A Week as Andrea Benstock

Sunday May 12, 1963

On the second Sunday in May, 1963, Andrea Beth Kleinman awoke to the sound of rain on her bedroom window. It was a comforting sound, and after she had looked around long enough to establish that it was light outside, she closed her eyes again and settled.her head on her pillow. Soon enough it would be time to get out of bed and shower and dress for what was supposed to be the most important day of her life. But first she would steal a few moments of that day for herself, lying snug in her own warmth and listening to the rain.

It occurred to her, after a few moments, that this would be a day of doing things for the last time. The process had already begun; this was the last morning she would wake up alone. Tomorrow she would be in Puerto Rico, a married woman, and Mark would be beside her. She would not be Andrea Kleinman but Andrea Benstock, and that seemed as vast a difference as between Buffalo and Puerto Rico.

Of course they would return to Buffalo. But she would not sleep again in this bed, in this house.

The house was a square brick structure on Admiral Road four doors from Starin Avenue. It was on the north side of Buffalo Just a few blocks from the Kenmore line. The house had been built shortly after the conclusion of the First World War, and had been occupied by the Kleinman family since midway through the Second World War. Her father had purchased it in 1942 for eighty-seven hundred dollars. A year later the real estate market went crazy and realtors offered David Kleinman as much as fifteen thousand. He had not considered selling then, nor did he consider it in the late fifties, when the exodus of Jewish families from that neighborhood to smaller houses in the suburbs began in earnest.

It was the only home Andrea remembered. She had been four years old when they moved in, and had previously lived in an apartment on Amherst near Elmwood and the upper half of a two-family house on Norwalk. She had the usual complement of amorphous memories of those first four years, but there was no sense of place to them. Home to her had always been this house on Admiral Road, and, within that house, this bedroom of hers.

For thirteen years she had lived here with no interruption beyond family vacations and a few summers at Canadian camps. During the years at Bryn Mawr, even during the years in New York, this had remained her home if only because she had had no other. Whenever she came home on a visit her room was waiting for her, her own room in the house in which she had grown up, and it was only in retrospect that she realized how much this pleased her.

Now she recalled a telephone conversation which had taken place on another Sunday a few years ago. She was in New York at the time, newly settled in her apartment on Jane Street. Her parents called for the traditional Sunday morning conversation, her father on the sun-room extension, her mother at the wall phone in the kitchen. They had looked at a house the day before, her mother said, and it was perfect in every way. A ranch house, small and easy to care for, all built-ins in the kitchen, and on a very good street in Snyder.

“Much closer to the club for his golf. Fifteen minutes shorter each way. And no stairs to climb. I thought if I could finally get him to look at a house, and this was just perfect for our needs.”

“It was a nice little house,” her father agreed.

“So it’s nice, and it’ll go on being nice, and somebody else will buy it and live in it. He won’t move.”

“It suits me here, Andrea. It’s closer to my office, which I still go to more often than I play golf, but even if it wasn’t. Maybe I’m crazy but I’m comfortable here. I don’t want to go get used to someplace else.”

At the time she had sympathized more with her mother’s position. The neighborhood was declining, in property value if not in physical appearance. They were alone, the two of them. They didn’t need all that space, nor did they need a staircase to go up and down a dozen times a day.

Then eight months ago she had returned to this house, to this room. And how glad she had been for her father’s stubbornness. Of course there would have been a room for her in whatever house they might have bought, but it would not have been her room, nor would any new house have been her house.

This was her neighborhood, each house on the block well remembered, its familiarity precious however many of the old neighbors were gone. School 66 was still around the corner, and its presence was no less reassuring for all that her teachers were retired or dead. In the fall, before she began seeing Mark, she had spent some time almost every day walking slowly through these streets. She would not have walked like that in Snyder.

Now she listened to the rain on her window and put off getting out of her own bed for the final time. Suddenly the thought touched her in a way she had not anticipated, and she began to cry. She felt unutterably foolish but still the tears flowed. She put her face in her pillow and wept.

After her shower she put on a blouse and a pair of jeans and went downstairs. Her mother was at the breakfast table with a cup of black coffee and a cigarette. She said, “You certainly picked a fine day for a wedding. It’s supposed to be like this all day.”

“It’s good we didn’t decide on an outdoor ceremony.”

“You weren’t thinking of it, were you? You never said anything about it.”

“I was just joking.”

“Because I never liked the whole idea of outdoor weddings. I suppose I’m old-fashioned. I went to one two years ago that you wouldn’t believe. Did I tell you about it? Sylvia Friedkin’s daughter Margie. I don’t know if you knew her. She’s a few years younger than you.”

“Everybody’s a few years younger than I am.”

“It was one for the books. The groom was a non-Jewish boy, so the service was nondenominational. Fine. But they held it in Delaware Park.”

“It’s beautiful in the park.”

“It’s lovely, but this was the middle of August and the temperature was over ninety for a week solid. And the lake there has no drainage, and you haven’t been around much in the past few years, but you no longer have to be right in the middle of the lake to realize that there’s no drainage. And the particular place they picked, for some nondenominational reason I’m sure, was close enough to Delaware Avenue so that you had a spectacular view of Forest Lawn with tombstones rising in the distance.”

“Oh.”

“Someone said this would be very convenient if the father of the bride had a stroke. You remember Joe Friedkin. He always looks as though he’s about to have a stroke, with that red face of his, and between the heat and his new son-in-law no one was too sure that he could last the day. The groom had grown a beard, which I suppose is all right, except in this particular case he wasn’t that good at growing beards, nebbish, and there were great hairless areas on his face as if he’d been struck by some form of blight. Your father thought possibly ringworm. You’re laughing, but you didn’t have to stand there in the heat and put up with all of this. You didn’t, have to listen to the nondenominational clergyman talk about living in harmony with Nature. God knows where they found him. He was barefoot, incidentally, like the bride and groom. I somehow forgot to mention that. They wanted to be able to absorb the essence of the planet through their toes. There used to be a bridle path there, bridle as in horses, not weddings, and your father said they stood a fairly good chance of absorbing the essence of hookworm between their toes. Ringworm and hookworm, that was the sort of thing that came to mind. Sit down and I’ll get your breakfast. What do you want?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“Well, you’ve got a big day. Just the family at the wedding, but the reception and running for the plane. You ought to have something.”

“I’ll get it.”

“Sit. In a few hours you’ll be a married woman and you can get your own breakfast for the rest of your life. And Mark’s, and before long you won’t remember what it is to sit down. Could you eat some French toast?”

“I’ll force myself. Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s in the sun-room reading the Times. The Courier’s right in front of you if you want to read something. Three pieces of French toast?”

“Two’s plenty.”

She was drinking her second cup of coffee and smoking her first cigarette when the telephone rang. Her mother answered it. After a moment she said, “Well, I don’t know. It’s bad luck for you to see her before the ceremony. Do you suppose you’re allowed to talk to her? They didn’t have telephones when they invented the superstition so I’m not sure how it works. Well, I’ll see if she’ll take a chance on you.” She covered the mouthpiece with the palm of her hand. “It’s Mark,” she said.

“No kidding.”

She took the phone. He said, “How are you holding up?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Oh, it’s business as usual here. The old man’s running around shouting because his tie had a spot on it, my mother’s crying a lot, and Jeff and Linda aren’t speaking.”

“To anyone?”

“To each other. How are things at your end?”

“Very calm. Daddy’s in the sun-room reading the paper and Mother’s screening all my calls.”

“Very funny,” her mother said.

“The reason I called. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t come to your senses and decided to call the whole thing off.”

“‘You say either and I say eye-ther.’ Why? Getting cold feet?”

“Warmest feet in town. I thought you might be having second thoughts, though, and I figured I’d talk you out of them.”

“I’m having nothing but first thoughts.”

“Happy ones?”

“Very happy ones.”

“Still love me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Some other time, okay?”

“Because your mother’s there? She knows you love me, honey. That’s why you’re marrying me.”

“I’ll see you in, oh, just a couple hours, isn’t it? I’d better think about getting dressed.”

“You won’t say it, huh?”

“You idiot. I love you. And I’ll see you in a little while.”

Her father was in his chair in the sun-room. The room had been an open porch when the house was originally constructed, but well before the Kleinmans bought it the porch had been completely enclosed so that it functioned as a second living room. It was a good place for reading, light and airy with large casement windows in front and on both sides.

David Kleinman was doing the crossword puzzle when Andrea entered the room. He finished penciling in a word, then lowered the paper and smiled gently at her over its top. “Going to get dressed now?”

