This story causes me to tear up, frankly. Again, my father somewhat manipulates time in its telling and clearly the names have been changed, the name. My mother died in November 1974 at age 48. They had met when she was 18. My father was about as uninterested in having another relationship, and definitely uninterested in the possibility of another marriage after she died. They had been married for 28 years, and as they say now, it was "complicated". There was a deep sadness and unsatisfied longing in my mother. She had, I think, expected my father, to give her a life that whisked her from the Bronx to a Manhattan apartment complete with doorman and concierge. Her younger sister, who has lived over double the time alloted to my mother, now age 99, managed the apartment with those amenities, then 450.00, an outrageous sum at the time. She and her husband, a bus driver, had two salaries, as my aunt was a working woman in a time when they were negligible. But my uncle also was, in my child's view, and in my view from my dotage, a bit of an operator. There are stories, albeit sketchy ones. My parents and I had moved earlier, to a nice two bedroom apartment in the Fort Independence area of the Bronx. But, it was still the Bronx, and there was neither doorman nor concierge.
For the two years of my completion of college, and my first semester in law school beginning in February 1977, it was just my father and I. Dad was still working and in his spare time, he read, and played a mean game of paddle ball with the locals in the nearby park next to the Jerome Reservoir. He enjoyed being the cook and host at my parties at our apartment. And he flirted with my female friends, who enjoyed his charm that was reminiscent of a Ronald Colman or Adolph Menjou. Dad's flirting was artistic but it wasn't serious. It did, however, give me the agita of embarrassment.
But somewhere in late 1976 or early 1977 (according to this story is was 1976), a work friend wanted my father to meet a woman, some 16 or more years younger than he, who was full blooded first generation Greek, but a woman in the work world, and at that time separated from her musician husband. There was a coincidence that they had both attended the same Greek School as children, albeit many years apart. My father resisted but ultimately surrendered to the blind date. And when they met, there was magic. There was dancing. I mean, really, there was dancing, lots of dancing, in the few remaining places, like Roseland, in Manhattan.
It was a little paradoxical that I, in the throes of law school study, and never marginally good at dating, was the one always waiting up for him. I guess he made the paternal decision not to stay in her Manhattan apartment, paternal not only for me (though I was not naive) but in consideration for her son, who was about 16, some years young than me at 23. Truth be told, once I met her, I was crazy about her, and if I could have arranged their marriage, I would have gladly been the wedding planner. Many of my friends met her. One time, they came back from some event, my father in a tux and she in a beautiful formal dress and they easily joined my college crowd. But there were obstacles. The difference in age bothered my father a lot. He had had one heart attack in 1971, a serious one at 53. And he had other health issues that sometimes required surgeries. He was adamant that this young woman should never be put in the position of having to be his caregiver. Or that he would die suddenly, and first, which he had expected to do vis a vis my mother. One day, about two years into their relationship, it ended. Dad made it sound as if it had been entirely his decision, which I would find out later, was not the case. It was, well, "complicated". She was a devout Greek Orthodox girl for whom divorce was problematic. And I have heard that many years later, though they were not together, she took care of the separated husband, in his last illness. Ironic.
Dad never stopped talking about her. And I reconnected with her. I don't recall exactly when, at least after I moved to California in 1981. I tried to get her to come to his 80th birthday, as a surprise. It was clear that whatever the outcome of the romance, the connection had been a bit magical for them--a dual Cinderella story without the happy ending for my father. I don't know what she felt. She is still alive, 18 years after Dad passed away, and we talk from time to time. She simply has said, "It wasn't meant to be". But there was a little residual magic. I asked her again to come for my father's 90th birthday, to Los Angeles, again to be a surprise. Dad was very sick by then, the early spring of 2008. She came for a weekend. Such a lovely action required a material and emotional thanks. I paid for the hotel (over her objection) and my friend Len gave her miles to travel from New York. It was a packed few days several of us shared with them. Completely platonic, but a bit romantic, from my point of view. I thought my father loved it. Dad died two weeks later.
I don't know when he wrote this story, before or after that visit, nearly 30 years after they had last seen each other. I think it was before. But finally reading this story, makes me extra glad that that I arranged that weekend in March 2008.
_________________________________________________________
Once Upon a New Year's Eve
Two groups of people lined the bus entrance. Someone was descending, but it was taking more time than usual. No one wanted to intercede. I decided to, myself.
A little bent old lady was making her exit. She was not fully ambulatory. Her three plastic bags were suspended on the bus coin box. There was, also, her walker, which she was manipulating precariously, and a cane.
The driver lolled with indolent indifference to the unfolding scene, his paunch imbedded, nay, wedged, three inches into the steering wheel.
I reached into the bus and retrieved the plastic bags, the walker and the cane and helped the bent figure traverse the chasm between the vehicle and the curb.
Her eyelids seemed almost shut, but she looked up and thanked me. She held both of my hands and whispered a chant, sibilant and unintelligible. Then she said, clearly: "I am poor and cannot reward you, but you will have a gift. Twelve dreams you will have, one a month. You may want to alter something in the dream, or add or even eliminate an action, but only the dream will change. You will remember it upon awakening, but nothing will be altered in reality. On December 31, you will have your first dream.
I tried not to laugh. The little crone was surely putting me on. The story of the goddess Athena who, disguised as a beggar woman, sought help and received it, came to mind. The kindly were rewarded for their assistance with a pitcher of wiine that remained perpetually full.
It was already December 31. A bottle of something with the quality provided by Athena would certainly palliate the fact that my New Year's Eve would be spent alone. I laughed again. But I felt goose bumps on my skin.
I marveled as my augur arranged her three shopping bags on the cane and then affixed them in some miraculous manner to the walker. She then crossed the street slowly, stopping only to hurl an invective at the bus driver, who had moved forward slightly into her path, as the traffic light turned a permissive green.
There was no magic bottle, but I did mix a pitcher of Martinis. After the third one, I dozed, but was rudely awakened by the phone. She was coming with me. My world had changed.
We were late. I pushed the accelerator to its limit. The Governor's Island Ferry was about to leave imminently, and the next one would not be available until after midnight. She clung to my arm. I had only one thought. I was going to ask her this time, come hell or high water, tonight, December 31, 1977.
I could see the attendant moving across the bow to attach the interdicting chain. I barely missed hitting him as I crossed onto the boat and stopped. My companion was thrown into my arms and I held her hungrily. I could hear an insistent tapping on my window to which I did not wish to respond, so much was my joy. When I did, I was properly penitent.
"You could be barred from the Officer's Club, permanently," he said. "You deliberately ignored my stop signal." Still, he looked at us, and then smiled.
"Just this once, it's New Year's Eve", he said.
This was our second New Year's Eve together but I knew it would be different. For the past several months I had thought of nothing else. I would ask her, beg her to forgive me for last year's failure, when the words would not come.
I held her tightly. We had not moved from our positions in the care in which we had stopped and she was hurled into my arms. I felt impatient. I would not wait for us to debark. I was practically incoherent.
"Marry me, Lara, marry me, now, tonight, before the clock strikes twelve."
She kissed me and I knew she would. We walked to the prow and watched the ferry pierce the waves as it approached the wooden barriers of the pier. I thought the helmsman was moving too fast. The ship plowed with force into the landing and we were thrown apart.
I awoke. I was alone by a phone that never rang. There were three olives in the ashtray.
I had had my first dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment