relationship was stalled—all right, going downhill—I’d assumed I’d get to say goodbye before he did. “Let’s get back to the seats,” she suggested. With a surprisingly gentle hand on my shoulder, she steered me back into the concert hall. As we sat, she advised, “Get lost in the music.”
Goody. The house lights dimmed. More Mahler songs. I can’t imagine what I’d been thinking in my junior year, but I’d taken one semester of German just for fun. So I kept getting distracted by a familiar word or phrase I was able to translate: “not in the songs” and “to watch their” something. And “bees,” though I conceded there was a chance it could have been “beans.” I tried concentrating on getting the gist of the lyrics to block out other thoughts. But the image of John and La Belleza kept coming back. I never would have believed he’d go for someone so soignée. I recalled his laughing at what she said. So utterly charmed. So man-of-the-world.
After the first time John and I went out, I’d gone home with this sense of Here’s a guy I could actually spend a lot of time with. He was smart, funny, unafraid of a woman with a brain, and most of all, most rare, he was nice.
I wondered how La Belleza would fit in with his family. I fit in so well I couldn’t believe it. Every one of the Orensteins had that niceness-smartness thing going: If they had a family crest, it would display an open book, a bowl of soup, and a motto like benignitas et litteratus. Could I see La B at their family Seder at their house in Connecticut with matzoh crumbs on her silver suit? Unfortunately, yes. But then again, she’d know not to go in silver. Whereas I’d show up in a twinset and faux silk slacks and feel uncomfortable because it evidently wasn’t a silk slacks/twinset year, and the Orensteins would sense I was somehow ill at ease and fall all over themselves being kind to me.
What made it worse was that I understood fully what was up with me. The older I got, the more alone I was. There was a scene at the end of Broadway Danny Rose that was so lovely, but always caused me such pain whenever I watched it: Danny, the talent agent, is having Thanksgiving dinner for his clients—the guy with the parrot, the one-legged tap dancer, and all the other oddballs who have only Danny as their family. He’s given them a family, a place to fit in the world.
I didn’t have that place. There was no Danny in my life. I could only see my father on the sly. Aunt Linda went with Uncle Sparky to one of his sisters’ houses for holidays—none of which was a Seder. And I’d started lying to Tatty years earlier so I wouldn’t have to buy the sad Damaris holiday package: Thanksgiving (the usual vodka and martinis plus Gewürztraminer), Christmas (glogg or mulled mead and champagne), and Easter (tequila cocktails, looking like urine in highball glasses), with Four dozing off by the second course. With no one to carve, Preshie would stand up and angrily hack away at the turkey, goose, or ham.
I could fit in anywhere: With all the kids on the bus going upstate to visit their fathers in prison. With all the Ivey girls and the guys they hung with. In a government seminar at Harvard. Drinking with the Democratic powers-that-be in Chicago. Except when you could theoretically live a thousand different lives, how do you pick the one where you belong?
In any case, I was on my own. I remembered being at my desk on 9/11 when the planes hit. It being In Depth, there was only one TV in the entire place. We all ran from our cubicles and offices and huddled around it. I stood stupidly, watching the jumpers choosing how they would die, then leaping from the inferno. The circuits on our phones were busy and it was hard to get a dial tone. Those times, everyone kept punching numbers into their cell phones, some sobbing, some numb, all crazy to say I’m okay. A couple of times someone’s phone actually rang—a Westminster chime, the first four
Goody. The house lights dimmed. More Mahler songs. I can’t imagine what I’d been thinking in my junior year, but I’d taken one semester of German just for fun. So I kept getting distracted by a familiar word or phrase I was able to translate: “not in the songs” and “to watch their” something. And “bees,” though I conceded there was a chance it could have been “beans.” I tried concentrating on getting the gist of the lyrics to block out other thoughts. But the image of John and La Belleza kept coming back. I never would have believed he’d go for someone so soignée. I recalled his laughing at what she said. So utterly charmed. So man-of-the-world.
After the first time John and I went out, I’d gone home with this sense of Here’s a guy I could actually spend a lot of time with. He was smart, funny, unafraid of a woman with a brain, and most of all, most rare, he was nice.
I wondered how La Belleza would fit in with his family. I fit in so well I couldn’t believe it. Every one of the Orensteins had that niceness-smartness thing going: If they had a family crest, it would display an open book, a bowl of soup, and a motto like benignitas et litteratus. Could I see La B at their family Seder at their house in Connecticut with matzoh crumbs on her silver suit? Unfortunately, yes. But then again, she’d know not to go in silver. Whereas I’d show up in a twinset and faux silk slacks and feel uncomfortable because it evidently wasn’t a silk slacks/twinset year, and the Orensteins would sense I was somehow ill at ease and fall all over themselves being kind to me.
What made it worse was that I understood fully what was up with me. The older I got, the more alone I was. There was a scene at the end of Broadway Danny Rose that was so lovely, but always caused me such pain whenever I watched it: Danny, the talent agent, is having Thanksgiving dinner for his clients—the guy with the parrot, the one-legged tap dancer, and all the other oddballs who have only Danny as their family. He’s given them a family, a place to fit in the world.
I didn’t have that place. There was no Danny in my life. I could only see my father on the sly. Aunt Linda went with Uncle Sparky to one of his sisters’ houses for holidays—none of which was a Seder. And I’d started lying to Tatty years earlier so I wouldn’t have to buy the sad Damaris holiday package: Thanksgiving (the usual vodka and martinis plus Gewürztraminer), Christmas (glogg or mulled mead and champagne), and Easter (tequila cocktails, looking like urine in highball glasses), with Four dozing off by the second course. With no one to carve, Preshie would stand up and angrily hack away at the turkey, goose, or ham.
I could fit in anywhere: With all the kids on the bus going upstate to visit their fathers in prison. With all the Ivey girls and the guys they hung with. In a government seminar at Harvard. Drinking with the Democratic powers-that-be in Chicago. Except when you could theoretically live a thousand different lives, how do you pick the one where you belong?
In any case, I was on my own. I remembered being at my desk on 9/11 when the planes hit. It being In Depth, there was only one TV in the entire place. We all ran from our cubicles and offices and huddled around it. I stood stupidly, watching the jumpers choosing how they would die, then leaping from the inferno. The circuits on our phones were busy and it was hard to get a dial tone. Those times, everyone kept punching numbers into their cell phones, some sobbing, some numb, all crazy to say I’m okay. A couple of times someone’s phone actually rang—a Westminster chime, the first four
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