Til the Real Thing Comes Along (45 page)

“I won’t pressure you,” he said, but when on a few dates his kisses got urgent, he murmured, “Please, honey, please change
your mind.” But she didn’t. Didn’t think she should. What if she didn’t many him after all? Marry him. A man who didn’t like
her play. Maybe, she hoped, this was his way. Not to laugh, but to listen very carefully to the rest of the audience, and
to be objective, and at the end when the curtain went down, to put his arms around her and whisper “fabulous” in her ear.
He coughed again. That same big cough, and a few minutes later the curtain went down. It shot up immediately for the curtain
call, and the applause was loud. The actors flew onto the stage with elated faces, and R.J. felt a swift wave of envy as she
imagined them, all when the curtain came down, squealing with excitement, then rushing down to The Greek’s to have
a beer and talk over every beat of the play with the director and the stage manager. But not the playwright, because she was
with her mother and Alvin Feld. Dr. Alvin Feld, who wanted to marry her. A man who was what the girls in high school called
a J.M.D.—A Jewish Mother’s Dream.

“So, Ma,” R.J. said, putting an arm around her mother’s shoulder as they stepped out of the theater into the warm spring night.
“What did you think?”

Rifke looked all around at the young people emerging from the theater. She smiled and nodded as she did, as if she was glad
to be among them, absorbing their excitement. Then she opened her purse and took out an L&M and some matches.

“Ma?” Rosie asked, avoiding at all costs looking at Alvin, who was standing behind her. Her mother opened the pack of matches
and was about to light her cigarette when she looked at R.J.

“Oy,
one second,” Rifke said suddenly, realization filling her face. Then she reached up to her eyeglasses and made an adjustment
on the volume of the hearing aid. When she was satisfied with the volume level she said, “It was so loud in the beginning,
I turned it all the way down.”

Her smiles. They were for a play she only saw. Never heard. R.J. wanted to cry and she knew she still had Alvin to deal with.
She was about to turn to him when Evie Bingham, her mentor, her severest critic, her playwriting for the last four years,
burst from the doors of the theater, spotted her, moved purposefully toward her, and squeezed her arm.

“In my office tomorrow, girl,” she said, in a way that made R.J. know she liked the work, and before she could be introduced
to Rifke and Alvin, Evie had disappeared into the crowd.

It was time to look at Alvin. R.J. turned. He was standing, hands folded at his waist, looking around at the crowd, and R.J.
thought he turned his head too quickly to get a better look at the miniskirted, white-booted freshman girl who walked by.

“So, Doc,” R.J. said quietly, wishing he would never have to look around or answer her so she wouldn’t have to hear him say
what she already knew, which was that he hated it. Disapproved. Of her play. Of her, after all. Because even though she’d
been inspired by other people’s conversations,
the play really contained her point of view. Her sensibilities. He turned.

“Fine, Rose,” he said. The liar. “The audience really ate it up.”

But you, Alvin, she wanted to say. What did you think? Was there anything about it you thought was funny? Had insight? Instead
she said, “Do you think so?”

“Oh, sure,” he said, and took her arm. “They were very amused.” Then he took her mother’s arm too, and walked them toward
the parking lot in silence.

“If,” Evie Bingham said, and she paused, a momentous pause, “anyone in this department that sanctifies Ibsen and Chekhov ever
comes back to me and reports that you said we had the following conversation, please be advised, Miss R.J. Rabinowitz, that
I will deny ever having had it. So do you—as your people would say—
farshtey?”

R.J. nodded. This woman. Evie Bingham. Two plays produced off Broadway, one on Broadway, two novels, and a volume of short
stories. This woman was her idol. She had the best sense of humor, the warmest way about her. In R.J.’s worst moments of self-doubt
in her four chaotic years in the drama department, she had always been able to go to Evie for counsel. It had started when
the money for R.J.’s freshman tuition was used up and her ability to stay in the school for the next three years looked very
iffy. Evie had spoken on her behalf to get her the yearly academic scholarship which had made it possible for R.J. to stay
in school.

“Not a word,” R.J. promised.

“I have friends in Hollywood,” Evie said, and then winced and covered her eyes. “Oh, my God, what a sordid admission.” Then
she uncovered her eyes and got serious. Her gray hair was cut in straight bangs across her forehead. She had a long nose and
olive skin with very large pores.

