What the Afternoon Knows

By Pat Sylvia

What the Afternoon Knows is a memoir reflecting two periods of a long-lived life. In the first part of her book, Ms. Sylvia writes about growing upthe formative forces of family of origin, friends, place, school, and society; the emergence and evolution of her own independent pre- and postadolescence identity; and the coming to terms with love and lossall profound experiences at the heart of being human. As an octogenarian, Ms. Sylvia insightfully captures and expresses many of the feelings and experiences of aging: caregiving, the blessings and challenges of living alone, relationships with adult children, and the choices and decisions that need to be made independent of others. What the Afternoon Knows is a perceptive and enriching story of a life fully lived, skillfully and honestly written, often humorous, and always with Ms. Sylvias distinct, authentic voice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984510266

Book preview

WHERE IS SHE? NEW YORK CITY, 1932

Mary Pat is sitting on her grandfather’s shoulders, looking at her four-year-old self in a long mirror. She and her Dearpa laugh. She looks funny up there. All of a sudden he moves and she disappears. Where is she? Then he goes to another mirror. There she is again! She holds onto his hair, which has his special smell, same as her daddy. He turns from the mirrors and trots down a hall. She bounces on his shoulders, giggling, half afraid of falling off. He holds her knees and she knows he won’t let her get hurt. They enter a darkened room. Her grandmother is lying in a big bed; she has never seen her Dearma standing. She cuddles in bed next to her grandmother, who smells warm and sleepy, and feels a soft pillow under her head. After reading stories, Dearma kisses Mary Pat’s cheek, so she kisses her Dearma’s cheek, smooth and wrinkly. Then her Dearpa lifts her off the bed and takes her upstairs to Mummy and Daddy.

One day there are no more stories. Her Dearpa never takes her on his shoulders to visit the mirrors again. Sometimes Dearpa comes to visit and stays for supper, but he doesn’t talk much, not even to her.

In a little while, it’s warm and sunny outside. She’s taken on a long drive to a big house in a place people call Bethlehem. Far away are big bumps near the bottom of the sky that everyone names the White Mountains, a silly name because the mountains are green. Staying in the house are Mummy and Daddy, baby brother Neddy, Dearpa, and some other grownups, but no Dearma. Mary Pat is allowed to stay up late to see her uncle light firecrackers to celebrate someone’s fourth birthday. She’s four years old—it’s like it’s her party too.

The smell inside the house is sweet—like the flowers outside. She and her brother eat in a special room where it’s always sunny. He still has to be in a high chair, but she has a small round table all to herself. Some of the stonewalls inside the house go up to the ceiling, and the room where the grownups eat is round. She can stand inside the fireplace in the big round dining room and look up at a deer head hanging on the wall. It has horns like branches and shiny black eyes.

Next to the big kitchen is a special window with a step underneath. Mary Pat climbs up on the step and looks out at hundreds of bees crawling around in tunnels. A glass case surrounds them so they can’t get out and sting her. There are thousands and thousands of bees, and she watches them for a long time. She leaves the bee window and goes into the hall. A huge red, white, and blue flag hangs on the wall, just where the stairs turn and go up to the floor where everyone sleeps. Each room upstairs has a number on the door. Today she walks into her Dearpa’s bedroom to tell him about the bees. He is sitting in a chair looking at a picture. She climbs into his lap.

Is that a picture of Dearma? she asks.

He puts the picture down and says quietly, Mary Pat, when we talk about your Dearma we have to talk in whispers.

Her grandfather looks angry. Has she done something naughty? She doesn’t know what. He closes his eyes, and she sits as still as she can. In a little while he whispers, Your Dearma loved you very much.

He puts his arms around her. She wants to ask where Dearma is and why she’s not here in Bethlehem with everybody, but maybe that will make Dearpa look mad again. Talking in whispers is scary, like some bad dreams she has sometimes. After a few moments, she gets down from her grandfather’s lap and tiptoes out of the room, being quiet and polite, like her mummy taught her.

WORDS AND MUSIC: A LITTLE HISTORY: HOW DICK ZINN MET MARJORY DREYFUS

Dick’s college roommate Jimmy Stein liked Connie Dreyfus; she was fun, good-looking, and had a nice figure. She’d invited him for Sunday dinner, adding, If you’d like to bring a friend, please do. I have two younger sisters. He asked Dick to join him. He and Dick were both New Yorkers, and Dick, though a bit stout, was a handsome twenty-year-old from a good Jewish family. Jimmy thought the Dreyfus girls would like him for his sense of humor and quiet intelligence.

