Love Is a Rebellious Bird

by Elayne Klasson

  “She’s fine where she is,” my mother answered curtly, busily chopping carrots. “Those new buildings have no dining rooms. Only a skimpy square off the kitchen. A dining area they call it, not even a real room. No space for our table. Where will we put the family at the holidays? And where will I shop? Everyone drives out there.”

  Again and again she repeated her objections. It was the first time I heard them argue, and it went on for weeks, frightening me. My usually agreeable father persisted. “So, two, three times a year we’ll set up a table in the living room,” he said. “The High Holidays, Thanksgiving, Passover. And I’ll drive you to the stores on weekends. For a little inconvenience, we’ll be in a good, safe neighborhood.”

  The apartments Dad dragged us to on the weekends were indeed small and boxy, no trims or cornices like we had in the old place. My father kept using the word modern, but the most exciting feature he could find was sliding mirrored doors on closets. He slid the doors back and forth on their tracks, as if they were clever pieces of machinery. My mother sniffed. Sliding mirrored doors did not impress her. She did not drive a car then, or ever. Moving meant she would give up the pleasure of visiting neighborhood stores and chatting with her friends at the butcher or in the greengrocers. She correctly envisioned her life as a prisoner during the week, waiting for my father to take her on weekends to shop in the new neighborhood. But she finally capitulated, my father’s desire to see me educated in a better school winning out. When my parents signed the lease on an apartment in the swanky West Rogers Park neighborhood of Budlong Woods, they were exhausted by the battle, and school had already started several weeks earlier. I’d answered my mother’s question honestly—I wasn’t nervous about the move. Even back then, I loved an adventure. I’d spent the summer before riding my bicycle in increasingly wider concentric circles around the old neighborhood. Farther and farther I went, thrilled at the space I could put between myself and home, welcoming new sights and unknown territory.

  In that first year in the new school, I’d watched you from a distance. Then sixth grade brought us closer. Two important things happened. First, in that Jewish neighborhood of privilege, it was the beginning of parties and boyfriends, children pairing up. You were precocious in that regard, one of the first to have a girlfriend. You chose, or were chosen by, Rochelle Bennett. Rochelle was perfect, yet also sweet. Everyone loved Rochelle. She was already quite curvaceous, one of the first of us to wear a bra. (By the time I got a bra, I had to resort to stuffing Kleenex in the cups and lived in fear of seeing a wadded-up tissue left behind as I exited the floor at school dances.) You and Rochelle made an ideal couple, our own royalty. No one could be jealous, because everyone realized the appropriateness of you two being together. I entered the royal court as the girlfriend of Steven—a good friend of yours back then. Because of our stature, it was Steven’s and my destiny to be paired up. Although Steven was terrific at sports, he was very short and would not get his full height until well into high school. Since I was so petite, I became his girlfriend. Short with short. Beautiful with beautiful. We all hung out together, a loosely defined group of around twenty kids. Just as my family’s apartment was on the edge of the good neighborhood, I was on the edge of that crowd of popular kids. You were at its center.

  The all-girl slumber parties now included boys for a few hours—although most parents insisted that the doors to the basement rec rooms be kept ajar. By the end of sixth grade, kissing games began. They happened on the deserted playground where we gathered on spring nights, or in the homes of the more permissive, or distracted, parents. I didn’t much like kissing Steven. In fact, it gave me a queasy feeling in my gut. I worried, too, about how my Kleenex-stuffed bra felt against Steven’s chest. However, you and Rochelle seemed entirely delighted by the kissing. You boldly held hands at movies and later, when Rochelle undressed at the slumber parties, it was obvious that she needed no Kleenex to fill the cups of her bra.

  Besides being at the same parties, you noticed me because we were often in competition for the same academic prizes. In sixth grade, there were two classrooms. We’d both been placed with Mrs. Aron. It was clear that the smart kids were with Mrs. Aron. And Rochelle? She was in the other one. After a year of being terrorized by Miss Schaffer, it felt like landing in heaven to be assigned to Mrs. Aron, known to be one of the best teachers in the school.

