On Saturday, the twenty-ninth of October, 1949, Bert and I went downtown and were married by a justice of the peace. Jerry and Bert’s brother Hans went with us as witnesses; Delia refused to go. No one in Bert’s family suggested we have a church wedding. I wondered if they felt a secular wedding wasn’t real and so could someday be broken. I certainly thought so. When we got back to Jerry’s apartment, my sisters and Bert’s family were there. Delia’s eyes were red, and every once in a while she’d get tears in her eyes. But no one thought anything of it; women were expected to cry at weddings. Everyone drank a little too much champagne and acted happy. Bert and I had saved up to go to New York for our honeymoon: we would stay at the Hotel Taft for the weekend and see a show. He borrowed Hans’s car and drove us down. But being in New York pushed against my heart, reminding me of my dreams, making the present unendurable. We ate at an Automat and walked back to the hotel. I threw up. I threw up the whole wedding night. Bert sat on the double bed, watching me helplessly. It was not an auspicious start to a life of wedded bliss.
Our room was furnished, mostly by Mrs. Shiefendorfer and Delia, with bits and pieces of furniture from the attics of families and friends. It was waiting for us when we returned to Bridgeport Monday afternoon. We stopped at the supermarket to pick up something for dinner. Mario’s was closed on Mondays, and Bert would have dinner at home. I kept nudging us toward cold cuts and rolls and canned soup; Bert wanted hamburgers or frankfurters and beans or a steak, things you had to cook. I told him I didn’t know how to cook. He couldn’t understand that. He seemed to think that girls got the ability to cook automatically, the way they got periods. In the end, we bought frankfurters and a can of beans and some potato salad. I told Bert I didn’t know how to cook frankfurters. When we got home, I examined the package; it didn’t even have directions!
“I mean it! I don’t know what to do with these.”
He raised his eyes at me. His face was sunken in. “But the woman is supposed to—” he began again.
“Forget supposed,” I cried. “I can’t.”
“How hard can it be to make franks and beans?” he sneered. Then, casting a look of contempt at me, he flipped open a newspaper. I had never seen Bert read a newspaper before. He was copying his father, I was sure.
So I was to do the cooking, whether I could or not.
I did try, but somehow I burned the beans and served the frankfurters cold inside. Bert stormed from the table and out of the house. He was gone a long time. I put the frankfurters back in the pan, but this time I burned them. Since by then I was hungry, I ate around the burned parts of the franks and beans, filling up on the gluey supermarket potato salad. Bert walked all the way to his mother’s and ate there.
In time, we settled into a routine. I walked to the bus stop at eight-fifteen every morning to catch the eight-thirty bus, which got me to work by nine. After my day’s work, I took the bus home, stopping at the grocery store every day or two; I couldn’t carry enough food to last more than a couple of days. On Saturdays, I went to the laundromat, dragging a laundry bag on a metal cart, and sat there smelling the clean damp soapy air and reading the movie and true confession magazines that always cluttered the place. On Sundays, I cleaned the apartment, which was small and perpetually messy. Jerry said, “Jesus, kid, you live in a hamper.” I worked as long as they’d let me. Fortunately, I didn’t protrude until my fifth month. I needed money for the hospital and the gynecologist.
Bert was working nights at Mario’s, days at his father’s gas station, and was studying for the police exam on his days off. When I was five months pregnant, I began staying home all day, and Bert studied in his mother’s house, where he could sit in the sunroom and no one bothered him. In our little attic, the two of us were on top of each other.
The Shiefendorfers had triumphantly presented us with a double bed as a wedding present. I imagine they reasoned that while we didn’t share much, we apparently shared a sexual attraction. Sex between us was moot on our honeymoon because I was sick the first night and sobbed myself to sleep the second. And we were not even speaking, much less kissing, that first Monday in our “little nest” (as his mother called our apartment). After Bert stalked out, I unpacked my things and washed the dinner dishes, amazed at how many there were for that simple meal, and at how hard it was to remove burn from an aluminum pan. I scrubbed and scrubbed: my hands were raw when I finished, but the pot was still black. Then I washed out some underwear and hung it in the bathroom, and threw myself on the bed—the most comfortable article of furniture in the apartment—and tried to read Blake.
