Suzanne Davis gets a life

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  My face got very red at being reprimanded by Pauline, a holdover from having suffered so much criticism from my mother over the years—at least this is what my $200-an-hour therapist, Dr. Chitturi, says is the reason I’m so sensitive. Once I had taken a breath and told myself that Pauline was not my mother (what Dr. Chitturi has instructed me to remember in such circumstances), I looked around at the group, curious to see who had gathered for the purpose of discussing The Great Gatsby.

  I recognized one couple, perched on the low chairs in front of the low coffee table, as Karen and David, the parents of the in-vitro-generated Matthew from the playground. Karen was clutching her cell phone, in case the babysitter in their apartment downstairs should call with a problem. Another couple, introduced as Marsha and Herb, were sprawled in a floppy, exhausted fashion on the sofa across from the chairs. Marsha was a juvenile court judge and Herb was a social worker. Both had the frayed look of people used to struggling all day long to be sympathetic, their bodies collapsed into a kind of permanent shrug, as if to say, “What more can I do?”

  As Pauline promised, there were also single men present—two of them, judging from the absence of accompanying females—both seated on large throw cushions on the floor, so as to guarantee that they looked completely ridiculous. One was a slight man with wispy blond hair of about my age. Pauline introduced him as Stephen Danziger and explained that he lived in 4H. I had, as a matter of fact, seen him once or twice in the elevator, where he had volunteered the fact that he was a math teacher on his way to the high school where he taught in the South Bronx. We may have chatted briefly on these occasions, but, in truth, I can’t recall. I took his occupation to mean that he was either an insufferable do-gooder or a pathetic loser and promptly forgot all about him. (This is the kind of dismissive thinking, by the way, that Dr. Chitturi says reflects my own deep-seated insecurities and that we’re working on ridding me of at $200 an hour.)

  Seated on the other cushion was a dark-haired man of about forty who, like Roger, was wearing a colorful patterned sweater. More imposing in his build than the wispy Stephen, this man had the sort of large, emphatic features that, on the Upper West Side, are viewed as handsome by women who can’t afford to be too aesthetically discriminating. Pauline introduced him as Derek Newman and said that he worked with Roger in the mayor’s office.

  I shook everyone’s hand, and Derek looked into my eyes with the mock soulfulness of the soon-to-be divorced man trying to communicate that he is open to your charms but not sure how to proceed.

  Everyone was holding a copy of The Great Gatsby.

  Pauline began the discussion by saying that critics called The Great Gatsby the Great American Novel. Did we agree?

  “I thought Huckleberry Finn was the Great American Novel,” said Herb, slouching lower in the sofa and shoveling another cracker with hummus into his mouth.

  “Huckleberry Finn for the nineteenth century. The Great Gatsby for the twentieth,” clarified Pauline.

  There was some discussion about what it meant to be the Great American Novel and whether things had changed now that we were in the twenty-first century. Roger said he didn’t think so, given that Fitzgerald was critiquing the materialist values of American society; that could still hold today.

  “It holds but it’s not a fresh idea anymore,” said Derek. “We all know material success is hollow. What else is new?”

  “It’s all in the treatment,” said Roger. “You say it’s not fresh; I say it’s timeless.”

  “I agree,” said Herb. “My clients are into materialism; they’re all Gatsbys” (lots of Herb’s clients were drug dealers).

  There was discussion about Gatsby in the ghetto and what that meant.

  “I don’t think it’s materialism that matters so much; it’s relationship—that’s what drives Gatsby to be a materialist,” noted Marsha. “It’s the hopeful element in the novel. He wants to be in a relationship, even if it’s an impossible one. The kids I see in court don’t understand long-term commitment and responsibility. Maybe it’s the generation.”

  “I don’t think you can generalize,” proffered Stephen, the wispy math teacher. Why is it that someone always has to make the bleeding-heart point that “it’s impossible to generalize”? To his credit, however, Stephen proceeded: “My father used to say that kids ‘nowadays’—which would have been our ‘old days’—had no sense of responsibility. Now we say the same thing. I see all kinds at my school. But I imagine you”—he nodded in acknowledgment of Marsha—“see a self-selected group of incorrigibles.”

