Fear of Fifty by Erica Jong

black velvet cape (in the middle of summer) and dragged it through fields of daisies and cowflop. She was an artist—very bohemian.
    â€œWhat’s a beautiful girl like you doing in a dump like this?” I asked, using the corniest line I knew. It worked. I thought she was easy because she was sleeping in the same room as the owner of the place. But it turned out later, he never laid a finger on her—couldn‘t, in fact. She was his beard. Anyway, she was painting murals, so I got her to paint my drum. We fell madly in love. After the summer, I visited her once a week, taking the subway from Brooklyn to Upper Riverside Drive. Papa and Mama always left us alone. We took chances that were unbelievable. I think I first said I loved her on the top of an open Fifth Avenue bus. Do you know that they had open Fifth Avenue buses? I was working at Paul’s Rendezvous with a five-piece band and also trying somehow to go to NYU at night. At seven dollars a point, I couldn’t afford it. (As I said, I never knew I got into City College.) Maxwell Bodenheim used to come into Paul’s Rendezvous to recite poetry in exchange for a drink: “Death comes like jewels dropped in a velvet bag ...” I seem to remember. We got married in 1933 because the Volstead Act was being repealed and we thought there’d be work in the clubs. Roosevelt was inaugurated in March. People were starving: apple sellers on the streets, Hooverville on the river. Our first apartment was on Twenty-second Street between Eighth and Ninth. It was a rooming house with the bathtub in the middle of the kitchen. We’d get two months concession on the rent and move out when the concession was up. We lived in a lot of places that way. At one time we were at 118th and Riverside Drive—thrilled to be on the same avenue as George Gershwin. Musicians worked from eight o’clock until unconscious. Eda would meet me and we’d walk home at night up Broadway and have breakfast at Nedick’s. Romantic. She worked all day demonstrating art supplies at Bloomingdale’s. She got to take home the paints, so it seemed like a good deal. We never slept. Then, when I was twenty-four, in 1935, I got my first big break. Mickey Green the agent—don’t use his name, he’s still alive—got me an audition with Cole Porter for Jubilee —and I got the job. From then on I was working.
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    So what happened?
    Your mother hated show business. The hours, the insecurity. She’d been the best artist in art school but didn’t get the Prix de Rome because they never gave it to girls. Also, there was this fierce competition with your grandfather. And she hated the musicians’ union—which was crooked then and demanded kickbacks. Also, when your sister Nana was born we moved back in with Mama and Papa to have some help with your sister.
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    But didn’t you miss show business?
    I would have missed her more. We were really in love. I couldn’t have done any of this without her. And your mother had a tough life. She didn’t know her father till she was eight, you know, because he left the family in England when she was two and her sister Kitty was barely three. Escaping the draft in England. Jews were always escaping the draft. Why should they die for an anti-Semitic czar?
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    Were you ever in love before?
    Oh, there was a girl in high school—but nothing serious. I was nineteen when I met your mother. Marriage was serious, a commitment. You just didn’t get divorced. Don’t think we didn’t have tsuris. We did. But divorce was out of the question.
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    What did your parents think of her?
    Mama came up to Utopia to check her out. “Watch out—that girl is using you,” she said. [He laughs.]
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    And what did her parents think of you?
    They thought I wasn’t good enough, but they kept leaving us alone in the apartment.
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    Didn’t it bother you to quit show