December 7, 2012--Chapter 17: The Blooms

Out of frustration and a form of muted desire, I would quickly shift my attention from the girl with whom I was “getting nowhere” to her parents.  I realize now that through these thwarted attempts at dating I was also seeking to find surrogate families.  It turns out that I was skilled enough at that that I often was more warmly embraced by them than by their daughters, where anything resembling embracing, much less more, was not even close to being in the picture. 

Even if all I permitted myself to hope for was nothing more innocent than going together to see a movie at the Rugby Theater--much less of a desire than any of the others lurking in my imagination--even that was unlikely because truly desirable girls would not want to be found on the same side of the street with me, much less walking together along Church Avenue toward the Rugby.  

What I was reconciled to look for, then, was any girl willing to been seen with me in daylight.  This meant my best chances, alas, were with those as undesirable as I.  Thus, the most that I could reasonably wish was that they might come from a family which allowed me to fantasize, by association, that I was entering into a world different from the one in which I was growing up.  

Thus the Blooms. 

I need to begin with their daughter Doris and report about my brief time with her when all that might be considered thrilling was the opportunity to imagine the adult delights out of reach beneath her blooming blouse, especially where it tucked into her well-below-the knees skirt, which in turn was further armored with sheathes of crinoline. 

Contrary to the ways of meeting at the time, Doris took the first step in a Catskill Mountain village called Tannersville, named for the leather tanneries situated there during the 19^th century and that passed into oblivion well before the 20^th began, only to be supplanted by rundown hotels that catered to Eastern European immigrants and World War Two refugees seeking respite from the heat and humidity of New York City, the scourge of polio, which was said to strike with particular virulence during summer months, and the lingering memories of their earlier lives. 

Any family that could scrape a few dollars together could check into a hotel with hopeful names such as the Rose Garden, where there were never any flowers to be found much less roses. More typically the hotel grounds featured an invasion of ragweed and thistle.  But for those families who had the wherewithal to make the three-hour schlep north, this was a chance to feel expansive and, above all, safe.  Though these displaced Jews were never fully capable of feeling totally secure, especially in a place in the country that was so dark at night that it seemed suffused with threat.  Our native habitat back in the city, by then, had become a place full of light and noise and congestion—all providing at least the illusion of protection.  But up in the mountains there was at least dry air to breathe and various viruses were held at bay. 

The Blooms, the parents of Doris and her older sister Erica, owned a summer home in Tannersville, a rambling place with broad porches that previously had been inhabited by the last member of the town’s gentry who when the Jews began to arrive packed up and left, selling at a below market price (as if there was a market for such a white elephant) and headed for a sanctuary further north in the mountains Where the villages' real estate was “restricted" and the hotel signs proclaimed, “No Jews.  No Dogs.” 

Owning this house, where everyone had their own bedroom, distinguished the Brooms from the mass of us who at best could afford only a small room at the Rose Garden in which were packed, in two beds, four or five family members.  These sleeping arrangements alone set the Blooms so far apart from us that they, if they had so chosen, could have considered themselves gentiles.  This of course would have required a change in surname and much plastic surgery. 

But they were so assimilated that Doris played tennis, whereas in my city world we played street games such as stick and punch ball.  So when the grocer’s wife, Mrs. Greenblatt, who knew about Doris’s passion for tennis and that there were no other Jews who knew the game much less had a backhand, thought that since I was tall for my age, was rumored to be “a natural athlete,” and from the look of me was genetically Jewish, for all of these reasons Mrs. Greenblatt encouraged Doris to ask me if I played. 

Which she did one day when we were both in the store shopping for our mothers.   

“I understand you like tennis." My heart began to flutter and happily she did not pause for a response.  "I do too.  When I can find a partner I play at Tannersville High School where they have courts.  Clay courts." Looking boldly at me, especially noting my height, then, apparently satisfied, she asked, "How would you like to meet me there one morning?” 

I had never held a racket in my hand and had not even witnessed a match, but I was so smitten by her and her offer and so desperate to meet any girl, much less one as round and pert as Doris, that I said, in the first of what would turn out to be a series of ruinous deceptions, “Sure, I play, but I left my racket in the City.”  

That will be no problem I was told since her sister was away taking summer courses at her college and I could therefore use hers.  This caused an immediate surge of panic because, in my total tennis ignorance, I assumed I would be stigmatized by playing with a girl’s racket, if anyone was there to witness, just as I would be if I had shown up on a girl’s bicycle.  But before I could back out of the date, Doris skipped off with her basket of groceries, saying over her shoulder, “See you there at 10:30 sharp,” while I was left standing in the aisle worrying how I would be able to learn to play tennis by tomorrow morning.

