The Seduction Of Nonny Stein

By Roberta Markels

Philip Roth’s GOODBYE, COLUMBUS came out in 1959. That’s the year Roberta Markels’ THE SEDUCTION OF NONNY STEIN should have come out. And it should have been right up there with Roth’s seminal work, which has been described as “…an irreverent and humorous portrait of American-Jewish life.” Hers is that, and more. Like Roth’s book, it’s a coming-of-age story, with all the universality implied by that, but from a female perspective. Few female writers back then, with the notable exception of, for example, Mary McCarthy, were allowed the latitude to tell the punch-to-the-solar-plexus truth that’s the defining quality of great fiction. THE SEDUCTION OF NONNY STEIN is rich with humor, but it’s the valiant, heroic sort of humor that arises from that profound place where comedy and tragedy overlap.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781631921209

Book preview

Lord.

Monday

Always she woke convulsively, her eyes wide open, intense, as if busy and someone had disturbed her work. Awoke startled, as though an answer were required, as though she had not been sleeping at all, but only standing in a dark quiet room, waiting; had heard a door close somewhere, a voice calling. Through sleep she searched a dim truth, almost found, never held; in the last moment of sleep the question was known, the answer found. Discovered and lost, always lost in the moment of waking.

And that was only her morning body; thin-skinned and hollow, remembering to sit up, remembering the first thought: work. Then the first spring from bed, tightening herself inward, pushing her bones closer together to keep out the day and the dark early-morning cold. The dream of waking.

She dressed quickly, smothering sleep with haste, putting on her stockings, her slip, combing her hair. And pushed automatically, she ran through her room, through the quiet still-dark hall, down the wide carpeted steps to the first floor.

And in the kitchen a bright early-morning Bessie, her white fuzzy hair dyed black, polished back, tightly braided before the ravages of the day loosened it; standing at the sink with her uniform starched and stiff, the bottom hanging away from her body like a stiff three-cornered sail; with her crazy leg sticking out at a thirty-three degree angle, her crazy foot turned backwards, and her flat-planed face jawing out like a wooden cigar store Indian's.

Time only to gulp her orange juice placed neatly on the little blue plate on the cool white porcelain table, to watch the first trembling light mounting steadily, climbing through the windows. Time to gulp her juice, to pull her cigarettes from her purse and put on her shoes (always she saved till the last possible moment that final outrage), to glance at the clock, to make sure she had her purse. To put on her boots and button her coat, light the cigarette, thrust the pack back in her purse. Then the first swing of the open door, letting in the cold blue air, and Bessie's Lawd, close that door; then out, half running down the street, feeling the sharp morning air snapping at her forehead, hearing the hard soiled snow squeaking under her rubber boots.

Then the sudden stop to join the crowd gathering, pouring from their separate doorways like leaves swiftly windblown, falling neatly stacked on the corner. They were mostly high-school students, taking the bus to the transfer point. On other corners where the bus stopped there might be one lone businessman or some early-morning shopper, one strange thorn among those jostling roses; but on her corner she was the only one, alien, standing in her worn rubber boots covering the high heels, with her little purse clutched in her hand, her coat buttoned up to her chin. Once she had stood in a small clustering circle like that, with her books under her arm, her saddle shoes and crew socks, and her coat open no matter how cold it was, because no one buttoned their coats then. Now she stood a little away from the rest, obeying the imaginary line separating her feet from theirs, staring at them remotely, almost puzzled, as if somewhere in the background she heard some strange yet remembered music she should place.

She would stand on the El platform still alone, breathing out the blue smoky air, watching the silver-feathered pigeons flying down and waddling across the planks, watching the people standing still and silent, clumped together in little unknown groups, like flowers all in the same vase with their heads going in different directions. Sometimes, waiting on the platform, the men would start their ritual conversations. The Men, The Knights, The Soldiers of Evanston, guarding their morning Tribune zealously, cautiously seeking each other's tepid opinions, they turned to one another or to her. Once, sitting on a bench, someone poked her tranquil sleeve. They used to all be on the south side, he said, nodding towards the lone Negro head searching the skyline. Chicago's going to the dogs. He shifted in his seat and looked at her imploringly. You go to hell, she said into his surprised face, and wondered, even now, how come she had the nerve.

