American Wife

A block away, we found a cafe, mostly empty, where we were seated at a small table. My grandmother scanned the menu. “Have you ever had an eclair?” When I shook my head, she said, “We’ll split one. They’re bad for your figure but quite delicious.”

“Is Dr. Wycomb friends with Negroes?”

“Who told you that?” My grandmother scrutinized me.

It seemed unfair to pinpoint my mother. “I just was wondering, since a lot of them live in Chicago,” I said. I had at that time only the slightest awareness of the protests and sit-ins occurring in other parts of the country; my main reminder of race came from Dena, who was not allowed by her father to listen to records by black musicians and therefore liked for me to play Chubby Checker or the Marvelettes when she came over.

“Dr. Wycomb supports desegregation, as do I, as should you,” my grandmother said. “That just means they can eat and live and go to school where we do. But if you’re talking about socializing, Gladys spends more time with Jews than Negroes. Jews often become doctors, you know.” My grandmother still was looking at me closely and apropros of nothing, it seemed, she said, “You don’t have a beau, do you?”

“No,” I said, but I could feel my face heating. A month before, just after Thanksgiving, Dena and I had spent a Saturday night sledding on Bony Ridge with two senior boys, Larry Nagel and Robert Beike. Robert was the one who’d invited Dena, and Dena had brought me. In the inside pocket of his down coat, Larry had tucked a flask of bourbon that we passed around. More than once I’d sipped my grandmother’s old-fashioneds—she’d sometimes give me the maraschino cherry—but this was the first time I’d tasted alcohol away from home. And though I felt a wave of guilt, I knew I couldn’t refuse the bourbon without seeming to the boys and Dena like what I was: a goody-goody. So I had drunk from the flask each of the four times it came to me, and though it didn’t taste good, it made me warm and relaxed. Prior to meeting up with Larry and Robert, I’d been jittery, but I began to feel calm and amused. At one point, at the bottom of the hill, Dena and I scurried to a grove of trees, pulled down our snow pants, and urinated into the snow, giggly and unself-conscious. “Write your name in yellow,” Larry called to us. At the end of the night, the boys walked us back to our houses, and from across the street, I could see Dena and Robert on her porch, kissing deeply. For several minutes, Larry stood a few feet away from me—at one point, under his breath, he said, “If they don’t watch out, their tongues will freeze”—but after Robert and Dena pulled apart and Robert called in a shouting whisper, “We’ve gotta go, Nagel,” Larry zoomed toward me without warning, his mouth on mine, his lips cold but his tongue warm. The entire kiss lasted about eight seconds and involved much head and neck movement, as if Larry were participating in a pie-eating contest, but instead of a pie, there was my face. Then he was off our stoop, headed up Amity Lane with Robert, and as soon as they were sufficiently far away, Dena and I met in the middle of the street, clutching each other, trying not to scream. “You two were making out,” she hissed. Until Larry had kissed me, I had not necessarily thought I wanted him to, but after he had, I was glad. In the four weeks since then, Robert and Dena had gone on actual dates, but Larry and I had only passed in the halls at school, acknowledging each other vaguely.

In the cafe, my grandmother said, “You should have a beau. When I last went to see Dr. Ziemniak, he showed me a picture of Roy, who seems to be growing into a handsome fellow.” Dr. Ziemniak was our dentist.

“Roy Ziemniak is short,” I said.

“Aren’t we picky? Eugene Schwab, then.” The Schwabs lived two doors down from us.

“Eugene goes out with Rita Sanocki.”

“Not Irma and Morris’s daughter?”

I nodded.

“I’ve always thought she has a piggy face.”

“Granny!”

“You called Roy Ziemniak short, my dear. And I don’t mean to be cruel about Rita, but you must know what I’m referring to. It’s her eyes and nose.” The waitress arrived then to take our order, and when she was gone, my grandmother said, “I’d had two marriage proposals by the time I was your age. It’s time for you to start dating.”

“WE’VE FOUND A gentleman for you,” Dr. Wycomb announced the next evening at dinner. We were having rack of lamb, buttered rolls, and artichokes—another food I’d never tasted, and one Dr. Wycomb apparently ordered once a year in a crate from California. My grandmother had shown me how to remove the leaves and dip them in butter, how to daintily skim off the meat with my front teeth. “Marvin Benheimer is the son of a colleague of mine, a gastroenterologist,” Dr. Wycomb was saying to me. “He’s in his second year at Yale University, and he’s very tall. He’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven.”

“What fun,” my grandmother said.

“He’ll pick me up here? Tomorrow?”

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” my grandmother said. “We thought it would be a treat for you after spending all week with two old ladies.”

“I like spending time with the two of you.”

“You don’t have to marry him, Alice,” my grandmother said. “Just consider it practice. It’s important to know how to behave in a range of social situations.”

I couldn’t tell my grandmother that she was underestimating me—I may not have been on any actual dates, but Larry Nagel was not even the first person I’d kissed. At Pauline Geisseler’s fourteenth birthday party in ninth grade, when we’d played post office, Bobby Sobczak had picked me, and then it became my turn and I picked Rudy Kuesto. Both of them had tasted like peanuts because that was one of Pauline’s party snacks.

“You shouldn’t worry,” Dr. Wycomb said. “Marvin is an upstanding young man. He’ll take you to dinner, then bring you to the Palmer House, where your grandmother and I will be having a drink with his parents, and we’ll all ring in the New Year together. That doesn’t sound so dreadful, does it?”

Before I could respond, my grandmother set down her fork and beamed. “That sounds perfect,” she said.

HE HAD ON a coat and tie, and I wore the kilt and blouse I’d worn on the train from Riley, but not the circle pin or the green wool sweater. “It’s manly,” my grandmother had said about the sweater when I appeared in the living room to show her and Dr. Wycomb the outfit, and though I protested that I’d be cold, she said it would be a short walk to the restaurant. Marvin visited with my grandmother and Dr. Wycomb before we left; when Myra asked what he’d like to drink, he said, “I’ll take a Miller, if you’ve got it,” then added, in the same tone of unjustified enthusiasm that the announcer used in the ads, “The champagne of bottled beers!” In this moment, I could feel my grandmother not making eye contact with me, refusing to concede what I’d been nearly certain of right away—that