces of fresh chalk screeching along a blackboard.)

  But these women of the Gardens were so removed from Leonard’s experience they might as well have belonged to another species. He could only worship them from afar. While he could easily (very easily) picture himself wrapping a golden sable cape around pearly shoulders in the front hall of one of the grander Tudors and hearing a grateful wifely “Thank you, Leonard, my dearest,” he could not actually bring himself to smile his wide, engaging smile at one of them, so afraid was he of rejection—or perhaps of acceptance. His only sexual encounters took place in another borough: exchanging chaste kisses with Brooklyn stenographers—and feeling up Flo Feinman, the Slut of Borough Park. Secretly, he was afraid he would never find anyone he would desire enough to marry.

  Six years passed. Since this is Lee’s story, not Leonard’s, suffice it to say that much happened in that time. Although Leonard remained innocent of the wondrous topography of women, in business he was on his way to being a man of the world. He had risen higher than he had ever dreamed—thanks to that louse Isadore Frumkin. Leonard’s boss’s black market diet of marbled steak and Hershey bars led, inexorably, to a crippling heart attack shortly after V-J Day. Leonard, backed by a loan arranged by an eager-beaver junior vice president of the East New York Savings Bank (a member of Nat’s Communist cell), became the owner of Frosty Furs just before Christmas in 1946. A year later, he proved he was a natural capitalist. Business was booming to such an extent that he repaid his bank loan, bought a 1947 Lincoln Continental that made Mr. Frumkin’s Packard look like a hunk of junk—and told his father, “Absolutely no contributions to Communist front organizations!” when Nat hit him up for a fifty-dollar contribution to the Soviet-American Folk Dance League.

  Leonard was not only putting some distance between himself and his past. He was also hard at work to get the polish he hadn’t been born with. He went to the theater and saw Cornelia Otis Skinner in Lady Windermerés Fan (which he’d thought might have something to do with the fashion business).
He listened to WQXR for culture. He went to the movies for diction lessons (although he did drop his lord-of-the-manor “How teddibly luffly of you” pretty quickly after his mother, Bella, started yuk-king it up, mistakenly believing that her son was indulging in a rare moment of frivolity and doing an imitation of Ronald Colman in The Late George Apley).

  But his urbanity wasn’t entirely superficial; Leonard went to every Furriers Industry Council meeting and absorbed his tony Manhattan colleagues’ wisdom on everything from remodeling Astrakhan coats to what whiskey to drink (Johnnie Walker Black) and precisely how to order it (“on the rocks, splash of soda—no twist, sweetheart”). He overcame his natural shyness by forcing himself to ask his customers leading questions. (“What are your Thanksgiving plans, Mrs. Fiske?” “No, really, I’d love to hear about your Easter centerpiece, Mrs. Guilfoyle.”) Thus he gathered an enormous amount of data on the folkways of the preeminent stratum of the upper middle class.

  Gradually, the young man gained confidence. His customers began to find him charming: “Mrs. Johnston, that seal would clap his flippers if he could see you in his coat! No, seriously. I mean it. You look”—he’d take a deep breath as if to clear his head so he could find the perfect word—“lovely.” At twenty-three, Leonard was almost on top of the world. He had money in his pocket, a firm jaw, a head of lustrous jet-black hair (more than one customer thought of him as a Jewish Robert Taylor), and a developing sense of style. All he needed was a wife.

  Early in 1948, Sylvia Bernstein came into Tudor Rose (the fur salon’s new name, which Leonard selected after nights in the library poring over everything from Amy Vanderbilt to Boutell’s Heraldry). Leonard checked out her well-cut gray wool suit with its flared-at-the-hips peplum jacket which only the slimmest women could wear successfully, looked into her blue-gray eyes, took in her prominent cheekbones and her sleek, blond-streaked hair and thought, in essence: Hubba hubba! But he acted all business, assuming she’d been recommended to him by one of his more genteel customers. Wait, she had no wedding ring. So she must be one of his customers’ daughters. Ah well, at least she might be good for a red fox chubby. He asked, “May I help you, Miss …?” When she answered, in the most euphonious tones possible: “Sylvia Bernstein,” he would have fainted, if he hadn’t found himself falling in love.

  It wasn’t just her looks. Sylvia had class, Leonard was relieved to discover. All right, people hearing her speak would realize she wasn’t a Vassar girl. But she never, even on the hottest summer day, left the house without wearing gloves. Her apartment building was classy too (Tudor style, no less), with leaded windows in the lobby and a lion stantant on the pediment over the elevator. Not only that: Her mother, at age forty-five, was still a natural blond.

  And her father was a judge!

  The first time Leonard met the Bernsteins, he could scarcely breathe. That was how emotional he became, wishing that he could have had such parents. They were perfect.

  Take Sylvia’s mother. Not only did she cook and clean. If sock-darning were a competitive sport, Eva Bernstein would have had a mantel full of trophies. What a housewife! But there were holes too big for even Eva to repair, and when one of these occurred, she would adopt the sock as her own, wearing it and its non-holey brother over her stocking feet so she could glide through the apartment without running her nylons or disturbing her husband, Judge Bernstein. “Shhh!” she’d warn Sylvia and Sylvia’s younger brother, Victor. “The Judge is taking a nap!” “The judge is reading!” “The Judge is on the phone!”