“I thought I’d sit with you for a minute.”

“Well, in that case,” he said. He put down the paper as she seated herself on the love seat opposite him.

“You’re beautiful today,” he said. “All brides are beautiful, but you’re something special.”

He was a handsome man, she thought. He was not tall, although she always thought of him as taller than his actual height and was invariably surprised when he stood at her side. He was fifty-seven years old and she thought that he had aged well. She had seen pictures of him as a young man. It seemed to her that he was a more attractive man now than he had been in his youth. His strong features, the prominent nose and deep-set eyes, were more at home in a more mature face. He still had all his hair, and it was a fine iron-gray color which suited him and contrasted strikingly with the still-black eyebrows.

And he was still slender. Her mother, too, had kept her figure, and that really made all the difference in the world. Mark’s parents were both quite a bit overweight, and as a result the Benstocks looked considerably older than the Kleinmans, although they were in fact all about the same age.

She would not permit herself to gain weight, she decided. And she would make sure Mark did not grow fat.

“Today’s the day,” her father said. “Now there’s an original thought, but it’s hard to know what else to say. I’m very happy for you, baby.”

“Oh, Daddy.”

“I’ll tell you something. I think you’re getting a hell of a guy. I was fully prepared to detest Mark, but he turned out to be as impossible to dislike as any man I ever met. He’s solid and dependable. He’s got a good future, he’s with a good firm and they think a lot of him.”

“I’m glad you like him.”

“Why should you care about that? To be frank about it, why should it matter how I feel? Or how your mother feels? Oh, I grant that it makes for a lot less friction this way, but it’s not the most important thing in the world. Your grandmother Levine is still not too sure about me. Well, God bless her, she’s not too sure about anything these days. If my mind ever gets like that, do me a favor and shoot me, okay?”

“Oh, don’t talk like that.”

“Anyway, I like him. Why in the hell shouldn’t I? He’s got a nice small family. His sister lives out in Arizona so there’s just his mother and his father and his brother in college, and his mother already has a set of false teeth so how much trouble can she be? You could have picked somebody with a roomful of cousins all of them needing root canal work. I’m getting off cheap.”

“I’m a considerate daughter.”

“Yes, you are. I wonder if you’re too considerate. Tell me something now that it’s too late to change. Didn’t you really want a big wedding?”

“Absolutely not. Mark and I agreed completely on that point. Just the family, the immediate family. In fact—”

“In fact you could live without us too? Don’t apologize. I see no reason why a wedding should be a family occasion. Not that wild horses could keep me from yours, but as far as the point of view of the bridal couple. I thought you honestly wanted to keep it small myself, but your mother had the idea that you might have wanted to take it easy on my bank account. Well. May I ask another foolish question? Do you have any hesitation whatsoever about going through with this today?”

“None.”

“Because it is a good deal easier to get out of a marriage before the wedding than after it. Sometimes people find themselves trapped into going through with something because they think it’s expected of them.”

“It’s not that, Daddy.”

“You’re absolutely sure in your mind.”

“Yes.”

“You love Mark?”

“Yes, of course.”

He looked at her for a moment. “Mark loves you very much.”

“Yes, I know.”

“In every marriage there is one partner who loves more intensely, more thoroughly, than the other. There’s nothing noble about loving more. It’s in the way people are and the way they operate with one another. I don’t honestly know which it’s better to be, the one who loves the most or the one who is loved the most.”

He seemed about to say more, so she waited, but that was all he said. Finally she said, “I love Mark very much, Daddy. Very much.”

“He’ll be a good husband for you. I’m happy for both of you. You know, I was never worried about you, Andrea.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Your mother used to worry. From time to time. But I always somehow knew that you would be all right. I’ve always found it easy to understand you. Probably because I feel that you and I are similar. Also different, very different, but in some ways quite similar.” He looked up at her and broke the mood with a quick smile. “You have to get dressed. So do I, come to think of it.”

She gave him a kiss, then went up to her room. She thought on the way of what he had just told her. That her mother loved him more intensely than he loved her.

Well, she had always known that. As she had always known that Mark’s love for her was somehow deeper and stronger than hers for him.

At eleven o’clock she went downstairs again. Her father looked quite elegant in a black mohair suit. “I thought brides took forever to dress,” he said. “We don’t have to leave for an hour yet. Your mother is busy making every minute count.”

“I have to go out for a minute.”

“What for? It’s still pouring.”

“I thought I’d run over to Van Slyke’s. I want to get something new. These shoes are old and I borrowed Mom’s diamond chip earrings and the dress is blue—”

“The dress is also new.”

“It seems cheating to use one thing for both. I’ll just get something.”

“You’ll also get out of the house. Fair enough. Take my car, it’s out front.”

She was able to park right in front of the drug store. It was raining lightly and she hurried inside and went directly to the telephone booth. She dropped the dime in the slot, then realized that she could not remember his number. It had been at least a year since she called him last, but there had been a time when his number seemed permanently filed in her mind. She dialed New York Information and asked for the number of John Riordan, on Perry Street.

The operator supplied the number. Then she started to place the call before deciding that it wouldn’t do to call collect. She got a couple of dollars’ worth of change and returned to the booth, only to find that she had already forgotten the number. She got it from Information again and dialed it, and he answered on the third ring.

She said, “Jack? It’s Andrea Kleinman.”

“It is? Well, I’m damned. Hang on a minute, I want to get a cigarette.” He was gone for a few moments, and she pictured him rubbing sleep out of his eyes and puffing desperately at the day’s first cigarette. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes and drank unblended Scotch, and the two vices combined to produce a voice that could scratch glass. It had been the first thing about him that attracted her.

Now he said, “Andrea. Christ, I thought the earth swallowed you. Where in hell are you?”

“I’m in Buffalo.”

“Buffalo. Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“I’ve been here since August.”

“So that’s where you went to. I haven’t seen you in what, almost a year. But why Buffalo?”

“It’s where I’m from. I was born here.”

“I know a woman who was born in Buchenwald. She’s never felt the slightest compulsion to return. When are you coming back to the city, kid?”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, that’s what they all say.”

“I’m getting married, Jack.”

There was just the slightest pause, as though the information had to take its time crossing the state.

Then he said, “No kidding. I think that’s terrific, Andrea.”

“You do?”

“I really do. Christ, it’s good to hear from you. I didn’t know what happened to you, nobody seemed to know anything except that you weren’t around any more.”

“Well, that’s what happened. I wasn’t around any more.”

“Must be a year since I saw you.”

“Something like that. I was in New York for a while after I saw you last, and then one morning I packed my suitcase.”

“Problems?”

“No, not really.” She drew closer to the phone, as if afraid of what she might see out of the corners of her eyes. She began remembering the last weeks in New York, the hectic pace, the ragged breathlessness, the bits and pieces chopped out of memory and lost. “It stopped being fun,” she said.

“And you were trying so hard to have fun.”

“I don’t know if I like the way that sounds. Anyway, I came back home because I didn’t know where else to go, and it turned out to be right for me.”

“I’m glad for you. Who’s the guy? Childhood sweetheart?”

“Not really. He was four years ahead of me in school so I never knew him. I knew his sister vaguely.”

“What’s he like?”

“Oh, he’s a sweet guy, Jack. Really. He’s a lawyer, he’s doing pretty well at it and he’s really involved in it.”

“That’s great. When’s the wedding? I’ll send you a present.”

“It’s in about an hour, as a matter of fact.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. And don’t send a present. You’re sweet, but don’t.”

“The past is past, that means.”

“That is just what it means.”

“Fair enough. Andrea?”

“What?”

“Why the phone call?”

“I don’t know. I had this urge.”

“That certainly explains it.”

“No, let me finish, because I’ve been asking myself the same question. I wanted to tell someone from New York. I wanted, I just wanted someone to know. I don’t know why.”

“Well, I think I’m flattered.”

“Well,” she said.

“The last time I saw you, you weren’t that good at being friendly.”

“I was probably pretty drunk.”

“You probably were. You told me to fuck off, as a matter of fact.”

Well, why don’t you? she thought. This call had been a mistake, and she was no closer than before to guessing why she had made it.

“How have you been, Jack? What have you been working on?”

“The usual. Something for the Voice now and then. And we’ve got a primary coming up soon, as you probably know. Or as you probably don’t know, come to think of it. Way up there in Eskimo country.”

“We get the Times every Sunday. The dog team brings it right to the igloo.” The operator cut in to say that her three minutes were up. She said, “I’ve got to go now, Jack.”

