A Week as Andrea Benstock Read online

  “I think we should go back to campus.”

  “And break our appointment? Suppose we got charged anyway? Doesn’t your father charge when patients don’t show up?”

  “I’m serious, Winkie.”

  “I’m serious, too. I’m very fucking glib but I’m also serious. I’m going through with this. Look, what choice do I have? Stop and think about it for a minute. Have the baby and put it up for adoption? Come on. If I actually had the baby I’d keep it. You know something? If I were five years older I’d do that little thing. ’How do you do, world? I’m Miss Winifred Crispin Welles and this is my illegitimate daughter, and isn’t she the sweetest thing?”

  “What if it were a boy?”

  “Then I’d strangle the little bastard. Men are evil, Andrea Beth. I thought you knew that.”

  “You could get married.”

  A theatrical reaction, the steering wheel abandoned, then gripped quickly when the car begins to swerve. “Married? I’ll be an angel and pretend you never said that.”

  “Wouldn’t he marry you?”

  “Do you want to know something? I’m almost sure he would, the pig. I’ll tell you this much. He’d marry me a lot faster than I’d marry him. Hell would freeze a lot faster than I’d marry him. I don’t want to marry anybody, and I don’t want to marry anybody for a dumb reason like being pregnant, and I wouldn’t marry him under any circumstances. And having the baby and keeping it would be terrific if I were a much stronger person than I am—”

  “You’re a strong person.”

  “Oh, like hell I am. I don’t have a tenth of your strength, and would you keep an illegitimate baby?”

  “No.”

  “What would you do, as far as that goes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you must have thought about it.”

  “Of course, loads of times. And especially now. Just now.”

  “And?”

  “I guess I’d do what you’re doing. Have an abortion.”

  “Because there’s nothing else to do, right?”

  “I guess.”

  And, a little later, “Listen, not to worry, Kleinman. I’ve got my luck working for me. Nothing can possibly go wrong because I’ve got a Jew along for luck. Jews have always been lucky for me.”

  “You told me that the first day I met you.”

  “What did you think?”

  “That you were probably crazy. But in an interesting way.”

  “That’s something. Were you offended?”

  “Offended? I don’t know. Probably a little.”

  “You didn’t let it show.”

  “Oh, of course not.”

  “You’re not offended now, are you?”

  “No. But I still think you’re probably crazy, Winks.”

  “What a revelation. ’Reading—18 Miles.’ But it’s on the other side of Reading, isn’t it? You’ve got the directions?”

  “That’s the tenth time you’ve asked me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. The first boy I ever fucked was Jewish. I must have told you that.”

  “About seventy-three times.”

  “I didn’t know you were counting. Do you suppose that’s why I’m keen on circumcision?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Because I just think it’s so much cleaner and more aesthetic. It doesn’t much matter for screwing, but when you get a little more intimate it does. Don’t you think so? Or don’t you?”

  “I think the weather’s going to be great if the rain holds off.”

  “And I think you’re a fucking prude, Andrea Beth. That’s what I think. Why am I manic and depressive at the same time, will you tell me? Isn’t it supposed to alternate? Oh, the hell with it anyway. Can I tell you something terrible?”

  “Could I stop you?”

  “I don’t see how. No, this is a monumental confession. I’m enjoying this a little. I’m terrified, that was no bullshit, but part of me is sitting in the back seat observing this, this fucking film entitled Winkie Gets Aborted. It’s sort of a sequel to Gidget Goes Bananas. Do you know what I mean? I mean all of this stupidity appeals somehow to my sense of theater. Now isn’t that disgusting?”

  “A little. I’m nervous, too, and I’m enjoying it in a way, and it’s not even me it’s happening to. Maybe that’s more disgusting.”

  “It’s the notorious Jewish empathy. Hey, maybe the doctor’ll be a Jew. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  “He hasn’t got a very Jewish name.”

  “Maybe he changed it. Or maybe he doesn’t use his real name for abortions. In fact I’m sure he doesn’t, so maybe he’s a Jew.” Then, with a swift shake of her head, “No, not with my luck. With my luck he’ll be a Catholic. He’ll save the fetus and let me die, the bastard.”

  “You never talk much about Bryn Mawr.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “Not really. Not about Bryn Mawr, not about your life in New York.” The Huntley-Brinkley Report had just ended and he had turned off the set. He straightened up. “I’m not suggesting you’ve got some deep dark secret—”

  “Hardly that.”

  “Just wondered if there was anything you wanted to share.”

  “Well, you don’t talk much about college, either. You’ll talk about law school if it’s a story involving a legal point or if it includes someone we’re friendly with now, but how many times do you tell Stover-at-Yale anecdotes about the time you spent far above Cayuga’s waters.”