  She spoke French like a native, and taught French as part of our curriculum. Each month, she invited the top students in her French class to a delightful French buffet. She prepared a sumptuous meal at home and brought it to school, teaching us the French words for all that we ate: savory poulets à la diable, crispy baguettes, and heavenly, smooth crème brûlées, which she explained were burned on top on purpose. You and I excelled in Mrs. Aron’s class, although your accent was far superior to my own, and we were always invited to the French luncheons. I loved the checkered tablecloths and candle that she placed over desks pushed together. Somehow she managed to turn that sixth-grade classroom into a bistro, with Edith Piaf recordings playing softly in the background.

  The competition between us that year culminated with our shared love of reading. In a contest Mrs. Aron devised, students each had their name printed on a paper rocket ship. When a student completed a book, he or she would write a report in their reading log and hand it in, and if the report was approved, their rocket ship would move upward another level in space. We were all excited about space travel in those years, and Mrs. Aron had covered a board in shiny blue aluminum paper and glittery stars. The student closest to the moon at the end of the year would be the winner. You and I soon left the others far behind. One week, your rocket might creep ahead; another, I’d triumphantly move my ship farther into outer space. The contest was to conclude at the end of May. On the Friday of the long Memorial Day weekend, we both left Pratt Elementary laden with books from the school library. That Tuesday, I excitedly watched Mrs. Aron place my rocket ship onto the surface of the moon. Yours was just inches behind, but you might as well have been in another galaxy. I was the clear winner. At the awards assembly on the last day of school, I was called to the front of the auditorium, and Mrs. Aron hugged me and with great ceremony presented me with my prize: a lovely book about women adventurers. She’d inscribed it, “Judith, may your dreams take you to the moon. Fondly, Sylvia Aron.”

  After the assembly, you were waiting for me. “How do you do it?” you asked. “I never saw anyone who could read as fast as you. I’ve watched you flip the pages so quickly, I can’t believe you’re taking in the words. But then you write your reports and Mrs. Aron loves them. Says they are perfect. Is there a secret to reading so fast?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and shrugged. “I’ve always read quickly. My dad’s a fast reader, too. You should see him turn the pages of books he’s reading.” My heart was pounding as I tried for a casual tone.

  You shook your beautiful head and stared at me, as if still trying to figure out my secret. “Well, you beat me,” you finally said and sighed. It might have been the first competition you lost. “Your rocket beat mine fair and square. So from now on, Judith, I’m going to call you Rocket.” You pushed open the school’s heavy front door for me. “Come on, Rocky, I’ll walk you home,” you said, and smiled at me.

  The admiration on your face filled me with pleasure. I laughed as we left Pratt Elementary together and walked the eight blocks to my apartment building, one of the few times I was happy to live so far from the school. Your family’s apartment was in the opposite direction, but we walked slowly, chattering about the books we were going to read that summer and whatever else came into our heads. We had all the time in the world. It was summer vacation and you had given me a nickname—a ridiculous nickname, but still, a badge of honor. This recognition was a prize greater even than dear Mrs. Aron’s had been.

  That year was a taste of things to come. Your nickname from sixth grade stuck, in private you always called me Rocket, sometimes Rocky. For the rest of
our lives, our relationship was a cocktail mix of rivalry and loyalty—shaken with a strong dose of passion and resentment.

  2

  Consolation

  Your father, Max Pine, was a purveyor of kosher meats on Chicago’s north side. By the early 1960s, his company had six or seven delivery trucks, all of them white, with “Pine’s Meats” painted in green on their sides. A tall, clean pine tree was incorporated into each green P. These trucks were seen in alleyways behind kosher butchers in the Jewish neighborhoods of West Rogers Park, and later into Skokie, the first of the northern suburbs where the Jews eventually began to drift. I sometimes saw men wearing thick, insulated gloves unloading slabs of meat from trucks into freezers in the shops our mothers frequented. Everyone I knew kept kosher in those days; they even perpetuated the myth that kosher meat tasted better. It didn’t, of course; at least not the way steaks were cooked in our homes back then, overdone and chewy, with a faint taste of soap in the meat. I learned what good steak tasted like only when I moved to California a decade later and tried, along with fine filet, still pink at the center, other once-unavailable or forbidden delicacies: avocados, artichokes, shrimp, clams, and bacon, especially bacon. To this day, I am filled with wonder as I remember my first taste of that delight—a BLT: crispy and salty, moist and sweet, all in one bite.

