Two Hearts Vulnerable

By Leah Jay

Rae Weller loved her husband. But early on she faced the fact that she was never "in love" with him. She didn't really believe that there was such a thing as "in love." Oh, she'd been around the block a few times, it never really meant anything beyond a guarantee for a bridge partner on Saturday night.
An old buddy put it this way. Play well, pay well or lay well. Rae had never paid a professional. Then at a bridge tournament in New Orleans she met Matt Forsythe who couldn't play bridge at all. But the game he played sent shivers down her spine and sent her out to buy lace pantyhose. Was it the real thing?
Two Hearts Vulnerable examines that premise from
trick one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lou Tyrrell
• Release date: Oct 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452468020

Leah Jay

Leah Jay graduated Phi Bet Kappa from Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan and went on to write articles published in Harpers Bazaar, New York magazine, The NY Times, The Detroit News and Los Angeles Magazine. She is a Silver Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League and has been published in the ACBL Bulletin. She conceived, wrote and produced a series of ten documentaries called Museum Cities of the World which played on Public Televsion and as DVDs around the world. She wrote and produce "The Champions" for NBC Television and the nationally syndicated stock car racing show, "The Racers."

Book preview

Foreword

I love a soft, melodious voice. I don’t have one. Actually, it’s nasal and occasionally shrill. Sometimes I fantasize about taking voice lessons; cultivating an English accent. Of course I never do. I also think a lot about taking exercise classes, joining a health club. I don’t do that, either. Or taking French lessons, really cramming eight hours a day at Berlitz. Right. I don’t do that either. For that matter, I think a lot about writing a book, and while I’m doing that, I don’t know that what I’ve written I like very much. There’s a big advantage to doing nothing; it can’t turnout badly. As long as not one word is written you’re Jane Austen or George Eliot or Emily Dickinson, waiting for the right moment. Once the words are down on paper you’re just a hack. Anyway what’s so special about my life that, even if my yenta muse puts glowing words of beauty in my head, would make anyone want to read the pedestrian details, I ask myself. I don’t know. And yet I have the feeling that if I write long enough and hard enough and remember truly enough I’ll be able to touch someone’s heart. I have this overwhelming but naïve feeling that I’m related to everyone who ever lived through time and space. Everybody is my business, my brother, my sister, my concern. In practice that isn’t true. I meet lots of people I think are foolish, hostile, stupid and unworthy, and toward whom I feel exceedingly unsisterly. But then the thought always comes that maybe they think the same of me. So I’m going to tell this story and maybe, unadventuresome and ignoble though it may be, perhaps it will seep under the foolishness, the stupidity, the unworthiness, or the brilliance, friendliness, and praiseworthiness of those who read it and we will all be joined for a time in a mutual experience. The human experience.

Chapter 1

July 1966

Let’s go. Freddy whispered in my ear. Familiar refrain. I looked around the room. It was unbearably hot. Guests wandered listlessly in and out, making idle chatter, drinking watery punch, fingering limp canapés. The host’s face was flushed, the hostess’ voice strident. There was no place to sit down. Okay. Sure, I said. For once I was ready when he was.

We walked out into the summer night, at least ten degrees cooler out there, and meandered slowly down the street toward the car. On the corner was a small neighborhood bar, surrounded by police cars, their red lights flashing. Hey, what’s happening there? I said and ran ahead Wait a minute, he called after me, but I was already gone. People were milling around on the sidewalk in front and as I got near I saw an ambulance pull away, its sirens wailing. What’s going on I asked a man standing nearby. Stash Kowalski just shot a customer in there. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bar behind us. Shot him just like that. He pointed his finger at me and went bang.

Who’s Stash? I asked.

Owner of the bar, he replied.

And who was the customer? I pressed on. A woman stood listening to our exchange, then sniffed and said, Some customer.

Is he dead? I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. I don’t know. They’ve taken him off in the ambulance.

But why did he shoot him? I persisted.

By now Freddy had caught up and was listening too. The man started to explain but the woman broke in with, That bum was fooling around with Doris.

What bum? I asked.

