Read Online Fierce Attachments: A Memoir by Vivian Gornick - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Vivian Gornick
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inside this newly arranged face of his.
The man standing in front of us is fifty years old. His tight curly hair is brown and gray, his eyes are cold blue, his figure beneath the well-cut business suit is thin and sexy, and he is made beautiful by the straight narrow line of a lovely nose: a nose not too long, not too short, just
right. In another life that nose was a painful Jewish droop, forever dragging everything in Maddy’s sad young face down down down to the bottom of his soul. His mother, Mrs. Shapiro, who lived on the third floor of our building, was always running after him in the street with the glass of milk he wouldn’t finish. The kids would scream, “Drink-your-milk-Maddy-drink-your-milk,” and Maddy’s nose would grow longer, and his mouth would pull downward into the sullen silence he adopted as a permanent means of survival.
When we were teenagers Maddy surprised us all one night at a neighborhood party with his extraordinary foxtrotting (“A regular Fred Astaire,” my mother pronounced). Where had he learned to dance like that, we wondered. This was not the kind of dancing you learned from watching Astaire on Saturday afternoons in a darkened movie auditorium, or from moving about by yourself in front of the mirror. This dancing you got from people . But where? who? when? Did Maddy have a life somewhere else? The question was asked, but no one could wait for, much less pursue, an answer.
We hardly saw Maddy at all once he had begun high school, but one night when Marilyn Kerner and I were fooling around in my bedroom Maddy walked in and joined us. We began to play “What do you want your husband (or your wife, Maddy) to be?” I said mine had to be very intelligent. Marilyn said she didn’t really want a husband, but if she had to have one he had to let her do whatever she wanted. Maddy began to dance around the room, his eyes closed, his arms holding an imaginary partner. “She’s gotta be real cute,” he said, “and she’s gotta be a great daa-ancer.”
What he couldn’t say then, at least partly because he wasn’t yet sure himself, was that even more than a great dancer, she had to be a he.
“I ran into your mother a few months ago,” my mother is saying. “She told me she never hears from you. What a bunch you all are!” I gaze at her in admiration. She hasn’t laid eyes on Maddy Shapiro in more than twenty years, yet she feels perfectly free …
Maddy bursts out laughing and hugs her as people push past us, annoyed that we are blocking their mindless trek to the subway. “What a bunch you all are,” he replies with something like affection in his voice. I look at him. I know that if Mrs. Shapiro was saying this his face would darken with anger and pain, but in my mother’s mouth these sentences are warmly awful, richly exasperating. Out of such moments of detachment comes the narrative tale we tell of our lives.
“Nothing ever changes, does it.” Maddy is shaking his head.
“Not true,” my mother says shrewdly. “You’ve changed. I don’t know what it is, but you’re a completely different person.”
“Not completely,” Maddy retorts. “After all, you did recognize me, didn’t you? Inside the brand-new Maddy you knew the old one was still there, and you spotted him. Couldn’t fool you , could I?”
Well, well, Maddy.
One more question-and-answer routine and we’ve reached the limit of mutual interest. We exchange telephone numbers, promise to remain in touch, and part knowing we will not meet again.
My mother and I continue walking west on Twenty-third Street. She grasps my forearm between her fingers and leans toward me, confidentially. “Tell me something,” she says. “Is Maddy what they call a homosexual?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What do homosexuals do?” she asks.
“They do everything you do, Ma.”
“What do you mean?”
“They fuck just like you do.”
“How do they do that? Where?”
“In the ass.”
“That must be
The man standing in front of us is fifty years old. His tight curly hair is brown and gray, his eyes are cold blue, his figure beneath the well-cut business suit is thin and sexy, and he is made beautiful by the straight narrow line of a lovely nose: a nose not too long, not too short, just
right. In another life that nose was a painful Jewish droop, forever dragging everything in Maddy’s sad young face down down down to the bottom of his soul. His mother, Mrs. Shapiro, who lived on the third floor of our building, was always running after him in the street with the glass of milk he wouldn’t finish. The kids would scream, “Drink-your-milk-Maddy-drink-your-milk,” and Maddy’s nose would grow longer, and his mouth would pull downward into the sullen silence he adopted as a permanent means of survival.
When we were teenagers Maddy surprised us all one night at a neighborhood party with his extraordinary foxtrotting (“A regular Fred Astaire,” my mother pronounced). Where had he learned to dance like that, we wondered. This was not the kind of dancing you learned from watching Astaire on Saturday afternoons in a darkened movie auditorium, or from moving about by yourself in front of the mirror. This dancing you got from people . But where? who? when? Did Maddy have a life somewhere else? The question was asked, but no one could wait for, much less pursue, an answer.
We hardly saw Maddy at all once he had begun high school, but one night when Marilyn Kerner and I were fooling around in my bedroom Maddy walked in and joined us. We began to play “What do you want your husband (or your wife, Maddy) to be?” I said mine had to be very intelligent. Marilyn said she didn’t really want a husband, but if she had to have one he had to let her do whatever she wanted. Maddy began to dance around the room, his eyes closed, his arms holding an imaginary partner. “She’s gotta be real cute,” he said, “and she’s gotta be a great daa-ancer.”
What he couldn’t say then, at least partly because he wasn’t yet sure himself, was that even more than a great dancer, she had to be a he.
“I ran into your mother a few months ago,” my mother is saying. “She told me she never hears from you. What a bunch you all are!” I gaze at her in admiration. She hasn’t laid eyes on Maddy Shapiro in more than twenty years, yet she feels perfectly free …
Maddy bursts out laughing and hugs her as people push past us, annoyed that we are blocking their mindless trek to the subway. “What a bunch you all are,” he replies with something like affection in his voice. I look at him. I know that if Mrs. Shapiro was saying this his face would darken with anger and pain, but in my mother’s mouth these sentences are warmly awful, richly exasperating. Out of such moments of detachment comes the narrative tale we tell of our lives.
“Nothing ever changes, does it.” Maddy is shaking his head.
“Not true,” my mother says shrewdly. “You’ve changed. I don’t know what it is, but you’re a completely different person.”
“Not completely,” Maddy retorts. “After all, you did recognize me, didn’t you? Inside the brand-new Maddy you knew the old one was still there, and you spotted him. Couldn’t fool you , could I?”
Well, well, Maddy.
One more question-and-answer routine and we’ve reached the limit of mutual interest. We exchange telephone numbers, promise to remain in touch, and part knowing we will not meet again.
My mother and I continue walking west on Twenty-third Street. She grasps my forearm between her fingers and leans toward me, confidentially. “Tell me something,” she says. “Is Maddy what they call a homosexual?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What do homosexuals do?” she asks.
“They do everything you do, Ma.”
“What do you mean?”
“They fuck just like you do.”
“How do they do that? Where?”
“In the ass.”
“That must be
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