Suzanne Davis gets a life

by Paula Marantz Cohen

I must have looked confused because he gestured behind him, and out of the kitchen, at his summoning, emerged a man in a scarf and an apron. Let me tell you something: If you see a man wearing a scarf indoors, he’s probably gay, and if you see a man wearing an apron, he’s also probably gay. But if you see a man wearing a scarf and an apron, he is definitely gay. Very gay. This man who came out of the kitchen was, and, as the veil lifted, so, I realized, was Philip. And there was the rebuttal to my mother’s maxim, whose infallibility with regard to being wrong now remained unchallenged. When it’s easy, that can mean only one thing: he’s gay.

  For those interested, it was a spectacular dinner—Kurt, Philip’s significant other, had spent a year at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and Philip was an expert on puff pastry. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship—two beautiful friendships, to be precise. Unfortunately, friendship, beautiful or otherwise, was not what I had had in mind.

  So WHAT WAS I going to do now? I had called Eleanor to discuss the Philip debacle, but she couldn’t talk too long because she had to go off to read to the blind. She does this once a week, and that’s what got me thinking. Every psychiatrist I’ve had since I was sixteen has told me to reach out to those less fortunate than myself so as to put my own situation in perspective. But the fact is that I’d never been so inclined. Why, I wonder, doesn’t someone reach out to me? Don’t I have enough problems to warrant sympathy? It’s true that I’m not a Sudanese child soldier or a paraplegic war veteran, but look at what I’ve been saddled with in the way of a mother! As every psychiatrist I’ve had since the age of sixteen has also told me, pain is a relative thing, and mental suffering can be as valid and acute as physical suffering. OK, even I know that this is really lame, so please forget I said it.

  One of the problems with good works for me is a matter of scale. Whenever I start to think about famine and genocide and just plain meanness in the world, I feel overwhelmed: it’s hard to visualize what working to alleviate famine, genocide, and meanness is actually going to look like, especially when you know that there are all these people along the way between me and the famine-stricken who, if they’re corrupt, are going to use my donation to buy a villa or a private jet, or, if they’re not corrupt and just doing their job, to help pay for the flower arrangements at some big charity gala to raise “serious” money, since the money I could give wouldn’t be serious but just enough to pay for maybe one or two centerpieces. If I had loads of money I wouldn’t mind giving a truckload of it to one of those charity fundraisers so I could eat a gourmet meal at a table with a nice centerpiece while getting thanked for it. But paying for the centerpiece at one or two tables at a party where I’m not invited—no.

  I should point out that at one juncture I did contemplate volunteering at a suicide hotline. I thought it might be interesting work and valuable in the event that I needed its services myself some day. As I noted earlier, I have never seriously contemplated suicide, but that doesn’t mean I won’t, and working for a suicide hotline seemed like a good precaution, since I’d know who the best volunteers were and could ask for them if I needed to be talked down. But as I considered the idea further, it occurred to me that my reasoning was off. If I knew the people working for the suicide hotline, I’d be too embarrassed to call them, which would defeat the purpose of working there and maybe put me at higher risk for killing myself. So I tabled the idea.

  Of course, nothing that I’ve said so far precludes my doing volunteer work of some other sort, like the kind Eleanor does. You’re probably thinking, Why can’t you do that, you selfish ——? This is not a bad question, and I am, I admit, a selfish——, which will only be confirmed when I confess that I’m not motivated enough to do such work. I used to think that something was seriously wrong with me for not being motivated until I came to the conclusion, possibly to appease my sense of guilt, that most people do volunteer work not out of genuine altruism but in order to boast that they do it. I’m convinced that Eleanor, for example, reads to the blind so she can say things like: “I can’t have lunch on Thursday; I’m reading to the blind.” Then there are all the people I meet who work one evening a week in a soup kitchen—“It’s so rewarding peeling all those potatoes, etc., etc.”—but if their cleaning woman calls in sick, do you think they’d run over with chicken soup? I don’t think so. My cynicism here is, as I noted, based on trying to rationalize why I don’t volunteer, so please take it with a grain of salt.