But the truth is, I never read Blake in that apartment. I never read Blake again. Misery, if it’s deep enough, can close the mind, the eyes, the ears, can dull the brain as well as the heart. I closed the book, put on my pajamas, and slid under the covers. I don’t know what time Bert came back. When I awoke next morning, the bed was messy on his side, but he was up. He must have been in the bathroom; though I didn’t see him, I smelled toast burning. Burning! And we had an automatic toaster, a wedding present! I smiled and rolled over and went back to sleep.
Five nights a week, Bert arrived home from Mario’s well after midnight, by which time I’d be sound asleep. Only on Monday and his night off, whenever it was, did I have to worry about Bert’s presence. So most nights I was left to my soup-and-sandwich dinners. But I have to admit I got tired of them. I began reading the woman’s page in the newspaper and decided to try some of the recipes printed there. I actually made a tuna casserole and a Jell-O salad with carrots and celery without disaster. Then I tried a lima bean casserole: that was ghastly, but I had to eat it because I was out of money until Friday, when Bert got paid.
It was as if we weren’t married at all: we didn’t eat together and rarely slept together. By sleeping together, I don’t even mean having sex; I mean just consciously, actively getting into the same bed. The first time we did this, on Friday, Bert’s day off from Mario’s that week, he had worked for his father and gone home with him for dinner. His mother must have wondered about us, but I think she liked having her boy home with her: he was her favorite child. He watched TV for a while after dinner, and showed up at the attic around ten-thirty. I was still awake.
We had tacitly fashioned a politely formal manner for the rare occasions when we had contact with each other. I was slumped in bed, reading a library book—a trashy novel—when I heard him unlock our front door. I pulled myself up to face him. His face showed shock at actually encountering mine.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He shook off his wet shoes on a rug near the door.
“Snowing out?”
“No, it stopped. But there’s a foot on the ground, more in the drifts.”
He walked into the apartment, toward the kitchen.
“Hungry?”
“Uhn-uhn. I ate at my ma’s.”
“Want some tea or something?”
“Nah. We got any beer?”
“No.” I carefully did not say, You want beer, you pay for it out of your allowance and you lug it home.
“Coke?”
I shrugged. He stared at me.
“Look and see—you’re not blind, are you?”
He sagged over to the fridge and opened the door. I knew perfectly well there were two bottles of Coke in there. And of course he knew that I knew. He pulled one out, removed the cap with his thumb (I hated that!), and threw himself down in our single armchair. He drank deeply, almost emptying the bottle with one draft. I found that revolting. I returned to my book.
“What did you do all day?” he asked.
I was shocked. He never initiated conversation. I felt a rush of gratitude and put down my book. “Nothing much. Went to work, did the ironing. I finished that disgusting lima bean casserole. I hope you got paid today.”
“Yeah.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out some folded bills. “My dad paid me.” He got up and walked over to the bed, laid the money on the nightstand near me. Fro
m the first, he simply assumed that I would take care of our money—stretch it to pay the bills, buy the food.
I glanced at the wad and saw that it was his entire pay. “Don’t you need some money?”
“Nah. I got bus fare, and I’ll get paid at the restaurant tomorrow night.”
He was good, I thought. That way, anyway. He could be worse. He could hang out in bars: he loved his beer. Lots of guys like him hung out in bars. He wasn’t the worst. That was something to be grateful for.
“Tired?”
He leaned his head back. He was very pale. “Yeah,” he sighed.
Suddenly, I understood. He felt shy about getting in bed with me awake.
“Why don’t you get in bed?”
“Yeah. I should.” But he didn’t move.
