The Karl’s home is an immaculate split-level, on the north side of town, “done” in muted tones of beige and mocha— reminiscent of a Danish modern furniture showroom or what is best described as dentist sterile. I often picture Rona and Hy sitting down to a Pillsbury-perfect dinner with their young son Ethan, a sweet nervous boy forbidden to tumble and soil his clothes. As their forks and spoons lift in unison, they appear futuristic and comically robotic. As part of her vows, I bet, Rona has included a policy promising no crumbs, spilled milk, or indelible stains.
All posts for the month June, 2012
Sleepwalking
Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 29, 2012
https://sandeboritzberger.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/sleepwalking/
Ambition
If you were at all ambitious in the 1940’s and beyond, or a woman starting a family, chances are you had to store away those dreams, or make yourself believe that they weren’t important enough to pursue. Women were reluctant to talk about a future that didn’t involve marriage, children, a house with a nice backyard. Of course, there were exceptions.
As a teenager, my mother was lucky enough to attend a prestigious fashion design school in NYC during the late 30’s, where she had won all kinds of recognition for her unusual talent.
My grandfather was a manufacturer of ladies fine knitwear, and so she was influenced by the fashionable industry around which she had grown up. Her perceptions and talents though were emphatically unique. A huge fan of the glamorous movie star set of her era, my mother conjured up all the greats whenever she created gowns or outfits for her many school assignments─ an ensemble you might see on Davis, Harlow, Hepburn or Crawford. Though she was barely seventeen, her creations looked like small masterpieces from the fashion houses of famed designers.
But there was a war brewing through-out Europe, and by 1941 some of our closest relatives would soon suffer a terrible fate under Hitler’s command. My grandfather, despondent and guilty for not being able to protect and save his brother’s entire family, went into a deep depression, and without explanation, other than financial restraints, he pulled my mother out of her fashion school, and never allowed her to return.
She was crushed. It had been the one thing she loved the most, and she was embittered by his act most of her adult life. She soon chose marriage and within eight years, had become a family of five. Her project then: decorating a 1500 sq. ft. house in a small suburb of Long Island, where she would live until her husband, my father, retired and moved away to Florida in the 60’s.
Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 27, 2012
https://sandeboritzberger.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ambition-4/
Baby Girl
I was a war baby, the first child and only girl. In the years when I could finally understand, my mother never missed a chance to tell me that she had suffered two awful miscarriages before me, so I understood that I was her third, and lucky try, yet if not for the difficulties during those previous pregnancies, I would have never arrived. The thought of that was unimaginable to me and more than a bit shocking.
How could my entire existence be so precarious? Instead of a girl, with big hazel eyes, and chubby thighs, I might have been just another egg, sloughed off with all the dozens of others that came before me. Oh, and then the other story she liked to tell was that I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around my neck and nearly died.
Though these tales fascinated me, I was always aware of my mother’s matter-of-fact approach in their telling. I think what I wanted was to hear how happy she had finally become, or that something miraculous had now changed her life for the better, and that the something was having me, finally, a healthy child- a daughter. I wanted to know that my birth and entry into the world was not paired with memories of remorse or regret.
Fifteen months later, with the war over and my father safely returned from his stint in the Navy, my mother gave birth with little complication to another child, this time a boy. Since we lived across the street from my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn, there were always surrogates to help out with babies. Besides my grandmother, there were my two unmarried aunts. Both were happy to look after their niece and nephew, intent on earning their keep so far from their homeland in Vilna, and living, since they were teenagers, in their brother’s house.
In most of the baby pictures of me, which are just a few, I appear owl-eyed and cautious, even a bit worried. Told again and again that I was a terrible sleeper, I was tossed around a lot, passed from body to body, from scent to scent. Was I searching for her, my mother? A lifetime later, I am still restless.
Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 25, 2012
https://sandeboritzberger.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/baby-girl/
Projects
Remnants of sweaters sit sleeveless in musty bags,
half- painted dressers and desks,
canvases with a first coat of my idea,
Picture albums barren on the shelf.
Plants that need new pots,
walls that need new coats
and racks of clothes I wore
when I had that happy time.
I am caught in the middle
of what was and what will come
and projects,
like me,
are numb.
Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 22, 2012
https://sandeboritzberger.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/projects-4/
The Graduate
Like some stories, this one begins with an ending─ my graduation from college. It was a milestone that arrived too soon, but I didn’t know back then, didn’t know much of anything. All I knew was that for the last four years, I’d felt free and amazingly happy, and I believed things would remain like that no matter what path I chose. And then, on the afternoon of graduation day, as my soon to be fiancé turned the corner and Old Main was out of sight, I began to tremble. I looked back in the rear view mirror and envisioned a much younger girl in knee socks and a plaid skirt bouncing up the steep hill to her first class. She did not have a care in the world, except maybe to pass her biology test, or to rush a sorority in the spring. She did have dreams though, but to talk about them might somehow jeopardize them coming true. She was, of course, superstitious as well.
Now, there would be no guide for the next curriculum of my life. Nothing but the models made by my grandmother and mother, aunts, and a fewer older cousins who I hardly ever saw.
Twenty years later, already in my 40’s, the mother of two adolescent girls and past the first decade of a second marriage, I returned to that school for the big reunion. Beside my sorority sisters, the first people I wanted to see were my English professors, two in particular, but they were nowhere to be found. Happy to learn they were alive and well, and still teaching, I found their offices and decided to write them each a note. It was a note of thank you, very long overdue, and I cried while writing because every word was true and heartfelt, and yet I’d never said any of it before. While I had dedicated myself to becoming a teacher, mostly because I loved kids and Dad had told me to choose between going away to college and getting a new car and working, I chose the profession that at the time seemed practical. I could always write, right?