And now and then a man feeding the pigeons would look up with a satisfied smile as though he were taming a lion. How about that? he'd say, and look around for all to see. How Caroline had hated the pigeons. Oh, she'd shudder, get away, get away. AWOOOOUL! Caroline screamed once when one fluttered near her chest, and everyone turned around. Imagine that, a man stared incredulously at Caroline's five feet eleven, and Caroline's face, usually taut, like a lovely flower frozen under glass, now startled and terrified. A big tall gorgeous thing like you, afraid of pigeons. She could knock a house down, the man said, still staring, and everyone laughed. And Caroline, resetting her face into its haughty stare.

Then the El would come lumbering over the tracks, groaning to its stop; two windows slanting over the snub nose of the engine like two giant eyes with only one pupil where the conductor stood. She would push herself into her seat, and as the El started up she would feel a sudden soar, a vague expectancy. The El was going somewhere; the continual motion and grinding wheels were all going someplace, and the promise of that motion, those wheels, held her for a moment in the false hope that she too was going someplace. That first second of exultation would die as the train gained speed, yet die slowly, enclosing her within its fading rays. She was the princess in the fairy tale, only sleeping still; sleeping beneath her life; sleeping beneath the days and nights and even sleeping beneath her sleep, a dream she could not tell herself, and always—waiting. A sleeper, going to work and coming home and fixing her hair and getting up in the morning and going out in the cold, buttoning her little Peter Pan collar, and all in a trance. But on the train and because of the train, somewhere a door would open. She searched the trees and the houses, and the bleary cold winter morning, searched even the veiled train faces always for her own face, an unknown slumbering search. The train carried them all, swaying them asleep, into their deeper sleep, remembering, recalling; the train was a sliding phantom boat gliding through gray air and all the lost dreams, the lost days ran up and down the aisles, plucking the mind with remembrance.

And she would remember strange odd half-moments that somehow had remained with her, and always, the sun was there, enfolding the half-remembered pieces through a thin yellow film. Saw their yard at home in the summer, a long green yard that led down to the lake. In the corner a plot of dark earth was laid aside, and they had a flower bed there. She remembered the warm summer days and the sun falling in golden patches on the grass in the yard, and the leaves rustling softly under a slow summer wind, and her mother in the yard, picking flowers. Her mother would fill a basket with long-stemmed pink and yellow flowers. Then she would go into the kitchen and stand by the sink and cut some of the stems and some of the leaves and place the flowers one by one into the vase with the leaves tumbling over the sides. And Nonny would lean against the kitchen door, watching .

Once, her mother looked up and smiled and said, When I was a girl, I remember, I used to watch my mama fix flowers. And she would tell her mother was thinking of her mother, as though in a dream. And for a moment, she felt as though she were not real at all, but part of her mother's dream. She could see her mother standing in her mother's house, watching her mother arrange flowers, and her mother's mother saying to her, When I was a girl, just as her mother was saying to her now. And it seemed to her, standing there, that this day somehow was a special day, a different day; and she thought, here is a woman, arranging flowers, this is the way it is; this is the way women do; and when I am a woman I will arrange flowers in a vase, and I will have a daughter, and she will watch me. Then perhaps I will say to her, When I was a girl, and I will think of my mother as my mother is thinking of her mother now, and my daughter will feel unreal, part of a dream. And she could see the scene unfolding in a three-cornered mirror, its many images rippling over the surface, back, back, as though it had a life of its own apart from them.

Saw Popper, on a Sunday morning long ago—all those Sunday mornings—sitting in his old bathrobe and slippers, in his big chair, his woolly plaid blanket over his knees, and the sun filling the alcove where he sat. And all around him it looked like Sunday. The way he sat, the way the papers were scattered, the way the sun came through the windows filling the alcove with a thick bright haze, and pieces of sun brighter than the rest caught on part of Popper and the piano legs, slid across the carpet in a long thin line. She would hurry home from Sunday School and rush upstairs, knowing he would be there; hurrying so fast she could hardly breathe, through the vestibule and up the steps and then jerk the door open and yell into the living room— Popper! — and make a wild leap across the room and fling herself at him. And in that moment, held in the arms of love, she would be all covered up in warmth from the sun and from Popper. She would stay there and hug him, feeling his strength all around her and the warm sun enclosing them both. Popper was there, she could be sure of that for always. Always? On the train, remembered, always; said it with the train wheels. What was that word, always? And where was that day and that sun, where was Popper now? What was always? And the train said always and there was no always, and the train sped still, through that gray-blue nowhere land; and she remembered always, remembered Popper, remembered the way it used to be...