  But my new approach to getting a life put things in this area in a new perspective. You may recall that I was taking Jane Austen’s “three or four families in a country village” and applying it to my apartment building on West 76th Street. Which is to say, I was trying to think small. Yes, my aim was to get a life, but this also meant helping people who happened to live in my country village. It would be easier than going to a soup kitchen across town and more meaningful than handing over a check for a centerpiece. And who knows? It might beef up my social life.

  So there I was, suddenly asking Pedro, the periodic doorman, if anyone in the building needed help, explaining that I had time on my hands and wanted to “give back.” That was the phrase that I knew you were supposed to use: “how can I give back?” It was unclear what it was I was giving back for. What did I have? An apartment the size of a shoebox in the West 70s and a job working for air-conditioning engineers, but beyond that, not much. But I suppose if you compare me to Sudanese child soldiers and paraplegic war veterans, I had it pretty good.

  Although I had no idea what I had in mind by giving back, Pedro seemed to understand. “You could help out the old Jews,” he said.

  I have to say I was momentarily thrown by his way of putting it. Yes, seeing as it is the Upper West Side and my building has a number of apartments bought at insider prices by people who had been there forever, there was an ample supply of old Jews in residence. But since when did one refer to them that way? Pedro, however, was not a subtle or politically correct sort of guy. He called things as he saw them, and I soon realized that there was no malice in his nomenclature. These people were old; they could barely walk and were very wrinkled. And they were Jews. They spoke to Pedro in heavily accented English, referred to him as “bubbeleh” and “boychik,” fed him things like potato kugel, and gave him Hanukkah presents. Being Jews, in other words, was an important part of their identity, and Pedro would have been doing them a disservice had he referred to them in any other way. That I was a “young Jew” did not seem to enter appreciably into Pedro’s perception of things. So I let it go.

  “How many of them are there?” I asked, “and what do they need?”

  Pedro considered the question. “Well,” there’s the Rosenbaums in 4J. Their aide leaves at 3 and they need someone to work their remote. They like some of the late afternoon reruns.” Pedro said he ordinarily had no problem doing this—a fact that went some way toward explaining his heretofore unaccountable absences from the lobby. He liked talking television with the Rosenbaums, he said; they were very jive on the subject, and they always fed him—he was particularly partial to Mrs. Rosenbaum’s cheese blintzes. But the building manager had recently instituted stricter rules about his remaining at the front desk, under the assumption that this would help catch the dog with the bladder problem. So far no culprit had been found. Despite the installation of the camera, there had been another incident, so it was decided that any time a dog and owner left the elevator, Pedro was to go in and sniff for evidence.

  “There’s also Mrs. Schwartz in 7E,” he continued in his enumeration of the old Jews who could use my help. “She needs someone to bring up her Meals on Wheels and talk politics. She’s very opinionated, so you have to watch your step with her. Then, there’s Mr. Brodsky in 11J. But you probably wouldn’t want to deal with him.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “He’s difficult,” said Pedro. “I can handle him, but you’d have a hard time.”

  His dismissive manner was a challenge. “I’ll have you know that I grew up wi
th a mother who could compete in mental torture with anyone,” I declared proudly, “so I can hold my own with difficult people, thank you.”

  “Have it your way,” shrugged Pedro. “He likes to have someone to talk to after dinner. But he’s got a pisk on him” (Pedro had picked up some Yiddishisms from the old Jews). “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  THE NEXT DAY, I embarked on my new mission with a visit to the Rosenbaums. When I arrived at their apartment, they were fiddling with the remote, trying to find Curb Your Enthusiasm. I checked the paper and told them it wouldn’t be on until 5, but they had me sit down and talk a while. Mrs. Rosenbaum had just made a brisket and proceeded to feed me some, even though it was the middle of the afternoon.

  “Where’s Pedro?” asked Mr. Rosenbaum. He looked at me accusingly, as if he suspected me of murdering Pedro to take his place.

  “He has to stay at the front desk,” I explained. “I volunteered to help out instead.”

