You Have To Kiss a Lot of Frogs

7

Roman Holiday

My Birthday

Gramercy Park, NYC 1991

Second Avenue. A rainy night. A night to remember. But more on that later.

His name was Roman. I had met him at the 86th Street bus stop a few weeks earlier. My scene partner from acting class was paying me forty dollars to feed his cats for a few days while he went up to Syracuse to see his girlfriend play Blanche in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire. I was waiting for the bus to take me across town, back to the Bohemian familiarity of the Upper West Side, when I heard someone talk to me. His friends talked to me first. His head was down. When he looked up I thought he was one of the cutest guys I’d ever seen.

I think he just asked me out on a dare. But when I got his message about a date, I immediately said yes. He was fairly new to the city. A stockbroker, a Yale grad. He’d gone to Yale on a soccer scholarship, stopped playing and wound up getting a great job on Wall Street. We would go all over New York. I showed him the city.

“Where would you like to go, young lady?” I got to pick the places and he got to pay. He set up the arrangement. I rather liked it. I’d go to Bloomingdale’s and buy clothes to wear just for my dates with Roman. I remember a pair of short wide orange palazzo pants with a matching sash. I wore it with white pumps and a long-sleeved white tee. I thought it very chic. So did Roman. He was enamored of me. I was his first New York City girl. And Jewish to boot. And he wasn’t. And it wasn’t an issue, because he wasn’t someone Jewish or Not Jewish. He was Roman. And that was perfect. However, he was still an East Sider, something bigger for me to overcome, but I was working on it.

The first night we went out, he told the waitress in Little Italy we were going to fly to Toronto for dessert. He knew a place that made great cannolis. I was wearing a purple scarf my friend, Fred, had brought back for me from Spain. Roman said it became a prop for me. A third hand. He thought it exciting that I was an actress. I thought it exciting that he made a living. That he was sensitive with a sincere edge. That he had big green eyes and wavy brown hair, and a voice that threaded together so many pieces of what the world had to offer.

“I tell the guy who comes by with the coffee in the morning that he and I are just the same,” Roman told me one night over a Courvoisier.

He felt guilty about his success. He thought he didn’t deserve it. That wasn’t true. He wasn’t on a free ride. He was working hard. He was trading the stocks. He was earning the money. It wasn’t Roman’s fault he got there by expertly kicking a ball instead of planning it out. It wasn’t Roman’s fault he came from a loving, not-well-to-do Catholic family in Boston and did well for himself. It also wasn’t Roman’s fault that he had outgrown his post-college girlfriend, Julie, who was still in Boston going back to nursing school. It wasn’t his fault he was moving on.

A party. My acting class. Me in a short jean skirt, red tights. Roman in a purple-and-blue-striped shirt. A Heineken in one hand, the other wrapped around me. Us on a terrace that wrapped around Manhattan. A great night.

Now the night. The one to remember. My birthday. Roman said that there were two types of people. Those who liked to ignore their birthdays, and those who liked a big fuss. Which was I? When he found out it was decided that he’d pick out a fabulous place, while I went off to Bloomingdale’s and picked out a fabulous dress.

I felt victorious as I combed through the racks of dresses in the Nightlife department, remembering years of birthdays and birthday dresses. This one was going to take the cake!

My birthday had always been a big deal to me. An event. It started in elementary school with a birthday tradition in my class that was passed on from Joni Wolf’s older sister, Debbie. We would take a bow used to decorate a package, attach pieces of ribbon to the back of it and put an ornament at the end of each ribbon. If a girl were turning eight, there would be eight ribbons with, let’s say, Tootsie Rolls tied to the bottom of each ribbon. They were theme corsages. Candy, stationery, kitchenware. My favorite was from Rachel Smith the year I turned ten. Ten pink, plastic hair curlers at the ends of the ribbons with a little note saying, “After your birthday I want my rollers back.” But by that time a girl could barely carry the weight of all those corsages, each with ten heavy ribbons and one for good luck. Especially when tent dresses were all the rave.

My mother and I had shopped and shopped until I found the perfect Kelly-green ultrapleated tent dress with white polka dots. When I put it on that morning, I spun round and round in front of the mirror watching the dress whirl. I looked like I was about to take off! I got to school and all my friends had made me great corsages. Bazooka Joe bubble gum, pencils, spoons. So now all of the very lovely, but very heavy corsages were pulling my dress forward, and when I stood up to answer a question, Murray Binder, who was seated behind me, screamed out, “Oooh, look, she has matching polka-dot panties too!”