“Well, I’m damned glad you called. Happy Wedding.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll see you.”

No, she thought. You won’t.

She was at the car before she remembered she hadn’t bought anything. She went back inside and picked out a stainless steel identification bracelet. They had been very much in demand when she was in high school. You had your name engraved on it, and when you were going steady you traded bracelets with the boy. She paid for the bracelet and drove home.

The marriage ceremony was performed by Rabbi Morton Farber in his study in Temple Beth Sholom. The temple was an imposing building downtown on Delaware Avenue. For much of her youth it had been if the focal point of her social life. Her Girl Scout troop met there on Wednesday afternoons. Her dancing classes were held there Saturday nights. For seven years she attended classes at the temple every Sunday morning, and for the last two of those years she was frequently present at services on Saturday mornings if a boy she knew was having his Bar Mitzvah. It was not until she had gone away to college that she was able to appreciate just how thoroughly Jews in Buffalo isolated themselves from their neighbors. The student body of her high school had been almost exactly half Jewish, and the social segregation had been virtually complete. There was no friction between the two groups; rather, it was as if neither was much aware of the other’s existence. Of course she never dated a non-Jewish boy in high school. Outside of the classroom, she scarcely knew any.

At the time, it had never occurred to her to question this social structure. And afterward it was incomprehensible to her that things had been as they were, and that she had regarded them as normal and natural.

While Rabbi Farber’s study was not a large room, it accommodated the wedding party with ease. Besides the bridal couple and their parents, there were only Andrea’s grandmother, Mark’s brother Phil, his sister Linda, and Linda’s husband Jeff. Phil served as best man, Linda as maid of honor.

This last had been a happy inspiration. Andrea had been unable to think of anyone to stand up with her, and had begun to consider the propriety of asking her mother to act in that capacity. The one logical choice for the role, the inevitable selection a year or two ago, would have been Andrea’s closest friend at college, a girl named Winifred Welles. She had been close to Winkie as she had been close to no one before or since.

But after graduation they had let go of one another. They’d both gone to New York and it would have been easy to keep in touch, but somehow it was easier to lose contact, to let the past slip into the past. It was still hard to imagine going through a wedding without Winkie, but when she tried to picture Winkie beside her in the rabbi’s study or at the country club she could not manage it.

And there was no one in Buffalo to whom she felt similarly close. Then she learned that Linda and Jeff were timing their annual trip east to coincide with the wedding. She had known Linda in high school, and had been friendly if not intimate with her. And, although she had no secondary purpose in choosing Linda, the effect was not lost on Mrs. Benstock. “You picked up a lot of points with her,” Mark said. “Not that it makes any difference what she thinks.”

But it did make a difference, and she knew it. She would not be in the happy position of Jeff Gould, who had cleverly put three thousand miles between himself and his in-laws. And Mark, whether or not he took his parents seriously, was nevertheless close to them. Thus it seemed to her that being a good daughter-in-law was part of being a good wife.

The ceremony itself went off as smoothly as it had in rehearsal. They sipped wine from a goblet, which was then wrapped in a napkin and placed on the floor before them. Mark, grinning, stomped on it with authority, and the wedding party greeted this act with the spontaneous applause which had characterized every Jewish wedding she had ever attended.

The glass-breaking ritual was on a par with heaving glasses into a fireplace after drinking a significant toast. But Andrea had always regarded it as a metaphor for the rupture of the maidenhead. He stepped on the glass, she thought, and found it had already been broken.

They exchanged plain yellow gold bands, and despite the traditional jokes beforehand, neither ring was lost or dropped and both fit perfectly. It had surprised her at first that he had wanted to wear a wedding ring. The double ring ceremony had been his idea, and one that would never have occurred to her. But now she liked it, and as she placed the ring on his finger she came closer to crying than at any other stage in the ceremony.

Of course Rabbi Farber had a few words to say. No one paid much attention to what he said, and yet if he had omitted this obligatory rabbinical material the omission would have been noted and commented upon. “You would think Rabbi Mort might have said a few words. Everybody does it, it’s the custom.” So Rabbi Mort did indeed say a few words, touching upon the joy of exchanging nuptial vows in the presence of one’s family, and the importance in the modern world of affirming one’s heritage through a truly Jewish marriage ritual, and the role of religion as a third partner in a successful marriage. A cynic might have reflected that these remarks were perhaps more a commercial than a benediction. But no cynic was present.

“I now pronounce you man and wife.” “You may kiss the bride.” “Aren’t they an attractive couple?” “How I waited for this day, David.” “Andrea, you look beautiful, I love your dress.” “Well, you went and you did it, kid.”

Married.

The wedding reception was held at the Northlawn Country Club. The club was situated a dozen miles north and east of the city of Buffalo, and when it was founded in 1947 there was not a Jew residing within eight miles of the club grounds. There were, in fact, precious few people of any persuasion in the area; during the war years, sheep had grazed on what was to become the Northlawn golf course. The course, first laid out in 1948 and enlarged to eighteen holes three years later, had been designed by Daniel Johns Gregory. It was acknowledged to be one of the three best courses in western New York.

David Kleinman had not been a founding member of Northlawn. He had joined late in 1948, having waited a year to make sure that the club would get off the ground. There had been an attempt before the war to get a Jewish country club organized. It had failed for lack of support, and several of the sponsors had lost money. After a little over a year he judged the club to be a sound operation which filled a genuine community need. And the public golf courses were getting impossibly overcrowded. He’d played at Delaware and Grover Cleveland during the war, but now there were constant waiting lines at both courses, and the maintenance was not what it had been. So he had joined, thinking of the club as an organization worthy of his support and a place to play golf on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That it would turn out to be a focal point of his social life had surely never occurred to him. Twice the nominating committee had sounded him out for the club presidency and on both occasions he pleaded the pressure of work. “I don’t need the aggravation,” he told his wife. “Let the operators have it. They want me because I’m not an operator, and that’s just why I don’t want it.”

Harry Benstock was not a member of the Northlawn, and because of this Bea Kleinman had suggested that it might be diplomatic to hold the reception elsewhere. “Now I can’t see that at all,” her husband said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“I was thinking that they might resent it.”

“I don’t agree, but suppose they did? We do our entertaining at the club. We’re going to have to entertain Harry and Ruth a certain amount of the time.”

“Not too often, I hope.”

“Not too often, no, but from time to time. So we might as well get everything out in the open at the beginning. Besides, what makes you think Harry doesn’t like to go to the club? Since she started going with Mark I made a point of noticing, and Harry’s out there whenever somebody invites him.”

“But he doesn’t belong.”

“He doesn’t and he won’t. His name was put up in, I don’t know, say 1950. And he was voted down.”

“You never told me why.”

“I didn’t vote against him, so I suppose I don’t know why. Except that I do know why. Harry made his money during the war, which is no crime, but he made it because Harry was the one guy who could get you a car when nobody else could. He had a Pontiac agency like a dozen other people, but if you wanted a ’42 Pontiac when nobody had them, you could get it through Harry. You paid him cash and you didn’t pick up the car at his lot. It was delivered to you at your home. And you paid a lot more than list price, and it was all tax free, and that was how Harry made his money. And in 1950 it was enough to keep him out of Northlawn.”

“I heard something about that but I never paid close attention.”

“Well, other people did. There were enough founding members who bought cars from Harry, paying him under the table, and it’s my guess that they were the ones who voted against him. The funny thing is if Harry applied now he would get in with no trouble whatsoever. There was one man who said Harry Benstock would get in over his dead body, but he died two and a half years ago, so it would be over his dead body after all. I won’t mention a name.”

“I know who you mean.”

“Of course you do. Anyway, Harry could get in. But his name was put up the once and he never had it submitted a second time. He says he doesn’t play golf so what does he need with it, but how many members do you know who don’t play golf? Harry would want to be a member except for getting rejected once. Not to mince words, he’s a climber. He was a member of B’nai Zion for how many years, and then he switched to Beth Sholom just so his kids could be confirmed there. Not that he was the only one to do that little thing.”

“I think that was Adele more than it was Harry.”

“You could be right. But the point is that Harry would love to belong to Northlawn, and he could get in now and knows he could get in, but he was blackballed once and he won’t apply again. And that’s pride, and for that I have to give the man credit. I wouldn’t want him in the club, I wouldn’t care to play golf with him or have drinks with him, but I give him credit.”

“That’s funny.”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t want him in the club but your daughter is marrying his son and you approve.”

