Mutzie, although she had little respect for her older brother, refused to allow herself to be drawn into these arguments. Anything she had to say to Seymour she said privately.
“Notice Mama doesn’t ask where the money comes from,” Mutzie told him.
“Where do you think? You think I steal it?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Bet you think I’m a punk,” Seymour snarled, poking a finger in her face. “Well I want you to know I got respect. Respect in the right places. I’m gonna be somebody. You watch.”
She hardly wished to watch and didn’t much care. She preferred thinking about movies and movie stars. Life was gorgeous on the silver screen, exciting, romantic, adventurous. Life in their cramped three-room walk-up on Amboy Street, where the hallways stunk perpetually of boiling cabbage and worse, was grim and boring.
The best that could be said about Henry Goldbaum was that he was a nice boy who didn’t get too fresh. He was also a snappy dresser since he got his clothes wholesale in the garment district. “Actually below wholesale,” he boasted.
“When I get into the union I can clear twenty-five, thirty a week,” he would explain to Mutzie. “That means if you want we could get married.”
“How romantic,” Mutzie mused to herself, deliberately leaving the question unanswered. She liked Henry but she didn’t love him, one of the rare facts about her life that she confided to her mother.
“Love is for Jean Harlow,” her mother told her. “The important thing is you’re not an old maid.”
Despite herself, the threat had the ring of reality. To be an old maid was a fate terrible to contemplate and her mother was not one to withhold her anxieties. A number of her friends were getting ready to get married after graduation, which increased the pressure on her to consider the joys of a future with Henry Goldbaum.
Not that she didn’t cast around with her eyes to observe other possibilities. Often when she went to the Ambassador or the Blue Bird on the corner of Livonia and Saratoga she would see
a number of well-dressed men standing in front of the candy store eyeing the women that passed. She was always slightly afraid to pass them, fearful that they might make some remark that would embarrass her, although she wouldn’t have minded an admiring remark or two.
One man in particular who seemed to spend a great deal of time standing in front of the candy store caught her eye. He was taller than the others, a very handsome man, always immaculately dressed with his shoes polished and his beautifully shaped pearl gray hat worn at a rakish angle.
On the rare occasions when she did not cross the street, passing in front of the candy store instead, she would sneak peripheral glances at him. When she did this, a thrill of excitement ran through her and she sensed an air of risk and adventure that made her heart race. She imagined that he looked at her with equal longing. Of course, he showed not the slightest sign of such interest, but she attributed that to his innate shyness and his gentlemanly demeanor.
One day she asked her brother who this man might be, describing him with a deliberate air of indifference.
“You mean Pep,” Seymour said proudly.
“Pep?”
“Pittsburgh Phil Strauss,” Seymour continued. “Real class. The women are crazy for him. You’ll just have to stand in line, little sister.” He bent over and whispered to her, “He’s way up. Real high up in the combination, a very important individual.”
Pittsburgh Phil Strauss. Even the name had the ring of excitement and she thought about him often.
One Saturday night during a date, Henry got fresher than usual. They would sit on the stairs of the fourth floor landing and
neck, a Saturday night ritual. On this particular night, Henry attempted to put her hand on his penis.
“No,” she protested, fighting to release her wrist from his hand. Up to then, she had allowed him some liberties. She had let him kiss her bare breast and nipples and touch her crotch over her dress.
“All I want is for you to touch it over my pants,” Henry pleaded. “There is a thing that happens to men from all this frustration.”
“Then you had better just control yourself.”
“We’re keeping company, Mutzie,” Henry whined.
“You’re taking too much for granted, Henry,” Mutzie countered.
“A man can’t wait forever. You know a girl doesn’t have that many chances. You’ll be eighteen in August.” Henry warned testily.
“So I’ll be an old maid.”
“But I love you, Mutzie.”
She shut off any further conversation with a long soul kiss and she let him squeeze and fondle her bare breasts.
Mutzie could not deny the pressure on her, especially since her girlfriends bragged loudly about their upcoming marriages. Henry was entitled to an answer. Her mother was entitled to see her “settled,” which was the most important thing expected of a daughter. She was, she acknowledged to herself, on the horns of a dilemma.