*    *    * 

Needless to say I did not wake up the next day transformed into Jack Kramer or Rod Laver.  But once on the Tannersville High School tennis court with Doris, sufficiently secluded so that I did not risk more than private humiliation because of my clunky, black Ked basketball sneakers or dungaree pants that dragged in the clay, I learned that I was in fact enough of a natural athlete to be able to get the ball back over the net if I hit everything with something she called a “forehand.”  Doris quickly sensed both this capacity of mine and my total inability to even nick the ball with Eve’s racket (it wasn’t pink or anything else that distinguished is as a “girl's’”) if it came to my “backhand” side.  I also learned that Doris’s roundedness and pertness masked her competitiveness since she was not at all reluctant to take advantage of my one-sidedness.  She worked my backhand so successfully that I was soon playing from a position well off the court, and from that remote position was susceptible to anything she hit to even the center of the court.  Thus, I spent most of the morning retrieving the dozens of balls that scooted by me.  My inability to give her a good game did not seem to disturb her; in fact, Doris seemed to be taking great pleasure in dominating me and having me serve as her ball boy.  I did not know it at the time but this reversal of traditional gender roles would characterize the rest of our relationship. 

On the walk back to her house Doris mentioned that the movie Lili was playing in town at the Orpheum and asked if I would go with her Thursday evening.  She said she had wanted to be a ballet dancer and that Leslie Caron, who was starring in it was a wonderful ballerina.  I asked if this meant that we would be going out on a date—I had never been on one before—thinking if it was I would have to pay for the tickets which meant that I would need to ask my mother for the money.  With a smile that I can only characterize as sly, Doris said, “If you would like it to be.”

“I would.  I really would,” I stammered, in truth not really knowing what either she or I meant.  I only knew that whatever that was I wanted to partake of it.  

We reached her house, and she hopped up onto the porch, still smiling, saying over her shoulder as she was disappearing through the front door, “Meet me there at seven.  After the movie you can walk me home and meet my parents.  I already told them about you.” 

The screen door swung shut behind her and I stood there for a moment, surveying the full expanse of that Victorian mansion, because that’s what it looked like to me, a mansion with its broad porches thick with paint, shutters, and gables. 

While returning to the Rose Garden, which I did in record time since I ran most of the way, as I thought back over the meaning of what was happening, with some emerging anxiety I wondered what it was that she might have told her parents about me—that I didn’t have a tennis racket and for my mother bought white bread and cream cheese?  Why would they be interested in meeting anyone based on that?  In fact, considering their obvious station in life, I wondered why they would have any interest at all in someone like me.  

Thus I thought that before the movie I had better become more interesting or the Blooms would probably tell their daughter to find someone more suitable with whom to go out on dates. 

And I did.  During the half hour we needed to wait for Lili to begin (my mother had given me enough money to pay for both of us), since Doris had mentioned that she was going to Douglass College in New Jersey in September I told her I would be starting Columbia in New York City.  She was so excited by this that she reached across to me and squeezed my hand, letting hers linger there for an intoxicating moment.  “We’ll be just across the river from each other.  I plan to join a sorority and maybe you will be able to come to New Brunswick when we have mixers.”  I had no idea what a mixer was.  Something to do with cocktails?  “Will you be pledging a fraternity?  I know they have some frats at Columbia for Jews.” 

“I haven’t decided that.” 

“Oh you must and you should also go out for the basketball team.  Columbia plays against Rutgers, Douglass you know is Rutgers’ sister school, and it would be so much fun to go to the games and watch you play.” 

“I haven’t decided that either.  I’m tall but I’m not really that good.” 

“But you’re such a natural athlete.  I could see that when we were playing tennis.”   Though this talk about college was making me nervous, to hear her say that, and to have her squeeze my hand again, excited me.  “What do you plan to study at Columbia?  Have you decided what you’ll be majoring in?” 

At this I began to experience more than just nervousness because I need now to confess that I was lying about college—I was not going to Columbia in the fall. In fact, I would be returning to my high school where I would still be just a junior.  I was at least two years younger than Doris, my true age masked by my unnatural height and the premature wisps of a mustache.  

I had no idea why I so easily slipped into these lies.  Was it her nearness?  My desperate attraction to someone who clearly came from such a fine family, whose parents and grandparents had all been born in America?    To thus become “interesting”? 

Clearly out of control, I said, “I’m not sure yet but I think I’ll be studying Chemistry.” 

“That’s amazing,” she gushed, “My father, Dr. Bloom, is a chemist.  When you meet him later you’ll have lots to talk about.” 