  Judge Arthur Bernstein was more than a pillar of rectitude; he was a five-foot-nine-inch pillar of quietude. In the Queens Domestic Relations Court, where he presided, court stenographers griped that they deserved battle pay, they had to strain so hard to hear his feathery voice. But other than that, there were no complaints. His reputation was neither sterling nor tarnished; he was not unduly harsh with the litigants who appeared before him (although he did seem a little too eager to rule an ex-wife’s petition for support out of order if her ex-husband was represented by a lawyer with links to the Ronald Goldberger Kew Gardens Democratic Club). However, to colleagues, neighbors, friends, and certainly to Leonard, Arthur Bernstein was nothing but a gentleman. He removed his hat in the presence of a lady. He wore an alpaca coat, used a small but genuine tortoiseshell holder for his Philip Morrises. When expressing gratitude to anyone, he simply nodded—but in such a gracious and dignified way that he made those who vocalized their “thank you”s seem almost vulgar.

  And compared to Leonard’s parents! Nat the Commie had an articulated opinion on everything, from dialectical materialism to how to grow string beans on the fire escape: “Hey, Lenny, you don’t drown ‘em, you schmendrick. You water ’em every other day!” And Bella, with her demands that he loosen up! Each day as he left for work she made a game of blocking the door. “What d’ya got, an ice cube up your tuchis, Lenny? Smile! It don’t cost nothin’.” He’d try to sidestep her and grab for the doorknob, but despite her bulk, she was more agile than he. “Come on, pretend I’m a lady buying a fur. ‘Excuse me, my good man,”’ she’d twitter, giving what was actually a pretty fair imitation of a Vanderbilt voice. “‘I’m looking for something smart in a mouton, fingertiplength.’” Eventually, Bella would start to guffaw at her own performance, doubling over with laughter; that’s when Leonard would make his break for freedom.

  In those days, young men did not get their own apartments, so Leonard was doubly grateful to Sylvia: for getting him out of his personal hell in Brooklyn and for giving him a judge and a natural blonde for in-laws. And of course, Sylvia was grateful to him, because at age twenty-two, she had no prospects. The loss of Selwyn Youdelman, a Brooklyn Law School graduate with offices in Kew Gardens, had devastated her parents a year earlier. That the loss was due to his choosing another girl over Sylvia made it more painful to the Bernsteins than if he had merely died. Sylvia knew that they blamed her for his leaving, that she’d shown off her artistic nature too much, that she’d kept pushing him to go to operas and museums, while all a normal fellow wanted to do was go see The Bells of St. Mary’s, for God’s sake, or go for a malted. “I didn’t push him!” Sylvia explained tearfully.

  “Shhh!” her mother responded. “The Judge is in the bathroom.” Both women took a moment to compose themselves and whisper more quietly.

  “He asked me what did I want to do,” Sylvia tried to explain, “so I said I read how they had a Turner exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. He’s this English guy. And Selwyn was the one who said how he loves good pictures and never gets enough of them.”

  “That doesn’t mean he actually wants to go into the city on a weekday night! The man is an attorney!” Sour acid rose from Sylvia’s gut and burned the back of her throat. She wanted to throw up. But the Judge was in the bathroom, and even if he finished right away, it would have to air out or she’d never stop vomiting for the rest of her life. She rushed away from her mother, into the bedroom she shared with her brother, flung herself facedown on her bed, and wept—silently.

  Unfair! Unfair! She’d bring a date into the apartment, and right away he’d hook his finger over his tie to loosen it, as if he were suffocating. Well, why not? The place was gloomy, airless. The windows were never open, the blinds were always drawn tight, and there was barely enough light—just enough to see the dust sparkles dancing in the living room air. Even before her mother could breathe, “Shhh! The Judge,” the date would get that Lemmeoutta-here look, like he was inside Boris Karloff’s tomb.

  But Leonard actually liked her parents! She knew part of it was that they had wall-to-wall carpeting and his parents were, as he explained, working-class people. But even guys who’d been all hepped up because her father was a judge—like Selwyn—were somehow repelled by the silence in that apartment, by the radio that hadn’t been turned on since FDR died. There was something about the Judge, she realized, that was … not right. And her mother, too, was … not right.

  Not right? Wack
o was probably closer to the truth, but that would have been too revolutionary a notion for Sylvia. And while Leonard (had he been cross-examined under oath) might have admitted something was not quite right about the Bernsteins, the cryptlike quiet made him feel they were, at the very least, a classy family.

  In fact, the first time Sylvia let him put his hand under her skirt, he was thinking: I’m bringing Sleeping Beauty to life. He was thrilled with her. Sitting on her living room couch, her parents inside, sleeping, he wanted to whisper, “Your thighs are as soft as chinchilla.” But he stopped himself because he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and think he was low class, comparing her to a rodent, or worse, that he thought her thighs were furry, although they did feel a little … fuzzy. So he kept mum, always a good idea in the Bernstein apartment.

  Three months later, when Leonard asked for Sylvia’s hand, an idea suddenly popped into his head. He decided that in addition to an engagement ring, he would give his Beauty a silver fox stole that would set off her pale prettiness. Which was too bad, because Beauty and her mother had been thinking more in terms of a Breath of Spring mink jacket, if not a full-length coat. Still, a fox stole is better than nothing: Even though he was not a professional man, not even a college graduate, not even a guy with a couple of years at CCNY, Sylvia knew Leonard was the best she could hope for. At least he was nice looking, and he owned a decent business, which was nothing to be ashamed about—even though she was.

  Well! Three years later, when Lee was born, things had certainly changed! But more about that when the time comes.

  Three

  Bobette Frisch stood apart from my client’s usual victims. Most of Norman Torkelson’s women lay somewhere between vulnerable and defenseless. Not Bobette. Starting out in Brooklyn, a venue not known for fragile females, she moved due east to Queens in the early sixties when she was about twenty. She worked as a waitress at a tavern in Flushing called the Dew Drop Inn. A couple of years later, when the crowd got meaner and the barkeeper took to tucking a hammer behind the Wild Turkey for protection, she moved east again, this time into Nassau County.