Triangulations

By Lorine Kritzer Pergament

A young woman gains newfound courage after discovering diaries from her female ancestors who survived the Triangle Waist Factory fire and the Holocaust and went on to lead full lives.

Susie, a fiction writer, is grappling with three issues that have been plaguing her: her inability to commit to her boyfriend Zach, who wants to get married and start a family; her frustration with her writing career; and the suspicion that exploring her family history may open doors to the reasons for her state of mind.

When Susie returns to her childhood home for the holidays to help her stepmother and father, she discovers four family photographs that trigger her curiosity about significant events in the lives of her female relatives. She gains new insights when reading about her birth mother Sylvie, who died when Susie was born; her grandmother, who despite surviving the Triangle Waist Factory fire, went on to lose her best friend, as well as her infant firstborn son; her aunt Berta, a serious musician who faced anti-Semitism and misogyny. In the end, Susie comes to appreciate how difficult life is for everyone and begins moving on with her own life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781735027302

Book preview

Susie 1978

Autumn began with a sudden but windless chill at the easternmost tip of Long Island, November arriving with the leaves firmly intact in shades of gold and orange and deep burgundy, an effulgence that would delight most people. But the advent of November signaled the approach of Thanksgiving, a national family day of celebration—a Brickner family day of dread.

Stuck in a pivotal chapter of her book, Susie stared through the picture window of her studio. More often than not, the writing flowed from her psyche through her fingers onto the keys, but on this day, she was distracted by personal issues.

This morning her boyfriend Zach had taken paintings into the city for his forthcoming show at Alden & Bliss, a prestigious SoHo gallery. He was excited, and Susie was happy for him. It had been two years since he’d had a one-man show, and although he was generally self-confident, it was hard not to play the numbers game in the art world, difficult not to compare his shows with those of competitors’. When he left, she’d straightened his collar and given him a good luck kiss.

You’ll be great, she’d said.

I’m fine, he said, but the tic on his left eyelid said otherwise.

Susie and Zach had been a couple for six years and living together for five. They’d met at a loft party in SoHo. After a few minutes of the first layer of revelation, he said he’d like to draw her some time. She laughed at the obviousness of the ploy, and for a second, he seemed surprised. But then he laughed too, saying, I know, I know. It sounds like a line, and I guess sometimes it is, but please take it as real. I’m attracted to you aesthetically. And they both laughed again.

Okay, okay. I’m physically attracted to you as well. Then he hung his head, saying, I’ve obviously screwed up any chance of your taking me seriously.

Having downed a few beers, she felt confident but not enough to say the feeling was mutual, so said, Well, it is a party, and no one is taking anything particularly seriously. Let’s dance.

That night, he walked her home to her third-floor walkup in the Village, but made a point of not coming in. He wrote her number on his hand with the green magic marker he found in his pocket.

They had their first real conversation when they went out the following week to Max’s Kansas City, a happening place for the artsies and artsy wannabes where, despite having a reservation, they’d had to wait at the bar for half an hour before being seated. After a few preliminary formalities, Susie thought of the scene in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda when Gwendolyn meets Mr. Grandcourt. Just like her, she’d found herself intrigued by Zach’s exploratory yet neutral gaze and wondered what he might have been thinking.

If she had been at all concerned that it might have been difficult to make conversation, she was soon disabused of the notion. They discussed the ballet (Susie was a big fan, he’d never been); Gloria Steinem (Susie thought she was a pioneer, he thought she was an attention-getter); and movies (which he loved as much as Susie loved the ballet).

Ignoring the waiter’s glares, they continued to converse long after dessert was finished and the check paid. That’s when they came to the crux of the conversation—her writing and his painting.

He told her that even though his own work was contemporary, he was greatly influenced by Renoir, Matisse, Corbet, and some of the other masters, and Susie said, Wow, that describes me as well, and then confessed to being a Jane Austen fan, along with the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.

I have to admit, he’d said, I never got into them, but I’m willing to learn. His face flushed, and he looked away.

She found it endearing that his guard was down. Well, I probably don’t go to the museums often enough, so I could use some help as well.

When he looked up, they both smiled, and she felt a pleasant wave of comfort and well-being she hadn’t experienced in a while.

