The five towns, p.25
The Five Towns, page 25
The wedding was set for June, following Stephen’s graduation. As planned, he and Amy would take an apartment near Washington Square, in a building that housed many of the university’s married students. They had gone to look at the apartment one weekend and Amy had been impressed with its grown-up cunning; it was tiny, efficient, and neat. The present tenants had decorated it with colorful posters, Salvation Army furniture, and a sofa-bed. There was a little acove, near the closets and bathroom, which Stephen thought could serve as a study area.
“See, it faces a wall. No distractions,” he said, measuring off the space with his retractable tape measure.
The kitchen was so small that only one person at a time could work in it, but Amy didn’t care. She already felt a wave of nostalgia for the place, as if she had lived there a long time. The girl who was giving up the apartment told them she was leaving because she and her husband were getting divorced.
“It’s not much fun being married to a perpetual student. Academic marriages don’t have the longest shelf life,” she said. She scratched her scalp and wiggled her toes. She looked very much like a standard, Washington Square Park sort of hippie, and Amy was glad her mother hadn’t been along.
“If my mother were here, she’d probably make us have the place disinfected before we moved in,” Amy said on the elevator going down.
“You think about your mother too much,” Stephen said, and after that Amy didn’t say anything at all, not even when they went for lunch in a nearby coffee shop.
Sometimes she felt wonderful about the marriage; she felt it was her fate to be tied up with Stephen—he was so utterly familiar to her. Other times she felt the full force of some resistance rising in her that caused her to feel lonely. She imagined she was not beginning her own life but rather entering his, as if he were a separate country in which she would live.
Her friends in the dormitory had given her a kitchen shower and she had stared at a metal saucepan with a copper bottom and wondered if she would own it for the rest of her life. The girls in Amy’s dormitory envied her security, but Amy could catch something else moving on the wind, a spirit of defiance that made a wedding seem as obsolete as a corset.
She had not heard from her uncle at all. She’d expected some sort of reply, at least a card if not a long letter analyzing the options she had outlined and guiding her in her decision. She did not want to ask her mother why her uncle had failed to write; she had learned not to mention him to either of her parents. After waiting two months and settling her future on her own, she wrote him a short, curt note saying that she would be married in June and hoped he would not miss her wedding.
In May, when the grass was freshly mowed and the fruit trees just past the peak of their bloom, Amy was sitting in her small room reading Milton and sobbing profusely over “Lycidas” when someone tapped on her door and told her she had a visitor waiting downstairs. Since “visitor” was frequently a dormitory euphemism for “boy friend,” she assumed it was Stephen and combed her hair and fixed her lipstick before leaving her room. She went down the stairs and over to the reception area. Looking around, she saw no one she knew seated on the couches and lounge chairs. One of the dorm proctors saw her and told her a man had come to see her and had gone outside to wait. Suddenly upset, for she assumed it was her father and that there must be some bad news, she hurried outside. It was a warm day for early May, but the breeze was cool. Standing near the doorway she shaded her eyes from the sun and glanced around. She could see someone standing across the street, a dark figure in a black suit. Her heart leaped and she caught her breath as she waved and ran toward him.
“Oh, God, Uncle Eddie, you’ve come, you’ve come!” she said as she threw herself into his arms. He caught her up and embraced her, his arms strong, and she could feel his shoulders tremble. When she pulled away, she saw that he had been crying and her heart broke inside her as she forgave him everything. “How did you get here?”
“I flew, my darling. Not a bad trip from New York at all, although this college of yours isn’t exactly in Boston. Cost me a fortune in cab fares.”
“You got my letters?”
“Of course. But look—” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and Amy saw that it was her first letter, asking him for help. It was covered with postal stamps and inked-out addresses. Apparently it had followed him from city to city, never quite catching up until somewhere in Italy. She could barely make out the final address. “This one took almost six weeks to find me, and then, before I could reply, I received the other. I canceled two engagements—I had to see you before you went ahead with your plans. Is there somewhere we could talk? Would you like to take a stroll?”
“We could go up the hill and I could show you the campus. It’s really very pretty.”
“That will do.”
“You sound as if you’re worried about something.”
“Perhaps I am. But look at you, you’ve become exquisite. And you’re a grown-up woman. It seems you’ve grown overnight.”
“Daddy used to say I grew like the willow in the backyard. Remember the tree we had on Bush Road? We planted it when we moved in, and once when you came to visit we sat beneath it and talked. That used to be my favorite place to go and think, our spot under the tree.”
“You love me a great deal, don’t you,” Uncle Edward said.
“Oh, yes,” Amy said, and she clung to his arm as they climbed the sloping hill toward the campus. Several students walked by them on their way to the library and Amy saw one or two of the women glance at her uncle, giving him a swift, appraising look. She knew he was handsome in a dashing, continental sort of way. He looked the part of a European visitor—like someone from Henry James, perhaps, the American who had lived abroad for so long he had forgotten the ways of the New World. She wished she were wearing something more grown-up than corduroy slacks and a plaid blouse. She remembered how, when she was small, she would dream of being in Vienna with her uncle, waltzing in some elegant hotel dining room and wearing a flowing dress with a skirt she caught up with one hand. “Yes, I love you very much,” she repeated.
