DULCINEA
My first cousin Sunny had gained weight, but the glamor was still there.
“Looks like a little pony,” my mother whispers in my ear.
Pony as in fat Shetland was her euphemism for fat. No one in our family was a featherweight and the battle between voracious appetites and the scale was an ongoing one.
My mother had successfully whittled herself down to one hundred twenty pounds. That was because, as she was fond of telling me, “every day was diet day.” Even on Yom Kippur, the highest holy day in the Jewish calendar and a day of sacrificial fasting, was just another way to jump-start a diet.
“I bet I lost fourteen ounces,” my mother would say on that day while shoving another matzoh in her mouth.
“A real little horse,” my mother’s eyes now gleam like a missionary about to convert someone to the virtues of a low-fat diet.
Then my mother remembers what her therapist told her. The thing about everyone determining their own fate.
“But if she is happy with that weight,” she says, “and I mean truly happy, then it’s okay for her.”
Happy was not a word I’d ever use to describe my family, but we had assimilated enough to pretend to be Americans.
Sunny was overblown in the way that hurricanes hit New York. Her real name was Sandra, the name her mother, my Aunt Ida, used when she was trying to talk sense to her. Sunny was not really sunny in the sense of a pleasant, leisurely day frolicking on a beach. She was more like the relentless glare of an uncomfortable place where you sweat and longed for relief.
“I just don’t see how she could be happy with that weight,” my mother whispers in my ear.
My mother never gave up on an idea until she wrestled it into the ground and came back to her original position.
“It would be impossible with all that extra weight. But if she is, and not just in denial, and I’d challenge her on that, then it’s okay. But I wonder about her cholesterol count. If nothing else, that’s a reason to lose it.”
Weight, the all-consuming summation of our worth and attractiveness, was the theme of my upbringing. Not brains or talent. Being pencil-thin was all it took. Starving was the price we paid for being women.
Sunny had the advantage of being tall and being able to carry it better. She had gained the weight mostly in her thighs and her face but there was still her towering height, the allure of black stretch pants, long painted nails that looked like talons, an overblouse that covered her stomach, and black sunglasses which she never bothered to remove. Her dyed chestnut hair hung in a long, loose mane and got tangled in the many gold chains that dangled from her neck. She was a dethroned Jewish American princess, growing older, fatter, more guarded.
She turns to me and says, “Long time, Kid. You’re not around much.”
I was surprised by the greeting. Sunny was like many women from New York. You caught them mid-stream. They rarely asked if it was a good time to talk or how you were and expected an answer. You entered their world that had been running on overdrive since their eyes blinked open to a new day. You, by proximity, were caught in the rushing river and tortuous currents of their thoughts. These women rarely stopped talking and if they did, it was only to honor the rudimentary conversational sharing skills they learned in kindergarten.
“You’re looking good, Kid,” Sunny unexpectedly says.
“Not like last Christmas,” I say, “when I was wearing that red velvet vest that I could barely button.”
This conjuring of my chubby self at Christmas, a holiday we had adopted without any attention to a tree or Jesus, was pushing it too far for Sunny. She reaches into her oversized black leather tote bag and pulls out rolls, potato salad and roast beef from the deli.
“Your mother will starve us,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper.
She heads over to the buffet table and with the ceremonial presence of a fat fertility goddess, dumps the stuff down. She pours herself a glass of the cheap, white California wine I have supplied. She glances at the healthy things my mother has chosen, things you couldn’t wring a bit of fat out of, like carrots and celery sticks and loads up a paper plate with the chips and guacamole I have also brought.
“Hey, did you know I got a facelift last month?” Sunny whips off her sunglasses to show me. “It tightens everything up, but I don’t feel stretched. See, I can still smile.”
Only in New York does that qualify as a smile.
“That’s great, Sunny,” I say.
I notice her different colored eyes—one brown, one blue. As a child, I was fascinated by this fact. It was like she was a person with one sensible, warm brown eye and an ice-princess with a cold, blue one. It was like she was mixed up about who she was and would be forever.
Her face is blotchy, and the brown and blue eyes are rimmed red and watery. But I must admit, there wasn’t a line on her face.
“It really makes you look younger,” I say.
I can feel her grabbing onto the “younger” part.
“You’re not lying?” she asks.
“Absolutely not,” I say. “No question. Ten years younger.”
