Old Neighborhood (9 page)

“You can’t be so rigid,” Tolchin said. “Business is business—and we can use the business.” And I relented.

The people with whom Beverly and I were friendliest, John and Pat Cleary, lived across the street. John Cleary, a pipe-smoking tweedy man in his forties, taught political science at Stony Brook, and when we were together at least we could talk about political events. The Clearys did not have children. Pat Cleary, a petite plain woman, kept busy as a housewife. Their house was spotless, laboratory experiments could have been conducted on the premises. One night Pat caused a moment of awkwardness during an unserious discussion of the forms in which we would like to come back in our next lives when she said, “I’d like to come back as Beverly.”

We had joined the Clearys for dinner at a restaurant. I had too much to drink, as was my custom, and the following morning I awoke with a hangover. “They’re here,” Beverly called out while I was showering. I had forgotten that she had said the previous evening that people were coming to the house for breakfast. I went downstairs in my groggy state to see a busload of Japanese tourists on the back lawn, eating lox and bagels, which topped pink elephants on parade.

“This is my husband,” Beverly said, and I was greeted by smiling faces and clicking cameras.

They were educators on a tour, they had visited the Institute and now Beverly was showing them the way we lived. I withdrew to the kitchen to read a newspaper. I noticed through the window one of the men, a sensual type, doing considerable smiling and touching of Beverly’s waist. I did not see the educational value in that.

“Hello, cuties,” I said, breaking in on them.

“Mr. Namruchi, my husband, Mr. Robbins.”

“I greatly appreciate your lox and your bagel, sir,” he said in perfect English. “Also your wife.”

He was too suave for my hangover.

“Help yourself to the former,” I said, leading him to the buffet.

“Steve, that was rude.”

“Well, what were you two discussing?”

“A pool,” she said, sarcastically. “He suggested we build a pool.”

There had been a time when the smallest victories were a reason for Beverly and me to celebrate—my first pay increases, the first enrollments at Beverly’s school. We took our achievements for granted now. Beverly was to speak at a meeting of the Nassau Women for Equal Rights—I decided not to go with her and worked late at the office instead. A few weeks after this, I was going to an advertising industry dinner, our agency would be winning an award again, and Beverly chose not to attend—she was preparing to head a workshop at a teachers’ conference. There was a surprise citation at the Equal Rights meeting, Beverly was named Nassau County “Woman of the Year,” and at my dinner I was given a personal award “for promoting the concept of Truth in Advertising.” Neither of us was there for the other, we drove home alone with our awards those nights.

B
EVERLY AND I HAD
always required two “yes” votes on any major decisions—the unwritten contract between us had been that we each had veto power over the other. In the early years of our marriage we had consulted even about such modest items as my shirts, Beverly’s shoes—we went shopping together or we brought the items home for the other person to see—“Should I keep it? Is it too expensive?” Now we shopped for ourselves when we could find the time, we bought what we needed and paid our own bills when they came in.

The girls did not have access to our credit cards, as was the case with some families, and I insisted Sarah and Amy now work during the summers to earn spending money. When the school year ended, they would be counselors in a children’s camp. Sarah was graduating from high school, and after her camp job, going to college. Beverly suggested that we buy a new typewriter for Sarah, the one she had was barely usable.

“Fine. We can replace it,” I said.

“I think we can improve on that,” Beverly answered. “If we’re getting her a typewriter, it might as well be an electric.”

“Why does she need an electric? They’re expensive.”

“We can afford it, Steve.”

“A portable nonelectric typewriter is good enough for a teenage girl.”

“But she can have something better.”

“You’re talking about hundreds of dollars.”

“Three hundred dollars.”

“Forget it. She doesn’t need a three-hundred-dollar typewriter.”

“With the money we earn around here, it’s nothing. What am I working for if I can’t give my daughter something extra every once in a while?”

“I never even
had
a typewriter when I went to college.”

“Just because you didn’t have it doesn’t mean she has to do without it.”