“Then I want you to listen to what I have to say, listen very carefully.”
“Of course I will.” Amy was puzzled by his seriousness. Of course, they were always serious together—that was part of their closeness to each other. But she felt she was being warned, and that frightened her. She tightened her grip on his hand.
“You know that I wouldn’t say anything to you to hurt you.”
“Yes, but what’s the matter? Aren’t you happy for me?”
Her uncle slowed his pace now, taking measured, careful steps. “I think you ought to reconsider this marriage.”
“That’s what you’ve come to say? Reconsider it? But why?”
“I think you might be making a mistake.”
“But how can you say that? You’ve never even met Stephen.”
“I know everything I need to know about him. But I don’t particularly care about Stephen. It’s you I’m concerned with. Your well-being, what you might want and need from life.”
“But it’s all arranged, everything. I’ve picked out my dress, and my mother has hired the caterer and the Lawrence Club and ordered the flowers, and the invitations are going out in two weeks.”
“Amy, it’s not too late. Don’t you want a life of your own? Don’t you want to travel and see the world and learn more about yourself before you shut yourself away?”
“We’re going to travel. We’re going to Bermuda for our honeymoon.”
He stopped walking and turned to face her. Taking her hands in his, he spoke gently but persuasively. “Why do you want to get married at such a young age?”
“Because,” said Amy. “I know it’s the right thing to do. I love Stephen and I want to live with him.”
“Then live with him. But why do you have to sign yourself over?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t what? Can’t help yourself?”
“I’m not allowed to live in sin. Mother forbade me.”
“I see. So your mother feels love must be authorized and stamped by the state of New York and a rabbi or two. I guess I shouldn’t blame her—but you, you’re a separate person. You’re old enough to judge things for yourself. Doesn’t that strike you as a ridiculous argument? How do you know you’ll be happy with this boy? Suppose you sleep with him and it’s no good?”
Amy lowered her eyes. She was mortified that her uncle should mention sex. But she desperately wanted to know why he had come thousands of miles to talk her out of her marriage. “We already have,” she said. “It’s fine.”
“Is that it? Tell me,” he said as he put his hand under her chin and jerked her face up so he could look into her eyes. “Do you feel you have to marry him because he’s the first?”
“Yes. Well—yes and no. Not really. I don’t know.”
Her uncle put his arms around her and drew her close to him so her head rested on his chest. “Oh, my darling, if you knew what I dreamed for you, what I wish you to have. Trips to Europe, adventure, work you enjoy, concerts, operas, men who flock to be near you and lay themselves at your feet. You must live. You must. There are women I know—I’ve known a good many but sometimes I think of one in particular—women of such spirit and understanding who gave themselves away to such ordinary men. Men with no fire, no life. I don’t have to meet your Stephen to know that he’s one of them. I can’t bear to think of you unhappy that way. It would be too much—it would break my heart.”
She pulled away and tried to calm herself down. She couldn’t back out of this marriage; she had to go through with it. “Uncle Eddie, I won’t have such a bad life, really. We’ll have lots of money. We’ll live in a nice house, I’ll have everything I need—pretty clothes, nice jewelry, money for tickets to plays and ballet, anything I want. We’ll be able to live well.”
“Amy, that is the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
She was shocked by his language. She felt she didn’t know him anymore. She pulled her hands away and began to walk, quickly, back toward her dormitory.
“Please reconsider, please,” he said as he walked beside her. “It isn’t too late—it’s not too late until they sign the license and give you away. They want you to be happy, but it’s happiness on their terms. You weren’t meant to be a Five Towns girl, you were meant to live in the world. Don’t be bound by the constraints of people who are not happy themselves. You’re not an ordinary girl, you’re not a conventional, run-of-the-mill girl. Stop trying to be one.”
“But I am,” she insisted. “You’ve just described me. That’s exactly what I am.”
“I want you to live. Live.”
“Then you won’t come to the wedding?”
“I’ll be there,” he said. “But that’s all.”
She stopped walking. She turned and faced him again. Her face had hardened and her voice was the only thing that betrayed her emotional upset. She stared at him and saw that his necktie had a small stain on it and that his pocket handkerchief had begun to fray at the edges. Who was he to try and dictate her life?
“I never wanted to say this, but now you’ve made me. So you’ve taken your own advice. You’ve gone abroad and lived and done whatever you’ve wanted to. But in the process you’ve hurt a lot of people. Don’t you realize that? Did anyone ever inform you? Remember my bas mitzvah? I waited the entire day for you to show up. I couldn’t believe you’d miss it. And Grandma was always off crying somewhere because she hardly ever heard from you. I thought it was silly then, just some kind of nervous thing because she was so old. But if living means not having any sense of responsibility for people who really love you, then I don’t want any part of your way. Do you hear me? I’m rejecting what you say. I’m rejecting you. And I don’t give a damn if you come to my wedding or not. You haven’t got the right to make me feel bad about something as important as this. At least I’m pleasing people, making them feel good, acting like a grown-up. And you don’t even know him!”