Ed Baines, that’s what bum, Ed Baines. As she spoke a women came out of the bar with a policeman on either side. Doris, no doubt. She looked 35, perhaps 40, with big blonde Marie Antoinette curls piled up on her head. Lots of makeup. Good-looking in a hard sort of way. Low cut blouse surplice over high breasts. Tight tan slacks. High heels with no backs. The woman went on. Ed should have kept his mouth shut.

Aw be quiet, Florence. It’s none of your business, said the man.

Its as much my business as it is your business, Dingo Krause, and she turned and walked away. The man went on.

Florence is right though. Fooling around is one thing. Rubbing it in is another. Ed, he used to come in every night and needle Stash about Doris. Not actually admitting anything, see. But, you know, little digs. It used to make Stash burn.

"So what happened?

So tonight, old Stash had enough. When Ed started up, Kowalski pulls a gun out from under the bar and shoots him in the chest. One bullet. Bang. Ed keels over on the floor. Someone calls the cops. Stash, he just puts the gun back under the counter and starts serving drinks up again.

Where’s Stash now, I asked.

Took him off to the police station.

Let’s go, said Freddy. I watched Mrs. Stash wiggle her hips into the back seat of the police car. The principles were all gone.

Stash, Doris and Ed, the lover with the hole in his chest. But the bar was jammed. One of those neighborhood hangouts where people get together every night and talk. And they sure were talking now. I looked in the windows through the red neon sign that read, Kowal’s Bar and Grill and said, I want to go in.

Our informer had moved away to tell his story to another knot of people. The police cars were beginning to pull off, one by one. But the drama was far from over. It was clear everyone inside knew Kowalski, Doris, Ed Baines and each other and they were chewing over the details along with the pretzels on the bar, both with great relish; gesturing wildly, shouting over the sound of the juke box, the noise and excitement spilling out into the hot July night.

Let’s go in, I repeated.

Are you crazy? Freddy looked at me in disbelief. We don’t belong in there.

Why not? Why don’t we belong in there?

Freddy looked in through the open door as though he were looking through a space ship window at Mars. They’re not our kind of people, he said. They’d resent us. They all know each other. We’re all dressed up. They’d think we were busybodies, just trying to find out what happened.

Exactly. And I want to hear what happened. Look, it’s no big deal. We’ll go in. We’ll order a couple of beers. We’ll sit at the bar. We’ll listen. We won’t talk to anyone. They won’t even notice we’re there.

They look like they’re in an ugly mood to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone started swinging, or even shooting.

Aw come on, Freddy. But he turned and walked toward the car. We just don’t belong in there," he said over his shoulder. I stood, hesitating for a minute and then followed along. O.K. Maybe he was right.

Maybe we didn’t belong in there. I shifted into another gear. Billy Maxted is playing on the roof of the Ponchartrain. You love Billy Maxted.

That’s way downtown, he said as he nosed the car out in the street.

But we’re halfway there. Ten minutes on the freeway, tops.

No, I don’t want to. It’s too hot.

You wouldn’t have to dance. Freddy didn’t like to dance with me. He said I was too tall. And, in fact, he was only an inch taller than I in our bare feet. Of course, I always wore low heels. I hated being taller than everyone else. And was still lying about how tall I really was. If anyone asked, I said five feet eight.

We could just sit there, have a drink, watch other people dance. Talk. He shook his head. I knew I was fighting a losing battle. The enthusiasm dribbled out of my voice. But I tried again. Wait a minute. Bucky Pizzarelli is playing at Baker’s Bar. Freddy loved jazz. In fact, had taught me everything I knew about it. When we were engaged he used to take me to the Paradise Theater where I saw Lionel Hampton, Illinois Jacquet, Tina Dixon, Jimmy Lunceford. When The Hamp used to swing out with Sunny Side of the Street, and came to the line …I’d be rich as Rockefeller… the audience would scream back, which you is.

Once Freddy took me to a concert in a basement classroom at Wayne University to hear a young skinny girl in a black skirt and white blouse. It was Sarah Vaughn. Another time we went to the Crystal Bar on Twelfth Street to hear somebody called Charlie Parker. Up to that time in my life I knew nothing about music beyond the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms I had practiced on the piano, and, of course, the Hit Parade I used to listen to on the radio. Jazz was something new to me, something Freddy seemed to know a lot about, something he was excited about. He used to play the drums himself. Had even taken his drums with him into the army, where he played with some first-rate musicians.

