Curtain Rising

By Lois Silverstein

Lois Silverstein was born in New York. She has lived in Boston, Montreal, Pensacola, San Francisco, and currently lives in Berkeley. Lois received her B.A. from Barnard College, her M.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York, and her Ph.D. from McGill University. She works as a writing consultant, Expressive Arts Therapist and College Literature Instructor. Lois has written and published three novels, five books of poems, essays, and reviews, and produced and performed in VALIA: The Story of a Woman of Courage. She is married to Dick Coleman and she has one son,
Julian Steinberg.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 12, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469106342

Lois Silverstein

Lois Silverstein was born in New York. She has lived in Boston, Montreal, Pensacola, San Francisco, and currently lives in Berkeley. Lois received her B.A. from Barnard College, her M.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York, and her Ph.D. from McGill University. She works as a writing consultant, Expressive Arts Therapist and College Literature Instructor. Lois has written and published three novels, five books of poems, essays, and reviews, and produced and performed in VALIA: The Story of a Woman of Courage. She is married to Dick Coleman and she has one son, Julian Steinberg.

Book preview

Copyright © 2008 by Lois Silverstein.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Also by Lois Silverstein

DOL. Red Shoes Press 2008.

DAUGHTER. Red Shoes Press 2002.

BLOODLETTING: A Mind At Midlife. Red Shoes Press 1992.

WOMANTREES HOW YOU ARE BLOOMING. Red Shoes Press 1989.

Also by Lois Silverstein (a.k.a Lois Steinberg)

MOTHER MY HOUSE IS MOVING PAST. Red Shoes Press 1978.

VOICES ROUND THE RIVER. Five Trees Press 1977.

THROUGH GLASS. Egret Press 1973.

For further information, see www.LoisSilverstein.com

Cover Photograph by Megan Allyse, NEW THEATRE, Nottingham, England.

Text Photograph

Upper West Side, New York, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jan_008.jpg

Pinckney Street, Boston, www.asergeev.com

"Place d’Youville, Quebec, Denis Tremblay http://vieux.montreal.qc.ca/phototek

eng/hivera.htm

Pensacola Beach, Joyce Zhang

Back Cover Photograph: Julian Steinberg, www.imaginetrix.com

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

38303

Contents

Curtain!

Fifty minutes, everyone.

CURTAIN IN Fifty MINUTES!

BACKSTAGE

NOTEBOOK #1: NEW YORK

Curtain!

Thirty minutes, everybody.

Thirty minutes to Curtain!

BACKSTAGE

NOTEBOOK #2: BOSTON

Curtain!

Fifteen minutes everybody.

Fifteen minutes to curtain!

BACKSTAGE

NOTEBOOK #3: MONTREAL

NOTEBOOK: EUROPE #1

NOTEBOOK: EUROPE #2

Curtain!

Ten minutes, everybody.

Curtain in ten!

BACKSTAGE

NOTEBOOK #4: FLORIDA

Curtain!

Five minutes everybody.

Five minutes to curtain!

BACKSTAGE

NOTEBOOK: FINALE

For Leah bat Gittel

With my deepest gratitude

May we continue to abide

Be not afear’d; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

The clouds, me thought, would open, and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.

William Shakespeare, THE TEMPEST

Curtain!

Fifty minutes, everyone.

CURTAIN IN Fifty MINUTES!