What Mutzie really wanted was the kind of life depicted in the movies, a life where “true love” was a woman’s most important aspiration. Finding “true love” was the most important thing in life, and, as the movies had taught her, when it did come, it came with everything, gorgeous clothes and jewelry, a beautiful apartment with exquisite furniture, chauffeured cars, trips to foreign
countries, wonderful friends and hundreds of admirers.
She would often discuss these possibilities with her one-time best friend Rebecca Schwartz. Rebecca, as Mutzie’s mother had attested, had “her feet on the ground” and “knew where she was going.” Rebecca, who was short and pudgy with a sweet dimply smile, had been Mutzie’s friend since first grade.
She was going steady with Brucie Goldstein, whose family owned an appetizer store on Saratoga Avenue and who would one day have an appetizer store of his own. To Mutzie’s mother Brucie was a “catch” and she lost little opportunity in telling her so. It was her mother’s goading, Mutzie believed, that led to the final argument with Rebecca that ended their friendship.
“You can’t just step inside a movie screen, Mutzie. It’s not real. That kind of life is not possible.”
“That’s what you think,” Mutzie had replied.
“What I think?” Rebecca had said, visibly troubled by Mutzie’s constant refrain about how life was in the movies. Mutzie was certain that her mother had told Rebecca to “talk some sense into Mutzie.”
“I’m not saying you can’t have dreams. But you can’t be out of touch with reality.”
They had been walking together on Pitkin Avenue, shopping for a bathing suit that Rebecca needed for her one-week honeymoon at the Nevele hotel in the Catskills. Rebecca was not overjoyed at seeing her chubby body in a bathing suit, which surely had contributed to her irritation. For Mutzie’s part, the whole idea of Rebecca’s impending marriage had become a flashpoint for Mutzie’s mother’s constant jibes and was making her nervous and anxious.
“What’s reality?” Mutzie had shot back.
“Reality is today, May 6th, 1937. Roosevelt is president. La
Guardia is Mayor. This is Brownsville. We are walking on Pitkin Avenue. I am getting married next month. I’m marrying Brucie Goldstein and we’re going to have two children. And some day Brucie is going to have a store of his own. That’s reality.”
Rebecca’s remark had come out as a burst of pique, full of irritation and rebuke.
“There’s more to life than herring and potato salad,” Mutzie had shot back.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“All day long in a store with a dirty apron. Is that a life?”
“So Miss Harlow is showing her jealousy.”
“Jealous of you? That’s a laugh.”
“I’m marrying somebody substantial with a future. What’s your future?” She pointed to the marquee of the Loews Pitkin which was showing
A Tale of Two Cities
and
The Thin Man
. “For ten cents you can live somebody else’s life for three hours, then when you come out again you’re still here in Brownsville and everything’s the same. Besides, it’s not so bad here. If I were you I would marry Henry and settle down to a nice life.”
“A boring life,” Mutzie shot back.
“Boring to have a husband and children and a business of your own? That’s boring? What will you have, Mutzie? Dissatisfaction. Always thinking that the grass is greener. You’ll be an old maid and dry up like a prune, like one of those old shiksa secretaries.”
The image triggered a burst of anger in Mutzie.
“And you? What will you be? A butter ball with fat arms and swollen ankles, always stinking of herring and onions.”
Rebecca flushed deep red and her lips trembled with rage. “Why you rotten little stuck up hooer,” she shouted, stopping dead in her tracks, her cheeks scarlet and quivering.
“Look who’s calling who a hooer,” Mutzie said. Rebecca had told her that she had gone “all the way” with Brucie, describing the experience in vivid detail. Mutzie fished in her mind for something awful to say to Rebecca, something that reflected her true feelings and would demolish Rebecca’s smugness about “reality” once and for all. Suddenly she remembered a crude remark that she had heard boys use at school to describe a fat girl. “Won’t be long you’ll have to pea for Brucie to find the place to put it.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Rebecca sputtered, flecks of saliva showing on the sides of her mouth. “I don’t ever want to speak to you again,” Rebecca shouted, stamping her feet. “Never ever as long as I live.” Her eyes rose skyward. “May I drop dead.”