I let my eyes hit the book again, waited a few minutes. He was still sitting in the armchair, but he seemed asleep.
“Bert?”
He was asleep.
“Bert!”
He shuddered awake. “Yeah! Yeah!” He swung around.
“Come to bed, Bert,” I said firmly, sounding more like a mother than a wife. It was the right tone. He got up, went into the bathroom to undress, came out in his pajama bottoms, and slid into the bed without looking at me.
I slipped out of bed, slid the chain lock on the door, turned out the lamp by the easy chair, and got back in bed. Bert was already asleep, his mouth fallen open, his pale eyelashes trembling on his white cheek. He looked like a boy, timid and fragile. I put my hand on his shoulder and stroked it, and he sighed and turned and nestled his head in my side. I went on reading, feeling his warm head against me, and for a moment, it felt all right to be married—it was even comforting. I read a little longer, turned out the light, and slid down in the bed. Bert’s head was pressing hard into my shoulder. I gave him a light push, and he turned over and crept, asleep, back to his own side of the bed.
One Monday, Bert came home right after I did, around six o’clock, with a paper bag full of hamburgers.
“Look what I got!”
“Bert! How great! Where did you get it?”
“White Tower. It’s new.”
Fast food had arrived. It saved my life. We devoured the burgers, french fries, and coleslaw. They tasted delicious to me, better than anything I could ever produce. We ate messily, with our hands; our faces were greasy, and when we looked up at each other, we were smiling. It was the first time since our marriage that Bert and I had enjoyed ourselves together. I praised him for resourcefulness and thoughtfulness as much as I could without becoming absurd. He lapped it up. The praise bore fruit.
“That was good,” he concluded, washing his hands and face at the kitchen sink. “How about—you wanna go to the show or something tonight?”
I hadn’t been to a movie since August. I hadn’t been out of the house at night since we got married.
We went to the seven-thirty show, a double feature that let out a little after ten-thirty. It was past eleven by the rime we got home, late for us. We were both tired but quietly contented. On the way from the bus stop, Bert took my hand, and we walked home swinging our arms together. We prepared for bed privately, in the bathroom, as usual, and we both put on pajamas. But tonight we did something we’d never done before—we talked as we moved around. We talked about our favorite characters and scenes, silently cherishing the sexy ones. And we got into bed at the same time, naturally, without strain.
But once we were in bed, tension set in. Bert immediately slid down, turning his back to me; I reached for my book, then thought twice about it and switched off the bed lamp. I slid down, too, but turned to face Bert and put my arms around him. A sigh like a gurgle sobbed from his throat. He turned toward me swiftly and grabbed and kissed me. He was already hard. I knew it was the movie that had aroused him, but it had aroused me too. Inexperienced as I was, I let him take control and do as he wished. This was not necessarily a good idea. He was sexually starved, and for him I was merely a receptacle.
Bert never had a clue about my sexuality. True, I never tried to enlighten him. I was too embarrassed, for one thing: I knew he believed that women were not sexual. It occurred to me that my brother believed the same thing, that that was one of the problems between him and Delia. And maybe Delia thought so too. But even stronger was my sense of the impossibility of explaining myself to Bert. How could I assert my sexuality to a man who never understood that I couldn’t cook but who went on believing that I refused to do so out of malice? A man who, no matter how we discussed the subject, really believed I had tried to trap him into marriage, that he was a great catch for me, that I had nothing else to do with my life but have babies.
When I felt an overwhelming need, I masturbated during the day. I’d been doing that for years; it was nothing new. I never impeded Bert’s pleasure. I figured I owed him something. He was supporting me, after all, me and the baby I was carrying. I was giving him service in return for money: that’s what marriage was, wasn’t it? That, certainly, was how everyone saw it in the fifties and even in the sixties and seventies. Probably some people still do. And heaven knows, sex with Bert was over fast enough. Apart from the fact that I ended up wet and slimy, it was painless.