Up the dingy subway steps littered with gum wrappers, match books, wrinkled cigarette packs, onto the pavement curb; past the keep-your-city-clean box; past the smudgy windows of the drugstore at the corner; past the group of shabby men standing hopefully at the still closed tavern; past Ed's paper stand, the bricks settled on his treasure; past Ed's bleak watery eyes under his lopsided cap, his good-morning smile, his different-colored teeth straggling from his gums like a row of uneven rocks against the shore. Turning in at the street where she worked, old and dirty, shuddering at itself in the early morning cold. The buildings packed tightly together leaned like huddled old women, and when the streetcar rumbled between them, they trembled slightly, awaiting disaster. Sometimes she saw an old beggar, always the same one, in a worn leather jacket and a pair of dirty corduroy pants, sitting on the cement. He had blue eyes and scaly pink and white skin like the scraped inside of an orange peel. She would walk fast, but still would catch his eye. She was always too slow, and there was that one second and that one look when she saw the eyes behind the mild, begging eyes, and the face beneath the bland begging smile, and she knew he had another face, wiser than hers would ever be, knowing something she would never understand. And she hated him with a nameless fear and flushed horror. She told herself he had lots of money buried away someplace anyway, the old bugger. But she knew it wasn't true, and it didn't help at all, and she'd keep walking and after awhile she'd forget it.

Her office was a store front only four steps down, which made it a basement. Her boss was a jobber, a resale jobber, he said, a wholesale supplier. What's that? she asked the first day. You'll see, he said. But she still didn't know. Only her work was sane to her, the rest of the office was a confused bedlam surrounding her typewriter.

She walked by the wide window that stretched across the front, and glanced down into the office, always crowded with cartons jammed along the walls, cartons on top of the files, the four desks back-to-back in the middle of the room, their separateness lost under the bombardment of papers, bills—green, pink, yellow—baskets labeled IN and OUT, four phones forested together, their wires intermingling, the narrow aisle between the desks and the walls, lined with sagging old file cabinets under more heavy cartons, and surrounding it all an air of suspended, deliberate confusion, as though the whole room were a packed moving van, about to take off at any moment.

She hung her coat on the rack in the corner, said, Good morning, Cookie, hating to call the old woman Cookie. Just call me Cookie. But what's your name? Oh, it doesn't matter, just call me Cookie; everyone calls me Cookie. As for Cookie, all day long she called Montgomery Wards.

She pushed herself through the aisle to the narrow hall in back of Cookie's desk, lined with more junk, and the washstand with the tarnished mirror hanging over it. Soot all over her nose. Her collar was soiled already.

Crazy.

Button up your strait jacket, Mama would say, don't wear your gloves till you get there.

I'm here a minute and I'm filthy already, she called out, and washed her hands and face, hung her towel and went back into the other room.

You should never wash your face, honey. How many times do I tell you that? Look at me now. I'm sixty-two and my face is nice and smooth, c'mere now and feel my skin. You should just cream it and then wipe off the cream and then —c'mere.

She tried to get by Cookie's desk, Cookie's round flat face pushing up, Cookie's little gray pin curls bobbing around her ears, her round rimless glasses pointing accusingly, but had to stop and feel the uplifted cheek.

Very nice.

Oh well, I'm sure you girls know everything, Cookie's voice droned on. She didn't hear it.