Drummer Boy, that was my name, he’d say. That’s what they called me. Then he got a medical discharge, left his drums in the army and came home. That was all before I knew him and years before the night in front of Kowel’s Bar and Grill. Nineteen or twenty years before. And so the name of Bucky Pizzarelli, great jazz guitarist though he was, held no interest, no promise of a good evening for Freddy.

No, he said. I don’t think so.

I had run out of ideas. Exasperation, the kind I had felt so many times before, began to rise in me.

It’s Saturday night. A beautiful summer evening. It’s only 9:30 and we’re all dressed up. I volleyed the ball into his court. What do you want to do? He slammed it right back. I want to go home."

Home?

That’s right.

But what should I do? I don’t want to go home.

Do anything you like, he said. Go to the bridge club. And so I did. And while I came home, quite late as I recall, I never really came home again.

Chapter 2

I was nearly forty years old when my looks came in style. I wonder if you can imagine the feeling. When I was eighteen the feminine ideal was Lana Turner. Girls were named Shirley or Arline. And all of them, at least the popular ones, were five feet two, with large breasts and rounded bottoms who wore angora sweaters, blue eye shadow and saddle shoes. Nothing could have been, nothing WAS more out of joint with the times than I. Long, lanky, five feet nine and a half inches tall. Rudyard Kipling could have been describing me when he wrote …nothin’ much before, an’ rather less than ‘arf o’ that be’ind. Even gay deceivers stuffed into my bra really didn’t help much. My bottom was still flat and the height was still there, and to make matters worse, my arms were so long they hung out of the sleeves of every jacket I owned.

My phone only rang when someone wanted tomorrow’s questions or yesterday’s answers. So I compensated in the usual way, by developing a wisecracking mouth. If I couldn’t be Lana Turner, well, perhaps I could be Eve Arden. I read a lot. I practiced the piano. I worked in my father’s store. And when I was 20 I met Fred Weller. In five weeks he asked me to marry him. I said yes, then changed my mind. I never told him that, because I changed it back again and married him.

He had been discharged from the army after spending one Sunday on the roof of a New York apartment, getting a suntan. What he got instead was sunstroke. The next morning he fainted in the subway on his way to 51 Wall Street, the army procurement center where he worked. During the course of treatment he received at an army hospital he had a nervous breakdown and was discharged. When I met him he was working for the city of Detroit, hiring bus drivers, and spending the rest of his time taking piano lessons and trying to figure out what had happened to him. His experience had left him with a significant case of free-floating anxiety and his conversation was loaded with a kind of Freudian chitchat that was very popular at the time. I thought it was cute.

He told me straightaway that I was the only girl he’s ever taken out that he felt comfortable with. It turned out to be quite an accolade. I learned later on that Freddy rarely felt comfortable with anyone. He also told me he admired me because I was capable and responsible. Not very romantic, was it, but no disadvantage here in being tall and flat. Actually, it must have been a relief to him. Beautiful women always intimidated him. But there was no intimidation here. And besides, I was rather a good pianist, after ten years of lessons, so logically, if he couldn’t learn to play himself, he could marry someone who did. And to give credit where credit was due, I was smart; although he quickly and frequently told me he was smarter. And I was funny, though he was funnier. Whatever else that can be said about him, he was, in a Woody Allen, life-despairing way, the funniest man I ever knew. He told me at once that I had no sense of humor whatsoever, although I had, through my teen years, worked hard at being a funny girl. Years later, when I would say something that provoked a laugh, he’d remark, Living with me certainly has improved your sense of humor. I never retorted that a sense of humor was the best defense against becoming a full-time wailing wall. Maybe I should have.

