I thought about Brenda out there somewhere in the literary limbo where characters go after their stories have been told. I'm also kind of a third-rate writer myself. Being less than Rate One, my characters aren't too terrific, so what's the harm if I borrow a good character from a big hitter like Roth. I would resurrect Brenda Patimkin and see if I could do anything about that ancient ache.
I was in an airplane on a mid-day flight. Off peak, of course. Uncrowded, with empty seats all around me. The plane crossed the Delaware River and New Jersey slid in beneath the wing, glinting under a dusting of light snow in the early winter afternoon. It was a long time since I'd been back. Memories rolled in. My writing pad lay open on the seat beside me. I fastened my seat belt, took a firm grip on my pen, and wrote--
A woman was sitting on the seat beside me. She was smallish, blond, and stylish. We were in the smoking section, but she asked, "Do you mind?" Such politeness! She wants to engage in conversation. I peered at her sideways. She had filled out. In high school she was still a runty kid. A picture came back of a girl's gym class. A softball game. She stands at the plate in a blue gym suit, corn-yellow braid hanging down from the back. She swings feebly at lobbed pitches. A klutz. In the story she plays killer tennis. In the movie she was played by dark-haired, heavy-browed Ali McGraw. All lies.
Brenda trying to play softball: a memory from high school. But then we went on to the same small college in Pennsylvania. We moved in different circles: Brenda, the pretty, popular girl, a cheerleader in a short skirt and white tasselled boots, jumping up and showing her orange-panted bottom, hanging out with big boys with letters on their jackets and rich lads who drove around in long convertibles finned like sharks. Sometimes I could get to talk to Brenda. She was no longer runty, but I didn't think of her as beautiful. Looking into her eyes I could see the glimmer of ironic humor and intelligence and I wondered why she wasted herself on these Neanderthals. Because I loved her so much, I was shy and awkward and I could see that she wasn't much interested in me and I could see that she thought I was a jerk and I would go away cursing myself for my foolishness and clumsiness.
After college I didn't see her again. Later there was the Roth novel and a movie. I was sure that by now Brenda had matured to a better perception of men. Neil would have been right for her: clever, intellectual, a guy with passion. Like me, but without falling all over himself. And now I had brought her up from literary limbo and she sat beside me on an airplane that would in only a few minutes be landing in Newark.
My opener-- "Hello, Brenda."
"You know me? Who are you?" Here gray eyes gazed into mine.
"Howie Sher." Did I detect a faint glow of recognition? "I was fat and wore glasses. I was a secret admirer." I smiled at the euphemism for the tumescent turmoil that still roiled in my loins.
"Howie Sher. Oh, my goodness! I do remember. I guess I didn't notice you much. I thought you were a creepy bookworm." She reached in her bag and extracted eyeglasses, the better to see me with, I supposed. "You've improved. You look quite human now."
"A late bloomer."
" Late in other ways too , Howie. Where have you been all this time. I feel like I've been in limbo for centuries."
"I never tried this before. I didn't know how the time part would work. I'm glad you didn't come up out of limbo as a twenty-two year old."
"Speak for yourself. What year is this?"
"1988. You look terrific, Brenda."
"My God! Here I am back in a story,, but I'm fifty years old." She opened her purse and took out a mirror. "Yughh! Lines and wrinkles!"
A little vertical crease appeared between her eyebows that I hadn't noticed before. Now she was troubled and it deepened. "Stop carrying on. You're beautiful and you're rich. You have diamonds on your fingers, a fur coat in the overhead. Everything your father wanted.."
"I married a doctor. What happened to Neil?"