“And that’s funny? I don’t think it is. For one thing, she’s not marrying Harry. She’s marrying Mark, and Mark will be a member. I happen to know he plans to join, and there won’t be a vote against him.”

“He’d join a club that wouldn’t have his father?”

“Oh, please. My own father couldn’t have joined Northlawn. Not that it was around at the time, or that he would have been interested, but he couldn’t have joined it. Did that keep me out? And is there any reason it should have?”

Andrea and Mark spent a little over two hours at the reception. She was kissed by a great number of men. Some of them she knew, some she recognized, and some she could not recall ever having seen in her life. She danced with Mark, with her father, with her father-in-law, with Phil Benstock, and with Jeff Gould. She cut the first piece of wedding cake, with Mark’s large hand over hers to guide the knife. She was complimented on her dress, her hair, her figure, and her general radiance. She was treated to an endless barrage of marriage jokes, none of which amused her and most of which struck her as in appalling taste. She ate two bites of wedding cake, drank a whiskey sour and two scotch-and-waters, and sipped a cup of very bitter coffee. There was a generous cold buffet but she did not have anything from it. She had no appetite at all, and thought that it had been good her mother had coaxed her into eating breakfast.

When Linda signaled her she excused herself from a conversation with an unidentified aunt of Mark’s and slipped away to a room upstairs. She changed her clothes while Linda smoked cigarettes and told her how good it was to be married. “Jeff and I have our bad times, sure. It’s not easy, and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy. Of course we have the advantage that we’re away from the family. We have to work things out for ourselves. Oh, I’m so happy for you, Andrea. I wish we had known each other better years ago, but Arizona isn’t that far, you know, and the planes fly in both directions. Mark’s a wonderful guy and he’s getting a wonderful girl and I’m so happy.”

“Oh, Linda.”

“And you were so sweet to ask me to stand up for you. I’ll never forget it, I swear I won’t.”

She went down a back staircase and outside to the parking lot. Mark was waiting for her. Their bags were already loaded in his brother’s car. Phil drove them to the airport and waited with them until their New York flight was called. “Well,” he said. “Don’t do anything I haven’t done, huh?” He shook hands with Phil, and Andrea threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Wow,” he said.

“That’s because I always wanted a little brother.”

“Well, I’ve already got a big sister, but she never kissed me like that. Jesus, get a move on, you’ll miss your flight.”

They boarded their plane. An hour and a quarter later they were on the ground at Idlewild. They checked in at the Pan Am counter and went to a lounge for coffee.

He said, “Mrs. Benstock.”

“The blushing bride herself. Do you mind if I don’t blush?”

“Not a bit. It went well, I’d say.”

“I think it did. I was in a daze.”

“So was I. Hey.”

“What?”

“Any regrets?”

“God, no,” she said.

She had flown from New York to Buffalo in the middle of August. It was early October when Mark first called her. Until then her life had been closely confined. She spent most of her time in and around the house on Admiral Road. Once or twice a week her parents went out to dinner, usually at Northlawn, occasionally at a restaurant. About half the time she would join them. Now and then she drove one of the two family cars downtown and saw a movie, but most evenings passed in front of the television set or in her room with a book.

Then one Wednesday afternoon the telephone rang and her mother told her it was for her.

She took the phone assuming it was someone from out of town. It did not occur to her that anyone in Buffalo would be likely to call her.

A voice said, “Hello, Andrea? This is Mark Benstock, and I’m sure that means nothing at all to you.”

“Well...”

“This is pretty complicated. My aunt Rhoda seems to be a good friend of your Aunt Claire, and it seems that — you do have an Aunt Claire, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Well, it seems that my aunt and your aunt were having a hot game of mah jongg or canasta or something, and the word eventually reached me that the most beautiful girl in Buffalo is only a phone call away from me. Uh. So I thought, uh, that perhaps we could have dinner some night.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a lawyer, I’m not married, and I’m kind to animals. Small children generally like me. What else? I’ve never been arrested. I did get a parking ticket last week, but that’s about the only blot on my escutcheon. And I’m sure this is the first time I’ve ever spoken the word escutcheon aloud.”

“I used to know a Linda Benstock.”

“My sister. I’m sure she’d supply a character reference if you’d like.”

She laughed.

“Friday night? Or Saturday better?”

“Saturday would be better, actually.”

“Around seven o’clock? I’ll pick you up.”

“Let me give you my address. Do you have a pencil?”

“I have the address, as a matter of fact.”

He was tall. He had wiry dark brown hair and a broad forehead creased with three deep horizontal folds. His cheeks and chin were lightly pitted with old acne scars. His eyes were a warm brown. His mouth was generous and his teeth were good and immaculately white. She was apt to take rather more notice of teeth than the average person, and supposed it was the inevitable consequence of being a dentist’s daughter. For many years she had thought it would be impossible for her to be strongly attracted to anyone with bad teeth. In New York she had learned that this was not entirely the case, but even then she had found herself more than a little put off by teeth that were out of line or badly cared for.

That Saturday he took her to a restaurant in Williamsville. The building that housed it had been an inn around the time the Erie Canal was dug, and so the waiters now wore Revolutionary costumes and the menu used f’s for s’s. They established that they had both gone to Bennett High School, that their families belonged to the same temple, and that they had a certain number of acquaintances in common.

He was twenty-eight. He had graduated from Cornell where he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi. He’d been accepted at Cornell Law, his second choice after Yale, but decided that four years in Ithaca were enough. And, since he intended to practice law in his home town, there were certain advantages in U. B. Law School. He’d naturally lived at home; his parents’ house in Eggertsville was as close to the University of Buffalo campus as any apartment he was likely to find.

After he’d earned his law degree he went into the Army for six months of active duty. He spent two months in basic training at Fort Dix and the rest of the time as a clerk-typist at Fort Polk in Louisiana. He had to go to reserve meetings every Monday night, but that would be over and done with in a couple of more years. And every summer he went to a camp in Watertown for two weeks. It was an idiotic waste of time, but it was better than giving up two years of your life in one chunk.

He still lived at home. He had taken the bar exam as soon as his active duty ended, and surprised himself by passing it the first time. Ever since then he had been with Gordon, Weissbart, and Gordon. The firm’s offices were downtown in the Liberty Bank Building, and on several occasions he had looked around for an apartment closer to his office, but he did get on well with his parents and hated the idea of having to cook for himself. He supposed he would move out sooner or later.

He loved being a lawyer. At Cornell he had considered several other careers. Medicine appealed, but the endless ordeal you had to go through had discouraged him; he knew he was not sufficiently dedicated to cope with it. And he had liked history enough to contemplate making it his life’s work, but being a historian meant being a teacher, and he couldn’t see himself doing fundamentally dull work for low pay for the rest of his life.

Law absorbed him. He had the right sort of mind for it. His firm had a broad general practice, and there was enough change in his work from day to day so that it could never become boring. He wasn’t setting the world on fire, but then he had not had the desire to set the world on fire. He was gradually building up a reputation and getting ahead, and he was doing what he wanted to do, and that was the most important thing.

He collected original cast albums of Broadway shows. Now and then he went to a concert at Kleinhans Music Hall but he wasn’t really crazy about it. He didn’t have the time to play golf as often as he would have liked. He had bowled in a Sunday morning league when he was in high school and had been fairly good, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone bowling. It was pretty dull, when all was said and done, because you just did the same thing over and over again.

They spent a long time at the restaurant. They both had several cups of coffee, then nursed small snifters of brandy. He was easy to be with, and he evidently found her easy to talk to. She did little talking herself but enjoyed listening to him. He was a man who knew just what he wanted to do; moreover, he was doing it. He had a sense of self, a sense of his place in his community, which was a quality quite outside of her experience in men. It was a quality she was now prepared to find extremely attractive.

He returned her to her house well before midnight. She wondered if she had done something wrong, but decided that she hadn’t; she was certain he had had a good time. And he said as much as he walked her to her door.

“I can’t remember enjoying myself this much, Andrea. I must have talked your ear off.”

“I enjoyed myself.”

“I hope you did. I know I did. Can I see you Friday? Maybe we’ll catch a movie or something, and I’ll give your ears a rest.”

“I’d like that. Seeing you, I mean. Not—”

“I know. Friday, then. I’ll call you.”

In the weeks before her wedding there were times when she looked back at that first date and thought that she had known then that she would ultimately marry Mark Benstock. But this was not strictly true. It was remarkable enough that, as she lay in her bed that night, she found herself speculating as to what her life would be like if she did marry Mark, or someone quite like him. She sensed even then that it would be a very comfortable life, and by this she meant emotional rather than financial security.