And so we got married. No large wedding. My father was too ill, although he managed to escort me down the aisle. And afterward we went to French River in Canada for our honeymoon, to a hunting lodge Freddy had found out about. You don’t like it, do you? he asked when I discovered you had to walk fifty yards to another building to find some plumbing. Actually, I did like it. The scenery was beautiful. Large dark forests, a steep rock-bound gorge through which the river flowed, a wide silver bay surrounded by trees. And hardly any people around to disturb our newly wedded bliss. Just a few hunters with their Indian guides. We canoed, we swam, we played golf on a course wet with morning dew. Our footprints were the only marks on the green. At night we sat by the huge stone fireplace in the main lodge and told ghost stories. And at breakfast we ate oatmeal with brown sugar and cream. Freddy took lots of pictures. One of me sitting on the sand with a stick in my hand, which had just etched out the words I love you.

The picture made my arms look too skinny and I threw it away. Something happened on that trip that now seems significant to me, although at that time it was just a curious disappointment. Freddy was the first man I ever slept with. Soon after we got engaged he persuaded me it was a good idea. He had a friend who had an apartment and he took me there to initiate me into what life was all about. I was very small and it hurt.

After it was over he said, Who else have you been to bed with? I said, No one. He said, you don’t have a hymen. I didn’t even know what a hymen was, but I felt somehow I had done something wrong. You’re supposed to bleed when I break your hymen," he said. He sounded disappointed.

Bleed? I said. It hurt bad enough, and you want me to bleed? He laughed and we forgot the missing hymen. And then from time to time, when we could work out a place, we would go to bed together. I can’t remember feeling much passion over these encounters although, on the other hand, there was no disgust or recoilment. Mostly just curiosity and interest, I think.

But now, on our honeymoon, we paddled up the French River, beached the canoe beside a pile of rocks and walked up into the silent woods. For some reason, I had an urge to take off my clothes. Freddy was just behind me and when he saw me he said, What are you doing? I smiled at him. I thought he could work it out. Wait a minute, he said. There are lots of hunters in these woods. You better put your clothes on. So I did. It was just a spur of the moment whim. I was soon to learn Freddy did not like spur of the moment adventures.

And so we moved into a one room apartment, then bought a lot, built a house, had our children, first Ron, then Mimi, then Jody. We bought cars, planted lawns; entertained our in-laws at barbecues every Sunday. Had some fights, developed a way of life, a mutual accommodation to each other. Then all of a sudden I was forty, and tall and became beautiful. Jutting hipbones, hollow cheeks, long neck, long arms, and yes, even small breasts were in.

Men began to trap me in the closet of the bridge club or back me into corners near the ladies room, one hand against the wall. Propositions came, first in a trickle, then in a stream, then in a flood. "Where were you when I was 18? I said to Danny Felker as I removed his knee from my crotch under the bridge table.

* * * *

It was at the bridge club that propositions first began to manifest themselves.

Let’s go for coffee.

Can you play Tuesday night?

There’s a tournament in Toledo Sunday.

Let’s meet at the deli before the game and talk over our system.

I had begun to play a lot of bridge. It was a great substitute for the social things Freddy didn’t want to do. He liked quiet. He liked to sit and read, or watch football on television. He did not like to do anything that made him nervous. The list of those things was very long. One of his hobbies was taking pictures. He was very good at it. Won a lot of ribbons in a camera club he belonged to. What he didn’t like was participating. He’d rather watch. Once in Paris, we had done the museums all day and walked the street while he carried two cameras and I dealt with the tripod. It was night now. We had eaten a six o’clock dinner; the only diners in a restaurant that hardly got going until nine. But Freddy didn’t like to eat late. It gave him indigestion. Now we were doing PARIS BY NIGHT. That meant I was sitting in a back seat of a cab practicing my feeble French with the driver while he took night photos of Paris Lumiere. They turned out to be gorgeous. And won him lots of blue ribbons.

Chapter 3

One. Fresh orange juice, (2) clean sheets, and (3) fuzzy slippers. These are my favorite things in all the world. The orange juice should be in an eight-ounce glass, just squeezed, with the foam still riding on the top. The sheets must be old. New sheets are scratchy with sizing. It takes about a year of washing to bring them to that smooth, soft texture that feels so delicious on bare skin. As for the slippers, they should be the kind that is fuzzy on the inside. Not those huge furry ones that look soft but are not. They should be quite plain leather or buckskin on the outside and lamb’s wool on the inside. Ah, the feeling of slipping out of a pair of hurty shoes on a cold day and into a pair of soft fuzzy slippers.

