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  For my mother, Sarah

  Just wait until now becomes then. You’ll see how happy we were.

  —SUSAN SONTAG

  Preface

  At the start of the Orson Welles movie Citizen Kane, as Kane is dying in his wheelchair, he whispers “Rosebud” and the audience is left to piece together the significance of the word for the rest of the movie. When I saw it for the first time, I was in my early twenties, and I was reading a series of books called A History of Private Life, a recounting of civilization in three or four volumes. Each referenced the grand wars, monarchies, art, and politics that other history books focused on, but only as placeholders for what were the real make-or-break major events of history: the stories about the daily lives of slaves and citizens and how they lived, the food they ate, their bathing rituals; the undisciplined sexual habits of the Byzantine court; the heights of beds in Renaissance Italy and what they were made of; etc. So. My ideas about memory, what matters, what to chronicle, were formed largely by that “Rosebud” moment, and further fixed in my psyche by those books, a powerful duo of influences.

  Once the hurdles of insecurity were jumped, once I was convinced it was the right time for my story to be told, I started the task of editing the events of my life, making lists and putting stories in order, comparing the big headlines with the tiny little items. Not ever having been one to revel, it’s the tiny things that make me happy more than any great accomplishment or glamourous acquisition or celebration. When I was thirteen my mother gave me Colette to read—a book called Earthly Paradise, which had lots in it about sensual pleasures. I guess I took it very much to heart. That combined with my natal astrological chart, Libra with a Virgo ascendant, makes me obsessive about creature comforts. What I eat for breakfast often carries more weight than an artistic inspiration or some kind of big achievement. (I now understand why old people are so obsessed with food. I know people in their eighties who talk about their preference for a certain brand of cottage cheese the way JFK talked about Cuba. I, too, am now obsessive with my dietary preferences, and those musings are, more and more, the centerpieces of my conversation.) And so after a great, long meditation, I began this book with the idea to memorialize the tiny day-to-day rituals, even at the cost of leaving out great chunks of my career trajectory. For example, I was much more inclined to remember the long melancholic walks I took in the environs of the Guggenheim Museum during the breaks from rehearsals of Peter and the Wolf than the opening night of the show itself.

  Through the writing and rewriting of this book I realized I had to sacrifice a few things for “shape.” After all, a book that hangs together, that’s meaningful in some way, is my ultimate goal, and getting sidetracked helps no one. So I edited. But what I hated losing were the tiny things, the day-to-day history of my own private life. And thus, I worry: Did I miss it? The minutiae? So many microhistories have had such a huge impact on the experience of my life. For instance:

  • The pages about swimming, which I have done at the same pool for the past thirty-five years. The minifrittata I ate for breakfast afterwards at a place called Good and Plenty To Go, a small catering facility up the block from the pool. Most mornings of my life I sat at one of the three outdoor tables, dreaming, planning, brooding, freezing my ass off in February, and sweating through my clothes in August. When it closed seven years ago, my heart broke. Had I died around that time, the last words on my lips would surely have been “mini zucchini frittata,” thus throwing my personal history, and those who survived me, into a quagmire.

  • An in-depth description of the years I spent riding the subway before completely swearing it off. The size of subway tokens and how they changed. What subway tokens actually were; I worry there’s a whole upcoming generation who might shrug their shoulders. And especially how I mistrusted MetroCards. (I’d have sworn some elfin subway-riding thief was depleting my MetroCard when I was least aware.)

  • Our first and only family dog, called Pom Pom, who got the shaft in draft two of this book. He was an apricot standard poodle that my mother acquired sometime in the late sixties. She kept him meticulously groomed, down to his pink-polished claws and topiary cut, and he inspired a collection of topiary fur coats I did in 2008—which I hired a poodle groomer to execute.

  • Stories about travel that will never see the light of day; trips I took and loved before I started to hate traveling. And not descriptions of the romantic gondola rides in Venice, or fabulous dinners in Marseilles, or gardens in Kyoto where I had more than one revelation. No, these were writings about squalid airplane-seat upholstery; meals eaten on the fly at a Wolfgang Puck concession in a certain Midwest airport I frequented; extraordinary linen sheets in a very ordinary pensione in Florence; and the habits and signals of cruising parks in London and Milan.

  • And what of smoking? How I loved smoking. How it made me feel like Greta Garbo, and how attached I was to the accoutrement. Details about my favorite ashtray and the jeweled lighter I found with my dear friend Lisa Eisner at the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena, which led to the design of a costume in an opera I directed in St. Louis. And how I gave up smoking cold turkey fifteen years ago after nearly thirty years of being a slave to the filthy habit.

  • Not to mention the house in Bridgehampton I’ve occupied for the past twenty-eight years, which has been redone twice but still has the same view from my bathroom of a small oak tree I planted when I got the house. And how I love that tree like a human soul, and how it almost died in one of the renovations. And how it survived. And how each spring to this day I still hold my breath till I perceive the tiny buds of new growth. That house is filled with so much secret history—a volume of its own.