  “Well, they seem more incorrigible than they used to be,” grumbled Marsha, “though maybe I’m just getting older.”

  “I’m afraid you’re off point,” interrupted Pauline, who appeared to keep book club, the way she kept her child, on a very short leash. “Getting back to Gatsby … ”

  “What did he want anyway?” complained Karen. As a former financial analyst, she spoke as though she was searching for Fitzgerald’s bottom line and not finding it.

  “What did he want?” Roger took this up. “Admiration and respect. What all men want.”

  “Power and money,” said David. “What all men want.”

  “The unattainable, ideal woman,” contributed Derek. “What all men want.”

  At this juncture, I felt I should say something. I’d been silent out of a mix of trying to project polite reserve and wanting to gauge the best tone with which to make a contribution. But you can only hold out for so long in this sort of situation. At a certain point, if you don’t speak up, you look like a dud who doesn’t have opinions.

  “As your comments indicate, it’s a very male book,” I contributed, trying to sound both authoritative and obsequious—a combination that may be the only marketable skill that accompanies a degree in English. “This may be why issues of responsibility and commitment don’t figure in it.” This, I should note, had been the consensus about almost everything we read in my Women’s Studies course in college, and I now embellished the idea accordingly: “Daisy is an object. And Gatsby never thinks about things women would consider—like having children. He doesn’t take into account that Daisy is a mother. Fitzgerald doesn’t either. It’s a negligible aspect of the plot.”

  My observation was greeted favorably by Pauline and Karen, who said that now that they thought about it, the lack of attention paid to Daisy’s daughter in the book bothered them. It made for a sterile, unrealistic atmosphere.

  “Are you saying all books have to care about children?” asked Stephen, the wispy math teacher, with some amusement.

  “Not all,” I acknowledged. “We wouldn’t want babies in Moby Dick”

  “I don’t know,” said the wispy Stephen. “That book needed to lighten up, if I remember correctly.”

  “I agree,” I nodded—I’d never gotten through Moby Dick in college. “But then, Melville would have bored us with details about cloth versus disposable diapers.”

  I could tell that Stephen would have liked to continue with this riff, but Pauline would have none of it. “Attention to children helps to humanize the characters,” she asserted authoritatively. “If they’re ignored, it says something.”

  “I don’t know that Daisy’s child is completely ignored,” said Stephen. “It says here”—he riffled through the pages— “‘he’—that’s Gatsby—‘kept looking at the child with surprise. I don’t think he had ever really believed in its existence before.’”

  I was momentarily impressed by the wispy Stephen’s ability to call up this relevant passage.

  “Do you think he thinks the child is his?” asked Roger, perking up at this possible plot line.

  “Not at all,” I pronounced. “There was no logistical way this could happen. Besides, it would go against the grain of Gatsby’s idealism: he wanted Daisy’s image unsullied.”

  Pauline, however, was intent on returning to the subject of the child. “Note that he refers to the little girl as an ‘it,’” she pointed out. “That�
��s telling. Gatsby is shocked to see her because it shatters his dream of being with Daisy alone. The child makes this impossible.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Roger piped up. “A kid is the end of your sex life, let me tell you.”

  Pauline shot him a look, and Roger passed the hummus around again. This lightened the mood. A discussion of children in literature followed, segueing into children’s books and how Pauline intended to write one, if only she had the time.

  Rose was brought out in a frilly nightgown to say good night, with everyone asking her questions that Pauline answered for her. After the child was trundled off to bed, Pauline seemed to feel that we had put in our time talking about the book and could now veer off onto the subject of child rearing, about which everyone, with the exception of myself and the wispy Stephen, had something to say. Derek had two children, though he was less interested in talking about them than about the bitter feelings he harbored against his spouse, whom he was currently in the process of divorcing. He brought everyone up to date: “I can’t believe that she was so sweet when I married her and now she’s such a bitch.” “People change,” noted Roger.