  “I guess that’s true.” He sat down beside her, picked up her hand in his. “Maybe it’s because we can’t really share those parts of our lives. They’re areas of our separate pasts. When I think of Cornell. To a great extent those were the years when I grew up. Being away from home—oh, we’ve talked about this, how easy it is to tell if someone went away to school or not. It was enough of an influence on me, those years at Cornell, that I didn’t have to go away to law school. I’d been away once and I could come back.”

  “Yes, we’ve talked about that.”

  “But if I were to try to think of anything from that very important time in my life that I wanted to talk about, or anyone I would even be inclined to mention . . . Now my two closest friends were both from Buffalo and both in Phi Ep with me.”

  “Dan and who else?”

  “A fellow named Mickey Ginsberg. I don’t know if you would have known him. He married a Baltimore girl and hasn’t been seen since. Those were my two best friends at college, but there were also several other guys I was very close to, extremely close to, and you know how it is at that stage of your life. I was sure I would never lose touch with them.”

  “Yes.”

  “I never invited them to the wedding. Never even sent them an announcement. Just a couple of years, but it makes that much difference. I never would have thought so at the time. I think you mentioned Winkie at one time or another.”

  “I’m sure I did.”

  “But you lost touch, and it’s been fewer years for you.”

  She nodded.

  “Were you very close?”

  “She was the closest friend I’ve ever had.”

  “Any idea why she would kill herself?”

  “Not really.”

  “Did she ever—”

  “No.”

  “Any history of emotional instability? Anything in the family, anything like that?”

  She glanced at him, then broke her gaze when she realized she was staring. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose she was a little crazy. We were all crazy, all the good guys were crazy.”

  “How do you mean that?”

  “I don’t know. She had a very original mind. She had as good a mind as anyone I’ve ever known. And she was terribly sophisticated—mercurial, I guess you could say.”

  “Ups and downs?”

  “Huh? Yes.” She paused to light a cigarette. “Intensity. That’s the best way to describe her. Everything was so desperately important and intense.”

  “You mean she t
ook things too seriously?”

  “No, no, no. I don’t mean that at all.”

  “Well, don’t bite my head off.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, baby. Come here.” She moved over and drew his head down into her lap and stroked his forehead with the tips of her fingers. “I didn’t mean she was serious. God, she had the most antic wit I ever came across. But she was—’intense’ is the only word I can come up with. Every moment was so very urgent and important.”

  “Isn’t part of that the age she was when you knew her? College kids are always more intense.”

  “And then you grow out of it.”

  There must have been something in her voice because his eyes widened for a moment. “I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. Not a matter of outgrowing it necessarily. But it’s rare for that kind of intensity to last throughout a lifetime.”

  “Unless the lifetime doesn’t last very long.”

  He didn’t say anything. She went on stroking his forehead. She liked these times, this silent closeness, but tonight she felt both closer and more remote than usual.

  “Eileen Fradin,” she said suddenly.

  “What about her?”

  “She never could have had that intensity that Winkie had.”

  “You didn’t know her until recently.”

  “No, but I know her well enough to know that about her. And in the same way I know Winkie didn’t stop living intensely, feeling things deeply. Maybe that’s what killed her.”

  “You’re reaching, don’t you think?”

  “Am I? Maybe she burned herself out.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Which isn’t likely to happen with Eileen.”

  “Where does Eileen come into it? You sound as though she doesn’t measure up.”

  “No, I don’t mean that.”

  “She’s a good friend to you, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, I guess she is,” she said slowly. “I don’t really know her. I spend a lot of time with her but we don’t really talk about anything. I’m not close with her the way I was with Winkie. I don’t think I ever could be.”

  “You might be surprised. How long did you know Winkie? A couple of years at college and a couple of years in New York?”

  “I hardly ever saw her in New York.”

  “Well, we might be friendly with Eileen and Roger for the next forty or fifty years.”

  “God.”

  “Does it sound that unpleasant?”

  “No. I just never thought in those terms. But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “And you and Eileen have things in common that you and Winkie didn’t.”

  “You’ve got that backwards, don’t you?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. No, not at all. You and Eileen grew up together, whether you really knew each other at the time or not. Their son’s older, but their second baby’ll be about the same as our first. Roger’ll join Northlawn in a year or so. He and I get along reasonably well. After the baby comes we’ll want a house, and if we don’t buy in Amherst we’ll probably buy near the Fradins, and if we do buy in Amherst their next house will probably be in Amherst. Add up all the different variations on those themes over thirty or forty or fifty years and compare them to what you had in common with what’s-her-name, Winkie. And all that really amounted to was that you happened to go to the same girls’ school at the same time.”

  “You’ve thought about this.”

  “Not really.”

  “It sounds as though you resent Winkie. Do you? I can’t imagine why you would.”

  “I don’t. Sometimes, oh, I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes I think you take people like Eileen for granted.”

  “But that’s not fair!”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. Baby? Don’t be upset. Listen, let me put on some records. Is there anything special you’d like to hear?”

  “Anything at all,” she said.

  Was there anyone she should call? Anything she should do?