And the universities I’d dreamed about were so much more costly than a teacher’s college, which in NY State in the late 60’s was tuition free. My very frugal Dad was thrilled that there would be money left-over to send both my younger brothers to college sometime down the road.
And I was lucky, it turned out, to have had the kind of professors I did, in a small school where I never felt lost and was given the attention and encouragement I might not have received on a campus with thousands of students. I was, by all standards and still am, a small town girl. And so I wrote my notes of thank you, even though they were a little late. And then, while walking down a staircase, I ran into one of the professors who I’d always liked but never actually studied with. We chatted for a while, and then he told me…that he quotes me at the beginning of every school year in his freshman comp class. Me? I couldn’t imagine what pearls of wisdom might have come spilling from my 20-year old mouth. And then he told me. Simple really, but very true. After he had wished me luck in graduating, I had responded, without a beat:
“But I’m not ready to go,” I’d said, “I’m only just beginning to learn.”
Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 22, 2012
https://sandeboritzberger.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-graduate/
Mylar: A Split-Level Life
August 1974
I am breathless from a morning of tedious phone chatter — talk I have talked before. Long conversations about how the wallpaper is starting to lift in my powder room — a bathroom with a small pedestal sink shaped like a clam- shell and a very low commode. No one will ever powder there; it’s hard enough to maneuver your body, let alone relieve yourself in the miniscule space. Still, I like the way powder room sounds, and Rona Karl has taught me a great deal about home décor since I moved to Wheatley Heights, a place that boasts of nothing taller than an intrusive water tower standing guard as you enter town.
The phone receiver is crushed between my ear and shoulder while I paprika a rump roast slumped in Pyrex. Struggling to stay tuned to the daily Listen to Rona Show, I slice an onion then blot the stinging with a wet dish-towel. Though my focus is blurred, I can see myself dividing.
One of me, appearing confident and cocky, is propped on the kitchen counter─ sleek legs dangling, shaking a head of wavy blonde hair and hissing at the other me, who, appearing embarrassed, tries to continue a conversation. But Confident and Cocky persists like a mosquito on its bloody mission. Blah, blah, tell me you’re into this garbage? Note: There are no signs of crow’s feet sprouting in the corners of Confident and Cocky’s festive, green eyes. Plus, she’s wearing low-slung hip huggers that fit her like a second skin.
“I was thinking, Rona, I might patch the wallpaper myself, with some Elmer’s.” This is how I often pose a question. Her response is predictable.
“Are you nuts, AL-UX? Do you want to ru-in everything you’ve done?”
“Of course not…you know better about these things.”
“Hold on,” Rona says without curbing her exasperation.
I slide the rusty roast into the Magic Chef and slam the oven door. Where is Confident and Cocky when I need her? She was right here a second ago where’d she go?
Stretching the phone cord to its uncoiled limits, I move to the den and begin dusting the bookshelves. My feather duster is held high like a magic wand. Poof! Make just one wish, Alex. Why is that so hard? There was a time when you had fistfuls of wishes— thought all you needed was the assurance of your beliefs to make them come true.
My shoulder bumps an ancient edition of Monopoly, which sends a slew of dependable cookbooks cascading to the floor. I rearrange the wobbly shelf and rub the grease off the cover of The Fifteen -Minute Quiche. Above the culinary section sits a shelf dedicated to the fine art of gardening and how I’ve learned to rescue my roses from the cruelty of mealy bugs and aphids. On the bottom shelf is a tower of decorating magazines, which have replaced all the fine art books and boast effortless projects like silk flower arranging and chic decorating with sheets.
But shoved in the back of the one skinny drawer of this flimsy teak wall unit, wrapped in a plastic bread bag, is my one little secret: an often-scanned, ear-marked copy of The Sensuous Woman by “J”, and the only book I own in the category of self-improvement. “J” offers a woman’s-eye view with detailed information on how to set off fireworks in the bedroom with tantalizing chapters like “The Whipped Cream Wiggle” and “The Butterfly Flick.” I’d bought the book after Becky’s first birthday not realizing I was already pregnant with Lana. So for now, I’m sticking to decorating with sheets, giving much less thought to what I could be doing on top of them.
“Got a pencil?” Rona’s voice blasts through the receiver, and I stuff the book back in its hiding place.
In the kitchen I fumble through the junk drawer. There are sales receipts for items purchased well over a year ago. A blonde Barbie head topples out and land at my feet. Rona’s breathing turns huffy. She has important things to do like removing finger marks from all her wooden railings. Still, I think she enjoys being my personal, household hint hotline, sharing her bible laden with numbers of service people in a ten- mile radius. Plus she never fails to toss out extra tidbits of information or local gossip: like who was last spotted slinking out of the Pickwick Motor Inn with Bernie Salter, the kosher butcher.
To keep Rona as a friend, I try not to scare her by reciting passages that pop into my head at inappropriate moments. Like now: This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Lately, I fear my world might end precisely like this— talking about absolutely nothing on a lemon yellow wall phone.
“This Maybelline pencil will do,” I say.
“The number is 377-Pari…you mustn’t fool around. Call them now, Alux,”
I love how Rona alternates between her London and Brooklyn dialects—a vernacular that conveniently distances her from her eastern European heritage. “They must come and repair the paper before the girls discover the open seam. Then you’ll be sorry!”
I ponder the tragedy facing the Mylar wallpaper dotted with silver swans curling up the bathroom wall, but my pulse remains steady. I actually feel nothing. Nothing at all.
Excerpt from the Novel
Posted by sandeboritzberger on June 15, 2012
https://sandeboritzberger.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/mylar-a-split-level-life/