  “We like Pedro,” said Mr. Rosenbaum. “He’s a good boychik.”

  “He loves my blintzes,” said Mrs. Rosenbaum. “I love blintzes,” I said.

  “My blintzes aren’t like other blintzes,” said Mrs. Rosenbaum doubtfully.

  “Then I’d probably like them even better,” I said. This appeared to assuage her.

  “Who are you?” asked Mr. Rosenbaum, still suspicious.

  “I’m Suzanne Davis in 8A,” I said. “I work at home. That’s why I can help you out.”

  “Hmm,” said Mrs. Rosenbaum. “Are you married?”

  “No,” I sighed regretfully. “I haven’t found anyone yet”— I had lately taken to putting my cards on the table upon the advice of Dr. Chitturi, who told me that you need to tell people that you need help; otherwise, how can they know to help you?

  Mr. Rosenbaum turned to his wife: “What about your cousin Jacob for her? He lost his wife.”

  “He’s seventy,” said Mrs. Rosenbaum. “She’s younger.”

  “So?”

  “So she’s too young for Jacob.”

  “Only if she’s picky. Are you picky?” he asked me.

  #8220;Not really,” I said. “But seventy is a little old.”

  “Then you’re picky.” He paused. “How about that nephew of yours?”

  “Maurice? He’s gay,” said Mrs. Rosenbaum.

  “He is? How do you know?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “What about that nice young man with the dog down the hall? The one who looks like James Bond who moved here from Chicago?”

  “He’s gay, too,” said Mrs. Rosenbaum.

  I had to hand it to Mrs. Rosenbaum who, at eighty-five, seemed to have a lot more on the ball in this area than I did.

  “She’s right,” I verified.

  “If you’re going to be picky, you’ll never find anyone,” said Mr. Rosenbaum.

  They turned on the TV, and I showed them how to use the remote, though it turned out they already knew. They’d been feigning ignorance in order to get Pedro to come up and talk television with them.

  “He’s the only person we know who watched The Wire” said Mrs. Rosenbaum. “Excellent show. Very realistic.”

  I admitted that I didn’t know it. They also liked Oz and Lost, neither of which I had seen.

  “No wonder you can’t find a husband,” said Mr. Rosenbaum.

  “Let me give you a little hint,” said Mrs. Rosenbaum. “You probably watch The Bachelor and American Idol. Only the gay men watch those shows, so unless you want to marry a gay man I suggest you start watching something different.”

  “I watch House,” I offered.

  “No,” Mrs. Rosenbaum shook her head.

  “Well, what then?” I asked.

  She considered this. “24 might be good to start with. But it’s off the air now.”

  “24,” agreed Mr. Rosenbaum. “You didn’t have to know anything to follow it; you could catch on right away. But since it’s not on, you lost your chance. Jacob likes 24.”

  “Enough with Jacob,” tsked Mrs. Rosenbaum. “The police dramas are OK, too. Any CSI, for example; they’re on all the time, so you can see one in a pinch whenever you want.”

  After the brisket, she served me a few boiled potatoes and carrots, followed by one of her unconventional blintzes, wrapping a few for Pedro, with sour cream the way he liked. “Take my advice and watch CSI,” she counseled. “You’ll have something to talk to the not-gay men about.”

  As far as dating advice goes, I have to say, I’ve had worse.

  AFTER I GAVE Pedro the blintzes, I brought the Meals on Wheels delivery up to Mrs. Schwartz in 7E.

  “Where’s Pedro?” she asked suspiciously. “He always brings up my Meals on Wheels.”

  I explained about the stench of dog urine in the elevator.

  She waved her hand: “What’s a little pee in the elevator when the world is going to pot?” She pointed to the New York Times that lay in disarray on her coffee table. It had clearly been thoroughly perused. “We ought to be marching in the streets. I would if I didn’t have a walker.”

  “What would you march for?” I asked.

  “What would I march for? For the overthrow of the government, that’s what,” she said. She had opened her Meals on Wheels and was peering at it distastefully. “Always an overdone baked potato. But I can’t be choosy since I’m on

  the dole.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to this, and we were silent a moment; then she asked whether Pedro had gone on strike.