  • Shouldn’t this book allude at least once to the fact that I’ve done the New York Times crossword puzzle literally every single day of my life since my first year in high school? Isn’t that an important feature of my life? Enough so that the name Eugene T. Maleska or Will Shortz might pass my lips as I quietly expire in my wheelchair, dropping a snow globe that crashes to the floor.

  I’m afraid some of these microscopic details were cut in favor of a propulsive, gripping story. These little memories that remain, like matches that burn your fingers even after they’re blown out; after all my editing, re-editing, cutting, and restoring, much as I thought I might be able to control posterity, I fear for those dear little private facts. All these details will, as my husband, Arnold, is fond of saying, “go to dust.”

  1

  I was five years old, lingering at the Avenue U Variety Store, staring. My mother took me there a lot when she went shopping for household things. I made sure she saw me pining there in the toy aisle.

  Because I was “artistic,” it was expected that more than anything else, I’d want whatever sort of art supplies the store kept in stock in those days: an assortment of chalky tempera paints that came in little jars packaged in shrink-wrap; waxy colored pencils that left nothing but translucent traces of color no matt
er how hard you pressed; oaktag in random colors; and tubes of glitter, which made my mother wince in anticipation of the mess I would no doubt make. I got paint-by-number sets that were too advanced for my age. I got real toys, too, things like Colorforms and an “age-appropriate” Erector set with scary pointed metal edges that full-grown adults might maim themselves with; today that set would be banned. I got all kinds of toys and games. I wasn’t deprived, but the thing I wanted more than anything, the thing that eluded me to that point, was a Barbie doll.

  The deluxe Barbie set came with a doll and three changes of clothes. Barbie herself was frozen in clear molded plastic, stuck to a cardboard background, dressed in a zebra-printed bathing suit with snap-on black pumps that seemed to go with everything. On one side of the cardboard was a polka-dot sundress on a tiny hanger, and on the other side a fabulous mink-cuffed, gold-brocade, knee-length coat.

  My mother reluctantly took notice of my lingering. She looked over with a dark expression, another hint that there was something wrong with this yearning of mine. We’d had the conversation before, more than once, with the standard conclusion: “Boys don’t play with dolls.” But I desperately wanted to play with dolls, and she knew that. No matter how long I stared at that Barbie, my mother didn’t flinch. But I kept my hopes up. On Hanukkah that year I was given a G.I. Joe, a consolation prize that I never played with the way I was supposed to. The first thing I did was lose the little Uzi; it mysteriously disappeared, and I never made a great effort to find it, since I had no plans to send him into battle. I wanted him out of that dreary camouflage print, but there didn’t seem to be any alternatives. His body wasn’t the right shape, he had a thick waist, no breasts, and even though I tried for a day or two to change his appearance, it was hopeless. No magic. Joe languished forever after in the toy bin.

  Around my sixth birthday I was back at the Avenue U Variety Store with my mother. She was shopping for something mundane like a Pyrex dish or a new nozzle for a hose. I was holding the doll again. It was a starter Barbie, a kind of rudimentary presentation, in a long box, like a coffin, with a cellophane window and only the dress she was wearing: a simple pink, yellow, and olive-green plaid sleeveless job with a slightly high-waisted dirndl skirt and the ever-present black pumps. Perhaps the fact that it wasn’t the grand deluxe set, that it seemed humbler, more manageable, appealed to my mother’s sense of propriety. I presented it to her, and she took the toy and held it tentatively for a long time, on the verge of a remark. Finally she tossed it in her handcart, which I took as assent. I stayed cool on the outside, but on the inside I was hopping up and down with joy. I measured the minutes it would take to get from that spot—out of the danger zone of her changing her mind—back to the security and privacy of my bedroom, which I shared with my sisters, but I knew I’d have it all to myself till they got home from school.

  We went up to the cash register to pay for it. My heart beat faster, my neck tensed for fear that anything should interfere with the transaction. The old man at the register, decrepit-looking, with a cigarette hanging from his lips, leered at my mother and said, “Will that be it, honey?”

  The word “honey” hung in the air and irritated me to such an extent that it was physical. My eyes itched, the back of my throat went numb. My mother ignored the sleazy endearment, but I couldn’t. I burned. And finally I boiled over. Stamping my foot I screamed, “She’s not your honey!” A few seconds of dead air, then shock registered on the guy’s face, then a greasy smile. He patted my head, which made me want to bite him. I knew my mother could take care of herself, she was no shrinking violet, but I was outraged that this stranger would take that kind of liberty and think nothing of it, as if he were entitled.

  One benefit of my outburst was that it distracted attention from the Barbie transaction, and before she knew it, my mother was paying for the parcel and out the door. She left the Avenue U Variety Store taller, with pride that I’d defended her honor. And like a dog who disappears with a hard-won bone, the minute we got home, I raced to my bedroom to play with Barbie undisturbed.

