Growing Up in Manhattan

Part 6: Saturday Short Story

Then this guy goes back to his wife and bingo. Tantrum time, rage, anxiety, depression, genetics, Miltown. 

“Where is he now? The guy you felt might have tamed you?” Sachs asked, hoping to hear the charismatic professor had passed away and been cremated. 

“He and his wife moved to England. He had always wanted to live in the Cotswolds and be a country squire.” 

“Do you miss him?” Sachs asked. “Are you over it?” 

“Well over it,” she said. “In retrospect, I can see how outrageously I behaved. Why? Are you jealous?” 

“Yes.” 

“Don’t be. As the Larry Hart lyric goes, I only have eyes for you.” And with that, she leaned forward and kissed him, pushing a button she knew would release all the dopamine he had in his hypothalamus, and in seconds they were slipping into the back seat so the steering wheel wouldn’t get in the way. 

The next months were the nicest of his life. Not only was his play given an exact date to open at the Minetta Lane Theatre in December, but he landed a job not just supplying jokes on current events but joining the staff of a full-fledged comedy show. That brought him a big jump in salary plus a great boost to his confidence. He felt moving up like this would assure Lulu that she was betting on the right horse. She said, “Congratulations, but don’t let the world of TV seduce you. You’re an 176 

artist. Strindberg and O’Neill would not have gotten sidetracked by the vast wasteland.” 

Still, it made his alimony easier to handle. Best of all, he had moved from cousin Chester’s, and Lulu helped him find a delightful apartment on East Seventy-Eighth Street right off Madison Avenue. It was one very big room in a brownstone that had been made into multiple dwellings. It had a fireplace and windows that looked out on the tree-lined backyard gardens of several adjoining townhouses. Lulu not only helped him find it, she helped him furnish it. She showed him all the good antique shops she had been taken to by her mother and Paula’s interior decorator. 

“Area rugs,” she lectured. “Not a wall-to-wall carpet. And no overhead lights. Lamps only.” She helped him pick out café curtains and warm country pieces. It was Alessandros, she advised him, for the best fireplace equipment. “Logs,” she explained, “you have to order from Clark and Wilkins. They will deliver to you.” Lulu pushed nubby fabrics and muted colors. Autumnal hues, her mother’s decorator used to say, and Lulu passed the palette on to Sachs. When he bought a pewter lamp that had too white a shade, she showed him how to stain it with a tea bag. But it wasn’t just furnishings. Raised with a Rhinelander exchange, Lulu knew the Upper East Side like he knew the rides at Coney Island. She knew the best grocery markets and butcher shops. She knew the best hardware stores and art galleries and where to get the prettiest dishes and flatware. She knew all the best doctors and Swedish cleaning ladies and where to buy the finest brownies. It was either Greenberg’s or William Pohl, “depending on what your chocolate craving is signaling.” She told him the best barber was in the Carlyle Hotel, where to buy the finest wines, and where all the good all-night drugstores were. And if you lost a button and needed to find an impossible match, she had the place to go. Rhinelander, Butterfield, Templeton, Plaza: even though these tony phone exchanges marked off her main stomping grounds, she also knew the best sturgeon came from the West Side at Barney Greengrass. And since he loved to read mystery books, she took him to a tiny bookstore called Murder Ink. He had never heard of the Amato Opera, nor had he heard the singing waiters at Asti. He discovered the wonders of the Frick from her, and to pamper her insane sporadic midnight cravings for cheesecake, she introduced him to the Turf on Broadway. She was raised in Manhattan where he wished he had been raised, and he was finally getting a city education. In Harlem they ate steaks at Frank’s, and for oysters, it was Grand Central Station. Meanwhile, they made love in front of his fireplace and watched late movies on TV. Did they fight? Not often. And they were trivial disagreements, quickly healed. There was only one time Sachs thought the temperature rose uncomfortably.

