books she’d found in a store down the block from the obstetrician’s: how the dark red on the Utrillo’s cover echoed the scarlets and carmines on the Rembrandt’s. She wasn’t like some women, buy-buy-buy out of boredom. She loved what she bought, took pleasure in an object every time she saw it in her home. Okay, not a box of Lipton’s tea bags. But like that petticoat she’d bought in 1949, in a lilac so pale it was almost gray; it had narrow ribbon shoulder straps and scalloped ribbon trim along the hemline. Every time she opened her lingerie drawer, she’d feel good, just seeing it—and the yellow nightgown with the quilted bed jacket too.
She thought about her things a lot, and about things she saw when she went to the city, things she couldn’t afford but remembered as if they belonged to her. She never forgot something once it caught her eye. Like in an antique store window on East Fifty-eighth, a silver tea set with the most delicate leafy pattern etched into it. The lid of the pot and the sugar bowl cover were topped with roses made out of silver. Incredible work. The last time she passed it, the store owner had waved to her from inside the store. Like: I know just how you feel. Wait: more than that. I know you’ll be back. He was very good-looking, with white hair and a white mustache, wearing a dark-gray suit that was almost black. Very slim. Neat. Like a well-packed cigarette.
Leonard was clean. There was no man on earth cleaner. He used four Q-Tips every morning on his ears. But he wasn’t … what was that word he’d liked but not loved? Fastidious. He’d used that for a week or two. But he wasn’t fastidious, because he wasn’t in complete control over himself, not like the man in the antique store, with his hankie sticking out of his pocket in six perfect points. Nervous, Leonard would run his hand through his hair, and by late afternoon the Brylcreemed ends would no longer lie flat, but would coil like tiny springs at the back of his neck. Or he’d dribble something on his tie, a tiny drop of something, but then a poppy seed would stick to it. And in terms of looks: He wasn’t dapper, but he wasn’t a man’s man either, like the assistant manager at the A & P, with black hair peeking out from under his white undershirt, making little twirlies right below his neck. Or her still-life teacher, Jeffrey, at the Great Neck Center for the Fine Arts, with his black eyes and tight blue jeans. Leonard was just okay-looking. Dark-brown hair, brown eyes. Okay. Skin? Not like he had pockmarks, but you could see pores on his cheeks. Five-feet eight-and-a-half, even though it said five-ten on his driver’s license, so not quite tall enough. Not getting fat, but in the last year, in his new, slim Englishjacket, it looked like he was wearing a fox boa under it instead of a belt.
Let us leave Leonard’s love handles and Sylvia’s mind and return to S-E-X once again. The E. If the vertical stroke is the institution of marriage, and the two Whites are the horizontal lines on either end, then clearly there is something between them. Remember, this was now 1951. They were neither sophisticates nor libertines, so it was nothing kinky. They
seemed
like a happy couple. They said “I love you” to each other every night just before they went off to sleep. They had sexual intercourse three times a week. At this point in their lives, the mere thought of taking a lover had never crossed either of their minds, so whatever was between them was certainly not another man or another woman.
They had more disposable income than Great Neck neighbors twice their age. True, Leonard’s big plans might put them in the poorhouse, but as the Bankers Trust Company was willing to underwrite his grandiose fantasies of a showroom with Louis XV bergères on Lexington Avenue and East Sixty-fifth Street, its sales force taught from birth to inquire “
Puis-je vous aider?
” it was not money that had come between them.
Could
She thought about her things a lot, and about things she saw when she went to the city, things she couldn’t afford but remembered as if they belonged to her. She never forgot something once it caught her eye. Like in an antique store window on East Fifty-eighth, a silver tea set with the most delicate leafy pattern etched into it. The lid of the pot and the sugar bowl cover were topped with roses made out of silver. Incredible work. The last time she passed it, the store owner had waved to her from inside the store. Like: I know just how you feel. Wait: more than that. I know you’ll be back. He was very good-looking, with white hair and a white mustache, wearing a dark-gray suit that was almost black. Very slim. Neat. Like a well-packed cigarette.
Leonard was clean. There was no man on earth cleaner. He used four Q-Tips every morning on his ears. But he wasn’t … what was that word he’d liked but not loved? Fastidious. He’d used that for a week or two. But he wasn’t fastidious, because he wasn’t in complete control over himself, not like the man in the antique store, with his hankie sticking out of his pocket in six perfect points. Nervous, Leonard would run his hand through his hair, and by late afternoon the Brylcreemed ends would no longer lie flat, but would coil like tiny springs at the back of his neck. Or he’d dribble something on his tie, a tiny drop of something, but then a poppy seed would stick to it. And in terms of looks: He wasn’t dapper, but he wasn’t a man’s man either, like the assistant manager at the A & P, with black hair peeking out from under his white undershirt, making little twirlies right below his neck. Or her still-life teacher, Jeffrey, at the Great Neck Center for the Fine Arts, with his black eyes and tight blue jeans. Leonard was just okay-looking. Dark-brown hair, brown eyes. Okay. Skin? Not like he had pockmarks, but you could see pores on his cheeks. Five-feet eight-and-a-half, even though it said five-ten on his driver’s license, so not quite tall enough. Not getting fat, but in the last year, in his new, slim Englishjacket, it looked like he was wearing a fox boa under it instead of a belt.
Let us leave Leonard’s love handles and Sylvia’s mind and return to S-E-X once again. The E. If the vertical stroke is the institution of marriage, and the two Whites are the horizontal lines on either end, then clearly there is something between them. Remember, this was now 1951. They were neither sophisticates nor libertines, so it was nothing kinky. They
seemed
like a happy couple. They said “I love you” to each other every night just before they went off to sleep. They had sexual intercourse three times a week. At this point in their lives, the mere thought of taking a lover had never crossed either of their minds, so whatever was between them was certainly not another man or another woman.
They had more disposable income than Great Neck neighbors twice their age. True, Leonard’s big plans might put them in the poorhouse, but as the Bankers Trust Company was willing to underwrite his grandiose fantasies of a showroom with Louis XV bergères on Lexington Avenue and East Sixty-fifth Street, its sales force taught from birth to inquire “
Puis-je vous aider?
” it was not money that had come between them.
Could
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