  Your family was slightly more affluent than my own. Although Pine’s Meats was a small, family-owned business, run by your dad, along with your uncle Lou, over the years, we saw the number of Pine’s meat trucks increase. The business supported both families comfortably, each with several kids to put through college. However, though you rarely mentioned it, your family had an additional burden: the private sanitariums and doctors required by your mother. Your father worked hard for his family. As in most households of that time and place, there was reverential guilt toward our fathers. The men of the neighborhood, including your dad and my own, worked at backbreaking jobs. It would take another generation before the Jews we knew no longer toiled at this kind of labor and became professionals: doctors, lawyers, academics.

  My father, along with two cousins, owned an army-navy surplus store: three floors of dusty cots and tents and work boots. None of the mothers, including my own, were employed outside the home. They stayed in their houses cooking and cleaning, perhaps getting together a few afternoons a week for card parties and mah-jongg. When the men arrived at the end of the day, they were greeted with a drink, usually a whiskey, neat, and the promise of quiet. Kids knew that they should stay out of Dad’s way until dinner was served. You could see the fatigue on those men; they didn’t hide it as they trudged up the stairs, and we respected it. I find my grandchildren oddly lacking in respect for their parents’ labors. In fact, parents today seem apologetic for being tired after a hard day earning a living. They feel they should be always available, on call for the children. Ah, but that’s me being cranky. Maybe it’s better this way; maybe their kids will appreciate their parents’ availability. (I doubt it. But we’ll see.)

  Once I ate dinner at your home. We were in high school, both of us sixteen years old and ardent members of a Jewish youth group. Your brothers had also been in this group, a Zionist organization. We met weekly in the basement of our local synagogue and pretended to be pioneers. There, we danced energetic Israeli dances, kicking high into the air, and singing heroic songs, like we were settlers of the holy land. We organized car washes and bake sales to raise money, which was sent to help the brave Israelis who were, we were told, making a Garden of Eden in the desert.

  You were a rising star in the American Zionist Youth, impressively making your way up the organizational ladder. First, you became the local chapter head of AZY, then the Chicago area president, and now, you were preparing your candidacy for regional. At the Midwest Regional meeting, to be held later that month at the Hilton in Chicago’s loop, hundreds of Jewish kids would listen to campaign speeches by ambitious young teenagers from communities much like our own in Cleveland, Detroit, or Milwaukee. They would scream and cheer for their candidate and then elect new leaders.

  I was at the Pine house almost every afternoon because you had mistaken my lovelorn eyes for devotion to the cause of Israel. You’d appointed me your campaign manager, and we spent days with magic markers and poster boards. I’m ashamed to admit that, despite our fervor, we came up with nothing better than “Pine Is Fine,” but I copied the same straight pine tree onto posters for the delegates to wave up and down as was seen on the white trucks plying our neighborhood with brisket and flanken.

  The sun had already gone down one late fall afternoon when your mother stood in the shadows of the doorway to your room. We were busy making banners and placards. I remember that Mrs. Pine had the habit of standing very still when she entered a room, waiting until she was noticed. I looked up and saw her first. You were still working, your head down and talking a mile a minute, as you always did.

  “I think we’ll get the delegates from Indiana,” you, ever the politician, said. “South Bend and Hammond at least. No problem there. They really have a leadership vacuum and besides, all those Indiana kids know me from summer camp. But I’m not so sure about Ohio. What do you think about that curly-haired girl from Cincinnati? Nancy something or other? Man, those Jewish kids from Cincinnati sure are organized.”