  “Or maybe she was always a bitch and you didn’t realize it,” said Herb.

  Derek sighed. “I wonder how I’ll ever trust a woman again.” He glanced in my direction.

  “That’s a bad attitude to take,” said Pauline.

  “I’m just saying.” Derek sighed again. “When you’ve been hurt, it’s hard to be trusting. Someone can look loving and honest and turn out to be vicious and deceitful.” His eyes darted in my direction again, as though to say that I, for example, might look loving and honest and not be.

  “I’m not going to bad-mouth your ex,” said Pauline. “I remember how much she contributed to our discussion of To the Lighthouse—but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that she was a piece of work.”

  “You can’t generalize based on one bad experience,” noted Stephen, a statement in line with his earlier refusal to generalize about the kids in his high school, thereby confirming my suspicion that he was an insufferable do-gooder, if not also a pathetic loser (categories which are not, after all, mutually exclusive).

  Derek nodded wearily. “I know what you mean. I can’t lose my trust in all women just because one happened to hurt me. I know there are generous, uncomplaining, loving women out there. I just have to be open to them.”

  It was a daunting set of adjectives, and I have to say I lowered my eyes so as not to suggest that they had anything to do with me. It wouldn’t have been right to lead him on that way.

  STILL, I WAS NOT surprised when, the next evening, Derek called to ask me out.

  “I immediately felt a kinship with you,” he explained. “And when Pauline told me you might be available, I didn’t want to waste any time. As you could probably see, I’ve learned a lot since my marriage—I’m a more sensitive person now. Not that I’m entirely divorced yet, but I’m on my way; you can be certain about that.”

  I told him I took his word for the certainty of the divorce. As for the sensitivity, I can’t say that I had seen evidence of it, nor was his forlorn manner of speaking particularly romantic. But I was in no position to be picky. I had promised myself (and Dr. Chitturi) to allow ample time to evaluate people and not jump to conclusions the way I usually did. So I agreed to have dinner with Derek the next night at the Chinese restaurant a few blocks up on Broadway.

  When I arrived, he was already there and had ordered a bowl of hot-and-sour soup because, he said, he was hungry and couldn’t wait. He looked depressed and eager to tell me about his day.

  He had just spent the afternoon with his kids. Since the separation, Derek had been thrust into the novel position of having to entertain his two children by himself for hours at a time, sometimes even for days. He found this grueling.

  “I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it,” I reassured him.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed. “I don’t have the skills. I think it’s something women are born with.”

  From my experience, the biological argument is one men drag out when they want to fob off on you something they don’t want to do. So when Derek said this, I should have been alert to potential problems, but you know how it is: when you’re starved for love and companionship, you tend to let things go that should send you running in the other direction.

  We proceeded to eat our General Tso’s chicken and talk about a variety of topics: The Great Gatsby, what it was like to work in the mayor’s office, indoor air quality, and the strains of being a single father. The conversation moved along, and Derek apparently thought we had hit it off. When he took me to my door he said: “I really like you.” Then, he leaned in and kissed me—a long yet perfunctory kiss. “I’d come in,” he said, “but I’m exhausted.”

  I was a little surprised by the first part of this statement. I hadn’t invited him in. But I could definitely see that he was exhausted. He was leaning against my door as if propping himself up, and I had to practically bite my lip not to tell him that I had a pullout couch he could use if he wanted. I restrained myself, however, and said, “I can see that you’re very tired.” This is what you’re supposed to say to show your concern but not turn yourself into a doormat. I learned this from Dr. Chitturi, who is always saying: “I can see that you are very distressed,” but never asking me to sleep on her pullout couch.

  “The kids, you know,” said Derek by way of explanation. “I was with them all afternoon, and they really gave me a workout.”

  I nodded.

  “But tomorrow, I’ll be refreshed.”

  And so he was. The next night, after dinner at the Hungarian place on Amsterdam, Derek came home with me. I had straightened up the apartment in anticipation of this prospect, stacking all the I-ACE material in one corner, draping the afghan I’d bought at a craft fair and never used over the bed, and hanging up the poster from the Cezanne exhibit that had been rolled up in the corner for six months over my pullout couch.

