Lily White (6 page)

S
-E-X.

It is as good a way as any to return to the marriage of Lee’s parents. So let’s spell it out. The first letter, S: for svelte. Before Lee’s birth, Sylvia had a model’s figure—that is, she had a large, finely shaped head that sat atop a long neck, which arose from a body that had as many curves as the average flagpole. Besides being thin, Sylvia was one of those born-chic people who can put on the plainest white shirt, fold back the cuffs, lift the collar, and—voilà—look as though she’d been done by Monsieur Dior. But in the weeks postpartum, it became clear that her outline had softened. Her chemistry had changed, her cell walls losing a bit of their resilience, and even though she’d gained only ten pounds, her pre-pregnancy waist had thickened. Her hips became almost curvy. Not just that: Her bosom swelled from what her mother-in-law, Bella, referred to as “a coupla fried eggs” to two noticeable bumps beneath her cashmere sweater set. Note the cashmere.

Tudor Rose Furs was a gold mine. By the late forties and early fifties, soldiers and sailors, back in civilian jobs, were celebrating the peace and reveling in a booming economy. They wanted to make up for lost time. How better to show the stuff they were made of than to buy a fur coat for the little woman? (Or a fur boa for the little woman’s competition?) By 1951, Leonard and Sylvia were able to buy their first house, a luxury, luxury ranch, as the real estate agent solemnly described it.

Just over four miles north and ten miles east of Forest Hills, their house might have inhabited another galaxy. For the son of a Commie and the daughter of a not-dishonest judge, Great Neck was so profoundly luxurious that the Whites kept saying to each other: “I want to pinch myself.” Their house, the agent assured them, had all the latest features. Not all: But on its over-half-an-acre plot, it did have a stone fireplace that opened onto both the living room and the den, a finished basement, with built-in cedar storage bins that doubled as seating, and, behind louvered doors right off the kitchen, a laundry center.

“I want to pinch myself,” Sylvia admitted to Leonard as she ran her hand over the chilly white porcelain of the dryer. Leonard’s hand cupped her buttock and gave it a fast pinch. The male in him loved the feel of her newer, rounder, more ample ass, even as the snob yearned for the prepregnant Sylvia, whose hollow cheeks and fleshless flanks announced: No sloppy lower-middle-class excess here. He couldn’t get over his disappointment that she had let herself lose that sucked-in-cheek, snooty look he’d prized. She still looked like Lauren Bacall’s twin sister, but a twin who couldn’t lay off the halvah.

And another thing. Once they got past the thrill of home ownership and finished with the business of the marriage—should the master bathroom have gray or peach tiles? could they afford to go to France on vacation? and if so, should they leave Lily with his parents or her parents?—he had nothing to say to Sylvia.
Nor did she seem to think she owed him any talk. He could understand her lack of conversational ability because he was aware of her background: Nobody said anything at the Bernsteins’ for fear of disturbing the Judge. But he could not forget that article he’d seen in
Collier’s
written by a Ph.D. psychologist. “Are You Married to Your Best Friend?” That title was a slap in the face.

Would a best friend just shrug—she’d shrugged!—when he’d taken her out to a French restaurant and ordered wine and confided his dream of opening a store in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, away from the fur district, and have it so elegant that only the most silk-stocking types would feel comfortable going in? Of course, once they were customers,
everyone
would want to go. Although the rude-crude types would be told they had to make an appointment. Not that he didn’t want their business. Frankly, they bought at least double what tightwad rich Christians did, but—see, Sylvia?—he wanted them to feel they were trespassing. They would have more respect for the store that way. Not store. Salon. And wait till those Christian ladies walked in the front door! They would love it, with skinny Frenchmen for salesmen who would say “May I help you?” in French. He’d even looked it up in the Forest Hills branch of the Queens Borough Public Library: “
Puis-je vous aider?
” although he didn’t dare to try to say it himself, being smart enough to realize the first word was probably not pronounced “Poo is-gee.” But of course Leonard would insist the salesmen switch to English if he saw the customer getting scared. Fear was bad, he explained. Intimidation, on the other hand, was good, because then the customer and her husband would order an even better garment, just to prove they could afford to buy in such classy surroundings.

So he’d poured all this out to his wife for almost an hour and a half, and she’d
shrugged.
“Is that all you can say?” he’d demanded. Finally, she’d said, “I think it sounds wonderful,” but he
could tell she didn’t. She was probably scared. Selling a booming business in Queens and opening up cold in Manhattan. Such a risk. Didn’t she realize he woke up at four in the morning with his intestines tied in knots? Such a huge outlay, what with inventory and a showroom with parquet floors and those antique French chairs with arms that cost about two hundred dollars each.