He was a sound person, a stable person, and she found his stability far more attractive than would have been the case a year or two earlier. It was the disquieting lack of stability in her own life and the lives of everyone she knew that was at the root of her return to Buffalo. Of course there were other more specific factors, but they seemed to be metaphors for the insecurity and isolation of her life in New York.

Yes, she could be married to someone like Mark Benstock. In fact it seemed unlikely that she could be successfully married to anyone who was not similar to him in most respects. But she did not seriously think that she might marry him, not then.

By Thanksgiving she knew they would one day be married.

She had not gone out with anyone in Buffalo before Mark called her, and she did not date anyone but him in the weeks that followed. There were a couple of phone calls from other men. A boy she had dated in high school called her one evening; he was recently divorced, had heard she was back in town, and wondered if she would like to get together for a drink. She would probably have gone, but the night he suggested was one on which she had a date with Mark, and he never called her a second time. Another man asked her out early in November; he too was divorced, and like Mark had heard of her through the aunt’s grapevine. By that time she was seeing Mark twice a week and had no desire to see anyone else. Besides, this man had a nasal voice and sounded like a creep. She told him she was seeing someone on a regular basis, and he sounded disappointed, but not terribly disappointed.

Their dates were always enjoyable for her. While they didn’t go anywhere spectacular, he frequently found something interesting for them to do. They had dinner at a few good restaurants, several mediocre ones, and one remarkably poor Chinese place. They saw half a dozen movies and one play, a reasonably good amateur production of Juno and the Paycock. The imperfect Irish brogues made her think of some of the men she had known who did their drinking at the White Horse and the Lion’s Head, but she did not think of them very intently, or for very long.

One night they drove to Niagara Falls and had dinner on the Canadian side. They had a window table with a good view of the Falls. She quoted Oscar Wilde’s line, expressing his assurance that Niagara Falls was the American bride’s second greatest disappointment. He had never heard the line before and he loved it.

On the long drive home he said, “I couldn’t even guess how long it’s been since I’ve seen the Falls. We had this tradition in my high school fraternity. God, high school fraternities and sororities! They were stupid enough in college, but in high school!”

“What was the tradition?”

“After our closing affair in the spring we would all drop off our dates and drive to Niagara Falls, and then we would all solemnly pee over the Falls. Well, into the river, and then it would go over the Falls.”

“At least you dropped your dates off first. Although I guess it might have been fun to watch. What fraternity?”

“Pal. Pi Alpha Lambda. And you were Phi Ep?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t think I ever dated a Pal boy. Yes, I did, come to think of it. Gerry Leibow.”

“Familiar name, but I don’t remember him.”

She sang:

“I remember that song. But the last word wasn’t girl. It was whore.”

“Hoor, you mean. To rhyme with mature, but we could only sing it that way when no one was around. And when we were in a particularly daring mood. ‘And now I am an Ulps boy’s hoor.’”

“Upsilon Lambda Phi. ‘If you laugh too hard, ULP.’ My father wanted me to pledge Ulps. He claimed it had more status. Fortunately I wasn’t sophisticated enough to know what he was talking about, so I joined the fraternity all my friends were joining. What nonsense it all was.”

He took her to a basketball doubleheader at Memorial Auditorium. He showed her his office. One Saturday afternoon he took her for a drive in the country. There was an orchard where you could pick your own apples for a dollar a bushel.

Beyond kissing her good night, he never made a pass at her. At the very beginning she interpreted this as strategy on his part; he would keep things very platonic, then move in swiftly for the kill. But as time passed she realized that he was not going to attempt to take her to bed, and on reflection she found that this did not really surprise her at all. In New York she had taken it for granted that any man she went out with would try to get her to bed at the earliest opportunity. But she was not in New York now. She was in Buffalo, going with a steady stable man who thought in long-range terms.

He gave her a diamond solitaire for Christmas. “We always exchanged gifts at Chanukah,” he said, “but I think kids should get something for Christmas, too. I’d even be inclined to have a tree for the kids’ sake. Of course I’d have to take it down whenever my parents came over.”

“Or hang a picture in front of it.”

“Even better. I hope I’m not presuming too much. I gather it’s considered proper to let the girl pick out the ring, but I wanted to surprise you. You can exchange it if it’s not what you want.”

“It’s just exactly what I want.”

“What I want is for us to be married. I’ve never proposed to a girl before. There was never anyone I wanted to marry. There were two or three I thought about marrying but it wasn’t what I wanted and it never went that far. I was beginning to think I would never meet anyone. And then your Aunt Claire and my Aunt Rhoda sat down over a card table, and here I am with the only girl in the world. I’m not dreaming, am I?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

“I love you, Andrea.”

They were invited to a New Year’s party at the home of a Polish couple in Orchard Park. “I suppose we ought to go,” he said. “I knew Cass in law school and we’ve been doing some business with his firm lately. They don’t touch negligence and they’ve been giving us some referrals. I don’t suppose it’ll be much fun, so if you can’t stand the idea just say so.”

“I don’t mind. I always hate New Year’s Eve anyway, so if we go someplace where we don’t expect much, at least we won’t be disappointed.”

The party was about what she’d expected. She didn’t know anyone there and Mark knew only the host. Everybody was married and half the women were pregnant. The men gathered in one room and discussed cars and told Kennedy jokes. The women sat around in another room and talked about toilet training. There was a pile of funny hats on the table next to the bottles of Schenley’s, and she told him she was damned if she was going to put one on.

“You won’t have to,” he said. “Wait right here.” She waited, drink in hand, and after a few minutes he returned with their coats. “I told Casimir we’d absolutely promised to be at a family party by the stroke of twelve. Not that he’ll remember anything. It’s a quarter after eleven, and at the rate he’s going he’ll be under the sofa by midnight.”

Outside, a light snow was falling. “We won’t ever be like that,” she said. “Tell me we won’t.”

“Like Cass and Ellie?”

“Like all those people. The women were worse than the men. I want to have babies, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about their diapers. Let’s try not to be boring, Mark.”

“It’s a deal.” They reached his car and he held the door for her, then walked around and got behind the wheel. “Well, we put in an appearance,” he said. “But I couldn’t see starting 1963 with a dose of terminal boredom. Anyway, I’ve got a wonderful idea. I’ll show you my office.”

“I’ve seen your office, silly.”

“Humor me.”

On the big table in the conference room was an ice hamper with two bottles of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge. They sat on the long leather couch and drank one of the bottles and necked. She had not had champagne in ages and it was delicious. She had not necked in ages, either, and his mouth and hands turned out to be an ideal accompaniment for champagne. He made gentle, leisurely love to her, and she felt so very much at ease that she began to grow passionate without exactly realizing what was happening to her.

After a long time he sat up and looked at his watch. It was twelve-thirty. “Well, what do you know about that,” he said, marveling. “Here I was hoping to steal a kiss at the stroke of midnight, and now I’ll have to wait a full year for the privilege. Privilege.”

“I think you’re a little bit drunk.”

“Well, maybe a bit.”

“And you don’t have to steal anything, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

He undressed her slowly, his large hands very gentle and capable. Someone had told her once that the size of a man’s hands was a good indication of the size of his penis. She had dismissed this as absurd folk wisdom at the time, but lately she had noticed his hands and remembered the old myth and wondered if there was anything to it. She was delighted now to find that, in his case at least, it was quite true. He was large, and she liked that. For all that she had heard and read to the effect that penis size was not important, she felt it was important to her.

It had been such a long time. There had been, since her return to Buffalo, no sexual frustration, no nights of longing, until she began to wonder if that final week in New York had permanently affected her capacity for sexual desire. Sex had become so slight a factor in her life that this thought itself was less a cause for worry than dispassionate speculation.

Her head was wonderfully light from the champagne, her body deliriously in tune after their love play. Now she inhaled the intermingled scents of his cologne and the leather couch, and she felt his weight upon her and his bulk within her, and oh my, oh yes, what a lovely way to start the year.

“Oh, Mark.”

“My girl, my baby girl.”

“Oh my God.”

She had had a diaphram in New York. For all she knew it was still there, zipped in its pink plastic carrying case and tucked away in the second drawer of the bird’s-eye maple dresser on Jane Street. Two days after he first made love to her she went to a gynecologist at Linwood and Utica and asked to be fitted. He asked her if there was any particular reason why she didn’t want to take contraceptive pills. She decided there wasn’t. He took her blood pressure and listened to her heart and gave her a prescription for Enovid, with instructions to begin taking them five days after the start of her next period.