He was driving them to Tanglewood to hear Mahler, which her father had introduced him to and which made him an instant fanatic. The highway was not moving. Traffic was at a standstill, bumper to bumper. Each car inched forward only rarely, headed for a tollbooth. There was a service road alongside the main road, and she was urging him to ease out of the traffic line and drive to the tollbooth on the service road and then ease back in the line. This he would not do, for several reasons ranging from morally wrong to fear of getting stomped to death by irate drivers who would not react kindly to someone cutting the line. She accused him of not having initiative and said others with her had done it before and it was not a capital offense. She offered to take over the wheel. Finally, he tried, but his heart was not in it, and he made a botch of it. She clearly had disdain for his ineptitude, and he was correct that the other drivers were not thrilled at his attempt to take advantage. After some creative expletives from road-ragers marooned behind the wheels of their cars, he made it back into the line by the grace of a single tolerant motorist. Lulu hardly spoke the rest of the way, and he wondered if this was a test he had somehow failed. Later, on the great lawn at Tanglewood, under the Big Dipper, listening to the unbearable sadness of Mahler’s Fourth, they eventually drifted back into each other’s arms, and the crisis faded.

Lulu still lived with her parents but spent most nights at his place. Her parents liked Sachs, and he liked them. Her father was a great guy; very warm and friendly, given to high-end living but in no way snobbish. Paula, the mom, was a bit more image-conscious but still very nice. She made helpful suggestions to improve Sachs’s wardrobe and said if he’d promise to throw away that awful aftershave he used, she’d gladly treat him to a new one. A fragrance, she called it, and he took her advice on such matters and they got along swell. Her parents took them both to dinner at all the tony restaurants where Arthur Brooks was recognized and definitely not shunted off to Siberia. After, there was always her dad’s discreet handshake with the headwaiter, smuggling a few crisp twenties into the man’s palm. La Caravelle, La Grenouille, Orsini’s. What dining experiences with this family. And who knew from palate cleansers? At Lutèce, Lulu insisted he taste escargot. He balked and said he found eating snails too disgusting. She thought it was absurd he wouldn’t even give it a try and teased, badgered, and charmed him until he finally agonizingly put one in his mouth. He made a cute face, pretended to swallow it, and managed to secretly ditch it without getting busted. His willingness to be a good sport won him a nice squeeze of his hand. Lulu’s father taught him who to tip and how much. They took Lulu and Sachs to the opera and to the theater, often with house seats. Arthur and Paula adored classical music, and Sachs heard his first Stravinsky and Bartók and took an instant liking to Sibelius. Her father put him in touch with his ticket broker so Sachs could then score good seats to hard-to-get shows. He and Lulu frequented the Half Note on Hudson Street and Birdland, where they listened to Miles and Coltrane and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. They caught every foreign film at the many art houses that dotted Manhattan. Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut. She spoke French. Outside of English, he was limited to the few Yiddish words he heard his mother calling him or his father. Schlemiel, schlimazel, schmendrick, putz, yold, useless when watching The Four Hundred Blows or La Strada. All the maître d’s had known Lulu since she was little and was taken to celebrate her birthdays at places like the Oak Room or Gino’s. But her favorite birthday memories were at Serendipity, and she and her friends still adored the Won Ton soup at Sam Wo’s in Chinatown, the pizza at John’s on Bleecker Street, and at midnight the chili at P. J. Clarke’s. Gifts, he learned, didn’t have to be expensive, but they had to be imaginative. Sachs discovered a shortcut to her heart was a music box from Rita Ford’s, her favorite store, which actually was expensive. He scored a bull’s-eye when he bought her a small Bemelmans watercolor of Madeline from the Hammer Gallery. He knew Lulu shopped at Saks and Tiffany’s and had charge accounts at Bergdorf’s and Bonwit, and between her and her mother he got a lesson in what was style as opposed to mere fashion. Her mother’s style was elegant, Lulu was very casual, and both always managed to look fabulous. “Style, not fashion,” her mother never tired of drumming into Lulu and Sachs. “Mrs. Vreeland always said, style, not fashion.” 

Sachs and Lulu made love all over town; at his apartment, in her bedroom if privacy permitted, and now and then they would check in to a hotel, with the new venue bringing out something fresh in her passion. Once, when her parents understandably did not want to use their season tickets to slog through The Flying Dutchman, Sachs and Lulu had their box all to themselves, and in the private compartment behind the seats, they did it to Wagner at Lincoln Center. Lulu introduced Sachs to her friends. Well-educated types she had grown up with or befriended at Ethical Culture or Fieldston or Brandeis. She introduced him to her sexy friend Jill with such a buildup you’d have thought she was trying to make a match. 