BACKSTAGE

Omigod, Winn, it’s happening. I am just about to do this! In minutes, I’m going to step out there, and people I never heard of, people who have never heard of me, people who have hired baby sitters or picked up grandmothers, left perfectly good houses to drive through New York’s honking taxis, buses, scooters, and delivery vans, in snow, and paid money for parking, to walk into a theater in galoshes and heavy coats—these people are poised to hear a story, Winn, our story, my story, the complete, unabridged, unexpurgated version: the I-could-have-been-sitting-pretty-had-my-nails-done-my-eyebrows-tweezed-hired-a-gardener-any-day-of-the-week version; the I-rescued-my-parents-my-father-losing-his-shirt-my-mother-screaming-at-him, ‘Jerk. Stupid.’ ABSOLUTELY CRAZY version; the I-married-a-winner-and-saved-us-all version. Is it possible? After all this time? My mother used to say at sixty she felt the same as she did at sixteen and that only the mirror lied. Ha Ha. Winn, I don’t feel that in the slightest, despite our dear Rudy saying You’ve got a whole life to live, Ma. You’re young yet! The dream of a well-loved son. And this dressing table mirror proves it, what with that skinny silver haired matron starring back at me, star-shaped mole on her left cheek, barely covered with stage make-up, brown eyes etched with kohl, teeth forward, like her personality, as Dr. Richmond used to say. But 16?

Rudy e-mailed the internet notice:

LoveSong

Women’s Solo Story Telling Performance, Jan 21-Feb 12.

Women 18-80, Art and Love.

Send proposals to Aviva Meyer Markus and Talya Faye Bernstein

662 W. 45th Street

New York City.

I almost threw it out. Yes, Winn, I told stories, and Yes, I wasn’t bad at it, but performing them? I gave up that idea years ago, but when I looked around my apartment at every conceivable surface covered with notebooks, every conceivable size of notebook, too, and color—green, red, orange, paisley, flowered, blue and business black, every conceivable style—Chinese and Czech, German and French—which that boy of ours refused to toss—I took a deep breath. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of pages, Ma, maybe a million. I’d feel bad if they went. They’re kind of like brothers and sisters. What? Was his interrupting my writing ‘sibling rivalry’? How he nagged me to join the rest of the world. Now, he didn’t want me to throw it out. It’s Our MUTUAL BIOGRAPHY, Ma. You made more than one creation when you wrote it down, and I am its testimony. Burn them? Not on your life!!!

He even refused to let me part with that wooden crate I stored my manuscripts in; you remember it? A Sam Wo discard, Winn, stinking of dried fish and old Chinese herbs. One night I dragged it home on the Sacramento bus, and Rudy carted it, stuffed with toys, between our houses. Joint custody, he’d snicker. Two rooms, two sets of books, clothes, two lives, two sets of parents, two vacations, two summer camps. Why did you two have to split? Thank god he didn’t say a word about all the schools we moved him into. Fourteen, he says it was. He still swears he’ll never move again.

So, I caved in, Winn. I sent a sample story, and, along with six other women—Allyson, Darya, Denisha, Lois, Eva, Templeton—was chosen for the show. Now, here we all are, fifty minutes from Opening Night. Hildy, Aviva and Talya, our three good witches, just walked out after blessing me with hugs and kisses: Hildy—all 6'3", old leather-jacketed and Timberline booted assistant to Aviva Markus, our Emmy-winning director and a gorgeous middle-aged redhead. And Talya Faye Bernstein, producer—plump, curly-haired also Emmy-winning and life-long friend to Aviva. They believe in me, Winn, and have from the get-go, even when I trekked in two days late from Penn Station backpack in hand. Oh, didn’t Rudy tell you? I had to abandon La Van, in Madison, at Vicky and Étan’s kids’ place. I had to leave Bernie too, my Bernese puppy. The old car broke down, and I had to hop on Amtrak. Lenni Schein and her merry pranks. There I was walking up Broadway to W. 46th—Aviva got us a gig for a few weeks in a Belasco rehearsal studio—in my grape, down-to-the-ankle raincoat, red tam, and peach gloves, the only ones I could find charging out of my Telegraph Hill flat—dosey-doing between hawkers and vendors selling tours and ties and shoppers in rainbow-colored hats and scarves beneath flashing billboards in magenta, white and green lights. The Big Apple all right. Were we billiard balls on some giant pool table? Or pawns on some satellite chessboard, making moves none of us understood?