Neil. A boy from Newark, her ardent lover who worked in the Newark library. A nice kid who talked to the statue of Columbus in the park across from the library, whence the title of the Roth's novel. Brenda finally rejected him because he wasn't acceptable to her noveau riche parents. I brought her up to date. "You won't believe it. He became a famous writer. Married and divorced three times. According to his novels, which tend to be autobiographical, they were all beautiful, intelligent, and somewhat neurotic. Of course, Neil himself is an expert on 'neurotic,' as you yourself know. Now he lives somewhere in upstate New York with an actress, a celebrated, albeit aging, beauty, a woman of great talent and grace, and to my less-than-omniscient knowledge, non-neurotic."
Bringing up old loves quiets people or makes them nervous. It set Brenda to musing for a while. "I'm glad he finally settled down All that turmoil served him right. He was always so emotional. Right away he flies off the handle. He was wrong about me, you know. He just jumped to the wrong conclusion. I did love him. I would have married him."
"Do you want me to fix it?" I offered.
"What, are you crazy? I have three beautiful daughters, a big house in Short Hills, and a marvelous husband who makes $752,496 a year."
A chime came on and the pilot announced that we were beginning our descent into Newark. We fished up our seat belts and Brenda snuffed her cigarette. We would be on the ground soon and she would be back on her way to Short Hills. "Is someone meeting you?" I asked.
"No, I'll just catch a cab." That was good news.
"Are you happy, Brenda?"
"Of course I'm happy. Why wouldn't I be happy?"
"Come, Brenda. There must be a worm in the apple somewhere." I was really worried. Now that I had resurrected Brenda, I had to find a worm in the apple. I had to find some flaw in her perfect existence, some unfulfillment that I could satisfy, something that I could offer that would deliver her finally into my long-waiting embrace.
Time was running out. The airplane's hydraulics whined as the flaps came down like a curtain on my little drama. My heart sank with the plane dropping down over the Jersey meadows. As the landing gear thunked down I felt it as weight dropping inside of my chest.
"And if there was a wee worm, my dear Howie? I hardly remember you at all. And I hardly know you now."
...and if there was? I had a glimmer of hope.
The plane jounced onto the runway. I had to think fast.
"You don't have to live like that," I said.
"Meaning?"
"I see a big flaw. Everything is too perfect. You're a literary character. Something has to happen. The story has to have a plot, big 'A' action. Otherwise, Boom! back to limbo."
"And you'll wake me up in another thirty years. Right, Howie? I'll be eighty years old. Why can't you bring me back as a young girl?"
"In a blue gym suit and corn-yellow braid. It just doesn't work that way, Brenda. Look, we have to create some excitement. We have to get you some aggravation. What do you do now for aggravation?"
"I don't have any."
"Exactly. You should have stayed with Neil. Neil writes book after book with tons of aggravation in every one. The guy's a virtuoso of aggravation. Please, stay with me for a little while and we'll get something going."
We were waiting for her luggage. "I guess I don't have much choice, do I, Howie?"
"Call home. Tell them that your flight was canceled and you're staying over another night."
She had retrieved her suitcase. "Watch my bag," she said. She went to a telephone.
When she returned, she looked worried. "I hate to lie," she said.
"It's not the first time."
She flushed and looked away. Being a literary character puts one at a disadvantage: everybody knows your business. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her, but I had. "I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't worry too much about it. That's what happens when you're in a book. Nothing is private. And I mean nothing. Authors have no sense of propriety any more. Well, Howie, I'm in your hands. You're really a nice person. I think I can trust you. I hope you're a good writer."
"I wrote Loxfin Soup."
"You write cook books! Oh, my God, what have I let myself in for?" Now she looked really worried. She looked downright aggravated.
"For a start we'll take a trip to the islands," I said.
"Islands? I don't have clothes to go to islands. I don't have a bathing suit."
"I'll rent a car."
"How can you go to islands by car?"
"I didn't say what islands. First we go to Staten, then Coney, then Long. On Long is Jamaica, Nassau, and Fire."
"That's what you call big "A' action? I call it big 'A' aggravation."
"Good. It's working already. We can stop in Coney. If you'd like, we can go for hot dogs at Moishe's." Moishe's hot dogs were famous.