  Derek, however, did not seem to notice any of this. He was not someone with much awareness of his surroundings. I would later learn that he lived in a squalid one bedroom downtown—his wife having kept the spacious apartment in the Village.

  “I married pretty young, and my wife didn’t like sex much, so you can imagine,” he explained by way of prelude. And, indeed, once we had retired to my bedroom, which really involved walking a few feet to the area adjacent to the kitchen, I learned that his lovemaking technique was nothing to write home about, as my mother would say. Still, he had staying power, and we both emerged with an acceptable level of breathlessness.

  I have to say that hot sex, though much hyped in certain quarters, isn’t high on my list of prerequisites for a lasting relationship. I’m looking for human decency and maybe some good conversation. To expect sexual prowess on top of these things would be unrealistic.

  So that’s how my affair with Derek began, although the word “affair,” with its suggestion of tumultuous goings-on, does not seem entirely apt. Our relationship mostly took the form of a foursome with his two impossible kids. Derek was not any more practiced as a father than as a lover, but his kids would have been a challenge for the most diligent supermom.

  Brad, the eight year old, had been diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder and had a schedule for regular doses of Ritalin, which he adamantly refused to take. Josh, the six year old, was petulant and quietly nasty, presumably owing to the fact that so much attention was being lavished on his hyperactive brother. Still, no amount of cajoling and sucking up seemed to work with Josh; his modus operandi was to stand sullenly in the corner and ignore all efforts to get him to do what was expected of him.

  “Come on, Josh, let’s put your jacket on and go out and play,” Derek would say, hoping to get the ricocheting Brad outside to expend some of his excess energy. But Josh would dig in his heels and refuse to budge. Often, this would result in my staying inside with Josh while Derek went outside with Brad, thou
gh as soon as they left, Josh would dissolve into tears at having been abandoned.

  I have to admit that I could understand Josh’s behavior. He was acting out the impossibility of his situation. Saddled with warring parents and an older sibling with impulse-control problems, where did he fit in? What did he get out of this whole thing? I understood his stubbornness and his subsequent tantrums. I also found him to be an unmitigated pain in the ass.

  Eventually I hit on the idea of feeding him candy. Mandarin oranges just wouldn’t do the trick here; what was needed was serious sugar—the sort that causes hyperglycemia and tooth decay. Plus, what can I say? I happen to like candy myself, and hanging out with Josh allowed me to indulge my fondness for Sour Patch Kids and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Moreover, as I was only in the presence of this child for a few hours before he was returned to his mother, the candy solution served the double duty of making him more amenable with me and more impossible with her (given that the sugar high would wear off by the time he was handed back). It’s true that his mother hadn’t done anything to me directly—I hadn’t even met her—but my grievance, though abstract, was genuine: this kid was hers and not mine, and what was I doing taking care of him anyway?

  You’ll say that my behavior was pretty reprehensible, and some of you health nuts are going to say I skirted child abuse. I admit that, sometimes, after feeding Josh from my Sour Patch stash, I’d feel this wave of guilt pass over me, thinking about how the poor child, years from now, would have rotten teeth and an addiction to refined sugar. But then it occurred to me that my mother had never thought twice about feeding me candy—I mean, there was a time, in the not so distant past, when candy wasn’t equated with heroin—and I hadn’t turned out so bad, had I? OK, don’t answer that.

  The truth is that Josh and I got along pretty well when we were pumping our jaws over the saltwater taffy that I’d bought during an ill-fated trip to the Jersey shore last summer. That was the mini-vacation I took with a guy who spent most of the time talking on my cell phone to his “aunt” in California, having conveniently left his phone in the motor lodge, resulting in an astronomical roving charge that he didn’t pay because, subsequent to that vacation, he headed out to California to be with his “aunt” and never to return. But I am digressing. My only point is that Josh and I bonded, in a manner of speaking, over candy.