The issue was not discussed further and then two weeks later I returned from work, Sarah greeted me at the door warmly, saying:

“Daddy, thank you!” and she brought me to her room where on her desk was a new Smith-Corona electric typewriter.

“Use it well,” I managed to say and walked quickly out of the room, looking for Beverly, who was in the bedroom.

“Bev! You knew how I felt!”

“I disagreed with you.”

“And you just went ahead and did this?”

“What’s the difference?” she said. “I bought it with
my
money.”

For fifteen years Beverly and I had never spent a night apart, except for the times when Beverly was in the hospital with the births of Sarah and Amy. Our separations had become routine now. I had just returned from a business trip to Dallas, Beverly was in Philadelphia at an art therapists’ conference. I made a dinner of scrambled eggs for the girls and me. Sarah went out on a date, Amy left for a planning meeting to save the Atlantic Salmon.

Feeling lonely and in need of company I called John Cleary and asked if I could come by for a drink, a request I had not made before. He was amenable and I went to the Clearys’ house. The centerpiece of the house was John Cleary, who was served his meals, never had to lift a plate, and received his evening newspaper and scotch on the rocks in his lounge chair. Pat Cleary served us cheese, crackers and drinks and then withdrew, leaving the men to have man talk.

“You have the perfect life here, John. It’s the nineteenth century with color television.”

“Except you get Pat with that.”

“I wouldn’t knock Pat.”

“She’s vapid.”

“John, I came here to say I’ve got business problems and my marriage is just as bad. Please don’t tell me you’ve got troubles of your own.”

“You and Bevvy, problems? I can’t believe it.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are.”

“You don’t know how I’ve envied
you.
To be married to someone like Bevvy. Do you know where Pat is right now? Ironing my underwear.”

“She irons your underwear?”

“True.”

“You must have outstanding underwear.”

I intended to talk about my relationship with Beverly, but I did not know how to begin and I felt disloyal discussing her with John Cleary. He was untroubled by loyalty to Pat, he told me that her banality had driven him into an affair with a young woman on the faculty at Stony Brook, then he went on to complain about the young woman. He continued with his complaints, moving on to academic life. At first I thought he was performing a comradely act, telling me about his situation to make me feel less troubled about mine. But he went on drinking and talking about himself, dragging out petty grievances about colleagues and university bureaucracy, and I drank along with him. Where were those wonderful conversations I had in the old days with my buddies, the walks we took when we talked and listened to each other and helped? “Walk me,” you said to a friend and he walked with you and you talked. He took the time to go where you were going just so you could be together. Talking to John Cleary, my supposed friend in adulthood, was a game, how many points he could score in his own behalf before he would be required to listen to you. I excused myself, and moving unsteadily from the effect of the scotch, went back to my empty house and fell into a troubled sleep.

I went through a particularly hectic period—client meetings, deadlines on my own copy, overseeing the work of other copywriters, who were also overworked—three of our copywriters had been out for nearly two weeks with the flu. I had a meeting with a young art director and the account executive for one of our accounts, a manufacturer of frozen pizzas made by a new fast-freezing process. That particular day an auction of graphics and posters was being held at Sotheby Parke Bernet. I had seen in the catalog a World War II poster that I remembered from the 1940s, “Buy War Bonds,” with the flags of the Allied nations. I wanted the poster, but I could not attend an auction in the middle of the day, so I phoned in a bid of $200, a few dollars above the estimate. The auction would just have been ending and I was eager to call and find out the result, but I had to be at the meeting. Ideas were exchanged, the account man pointed out that the client had a limited budget, they were straining their resources to advertise on television. I was having trouble concentrating. Finally, I said:

“Look. Why don’t we do something different? You have a black screen, voice over, white type with the words: We don’t have much money for advertising. Next frame: How do you advertise frozen pizza anyway? Next frame: You have to eat it to know what it tastes like. Next: Carmella Frozen Pizza is made by a new fast-freezing process. Next: It’s very, very good. Next: We don’t want to overproduce this. We put our money in the product. Next: Carmella Pizza. Very, very good.”