She left his office praying she would get a next period to begin with. Neither she nor Mark had taken any precautions, and he insisted he would be just as pleased if she were pregnant; it would give him an excuse to move up the wedding date. But her period came on schedule, and after that she took her pills faithfully. Invariably their nights together concluded at his office, with her bare bottom sticking to the brown leather of the conference room couch.

They had first-class seats on the flight from New York to Puerto Rico. The seats were more comfortable than in the tourist section, and the drinks were free. She told him she had never flown first class before.

“You don’t want to get used to it,” he said. “It’s a ridiculous extravagance.”

“Then why are we doing it?”

“Because I feel ridiculously extravagant.”

“You nut.”

“Hell, this is my wedding day. I can’t go and sit among the peasants on a day like this. And I certainly can’t expect my wife to sit among the peasants on a day like this. Do you want to know something?”

“I would love to know something.”

“It’s a good thing, because I would have told you anyway. I like being married.”

“How can you tell so soon?”

“I don’t know, but I can. Can’t you?”

“I suppose so. I just like being here with you, and I guess married makes it even nicer.”

“Give me a kiss.”

“Ah, that’s much nicer than kissing all those people at the club. Much nicer. But it wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“The wedding or the reception?”

“Both. I’m glad we kept the wedding small. I would have loved to pass up the reception, but I suppose that was out of the question.”

“No, they had a right to that much.”

“Our parents? Or the guests?”

“I meant the parents, but in a way the guests too. By the way, do you know what your father did?”

“What?”

“I thought he might have told you. You know, I think he’s as fine a man as I’ve ever met. I thinka lot of your mother, as far as that goes, but your dad’s really remarkable. He’s the kind of man I’d like to be when I grow up.”

“I like that, when you grow up.”

“Well, I mean it. In a funny way he reminds me of a professor I had at Cornell. A good many years older than your father, and very much the academic type, but there was something similar about them. I had a course in Contemporary European History with him, Europe since 1815, and it was the best course I ever took in my life. I think it was his influence that made me consider teaching. In fact I know it was. Hiram Carruthers, the first and only person I ever met named Hiram. You’d expect a hayseed with a name like that, but he was very much the Ivy League cosmopolitan.”

“You still didn’t say what my father did.”

“I didn’t, did I? Hiram Carruthers led me off the track. Well, your father slipped me an envelope at the reception, and did it with a lot more grace than I slipped the envelope to Rabbi Farber.”

“And there was more in this envelope, I take it.”

“There was a check for five thousand dollars in this envelope. I was sure he would have mentioned it to you. I looked at it and thought at first it was five hundred, which would have been damned generous, but it was five thousand.”

“That’s too much.”

“That was precisely my reaction, and it was just what I said to him. He told me he’d figured on spending that much on your wedding, and that he thought it was sensible of us to keep the wedding small, but that there was no reason why our decision should let him off the hook cheap. He put it better than I am, but that was the gist of it. It’s far too much. I wanted to return it—”

“No, I don’t think you can do that.”

“Neither do I. Five thousand dollars. If we were younger, just out of school, that would make the difference between scraping by and living decently for the first few years. But I make enough money for us to live on, and I like the idea of us living on what I make.”

“So do I. Very definitely.”

“I’ve been trying to think what to do with the money. If we were going to buy a house we could use it for the down payment, but I wouldn’t want a house now, not for just the two of us, and by the time we’re ready for a house I’ll be able to afford the down payment myself. I think I know what I’m going to do with the money.”

“I bet I know, but I want you to tell me.”

“I’m going to put it away for our kids’ education. That’s if you approve, of course.”

“I win my bet. I just knew you were going to say that. And of course I approve.”

“Five thousand dollars will just about see a kid through a decent college. Well, it’ll cover tuition, anyway. Of course college costs are going to go up, but by the time we have children ready for college that five thousand will have grown a great deal. I’ll have to talk to somebody when we get back to Buffalo. I don’t know what’s the best way to invest it, stocks or mutual funds or some sort of insurance plan. I do know I’m not going to let it sit in a savings bank, but I’m not going to gamble it away, either. I’ll talk to Hal Ginzburg at Bache, and I’ll also talk to a fellow I met for the first time this afternoon. A friend of your dad’s, very tall and thin with a droopy moustache. Arthur something, but I don’t remember his last name.”

“Vogel. Uncle Art Vogel.”

“Oh, he’s your uncle?”

“No, it’s an honorary title. Did you have to call all your parents’ friends Aunt and Uncle? There must be a point where it’s time to stop, but I still feel uncomfortable calling them by their first names.”

“No, we didn’t have that. But I knew a fellow at Cornell who grew up thinking that an honorary aunt and uncle from another city were his real aunt and uncle. He didn’t know just how they were related, but it never occurred to him that they weren’t, and it caused a problem.”

“How would it cause a problem?”

“Well, he thought their daughter was really his cousin. And one summer they were all at the same resort together, and his little cousin seemed to be very available, but he knew it would be incestuous so he never even considered it. He was sorely tempted, as they say, but he kept his hands to himself. Then a few months later he found out Aunt Whozit and Uncle Whatsit were just his parents’ very good friends, but by that time Cousin Hepzibah was miles and miles away.”

“I hope her name wasn’t really Hepzibah. Does the story have a happy ending?”

“If it does, I never heard it. He tried to salve his wounds by screwing his way through Sigma Delta Tau. A heroic ambition, and better than drinking yourself to death. I don’t seem to want this cigarette after all. Want to finish it for me?”

“Sure. It’s good we smoke the same brand.”

“It’s one of the reasons I married you.”

“Tell me the other reasons.”

“Because I hate my mother’s cooking.”

“Not because I’m sensational in bed?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I know you’re sensational on a couch.”

“I’ll miss that old brown couch.”

“Well, it’ll miss you. It’s permanently imprinted with the impression of your very nice little ass.”

“Ha! I married a crude man.”

“That can’t be a surprise to you.” He yawned. “Would it be terribly unromantic if I took a little nap?”

“I wish you would. You’ve looked tired all afternoon.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Then close your eyes and put your seat back. Go ahead.”

“It does seem unromantic, though.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Nonsense,” she said. “It sounds like a very married thing to do. I like the idea of us doing married things. I like that very much.”

He fell asleep almost immediately. She sat for a few minutes watching him sleep. When the stewardess came by she asked for a magazine and a cup of coffee, but she abandoned the magazine after leafing through it very briefly. It was more pleasant to sit sipping coffee and watch her husband sleep. He looked very vulnerable now, his honest face open in repose. She could see no weakness in his face, not when he was awake and not now while he slept, but she felt stronger herself now. This was her man, sleeping beside her, and she realized that this was a sight she would be seeing for the rest of her life. This was the man who would share that life with her.

There were so many things she did not know about him. She would be sleeping next to him for the rest of her life, yet now she did not know whether he slept nude or in pajamas, whether he shaved at night or in the morning. In a week’s time she would be making his breakfast, but at the moment she did not know what he liked for breakfast, or if he was talkative in the morning.

She realized with some surprise that she knew less about him, knew him less thoroughly, than she had known several other men in her lifetime. She and Mark had never spent more than a couple of hours at a time in lovemaking. They had never spent a night together or been in a real bed together. There were men she had slept with, men she had spent weekends with.

He knew, certainly, that there had been men before him. But he did not know — and would not know — the number of men who had been to bed with her, or the depth of certain relationships she had experienced. Indeed, there was at least as much about her that he did not know, and she suspected that his ignorance of her was somewhat greater than her ignorance of him. He was, unless she was greatly mistaken, a much simpler person than she was. No, simple was a bad word, it had negative connotations which she did not mean at all. He was a less complicated person than she, he had led a less complicated life, and she recognized this without feeling in any way superior to him for the recognition. The relative simplicity of his life was unquestionably one of the things about him that had attracted her.

One had to simplify, to draw back, to be careful.

She picked up her magazine again and tried to get interested in an article about Jackie Kennedy’s redecoration of the White House. She looked at the pictures but couldn’t keep her mind on the text. She could not make up her mind about Jackie Kennedy, now respecting the woman, now finding in her aspects of several girls at Bryn Mawr whom she had found intolerable.

But we’ve got something in common now, she told Jackie’s photograph. We’re both a couple of housewives with places to furnish. Of course yours is a little more elaborate, and you’ll probably be doing more entertaining...