“Honey, you are the most commercial writer of any I’ve ever taught,” she said, “which around here is probably a huge insult.
But it’s true. I mean, you’re a cream puff. In the best sense. You see silliness around you everywhere you go, and I love
that. And you know where else they love it? In the world of tel-tel-tel…” It was a fake stutter and she
and R.J. both laughed at the joke. “God, I can’t even say it.”

“Television,” R.J. said.

“As I said, despite the sordidness of the admission, the truth is, even living in Pittsburgh, I do have a friend or two in
that world. You know—alumni and all that. So, if you want my opinion, and after having suitably dazzled you for four years
I’m certain that you can’t live without it, you ought to make it through the commencement exercises and hightail it out to
Los Angeles.”

Los Angeles. The only thing R.J. knew about Los Angeles was what she’d seen on
77 Sunset Strip,
Television. Evie Bingham was praising her work. Or was she? Maybe this was a huge insult.

“It’s rare what you have,” Evie said, now very seriously. “A point of view that sees jokes in pain. Don’t waste it. I mean,
what were you going to do after you graduated? Did you have any plans? I mean anything crucial that couldn’t wait?”

“No,” R.J. said, very serious now too. “I was just going to get married.”

“See what I mean?” Evie Bingam said, pointing in R.J.’s face and laughing. “That’s funny. Go to Hollywood. Next, please,”
she said, as if she were a waitress at a bakery counter. “Please speak up. Who’s next?” Then she slapped her desk and laughed
some more.

Actually, Alvin had never officially asked R.J. to marry him. What he had done was to talk about their future together as
if it were a
fait accompli,
even after the taboo play. Though they were together constantly for the days following it, the play was never talked about.
Los Angeles. Uncle Munish’s son Maxie had moved there years ago, and he was probably the only person R.J. even vaguely knew
who lived in that strange exotic place. Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb.

Alvin and Rifke were playing gin at the kitchen table and R.J. was lying on the living room couch, staring at the television.
Bill Burns and the eleven o’clock news. It was just ending. “Good night, good luck, and good news tomorrow,” Bill Burns said.

“Amen,” R.J. heard Rifke say from the dining room table. Bill Burns said the same thing to the TV audience
every night, and every night Rifke said the same thing back to him.

R.J. got to her feet and walked to the kitchen. Alvin’s jacket and tie hung over the back of his chair. His shirt collar was
open, and his lower lip was extended in a pout, as he looked with a furrowed brow at his hand of cards. For a second he reminded
her of her father.

“I’m going to Los Angeles after graduation,” R.J. said, to her mother and Alvin. Neither of them looked up. Alvin discarded
a king.

“Gin,” Rifke said, grabbing the king, shoving it into her hand, and slapping another card face down on the table.

“No,” Alvin said, sincerely distressed.

“What do you mean, no?” Rifke asked, fanning her cards face up on the table. “Give a look here, sonny boy. Is that gin or
not?”

“God,” Alvin said, shaking his head in disbelief, holding his as-yet-unmatched cards out to show Rifke. “You got me with my
pants down. I don’t know who dealt these lousy cards.” And they both laughed.

R.J. couldn’t believe it. They were ignoring her completely. Rifke pulled an L&M from her pack on the table. Alvin lit it
for her.

“How many points?” Rifke asked, and R.J. had to fight off a feeling that she was the other woman.

“Let’s see,” Alvin said.

“Los Angeles,” R.J. said louder. “Right after graduation. I have a few dollars and I want to go there.”

“Where?” Rifke asked.
“Vigeystu?”

“Fourteen,” Alvin said.

“Hooray,” Rifke said.

R.J. walked into her room, got undressed for bed, and went to sleep.

The money was some she’d managed to save over the last year, in a box in her sock drawer. It was enough, she figured, after
a phone call to Mona Feldstein Friedman’s ex-husband Jerry, who still ran the travel agency, to get her to and from Los Angeles
and keep her there for a month. By then she would have met all of Evie Bingham’s “contacts,” as Evie called them that morning
when she telephoned R.J. to give her their addresses and phone numbers. R.J. had it all figured out. She could have the television
people tell her what they wanted her to write, and she
could come back to Pittsburgh, write it, and mail it to them. Alvin would go to the hospital every day, and she would stay
home and write. Then, after the people she was writing for knew her well and knew her work, they could call her anytime they
needed more, and she would send it to them. It sounded like a perfect plan to her.