"Do you think it's still there?" she asked.
"A landmark. I was there in '72. Hadn't changed a bit since '55."
I rented a big Lincoln. I wanted to make an impression in Coney Island.
We drove across the Verrazano and down the Belt Parkway. It was a bright and mild winter day. Ships stood in the Narrows waiting for the tide. Brenda sat quietly, muffled in the collar of her coat. "Tell me about yourself, Howie. Don't you have a family?"
"I was married. I have a son and a daughter but they're grown up and on their own. We had a divorce a few years ago."
"What happened?"
"She said I was weird and all I ever wanted to do was bury my nose in a book."
"Ha! I was right! A creepy bookworm." Brenda lit a cigarette and cracked her window open. Cold air sliced in under the canopy. She pulled her collar closer around her throat. "You think that somehow you're going to get to sleep with me, don't you, Howie? That's going to be your story?"
"Who said anything about sleeping?"
"You know what I mean. You'll get me to go to bed with you. Then you'll end it all with some corny wistful ending and I'll go back to limbo for another thirty years until you think of me again."
"Island Number Two coming up on the right," I announced. The landmarks of Coney Island came into view: the parachute tower, a relic of the 1939 World's Fair and the Half Moon Hotel, once a honeymooners' haven and now a residence for elderly pensioners. I turned off the highway onto Ocean Parkway and headed for the beach. I found Moishe's on Surf Avenue, right where I had left it in 1972.
"See, nothing's changed," I said.
"That's what you think. Look around."
I had to admit there was an air of insidiousness about the neighborhood. A group of tough-looking young men stood on the corner, their fists crammed into the pockets of their jackets. I suspected that they carried lovingly honed switchblade knives. They wore little knitted skull caps, held with bobby pins. Yeshiva punks.
"Don't be afraid." I said. "These guys just hang around here to give the place atmosphere."
"Well," sighed Brenda, "if this was for real, I'd never get out of the car."
"Relax. just look like you belong here. With this car they'll think I'm a big dealer." I put on a pair of dark glasses and rolled my hat brim down all around. "Come on," I said.
"You're not only creepy, you're crazy. Howie. You've got a real life to lose.
We arrived inside Moishe's with our throats unslit. It was crowded and noisy, the marble-topped tables occupied by small groups representing the spectrum of New York ethnic tytpes and social classes: Russian immigrants drinking tea in glasses with wire holders, blacks, Asians, Hispanics; bums and swells. The windows were clouded with moisture, the air humid with the vapors rising from kettles of boiling hot dogs and hot sauerkraut. We found a table. An ancient waiter, his apron stained with splashes of mustard, took our order-- beers and hot dogs with the works. For myself, a kasha knish on the side. I requested an unfrosted glass. A mistake.
"Aha," said the waiter. "The glasses we keep frosted. You want maybe warm beer?"
"No, just cold beer in a room temperature glass. Is that a problem?"
. "Special requests a mere bagatelle. My pleasure is to serve you. .Anything else, Madame?" addressing Brenda. "No, thank you," she answered.
"Anon, I shall return." He slapped a napkin over his arm, and sailed off toward the steaming kettles, listing a bit to starboard.
I looked around and saw some familiar faces. "Don't stare," I warned Brenda, "but there are some famous people here.."
"Real celebrities?"
"You bet. The guy on your right, the little fat one with big rings on his fingers-- That's Dirty Book Sam from Boston. Across from him, the dapper little guy with the shiny bald head is Don Michael Angelo."
"I'm impressed, Howie. How do you get to know such famous people?"
"They're gourmets. They come here for the hot dogs. They give me recipes for my cookbooks. When Don Angelo offers you a recipe, you can't refuse."
Our food arrived. Don Angelo and Dirty Book Sam were intensely engaged in conversation. I caught Don Angelo's eye. "How's the cookbooks comin', Howie?" he asked.