  July 17th, the Alumnae Bulletin had said. That was more than two months ago. And no one had called her.

  But who would have called? Dana? Dana would probably have learned the same way that she learned—if Dana even bothered to keep up with alumnae news. And Dana wouldn’t call her any more than she would now call Dana. There was no one who might have called her with the news, and there was no one for her to inform in her turn.

  She had never met either of Winkie’s parents. They had been long divorced and Winkie had never been enormously fond of either of them. Andrea’s parents had met Winkie twice. No, three times. They had seemed to like each other well enough.

  That was one person she could tell. “Mother? You remember Winkie Welles, don’t you? Well, she killed herself two months ago. It’s too late to go to the funeral, not that there would have been any reason for you to go in the first place. I won’t say what she died of but she took a lot of sleeping pills, so as far as where to send the contribution—”

  Where? Was there an American Suicide League to accept contributions? An institution that collected funds and sponsored research that mapped those black holes on the edge of thought?

  Oh, but there was always the prayer-book fund. And that would be quite perfect. For every three dollars you sent they purchased yet another prayer book for the temple, and a bookplate inside the front cover memorialized the deceased. “Presented in Loving Memory of Winifred Crispin Welles.”

  Excellent. She would write a check herself, payable to the prayer-book fund of Temple Beth Sholom. And no acknowledgment need be sent, thank you.

  Winkie, wherever you are, you’ll get a laugh out of that, won’t you? Won’t you?

  “College must have been very different for you.”

  “Than high school?”

  “Than it was for me, is what I meant. I mean from a social standpoint primarily.” He put a cup of coffee on the table for her, then straightened up. “In terms of being Jewish.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Well, we’ve talked about college being just an extension of high school for the kids who went to U.B. and went on living at home. In terms of being Jewish, Cornell was just an extension of high school for me. All my friends were Jewish. I just went out with Jewish girls. I was in a Jewish fraternity.” He walked halfway across the room, turned, put his hands on his hips. “What’s interesting is that I never questioned any of that. I don’t think I felt any real prejudice against gentiles or that they were prejudiced against me. Of course overhearing my parents and their friends, but that was something that applied to older people. I didn’t feel personally affected by it. But I took it for granted, that while I would be friendly with non-Jews in the sense of being on good terms—”

  “That it would never go further than that.”

  “Exactly. I wonder when it started.”

  “In the womb?”

  “No, a little later than that.” His voice was serious.

  “For me it was when I finished grade school and entered high school. There were certain activities that were separate before then. Boy Scouts and dancing class, because those were activities that were centered around the temple.”

  “And Sunday school and Hebrew school.”

  “Well, obviously those were centered in the temple. Oh, I see what you mean. They were still activities that set us apart. That’s true enough. But the big thing was high school. Before then you didn’t pay any real attention to who was Jewish and who wasn’t in terms of who your friends were. Then one morning I got up and went to Bennett High, and there were fraternities for us and fraternities for them, and there was no cross-dating to speak of and if a Jewish girl went out with a gentile boy she got a reputation—”

  “And if a Jewish boy went out with a gentile girl it meant she put out, or why else would he bother with her. That was really the way we thought, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “And because of the way we thought, it wound up being true. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Yo
u knew what you were getting into, so when you went ahead and did it anyway—”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’re missing the eleven o’clock news.”

  “I don’t really care, do you?”

  “Well, there were a couple of baseball games tonight, but I don’t really need to know who won them. No, I’m enjoying this conversation. You know what’s funny? That we’ve gone this long without having it. I wonder how it all started?”

  “The conversation?”

  He shook his head. “The separation, the way it begins for real at the high school level. Oh, I know the answer, come to think of it. It’s how society prevents intermarriage. Let them be close until they’re old enough to take an interest in each other. Then keep ’ em apart.”

  “Like in the South?”

  “Oh?”

  “Negroes and whites in the South. White and colored kids play together in their cradles, they’re the best of friends and nobody thinks anything of it. I never even saw a colored person who wasn’t somebody’s maid until I went to high school, and how many Negroes were there at Bennett when I was there? I think three.”

  “Well, there has been some changes made since then, Sapphire. You wouldn’t recognize the place these days.”

  “So I understand, but don’t let me miss my point. I grew up in the North and never had any colored friends, but in the South they play together from infancy as a matter of course, and then there’s complete and total segregation the minute they go to school. Not high school, of course. Kindergarten or first grade, whatever it is. They have the segregated schools and as soon as they go to them they stop speaking to each other; It’s not that extreme here in Buffalo between Jews and gentiles—”

  “Hardly.”

  “But it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, I wonder.”

  “What’s the difference, Mark? It’s just one of degree.”

  “Maybe.” He refilled their coffee cups and brought in a plate of cookies. “Tell me about Bryn Mawr,” he said.

  “About Bryn Mawr. Okay. Perched on the Main Line just north of the teeming metropolis of Philadelphia, the esteemed college of Bryn Mawr—”