After that, until I got too big for sex, Bert brought home White Tower every Monday night. Every Monday night we went to the movies, and every Monday night we had sex. Like clockwork.
In March, Bert took the civil service exam for the police force and passed, but with a low grade. The Bridgeport force hired him anyway, probably because so many of the older men were friends of his father’s. He was to start training school in July.
In the middle of April, though, I gave birth to our baby. It was a girl. My pains began in the late afternoon and became intense by evening. Bert wasn’t home, and I couldn’t locate him—there was no answer at his mother’s (it was her bingo night), and his father said Bert was not at the gas station. It was his night off from Mario’s. I called Jerry.
Delia came with him, which made me teary, and I hugged her and held on to her all the way to the hospital. They stayed with me as long as they could before the nurses took me away. Jerry promised to keep trying to locate Bert. I had no idea what I was in for: the enema, the shaving, nurses and orderlies checking between my legs. I didn’t cry or even whine or whimper; I had determined I would not. But as I lay there in pain, in a roomful of screaming women, without a friend or relative to hold my hand, only the brusque nurses swishing around, I thought this had to be the worst experience of my life.
The baby wasn’t born until one-thirty in the morning, and by then Bert was there. When he saw me being wheeled out of the delivery room, he started babbling guiltily: he’d been playing poker with some cops at a guy’s house, he said. As if I cared where he’d been, as if I had a big account book and was going to give him a demerit. He didn’t even ask how I felt. I was zoned out from the Demerol and the ether but I looked for Jerry and Delia. I was so happy to see them. They were the only ones who loved me, even if Delia was mad at me, and I reached my arms out to them like a baby and they bent over and held me. Bert was still apologizing.
Over the noisy objections of the entire Shiefendorfer clan, I named the baby Lettice, a name I’d found in a novel. Bert asked nastily if I intended to name the next one kohlrabi. I laughed: this was the first example of wit I’d seen in him. But before long, everyone but me was perfectly happily calling her Letty.
Ironically, in those days of inhumane birthing, they allowed you to stay in the hospital for five days. The bad part was, they didn’t let you see the baby except to nurse her. Fathers and grandparents could glimpse the infants only through a glass. It wasn’t good for the babies not to be close to their mothers from birth, but it did let you rest up a bit, gain strength for the ordeal ahead.
And an ordeal it was. Baby crying all hours of the day and night, dirty diapers piling up, stinking up the entire room, baths and oilings and powderings to be administered daily, and all that laundry! The wh
ole apartment was given over to the baby, and Bert hated that. Truthfully, I didn’t love it myself. But I had no alternative; he did. Once he started training, I hardly saw him: he no longer had to work at Mario’s, but he was either at the police academy or out drinking with the boys. I didn’t blame him. If I could have escaped from my life in any way short of suicide, I would have.
From the day Bert started training as a cop, he began to change. He’d been a passive, dense, selfish boy with a sweet nature—at least, when he was not unhappy. He became a stubborn stupid man obsessed with displaying control. He swaggered around with his gun on his hip, often touching it like a talisman. He seemed to think of the gun as a means to enforce his will; he stroked it for reassurance. He would make irrational assertions, in a tone of utter conviction, about the proper roles of men and women.
One of the things he was intent on proving his control over was the baby. I told him that the only way to control a baby is to kill it, but he would yell orders at me, demanding I keep her quiet. Lettice was what they used to call a “colicky” baby: she cried a lot and would not be calmed. I would walk her around the room for hours, or put her in the carriage and walk her for miles, but between four in the afternoon and eight in the evening, she wailed unceasingly. When I could not quiet her, Bert would slam out of the house.
He calmed down somewhat once he finished training, though. He’d probably been afraid of failing; maybe he too was shocked by the macho police ethic (of course, we didn’t have the word macho in 1950; at the time, I didn’t know how to describe his behavior).
My Summer With George Page 16