Such a detailed description of these, my three favorite things in all the world, has perhaps led you to believe I am a superficial person. What about great cities, what about certain books, selected pieces of music or art? For that matter, what about people? You may well ask. Are there not three people in this world who would rank above fresh orange juice, clean sheets or fuzzy slippers? The answer is, of course. It’s just that I started with those three because they are so simple. Simple to name and simple to explain. After you’ve named them there’s very little left to say. In all other categories there is so much to say. Pro and con, shades of opinions, revisionist thinking. And with people it’s the most difficult of all to be objective. For I have liked, loved and hated the same people, sometimes at the same time, and sometimes for the same reason. But with orange juice, clean sheets and fuzzy slippers my loyalty has never wavered, my preference always quite clear. Of course, from time to time things like a massage, or a hot bath, or watching an old movie on television come forward in my mind to challenge the Olympians of my personal taste. But they can never quite make it. And so, in my middle fifties, fresh orange juice, clean sheets and fuzzy slippers are still the front-running favorites.

Such a selection may tell you something else about me. I’ve denied that I’m superficial but in the end, you’ll have to be the one to decide that. It also tells you I’m a list maker. I love to make lists of everything. Day to day lists of things to be done, people to call, shopping lists. I find old lists in out-of-season coats, summer purses, jacket pockets. And as each item is performed, purchased, contacted, cleared up, I take great delight in checking it off. For me, there is real joy in looking at today’s list with a check mark after each and every item. A sense of accomplishment. Regrettably, the thrill doesn’t last very long. The next day produces its own list. Like housework, my lists are never done.

And if the obligatory lists aren’t enough, for recreation I make others. Like orange juice, clean sheets and fuzzy slippers. Or my three favorite movies of all time. Naturally I’ve already made my selection, although I will admit it has varied from time to time: 1. Gone with the Wind, 2. Casablanca, and 3. Rebecca. Other contenders through the years have been The Wizard of Oz, Now Voyager, and A Tale of Two Cities. The problem with movies is that I tend to think of them in terms of the people I saw them with. And that fact colors my perception and removes my objectivity. Take, for instance, Anatomy of a Murder. Certainly a good movie. But Freddy got so nervous watching it that he stood up from the aisle seat he always occupied in any theater and leaned against the wall. He was too anxious to sit down. Or take The Wizard of Oz. It comes on television every spring, but I don’t like to watch. More exactly, I’m drawn to watch it with a perverse fascination. I know it’s going to hurt, but I do it anyway. And though I love every song, can repeat half the lines, after it’s over I walk around in a fog of memories.

Memories of doctors, nurses, upside down bottles attached to poles and a room on the seventh floor South.

February 1971

The Houston Kings were playing an exhibition match against a pick-up team called the Victors. It was a grandiose scheme by Sam Grooms, a Texas millionaire with an enormous desire to win at bridge and the money to implement that desire. Sam Grooms, 350 pounds of shrewd cunning, an ego to match his avoirdupois, and a personality made up of equal parts of knavery and gallantry.

Sam had gathered up to his ample bosom six of the best young bridge players in the United States, each with an ego to match his own. Brought them to Houston. Made them take a bath. Change their underwear. Cut their hair. Then he had put them on a weekly salary, provided them with a coach who sent them into training to the end that they should capture the Bermuda Bowl, the world championship of bridge. For 16 years that bowl had been the sole property of the Italian Blue Team. And Sam was determined to take it away.

While the Kings were in training, Omar Sharif, with the same amateur’s drive to be a world class player and the pocketbook to show the world he could do it, brought his Bridge Circus to the United States, complete with three members of that Italian Blue Team. Sam inserted himself into Sharif’s act. The Circus was to tour nine cities on the North American continent, challenging teams as it went. And Sam, whose bank account knew no bottom when it came to bridge, decided he would send the Kings around on the tour, matching up his team against the Circus on the nights Sharif’s team didn’t play the locals.

