A Complicated Marriage by Janice Van Horne Read Free Book Online

Norden’s, differing only in its vehemence.
    The blood is awash in my head. I want air. I want out. I want to kill them. Smash their heads. Spill blood. At the least, wreak havoc on that
killing field of a room. My mother droops beside me, silent and stricken. Elfrida begins to play the contrapuntal good cop. “Jenny won’t do anything foolish. She would never do anything to hurt Poor Lolly and her Darling Betty.” Then, as the scene reaches its denouement, an off-stage chorus of one is heard. The Bund has fully convened.
    Marlene, perhaps fearing contagion, never enters the den. From the living room she screams hysterically about the sin I am committing. She uncages the proverbial elephant by introducing sex and a smattering of Christ into the mix.
    Since I had moved to New York that fall, Marlene and I had spent our first “grown-up” time together. I had shown her around the Village, new territory for the cloistered uptown Spence girl. She had bought a pair of sandals like mine that her father forbade her to wear. We had talked about boys and dating—the blind leading the blind. At eighteen, having never hung out with boys, she had gotten a vicarious thrill out of my virginal tales. But tonight, no doubt fueled by her family, our girlie talks have taken on a new reality: marriage plus sex plus Jew. Images she can’t handle. She has gone over the edge and can’t come back.
    I rush for the door. How long have I been in that den? Fifteen minutes? More? The elevator takes years to come. I am imprisoned in that small hallway between two apartment doors. The Nazi—my name for him then, and forevermore—stands guard at his gate, white with rage, still ranting about my obscenity. My grandmother, who has arrived only moments before, stands in the foyer, bewildered, in her fur jacket and feathered hat, supported by my mother’s arm. Behind them, Marlene, violently pushing her mother away, fires another volley: “Our grandfather is turning in his grave!”
    That is my last look at my family as a group. But the Nazi has the last word. As the elevator door finally slides open and I step into its sanctum, haunted by someone’s arpège , his voice thunders down the airshaft. “If you dare use our name in a wedding announcement, we will sue you.”
    Â 
    The blur of Christmas lights ushered me down Park Avenue. I was a victim. I was a raging warrior. I was a martyr. I was omnipotent. I was powerless. I was all-knowing. I knew nothing.

    Only a year earlier, there had been another taxi ride down Park from 1155. A senior at Bennington, I was going to meet my mentor, Stanley Hyman, for drinks at the Algonquin, the Mecca of the literati. I no longer needed a red velvet dress. I was beautiful, radiating with the power of being me. I spread myself across the backseat, arms outstretched, my feet propped up on the jump seats across from me. I told the driver I was going to a party, that I was a poet and had just published my first book and the party was for me. He said that was swell. And I said, “I know.” I soared down the avenue. None of it was true, but what did that matter?
    Tonight there would be no chat, no soaring. I wrapped my wounds with vitriol. Why wasn’t my mother with me in the taxi? She who had said nothing. What was she thinking about? Was the Nazi reenacting the annual charade of Santa’s arrival—thump! thump!—before sliding open the dining-room doors to reveal the ceiling-high tree ablaze with real candles, in the German way, a bucket of sand at the ready, just in case. Were they singing a rousing chorus of “Tannenbaum” as they entered? I could see the table sagging under the weight of silver: candelabra, bells, birds, reindeer, and cornucopias. Oversize glockenspiels spinning their chimes. Dishes of red cabbage, heaps of mashed potatoes, applesauce, gravy boats thick with innards, and chestnut stuffing, and lord knows what