  I explained again about the dog problem in the elevator.

  “I told him he should go on strike,” said Mrs. Schwartz, ignoring what I had said. “They pay him well, but he should do it on principle. Help bring the capitalist machine to its knees.” She blinked at me over her bifocals as though registering my presence for the first time. “What do you think,

  Missy?”

  I straightened a bit, sensing that this was not the most respectful mode of address and that maybe I should be offended. “My name is Suzanne,” I said, “and I don’t know about going on strike.”

  She gave me a scornful look, then peered at me more closely for a moment. “I think you’re my niece,” she finally said.

  I said I wasn’t.

  “Well, I think you are,” said Mrs. Schwartz, who was obviously used to opposing established opinion. “How’s Brenda?”

  “Who’s Brenda?”

  “Your mother.”

  I said that my mother’s name wasn’t Brenda.

  “How would you know? You don’t even know what you think about going on strike.”

  I said I should at least know the name of my own mother.

  “You’d be surprised what most people don’t know,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “Now read me what those nudniks at the Times have to say today.” She gestured to the crumpled paper on the coffee table. I found the front page and prepared to read her the headlines.

  “Not that,” cried Mrs. Schwartz. “I read that propaganda already. The editorial page. That’s how you know what the liberal elite are thinking so you can make sure not to think it.”

  I was struck by her reasoning here. “Are you a Communist?” I asked.

  “A Communist,” she waved her hand contemptuously. “Of course I’m not a Communist. What do you take me for? I’m an anarchist.”

  Clearly, Mrs. Schwartz had a more subtle understanding of political movements than I would ever have, so I changed the subject. “What did your husband do?” I asked, hoping to steer her to a more personal and possibly less antagonistic line of discussion.

  “He was a presser in the garment district. Worked all his life and what did he get for it?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. He’s dead.”

  There followed an indictment of the retail industry that had killed her husband. As I edged out the door, she was railing against the sweatshops in Brazil, where “the tentacles of capitalism were squeezing the life blood out of the third-world proletariat.”
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  “SHE SEEMS ANGRY,” I told Pedro after I had fled the tirades of Mrs. Schwartz.

  “She’s feisty,” agreed Pedro.

  Feisty did not seem the right word for Mrs. Schwartz’s vituperative fury against the social order. “She’s an anarchist,” I said. “I wonder if she makes bombs in her kitchen.”

  “She can’t get around too well anymore,” said Pedro, sounding sorry that Mrs. Schwartz’s bomb-making days were behind her. “Mostly, she’s just venting because she’s depressed. She misses Mort.”

  Mort, I presumed, was her husband, the dead garment worker.

  “You better go up to Brodsky now,” said Pedro, “while you still have the energy. Besides, if you come late, he’ll only be worse, and he’s not easy to begin with.”

  I’d pretty much had my fill of old Jews by this point— with the result, I have to say, that my respect for Pedro had increased considerably—but I wasn’t going to back down on Brodsky after having boasted of my acumen with difficult people. So I went up to 11J and knocked on Saul Brodsky’s door.

  “Who are you?” asked Brodsky, opening the door a crack and peering at me suspiciously. One thing I’d come to see was that old Jews liked to get to the existential heart of things as quickly as possible.

  “I’m Suzanne,” I explained. “I’m filling in for Pedro today. He has to watch the elevator to make sure that dogs don’t urinate in it.”

  He opened the door and motioned unenthusiastically for me to come in. He was very old and disheveled, wearing a tattered bathrobe and socks.

  “How do they know it’s dogs pissing in the elevator? Could be me,” said Brodsky, shuffling ahead of me into the living room and throwing a pile of papers onto the floor so I could sit down on the worn sofa.

  It was indeed a thought. His apartment was a mess and didn’t smell very good either. The altruism that had shown itself in my decision to visit the old Jews to begin with flickered back into life, and I asked if he’d like to have someone (by which I suppose I meant me) come in and help him straighten up.

  “No,” said Brodsky. “I like it this way. Are your boobs