Detroit was one of the cities on the circuit. And thus it was that into my life in February 1971 dropped Omar Sharif, Pietro Forquet, Benito Garozzo and Georgio Belladonna from the Italian Blues. Also came Sam Grooms and his six Kings. As bridge writer for the Detroit News, I was immediately called upon to do public relations for the event. It turned out to be a huge success. The newspapers gave it lots of space, thousands of people attended. The Detroit team, pulling on resources no one seriously thought it had, defeated the Sharif Circus in a last minute cliffhanger that had the crowd clutching the edge of its seats.

The Kings served as color commentators for the match and later stood around signing autographs for the bridge groupies who couldn’t get near Omar and his Italian Blues. Buff Wiley and I gave a dinner party for the Kings and the Sharif team at which, between the serving of beef bourguignon and the baba au rhum, they played 26 hands. Oswald Jacoby flew up from Texas to attend the party. The kids in the neighborhood lined the sidewalk in front of our house to catch a glimpse of Omar as he walked in, heavy-lidded, his skin the color of old liver, his hair several shades of black, brown and grey from tint. He scowled at the neighborhood children, resisted the advances of the News society editor and smiled only when I put on our Funny Girl album and he heard Barbra Streisand and himself singing. His ulcer was bothering him.

The few non-bridge players I had invited to watch were sshhed into silence each time they tried to make a little small talk. For the bridge players the evening was a smash. For the rest, the comment most frequently quoted after the night was over was, I could have had a better time at Ira Kaufman’s, – the local Jewish mortuary.

After that week Sam and I kept in touch and in October he called to propose I do a similar job of public relations for the match between the Kings and the New Orleans Victors. He had persuaded The Times Picayune to sponsor the event. George Healy, then editor, was just such an amateur bridge nut as Sam and Omar. And while he didn’t have their money, he had something better. He had the press.

He was a man of indefatigable energy who called in every favor, every I.O.U., every means at his political behest to make sure the three day match was well attended. I went down to New Orleans four times in the weeks that preceded the event to show him how to do it; how the paper should cover the tournament Cover turned out to be an understatement. For two months there were daily articles, and during the exhibition week there were personality sketches of the players, descriptions of the hands, interviews with the fans.

To read the Times Picayune that week in February was to be convinced that Byron Steinway’s declarer play which made six clubs on a two way squeeze was the most important news item of the year. Major fires were buried on page eleven. Diagrams of bridge hands appeared on page one.

* * * *

I was sitting in the last row of the Gateway Civic Center watching Charlie Jones, the NBC football sportscaster, and Porter Bridgeman, self-styled expert, point out to the crowd the intricacies of the hand being played at that moment in another room. They were using a huge electronic screen called Bridge-o-rama. Secretly I thought it was a very complicated procedure, not really understandable to anyone but a serious bridge player. But the audience, some 1,200 of them, seemed to be enjoying it. I turned and saw Sam enter, like the QE2 floating into its berth on the Hudson River.

Hello Ba-bee. He drawled and introduced me to the man next to him; a tall man, perhaps six feet one or two, with a lot of white hair worn longish over his ears and a pair of incredibly blue eyes. Rachel Weller, meet Matthew Forsyth. We shook hands. Rae? he said. How do you do, I replied. Then Sam sailed away and we sat down to watch.

Bridge player? I asked. Standard opening. No, he said, a little poker, a little gin. I’m not smart enough for bridge. This last was accompanied by an ambiguous but never the less friendly smile. I smiled back and waited. I wanted to ask him what he did but I held my tongue and let the pause ask it. He got the message and filled in the blank. I’m a television director and producer. Mostly sports. Actually, Sam brought me down to see if I thought there might be a special in all of this. What do YOU think?

My first thought was absolutely not. But I knew Sam’s most urgent desire was to make bridge into a spectator sport like football. I had heard him spout all kinds of supportive evidence to prove he could do it. Twenty-five years ago football games had only 5,000 spectators. Now they had 100,000. Television had done it. The American audience needed to get educated in bridge just as it had learned about football.

If they could learn the ins and outs of field goals and forward passes, they could learn to understand two way Stayman and strip and end plays. Of course, bridge and football are in no way similar. But the bridge people close to Sam, including me, were on the gravy train of his conviction. Pointing out to him that it couldn’t be done