“She’s so beautiful and brilliant. She’s an architect. Lots of fun with a great sense of humor. You’ll love each other.” He met Jill, and she was fine but no one he would have been moved to call if he wasn’t going with Lulu. After practically pushing them together, Lulu kept selling Jill to him. She kept asking if he preferred Jill to her. He assured Lulu he did not. It amazed him that, despite Lulu’s looks and charm and intellect, she still seemed to have a little insecurity problem. For instance, she was thrilled when the producer of his Off-Broadway play wanted to cast an actress who was particularly attractive and talented. This would of course mean that she would be in contact with Sachs on a daily basis once rehearsals started. He had to assure Lulu, as he had done about Jill, that the actress could never mean anything to him, nor could the pretty Asian model who lived in the apartment over his. This jealousy flattered Sachs, although he had his own problems with insecurity. How could he not, with guys always hitting on Lulu and she with a naturally flirtatious personality? He was jealous of the time she spent with her friend Harley, even though he was openly gay. She had gone through Fieldston with Harley, and they were exceptionally close and laughed together at a million private jokes, and they dished and shopped and spent long stretches on the phone. They joked about giving up their ambitions and becoming a team of domestic servants. Harley would be the butler and Lulu the cook and cleaning lady. Not that she could cook anything but tuna casserole. It was all nonsense, but it bothered Sachs. Harley took her to see Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall but could not manage more than two seats, so Sachs could not go. Still Sachs had to admit he enjoyed Harley’s wit and learned a lot from his inside knowledge of the Broadway and Off-Broadway theater scene. 

After a live reading of his play, hearing his dialogue out loud was for Sachs like taking a cold shower. How awful it sounded. How foolish and immature. He was no longer the same person who wrote those words when he was typing on his Olivetti in the Village. He needed to fix it up, make it more real, less naive. Maybe the producer was OK with it, but Sachs had outgrown it. He wrote Lulu’s praise off to the fact that she wanted to be encouraging. It no longer satisfied him. It needed work. 

He and Lulu flew to Palm Beach to attend her friend Claire’s wedding. They tried to make love in the bathroom of the 727 in flight because she loved the idea of saying they both were members of the Mile High Club. Sadly, turbulence made the required choreography too slapstick. When Lulu read the first act of his rewrite, she was surprised how much he had deepened it, and even though she liked the original draft she could see this one was clearly better. 

He said someday he would write a terrific and complex role for her because she was terrific and complex. She said that was not why she was with him, so he could write for her. She said he should only write what inspired him. She bought him a leather-bound edition of Miss Julie and inscribed it “To Jerry, You only live once. If you’re a schlemiel, twice won’t help. Love, Lulu.” By that time, she was just about living with him, and they looked for a larger apartment they might move into together. Her friends thought they made a great couple and felt, of all of Lulu’s romances, this one was actually going to hit paydirt. 

One afternoon in October, Sachs returned to the bench where he met her. He was looking up at the penthouse where it all began, but now with a slightly different perspective. He had been there, done that, and had seen it firsthand, and it was very lovely if not precisely a set where Tracy and Hepburn could solve their unsolvable dilemmas. He laughed at himself when he thought he had learned how to tolerate burgundy, even if it was only one glass. He knew now how much to tip and how to get logs for his fireplace and what Mahler sounded like and what the best brownies tasted like and what aftershave never to buy again. He realized what a small life he had previously led. How limited was his upbringing in so many ways. Of course, he understood his parents did the best they could given their struggles and on his father’s tiny income. He wondered if he had not judged Ruth and Morris too harshly, too unrealistically. At that moment he felt sad that they would never live high above the city unless someday, if things went right, he could splurge and make it happen for them. He resolved to take them to dinner at Lutèce and laughed, thinking his mother would say something like “Aunt Rhoda’s halibut is much better.” He envisioned his father loving the food, then complaining all night of heartburn. Still, maybe it would be nice to treat them even if they kvetched.