Only you weren’t there, Winn. Hard to believe: New York without G.W.Weinstein? How long was it since that first phone call—a year ago? Sunday afternoon? I was sitting on the Boston rocker you refinished, after Rudy was born, and rereading your old letter from Florence, all about the Della Robbias we’d loved, those faces in crème, yellow, blue. And the phone rings. I knew it was you.

Winn, I said and sure enough.

I’m dying, you said, no preface.

What?

I’ve a year, maybe less.

Are you kidding? You’ve been swimming every day for years, Winn, eating only two squares of chocolate after dinner. What do you mean, little black spots in the bone? I thought you said a torn rotator cuff after skiing. Dying?

The minute we hung up, I ran to call Ruthie. It’s sad, she said, and then started in about her cold. I had to repeat it to make sure she heard.

DYING, Ruthie, Winn’s DYING!!

And what does she say, my sister? For godsakes, Lenni. It’s sad, but it’s not as if he’s still your husband.

HUSBAND: Mate.

HUSBAND: Spouse.

My husband’s dying. A malignant tumor in the cells of the bone.

BONE MARROW: Red blood cell maker, white blood cell maker, filler of bone cavities.

Right away I want to know everything.

Who is this doctor you’re talking to, Winn? What is he telling you? You know I know an acupuncturist, a terrific nutritionist. Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s not too late. Didn’t I sit beside you when you ‘got’ every fatal disease in the book? Come on, Winn, nobody knows things like that, not even you.

MARROW: The choicest, the most essential part! The pith!

HUSBAND: Once Defined, Always Written.

Tell me you’re eating, though, Winn. You’ve got to. Forget skinny as a rail, Winn, for once. It was your Mrs. Nussbaum, in 8th grade, who said, He’ll get somewhere if he’ll just drop some weight. Okay, let’s pin it on her. Who knows? Maybe she forgot to smear the doorpost with blood. I’ll come right over, Winn, I’ll make soup, Winn, with gelatin. I’ll get chicken feet, a dozen, from the butcher. It’s bone we’re talking about, right? Calcified connective tissue. I don’t have to tell you, Mastermind.

BONE: Dense, Semi-rigid and Porous.

BONE: What Gives Us Fundamental Design, the Way Plot Gives Story Organization. Idea, Meaning.

MARROW: Where We Get Our Strength, Our Vitality.

Or, I can open canned soup, Winn—barley, barley and mushroom, split pea, tomato and carrot, corn, bean—my emergency supplies.

EMERGENCY: Chance Event, Accident, Eventuality, Crisis.

Doesn’t this qualify?

HUSBAND: Companion.

HUSBAND: To Use Sparingly. To Conserve.

Potato, cabbage, beet.

Winn Winn

I’m home I’m home

Freude Schoner Gotterfunken tochter aus Elysium—

Be Bah Be Bum Be Bah Be Bum—

Lenni Lenni

Maybe it was the shoes you started to wear, Winn, those penny loafers. Our Man of the Flat Feet. Your mother always boasted about the steel arches you wore. He stepped so heavy, when he walked in the room, the plates fell off the wall. Sixty-five years we’re talking, Winn. The trees on Edgewood are seventy-five, eighty. Yeah, the hawthorn, both pink and white.

HUSBAND: Relation.

RELATION: Connection, Through Marriage or Kinship. Relation as of Things, Through Logical Association; Associate.

Ten thousand days, Winn, ten thousand eight-hundred eighty-six to be exact. New lives don’t change that, or new books, or records, and you’ve got, by the way, at least two of mine, the Ninth and the Soviet Army Chorus we bought at the concert, at the Coliseum. New and old, Winn, like cells. They change their shape and their direction, over time. Didn’t you yourself tell me we shed them every seven years? Seventeen years I lived with two and a half sets of yours, Winn, twelve after. Who knows because you didn’t listen then, they took a turn for the worse.

HUSBAND: Relationship.

RELATIONSHIP: Persons as Partners or Allies; Relationship of Things That Are Similar, Complementary and Connected in One’s Thoughts.