The morning she told it to Alvin he patted her hand and shook his head, then raised a finger to tell the waitress he wanted
more coffee. R.J. looked down at her bagel and cream cheese, wishing she were hungry, wishing she didn’t feel like crying.
Wishing they weren’t sitting in Weinstein’s, so in case she did start to cry she wouldn’t have to be seen running to the ladies’
room by half of Pittsburgh.

“It’s my fault,” Alvin said. “I should have realized that eventually your age would be a problem.”

“What does my age have to do with it?”

The waitress came and poured some more coffee into Alvin’s cup. He waited for her to finish and get a good distance from the
table before he answered.

“It makes you naive,” he said. “Foolish. You believe in fairy tales, Rose. Have fantasies about things that won’t ever come
true. And it’s not because you’re dumb. You’re not. If you were dumb I wouldn’t want to marry you.”

“Thank you,” R.J. said, then wondered what in heaven’s name she was thanking him for.

“It’s because you’re a little girl of twenty-two, and instead of having real values and a real understanding of what’s worthwhile,
you have delusions about the way things might be. And I understand. So here’s what I think you should do.” His voice changed
into the one he used when he was being a doctor. She’d heard him use it with her mother that first day and with patients on
the telephone. “Proceed with your plans. Go wherever you have to, to get a firsthand sense of what’s real. And after you’ve
made the distinction and you’re sanguine that you simply can’t have both—being married and having your absurd notion about
a career as a Hollywood writer—you can decide. I only hope for your sake that I’ll still be here.”

“Alvin,” she said, tearing a strip of her paper napkin, and then another. “If the television people won’t give me assignments
that I can write in Pittsburgh after we’re married, what
will
I do?”

“Do?” Alvin said, but he was stalling, stuck for an
answer, and R.J. noticed for the first time that he had a few gray hairs above his ears. “What does my mother do? She makes
the house nice for my father.” R.J. had met Alvin’s parents. His father, a salesman, seemed dark and moody and brooding. His
mother was birdlike and weary. “Or
your
mother?” he added, and then realized that Rifke was not a good example, so he moved on. “My aunt Sheila,” he said, pleased
with himself for striking gold. “That’s who you’ll be like. You never met my aunt Sheila, but she is really a great person.
Kind of offbeat, like you.” He meant that as a compliment. “In fact, I don’t know why I never introduced you. She does the
shows for the Hadassah. They’re wonderful shows. Last April she wrote the President’s Day luncheon for my mother’s best girlfriend,
Helen Baum. My mother raved about it.”

The minute she got home from brunch, R.J. called Jerry Friedman the travel agent to firm up her plans to go to California.

Graduation day was hot and muggy, and the black commencement gown stuck to R.J.’s street clothes underneath it, and the band
inside the mortarboard made her head sweat. The a cappella choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and when she looked
out into the bleachers she spotted Rifke and Alvin together in the twelfth row. They were laughing and talking animatedly
to each other. In the years since Louie’s death Rifke had changed a lot. Come out of herself. Lately she was even flirting
with some of the men who came into the store. Happy with the new world of being able to hear.

Two of the men—Silverberg the produce man, and a customer named Solly Blywas—had asked her for a date.

“I think they’ve been asking me for years,” she confided to her daughter. “I just never heard them before.” R.J. laughed.
She loved her mother and would miss her. She had a passing thought, which she quickly shook off, about her being successful
in California and sending for Rifke to come and live with her there, and both of them loving the sunny climate, away from
the bleak gray winters of Pittsburgh forever. But no. There was Alvin. Here. And she would come back and marry him. The graduation
ceremony droned on, and when it was finally at an end, R.J. stood, and when they called her name, walked to the po
dium and collected her diploma. When she looked at the twelfth row, Rifke was waving a congratulatory wave.

When she came out of the gym, where she’d turned in her cap and gown and said tearful goodbyes to some friends whose parents
were taking them home right away, Alvin was standing waiting by the gym door. Alone.