Well, Mark Benstock would never be President, and thank God for that. And they would not live in a white mausoleum on Pennsylvania Avenue but in a two-bedroom apartment on Kenmore Avenue, with leaded glass windows and a woodburning fireplace. The smaller bedroom would be Mark’s den. They would eat their breakfasts at a table in the kitchen. (Her prior experience with apartments was limited to New York, and the idea of having an apartment kitchen large enough to eat in delighted her.) And when Mark came home from the office she would meet him at the door with a cocktail, and they would dine in the dining area of the L-shaped living room. On winter nights she would have a fire laid in the fireplace, and after he had his cocktail he would fight it.

She closed the magazine and went on imagining their life together. They would spend a great deal of time alone together, certainly, but it would also be important for them to have friends. During their courtship they had kept pretty much to themselves. Now they were married, and before long people would be inviting them over and they would invite people to their apartment in return.

It was not hard to guess who their friends would be. Many of the couples they would see socially had been at the reception earlier. There would be old friends of his and old friends of hers. Pal boys and their wives, Phi Ep girls and their husbands.

She thought suddenly of that New Year’s party. But it would not be like that. She and Mark would have as friends people very much like themselves, and the women would not talk of toilet training while the men talked of cars and football. It would not be like that.

The landing at San Juan Airport was smooth, and it was not until the plane had taxied the length of the runway and come to a complete stop that she realized she had been afraid of this flight. She had never been conscious of fear, but now she felt as if she had been relieved of a burden, and she figured out what it had consisted of. She was too happy, too safe and secure, and evidently she had read too many sad stories and seen too many bad movies not to expect tragedy.

The air was warm and heavy, with an almost musky scent on it. She experienced an odd sense of deja vu as they walked from the plane, and it was a moment before she knew what it was. The air had had just this quality in Florida. She had been there twice, once during high school when her parents took her to Miami Beach during Christmas vacation, and once when she and several college classmates took a reluctant part in the Easter pilgrimage to Fort Lauderdale.

She went with Mark as he collected their bags. On the way to the hotel’s courtesy car he said, “I think you’ll like the Flamboyan. It was brand new when I stayed there and the staff was a little rusty, but even so it was a pretty decent place to stay. I figured I’d play it safe and pick a place I knew was all right.”

“That was two years ago?”

“Well, a year and a half. The week before Christmas.”

“I hope they don’t give us your old room.”

“That’s not too likely, since I booked a suite. But why did you say that?”

“Because I’m jealous enough of the girl you took along as it stands.”

“I went all by myself and you know it.”

“Poor baby. All alone in romantic Puerto Rico.”

“It was about as romantic as old tennis shoes.”

“Oh, come on. You must have picked up a senorita or two.”

“All I picked up was a very light case of sun poisoning. Oh, I bought a couple of drinks for a girl. A secretary from Brooklyn who’d been saving all year for a glamorous week in the sun.”

“I hope you made her dreams come true.”

“Not unless she had very masochistic dreams. I bought her two Apricot Brandy Sours, and don’t ask me how I remember what she drank. I bought her two Apricot Brandy Sours and excused myself to go to the men’s room, but instead I went to my own room and read the newspaper and went to bed. I can’t believe that was the end she had in mind for the evening. It wasn’t what I had in mind, either, but it turned out to be what I wanted.”

“She must have been flat chested.”

“How well you know my fetishes. No, as a matter of fact she was built like the proverbial brick outhouse, or otherwise—”

“You would never have bought her a drink in the first place.”

“I’m afraid you’re right. Actually she was good-looking enough. But her voice was like chalk on a blackboard. I can stand some Brooklyn accents, but on top of that her voice was shrill and nasal at the same time, and—”

“I know the voice.”

At the hotel desk she looked over his shoulder as he signed them in. Mr. and Mrs. Mark Benstock, 803 Kenmore Avenue, Buffalo, New York. A bellhop took their bags and led them to the elevator and then to their suite. He started to check the bathroom but Mark told him everything was fine and gave him a dollar. When the door closed he took her in his arms and kissed her. She clung tightly to him and the kiss lasted a long time.

“Mrs. Benstock,” he said.

“You know, I don’t think it’s going to be hard to get used to the name. I think I’m used to it already.”

“Just don’t get tired of hearing it.”

“Not for a minimum of a hundred years. Oh, isn’t that nice, there’s a bowl of fruit.I hope it’s not wax. No, it’s real fruit, and there’s a card. ‘Congratulations and best wishes from the staff and management of Hotel Flamboyan.’ Congratulations and best wishes, so they know this is a honeymoon.”

“Unless they congratulate people who are having affairs. Somehow I doubt it.”

“Somehow so do I.”

“Does it bother you? That they know?”

“Should it? I’m in love and I’m happy and I’m married and I don’t care who knows it. My God, the bedroom’s even bigger than the living room. And what a big bed. Did I tell you my mother said we should get twin beds? ‘You’ll get a better night’s sleep, dear, and that’s important even if it’s not so romantic.’ Fat chance, mother dear. Do you suppose we’ll ever want twin beds?”

“Not for a minimum of a hundred years, as someone said recently. There’s an icebox in the living room, incidentally, and unless they fouled up it’s not empty. Let’s just see. Ah, they followed instructions to the letter. They even got the brand right.”

“Mumm’s Cordon Rouge. What a wonderful man I married.”

“I’d glad you realize it.”

“Now all we need is a leather couch.”

“And a terrible party to go to first. Should I call the desk and order up a dozen Polacks and a couple of bottles of Schenley’s?”

“I’m sure they’re fresh out. Of Polacks, anyway. But calling the desk reminds me.”

“You must be starving.”

“That’s what it reminded me. Do you mind waiting? Am I blushing? I think I am.”

“You are.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“I kind of like it. The blushing bride. No, I don’t mind waiting. In fact there’s something nice about the idea of not having to rush. We’re old married folks. We can go downstairs and eat a civilized dinner. Maybe take a turn at the casino, catch a show at the nightclub—”

“That’s a little too civilized, but the dinner sounds good.”

“I’ll tell you what. I need a shave, so why don’t you unpack and freshen up and then we’ll go downstairs before they close the kitchen.”

In the dining room he ordered a Rum Collins for himself and a Daiquiri for her. “No, let me change that,” she told the waiter. “I’ll have an Apricot Brandy Sour.”

“You lunatic.”

“I was going to use my Brooklyn accent but I chickened out.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Now I couldn’t. I’m too self-conscious. In New York everyone made fun of my Buffalo accent. ‘Aaandrea.’ I got the same thing at Bryn Mawr, but there I was naive enough to think it was something to be ashamed of, and I carefully cultivated a Main Line accent. Or what I thought was one. Then I would have to lose it very deliberately when I came home for vacations. In New York I decided I would rather sound like myself than go native.”

“New York. I don’t know how you could stand it.”

“Well, I couldn’t. That’s why I came home.”

“It’s nice for a visit. I like to drive down and see a couple of shows every now and then. Oh, you married a man with an original mind, didn’t you, Mrs. Benstock? ‘A nice place to visit but I’d hate to live there.’ Well, like most clichés, it happens to be the truth.”

“Well, that’s really all I did. Visit there, I mean. I never really lived there. I visited for a couple of years.” The waiter brought their drinks and they ordered dinner, sirloin for him, lobster Newburg for her. “So this is an Apricot Brandy Sour,” she said. “You would have to taste it to believe it, but don’t bother. I don’t feel sorry for that girl now. Anyone who drinks these regularly must be used to having men abandon her.”

“I’ll order you something else.”

“No, let me finish this. It’s not going to be a habit with me, but let me stay with my Apricot Brandy Sour. That sounds like a name for one of James Bond’s girlfriends. ‘Her name was Apricot Brandy Sour. She drove an E-type Jaguar and wore a diamond tiara and nothing else. Her auburn hair cascaded over her lush ruby-tipped breasts.’”

“‘Bond cast an admiring glance at her breasts. He took out a packet of Player’s and slit the wrapper with his thumbnail.’ I’ll be damned if I know how he does that, incidentally. He must have the sharpest goddamned thumbnails ever.”

After dinner they had a brandy at their table, then strolled through the lobby. They were both postponing their return to their suite, in unspoken agreement to delay their pleasure as long as possible. In the casino he told her that it was a good idea to stay away from the roulette wheel. They had the usual zero and double zero, and they also had a triple zero, which gave the house an added edge.

“I keep learning new things about you,” she told him. “Now I discover you’re an expert on gambling.”