The next Sunday, at 1:00 PM sharp, the two young men were met at the door of the Dreyfus’ Brookline home by a uniformed maid and shown into a pleasant living room. Mr. and Mrs. Dreyfus and their three daughters, Constance, Marjory, and Ruth, were all seated and Jimmy introduced his friend to the family.

At dinner Jimmy noticed that Marjory, the liveliest of the three, was flirting with Dick. She told a funny story of how she had passed her science class at Simmons by laughing at all the professor’s silly jokes. Dick seemed equally entranced and chuckled several times as Marjory spoke. He responded to her story by telling her that maybe he would have gotten better grades in his biology class if he had perhaps seemed more interested in class and not just sat there looking like a bump on a log. Dinner was luxurious and delicious, nothing like the kind of food served at Harvard, not even at the eating clubs. There was bouillon soup as a first course and then a standing rib roast carved expertly by Mr. Dreyfus, roast potatoes, carrots and peas, and for dessert, a homemade apple pie.

Thank you for dinner. It was delicious, Dick said as everyone got up from the table.

Would you boys enjoy a little concert? Mrs. Dreyfus asked.

Both Dick and Jimmy nodded yes, each thinking, Oh god, no. However, when Constance sat down at the piano it was evident that she was an accomplished musician. She played a lovely Chopin etude and a Bach partita. Marjory and Ruth sat side by side on a brocaded settee and listened to their elder sister with appreciation.

That was beautiful, Connie, Jimmy said after the polite applause. Connie blushed, said thank you, and went over to sit with her sisters. Mrs. Dreyfus (Lottie, her husband called her) went to the piano and accompanied herself as she sang German lieder. She had a beautiful soprano voice, and Jimmy noticed that Dick was enthralled with the music. After the piece was over, Dick rose and thanked her saying he loved lieder and was a great fan of Wagner.

How can you like that man’s music? Marjory said in a loud voice. It’s so … well, it’s so vulgar. I hate Wagner.

Dick turned. You hate Wagner? Surely not his operas.

Especially his operas, said Marjory hotly. I loathe them.

Well now, Mr. Dreyfus said, there’s always room for more than one opinion, right?

Everyone nodded and the conversation drifted to other topics—the weather, Boston politics, summer plans. When it was time to leave, Dick and Jimmy, saying goodbye to their hosts, shook hands with the three daughters saying how nice it was to meet them. On the trolley car ride back to Cambridge and their dorm, Jimmy asked Dick if he had had a good time.

Thanks, Jim, I really enjoyed the afternoon. Connie and Ruth seem nice and prettier, but I liked Marjory best.

My parents, Richard Arthur Zinn, twenty-two, and Marjory Helen Dreyfus, twenty-three, were married at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1926.

BOUJY AND KYRA

My mother and father were a well-matched pair. They had an excellent relationship that included each doing what they damn well pleased most of the time, with the other trusting, loving, occasionally complaining, and accepting. My father, intellectually curious, was mostly content with his life. He would have loved to make more money and not rely on Mom’s trust fund, but aside from that concern he was happy with his wife, children, friends, and with his work in advertising, public relations, and fundraising. Never lazy, he was phlegmatic and moved slowly. My mother, on the other hand, was restless, never bored, but just wanting to be doing something else. She moved quickly, spoke quickly, and displayed a quick, hot temper that flamed and then just as quickly subsided. She didn’t hold grudges and was quick to forgive and forget since she despised conflict. She was a sloppy cook when she tried to get a meal together, which wasn’t often. Dad was the cook in the house. She became a real estate agent and was a terrific salesperson with a real feel for what people were looking for. She left the negotiations up to her boss as she was impatient and sometimes imprudent in her language to customers.

They loved entertaining, and when company came, she did the most talking, with Dad as a bass note, coming in with wise observations or an outrageous pun. When asked, How are you? he’d answer, Sa-fari, so-goody. He was charming and funny; she, witty and acerbic.

They referred to each other as your mother or Marjory and your daddy or Dick. When they spoke to each other, I never heard them say their first names. I don’t know where Boujy came from or why Dad called Mom by that name. She called him Kyra, a Russian name she picked out from a book about the ballet dancer Nijinsky, whose sister’s name was Kyra. It became a bit confusing when my sister was born and they named her Kyra, which, as it turns out, is an androgynous name. Lots of calling from downstairs to upstairs from my mother: Kyra, where are you? to be answered by both the male and female so named in our family.

