This is why I believe that it was my father who was incapable of producing offspring. My dad has always been incapable of admitting weakness or failure, so if it wasn't his problem, wouldn't they have just owned up to it being my mom? She's a very open person about that sort of thing. But really, though, is it weakness or failure when it's just some stupid mechanical problem? Why, anyway, does it always seem less terrible of a thing if the woman can't have children? I've never understood it. What makes a man less manly if his sperm doesn't swim?
Anyway, after high school my dad put himself through the University of Pennsylvania and then went on to business school at Wharton, and he eventually became one of the most successful real estate developers in the United States, if not the world.
Through all of his hardheadedness and his determination to make something of himself, there was one weakness in his life (well, except, of course, the obvious sluggish sperm setback).
Now, Achilles had his heel. Superman had his kryptonite. I had the entire third floor at Barneys New York (ha!). My dad's weakness: my mother.
Maxine Elaine Firestein was born into a middle-class family in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia nine years after my dad was born. Like my own father, my mother's father worked his way through school and became an accountant. They weren't rich-rich or anything like that, but they were comfortable enough to have their own detached home, a car, and cashmere sweaters (the rage in the 1950s), whereas my father grew up with his family, including two younger sisters, in a one-bedroom apartment in West Philadelphia.
Maxine was the only child of Evelyn and Harry Firestein and, to hear my dad and others tell it, “the prettiest thing for miles and miles and miles.”
“Maxine was the Grace Kelly of our neighborhood,” my mom's friend Sally LaFair would tell me. She really was, though. She still is.
It always kind of irked me that I look more like my dad. My mom has this porcelain skin and these cheekbones that go on for days. Unlike my mom's, my skin could take on a nice tan, but when you have a mother who glows, you hate that your skin can tan. I've tried to find the cheekbones in me, but all I ever feel is flat bone.
My mom's hair shines, not one split end, ever, and she somehow never shows her roots, even though she dyes her hair blonde now. I had only split ends, not a clean end in sight. Roots grew in the second I paid the hairdresser's bill.
My mom could always eat whatever she wanted and never gain weight. I would look at a hot fudge sundae and gain five pounds. At sixty-five, she still has a perfect figure. I hadn't left the house without wearing a body shaper since I was fourteen.
My mom was also the most popular girl at Overbrook High School. I was not the most popular girl at the Friends School. Dana Stanbury was, and although Dana and I were friends, I was a follower and not the leader.
My mom got straight As in school. I slipped by.
They practically held out the red carpet on her first day at University of Pennsylvania. I got in when someone left the back door open.
My mom is the nicest person in the entire world. She takes in stray dogs. I bought Peaches for $800.
Everyone in Philadelphia at that time knew that the girl to get was Maxine Elaine Firestein, with her perfect figure, her perfect clothes, and her perfect bubbly personality. My dad took note.
My mom says that the first time she ever saw my dad was in Bonwit Teller on Chestnut Street. She was shopping with my grandmother one day, at the scarf counter on the first floor, and he approached them. What she didn't know (but would find out later) was that my dad had spotted her many months before.
It was at the Latin Casino, some nightclub they used to go to then. My mom, of course, was with a date, and my dad was alone by the bar when he spotted her. He said he'd never seen a woman more beautiful: her blonde curls, the way her black strapless hugged her body. She was the main hottie of the Latin Casino.
By the time he approached my mom in Bonwit Teller, Dad had become something of a mini-mogul, buying small properties here and there. He wasn't rich at this point, but he was on his way. He had just moved his parents and two sisters into a bigger, two-bedroom apartment, in fact.
Unfortunately, both of his parents died before I was born, so I never knew them. (Hey wait, don't I get to meet them now? What's up with that?)
Anyway, here's how they met. By the way, this is my favorite story ever. I think I had my mother tell me this story about fifty thousand times, so you'll notice that I really know the particulars:
It was December 1958, and it was one of those bitter cold days where anything that's not covered, like your ears or your nose, is instantly freezing. My grandmother and my mother were doing some Christmas shopping. (Yes, I know, my whole family is Jewish, but what can I say? We always celebrated Christmas, too. Knowing my family, I chalk it up to embracing any excuse to get together and give presents and eat. Plus, my grandparents' faith was really lax. My parents definitely followed their lead.) Anyway, by the time they got to Bonwit's on Chestnut Street, they decided that anything they had to buy they'd buy there, because the thought of walking outside again still made my mom shiver every time she told me the story. The thing you also have to remember, it was different in those days. A department store was a destination and not just a store you popped into for some panty hose. My grandmother and mother always looked starry eyed when they told me about Bonwit's. You'd start out with lunch and then work your way through the store. All the salesladies knew you by name and knew your taste, not like now when you have to hunt someone down to open up a dressing room. There were lots and lots of Christmas presents to buy that year. The people in my grandpop's accounting firm, cousins, neighbors, and friends. Both my grandmother and my mother had been invited to so many Christmas parties that year, so buying some new dresses was also high on the list.
My mom always says that had she not met my father that day, she still would have remembered it as being one of the most special days she ever had.
“Everything about that day was magical,” she'd say with her eyes shining. “The store was full of people and everyone had the same problem of what to buy for who and, of course, what to buy for themselves, so there was a lot of chatter and comparing what other people were buying.” My mom forced my grandmother to buy a black-sequined chiffon dress with bell sleeves for New Year's Eve. She always says, “I'll never forget how beautiful she looked in that dress as she stood on the boxed step in front of the three-way mirror. The tailor worked around her, cinching in her waist and gathering the full crinolines underneath. ” My mom bought a maroon eyelet dress with a teardrop front and spaghetti straps. Then they went into the lingerie department and fitted that dress with more crinolines than you would have thought possible. She said she looked like a flower in full bloom, but not in a good way, which is when she'd always tell me a fact of life that, as much as I try to remember it, I always forget: moderation is the key.