“Not an expert and not even a gambler. I played when I was here the last time because there was nothing else to do. I think I won about forty dollars. It bored the hell out of me.”

“What did you play?”

“Blackjack some of the time. I lost a little at blackjack and won at craps. I think I’ll try my luck at the crap table.”

“All right. Oh, they have slot machines.”

“You’d get a better break playing parking meters, but here’s ten dollars. Have fun.”

She drifted over to a bank of slots while he headed for the crap table. When he rejoined her she had doubled her ten-dollar stake, and he told her that was exactly half of what he had lost at craps. She poured quarters into her bag and took his arm. “Let’s go,” she said. “I have a sudden craving for champagne.”

“So do I.”

In their suite she said, “I wanted the wedding small and I could have lived without the reception, but I’m glad we weren’t too blasé for a honeymoon. This is just the way every marriage should start. Flying first class, and then this suite. You’re going to give me an appetite for luxury. I won’t even ask what this is costing us.”

“I won’t even tell you.”

“Do you want to open the champagne? I think the second bottle will have to wait for another night, but I’ve got room for a glass or two. You pop the cork and I’ll slip into something more comfortable.”

When she came out of the bedroom he was already in bed with the sheet covering him from the waist down. He held two glasses of champagne. She slid under the covers beside him and took a glass. “To our honeymoon,” he said. “May it last a minimum of one hundred years.”

“Oh, it will.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you look terrific in black lace? I certainly hope not, but you do.”

“I’ve never owned anything like this.”

“You won’t own that long. I’m about to rip it off you.”

“You won’t have to. There. Am I what you always wanted? You’d better say yes.”

“Just what I always wanted. All I ever wanted, and you’re mine and I love you.”

“Oh, this is so perfect. A bed is nicer than a couch, isn’t it? And married is nicer than not married. Let me look at you. My husband. Oh, what a big cock you have. Do you mind if I talk like that?”

“I like it.”

“What a big beautiful cock my husband has.”

“And what lovely tits my little wife has. I think I will kiss them.”

“Oh, please do. Oh, yes.”

“And what a nice cunt. What a nice wet cunt, all warm and wet.”

“Oh, put your cock in my cunt. Oh, fuck me.”

He positioned himself on her and rubbed the head of his penis back and forth over her clitoris. The sensation was almost painfully exquisite.

“Don’t tease.”

“It says in the books that you’re supposed to like this.”

“God, I love it but I want you inside me. Now. Oh, yes, that’s so good. Your cock is in my cunt and I love it, I love you, oh God.”

Afterward he lit a cigarette and they passed it back and forth. She said, “That’s good to know, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“That it’s better when you’re married.”

“Didn’t you think it would be?”

“I didn’t think it could be. Was it my imagination or did you make it last longer than usual?”

“I wanted to make it last forever. I never wanted to finish. I want all of this to last forever.”

“It will, my darling.”

“And we can do it whenever we want to. We have a license, like a hunting or a fishing license. We have a fucking license and we can do it all we want.”

“Every night on Kenmore Avenue.”

“Every night. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Benstock of 803 Kenmore Avenue regret they must reject your kind invitation as they will be at home that evening fucking.’ I hope we remember to draw the drapes.”

“Let’s never open them. Just in case the mood comes on us suddenly.”

“As it very well might. And we don’t have to get up and go home, and I think that’s the best part. No more going home to Admiral Road and trying not to walk bowlegged.”

“What a nice picture that makes.”

“And trying at the same time to keep the smile off my face. I wonder if they knew. I suppose they must have.”

“Do you care?”

“Not a bit.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Are you sorry we didn’t wait?”

“Why should I be?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might be.”

“I’m not. You’re not, are you?”

“God, no. I couldn’t have waited, I don’t think. I could never sleep after a date with you.”

“And I thought you weren’t interested. All those months and you never tried anything.”

“I was afraid of spoiling things. I knew I was going to marry you and I didn’t want to rush you.”

“When did you know?”

“As a matter of fact, cliché or not, I knew from the first time I saw you. That’s something nice and romantic for us to tell our children. It happens to be the truth. I took one look at you and I said to myself that this was the girl I was going to marry. And then I told myself not to be ridiculous, but I never did change my mind.”

“What a wonderful man you are.”

“Just keep on thinking so.”

“You could have had me any time, you know. That’s probably not something I should be telling you. But I am glad you waited as long as you did. And I’m glad you didn’t wait any longer. You weren’t the only one who had trouble sleeping.”

“Think you’ll be able to sleep tonight?”

“Like a lamb.”

“Well, you go to sleep. I’ll just touch you a little.”

“Sneak. Oh, that’s nice. But you can’t be ready again so soon. Oh, but you are. How lovely.”

They made love again. It was briefer this time than before, but equally satisfying, and afterward he lay in her arms for just a few minutes before rolling off of her and going to sleep. He lay on his side facing her and she watched him sleep and remembered how she had watched him on the plane.

She smoked a cigarette, then put out the bedside light and stretched out beside him. But she was not ready to sleep, and after a few minutes she knew it.

She slipped out of bed and got the champagne bottle and a glass from her night table. She went into the living room and poured herself a glass of champagne.

Shortly after they had begun having sex they had confessed their prior experience to one another. She had admitted to one affair at Bryn Mawr and two in New York. He told her he had had one genuine affair at Cornell, another brief affair in law school, and perhaps a dozen one-night stands with girls he had picked up. She was certain his summary was the literal truth, and just as certain that it was a good thing hers wasn’t.

Years ago she had taken it for granted that it would be impossible to marry a man who did not have considerably more sexual experience than she did. She had since come to see that neither sexual experience nor sexual sophistication was terribly important. Of course she was glad that Mark was not entirely without experience, but she was also glad that his experience had been no more extensive than it had.

Nevertheless, it still seemed to her that it was important for the man to think he was more experienced than his bride. And however much experience he had had, there was no question that his lovemaking satisfied and fulfilled her. She had slept with men whose store of sexual expertise was greater than Mark’s, but she had never slept with a man who moved her more deeply or pleased her more thoroughly. If he lacked something in the way of innovation and sophistication, he more than made up for it in other ways.

And she had learned to distrust sexual cleverness, anyway. New York had been full to overflowing with men who could screw you in every position the Kama Sutra ever thought of, and they all forgot your name before they were through doing it.

But how she longed to take his penis into her mouth! Ever since a boy from Haverford had taught her to enjoy fellatio, it had always seemed to her the ultimate expression of love, an act ideally to be reserved for what she had around the same time learned to refer to as meaningful relationships. It bothered her that she had done this with other men and not with Mark. There ought not to be anything she had done with others but not with him. She did not in the main regret her experience before she met Mark. It was the past, and nothing to do with the present. But she did wish to do with him everything she had ever done with anyone else.

She wanted to know his taste. On two or three occasions she had surreptitiously touched herself after intercourse and conveyed her hand to her mouth, seeking in that way to have the flavor of him. And so many times she had been on the verge of putting her mouth on him.

But it would be a mistake, surely, to take the initiative. And he had never hinted that she might do this for him, nor had he attempted to go down on her. He was marvelously oral and used his mouth with great enthusiasm and effect on her breasts, so much so that she was sure he would eat her magnificently if he only got around to it.

Oh, it would come with time. He had waited longer than necessary to make love to her at all, and perhaps this was a similar sort of reticence. Sooner or later he would add this element to their repertoire; if he did not take the initiative himself, she would find some subtle way to teach him to teach her. And what an eager pupil she would be.

She drank another glass of champagne and smoked another cigarette. It was late and she was tired, and she knew now that she would be able to sleep. She was a married woman on her honeymoon and it was a perfect honeymoon and she knew she would remember it all her life. And she knew too that she was slightly anxious for it to be over and done with even as she looked forward eagerly to its remaining days. She was a little impatient to begin this business of being a wife.

She padded silently back to the bedroom. He was positioned as she had left him, lying on his side facing her side of the bed. She got into bed and moved close to him, first feeling his body warmth on her skin, then moving closer so that their bodies touched. He did not awaken, but his arm reached out and fell across her body. She felt a deep sense of security unlike anything she had known since childhood. This man would take care of her. This man, this good man, loved her.

And she loved him. She did.

This had been the best day of her life. It was the most important day of her life, as she had known it would be, and now it had turned out to be the best day of her life, better than she had dared hope it would be.

Drifting off to sleep, her last thought was of her high school’s motto. Optima Futura. The best is yet to be.