“That’s very, very good,” the young art director said to me with a look of awe.

“Perfect,” was the account executive’s comment.

All I had wanted was to get out of the room. And I did not get the poster.

We also did the advertising for a national insurance company. The company offered an insurance program for senior citizens, and the client, who was socially conscious, had decided to run a public-service campaign in praise of older people. I worked on the campaign on and off for several days, to the exclusion of other work. Tolchin said the time I was spending on this was unwarranted, it was low-budget, the agency would not be making much money on it and other projects required my attention. I could not let go of the material. The project had a moral quality to it and I wanted the ads to be as good as they could be. “Robbins’ Folly,” Tolchin began calling it. Finally I came up with a headline that I liked: “Old age—it’s not a disease, it’s a national heritage.” The ad would then discuss the knowledge and expertise of senior citizens, and for the artwork I thought we could use documentary photographs in the style of the old Farm Security Administration images. A photographer could go out and take pictures of senior citizens across the country in realistic settings. This would have been a slow process and could have become expensive. Tolchin, supported by the account executive, argued that the costs were out of line, we had to move more quickly or the agency would be in the red on the campaign. So we ended up using models, old people who were professional old people in staged settings. The client was satisfied with the ads. The copy was strong and it looked as if Steven Robbins had done it again, but I knew what the ads could have been. If we had taken more time, they could have been terrific.

Sarah had a part in the high school production of
Guys and Dolls
but she knew better than to break into her parents’ schedules. She told us that she had no lines in the play and was only in the chorus—it was not necessary for us to attend. Beverly was busy that night with a group show of local artists at the Institute. I had been in Atlanta on business, but managed to make a late-afternoon plane, and I went directly from the airport to the high school, finding a seat in the back of the auditorium a few minutes after the show had begun. Sarah was one of the Salvation Army girls. In the second act, I was astonished to see that she had a solo. She sang “More I Cannot Wish You,” a touching performance of a lovely song, and she stopped the show. After the play ended, I startled her by greeting her in the backstage area.

“Sarah, you were so marvelous! Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It was sort of last minute. The boy who was supposed to do it got sick. And they substituted a girl. And I got it.”

“You should have said something to us!”

“Well—I didn’t want to be disappointed when you couldn’t come.”

A cable television station on Long Island presented a program called “Lifestyles,” an interview show with people who were considered to have interesting occupations. They contacted Beverly and invited us to be guests. Beverly and I discussed it and decided this would be good publicity for the Institute, and we agreed to appear. We arrived at the studio for a Thursday-night program, the producer, a woman in her thirties, said she was delighted to have us and wanted to explore our particular lifestyle, how we managed to make our marriage work given the fact of two active careers.

“I hoped I could talk about my school,” Beverly said.

“Oh, we’ll do that, too,” the producer answered.

The host was a writer in her late forties named Martha Wheeler. She used the word “wonderful” almost as a verbal pause. “We have as our guests tonight the most wonderful couple with a really wonderful lifestyle. She is Beverly Robbins who runs the wonderful—” and she checked her index card—“Nassau Institute of Children’s Art, and her husband, Steven Robbins, president of the—” checking her card—“Robbins and Tolchin Advertising Agency. So, tell us—how do you manage to keep two wonderful careers going at the same time?”

Beverly glanced over at me and said:

“Steve is not a man who expects his wife to bring him his dinner every night on a silver tray. We try to be flexible, for neither of us to be sexist—if that word is still in use.”

“Wonderful,” the host said. Then she turned to me and asked: “How do you feel about your wife being so successful?”

“The important thing is for Bev to express herself. If she’s happy doing that, then I’m happy and we’re all happy.”

“Wonderful. You have two—” checking her card—“daughters. How do they feel about all this? Beverly, are you always there to make dinner for them?”