He walked her home to the apartment she shared with her friend Kathy and asked her out for the following week.

Susie had been impressed because most men would say something vague about getting together again, and she never knew if they were serious or not. Until their relationship had reached the point where both assumed they’d be seeing each other as much as possible, he always made a point of arranging their next meeting when they were parting.

The first time they made love, Zach held her in his arms all night. Later, he’d told her his arms had cramped, and when she asked why he continued to hold her, he said he’d wanted her to feel secure.

Zach worked as a handyman and sometimes as an event waiter for a caterer to support his painting career. He’d inherited some money when his father died, and that was how they were able to buy their house, a small fixer-upper. It was he who’d done all the renovations.

She and Zach had been living on Long Island for four years. He painted large figurative canvasses in the studio he’d built adjacent to their house. Until the previous year, their lives had been, for the most part, harmonious. They were two artists pursuing their dreams in a beautiful setting. With friends on the island and in the city, mostly writers and artists, they’d go to galleries and museums when they could.

Feeling cold, she got up to make tea.

Thinking of Zach brought her back to their issue. He wanted to have a family, and Susie didn’t think she could.

It had started about a year ago. It was just before Thanksgiving. They’d had an intimate dinner, then intense lovemaking. Only this time, afterward, Zach had surprised her.

She’d opened her eyes to see his smiling face.

I love you.

She smiled, thinking they were getting into their little game. I love you more.

No, I mean it. I love you.

She raised her eyebrows. I mean it, too.

He’d run his finger from the nape of her neck down across her breast, then gently traced a ring around the nipple. She’d felt it stiffen. His tongue made curlicues on her neck as her vagina contracted. I want the whole package, he’d said in a low voice.

She’d turned onto her back, pulling him on top of her, but he resisted, holding her at arm’s length, looking into her eyes.

She’d lowered her lids. Oh, Zach, I’m not sure I can give you what you want. She was petrified, afraid of his response.

He’d released her arm, falling back onto the pillow. Staring at the ceiling, he said, Can’t or won’t?

She’d turned onto her side, propped an arm under her cheek. Do you really think I’d refuse something that I thought I could give you?

He was scratching his chest, biting his upper lip. I think that you think you’re the avatar of tragedy for the whole Brickner family screw-up.

She thought about the death of her sister Debbie ten years earlier and how it had affected her, their sister Lynn, their father Stan, and stepmother Clarisse.

Zach, that’s not fair, knowing he wasn’t entirely wrong.

He’d looked at her. Okay, maybe that’s a little strong, but you do have a choice here. Your future’s not written in stone. And if you think it is, that means you don’t trust me. Think about it, he said, getting up and going to the bathroom.

She’d turned over, exhausted.

Zach had grown up as an only child in Burlington, Vermont. His father had been on the faculty in economics at the university, and his mother was a painter. He was doted on and loved and encouraged, and he couldn’t imagine any family not being that way. Susie wished she could just agree to having a family, but the migraines and anxiety attacks wouldn’t allow her to do so.

In the morning when Zach got up, Susie had pretended to be asleep because she didn’t know what to say.

After he left, she’d thought about reading for a few minutes to clear her head before getting up, gazing at the night table. The Color Purple by Alice Walker and The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty were both waiting for her. She’d started one of the stories but felt distracted and put it down, smiling, reminded of her English lit professor at Douglass, an ethereal woman named Janet Buck, who kept a copy of Boswell on her night table. Maybe I need a bedside Boswell, she’d mused.

Their relationship was only one of several nagging issues. Her career had become a focus of concern. She taught creative writing at Southampton College, and after publishing a collection of short stories, she’d been working on a novel that just wasn’t cooperating. The writing was painstaking and often tedious, without any guarantee a publisher would invest in the book. The agent who secured a publisher for the short story collection had retired, so she’d had to start fresh with the novel. It was just so damn competitive out there. The teaching was rewarding but was supposed to be a supplement to her publication income, which, because she wasn’t an established author, was below the poverty line.

Then there were the ups and downs. Some days she couldn’t write a single paragraph that pleased her, as she compared herself to successful writers, thinking she’d never get there. But then, when the words seemed to pour out faster than she could think, it was a rush, her writers’ high, and there was no stopping her.