It didn't matter anyway, where she worked, what she did. They were all the same. And she remembered seeing the place the first time, and trying to tell Morry, Listen, this isn't the kind of job I want. But Morry had taken her arm, half pushing her across the four steps into the small stockroom at the other side, looking at her so close with his little darting penetrating eyes and the one that was just a little crossed, going off a little. You can't leave me, he cried. Just wait till I get another girl, just a week —two—now that you're here. A supply house was sloppy, it was true, but she would like a little office. She was right near Rush Street. Didn't she want to be near Rush Street? He would pay her fifty a week. She would have it easy—she could write his catalog—she could take long lunches. She would LOVE it. And finally he said, O.K., it's a bargain, you're a good girl. That's a good girl. She staggered under his words, fell and never regained her feet. After a few weeks the actual thought of looking for another job faded into a fuzzy dream of someday I will which she told herself in the odd moments when jarred into knowing she was stuck there. Then she would remember again the terror of walking into strange offices looking for a job, the strangeness of new desks. And where should she go? She had hated her loop job (UP went the elevator in the morning and down the long aisle to her wooden desk and typewriter and DOWN went the elevator and the weary self-conscious smiles of the daily dead greeting each other over their doughnuts and coffee and UP to the ladies room and the lone cigarette midst the anxious washing hands of office girls taking off their rings and bracelets, and she alone, reading her rental books religiously only to return them dubiously, asking, Is this the world? Mother said yes, and Henry said yes, and the braceleted hands of the working girls smoothing their hair said why, yes, of course this is the world, what did you think?)

.....just one tissue at a time. Cookie's voice, like monotonous waves, still lapped at her consciousness. She settled herself in her chair and took off the typewriter cover. The salesmen would be in soon and she would be ready when they threw their slips on her desk.

Bill 'em out, baby, money for Papa.

Here, cutie, type these for me and I'll give you a big kiss.

Morry came in with Sid, their mufflers hanging askew, their hats already pushed back, their coats half off. Talking still, while they hung up their coats; gesticulating, explaining, not listening to each other, like two men telling a third about a card hand. Morry squeezed by her desk, patting her head. Morning, Sugar. He sat down, relighting his cigar, straightening the mess on his desk into separate little messes, arranging the pictures of his wife and daughter. Oh, my baby girl, you don't know. I mean, that kid. I gotta give her the whole world. When she says Daddy—wait'll your kid calls you Daddy.

She'll probably call me Mama.

Listen, I'm your boss, I pay you good, so listen to what my kid told me. He turned to Sid, Boy, they grow them tough in Evanston, get her. She gave him a sullen smile and went back to her typing.

Actually, the miracle was that he put up with her. Why? She would never know. She came in late half the time, and left early the rest—and called periodically: Listen, I'm sick. I can't come in today.

You're a damn liar, you damn liar! Morry would shout. Just see that you're here tomorrow. Tomorrow! And slam down the phone. On the days before tests at night school she would sit for the last two hours with her book in her lap. The Greek Tragedies, Morry yelled one time, grabbing her book. Oi, we've got an intellectual yet. What'ya studying that for, the Greeks are dead, you bum.

I don't know, she shrugged. I don't know anything about anything anyway; I might as well start at the beginning.

Oedipus! he wailed another time. Oedipus, eh? He flipped through the pages. Oedipus, Schmoedipus, so long as you love your mother. You didn't know I knew all about this stuff. Say listen, I went to Colleridge. Coolidge was the president of my colleridge. That's a funny, smile. And he would laugh, his cucumber nose dipping down over his little mouth. She would smile, take her book back.

But someday she would quit. Just quit. Goodbye. And walk out.

The thing was, he was never there to quit to. When they weren't busy he was never around, or he was running in and out, and someone else was right in the room with them. You couldn't quit with someone else right in the room with you. And when they were busy he was in too much of a frenzy to get hold of. The last time she tried to quit, he turned absolutely purple. The Christmas stock, he screamed, the prices aren't decided, the catalog isn't finished, half the merchandise isn't in, how am I going to get a new girl now? You'd leave me now? In this mess? You monster! Wait, wait — wait till the rush is over. And she had waited. Well, that was fair enough. How could she leave when he was in such a mess? Who else could understand his letters when he was busy? For days the office was caught up in hysteria, with Morry and Sid in wild debate over prices, lists, numbers. Calling and recalling factories, outlet stores, hotels, restaurants, exclusive sport stores, dress stores, jewelry shops, to buy up their surplus. Calling, calling, the place was a madhouse: What? You're robbing me, Morry shouted to the factory, I can't get it to you any cheaper, I've lost three cents a pound already. He would hang up, smiling gleefully at Sid. We're in. He ran in and out, grabbing his hat, calling out numbers, prices, abbreviations, while Sid shuffled around the office scrawling incomprehensible secrets on his many packs of index cards, nodding, Good, good, good. They'd go back into a corner, talking excitedly, make another phone call, check another list. They sent her out on numerous odd errands she didn't understand. Go into the hardware and find out how much this broom cost. He'd show her a certain broom in the catalog, and when she came back they'd shout, clap their hands to their heads, make another phone call, pat each other on the back. They were like little boys in a secret club, making diplomatic phone calls to the other camp, writing down their magic codes, sending her as a scout.