Still, the way her skirt fit over her backside, like the skin on a knockwurst …

“I said pinch
myself
,” Sylvia laughed, wriggling out of his grasp, moving into the kitchen to deal with the bags of groceries that filled the room. Stock up, Leonard had commanded her the day before, their first full day as home owners. She had left the baby with her mother, who was helping out till they got settled, and had gone on a shopping spree that had left the assistant manager of the A & P with his jaw hanging open—although he
badbeen
able to say: Can I have one of the boys put your bags in your car, Mrs. … And she’d filled in his blank. White, she’d said. To be perfectly honest, it had been humiliating, going from Weissberg to Weiss to White, but now that they were in a new community, starting out fresh as White, knowing he wouldn’t change it again (despite a few days’ flirtation with “Whyte”), she was glad Leonard had insisted. Anyway, the A & P assistant manager—he was very broad-shouldered, probably from lifting all those cartons of canned peaches—he said …

“How much did you spend?” Leonard inquired.

“What you gave me,” Sylvia responded, a little edgy because she
had
gone overboard, sweeping roll upon roll of paper towels into her cart, stocking up on Chicken of the Sea chunk white like the tuna was pheasant under glass or something. And she had pulled jar after jar of preserves off the shelf, until she had strawberry, black-currant, cherry, raspberry, gooseberry, plum, apple butter, and orange marmalade.

But to his credit, Leonard wasn’t cheap. Nothing but the best. Well, not
the
best, because the best kind of a house was an English Tudor or something called a Georgian, he’d told her. Except then your furniture had to be antiques or at least come from B. Altman, so it was better to have a modern house. Then it could be spare. Spare. That was his new favorite word; it superseded “classic,” which came after “luxuriant,” which supplanted “discriminating.” He always had some snotty new word. To be honest, he had some nerve acting so snotty, what with Lard Lady, his mother, and his old man, Nathan the Red. “Spare.” Well, her clothes were spare, but then, she’d always had terrific taste. It was part of her artistic talent. Like, with her Hardy Amies green wool suit: a green felt hat trimmed with green feathers, but black suede pumps. She didn’t want to believe it when the salesgirl had suggested green alligator. No! She knew when enough was enough. Black suede gloves, large gold button earrings, and
that was it.
No bracelet, no necklace, no scarf. Spare.

She loved buying. The dark jewel colors of the jams in the A & P. The sleek Danish-modern coffee table with those skinny blond legs that made it look as though it was tiptoeing over the cocoa-colored carpet. And on top of the table, casual, as if someone had just stopped reading them, not in a neat pile, the half-price art books she’d found in a store down the block from the obstetrician’s: how the dark red on the Utrillo’s cover echoed the scarlets and carmines on the Rembrandt’s. She wasn’t like some women, buy-buy-buy out of boredom. She loved what she bought, took pleasure in an object every time she saw it in her home. Okay, not a box of Lipton’s tea bags. But like that petticoat she’d bought in 1949, in a lilac so pale it was almost gray; it had narrow ribbon shoulder straps and scalloped ribbon trim along the hemline. Every time she opened her lingerie drawer, she’d feel good, just seeing it—and the yellow nightgown with the quilted bed jacket too.

She thought about her things a lot, and about things she saw when she went to the city, things she couldn’t afford but remembered as if they belonged to her. She never forgot something once it caught her eye. Like in an antique store window on East Fifty-eighth, a silver tea set with the most delicate leafy pattern etched into it. The lid of the pot and the sugar bowl cover were topped with roses made out of silver. Incredible work. The last time she passed it, the store owner had waved to her from inside the store. Like: I know just how you feel. Wait: more than that. I know you’ll be back. He was very good-looking, with white hair and a white mustache, wearing a dark-gray suit that was almost black. Very slim. Neat. Like a well-packed cigarette.

