How They Met, and Other Stories

But William was already speaking, talking about the length of the exposure and the solitude of the near-daybreak. Milo could not find a transition. He was afraid of souring what had been a wonderful afternoon. William spoke on—of apertures and natural light and the point where the eye is directed. Milo’s urgency subsided into a light, bearable sadness.

He tried to look at the pictures.

There comes a moment of decision, if not many. He is talking to you about his morning and suddenly more than anything else you want to kiss him. Or it is night and you are staring at her upturned face, wondering wondering wondering. You share a bed, you share a glance. He changes his shirt in front of you, and you think: You have no idea how much I love you. He has no idea. He is the lucky one.

The question is there in each silence. The question is there in the space between you. But you cannot bring it aloud. He is lending you his sweater. She is hugging you hello, and you try to measure for that extra beat. You linger in his apartment, he lingers in your thoughts. When you touch her arm, you feel a charge. You are lying on the floor, watching TV, your legs intertwine with his. You are on the couch laughing. You are breathing in the night sky, lying on your backs. She is pointing out Orion. Your head is on his shoulder, you are riding on the train. You are walking arm in arm through a snowstorm. Singing.

There are good reasons, there are bad reasons—but most of all, there are too many reasons. They cloud, they crush, they deceive. They are too much and never enough.

There is an avoidance in everything. Avoidance, and invention. Ramona rings Milo’s doorbell. Milo watches William’s mouth as he mentions the still point of morning. Ramona rings the doorbell again. She sits alone in her kitchen. Milo imagines what William would be like as a boyfriend. Ramona invents Milo. Milo invents William. They are all invented.

And you…you are not invented. Who do you invent? It goes unspoken.

To love—to fall—is not a question.

To touch—to kiss—to speak—those are questions.

There is nothing worse than a ruined friendship. There is nothing better than a companion. Somewhere in between lies risk.

Somewhere in between, lies.

Ramona reaches over and pulls Milo toward her. She embraces him, she plunges, she will not let go for a minute. She can do it. Milo and William have a conversation about love and halfway through, Milo interjects: “But, William, you know this is how I feel about you?” He can do it. Milo holds Ramona and treasures her. William is surprised, but not displeased. There are happy endings. There have to be.

You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking. What would you have them do?

Ramona and Milo. Milo and William. Kisses and sighs. Ridiculous Boyfriend #9 and you. Him and she.

They are inventions. They can do things.

I can’t do the things they do. I can invent.

Ramona reaches over and pulls Milo toward her. (You are right there.) She embraces him, she plunges, she will not let go for a minute. (I want this more than words.) She can do it. (I can’t.) Milo and William have a conversation about love and halfway through, Milo interjects: “But, William, you know this is how I feel about you?” (I have daydreams where I see this happening.) He can do it. (I just can’t.) Milo holds Ramona and treasures her. William is surprised, but not displeased. There are happy endings. (When I write them.) There have to be. (When I write.)

I want to write my life. I want to be able to write my life.

You are a second away from saying it.

You have no idea how much I love you.

HOW THEY MET

I think my favorite family stories are the stories of how my grandparents met. To think that these two intersections led to my parents, led to me. That my very existence owes thanks to a piano, a jeep, Hunter College, and the U.S. Army. One of the two stories I’ve been told for as long as I can remember being told stories. The other I recently learned. They amaze me because they prove that a single moment can blossom into almost fifty years of togetherness. They prove that my grandparents were once young and crazy and romantic and yearning. They are finished stories to me now—I knew the ending from the first time I heard them. But at the time…well, at the time it must have been something.

My Papa Louis and Grandma Alice’s story has to begin with the phrase “It was during the war.”

It was during the war. My great-aunt Estelle (my grandfather’s sister) and a friend of my grandmother’s were going to Hunter College. One day they were comparing notes and discovered that both of their siblings were stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. They decided to do a little matchmaking. Gladys (my grandfather’s other sister) wrote to Lou. Irene (one of my grandmother’s sisters) wrote to Alice. Lou got on the horn to Alice. A date was set.

But Lou wasn’t going to leave everything to chance. He was thirty-three, a paratrooper. He’d been a cop in New York City before the war and had been on a date or two. He decided to make sure everything was on the up and up before going on a blind date. So a couple of days beforehand he borrowed a jeep and did a drive-by lookover. He found out where my grandmother was going to be and (for lack of a better term) checked her out. He liked what he saw. The date was on.

My grandmother was nine years younger than my grandfather. She was a dietician, and outranked my grandfather. When my grandfather called her up, they arranged to meet Friday for lunch. They hit it off, and my grandmother asked my grandfather if he wanted to go to synagogue with her. This would end up being one of the few times my grandfather would go to temple in his life. (The things we do for love.) He said yes. They met. They talked and talked and talked.

Something clicked.

My grandmother told her friends she’d met this crazy guy. Crazy in a good way.

My grandmother must have been pretty crazy, too. Crazy in a good way.

They were both clearly crazy for each other.

They met on Friday.

By Wednesday they were engaged and talking to a rabbi.

Three days later, after my grandfather’s baseball game, they were married.