The blue bird on the kettle whistled. She half expected it to fly away, but it just spun in place like a tireless ballerina. She noticed her reflection in the shiny finish of the kettle. As she grew older, people said she resembled Sylvie, the mother Susie never knew. Of the three sisters, it was Susie who took after Sylvie, with her tall, thin figure, curly black hair, pale skin, and especially her laugh. (When Zach finally did draw her, he said it was the black curls that had first attracted him.) The few movies the family had of the old days are in 8mm, without sound, so she’d never heard her mother’s voice or laugh, could only imagine them. She was able to see Sylvie’s dimpled smile and obvious affection for her little girls. When Susie found herself longing for a piece of that experience, she felt guilty. After all, Clarisse had stepped in and raised the girls when Stan was bereft and all alone. To Debbie, it might not have been enough, but Susie, whom Clarisse had brought up as her own, didn’t think her sister had cause to complain.

Susie thought about the upcoming month. For some people, the December holidays caused consternation, but it was the weeks leading up to them that she preferred to sleep through. It was an event at a Thanksgiving family dinner eleven years earlier that precipitated the anguish leading to Debbie’s untimely death.

Susie knew her father Stan would be calling any day to invite them for the holiday. He always did. Usually, she arranged to be with her sister Lynn.

Lynn rarely came back East anymore. She was always busy with one project or another of her Catholic Charities activities. About six months after Debbie’s overdose, Lynn had shocked them.

I’m moving to California, she’d said.

California? What’s there? Stan had asked.

It sounds corny, but I want to devote my life to helping others. Hearing herself, she chuckled and turned red. There’s a group out there, the Sisters of Mercy, that is doing really good work.

Nuns? You’re going to live with nuns? Stan, who never objected to their being raised Catholic by Clarisse, said now she was going overboard.

Even Clarisse was caught off guard, You’re kidding, aren’t you?

Susie was flabbergasted. Lynnie, we’re all still in mourning about Debbie, but moving to California? Don’t you think we’d be more help to each other here? This is not all on you. We all feel responsible.

The first time Susie went to California to visit Lynn was in 1968, a year after she graduated from Douglass College, her older sisters’ alma mater, and she’d had no idea what to expect. Lynn had been living in San Francisco for six months. She’d sent newsletters now and then about what she was doing, but none of it was personal, more of a way of soliciting funds for her organization. Susie was surprised to see Lynn and the other women working eighteen-hour days with little down time, cooking for the homeless, getting medical help for drug addicts, and trying to get young girls off the streets.

Though she was willing to spend part of Thanksgiving Day with Susie, Lynn preferred to spend most of the holiday ministering to society’s less fortunate. It was her self-imposed penance for what happened to Debbie, which she felt she could have prevented. Susie’s chest tightened thinking about her sisters—the absence of Debbie in their lives of course, but also Lynn, whose sense of humor and personal dreams of having a family were replaced by the strong, responsible nun surrogate Susie barely knew. She could remember Lynn and Debbie reading engagement and wedding announcements from The New York Times and pretending to make up their own. It may not have been what Debbie truly wanted, but Lynn certainly did.

This year, because of the gallery show, Zach didn’t want to leave New York to visit his parents in Vermont, and Susie was reluctant to leave him alone. Although he hadn’t said so, she knew he’d be disappointed if she went to California, that he wanted her around to share the excitement of the show. They’d talked about having some friends over, but nothing had been finalized. She poured steaming water into a large blue ceramic mug, her favorite, then bobbed the tea bag in the water until the color was dark enough to accommodate some milk without diluting the flavor. She stood in front of the sink, holding the warm mug in both hands, looking out at the curling autumn leaves, and blew on the fragrant tea. Her feelings of dread were at odds with the beautiful day.

She took a sip—still too hot—and was reminded of Clarisse, who would take things off the stove without a potholder. Stan always said Clarisse had hands made of asbestos, which became a family joke. Maybe he was pleased his second wife appeared to be fireproof.

Susie climbed back up to the studio, her nest always welcoming and comforting with its built-in desk and bookcase that Zach had constructed, the cream-colored sofa with extra pillows, and a soft afghan she’d picked up at a yard sale to complement the earth tones of the hand-me-down rug. Sitting on the couch with one leg tucked under the other, she took in the view, a pleasure any time, but particularly spectacular on this autumn day. The leaves seemed to dance in the wind, then dive gracefully into the pond Zach had carved out of the earth.