“Ten years and I’m going to be a grandmother soon,” she coos, and I wonder if I have gone too far.
In fact, even with an unlined face, there was no mistaking her age. Fifty-five. It grabs me like a claw. We were all getting older. I glance around the living room at my mother who has become even thinner and seems shrunken like a monkey’s paw. I notice my father sitting on a folding chair at the far end of the impromptu circle that has been set up. He has a silly, vacant smile on his face while his eyes are half closed with sleep. I observe my Aunt Ida, Sunny’s mother, eighty-five now, her legs spread apart, her stomach and chest one large bump but her eyes sharp, bright and looking over to where Sunny and I are now sitting.
“Mikos is not coming?” I ask.
“No, he couldn’t make it,” she says. “He had an important business meeting.”
Mikos was Sunny’s third husband. He was Greek and a poor man’s version of Aristotle Onassis. He was Ari without the money or the yacht but with a small sailboat tied up in Merrick Harbor on the south shore of Long Island. The fact that anyone in our family even had anything to do with a boat made Sunny glamorous in my opinion. Mikos, in fact, rarely came to family functions. The one time I do remember him coming, Sunny stood guard when he went to the bathroom. Ramrod straight like a martinet guarding Buckingham Palace she stood outside the bathroom door while Mikos bared his tush inside.
“Besides, he doesn’t really like my mother,” Sunny says to me in a moment of rare confidence.
She is on her second glass of cheap white wine which I am sure has begun to taste better.
“He doesn’t feel she accepts him,” she adds.
I appreciate what I take to be her acknowledgment that both of us are outsiders. Daughters who defied expectations and cultivated their own passions. Sunny liked brown men. I didn’t like men at all. In her choice of husbands was defiance, a fuck-you to the notion of marrying up. My Aunt Ida and Uncle Harry, now deceased, were people like bookends. They were of similar class and immigrant Jewish ambitions. They expected Sunny to marry a lawyer, a doctor. “It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as it is to marry a poor man,” Aunt Ida would say in a sing-song Yiddish lilt. Sunny eloped at seventeen with a Puerto Rican busboy. Aunt Ida received the news on the wrap-around, screened-in veranda of the rambling house in Merrick. She collapsed in a faint and had to be revived by Uncle Harry. And, as she was a woman of steel with a flinty mien, someone who had risen from the ashes of the immigrant experience to this house and this class by the dint of American exceptionalism and opportune times, she promptly upon rising declared Sunny dead. The mirrors were covered in the Jewish tradition and Aunt Ida sat shiva, inviting people into the darkened living room to mourn the loss. It was my mother, the younger sister, who suggested that perhaps Sunny was not dead but that she had just married someone they didn’t like. My mother had a convincing argument and not much to lose as it was not her daughter who had done this. She argued that all it took for a busboy to become something else was an investment of polish and money. Aunt Ida, who responded to appeals to her intelligence, finally relented. The mirrors were uncovered, the blinds lifted, the circle of folding chairs put away and she proceeded to groom the busboy. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and while it lasted for a while, by the fifth year, he ran off with Sunny’s best friend.
“I got the facelift done in Mexico,” Sunny says. “Mikos knows someone who knows someone who knew a great doctor down there.”
Sunny and Mikos were famous for their connections. They always knew or could refer you to a quick-fix therapist who had a TV show, a psychic in the East Village who would read your palm for five dollars, a computer dating service, a sex hot-line number, a third world land investor, an ice hockey journalist who is doing time on a drug charge but will be out soon. In a pinch, they could find you a commodities broker who knew Bernie Madoff, someone who hawks Pierre Cardins off of a dock in Brooklyn, Leona Helmsley’s insurance man’s daughter, a potion purveyor in Florida, someone who knows the true story behind the New York City garbage strike or a doctor in Mexico who did facelifts.
Although I didn’t want to admit it, this felt glamorous compared to my family. I looked over at my father who is sitting with his hands neatly folded in his lap, his short-sleeved shirt buttoned up to the very top. He was an accountant and my deeds were weighed carefully on the ledger of debit and credit. Nothing was given that wasn’t earned. Horatio Alger’s American was my sad legacy. My mother had her own harsh reckonings, nothing near as systematic or applied as surgically as my father, but the same principle prevailed. I didn’t deserve anything.
“Next year, I’m doing liposuction,” Sunny says. “That’s cheap too. Maybe I’ll just lose weight though,” she stares mournfully at the roast beef sandwich she has concocted.