“They’re not panties,” I turned around and screamed at Murray, totally embarrassed, bent over my dress, supporting it with my arms so the weight of the whole thing didn’t make me fall over completely. “They came with it. It’s part of the outfit.”

“Where’d you get it?” Rina Biller snidely yelled out. “Alex or Bloomie’s?” Rina knew full well that I had not gone shopping in The City at the wonderful and exclusive Bloomingdale’s. Rina knew my mother always took me to Alexander’s in Rego Park, Queens, where I invariably got nauseous from the ringing bells, the sales tables and the fights in the overcrowded parking lot.

“Stop this excitement,” Mrs. Gorsky hollered. “This is stupidity.”

I stood mortified and angry that our crazy teacher was ruining my birthday.

“Take those bows off and put them away. You can take them home at three o’clock. What’s the matter with you kids? Doesn’t anyone care about what’s going on in this world?”

Mrs. Gorsky paused for a moment. I looked at her red hair standing up in the middle of her head like Bozo’s. Her dress came to below her knee. There was a run in her stocking, and her black laced shoes looked like my grandmother’s.

“Quiet!” Mrs. Gorsky went to her desk and picked up a small black transistor radio. She stood in the aisle between rows two and three, kept the radio to her ear and listened. The class was quiet. Watching. I was in the last seat of row three, soundlessly storing my corsages in the empty desk until the three o’clock freedom bell rang.

“No! No!” Mrs. Gorsky let out a scream. “ACHHH, NOOOO!!!” She threw the radio in the floor. We watched it break into pieces, the same as when she had thrown chalk, pointers and once Joshua Morris’s eyeglasses. We were afraid of her. No one would speak.

“The world is insane. My son goes to Columbia. There are uprisings all over the campus. They took over the administration building. He can’t get an education.”

I carefully looked at my corsages inside the back desk as evidence of an innocent childhood. I was only ten years old and today was my birthday.

A week later Bobby Kennedy was shot. Every few years since I had been in kindergarten there were major assassinations. I watched other people mourn John and Malcolm and Martin. But this one, Bobby, felt different. This one felt real, and this one really hurt.

The following year we stopped making our own corsages and upgraded to the local florist. For seventy-five cents, the florist would make a little boutonniere out of a carnation. Now each girl looked like a bouquet on her birthday, but no one toppled over. By the time we went to junior high our birthday traditions had dissolved. It no longer mattered if I shopped at “Alex” or “Bloomie’s.” Girls were finally granted permission to wear pants. With all the marches and sit-ins and antiwar rallies I often felt like I’d never see another birthday. I’d never see another spring. But the world kept ticking and somehow it all kept going.

Looking at myself now while trying on these dresses, I was pleased with the woman who reflected back three times in the triangular mirror. I had grown up and I could do what I wanted, date whom I wanted and shop where I chose. Another spring was ending. Summer beginning. I left Bloomie’s with the perfect dress. Baby blue. Silk. Bare shoulders. High heels. A matching shawl of pale blue chiffon.

My birthday night arrived with torrential weather. Rain. Pouring rain. Thunder and lightning. An emergency at work. A last-minute call.

“Jeans, okay?” he asked.

I looked at the blue silk dress laid out on the bed before I hung it back in the closet. Another time. The rain did not wash out Roman.

“Sure,” I said into the cordless phone as I unhooked a pair of jeans from its hanger. I wore them with a white tank top. A fringe of lace over the bust. A peach cardigan. A yellow slicker. Roman was knocked out by the outfit.

“What outfit?” Rain clothes. I didn’t see. I just felt. Beautiful.

After eating Mexican we walked up Second Avenue. People. Mist. Dogs. Restaurants. A taxi whizzing by.

“Come here, young lady.” Roman pulled me to the side. Fluorescent light from a candy store. A kiss. Not just a kiss. A dissolve. Lips. So soft, hard, so warm, slow. Long and forever and so quickly a change. Between us. Together. Falling together into something else. A burrow that enveloped us.

“Is this how they do it in New York?” he whispered that night.

“This is how I do it with you,” I said. “I will never forget this. Ever.”

I cooked him dinners and he brought wine and flowers.

“I thought I should bring you something else,” he said one night, handing me a bouquet of purple tulips. “I went into Barneys and looked around. I thought, ‘Would she like this belt?’ But then I decided to bring the flowers.”