Thinking about the peaceful life they enjoyed, Susie wished they could continue this way without worrying about the next step. She’d been going to counseling sessions for the last six months and had a clearer understanding of her reluctance to have a child, but she still couldn’t make the commitment. But all that could wait until after Thanksgiving and those two painful weeks in December when she would experience the nightmares, anxiety attacks, and migraines that had recurred annually since that time. Mild tranquilizers had taken the edge off, something to stave off the migraines and relieve the sensation of having an about-to-erupt shaken soda bottle in her chest, but she didn’t like the idea of staying on them. Most days were like a prickly fog. Her mind wasn’t clear, only the pain was.

It was at these times she wished she’d found an escape like Lynn’s. The irony was, that even though Susie was the one who was raised as a Catholic from birth, she couldn’t subscribe to it. But Lynn, who’d started life as a nice little Jewish girl, had become a devout Catholic.

Sometimes Susie reimagined the events leading up to Debbie’s death, longing to adjust a detail or two to effect a different outcome, but knowing that history can’t be rewritten. She stretched, sipped some tea, and tried not to think about it again, but the images, as told to her by Lynn and from her own memory, pushed themselves into her consciousness.

On the night before Thanksgiving of that fateful year, Debbie had decided to go out with some of her less desirable friends, and Lynn had begged her to come home at a decent hour and not drink too much. And for God’s sake, please don’t do drugs tonight. Even as she was mouthing the words, Lynn knew she was talking to herself. She knew she would have to deal with Debbie in the family setting the next day. Would Debbie get along with Clarisse? Would they have a pleasant day, or would something stir the pot? She crossed her fingers and went to bed.

The next day, which was Thanksgiving, Lynn woke at eight and went to Debbie’s room. Her relief to see her sister was short-lived—Debbie was on top of the bedding in her clothes from the night before, stinking of alcohol and cigarettes. Lynn opened the window and decided to let her sleep for a couple of hours more. They didn’t have to leave until noon.

But when Lynn came back later with a mug of coffee, Debbie needed prodding to sit up, then took a sip and fell back down on the bed. Obviously, she’d been doing more than drinking the night before. Lynn undressed her sister, walked her to the bathroom, forced her into the shower, and held her there until she seemed more lucid, Debbie screaming the whole time.

While Lynn helped her on with her blue terry robe and put a hand towel around her hair, Debbie said, Fuck, Lynn, what were you trying to do, drown me?

Lynn bristled. Yeah, right, I want to drown you. Believe me, it would make my life easier. What the hell were you on?

Um, I can’t remember, but I think I had a good time. Ooh, my head, I’ve gotta lie down, she said, sprawling out on the bed again.

That’s okay for now, but you’ve got to get dressed soon. What do you want to wear?

Wear where? Debbie laughed. I made a pun, I think … was that a pun, Lynn?

No, c’mon, I’m trying to help you. Drink more coffee, she said. Now what do you want to wear today, you know, for Thanksgiving?

Oh, shit, that’s right, it’s today. No wonder I got smashed. She sat up and sipped from the mug.

You figured it out, I see.

You don’t have to be a fuckin’ shrink to know that.

It’s nice to know that you understand your hang-ups. Now let’s get this outfit together. Here, she said, pulling a bra out of a drawer. Do you want to wear a skirt or pants?

Hmm, Clarisse would like me to wear a skirt, so I’ll wear pants.

Okay, first, here’re some panties, put ‘em on.

Yes, sir, General, sir.

Lynn opened the closet door. Which pants?

Black, of course, Debbie said, giving Lynn a look as if she should know better.

Of course, there’s not too much else in here anyway.

Remember Dr. Moskowitz, the shrink I went to?

Lynn remembered very well that Stan and Clarisse had sought help for Debbie when she was acting out in high school, staying out past curfew, hanging out with the wrong crowd, getting drunk and stoned. Sure, you hated going there.

I actually liked him—it was just a waste of time. But he used to say I wore black all the time because I was in mourning.

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