TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 156

[Tobie Shapiro]

February 19, 20000007


Dear to me,

	Today, we U.S. citizens celebrate 
Presidents' Day.  This is a minor crock.  It's 
been reduced to a shopping spree, for one.  For 
two, it is two Presidents' birthdays rolled into 
one three day weekend.  It used to be that we 
celebrated Lincoln's birthday on February 12th 
and Washington's birthday on the 22nd.  Two days! 
Then Nixon shoved them together on a weekend, 
ostensibly so the populace could enjoy a three 
day weekend.  But we all know that had not much 
to do with it.  We got ripped off.  Where there 
were two legal holidays, now there was one.  And 
that was all well and fine for corporate America. 
Plus, all the sales!  That's when the awful sales 
began.  Buy buy buy, ye faithful buggers, buy!

	And the rest of you lucky people who 
don't live in the Untidied States of Amurika, 
just go about your business as if nothing at all 
is happening.  Nothing at all is.




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End of an era


	I was thirty five and my marriage to 
Bernie Lustgarten was working up to a resounding 
finish: too many promises to me broken, too many 
lies, his increasingly alarming paranoia.  This 
was  not going to last.  To avoid the 
confrontations, not just with Bernie, but with 
myself, I would leave my job as a legal secretary 
at five o'clock, and delay my arrival at home 
until nine o'clock if I could.  I'd go from one 
coffee house to another with my book in progress, 
and write my heart out.  When I felt I'd used a 
chair and table long enough, I'd find another 
place to get a cappucino, pull out my binder and 
continue writing where I'd left off.  I'd do this 
a few times, watching the clock, worrying about 
when I should be home.

	At this point, Bernie's long lost 
daughter had come to live with us.  She was 
twenty one and a citizen of another planet.  I 
kept being surprised by her definition of ethics. 
She'd want to go out partying pretty much every 
night.  She held down a minimum wage job and came 
home to tank up on food.  Then she'd go back in 
her room, get all dolled up and emerge with thick 
layers of eye shadow, mascara, pouty lips in a 
variety of colours, foundation make-up to hide 
her pimples and powder on top of that.  A little 
rosiness in the cheeks.  The dress would be cheap 
and revealing, but not rude.  She would say she 
was going to a particular disco or another, 
someplace in San Francisco.  She'd rely on one 
man to buy her ticket and would then discard him 
for whomever she found for the night's fun.

	I questioned her about the morality of 
such a move.  The only argument that worked even 
partially was, "What if someone did that to you?" 
She actually thought about that, and her jaunts 
into the city were now fun, but with a little 
guilt thrown in.  She never brought home strange 
men, but probably would have if she'd thought we 
would ignore it.  Watching her behaviour was like 
watching the mating dance of a strange and 
colourful bird: the strutting, the puffing up of 
the breast feathers, the squawking, the fanning 
of the tail feathers, the sultry dance of 
identity, and then as if the prospective cock 
were deemed undesirable, a repeat performance for 
a new potential mate.

	Bernie didn't seem to notice what his 
daughter was doing, what she was about, what was 
going on in her heart and her mind.  He was busy 
fussing over his own weight and avoiding work. 
That was a full time job.  He took low level jobs 
that paid minimum wages.  He was a bright man. 
He would tire of them, finally quit because he 
couldn't stand it, and then mope about saying, 
"See, I can't even do that!"  His ultimate 
nightmare was that he would wind up as a homeless 
bum without friends or means of pulling himself 
out of it.  And he had some of the appearance of 
a street person, not like he was when I'd met 
him.  He left his thinning hair uncombed, did not 
trim his beard very well, and wore whatever was 
lying on top of the pile of clothes.  A T-shirt 
and polyester pants, dirty and fraying around the 
cuffs.  The T-shirt never quite made it over his 
round belly.  This was not really fat, but just 
the shape he was born with, a protruding belly 
and chunky legs.  The overall image was not one 
of inspiration.  But it didn't lack charisma.

	This was the man who climbed into bed 
with me every night and sought out, "Cloud," as 
his spiritual guide, a guide that I would provide 
him by faking that I was channeling Cloud in my 
sleep.  This was the man who tried to choke me 
while we made love, if you could call it that, 
who assaulted me with filthy grotesque talk in 
bed, the same man I pleaded with to stop it.

	It was not a happy marriage.

	One evening after work, I was 
particularly dreading coming home to this.  My 
ethical world had been invaded by aliens and I 
was supposed to cook dinner for them.  They were 
the closest people in my life, or at least the 
ones I saw the most.

	Who were the people in my life?  My 
mother, unfortunately my father, my sister and 
brother whom I saw only rarely, Yvonne who was 
busy working, and my grandparents, Fannie and 
Benny.  I was lucky to have them still around 
while I was in my mid thirties.  Grandma would 
tell me, "Never give up the ship.  My little ship 
sails out to sea and someday it will come home to 
me.  It will come home, Tobie dear.  It will come 
home.  Never give up the ship."  And Grampa saved 
my life a hundred times just by being the only 
man in my life I could trust.  That night, Grampa 
was due to come home from the hospital, and I 
wanted to be at home when they released him, so I 
could hear his sweet voice tell me he loved me 
and that the world was a fair place.