So, after lunch, they went down to the first floor where they decided on scarves for all of the secretaries in Grandpop's office. My grandmother and mom were deliberating between a sky blue scarf or one with little orange polka dots for Miss DeMarco, Grandpop's secretary at the time, when Mom heard this strong voice say, “Nothing could make you look more beautiful.”
At this point she would always add this aside to the story: “Now, it wasn't how handsome Daddy looked, even though he was. It wasn't the gorgeous suit he was wearing, even though that was a part of it. It was the way he said those words to me in that deep assertive voice he has when I hear him talking to clients on the phone: âNothing could make you look more beautiful.' ”
“Excuse me?” Grandmom said. Grandmom was wary of this man from the first moment.
“Mrs. Firestein,” he said, extending his hand. “I'm Bill Dorenfield,” he added in that same self-assured voice. “I'm going to marry your daughter.”
My grandmother took a step back and looked him over. He was leaning over the scarf display like he was lounging at the pool.
“Not with that swagger you are not,” she said, taking my mom's hand.
Grandmom and Mom talked about it later. Grandmom heard all about Bill Dorenfield from Lil Feldman because he had taken out Lil's daughter, Rona, and tried to have his way with her, which in those days meant a kiss. Rona always joked whenever she ran into my parents in later years, “I would have given him more had it not been the fifties.”
The next day two-dozen white roses arrived at the house, one bunch for Mom and one for Grandmom, with no card attached.
“No card,” Grandmom said, dumping the flowers in the trash. “Who does he think he is? Doesn't he know that a woman needs to hear the words?”
From that moment, my mom said, she stayed out of it. She knew. If he could get through to my grandmother then he was going to get the pretty Maxine Elaine.
The next day he sent my grandmother's favorite tapioca pudding from Horn & Hardart's, the one with the huge pearls, not the runny, bitsy ones everyone else sold.
Then he sent tickets to the symphony.
“No card,” she said, throwing them in the trash. “He's sky out of his mind.”
The next day he sent Grandmom's favorite perfume. He never told anyone how he knew it was her favorite.
“It's not my favorite anymore,” Grandmom said, dabbing some on her wrists and throwing it in a drawer.
The next day it was a bottle of French wine.
“Cheap,” she said, looking at the bottle.
Then he appeared at the door.
“What's it going to take?” he asked her.
“Why don't you just say the words?” she demanded.
“I want to marry your daughter,” he said.
“Take her on a date first!” she said.
“Fine!”
And so he did.
My parents were married the following May. Word has it, you never saw two people in this world who were happier than my grandmother and my father.
Don't you just love that story? Don't you just love how my mother knew from the first second she saw my dad? Don't you just love how she let my grandmother take over? That's my mom. Feminine, beautiful, and able to get what she wants without ever saying a word. I was never like that. Like my grandmother, I always had to repeat the words over and over until someone got the point. All my mother had to do was rely on her grace and femininity.
When I was about ten, and my parents were celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary, I had come home from school to find a brand-new lemon-colored Cadillac Coupe deVille and, oddly enough, my father. He was never home so it was really strange to find him there.
“Did you get a new car?” I asked him.
“No, I've got to drop that off someplace,” he told me. “Why don't you come along?”
So I did. To be with my father in the middle of an afternoon on a workday was prize enough for me. To go for a ride, well, that was another.
We drove up to my grandparents' house as my grandmother came outside.
“What's this? Another new car for yourself? What about one for my daughter?” she shouted out as she crossed her arms.
“It's for you,” he said, agitated, handing her the keys.
“What am I going to do with this car?” she complained to him. “It's too nice. People will think I'm showing off.”
“Tell them your son-in-law gave it to you for twenty years of wedded bliss.”
“Fine,” she said, adding, “I suppose I have to give you a ride home now.”
That kind of bickering between my grandmother and my dad went on and on and on, by the way. The day my grandmother died, though, I don't think anyone cried more than my dad. Come to think of it, I guess she must have really loved him, too, since she's still driving that car up here.
So now you know the ins and outs of the love affair between my parents. You can imagine how they must have felt when they couldn't have children.
To tell you the truth, they never really talked about what they went through. My mom said that after I was born all that talk didn't matter, but I can only imagine it was awful. I'm assuming that tests and procedures were performed and tries were made, but with no success. My dad has always had it out for doctors, and I can't help but think it has something to do with that time.
So here's how my first best day happened, which is kind of sad, but, as you know already, it has a really good ending. My parents, by the way, never told me this story; my uncle Morris did when he was babysitting for me once. When I asked them if it was true, they didn't say it wasn't, but they brushed it off in the way parents do when they don't want to talk about difficult times with their child. That's how I know it's true.
My mom had gone to the doctor for her yearly gynecological checkup, real routine. My mom always goes around Thanksgiving, and so do I (or I did) because she took me with her for my first visit and I just started on that schedule.
Anyway, this particular year, 1968 to be exact, there was a problem. uncle Morris told me they'd found a lump in her breast.
Now remember, this was the late 1960s. Women weren't banged on the head to check their breasts every month like they are now, so if it was a lump, it was even scarier, and according to my uncle Morris, my father was petrified. My grandmother was hysterical. The only one who wasn't as scared, as you could imagine, was my mom.