  Your mother was tall and had the palest skin. With her elegant features and long limbs and torso, you resembled her. That day, she was wearing a clean white apron tied over a dark green housedress that buttoned down the front. The dress hung on her, much too large for her slim frame. She stood still, her hands at her sides, listening and watching her youngest son with the same adoration I imagined was on my own face. Then her eyes moved to mine and she gave me a small smile.

  “Judith,” she said softly and shyly, “it’s nearly time for dinner. Why don’t you call your mother and ask her if you can eat with us? One of the boys will drive you home later.”

  My heart began to beat quickly. Although you and I had often done school or youth group projects together, I’d never before eaten dinner with the Pine family. You still had an off and on romance with Rochelle Bennett, who also was in the youth group, and seemed to get prettier every year. These dynamics were tricky, since Rochelle and I had become friends—close enough for me to have heard intimate details of her relationship with you.

  “Elliot likes to French kiss,” Rochelle had confided as we refreshed our lipstick in front of the mirror in the girls’ bathroom. “He knows how to do it good, too.”

  Of course, when Rochelle spoke to me this way, I never allowed myself to appear to be coveting you. That would be laughable. After all, you two were the King and Queen. Instead, as usual, I settled for less glamorous boys, such as Jordan, my current boyfriend. Jordan was an intellectual who wore thick glasses and expertly played the accordion. (Although today accordion playing has become somewhat of a joke, I remember that back then it was played by many kids, especially those whose families couldn’t afford a piano.) Jordan and I had become so inseparable that when our temple youth group sat on the floor in a circle and sang the old spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and got to the line “I looked over Jordan, and what did I see,” everyone gleefully shouted in unison, “Judith!”

  I also hesitated at the dinner invitation because I didn’t want to make more of a burden for your mother. By this time, it was common knowledge that Mrs. Pine was not well, although none of us had a name for her sickness. But she had invited me to dinner, so I supposed it would be okay.

  You lifted the stencil from the poster we were working on. “Hi, Mom. I didn’t see you standing there. But that’d be great. We can keep working on the posters after dinner. Okay, Rocket?”

  “You’re sure, Mrs. Pine? Is there enough?” I asked.

  “One thing you can be sure of, Judith, there’s always enough meat in this house.” And with a little smile, she was gone.

  At dinner, I watched everything carefully, excited to see how your family
ate their meal. My own house was too quiet. There was uninteresting conversation with long silences in between sentences. I felt pressure to fill those silences at home and usually wished I had more accomplishments to speak of at the table, as this is what made my parents more pleased than anything else I could say. Dinner at the Pine house was different, a big, rowdy affair, with three large sons (both your brothers, Jeffrey and Phillip, were by then at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park and often came home for a meal) and your even larger father. Mr. Pine was the biggest and bulkiest man I knew. He wore a white T-shirt to the table and had massive forearms and a broad forehead. His thick, curly hair made his already large head, huge. Your mother set a plate of well-done roast beef and a bowl of steaming whole potatoes boiled in their skins, in front of your father. She didn’t completely sit down, but rather perched on the edge of her chair. Suddenly, she took a sharp breath in and said, “oh” softly and went quickly back to the kitchen. She returned with an oven mitt on her hand and carrying a cookie sheet of hot rolls. The rolls were almost, but not quite burned.

  The conversation continued, everyone, except your mother and me, weighing in about your upcoming election. Suddenly, Mr. Pine stopped speaking and put down his knife and fork. He stared at your mother and there was an ominous silence for a few seconds before he spoke.

  “No greens?” he asked, his eyes scanning the table as if he might have missed them. “No greens tonight, Helen?” he repeated.

  She flinched as if he’d struck her. “Oh my goodness. I’m sorry, Max. I’d been feeling I’d forgotten something all afternoon. I couldn’t think what it was, but I felt so unsettled. Judith, please forgive me. I didn’t make a vegetable. Or even a salad.” She put a hand up to her mouth, covering it.

  All three of you boys spoke at once, interrupting one another.