	When I left work that night, I drove a 
distance from Zebrack's office and stopped in a 
cafe to write.  I was writing a book about my 
previous life with cocaine.  It was full of 
action and degradation, a keen eye into my own 
frailties.  It was like a pilgrim's progress and 
the writing of it was exorcizing all sorts of 
nasty demons that had been lurking in my skull 
ready to insult me at every turn.  I was filling 
up binder after binder of this.  It was the only 
part of my day I relished.

	After about an hour and a half in the 
cafe, I saw the waitress eyeing me while I nursed 
my cappucino.  I'd worn out my welcome.  The 
meter was up, so I arose, went to the car and 
drove somewhere else to write.  I settled in, 
took out my pen, began to write, and was accosted 
by a man at the next table.  He asked me what I 
was writing and if I'd been published, a question 
I always hated.  Then, he started wandering off 
into personal details of his own life, his first 
marriage, his ex-girlfriend, what he thought of 
President Reagan, how much money he had.  Do I 
write for an audience?  Who is my audience?  And 
not feeling like I could tell him, politely, to 
stuff it, I gathered up my tablet, got into my 
car again and drove off.

	I found another place.  This time, I got 
a soda.  How long can you rent a table with just 
a soda?  I stayed until eight o'clock, then I 
drove to a K-mart to buy myself another tablet. 
I stood in front of the school supplies, going 
over each possible selection as if the world 
could turn on my decision.  Finally, I picked up 
a nice thick spiral binder and walked to the 
check out counter.  I stood in a long line trying 
not to read the junk tabloids stacked in their 
stands with their kitchy headlines blaring out 
the latest on the world's fattest man, a cream 
puff diet, how the hottest Hollywood marriage was 
being thrown up on the rocks.  I wanted to get 
out of there so I could go home and talk to 
Grampa on the phone.  The line inched forward. 
That made me one inch closer to having to exist 
in the same room as my husband.  As soon as I 
paid for the binder, I rushed out to the car and 
headed home.  I would have to say hello to Bernie 
and his daughter, Alexis.  I would be outnumbered.

	I opened the front door and went directly 
to the bedroom where I peeled off my jacket and 
hung it up in the armoire.  As I was doing this, 
Bernie came in from the other room and stood 
there looking at me with a tragic expression on 
his face.  He opened his mouth and began sadly, 
"Your mother called."  That's all I needed to 
hear.  As if I'd been struck over the head I knew 
what this was about.

	"My Grampa.  My Grampa."

	He moved forward to touch my shoulder, 
but I pushed his hands off of me.  I was furious 
that Bernie was the one to tell me.  I put my 
jacket back on and phoned my mother.  She told me 
that Grampa had been putting together his things 
to bring home with him.  The doctor had given him 
a clean bill of health.  Then suddenly, he 
dropped to his knees and was dead before he hit 
the floor.  He was eighty eight.  The whole 
family was going to Gramma and Grampa's house. 
We'd figure out what to do then.  I couldn't get 
Bernie to stay behind.  I didn't want him with 
me, not for anything so real.  Something as real 
as death didn't mix with him.  He was the stuff 
of delusion, of half high dreams and ground up 
hopes.  He insisted on coming and I didn't have 
time to convince him otherwise.

	The trip to the house in the fog at the 
side of Mt. Davison in San Francisco was silent. 
I pulled up outside.  There were a lot of cars, 
and the house was lit up brightly as if there 
were a celebration going on.  I took the front 
stairs two at a time, not even checking to see 
where Bernie was.  The door was open.  I kissed 
the Mezuzah before entering.  Everyone was in the 
living room.  All the grandchildren, the great 
grandchildren, even my uncle Harold and aunt Ruth 
who weren't talking to my mother were there.  I 
came up to Gramma who was sitting on the piano 
bench.  She was ninety three.  I sat down next to 
her and hugged her, kissed her on the cheek.  She 
took my hand and held it.  "The things that can 
happen in a life," she said to me.  She wasn't 
crying.  Instead, she uttered a series of deep 
sighs that broke my heart.

	"I lost my pal," she said.  "I lost my best friend."

	We sat there on the piano bench together, 
she, holding my hand in both of hers, and patting 
it as if she were consoling me.  The family 
started talking about funerals and memorial 
services, mortuaries, Rabbis, schedules, flowers, 
choices of coffins, who would perform which duty 
so that this miserable ship could move forward in 
brackish water.  I wished they'd stop.  I wanted 
everyone to stop and honour Gramma.  She sat 
there, her feet not reaching the floor, made 
smaller, even smaller than the four foot ten 
inches of her.  I could see that the discussion 
going on was just noise to her.  She was 
elsewhere, as was I.  Then she turned to me and 
whispered, "From now on, I'm going to turn my 
hearing aids off during the day and turn them on 
during the night, so I can listen only to what I 
want to listen to."  I squeezed her hand.

	No one wanted to leave Gramma and Aunt 
Belle alone in the house that night.  I 
volunteered to stay and provide company.  Bernie 
said, "Me too".  So after everyone left, I pulled 
out the hide-a-bed in the T.V. room, the same bed 
my sister and I had slept in when we came 
visiting from Silver Spring when I was five.  The 
same windows were open a crack, and the same 
billowy white curtains blew into the room, the 
ones that Dana was convinced were being blown 
about by the breath of the, "Beast from Twenty 
Thousand Fathoms,".  There I lay, listening for 
Gramma to call me, keeping my husband at bay.  We 
slept on opposite edges of the bed, curled up 
away from each other.  Why did Bernie have to be 
the one to bring me the news?  I couldn't shake 
the anger.



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net