she was right and to myself, if not to her, I began to call it “the Brooklyn Revenge,” since it was going to take place across the river.
But I’m not quite ready to talk about that. First, I want to tell how, in New York, I became something else as well. A poet. Back in the late sixties in college (when, in fact, I wasn’t a hippy but a good girl, going to class from my parents’ house, dating Harry on Saturday nights) I took a few frivolous literature courses and fell unabashedly in love with poetry. A love which continued even after I married and quit my job when I became pregnant, and ran our house and raised the kids and kept the books for a couple of dozen small businesses, working at the dining room table. It was my pleasure and indulgence to buy a new poetry book, at first one of the classics, later one of the modern poets, someone I’d never heard of but who caught me with a title or a line, which was how I fell for a Swedish poet named Lars Gustafsson, a Hungarian named Dezso Tandori, a Canadian named Roo Borson. I didn’t even have anywhere to put those sliver-thin books; they were piled on the floor by my side of the bed, stuffed between the cookbooks in the kitchen. As far as Harry was concerned, reading poetry was my hobby, equivalent to scrapbooking or learning to play the dulcimer. Maybe he felt it justified his hobby, too, which was cheating on me.
In all those years of making dinner and figuring out how to deduct a trip to Miami as a business expense, of running the kids to skating lessons and dance recitals, not one poem did I write. Poetry wasn’t about expressing myself, but falling into someone else’s words. I had no secret frustrated desire. But, in New York, the first time I left my apartment to go for a walk, I went into a stationery shop and bought a Moleskine notebook and a pen. I went into the park, sat on a bench, and immediately wrote a poem. I am not saying it was a good poem, or original, or worth anything. I’m not going to give it to you here to read, because I have no need. But I wrote three poems that day, two the next, and it kept going. I began taking my notebook into Café Orlins, which was two steps below the curb and so felt underground, and which is why I can say that besides everything else, besides being just another woman who was cheated on, I was also a poet.
I DIDN’T DISCOVER MY HUSBAND’s affair until the day after his death, while looking through his papers for a file he kept on family history to give to the rabbi for the eulogy. I found a shoebox stuffed with nine years of letters from one Tilly Mellankop, who had liked to put a drop of perfume on her girly notepaper.
Here, use this
, I wanted to say to the rabbi, shoving a handful of letters smelling like air freshener at him. I resisted the urge, but at the funeral found myself violently throwing dirt onto the casket until somebody took the shovel away.
Tilly Mellankop was an executive secretary at Holtzman Sleepwear, but had retired six months before, as I found out on phoning the office. She was a divorcée, a word I thought should be brought back into fashion. There was only one T. Mellankop in the Brooklyn telephone directory. I would go across the river, all right. I would meet her when I was good and ready.
IT WAS SARAH, MY OLDEST, who gave me the cellphone. And she who called me every day.
“All right, Mom, enough is enough. It’s time to come home.”
It was as if she was trying to reverse our roles. I could imagine her moving about the house, just twelve blocks from my own, picking up kids’ toys or maybe pulling things from the fridge to start dinner. My two younger ones were busy with their own messy adventures and called me every week or so. But Sarah, the one who tried so hard to replicate her parents’ life as she saw it, made me want to scream.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s hard not having me there. And nobody wants to see her mother enjoying herself.”
“I hope you don’t
But I’m not quite ready to talk about that. First, I want to tell how, in New York, I became something else as well. A poet. Back in the late sixties in college (when, in fact, I wasn’t a hippy but a good girl, going to class from my parents’ house, dating Harry on Saturday nights) I took a few frivolous literature courses and fell unabashedly in love with poetry. A love which continued even after I married and quit my job when I became pregnant, and ran our house and raised the kids and kept the books for a couple of dozen small businesses, working at the dining room table. It was my pleasure and indulgence to buy a new poetry book, at first one of the classics, later one of the modern poets, someone I’d never heard of but who caught me with a title or a line, which was how I fell for a Swedish poet named Lars Gustafsson, a Hungarian named Dezso Tandori, a Canadian named Roo Borson. I didn’t even have anywhere to put those sliver-thin books; they were piled on the floor by my side of the bed, stuffed between the cookbooks in the kitchen. As far as Harry was concerned, reading poetry was my hobby, equivalent to scrapbooking or learning to play the dulcimer. Maybe he felt it justified his hobby, too, which was cheating on me.
In all those years of making dinner and figuring out how to deduct a trip to Miami as a business expense, of running the kids to skating lessons and dance recitals, not one poem did I write. Poetry wasn’t about expressing myself, but falling into someone else’s words. I had no secret frustrated desire. But, in New York, the first time I left my apartment to go for a walk, I went into a stationery shop and bought a Moleskine notebook and a pen. I went into the park, sat on a bench, and immediately wrote a poem. I am not saying it was a good poem, or original, or worth anything. I’m not going to give it to you here to read, because I have no need. But I wrote three poems that day, two the next, and it kept going. I began taking my notebook into Café Orlins, which was two steps below the curb and so felt underground, and which is why I can say that besides everything else, besides being just another woman who was cheated on, I was also a poet.
I DIDN’T DISCOVER MY HUSBAND’s affair until the day after his death, while looking through his papers for a file he kept on family history to give to the rabbi for the eulogy. I found a shoebox stuffed with nine years of letters from one Tilly Mellankop, who had liked to put a drop of perfume on her girly notepaper.
Here, use this
, I wanted to say to the rabbi, shoving a handful of letters smelling like air freshener at him. I resisted the urge, but at the funeral found myself violently throwing dirt onto the casket until somebody took the shovel away.
Tilly Mellankop was an executive secretary at Holtzman Sleepwear, but had retired six months before, as I found out on phoning the office. She was a divorcée, a word I thought should be brought back into fashion. There was only one T. Mellankop in the Brooklyn telephone directory. I would go across the river, all right. I would meet her when I was good and ready.
IT WAS SARAH, MY OLDEST, who gave me the cellphone. And she who called me every day.
“All right, Mom, enough is enough. It’s time to come home.”
It was as if she was trying to reverse our roles. I could imagine her moving about the house, just twelve blocks from my own, picking up kids’ toys or maybe pulling things from the fridge to start dinner. My two younger ones were busy with their own messy adventures and called me every week or so. But Sarah, the one who tried so hard to replicate her parents’ life as she saw it, made me want to scream.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s hard not having me there. And nobody wants to see her mother enjoying herself.”
“I hope you don’t
Similar Books