"Nothing going right now Don Angelo. I'm working on some big deals."
The Don looked at Brenda, then winked towards me. "I guess I know what you mean, Howie."
Dirty Book Sam spoke towards Brenda. "Maybe you got some influence. This guy Howie, he's a big schmuck, with those cook books. I asked him to come work for me. He can be a big shot, make big bucks, a high class author like maybe ah--. Gimme some names, Howie."
"Sure, Sam. Let's see. Hemingway, Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Faulkner--"
"Yeah, Faulkner, He wrote some dirty books. I make you a big name like Faulkner, except maybe I change the spelling a little bit, fits in a little better with my clientele."
Brenda turned to me. "Listen to his man, Howie. He wants to make you famous. I can see it in the New York Times Book Review-- 'by Howie Fuckner' " She laughed so hard that I was afraid she would choke on sauerkraut.
Don Angelo chimed in. "That's a good offer, Howie."
"An offer that I can refuse, Don Angelo, " I replied. "No hard feelings, Sam?"
."Get outta here." Sam chuckled, his rings twinkling as he waved a little good-bye. Not that we were leaving, but he was finished with us. Sam and Don Angelo had business on their minds.
Brenda had finished her hot dog. She wiped the mustard off her lips and repaired her lipstick. Her chest heaved as she belched in a ladylike manner, containing and absorbing the gasses within the cavities of her body.
"Come on, we'll walk off some of this gas," I said. Moishe's rear entrance led out onto the boardwalk.
"Maybe I shouldn't have taken you there," I said. "All sorts of characters."
"Yes, Howie, and some rather dubious. Still, I like your friends.
"I get around."
"I never meet such people in Short Hills. Oh, I think I'm getting heartburn," said Brenda. "Let's walk to the parachutes."
We walked down the boards, deserted but for ourselves, some desultory seagulls, and a few elderly strollers. Brenda held my arm. We arrived at the base of the parachute tower.
"I came here with my family when I was a kid," she said. "I was afraid to go up, but my brother teased until I dared. They buckled you into the seat and started to pull you up. It's very high. The people on the boardwalk get very tiny and you could see far out to sea and over the tops of the buildings. I could see New York. As you go up, people are going down. They scream. I remember that I was crying and hanging onto my brother for dear life. He was scared white himself. Suddenly you hit the top. It lets go and you fall free. I must have screamed. Then the chute catches the air and you come down fluttering like a bird. It was beautiful."
"It's closed down now. Would you do it again?"
She didn't answer. She gazed up at the tower, smiling softly. She gripped my arm tightly.
In the sinking afternoon we headed back to Moishe's. "We need to vacate this place before dark," I said. "After dark the wolves come out."
"You were right about something, Howie. There is a flaw. I don't know if I can talk to you about it."
"Doctor Fuckner at your service."
"Well, I've trusted you so far. The worm in the apple is that there is no worm. Everything is always perfect. I'm not bored. I'm not discontent. I came along with you because I sensed that something might happen. Maybe something terrible and destructive; maybe romantic and memorable."
We approached the car as it was getting dark. The young men on the corner were beginning to sprout fangs.
"Fasten your seat belt. The next island is Jamaica," I announced. "We can stay over at Kennedy. I can take you back if you want me to."
"No, I'm going to see this through. I'm not ready to go back to limbo land. And I have to tell you something else that may come as a surprise, Howie."
"I'm all ears."
It was warm in the car. She opened her coat, took her cigarettes out from her bag and waited for the lighter to pop out. My ears waited.
"I'm getting quite fond of you, Howie. You're bizarre. You have strange friends. But you have some kind of a sneaky charm I can't deny. And I'm flattered that you brought me back. Why me, instead of, say, Shirley Finkelstein?"