RICHARD ARTHUR ZINN IN IMAGERY

Animal: Elephant: tough exterior; large useful ears; family oriented; deeply intelligent; no natural enemies; trumpets when necessary; seemingly sociable; aggressive only when threatened.

Musical instrument: Grand piano: classy; large, handsome, well-cared-for exterior; mechanically complicated (keys, strings pedals, all used differently).

Landscape: Large smooth rocks by the Atlantic’s edge: there for the ocean to lean and fall against; cool and cold except on summer days; hidden crevices; occasionally slippery; limited accessibility.

Color: Blue, on the lavender side; cool blue, not bright blue, baby blue, neon blue, green blue, navy blue, bluebird blue, or Israeli blue; easy on the eyes; hard to match.

MY FATHER NEVER

My father never swore, not so much as a damn or a hell. I only once heard him raise his voice in anger. My brother, at an adolescent fourteen, took on the persona of a tragic knight that no one understood, one who lectured us at the dinner table about the poor, downtrodden, and unfortunate of the world. One night Mom teased him about something he said and he called her a bitch. Dad told him to leave the table immediately and chased him up the stairs. Since being fresh to Mom was the biggest no-no in the house, I found Dad’s quiet, nonviolent approach, considering the language used, extraordinary.

My father was a spanker, however, and we all got put over his knees at one time or another and spanked as a punishment up to the age of ten, sometimes with a hairbrush, which hurt a lot. We three agreed that, though spanking was painful, it was preferable to a prolonged punishment that might include no desserts for a week, imprisonment in our rooms for seemingly long periods of time, or no dates with friends. When we were older and got allowances, money was deducted for bad behavior. In the breakfast room, a chart posted for all to see noting our weekly allowances and deductions thereof.

Manners and table manners were extremely important in our household, and nickels and dimes often accounted for the infringements deducted. We were taught how to hold a knife and fork when cutting food, where to place utensils on the plate when finished, how to use a napkin, how to sip soup from a soup spoon and scoop soup from a soup dish, where to place the arm not being used (never on the table), and, above all, not to chew with our mouths open. Burping and belching were considered beyond the pale. I never saw my father pick up so much as a chicken drumstick with his fingers, although we children were allowed to do that.

I never heard my dad sing, which was odd because he knew a lot of music, and after my mother died he whistled a lot. He played piano moderately well, taught me how to play, and attended many concerts. My mother, on the other hand, hummed or dee-dee dahed a lot, often complaining she couldn’t get some melody out of her head. Once I mentioned having the same problem. "Just sing My Country, ’Tis of Thee loudly to yourself, she said, and the other melody will go away." (It worked.)

My father never sweat; he carried a slight smell about him in the summer as if he had, but I never saw his face or skin damp with perspiration. His general body odor was that of Bay Rum After-Shave lotion that was, and still is, pleasing to me.

BEING JEWISH

I came home from my second day in fourth grade and asked Mom, Am I Jewish?

Of course you are, she said impatiently. Who wants to know?

I’ve just met a nice girl named Ruth Siegel who wants to be friends, and she asked me if I’m Jewish.

At that age, I didn’t know what being Jewish meant, and I didn’t want to ask my mother because she looked as though she was not too happy with my first question. Without further explanation from either of my parents, we were told the next night at the dinner table that Dad was going to start an Old Testament Bible class for me, my brother, and the other Jewish kids in the neighborhood.

Why are you doing this, Dad? I asked. He told me it’s time to understand a little about being Jewish. I didn’t object to the class because my dad was a great teacher. And so the next Sunday I was proud to show him off to the neighborhood kids who were coming to class.

I guess my parents, particularly my father, thought that living a secular life was fine up to a point, but that as we got older they should really do something about our Jewish education. Since we didn’t belong to a temple, my dad’s way of correcting our knowledge gaps was to hold classes around our carved mahogany dining room table. The teaching role came naturally to him, and his background had prepared him well. Though not a Bar Mitzvah, he was confirmed, had taught Sunday school before, and, if I’m not mistaken, could read Hebrew. He invited the two Eders, Joan and Bobby, and the three Handleman boys to attend his class. At each session, we would read the Old Testament and discuss it. We had homework each week—either reading the Bible or memorizing Psalms.

I truly enjoyed those Sunday classes, which went on for a couple of years. They represented the extent of my religious education until we moved to Elizabeth Road when I was thirteen. There, for social reasons, my folks joined the classical reform congregation at Temple Israel in New Rochelle, where their Jewish friends belonged. I was confirmed at fifteen by young Rabbi Greenberg, on whom I had a terrific crush. I was not the only one who