  I approached Barbie not like another pretty face. Of course I made her dresses, but I made up stories for her, too. She was the woman I dreamed of being or befriending. I transformed her with outfits I made from scraps of fabrics and paper I found around the house. One day my mother shortened a dress made of pale-blue crystal-pleated chiffon that she got to wear to an important event associated with my father’s business. The scraps were too wonderful to throw away, and she gave them to me. I was thrilled by those scraps and knew immediately what to do. I made Barbie a floor-length boatneck sheath with a fluted hem. I crudely stitched a broad sash that closed with snaps in the back. My focus on constructing that dress was laserlike. I made up a story about how Barbie was wearing the dress to a very important party that would clinch her great success. For fleeting moments I forgot about my mother’s angst surrounding my attention to the doll. I was caught up with how best to style Barbie’s hair, how lucky she was to have that tiny waist and those long legs, and how well she carried off that blue dress despite the black pumps, which I wished could have been gold or silver or, at the very least, bone.

  I proudly presented Barbie in the crystal-pleated chiffon dress to my mother. She acknowledged it with a half-smile, accompanied by a distinctive whiff of misunderstanding. For a long while around my father, I pretended that Barbie belonged to one of my sisters. I don’t think he ever realized the doll was actually mine. It was a well-kept secret, our secret, my mother’s and mine. We didn’t—couldn’t—let on to the others. She was protecting me, but more, she was struggling with her own past—a past that didn’t embrace effeminate little boys, a past that did nothing to prepare her for dealing with such a son.

  * * *

  To hear her tell it, my mother and I have a lot in common with the biblical Sarah and Isaac. She was named Sarah after her father’s mother, and I was named Isaac after my father’s father, a coincidence not lost on our family and friends. And the parallels don’t end there, according to her dramatic version. In 1961 my mother’s doctor considered her to be on the old side for childbirth. She was thirty-six and in good shape, but she was told that having me, her third child, was a risk. It was one she accepted, just as the older Sarah of the Bible took a risk in having her Isaac. My mother was fond of quoting her doctor on the subject. According to him, if we survived I was destined to be either “a genius or a Mongoloid.”

  We came through childbirth unscathed, but shortly after there was one dramatic and life-threatening event that shaped my perception of the world and especially my relationship with my mother. At the age of four I was stricken with spinal meningitis. The story goes that one morning I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow, I ran a very high fever that wouldn’t break, and eventually I couldn’t be revived from a deep, mysterious sleep. My mother panicked and called the family pediatrician, Dr. Bernard Greenberg, who made a snap diagnosis over the phone and instructed my parents to take me immediately to the emergency room at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. There’s a bit of extra suspense that my mother loves to insert into the tale—about how they couldn’t find parking at the hospital, and how my father ran for blocks, carrying my limp body in his arms. He was the hero of the tale, getting me there just in the nick of time for the doctor to inject me full of antibiotics and save my life. I’m not exactly sure why that detail was worth embroidering onto the already dramatic tale. I think it was my mother’s attempt to prove how much my father loved me. But over the years it came across more as a hard sell. For one thing, wouldn’t anyone run a few blocks if they had a dying child in their arms?

  My mother says she never fully recovered from the trauma and describes those days of my illness as the worst of her life. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.” She reacted to the experience in contradictory ways. She overcompensated, examining every cough and sigh. She had Dr. Greenberg on a short leash and was on the phone with him constantly. On the other side of the spectrum, p
erhaps to purposely distract herself from what she perceived as my physical vulnerability, she and my father went out a lot. I remember missing her, worrying about when she would return, wishing she’d stay home. I’d carry on and she’d say, “Relax, we’re not going to Canarsie,” which always struck me as funny, since Canarsie, far as it was from where we lived in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, was not nearly as far as Manhattan, where my parents were actually going. I’d lie awake, sweaty with fear and anxiety, waiting to hear the familiar sound of the car pulling into the driveway.

  My mother was deeply anxious about my physical and emotional health. She’d warn against overexertion, and when I was “all sweated up,” she’d make me sit still for ten minutes before going out into the cold. Yet when I was actually sick she’d accuse me of pretending. “You’re such an actor!” she’d say with a withering look. I was accused of “acting” a lot, whenever I cried or carried on, to the extent that I got confused myself between when I was actually sick and when I was faking it. When she couldn’t understand something I was feeling she attributed it to my overly dramatic nature—which, ironically, I got from her. And though she encouraged me to be independent, she also liked knowing what I was up to. She convinced herself that I was fine without her, but then was loath to admit it.

  Most of the time she rejected the stereotypical role of the overbearing Jewish mother and seemed to want instead to be a best friend or mentor. This, too, was meted out in contradictory ways. She’d lull me into a sense of friendship, encouraging me in my creative pursuits, and then pull the mother card, stressing the importance of conforming to the family and its preconceived, traditional ideas. She was my cheerleader, filling me with her confidence if I lacked my own. But she felt too bound by the traditions of her upbringing to give me the consistent acknowledgment I needed. However she did it, she helped mold me into a functioning artist. Whether it was direct encouragement, or more commonly, a coded glance or a mysterious comment that helped me to think or act independently. Throughout, though, I could sense how much easier our lives would have been if only I’d been like other boys.