"Shirley? Amazing! You remember her. My God, she was the stunningest girl in that class. Those brown eyes. Not to forget those luscious breasts. But she wasn't the one, Brenda. You were the one. When we were young I lusted for you."
"From afar, Howie. Far afar."
"I didn't forget. My love never died. When I needed a character I thought of you. Shirley Finkelstein never entered my head, although now that you mention her--"
"How do you feel about me now? A middle-aged woman with grown kids and a husband. And wrinkles around my eyes."
She had forgotten to mention the engaging little dart between her eyebrows.
"I love your wrinkles. My lust is aged and mellowed like an old brandy, fuming in the cask, one hundred and ten proof."
"Howie, you're too much."
"I'm not enough."
Oh, Howie." She squeezed my hand and lay her head on my shoulder. Her delicate perfume, an expensive essence designed to madden, enveloped me. My throat was dry, my nerves on edge. The blood beat against my temples. My body was athrob in several places at once.
We checked in at one of the big hotels near Kennedy. Drinks. A light dinner. We sat in the hotel lounge and talked about her family and gossiped about friends that we both knew from the old days. We talked about Neil's books.
"What do you want from me?" she asked. Soft light haloed her hair, more ashen than I had remembered it. But her eyes were still the same pools of bluish-gray, still that glimmer of gaiety rippling behind her eyes and about her mouth.
"I am sitting here looking at you and you are so beautiful that I ache. Right here," I said, lifting my tie and pressing my fingertips into my chest.
" Howie, your love is heartburn. Oh those hot dogs!"
"A thirty-year heartburn, Brenda. What do I want? I want you to love me. And you will."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Doctor Fuckner's love theory. No woman can resist being loved."
She put her drink down sharply, splashing the tabletop. "What a dumb idea! And so arrogant. You are creepy! And how many guinea pigs have you tested this cockamamie theory on, Howie?"
"I have to admit that you are the first. Look, Brenda, can this be arrogance, this desire carried in my heart for so long? How can you not see what it is. What I bring you is a gift, something so rare, something that can happen only once, maybe twice, in a lifetime."
She leaned back in her chair and gazed at me for a long time and I saw her eyes grow misty and she came forward and put her hands over mine and she looked into my eyes and in that look there was such tenderness that I could feel my bones melting. "Well, as the old saying goes, never look a gift horse in the mouth," she said, and she leaned forward and kissed me.
"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." I said.
She laughed. "You're too much."
"I'm not enough. Really, not enough."
"So, we'll find out."
In our room we undressed and got into bed like familiar lovers. She wore a blue nightgown. "In scenes like this we're supposed to be nude," I said. Don't you ever go to the movies?"
"I don't go to see those kinds of movies."
"Try it, you'll like it." I helped her lift the gown over her head. She turned to the nightstand and switched off the light. I clasped her body...her tongue reached into my mouth hungrily. I was astounded and delighted by her passion and energy. It was as though it was she who had waited so long for this consummation. We came together. "Oh Howie, Howweee!" she cried out. Making love is like cooking: timing is all-important.
She fell asleep in my arms. In the small hours of the morning she stirred. My tuckered glands rose to the occasion and we made love again.
The dining room was already busy when we came down for breakfast, the tables filled with trimly tailored women and business men in dark suits stoking their bodies with cholesterol for the day's contests. I ordered grapefruit and bran cereal with skim milk. "Those eggs look so good," said Brenda, eyeing the platter of a man at the next table. "I'm hungry. I've already committed adultery; now I will commit gluttony." She had a big plate of scrambled eggs with steak and tomato slices, biscuits and butter, and coffee thick with cream.
"What happens next, Howie? Will you bring me back again?"
"How's Tuesday? Now that I've begun this, I don't know how to give it up. I think I'm quite in love. I'm beginning to wonder how I'm going to get on with the rest of my life."
"This isn't healthy for you. I'm not reality, just something you've created. Besides, I have responsibilty. I do have a husband, and those two beautiful daughters, previously mentioned."