“Oh! Did I tell you that Mikos and I are thinking of moving to South Florida next year?”
“No, I don’t think…”
She cuts me off.
“And Mikos has some people interested in a business idea. Let me run this by you and get your opinion. Have you ever noticed how there are no good hot dogs in South Florida?”
“Well, no, I haven’t…”
“Take my word for it. There aren’t any. I’m not talking about those cheap hot dogs with a lot of filler in them. I mean the good kind. Hebrew National. Listen to this…” she moves closer, warming up.
I notice that people do tend to open up to me. I don’t know if it is a non-judgmental exterior I present or because I am generally too meek to assert myself. Perhaps it is because I am always secretly scheming on how to get out of my own life, open to entertaining different versions of how life might be lived than the average person and could be convinced that South Florida and hot dogs were in my future too.
“Mikos is going to invest a lot of money to get a pushcart business going. You know, pushcarts like they used to have on the Lower East Side? The kind you still see on every street corner in New York but never in South Florida. I bet a lot of people who move down there miss them. Mikos knows somebody who knows somebody who is a direct supplier to Hebrew National. And there’s a really cheap labor pool down there when we expand.”
Whatever fragrance Sunny is wearing is finally getting to me. It smells like a tropical storm washing over a beach strewn with rotten mangoes and pineapples. I wonder if she got it on her last trip to South Florida.
But before I can respond, Sunny screams across the room, “Shut up, Ma! You know that’s not true!”
She has only been half talking to me. The other half has been keeping track of the conversation her mother is having with my mother. All that time I thought I had her rapt attention.
“Darling…” Aunt Ida says in a soothing voice.
“Why the fuck do you say things that are patently untrue?” Sunny screams.
“Now Sandra,” my Aunt Ida uses Sunny’s birth name as a soothing device. “She’s a little drunk,” she adds to all of us as an apology.
“Drunk my ass! I’d say the exact same thing any time of day. Mikos is NOT planning on selling the house to pay for some so-called crazy business scheme.”
“I never said he was, darling. I was merely questioning whether a new venture was feasible at this time.”
“Don’t give me your shit,” Sunny stands up. “You’ve never approved of Mikos. Or ANY of my husbands for that matter. Any little happiness I have, any tiny bit, you want to take away from me!”
“Now Sandra…”
“I’m his Dulcinea, Ma. Did you know that Mikos calls me Dulcinea?”
“Is that Greek? Or Spanish?”
“That’s Man of La Mancha! I can’t believe how stupid you are! Remember how Daddy knew somebody who knew somebody who got us tickets when it was sold out and people were scalping them for $200 a seat?”
“To each his Dulcinea,” I pipe in hopefully.
“That’s right,’ Sunny looks at me trying to think of my name.
“Debbie,” I suggest.
“Debbie understand me. Nobody else in this family does. You think I’m a whore. Someone who sleeps with trash. Someone who marries trash.”
“Now Sandra, that was a long time ago…”
“I’m not talking about the busboy! That was horrible by the way. I’ve never forgiven you for the way you treated me. Never!”
“Didn’t she send him to school?” my mother says hopefully.
“Now Sandra…” Aunt Ida begins again.
“Don’t ‘Now Sandra me’. I’m talking about Mikos, Ma. You never thought he was anything more than a drunk, an illiterate, a foreigner…someone not good enough for your stinking daughter, your precious little whore!”
“She has had a lot to drink,” my mother says.
“Have you taken your medication today, Sandra?” Aunt Ida’s face is red.
Sunny moves menacingly into the center of the room and assumes the stance of a flamenco dancer.
“I was born on a dung heap to a mother who left me, naked and starving and wishing me dead,” Sunny sings in a low, off-key way the song that brought the heat and desolation of the Spanish plains into the suburban living rooms of everyone who saw the show or bought the record.
“I hardly think our house in Merrick is a dung heap, dear,” Aunt Ida says in a rational voice, “and look, I’m your mother and I’m still here.”
“That’s my experience, Ma!”
“Everyone is entitled to their experiences,” my mother, the budding therapist, chimes in.
“See, Gloria understands me. She stood up for me once. Nobody else in this family ever does.”
My mother’s eyes slide away.
“Don’t you? Gloria? Understand me?”