He helped me memorize a script. Roman hadn’t acted since grade school. It was a good thing! But he loved doing it with me, and I loved sharing my world. He played hooky from work and we explored the city. We’d sit at an outdoor café sipping wine and watching the people pass. Roman was in awe of the city in the middle of the day in the middle of the week.

“I never see this,” he said, sliding his hand up and down my thigh. “I’m inside at work, but the world is going on. The city never sleeps.”

He saw Manhattan as if it were brand-new. I filled up with pride as if I had built it. We went boating in Central Park. We hiked up a path in the park that made us feel like we were backpacking together in Europe. At the top. Looking down on the city. Looking out. Green trim of the Plaza Hotel accented the lake like a picture frame. He stood behind me and moved his hands possessively over my body. I was happy and I told him. And then he told me.

“I’m being transferred back to Boston.”

The weeks that followed were sad. Every great moment slipped into the next and it slipped into time that would move Roman from my present to my past. Unless.

“My agent called today to submit me for a role in a play,” I told him over one of our last dinners. We were sharing a piece of apple pie, drinking decaf coffee and brandy. I went into the bathroom three times during dinner to splash water under my eyes to disguise the swelling from the tears.

“That’s great. When is the audition?” Roman had learned the lingo.

“I don’t know if I will actually get one. The casting director has to select which actors they will give appointments to after they get the agent submissions. But I really, really want to read for this,” I said.

“Is it a great part?”

“Who cares? The show would be six months of work. In Boston.”

Silence.

Awkward.

Head down.

Shut down.

“What? I thought you’d be happy.”

He took a long time to answer. “Don’t give up your dreams for me, Karrie.”

“Don’t what?” I felt so betrayed. Misunderstood. “My agent submitted me for a role. For a job. A job! I’m not exactly chasing you to Boston. Are you afraid of that? What’s going on?”

He felt guilty. He was supposed to stay at home and marry Julie and raise a family. Instead he came to New York. He loved it. He met someone new. No one approved.

“Did you ask for this transfer?” I needed to know.

“No,” said Roman. “I didn’t. But it happened. And it makes me wonder why.”

“So do it. Go back. Trade stocks. Make money. And in a year ask to be transferred back here. It’s not such a big deal.”

Roman wasn’t so sure. He was sure I was special. But he was unsure how we fit. He was still pondering the question the day he left. Ninety-five-degree heat, a dog day of August, apartment packed, boxes picked up from UPS, two suitcases loaded into the trunk of cab, Roman ready for the airport.

“I’ll miss you, young lady. Move on. And keep a little mystery when you meet someone new. Let them know you slowly. Be happy.”

“I don’t want to be mysterious. I don’t want to meet someone new. I don’t want to move on. I like you.”

“Me, too,” he said as the cab took off, and Roman flew away. I walked back home through the park. I knew time would turn Roman into a memory I could live with, and it would be some time before that happened. But it did.

Eleven months later he called from Boston.

“Do you remember me?” he asked.

Yes, I remembered. I remembered well. The voice. Those pieces. I hoped they would thread together the sound of Roman’s transfer back to New York.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

“I sure do.”

“Tell me what you remember….”

Roman paused. “I wanted to tell you that I’m marrying Julie.”

I paused.

“It’s right for me,” he said. “It’s right for my life here, with the company. Our families are here. I’m sorry. I don’t feel I was fair to you.”

I wondered if he had been fair to himself. There was so much in New York he had yet to discover. Inside the city. Inside himself.

“Do you love her?” I held my breath hoping the right answer would not hurt too much.

“She would follow me anywhere,” he said. “Look, if you ever need anything. Money, anything, you can always contact me. Always. I’ll always remember you.”

“I’ll never forget.”

I never have. Sometimes on a moist and balmy New York night, when I take a walk, I can still see all the colors of the Roman rainbow.

8

My Worst Date… Almost

New Year’s

Day Chelsea, NYC 1992

The day after the party he called. I was bedridden, feeling comatose from the twenty-four-hour bug that had hit six hours earlier.

“I was so glad you gave your card to my sister,” he said.

I’d thought his sister was his wife. They were holding hands all night.

“Can we go out?”

“Okay,” I mumbled in my delirium.

“I’m so anxious to see you,” Arthur blathered. “I’ve never been this excited before. How’s Thursday? What do you like to do for fun? Am I too forward?”

“No. No.”

“Do you think it’s a possibility we’re going to have a great time?” he questioned. “I want you to come to this date really open with positive feelings. I’ll talk to you before Thursday. I can’t wait. This will be the best date of our lives.”

We never went out. He never called.