*    *    * 

As you might imagine it was then impossible to concentrate on the movie.  All I could think about was meeting Dr. Bloom and having to talk with him about chemistry, which incidentally I was scheduled to take for the first time in September.  So I was lying about that too.  All I knew about chemistry was what I had learned in French class because my high school, which emphasized science studies, taught French by using a chemistry text in French.  I knew almost nothing about chemistry from that and thus was quaking in my seat, but not from Doris holding onto my sweaty hand all through the movie.  It was from fear of my soon-to-be unmasking and certain humiliation and exclusion from anything having to do with the family Bloom. 

I did though remember one thing from the movie, Leslie Caron’s tragic rendition of the title song, Lili Hi Lo: 

The song of love is a sad song

Hi Lili Hi Lili Hi Lo

The song of love is a sound of woe

Don't ask me why I know 

For me that seemed a foreshadowing—just how sad and woeful love was about to become. 

*    *    * 

After the movie, as a strategy to avoid the inevitable, I suggested that we go to Warms for some homemade pie and ice cream.  I had just enough money for that and that would make it late enough so I could avoid having to meet Doris’s parents.  I needed to escape from the web of lies I had woven and in which I had ensnared myself.  I would simply drop her off as I had after tennis, maybe be allowed to kiss her goodnight in reward for all the money I had spent on our date, and then run away from Tannersville and home, and the Bloom fantasy, hitchhiking back to Brooklyn where I would join the army and get sent to Korea. 

But that was not to be.  Doris insisted that I take her right home, “I love Warms’ pies, they’re my favorites, but my father is so eager to meet you.  To talk with you about your plans.”

“Well to tell you the truth I want to do that but it’s getting late and I promised my mother I’d be home before ten.”  I was so desperate to just disappear that I was even willing to make myself look like someone who had a curfew.

“It’s just 9:15 now and if we walk fast we can get to my house in ten minutes, you can meet him, have half an hour to get to know each other, and then still have enough time to get back to the Rose Garden by ten.” 

I was thus trapped in her logic; and since I had begun to accept the idea that I would have to pay for my transgressions, that I deserved to be exposed as an imposter in front of Doris and her American family, I slumped even more than usual and turned to catch up with her as she had raced ahead in her eagerness to bring home her prize date who was about to attend Columbia. 

It took even fewer than ten minutes to wind our way up the hill from which their house dominated that forlorn village that had seen so many better days.  This felt like the appropriate setting for my comeuppance. 

“Daddy, we’re here,” Doris sang as we together stood at the door.  She was waiting to be admitted as if she too were a nervous visitor.  

Their maid, Ella, all in crisp whites, stood back as she opened the polished door.  “Welcome back Miss Doris, I hope you enjoyed the movie.”  And with a radiant smile directed at me added, “And he is just as tall as you said.”  While Ella was glowing I couldn’t arrange to make myself invisible no matter how tight a corkscrew I twisted myself into.  It is that hard to disappear at six-four.

“It was wonderful.  Leslie Caron ran off with a carnival and then joined a show where she sang the saddest songs and danced with all the puppets.  I couldn’t stop crying.  I wish I could do that, become a dancer, but I have to go to college in September.”  

Turning to me, teary again from recalling the scenes with the puppeteer, Doris took my hand and pulled me into the grand parlor room where Dr. Bloom stood, still dressed in a gray pinstriped double-breasted suit.  He even had a handkerchief neatly tucked in his jacket pocket.  With one arm behind his back he approached me with his other extended in welcome, “It is so good to meet you.  Doris has told me so much about you.  What a good athlete you are and what a fine family you come from.”  

Averting my eyes and shuffling my feet I took his hand and shook it limply, “She told me a lot about you too,” I muttered. 

“Are you off to college too?”  I stopped breathing and sensed my heart had stopped as well. 

“I plan to.”  I managed to be sufficiently ambiguous so as not to compound my lies, feeling I had committed enough sins for one evening or a lifetime. 

Doris chirped, “He’s going to Columbia in the fall, and can you believe it he’s going to major in chemistry.”  She clapped her hands joyously while I felt doom closing in on me.

I stammered, “It’s been very nice to meet you, Dr. Bloom.  But it’s getting late and I should probably be leaving,” thinking that unless I got out of there right away there wouldn’t be any cars on the road that would pick me up and drive me back in humiliation to Brooklyn. 

I began to inch backwards toward the door where Ella still stood guard.  “But it’s only 9:30 now," Doris said, "You can stay a little longer I’m sure."  
If I could only manage to get away, I thought, I would even forego the possibility of that kiss.  It no longer mattered how much I had spent on her. 

Dr. Bloom intercepted my retreat, “I’m into dyes myself.  Aniline dyes.  Among the first to be synthesized from coal tar.  Have you gotten to them yet?” 

“Uh, not really.  Not yet,” I was hoping that maybe I would be lucky enough to die right there in that magnificent room and wouldn’t have to worry about hitchhiking. 