HUSBAND: Written In Stone.

What did they call us, Shining?

How do you turn a lover into a foe, Winn? How do you turn someone you have given yourself to, bled with, yearned for, cried after, begged for, into a stranger whose deathbed you’d ride trains, buses, cars, even planes to get to? Me, we’re talking about Winn, the one who waited for you every day, who listened for you whistling the Ode to Joy down the street, who heard you galloping up the stairs, flinging open the door:

Freude Schoner Gotterfunken tochter aus Elysium . . .

Be bah be bum

Winn Winn

You’re home You’re home

HUSBAND: Friend. A Coherence of Two, Joined, Yoked, Combined, United, Linked, Connected, Related, Associated, No Boundary.

HUSBAND: Comrade.

But that night, Winn, in the car. Omigod. I still can’t believe it.

Where were you this afternoon?

What?

Where were you?

I couldn’t believe my ears.

Slant back Volvo, khaki green, two-door?

My god. The baby was burning up. 105 degrees.

Answer me. I am your husband.

The kid who took his marbles and went home. The kid who wouldn’t forgive and who wouldn’t fight. Was that it, Winn, I was no contest?

Listen, Winn, I did not, NOT, drop that ring into the dresser drawer when I went to the house the last time. You hear? It slipped off my hand. The one Tuesday afternoon, in seventeen years plus twelve, somebody breaks into the house, and, it, of all things, gets stolen. That’s right. Twenty-nine years, and nobody, NOBODY, I’m telling you, takes a plant from our front porch. But, you can see it, Winn, in every single photograph, glued to my finger, glued to my hand, the hand that held the baby’s head, caressed the baby’s head, supported his head, his neck, his back, his legs, the hand that tickled him, soothed him, made him smile, the hand that wore that silver ring, and not gold, right? We never believed in gold. Silver we wore, before it became THE THING! SEARS’ Ads raved about as the cheap alternative. Silver would keep us faithful. Silver would protect and bind. No breaks with silver, Winn. Never would we wear gold.

HUSBANDRY: The Practice of Conserving Resources.

HUSBANDRY: The Finding and Redeeming of Things Lost or Forgotten.

Winn, you know, I’m not dangerous. I never was. I just want to make it right, now, at the 11th hour. I have to, Winn, we have too. But don’t worry, I’m not going to light candles, sprinkle incense or wave your Phi Beta Kappa key in the air. I won’t even let my hair down, Winn, my ‘nest’ hair, my wild gypsy-babushka-on-the-head-storyteller-hair, my ancient tribal-unforgettable-hair, which drove you crazy. (Aviva loves it, by the way, and insists I let it down for the Finale!). I’m just going to reclaim what I left out, reclamer, Winn, in Old French meaning to entreat, to make live again. Recouper, Winn, reinvindicar, reformera, to make useful again, It’s the same in every language, Winn, in Latin, reclamare, to cry out. We have to make peace, once and for all, Winn, no more duck and cover.

Snowing? Why of course it’s snowing here in New York. It’s January, what else, January 21st. Twenty inches at JFK, and more on the way. You’d be whooping it up, if you were here, Winn, leaping and squealing up and down the living room, your mother sure she should call the doctor. Never could you get enough. More, you’d cry to the Weather Man, on the telephone, the TV. Nights when we went to bed, I heard you sneak out to read the barometer and rush back to write it in your little book. Two or three times you did it. You think I didn’t hear or see, Winn? I did. Every move, every twitch of your eyelids, every shake of leg. Seventeen years plus twelve. My boy of the bicycle, riding like wind, coat tails flying. A piece of silk, your mother always said you were. My son’s a piece of silk. But, you were not silk, my dear. Silk flows, and you were never flowing. A wild rider you were, a comet. My white hot flash.