With that, she turned and waddled off, leaving Mutzie with a sad sense of victory.
Breaking up with her best friend left Mutzie frightened and anxious. “I would go down on my hands and knees to Rebecca,” her mother cried when she heard about the fight from Rebecca’s mother. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Now you won’t even be invited to the wedding. None of us.”
“I’m sorry about that, Mama,” Mutzie conceded.
“So you won’t apologize?”
“Never. Not as long as I have breath.”
“A stubborn mule. That’s what I got.” Her mother raised her voice in near hysteria. “Why are you doing this to me? Rebecca has a future. What have you got, Mutzie? With this attitude you’ll also lose Henry. Then what?”
“So I’ll be an old maid,” Mutzie muttered.
“What did I do to you to deserve this?” Mutzie’s mother shouted. “I’m glad my mother didn’t live to see this. What a daughter does to a mother!”
Mutzie knew that after the hysteria had subsided, her mother would engage in long bouts of cranky pouting, screaming invectives at her father and giving Mutzie the silent treatment. As much as she ridiculed such treatment, Mutzie felt its effect. With high school graduation coming up, she felt herself faced with weighty decisions. She was frightened about her future. What if her mother was right? What if she did miss out on her chances? Maybe she should marry Henry Goldbaum. She resolved to consider it very seriously.
On her next date with Henry, she studied him very carefully, trying to picture what a future with him might be like. He was a pleasant young man, handsome in a rugged way with curly brown hair and hazel eyes, and he also smelled nicely of aftershave. He was steady and responsible and would, when he got into the union, be able to support a family. Such considerations could not be ignored.
They went to the movies and saw Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat in
Knight Without Armor
and another picture called
Married Before Breakfast
. She tried to compare Henry Goldbaum with Robert Donat, but, even discounting the British accent, her imagination simply could not stretch that far.
Even when they began to neck on the landing of her apartment building, she forced herself to imagine what living with Henry on a permanent basis might be like. Like her mother, after a day of shopping and housekeeping, she would have a hot meal on the table when he came home. He would tell her about people in the shop, cutters like him, how the bosses had maltreated him, how he was worth more than what he got, how the unions cheated him. Later would come babies, diapers, formulas, school. Was that it? Normal, respectable, safe, comfortable, steady.
She thought, too, of sex with Henry. Would that be worth the
other, the boring drudgery that would make her grouchy, irritated and unhappy like her mother?
That night she even let him go further than he had ever gone before, letting him push her panties aside and get his fingers on her bare thing.
“I love you, Mutzie,” he told her as he moved his finger back and forth on her thing. He was a little rough, but she wasn’t entirely indifferent to the sensation and she could feel her heart pumping and her breath coming in deeper gasps than usual.
He put her hand on his penis and this time she grasped it over his pants.
“May I take it out?” he whispered. She could feel his face grow hot and he accelerated the action of his fingers on her thing. She did not answer his question, and he probably assumed it meant that he could. Which he did. She had never in her life felt a man’s hard-on. It felt hot and velvety.
“Just rub it up and down in your fist,” he told her.
She did as he asked, feeling strange as he moved his body to the rhythm of her fist. Although she wanted also to look at it, she was fearful that he would see her doing this and that would embarrass her. Instead she kept her eyes closed.
“Oh, please marry me, Mutzie. I love you so much. Oh God I love you.”
The titillation of his finger on her thing was making her feel good. She had done this to herself on occasion and it had also felt good. Sometimes it made her shudder with pleasure which, she knew, meant that she had had a climax, although it did leave her with the feeling that she had done something nasty.
Suddenly, she heard Henry gasp and his hard-on seemed to twitch and jump and she felt warm sticky fluid on her hand. Then he removed his fingers from her thing, which she could not quite
understand, since she felt that a little more work on his part would make her reach a climax.
“Oh God, Mutzie,” Henry said. “We’ve got to be married now.”
“Because we did this?” Mutzie said. She felt let down, slightly disappointed.
“Partly,” Henry said. “It shows how much we need each other. Besides, after awhile you’ll want to go all the way. That’s nature’s way of showing how deeply two people need each other.”