Arthur must have literally burst from anticipation.

9

The Clan of the Cab Bears

Passover

Port Authority, NYC 1992

“Need some help?” the homeless man asked while he watched me schlep my bags from the Airport Bus Center through the Port Authority.

“No, thanks,” I said, kicking the flowered one that was bigger than me and wouldn’t stay on my shoulder. The yellow cabs were all lined up on Eighth Avenue, just waiting to be hailed.

“We have to make a quick stop,” I told the cabby while I stood to the side and watched him put my baggage in the back seat. He was a big, chubby guy with wild, messy brown hair in baggy jeans and flannel shirt.

“It better be fast,” he said.

“Why? You have someplace to go?” I asked him, thinking that after he dropped me off, he’d probably like to go back twenty years, run over to the student union, lead a peace march and drop some acid.

“Well, no,” he said. “I just don’t feel like stopping.”

I opened the door to get out.

“But I will,” he said.

“Thanks a bunch.”

We sped between the traffic up the avenue.

“You just get back from a trip?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Where’d you go?” he asked, stopping the cab at a red light.

Through the window, I watched a man shoving leaflets at passersby.

“Check it out. Check it out,” he said, hoping to entice them into entering the House of Heavenly Delights. I looked up and saw an enlarged color photo of two women having their way with each other, while a man, dressed as the devil, held a pitchfork over their heads.

“Florida,” I said.

“Vacation?”

He was turning out to be pretty chatty, this…I looked to the front seat to see the name on his identification card. Alan Cohen.

“Passover,” I answered. Mom, Henry and I flew down to spend the holiday with Aunt Cookie and Uncle Sy. It had become a new tradition since my aunt and uncle had retired there five years ago. Uncle Sy’s Passover seder was so different from the holiday I remembered as a little girl when Grandpa Lou was still alive. He would recite the whole haggadah in Hebrew. My cousins and I would twist and turn in our seats for what seemed like a century until, finally, we could eat. After the meal, Grandpa Lou would hide the Afikoman, the magic piece of matzoh, and give a quarter to the kid who found it. All of us kids would search the Brooklyn apartment high and low only to find that, once again, our grandfather had hidden it in his suit jacket.

Some years later, after Grandpa Lou had passed on, Sy had stood at the head of his Long Island table and flipped on a small tape recorder. After a series of static sounds, Sy’s voice had filled the room. “Your mission tonight, if you choose to accept, is to skip the formalities and go directly to the Passover meal catered à la Cookie.” Everyone thought it was very funny, except for Grandma Rose, who was missing her husband and the days when “the holidays” meant her house.

“Yeah, Passover. Yeah,” said the cabby with the recognition I expected. “The folks glad to see you?”

“Thrilled.” There seemed no point explaining my folks didn’t really live there.

“Boca?” Alan Cohen asked in shorthand.

“West Palm.”

“Nice.”

Alan Cohen probably had family in Boca, I thought, and wished that he had gone down for Passover to see his parents. They probably lived in a development with two swimming pools, four tennis courts and a clubhouse. Alan would always think he was going to play tennis when he visited, but it never happened. He probably never went to see them much, being the black sheep of the family. Alan had probably had great potential. He was probably the salutatorian of his graduating class at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. His parents had thought he would be a doctor, or at very least, a dentist. But he went away to college, did too many drugs and never got out of the Sixties.

“So…” he said. He was determined to keep the conversation going. “Does your family do a whole seder thing, or do you just eat?”

I pictured Sy standing at the head of the table wearing a blue satin yarmulke on his head, a gold Jewish star around his neck and a yellow-and-white kitchen apron tied behind his waist.

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” he asked. “Because tonight we’re not going to ask the four questions. Every year you ask me the same questions, and for thirty years I’m giving the same answers. So, if you don’t know the answers by now, you’re out of luck.”

“We did a little seder,” I told Alan the interested cabdriver. “You know, the usual stuff.”

Sy was in rare form this year. “Now I want everyone to listen to the instructions on how we will proceed with tonight’s seder. First, this will be an abbreviated version of the abbreviated version we generally have. Only, I will say the blessing over the wine and that’ll be it. There’s no reason for us to go around the table and have everyone say the kiddush. So I will say the blessing and you all say Amen. Are you with me so far?”

“Like what’s your usual?” asked Alan. “How many minutes is yours? Ours were like about fifteen minutes. Me and my cousin, Ricky, always tried to sneak in some decent wine. That Manisohewitz crap is not anybody’s idea of a great vintage year.”