NOTEBOOK #1: NEW YORK

HIS SISTER/HIS BRIDE

new%20york.jpg

1957-1959

• Sputnik orbits earth

• Eisenhower sends troops to Little Rock

• Paul McCartney meets John Lennon

• Althea Gibson is runner-up at Wimbledon

• ‘Battle of Algiers’ begins

THE MIXER

Her father forced her hand. Married was what he wanted her, his second daughter, no college girl. What, they’re going to ask you to walk on the moon? He wouldn’t put out a dime. Not that he had one, having lost it all in that wreck of an ice cream store; she and her mother scrounged for tuition, but money or not, he wielded the power, even though she was the one downing two soft-boiled eggs and charging the two hour bus and four-subway ride every morning at 5:15 a.m.; conjugating Italian verbs and memorizing the anatomy of the dogfish, was that what was called inviting? If you don’t marry by June, that’s it with college for you. Survive without school? She cowered. A Mixer, he shouted! A Mixer like that doesn’t happen every day. With doctors! Doctors!

November 22nd. St. Cecilia’s Day. St. Cecilia was the Patron Saint of Music. She was toying with music as a major; maybe The Mixer could be a sign. She had her eye out for signs; St. Cecilia could be a sign as well as a saint. Of course, Jews didn’t have saints or signs, but maybe she could adopt her. Please, please, she mumbled as she walked to her closet, he’s making me go. I have to study for Shakespeare, but please. Please? Was that right? Nobody ever taught her to pray. Make it okay. She grabbed her turquoise sweater dress and pulled it on.

Not that awful thing, her mother shouted and shoved a black jersey at her, complete with beige, brown and cream cummerbund.

I’m not going on the auction block, she snapped, but who was she kidding. Her mother had to be obeyed; she’d see to it. Besides, she needed a leg up; no looker like her sister Ruthie; the fate of the whole family hung on her.

And put on blush. You look like you’re living in the morgue. Yellow you are, almost green, and take off those glasses, you hear me? You want to look like a jerk? She checked the mirror. Her coloring was the family joke. Who knew? Maybe blush counted. If my mother, or my father even gave me the slightest amount of attention I give you, she snickered, I wouldn’t be in the place I am in now.

A Good Girl Always Makes a Date.

A Good Girl Always Accepts an Offer.

Yeah, she said, your second chance. Her mother whacked her across the face; Lenni fell against the pink tile wall.

Don’t you ever say that to me again, you hear? I am your mother. Do you hear?

MOTHER: Female Parent.

Mother: Woman Who Conceives, Gives Birth To and Raises a Child.

MOTHER: Advocate, Nurturer, Forceful Presence. Comforter. Wiper of Foreheads in Fevers, Consoler of Heartbreaks.

MOTHER: Friend, Provider, Infinite Reservoir, Model Inspiration.

But did she cry? Did she even wince? The groove was deep, the story old. It was hers, her mother’s, her mother’s mother’s mother’s, back to Sarah, who laughed herself when God said she’d have a child at ninety. Faith? she said. Every woman needs it.

Mother: Woman Who Wields Authority.

She gave in. She knew her duty here too. She wriggled into the black dress, squeezed into her black pumps and headed down 183rd Street. Four trains and one bus later, she jerked open the green door of the College Annex, 116th Street and Broadway. Jackie Gleason’s I’ve Only Got Eyes For You greeted her from a scratchy record player. Her stomach dropped. For this she’d traveled one hour fifty-nine minutes? She wanted Beethoven. She flung off her coat.

And then she saw him. The boy from the bicycle, that boy crossing the quad, with that beak-like profile and absolutely dedicated brow. The Middle Ages called a brow like that perfection, especially in girls, if the eyebrows joined straight across. She’d been walking from the University library, the sky grey, her legs heavy as lead. She hated her classes, she hated the dorm, and the girls with their Peter Pan blouses and pert blond haircuts, and the boys with their fraternity smiles, Hillside High’s Most Likely To Succeed, almost eighteen, alone, not knowing what to do for the rest of her life. Her Great Books teacher said she was his best student, and she was, of course, going to major in literature. She said if that’s what he thought best; she wanted to jump off the roof.