This is a story we tell all the time. A couple of the details change every now and then, or a character is added (what was the name of the justice who married them?). But the moral of the story is that it worked. They knew, and they were right.

It wasn’t until my Pop-Pop Arnold had heart surgery that I realized I didn’t know how he and my Grandma Grace had met. I asked my mother and she didn’t know, either. She got the story, told it to me, and the next time I saw my grandfather I asked him to tell it again. It’s a different kind of story than “during the war.” But I love it just as much.

My mother’s parents met because they often passed each other in the neighborhood. My grandmother was in a group of girls who would hang out on a certain stoop, chatting. My grandfather was in a group of guys who would walk past on their way to work and say hello. Soon they started talking, group with group, and my grandfather’s friend, Sidney Throne, decided to set Arnold and Grace up.

I don’t know what their first date was, but I do know that they had such a good time that my grandfather traveled to another borough in order to walk her home. They said good night, saw each other a little more, and eventually it came time for my grandmother to bring my grandfather home.

My great-grandmother was not amused. My grandfather was from Detroit. He’d run away to escape the Ford factory and his parents. He was not from a Fine Jewish Family, like my grandmother was. According to my grandfather, the moment my great-grandmother set eyes on him, she thought, Who is this shmegegie?

“She wouldn’t give me a glass of water” is how my grandfather tells it. He was ushered into the living room, where all the chairs had cords over them, like antiques in a museum. The only place that didn’t have a cord was the piano bench. The piano itself was an ugly green Steinway, never used. My grandfather squeezed in among the clunky furniture, made small talk, but was never offered anything polite, not even a glass of water.

This repeated a few times.

Then one day, sitting on the piano bench, my grandfather decided to open the piano. With my great-grandmother out of the room, he started to play for Grace. He had been to Juilliard, you see, and the room was soon filled with music. My great-grandmother stormed in, disbelieving. Then slowly she went over to the window closest to the piano and opened it. Then the next window. Window after window. So the neighbors could hear. So the neighbors could know what kind of visitor they had.

The next time, he got a glass of water.

Is this the whole story? Of course not, in either case. But these are the true-life family fairy tales, and I’m happy to be the one to tell them ever after.

In 1964, in the summer after they graduated from high school, my parents were set up on a blind date. They went to see A Hard Day’s Night.

I am here because of a piano, a jeep, Hunter College, the U.S. Army, the Beatles, and a whole bunch of matchmakers. I am here because of letters written during a war, music played with windows open, a crazy leap.

And love. I am here because of love.

MEMORY DANCE

Wallace liked his cornflakes to be served the same way every morning—with only enough milk to surround (and not dampen) the cereal, perhaps with a piece of fruit thrown in. He was accustomed to having them day after day, a constant in his unextraordinary life.

The other constant in Wallace’s life, of more importance than the cornflakes, was Mary, who for forty years had sat across the breakfast table from him. Recently, she had been the same every morning, too, dressed in a bowed blouse, blue skirt, and white sneakers (a gift from one of their few grandchildren), the standard outfit for a schoolteacher over sixty.

That day started like many others before it, with Mary waking first and Wallace wandering into the kitchen after ample time was provided to make coffee and pour orange juice (coffee for him and orange juice for her). Wallace had on a bathrobe over his flannel pajamas; he had recently been feeling a chill during the unpredictable April nights.

“Any coffee?” he asked as he entered the kitchen, more out of habit than thirst.

“Here,” she answered, pouring the coffee into a World’s Greatest Grandmother mug, leaving just enough space at the top for the milk.

The cornflakes box and bowl were already on the table, awaiting Wallace’s use. As he sat upon a cushion worn thin over the years, his wife impulsively went to the refrigerator and got Wallace the milk for his cereal. And although she realized that he could have gotten up himself, she always did it. Bringing the milk was merely one of the many constant mini-actions in her life, and to change the process would only make her think about it, thus making the whole thing much more complicated than it was.

“Thank you,” Wallace said, always routinely appreciative.

“You’re welcome,” Mary mumbled, as she walked the ten steps to retrieve her toast from the toaster.

Sitting at the table, neither of them was terribly interested in the other. Granted, had one been missing, the other would have noticed. Yet breakfasts could be eaten with little more than a few words spoken between the lifemates. They had been together so long that superfluous conversation (“Nice weather we’re having,” “What time did you go to sleep last night?”) did not need to be voiced. It was assumed.

That morning, however, the morning was in some manner disrupted. It started very innocently; Mary had been looking at a slightly askew picture frame behind Wallace when he, sensing her head’s movement, looked up to match her glance. But when Mary’s gaze shifted back from beyond Wallace, she couldn’t see him at all. She suddenly found herself reaching through the bonds of time and under the tattered layers of skin.

A hand appeared before her—a man’s hand free of age spots and prominent veins. And when she followed the hand to see its keeper, she saw him again, the one she had only seen long ago.

He was a young man once more, looking polite and hesitant, like one of her fourth-grade students on the eve of a school dance. His smile was a mixture of delight and fear, his voice searching to sound assured.