"And $752,496, also previously mentioned."
"That's not nice, Howie. I love Marvin. He's good and kind and sweet. He's a marvelous gastroenterologist and he earns whatever he gets. Now I'm going back to him. End the story so I can go back."
"I could invent more aggravation. We never made it to Fire Island."
"Fire Island in winter? Spare me, Howie."
"Of course. I love you, Brenda, and that's not dyspepsia. But this story is over. Back to the cookbooks for me."
"And back to limbo for me." She held my hand. " Bring me back again someday. It was romantic and rememberable."
"Even Moishe's?"
"Even Moishe's. And something else, dear Howie-- You are enough."
"Not too much?"
"No, just enough. Goodbye, Howie."
"Goodbye, Brenda."
She threw me a kiss and was gone. She hadn't finished her eggs. I took her plate and ate. The eggs were delicious; something had been added to the recipe. Hmmm... I went back to the kitchen and asked to speak to the chef.
I closed the notebook and looked out of the window. The plane was descending over Boston Harbor. The hydraulics whined as the flaps lowered. The landing gear thunked down. As commanded by the crisp female voice announcing that we were about to bring the aircraft to earth at Logan Airport, I snapped my seatbelt shut, raised my seat to the upright position, stowed my gear under the seat in front of me, and awaited with my usual trepidation the jounce onto the runway.
There was Sam waiting for me as I came out of the gate. Dapper little Sam in a homburg, sporting a Florida tan which I supposed to have been acquired at the Hialeah race track. He embraced me like a long lost son. "How was the trip?" he asked.
"Fine, Sam. Good weather. Not a bump. I even wrote a story on the way up."
"Story, shmory. Stories is for shmucks. Listen, I got good news from Angelo-- another printing for Loxfin Soup, twenty thousand. Stick with those cookbooks, Howie, and we can go places."
"I guess you're right, Sam." I was happy about the success of Loxfin Soup, but a little depressed too about my going-nowhere artistic career. Sam seemed to sense my sadness. As we walked down through the crowded concourse he put his hand on my shoulder.
Through a break in the traffic I noticed a woman coming toward us. She was attractive, blond, wore a belted raincoat of shiny black stuff, a fedora hat with a wide brim turned down and covering the side of her face. As she passed she turned in my direction. It seemed she smiled as though she experienced some faint glow of recognition. Then she went on. I stopped and watched her disappear in the crowd. It was Brenda. I was sure of it. My story , my shmory! "Wait for me," I said to Sam. "I just thought I saw somebody I know. I have to find her."
The monitor. A flight to Newark leaving in about fifteen minutes. I raced down to the gate. There she was in the queue at the podium. I took a deep breath and went up to her.
"Pardon me. Do you know me?" I knew that she would say, Yes. My story was working. "Yes. Oh, my goodness, yes. Of course. You're Howie, aren't you? Howie Sher. It was so long ago. Are you going to Newark?"
"No, I just arrived here. I saw you in the concourse and followed you down."
"That was sweet." We were moving up in line. The agent handed her her boarding pass. "I'm surprised you recognized me. I'm afraid I'm a bit older and heavier than I was then."
"You've filled out. I think you look quite lovely."
"You would say that. You had a crush on me, didn't you? And I gave you a bad time, didn't I? You were kind of chubby and wore glasses. You were so studious. I thought you were a creepy bookworm. You told me my boyfriends were Neanderthals. You see how I remember everything? I married a doctor. I'm not Shirley Finkelstein anymore."
Shirley Finkelstein! Yipes! The feeble slugger in a blue gym suit-- Shirley, not Brenda. Misremembrance of times past. There had to be a meaning to my meeting her, right here, right now. Looking into her deep brown eyes, I could see that she hadn't changed. The embers of my ancient ardor hadn't died. In a few minutes she would be boarding the flight to Newark and would be lost to me. I had to think fast.