He whizzed by on that bike. Not a shiny Raleigh or Schwinn, but some old clunker with fat balloon tires, and wearing an old long dark coat trailing past his knees and fanning out to the sides. A skinny and tall Ichabod Crane in a terrific hurry, looking as if he were standing, long coat flying like a cloak, driving forward and pedaling hard. Sitting down made him look wimpy, a regular P.S. 109 boy in winter, wool pants, wide cuffs, wide waist, though, in that coat, she wasn’t sure. And, then glasses. She believed she saw them, but if she were 100 % sure, she wouldn’t forget, because her mother warned her that guys with glasses were stupid. Don’t be caught dead with one. Scowling, he raced through the noon crowd, his gaze riveted ahead. Where was he going? What was he driving toward? It grabbed her. Forget the roof. Latch on. Follow where it led.

There. In the middle of jabbering students, he stood. She hunted for Elaine Friedman of the blond hair and big breasts, Elaine, who’d been his girl since last year—she’d done the research—but she wasn’t there. She pressed deep into that dress two hours ago she’d tried to rip off; and glided toward the soft drink bar, where he was chatting with Doris Swerdlow, she even swung her hips.

That moment filled her mind, the moment that led her here, the one she wanted etched on her tombstone, the moment when she stepped toward him and their two lives crossed forever. Any moment takes us where we wind up, and then? One step from the dance floor, he, that moving, racing, stream, that full-charge ahead, she, the dreaming-now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t girl, one second away. Step up. Who will make a bid? She stretched for a pretzel.

You know Elaine Friedman, she said.

And you are—, he said giving her the once over. Do I know you?

Nope, she said letting the pretzel hang over her bottom lip the way la Monroe did in Some Like It Hot. Then, svelte as you please, she pivoted around in her black and beige, her hair piled up. He mumbled something to Doris and followed her. Got ’em! Daddy. Look at me now!

I’m George Weinstein, he said. And you? Do I know you?

No. Lenni Schein.

Would you like to dance?

Yes, she said, Lenni Schein, she repeated.

Gleason came on again, and she slipped into his arms; he slipped her long thin hand into his white one. His hand was squat, fingers short and stubby, but it pressed her around the postage stamp size dance floor.

I don’t see her anywhere, she said about Elaine.

We broke up.

Oh. Her heart thumped out of her chest. Gleason groaned, she stuck her hip out, broke up, oh boy. But, what if Elaine showed? What if she wanted a replay and grabbed him away? Both of them kept playing the I-can’t-believe-you-know-Elaine game, and how Jon, her old boyfriend, set it all up.

The guy with the house on the island, whose father is a lawyer? The ex-girlfriend of your ex-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend. He got it, right away.

He said she looked like her sister, she said.

And does she?

Sort of, she said thinking this was a sign too, his sharpness. What else could St. Cecilia be saying?

Coffee? he shouted above the music, and, before she could answer, he tangoed her to the door, giving her two seconds to grab her coat and step into the cold November night. She took three jerky steps to his one, moving as if he were on a charge, head down, brow pointed, through the green gate, criss-crossing the traffic zooming down Upper Broadway and the broad brick quadrangle, to the Lion’s Den in the basement of John Jay Hall. She managed to answer every single question he shot out en route, and, by the time they were sitting in the dark oak booth, he knew: (a) her father lost his pride and his money; (b) her sister’s marriage was a bust; and (c) her mother was one tough cookie.

And him? Medical School. What else?

DOCTOR: Saver of Lives.

DOCTOR: Savior.

