Read Online Lion House,The by Marjorie Lee - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marjorie Lee
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in it which often came (and I suppose always will come) back to me: "Let me love you. Let me show that I do. Let me do a million impossible things —So you'll know that I do..."
We had dinner at Nicholson's; and then we braved an icy wind to the Byline Room and listened to Mabel Mercer. Frannie's records, good as they were, had not prepared me for Mabel in person. It was one thing to hear her tears on plastic and another to have them drip on my arm. We had a table directly beneath the wooden platform on which she sat in a straight-backed chair, hands folded in her lap, singing of: the loneliness of ivory towers; the ends of love affairs; mornings of orange juice for One; lucky stars above, but not for her; telephones that ring (but who's to answer?); summer days that wither away too soon, too soon; plans that would have to be changed; farewells (sweet) and amens; and various other sobbing manifestations of the Universal Female Neurosis which seemed to be her stock in trade.
We stayed for the last show and then taxied back to the car. Brad, Marc, and I fell asleep and Frannie drove. What with a sudden fall of snow on the Henry Hudson Parkway and a staggering case of myopia, she landed us in Westchester at five forty-five on Sunday morning.
There was something else we owed to the Brownes: an invitation to a party in Meade's Manor given by a couple named Sondheim. The evening had been themed A Winter Picnic; and, as picnics go, this was a memorable one. The absence of grassy leas by rippling rivulets or stretches of coral sand was more than made up for by two-inch pile broadloom, the expanse of which, from livingroom to diningroom to library, offered ample sitting-space for over eighty picnickers. After a siege of drinking ("Mother of God," Frannie reported, returning from the bar, "they've got a separate bartender for each brand!") every couple was given a small pink damask tablecloth to spread on the floor and two box suppers. These, it was said, had been imported from Chambord via refrigerated truck, and contained, among other homey-type victuals, a stuffed squab and half a lobster.
"What's the Sondheim guy like?" Brad asked Jeri who was sitting near us. "Rich," she answered.
"And not exactly Liberal," someone else put in.
"Fuck Liberals!" Frannie roared for the edification of twenty surrounding guests. "This is the first square meal we've had in years!"
Towards the end of dinner a man named Fred Sitkin played the piano and a girl named Something Harris sang along. She was excellent. Frannie could barely eat. In a while she got up and went over to make a request. It was the same song she'd done herself with Cy Walter at the Weylin Bar. When Mrs. Harris came to the lines: Let me do a million impossible things —So you'll know that I do —Frannie became rapt enough to stop chewing altogether.
It was interesting to watch Frannie in a group from which she was (or at least kept saying she was) trying to break away. It occurred to me that the emphasis she placed on the difference between these people and herself was a ruse of the mind: a defense against some deeply rooted and distorted fear that she was not acceptable. It was not Meade's Manor alone, I decided, which would play upon this insecurity: it could have been South Philadelphia or Sioux City, Iowa: any locale at all, in fact, which, through the ungrounded cliches of society, had been invested with a connotation of homogeneity. Meade's Manor, for that matter, was probably closer to being her personal milieu than any of the others in which she might try to puddle so anonymously.
While this particular dot on New York's map had somehow gained for itself a reputation for hide-bound Jewish conservatism, its younger generation had attempted, just as Frannie had, to break from old beginnings. Though a few of them were, as Frannie put it, still trying to keep cool with Coolidge, there were many more who were clearly emancipated.
"They're nice," I told her during the
We had dinner at Nicholson's; and then we braved an icy wind to the Byline Room and listened to Mabel Mercer. Frannie's records, good as they were, had not prepared me for Mabel in person. It was one thing to hear her tears on plastic and another to have them drip on my arm. We had a table directly beneath the wooden platform on which she sat in a straight-backed chair, hands folded in her lap, singing of: the loneliness of ivory towers; the ends of love affairs; mornings of orange juice for One; lucky stars above, but not for her; telephones that ring (but who's to answer?); summer days that wither away too soon, too soon; plans that would have to be changed; farewells (sweet) and amens; and various other sobbing manifestations of the Universal Female Neurosis which seemed to be her stock in trade.
We stayed for the last show and then taxied back to the car. Brad, Marc, and I fell asleep and Frannie drove. What with a sudden fall of snow on the Henry Hudson Parkway and a staggering case of myopia, she landed us in Westchester at five forty-five on Sunday morning.
There was something else we owed to the Brownes: an invitation to a party in Meade's Manor given by a couple named Sondheim. The evening had been themed A Winter Picnic; and, as picnics go, this was a memorable one. The absence of grassy leas by rippling rivulets or stretches of coral sand was more than made up for by two-inch pile broadloom, the expanse of which, from livingroom to diningroom to library, offered ample sitting-space for over eighty picnickers. After a siege of drinking ("Mother of God," Frannie reported, returning from the bar, "they've got a separate bartender for each brand!") every couple was given a small pink damask tablecloth to spread on the floor and two box suppers. These, it was said, had been imported from Chambord via refrigerated truck, and contained, among other homey-type victuals, a stuffed squab and half a lobster.
"What's the Sondheim guy like?" Brad asked Jeri who was sitting near us. "Rich," she answered.
"And not exactly Liberal," someone else put in.
"Fuck Liberals!" Frannie roared for the edification of twenty surrounding guests. "This is the first square meal we've had in years!"
Towards the end of dinner a man named Fred Sitkin played the piano and a girl named Something Harris sang along. She was excellent. Frannie could barely eat. In a while she got up and went over to make a request. It was the same song she'd done herself with Cy Walter at the Weylin Bar. When Mrs. Harris came to the lines: Let me do a million impossible things —So you'll know that I do —Frannie became rapt enough to stop chewing altogether.
It was interesting to watch Frannie in a group from which she was (or at least kept saying she was) trying to break away. It occurred to me that the emphasis she placed on the difference between these people and herself was a ruse of the mind: a defense against some deeply rooted and distorted fear that she was not acceptable. It was not Meade's Manor alone, I decided, which would play upon this insecurity: it could have been South Philadelphia or Sioux City, Iowa: any locale at all, in fact, which, through the ungrounded cliches of society, had been invested with a connotation of homogeneity. Meade's Manor, for that matter, was probably closer to being her personal milieu than any of the others in which she might try to puddle so anonymously.
While this particular dot on New York's map had somehow gained for itself a reputation for hide-bound Jewish conservatism, its younger generation had attempted, just as Frannie had, to break from old beginnings. Though a few of them were, as Frannie put it, still trying to keep cool with Coolidge, there were many more who were clearly emancipated.
"They're nice," I told her during the
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