The salesmen ambled in and out, played cards sitting on the desk, began to despair.

Come on, come on, they'd groan, I can't go anywhere till you get this settled.

Wait! Morry would yell, and he'd run out again. When he came back he'd cut through their questions, sit down hastily, take off his hat and coat, his suit jacket, eagerly going through the piled-up papers on his desk, find the one he wanted. Here, take a letter, and she'd quickly take her billing out of the typewriter. Dear Mr. So and So—here, you'll have it on the heading. Where the hell are the sewing machine parts you promised me? You are a sonofabitch, send them right away, yours truly. Take another. Dear Jerk: Here, it's on this second letter; I am sending you your goddamn money as soon as I can, keep your pants on, sincerely. Another: Dear You, we've heard of reputable blah blah, we buy anything and sell it to anyone. What have you, etcetera. Etcetera. Put in something there about selling to a factory outlet, wholesale, last year's merchandise, what have you. O.K.? O.K.?

She would write quickly in her own private shorthand: letter one: send me; letter two: I'll send you. And wait till the whole pile of letters was dumped on her desk and she could go through them slowly, trying to make out from their contents what to write. She'd finish and put them on his desk. Very nice, he'd say, scrawling his name on the bottom, very professional. She stayed a few nights late, working straight through till seven or eight. Sometimes Morry would buy her dinner, and drive her home, or to the El. But if he went early, she'd sit in the gloomy basement office alone, typing away, thinking, What am I doing here? and finished at last, put on her coat and walk up the basement steps exhausted.

In a few days the office subsided again to its present lethargy. She sat at her desk, going through bills, making a half-hearted attempt to put some of the accumulated junk on their desk back into the files. I don't know where these things go, she'd moan, picking up files of letters that had been pulled. Nothing is by alphabet around here. Is it by year? If you'd let me in on your precious filing system, I might be able to__

Oh, go on, we'll do it later, Morry would say. Go on. Take the afternoon off, it will make up for last night.

But this was the end. Absolutely. She was through. She was going to quit. In a week or so. She'd just tell him. Morry, there's something I want to tell you. No. Morry, I'm quitting. No. Listen. Morry...Morry...

Then there was the coffee break. Get me the Tribune, will you honey? Cookie handed her a nickel.

March is a lousy month, Morry was saying to someone on the phone. She put on her coat, stopping to stare out the window.

March. Infinite, infinite, infinite despair. March is a lousy month.

The sudden release again, out of the musty office into the world. Gulping down great breaths of clear winter morning, walking fast on the snow-melted, still-damp sidewalk. And now the sun was out, a crazy new morning sun, crashing all around her into the buildings and the car tracks and squatting on the cars. Spring will come. Spring will come. She looked happily into the milky winter sky.

Once more the heavenly power...

Power. Power?

I pant for music which is divine

My heart in its thirst is a dying flower

And in the restaurant. Time renewed. Time to sit and smoke a cigarette. Time to look at the long counter and the mirror in front of her, echoing the back of the restaurant. Time to look at her own face in that long mirror. Ramona. Who's that? Girl of the golden west.

What'll you have? Gina said.

I don't know. Nonny leaned forward on the counter. What do you have?

The same thing we had yesterday. Come on, Come on... what'll you have?

Oh... I don't know. Coffee.

Sometimes a couple of the salesmen would come in, but usually, as if by some secret and tacit agreement, they sat away from her, talking in low tones and then suddenly laugh. They would pass by and say, Hi, cutie, and sometimes jerk a strand of her long hair, like bashful boys still in grammar school. And she sat not caring if they came or went or what they did, after the first few times when they never sat with her. Sat, a vague smile greeting them. But not caring. They were the men. The salesmen. She was what? The girl. The office girl. And all the stories about it.

Even her own family. On evenings and weekends when she was home, her relatives would visit, and when they saw her, her uncles would stand for a moment, staring, as if they should say something but were