I never wanted to become one, he said. It was my mother’s idea. She played nurse to the whole neighborhood after third grade, when she left school. When she had me, at 45, it became her dream. I wanted psychology not medicine. Stomach cramps and sore throats? Forget it. Fortunately, my first years’ grades didn’t cut it. Then, Gert Weinstein went into action. ‘I know somebody,’ she said, ‘through Dr. Mendelssohn. He could help you.’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘He gave me his number.’ I said. ‘Even if I wanted to go, I wouldn’t do that. I’m getting straight A’s now.’ But she kept at it. ‘Here,’ she said and shoved a piece of paper into my hand, ‘call him.’ ‘Ma, please,’ I said. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Son. His son’s got two offices, one in the city and one in White Plains. He’s got two cars and his wife’s going to Florida for the whole winter. It’s too late now, but he’ll work something out for you the following year. Don’t worry. He knows all the big shots. Someday you’ll be rich and famous. You’ll thank me.’

But then I got hooked. I went for it myself,’ he said. ‘I wanted the best, the best in the city, not the school this doctor wanted to help me with. And what does my mother say? ‘You’re not going to embarrass me, Son. You can’t do this.’ But, I fought her, and for the first time. ‘I’m grown up, Ma. Stop telling me what to do. Do you hear?’ ‘I can’t help but hear you, Son,’ she said. ‘You are shouting at the top of your lungs. Are you sick? Do you want me to call the doctor?’ Seventy-one years’ old, my mother. She’d lived through the Depression, Grandma sick while living in the house, a miscarriage, her husband’s problems. I couldn’t do that. How could I just ignore what she wanted? Could I make my mother miserable?

A guy who loved his mother. Lenni gawked. And not afraid to admit it. He talked about Beethoven’s Ninth at Carnegie Hall the following week—The Ode to Joy. Freude Schoener Gotterfunken . . . Be bah be bum be bah be bum? Was he asking her?

My mother sold Jan Peerce a couch, and, after, he sent her free tickets to the Met. Beethoven. A mother who knew an opera star! You know Arnie—he’s my lab partner—he insisted I come here tonight. ‘Anatomy and Physio quizzes aren’t till Tuesday,’ he said. ‘What, are you going to watch the Giants with your father on TV? They’re just going to fall on their asses again. Get out, Weinstein. Meet somebody.’ If I had not listened to him— He paused. But, we’d have met anyway."

You believe that? Lenni said growing ecstatic. Destiny. Omigod. Written in the stars. The hell with her assignment. She didn’t need that.

More coffee? Oh, on second thought, I’d better get going. Got a lot of studying to do tomorrow. The chair scraped the floor as he stood.

I, he said, I’d better get going, I’ve got a lot of studying to do. I. But, why not? How could he know she had a Shakespeare test on Monday, as well as Italian and History and Zoology to study for? He should have said ‘I’. ‘I’ was what he knew. ‘I’ was what he had to take care of. He was a med student. Med School required total attention. A 101. Med School got it all. She grabbed her coat and buttoned it trailing behind him to the door, dodging troops of heavy-coated students lining up at the counter; he was so quick. But the whole time she had her eyes peeled to see if and how she might figure into the equation, a date, a call even. This guy was a winner. Even if they’d only one dance, one conversation. More than anything, she wanted to forget lonely, forget no-one-to-talk-to.

She didn’t want to stay the girl on the sidelines, the girl who had no one coming to call for her. An Open Sesame she wanted, an up-on-the-handlebars someone sweeping her off. She wanted to be someone strong and clever, well-read, in-the-know. Besides that, what? That he paid for both coffees was definitely a good sign, but that he walked out in front of her was not. That he watched to see if she didn’t get her arm caught in the swinging door was good, that he kept talking as if she were right beside him was not.

They hurried across Broadway to the 116th Street subway, the wind blowing from the Hudson. She froze. Her mother said she didn’t need a scarf because her green one didn’t match her black and tweed coat. Don’t dare put that on. It won’t be cold. By the time they reached the Down Stairs, however, scarves and necks and tweed coats with big collars were the last things on her mind. What if she never saw him again? What if she read the Erich Fromm he told her about, or, the David Riesman, and never had the chance to talk about them with him? She wadded up a Kleenex from her pocket. What