My mother begins her usual litany. “If you’re happy…truly happy and not in denial and I would question that but if it’s okay for you, how could it not be okay for me? I’m okay, you’re okay. It’s a free country. Lincoln freed the slaves.”
“What the hell is that gibberish?” Sunny screams.
“I’m not sure a hot dog in South Florida is that good of an idea,” my mother says, “and I don’t appreciate being screamed at. That’s not okay, Sandra.”
“Dulcinea.”
“Dulcinea then…” my mother trails off.
“I know she’s off her medication,” Aunt Ida moans.
“And Mikos is my Don Quixote—my knight in shining armor. He’s fighting against a cruel world –against you, Ma. Against you, Gloria…”
My mother purses her lips into a thin line and lifts her chin slightly in a combative pose.
“We have an impossible dream,” Sunny continues singing, “to dream the impossible dream. To fight with your last ounce of courage, to go where the brave dare not go. This is our quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far…”
Sunny is stamping her feet and snapping her fingers like a crazed bullfighter waving a red flag.
“Is she going to sing every song from that show?” my mother asks.
“It’s a medley,” I say.
“I hardly think a hot dog stand in South Florida is an impossible dream, dear,” Aunt Ida says.
“It’s not a hot dog stand! Can’t I get that into your thick skill? It’s pushcarts—it’s mobile, it’s a fleet, it’s a niche!”
“Let her vent,” my mother suggests.
Life as a big bag of hot air that needs to circulate and dissipate meets the plains of Spain.
My father’s eyes are wide open now and he’s sitting on the edge of his chair.
“Uncle Leo, you’re an accountant, what do you think?” Sunny asks.
My father’s mouth opens and shuts. This is a man who has never willingly voiced a feeling and who views any advice as a potential lawsuit. A man who leaves no tracks.
“You have to look at the bottom line, Sandra,” he begins vaguely, “you’ve got to assess the risks, look at the interest rates. Really, I don’t know.”
“You all hate me!”
Sunny sinks to the floor in a long slow collapse. She lays there weeping while we all look on.
“You think hot dogs are cheap,” she moans, “but remember, Daddy always said to find a business everyone needs. Everyone needs a haircut. Everyone needs to eat. Everyone needs to shit.”
She sobs in a heap until she slowly raises up on one arm, points to me and says, “Debbie, if anyone in this family understands what I’m saying, it’s you.”
I nod my head solemnly.
“That’s true,” I agree, “we have both loved who we loved even if no one here understands.”
“What’s she saying?” Aunt Ida asks.
“She’s saying it is okay to be gay, Ma, how stupid are you?” Sunny shakily stands up.
“Of course, if it’s okay with her, it’s okay with me,” Aunt Ida learns fast.
My mother’s eyes are squinting. Some things are more okay than others especially if they don’t involve the daughter who was supposed to marry a lawyer.
“I’m a lotus,” I declare.
It’s my way of asserting beauty and uniqueness. It’s also my way of being oblique.
“One’s Dulcinea and the other’s a lotus,” Aunt Ida sighs.
Everyone’s eyes are now squinting trying to conjure up what a lotus looks like. Not a lot of these in suburban Long Island.
“A lotus,” I continue, “grows up out of the mud.”
My mother, quick to find a slight, is gathering steam. “So, we’re mud?”
“I didn’t say that,” I protest but my voice wavers.
“Where does she get this stuff?” Aunt Ida asks.
“She’s from California,” Sunny answers.
“I’m a diamond,” I say, an item more familiar to this set, “indestructible, made from intense pressure inside the Earth and uncovered when ready to shine forever.”
“Yes!” Sunny screams. “Thank you!”
“I never thought she should leave New York,” Aunt Ida says.
New York is the kind of place that hurls you from its orbit. The centrifugal force of all those women, arguing, screaming, carrying-on, spins you like a top or a salad spinner to the other end of the country. From the soil of a recently acquired country, you are cast outwards in search of more peaceful, or at least quiet, lands.
“I think it’s time to go,” Aunt Ida says. “Sandra…Dulcinea…we should be going.”
“It’s a good idea, the hot dogs,” I say when I help Sunny into the car, “and give Mikos my regards.”
“Thanks, Kid. And keep your chin up too. Maybe we’ll come out and visit you in California someday.”
I can’t see her eyes because she has put back on the black sunglasses, but she raises her hand to her mouth and lightly blows me a kiss.
