“You made your bed,” my mother said. “Now lie ... lay ... whatever.” What she meant was you should have been smarter, but as usual you weren’t. My mother was an actress and prone to drama.
It was a transplanted writer from Delaware named Gordon Bryan who provoked my mother to pull out this old saw from her fat bag of clichés. Gordon wrote for the Children’s Television Workshop and I thought he was rumpled, funny, and smart. I liked rumpled. It revealed a certain laissez faire. We met in the self help section of an uptown bookstore under the display for How To Tell If He’s The One. He smiled a shy smile (I loved those best) and told a joke. I returned the smile, demure of course, and told a joke myself though I’m not very good at punch lines. We took the downtown express and flirted the entire way as the train shuddered its way to Sheridan Square.
It didn’t take long before he swept me off my feet with armfuls of lilac and promises to love me for the rest of my life. He asked me to marry him and when I cried, blissfully happy, for he was the one; he licked happy tears from my unblemished cheek.
This was it I knew. After all, I deserved Gordon. For I had suffered.
A few years before, as a senior in college, I had eloped with a man I met at a Yale mixer. I had come to the mixer with my friend Jane who was engaged to the grandson of the founder of a famous Applesauce company.
The worn oak floors and leaded glass windows of the old stone building vibrated as the noisy crowd sang and danced. Jane danced wildly with the Applesauce king while I fidgeted self-consciously, against the wall. In a while, a handsome young man who had been watching me from across the room appeared in front of me and, shouting to be heard, asked me to dance.
“I’m Alex,” he shouted.
“Miggins,” I shouted back.
“Miggins?” he asked, cupping his ear. “I like it.” he said.
We danced a few fast dances. And when a slow dance played, Alex silently reached for me. When I didn’t say no, he wrapped me in big arms as we shuffled to a melancholy tune.
He smelled like cigarette smoke and Axe. I felt his heart beat through his wrinkled, damp oxford shirt, aware of his chest against my small breasts and a stiffness in his pants as he moved against me to the music. His lips grazed my hair and my ear and I could feel his heat as he whispered the words to the song. His hand moved up the small of my back and his fingers lightly stroked my neck beneath my cashmere sweater. He brushed his cheek, flushed and warm, against mine and I shivered.
When the song ended, he looked into my eyes, kissed my hand and asked, “Who are you?” His hand covered mine as he led me off the dance floor.
Late into the night, curled in large leather chairs while white-jacketed waiters served us scotch, we smoked Marlboro’s and talked in circles about pre-destination. Alex promised to call me when he got back to the city.
As the train shimmied to Manhattan the next day, I daydreamed against the window until Alex surprised me and sat beside me.
Alexander had been raised in Sands Point, Long Island, the grandson of the founder of a well-known Foundations and Lingerie company. He grew up privileged by my family’s standards and was inclined because of very healthy esteem, I discovered later, to overestimate his own charms and abilities (which eventually led to his running a major movie studio in Hollywood).
Soon he professed unconditional love. However he had very clear opinions on how I should dress, how I should wear my hair and make-up and how to behave in certain social situations. He saw me as a present and future reflection of himself and wanted to be certain that the reflection was as sterling as he was.