“Well, when you do I think you’ll find them interesting—they’re some of the best dyes around.  But enough about that.”   
Enough?  I thought in terror that we were just getting started with chemistry, that he would be asking me about benzene rings or titration and other stuff I had translated from French.   “Doris also tells me that you are a gifted athlete.” 

I was shifting on my feet thinking maybe, just maybe, with the subject turned to sports, I would somehow manage to get out of there unscathed, “Not really, I’m just tall for my age,” what was wrong with me—why was I drawing attention to my age? “So I can play basketball pretty well.  But that’s about it.” 

“But what about tennis?  I heard you have a pretty good forehand.”   As he said this he swept his right arm across his body in the perfect motion of a devastating forehand—that much I had learned the other day from observing Doris’s version.  “And baseball; you’re from Brooklyn I understand, and you must see the Dodgers play all the time.” 

I resumed breathing. “Sometimes.  Ebbets Field is not too far from where I live.   I always sit in the bleachers.”  I had lifted my head to half-mast and could see him warming to the subject. 

“I’ll bet you enjoy watching Jackie Robinson play?”

I too was rising to a cherished subject, but above all was sensing my escape, and so I chattered on, “And Duke Snider and Gil Hodges too.  Hodges actually is my favorite.  No one pays that much attention to him but he gets the job done in the field and at bat every day.”  I was beginning to sound to myself like the Dodgers’ radio announcer, Red Barber. 

“I agree.  That is an excellent observation.  I suspect you’ll do very well both in sports and in college.”   I began to again fold in upon myself as the subject turned back toward school.  “But I must be boring you.  You youngsters should go out and sit on the porch before you go home.  It’s such a beautiful night.”  He peered at me with his chemist’s eyes as if I were a long-sought precipitate. 

“It was a great pleasure to meet you.”  He extended his hand for a second handshake, “I hope to see you again before Labor Day.  All the best to you.  Mrs. Bloom is not feeling that well but I am sure she too would be pleased to get to know you.”  And with that he turned to the sweeping mahogany staircase which he bounded up with athletic grace.

*    *    *

Doris ran over to me.  It was obvious how pleased she was by how I had been received and comported myself.  I was simply happy to be able to resume regular breathing.  She took hold of both my hands and brought them to her chest, actually close to her chest, not in any way touching even the billowing fabric of her starched blouse.  “My daddy is right, it’s beautiful out.  The moon is almost full.  Do you have the time to sit on the porch before you need to leave?’ 

Forget my curfew!  Of course I did.  I was euphoric that I survived and wouldn’t have to go to Korea but even more because of where my hands had almost been. 

So we sat side-by-side on the glider, hips just touching.  Doris held my hand again.  I felt her fingers stroking mine.  We watched the clouds stream across the face of the moon.  Gliding back and forth, not inhibited by its rusty squeaking and what that might signal to the Blooms in their room that I imagined was right above the porch. I knew it was past ten, but after what I had just survived, getting back to the hotel late, including dealing with my mother’s hand wringing, hardly concerned me 

“Do you want to kiss me goodnight?”  Doris whispered, leaning toward me.  I could feel her breasts pressing into my shoulder.  I attempted for the second time in less in an hour to keep my heart from stopping.  I was becoming as adept at defying death as some of the carnival high wire artists in Lili.   And I was hoping to receive that kiss before passing out. 

Before I could say, “Yes” I felt her lips on mine.  And saw the clouds clear the moon’s surface as an owl began its mating call. 

“I think it may now be time for you to leave.  Your mother will be so worried.”  Doris was so thoughtful.  So good, while I, such a thoughtless son, was thinking only about a second kiss and more.  Which I attempted to initiate but managed to plant on the side of her head since she had turned away in the darkness. 

“Can we play tennis again on Tuesday?  After that it will be Labor Day weekend and the whole family will be here—Erica with her fiancé Ned—and all my aunts and uncles and cousins.  I don’t think there will be time to see you again until we return to New Jersey and you to Brooklyn.”

It was ending.  There would be no mixers, no frat parties—just Doris in college and me stuck, in spite of my moustache, in high school.

There was just enough light now to see Doris turn to me again.  She had my hands in hers just like earlier when I told her about Columbia.  “It’s OK for you to come to our dances.  One of my girlfriends, Brenda, is also going to be a freshman and she too has a boyfriend who still goes to high school.  She already invited him to Homecoming.” 

I was stunned. How did she know?  

For the third time that night I could not feel my heartbeat though, recklessly, without any hope of a future for myself, I managed to find Doris's lips. For the last time that night. And, I knew, forever.

Without another word, I slipped out of the glider and, walking toward the hotel, through that deserted town, not thinking about the time or, more, what next year would bring, I remembered something Leslie Caron had said as Lili Daurier in Lili--

"We don't learn. We get older, and we know."