Leonard was clean. There was no man on earth cleaner. He used four Q-Tips every morning on his ears. But he wasn’t … what was that word he’d liked but not loved? Fastidious. He’d used that for a week or two. But he wasn’t fastidious, because he wasn’t in complete control over himself, not like the man in the antique store, with his hankie sticking out of his pocket in six perfect points. Nervous, Leonard would run his hand through his hair, and by late afternoon the Brylcreemed ends would no longer lie flat, but would coil like tiny springs at the back of his neck. Or he’d dribble something on his tie, a tiny drop of something, but then a poppy seed would stick to it. And in terms of looks: He wasn’t dapper, but he wasn’t a man’s man either, like the assistant manager at the A & P, with black hair peeking out from under his white undershirt, making little twirlies right below his neck. Or her still-life teacher, Jeffrey, at the Great Neck Center for the Fine Arts, with his black eyes and tight blue jeans. Leonard was just okay-looking. Dark-brown hair, brown eyes. Okay. Skin? Not like he had pockmarks, but you could see pores on his cheeks. Five-feet eight-and-a-half, even though it said five-ten on his driver’s license, so not quite tall enough. Not getting fat, but in the last year, in his new, slim English
jacket, it looked like he was wearing a fox boa under it instead of a belt.

Let us leave Leonard’s love handles and Sylvia’s mind and return to S-E-X once again. The E. If the vertical stroke is the institution of marriage, and the two Whites are the horizontal lines on either end, then clearly there is something between them. Remember, this was now 1951. They were neither sophisticates nor libertines, so it was nothing kinky. They
seemed
like a happy couple. They said “I love you” to each other every night just before they went off to sleep. They had sexual intercourse three times a week. At this point in their lives, the mere thought of taking a lover had never crossed either of their minds, so whatever was between them was certainly not another man or another woman.

They had more disposable income than Great Neck neighbors twice their age. True, Leonard’s big plans might put them in the poorhouse, but as the Bankers Trust Company was willing to underwrite his grandiose fantasies of a showroom with Louis XV bergères on Lexington Avenue and East Sixty-fifth Street, its sales force taught from birth to inquire “
Puis-je vous aider?
” it was not money that had come between them.

Could it have been that having a child had caused some rift? Highly dubious. If not a great child, our heroine was certainly an awfully nice one. In the late spring of 1951, Lily Rose White, thirteen months old, had three teeth and a sweet smile. Well, sweet when it came to friendly people, a smile in response to a smile: up on the right side, a quiver on the left—before spreading across her face and lighting up her big brown eyes. Definitely not one of those Aren’t-I-fabulous smiles the born-confident flash. But engaging enough.

And she got better in the ensuing months. Some ordinary children are, for a short period, overcome by a monomania that lights them up like a holy spirit. Who knows why an ordinary little boy becomes incandescent at the sight of a garbage truck?
Or how a plain little girl transcends her commonality and becomes a toddler goddess at the sight of an animal? For Lily Rose White, a blue jay evoked delight, a cat rapture, and a dog … bliss beyond all understanding. Sylvia learned that the fastest way to obtain her daughter’s cooperation was to threaten to withhold either the blouse with a Scottish terrier appliquéd on the collar or a cup decorated with an owl and pussycat. Leonard was the more positive parent. He discovered that to take this nice enough (but after ten minutes of peekaboo rather boring) female child to the Bronx Zoo was to turn her into the Best Kid in the World. Show her a tapir and she’d howl with jubilation, a giraffe and she’d fall into silent awe.

So it was not the child who came between Mr. and Mrs. Leonard White. What was happening that while allowing them to say “I love you” to each other once every twenty-four hours did not allow them to
feel
love? It is easy to tick off items on a list: Narcissism. Lack of trust. Self-loathing, the belief that anyone worth loving could not love them. Emotional immaturity. But the truth is, some questions have no answer. Suffice it to say that although Mr. and Mrs. White looked as if they had it all, they did not. They were wanting.

Having avoided that issue, let us not avoid concluding S-E-X. Note how the two lines of the X intersect at only one point. Well, two years after their move to Great Neck, Sylvia and Leonard came together. She was two months pregnant with their second child. (A son, Leonard prayed to no one in particular. John Bradley White? Radley Wilson White? Did he dare Dalton Kendall White III?) Having successfully lost the ten pounds she had gained with Lee and not yet put it back on, as she would inevitably and irrevocably do, Sylvia had regained some of that high-cheeked, honey-haired elegance one would anticipate from the wife of a polo player, assuming one knew polo players. On those nights when she would stop by the salon to wait for him
before they went out for dinner with other furrier couples or to the Museum of Modern Art, where she had made him—he was grateful—become a Donor so they got invitations to all the openings, Leonard could see his customers’ heads turn: Who
is
that woman in the Lanvin evening suit, its jacket lined with leopard-print silk, a leopard coat slung casually over her arm? Sylvia was at her peak.