Come Together Now

Hello, friends of Father’s!

Don’t mind Dad. (He hates it when I call him that.) I’m not at all like him, really. We fight all the time.

Did you know Dad went to Cornell? Did you know he knew Nabokov? Well, you’re his friends. Does he ever let you forget it? Did he tell you Janet Reno waited on his table when he had dinner in Sage with one of his bimbos? Dad was in the Ag school, and to him, college was one long roll in the hay.

Dad pretends to be a pig. He thinks it’s funny. He has no respect for people’s sensibilities. I do, and this is my novel. I don’t intend to let him stick his nose in it.

Still, I don’t like to do things the way other people do. Instead of whizzing in with a Whoosh Bang event to get you going, how about you just sit back and let me introduce you to the people who are going to absorb your blows, accept your kisses, and otherwise stand in for those you love, and those you hate. Malice before thought: I aim to make you squirm, so hold on to your whoopee cushions, and let’s go.

I’m going to rat out a group of my friends.

Danielle (not her real name). The mistress. Brought up on a farm out west. The mid-west, where everything is square. The streets are grids, if there are enough of them, but often it’s just one road cutting through the corn fields, or the wheat fields, with houses on either side, a cluster of stores halfway through called “town” and back out the other end and on to the next collection of human beings who share a school, a drugstore, a grocery, a post office, a bank, and a hardware establishment. But Danielle, born Edna, was destined for a more exotic version of life. She worked hard in high school. After hours, as a secretary. Learned all the skills, including the management of bosses. Changed her name before she moved to the big city, joined a gym so she could keep up the body she’d developed on the farm.

And what a body it is. Ever hear of Swedes? I see you have. You’ve already got the picture in your head. And you’re right. Our girl is tall and lanky, but thin and curvaceous. What God didn’t give her she got from a doctor her second week in New York. I’ll give you a moment or two to solidly implant her in your head. Long blonde hair, the trite color of wheat. But no, no, not like that. Not straight. Danielle’s hair falls down past her shoulders in golden waves of grain. I knew you’d like that. Makes you want to reach out and touch it, twine your fingers in the silken sheen of it.

Danielle’s eyes are blue, of course. A beautiful sky blue. Naturally. She does not need the turquoise contact lenses to make them other-worldly, but she needed glasses, so why not give herself an edge? That’s the kind of girl Danielle is. Always looking for that little something extra to put her over the top. Willing to be playful if it helps. Able to turn hard as nails in an instant if the game goes sour.

With a presentation like hers, a woman must develop a devastating personality – to keep the bums away. The difference between the royal consort and the whore is the company she keeps. Dirty hands must be kept at bay. Four-inch heels help. The little suits with plunging necklines and the nipped-in waists are unaccountably formidable. Danielle has not succumbed to rope-and-pulley cleavage. Her big round breasts are separate and distinct rather than pressed together like a tiny ass. Neckline plunges down to waist on a clear, clean run. Cool as can be.

More about her later. Here comes the wife. Or, I should say, wife, mother, teacher. Brenda. Mommy. Mrs. Shapiro. Married to a Jew. No, not quite. Half a Jew. But the father’s half, and it’s all in the name. Oddly, according to the Jews, a Jewish father means nothing. It’s the Jewish mother that counts. If your mother is a Jew, you are. If your father is a Jew, and your mother isn’t, God help you. And he probably won’t, because he’s pissed. God does not like miscegenation. God doesn’t even want you to mix cotton and linen. God is a purist. And a bigot, of course. He’s got those chosen people.
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But despite the Hebraic surname, these younger Shapiros are not practicing Jews: they don’t go to temple, they don’t observe the sabbath, they are not kosher. Each spring, they go to Aunt Audrey’s to celebrate the passover. They eat matzoh, drink sweet wine, sing silly songs, and pack it up for another year. They have a Christmas tree, for which Mr. Shapiro is grateful, having had a deprived childhood due to his parents’ familial accommodations. They ignore Easter. It’s too complicated. Half of Jason’s ancestors refused to stand up for one of their precocious progeny, who after his execution was adopted by Brenda’s progenitors as the son of God. Go tell that to the judge.

Brenda teaches math. Lucky for us. We won’t be hearing too much about it. If Brenda were an English teacher, or a history teacher, she’d be bringing her classroom into conversations, and taking bon mots back to her students, because Brenda’s religion is Humanism. Brenda greatly admires the French, and would go there to live, if only she could get a job, and if only she wasn’t all bound up with a husband and family she dearly loved. But it’s mostly a matter of mind. Mind over matter. Brenda looks out at her world from under a figurative beret. She finds much to fault.

To begin with, her image in the mirror, which is not at all French. Short brown hair, a turned up nose, a straight, athletic body, hard and trim … but what was it? Her sincerity, her earnestness, her strictness, perhaps, that made her look so opposite of what she imagined she’d be if she lived in Paris, where she’d let her hair grow and wear it in a long braid down one side, under a real beret that matched her black leotard and her slinky, sexy, artist’s body that would ride around town on a bicycle with a long loaf of bread in its basket.

Yes, she’s was stifled. By her school, her husband, her children, her country. But she was a hell of a good math teacher, and therefore a valuable asset. Her principal treasured her. As did her husband and children, because she was also a good wife and mother. This did not diminish her need to give expression to the vision she had in her head. And that is why she accepted an offer to run for political office. But more about that later.

Now, the hero of the story. Hero, you say? What makes him a hero? He’s got a wife and a mistress. Exactly. There’s an old tale that a Chinese character for trouble is a picture of two women under one roof. I submit that the roof can be virtual, and that a man with two women may have double the pleasure, but he’s also got double trouble. One hero and two heroines. Affirmative action. Give the ladies two to one.

Okay, I see you don’t want to hear about him now. You’re suspicious. You don’t think you’re going to like a philanderer. Well, he doesn’t need you to like him. His wife and his mistress like him well enough. And you haven’t even met the kiddies.

Next time.