“Amy, please, don’t run away.” He chased after her as she ran up the path toward her dormitory. “Amy, don’t cry, don’t go.”
He followed her through the glass doors and into the lobby. He saw her disappear up a flight of stairs. He’d started toward them and begun to climb when someone put a firm, restraining hand on his shoulder. He turned around and stared.
“Excuse me, sir,” said a thin-faced young girl. “I’m awfully sorry, but men are not allowed upstairs in the girls’ rooms.”
“But I’m her uncle,” he protested.
“I’m sorry. Only fathers are allowed upstairs, and then only when the girls are moving their belongings in and out at the beginning and the end of the school year.”
He backed away then and stood in the lobby.
“Can I help you, sir?” the girl went on.
“No, there’s nothing—except, can you tell me how to get a taxi out of here?”
“There’s a pay phone right over there.”
He took a cab back to Logan Airport, but before he got on the plane to New York he called a florist near Amy’s school and ordered a dozen white roses with a card to go with them. The card said, “Congratulations on your coming marriage,” and he asked the florist to please sign it for him, “All my love, your uncle.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After Amy graduated from New York University, she enrolled in the one-year secretarial program at the Katharine Gibbs School. A bachelor’s degree in English had given her no better entree into the job market than four years of high school had: She was equipped to answer phones and file, but not much else; the glamour jobs were beyond her reach. So she took the advice of helpful friends and job-placement counselors and set about making herself useful. Stephen was in his second year of dental school and working hard and they spent little time together. Occasionally on a free Sunday they would take the Long Island Railroad out to the Five Towns and visit one or another set of parents.
The Lawrence house seemed empty to Amy; Marci had gone off to college, a two-year program at a school in Boston that didn’t care how low an applicant’s grades were—at least it had seemed that way to the Freundlichs. “They’re only interested to know if you can pay,” Evelyn had told Amy. “Thank God there are still places like that available, otherwise I don’t know what I would have done with that child. She barely passed a single course.”
Amy wrote long letters to Marci, hoping that her sisterly encouragement might make a difference, but she never heard anything back except for an occasional phone call during which Marci sounded sleepy or stoned or bored. She didn’t care that her junior college was located in a city full of wonderful places to visit. Amy’s advice about seeing the Gardner Museum or walking the Freedom Trail was never taken. Marci was hardly interested in expanding her horizons. Finally, Amy gave up.
“I’m not going to write to Marci at all,” she announced to Stephen one night as she served him dinner on the small gateleg table they took their meals on each evening. She put down the plate of lamb chops and peas.
“Is that so?” he said through a mouthful of baked potato. Stephen would eat his food in a quick, rhythmic pattern with a minimum of conversation, then retreat again to his desk against the wall to study. He never noticed what he was served, unless it was something he loathed. Amy had quickly learned to avoid cooking pork chops, Brussels sprouts, lima beans, or eggs (Stephen liked only the whites, not the yolks, and she’d never figured out how to serve appetizing yolkless eggs). Her menus became standardized and simple: the same six meals each week in rotation—broiled or fried chicken, hamburgers, steak, meat loaf, lamb chops, spaghetti—with the seventh meal saved for their one night a week out. Sometimes she felt as boring as her parents, but Stephen always protested that he loved her cooking, so why bother to change? The days passed for Amy in a seldom varying routine of shopping, cleaning, cooking and doing dishes, typing and steno, and the occasional trips to Long Island or visits with friends.
Sometimes when she did the dinner dishes in the tiny kitchen she’d stare at the things she’d placed on the counters and hung on the walls and think about what she had thought marriage would be like. The first year had been more exciting. She’d still been in college; she had extra credits to make up and course work that kept her occupied almost as much as Stephen’s did for him. She’d made a few friends and become peripherally involved in the antiwar movement, attending a few speeches and rallies and finding the atmosphere tense and thrilling. After seeing a film about the agonies of the Vietnamese people, she’d bought a peace button with an upraised hand holding a dove painted on it. She considered herself active and informed.
Stephen had refused to participate in any of these activities and was annoyed by the button pinned to Amy’s winter coat; he didn’t want anyone to think of his wife as a radical protester. He made her take the button off when they went out with his dental-school friends—usually another serious dentist type and his subdued wife. The husband would spend the night talking to Stephen about setting up a practice and what they would charge; the wife would chat with Amy about shopping, cooking, and about the family they planned as soon as the dentist husband finished his periodontics training. Amy decided that people who wanted to be dentists had two things in common: one, a fascination with building things on a miniature level—a ship-in-the-bottle mentality, rather like a hobbyist; and two, the desire to make money. A few dental wives warned her to watch after her own dental hygiene. “They ignore their wives pretty much,” one girl said, twisting her diamond engagement ring back into place and polishing it with her napkin. “You could have an impacted wisdom tooth and all he’ll say is take a couple of aspirin, it’s probably nothing. I mean, you could die or something and he’d think it was all in your head.”
