In Case We're Separated: Connected Stories

In Case We’re Separated

You’re a beautiful woman, sweetheart, Edwin Friend began. His girlfriend, Bobbie Kaplowitz, paid attention: Edwin rarely spoke up and complimented her. He tipped his chair against her sink and glanced behind him, but the drain board wasn’t piled so high that the back of his head would start an avalanche today. He took a decisive drink from his glass of water and continued, But in that particular dress you look fat."

It was a bright Saturday morning in October 1954. Edwin often visited Bobbie on Saturday mornings, and she had dressed up a little, anticipating. Now she didn’t bother to speak. She reached behind to unfasten the hook and eye at the back of her neck, worked the zipper down without help, stepped out of the dress, and in her underwear took the sharp scissors. She cut a big piece of brown wrapping paper from a roll she kept next to the refrigerator, while Edwin said several times, What are you doing?

Bobbie folded the dress, which was chestnut brown with a rust-and-cream-colored arrowlike decoration that crossed her breasts and pointed fetchingly down. She set the folded dress in the middle of the paper, wrapped and taped it, and addressed the package to her slimmer sister in Pittsburgh. Then she went into the bedroom and changed into something seriously gorgeous.

Come, Bradley, she called, though Edwin would have babysat, but Bradley came quickly. He was a thin six-year-old with dark curls and the habit of resting his hands on his hips, so from the front he looked slightly supervisory and from the back his pointed elbows stuck out like outlines of small wings. They left Edwin looking surprised. At the post office, a considerable walk away, the clerk said the package had to be tied with string, but lent Bobbie a big roll of twine and his scissors. Bobbie was wearing high-heeled shoes, and she braced herself on the counter with one gloved hand. She was short and the shoes made her wobble. She took the end of the twine in her mouth, grasped it between her teeth, and jerked her head back to pull it tight. It was brown twine, now reddened with her lipstick, and its taste was woody and dry. Fibers separating from the twine might travel across Bobbie’s tongue and make her gag. For all she knew, her poor old teeth might loosen.

Much was brown: the twine, the paper around the package (even the dress inside if one could see it), and the wooden counter with its darkened brass decorations. The counter was old enough to have taken on the permanent sour coloring of wooden and metal objects in Brooklyn that had remained in one place—where any hand might close upon them—since the century turned. But Bobbie’s lipstick, and the shoes she’d changed into, and her suit—which had a straight skirt with a kick pleat—were red. She wore a half-slip because she was a loose woman. Joke. Edwin’s hands always went first to her bare, fleshy midriff. Then he seemed to enjoy urging the nylon petticoat down, sliding the rubber knobs up and out of the metal loops that attached her stockings to her girdle, even tugging the girdle off. She never let him take off her nylons because he wasn’t careful.

Bobbie tied a firm knot. Then she changed her mind. She poked the roll of twine and the scissors toward the clerk with an apologetic wave, called to Bradley—who was hopping from one dark medallion on the tile floor to the next, flapping his arms—and went home. As Bobbie walked, one eye on Bradley, the package dangled from her finger on its string like a new purchase. At home she found Edwin taking apart her Sunbeam Mixmaster with her only tool, a rusty screwdriver.

Didn’t you say it wasn’t working? Edwin asked.

There’s nothing wrong with it. I didn’t say anything.

Edwin was married. He had told Bobbie he was a bachelor who couldn’t marry her because he lived with his mother, who was old, silly, and anti-Semitic. But his mother lived in her own apartment and was not silly or anti-Semitic as far as he knew. Edwin had a wife named Dorothy, a dental hygienist. She’d stopped working when their first child was born—they had two daughters—but sometimes she helped out her old boss. Now, fumbling to put Bobbie’s mixer back together, Edwin began to wonder uneasily whether it wasn’t Dorothy, dressing for work in her uniform, who happened to mention a broken mixer. He had never confused the two women before in the years he’d been Bobbie’s boyfriend.

Edwin’s monkey business had begun by mistake. He was a salesman for a baking supply company, and Bobbie was in charge of the payroll at a large commercial bakery. Though Edwin didn’t wear a ring, he believed that everyone in the firms through which he passed assumed he was somebody’s husband. However, a clerk in Bobbie’s office had moved to Brooklyn from Minneapolis. When this young woman, who had distinctive habits, asked him straight out, Edwin misheard the question and said no. He had heard, Mr. Friend, are you merry?

Edwin was good-natured but not merry, and the question puzzled him until he found himself having lunch with Bobbie, to whom the young woman from Minneapolis had introduced him. He realized that he was on a date. Bobbie seemed eager and attractive, while Dorothy liked to make love about as often as she liked to order tickets and go to a Broadway show, or invite her whole family for dinner, and with about as much planning. Not knowing exactly what he had in mind, Edwin suggested that Bobbie meet him for a drink after work, nervous that she’d refuse anything less than dinner and a movie. But she agreed. Drinking a quick whiskey sour in a darkened lounge, she suggested that next time he come to her house. So his visits began: daytime conversations over a glass of water or a cup of coffee; suppers followed by bed. Bobbie was always interested. She only needed to make sure Bradley was sleeping.

Bobbie rarely spoke of her marriage. Her husband had been a tense, mumbly man, a printer. He’d remained aloof from her family. At first he said she was nothing like her crude relatives. I felt refined, but I didn’t like it, Bobbie told Edwin. Later her husband began to say she was exactly like her family, and at last he moved her and Bradley, an infant, into a dark two-room apartment where nothing worked and there was hardly ever any hot water. He said he slept at his shop, and at first he brought her money, but soon that stopped. I didn’t have enough hot water to bathe the baby, Bobbie said. Let alone my whole self. Edwin imagined it: naked Bobbie clasping a thin baby and splashing warm water on herself from a chipped, shallow basin. She’d moved back with her mother and got a job. Eventually she could afford the apartment on Elton Street where Edwin now visited her. When Bradley was two she had taken him on the train to Reno, lived there for six weeks, and come home divorced, bringing her sisters silver pins and bracelets with Indian designs on them, arrows and stylized birds.

Bobbie’s family wouldn’t care much that Edwin wasn’t Jewish, she assured him, and they’d understand that he couldn’t be around often because of his mother. But they did want to know him. So Edwin had consented to an occasional Sunday lunch in Bobbie’s kitchen with her mother or one of her sisters, eating whitefish and kippered salmon and bagels off a tablecloth printed with cherries, and watching the sun move across the table as the afternoon lengthened and he imagined Dorothy wondering. After the bagels they’d have coffee with marble cake from Bobbie’s bakery. He’d tip his chair against the porcelain sink and consider how surprised his wife would be if she knew where he was, being polite to another woman’s relatives. His own house was bigger and more up-to-date.

Dorothy would be even more surprised if she knew, right now, that Edwin was in that same kitchen, which was less sunny in the morning, fixing a mixer that wasn’t broken. Edwin would have preferred to be a bigamist, not a deceiver. When he reassembled the mixer, it didn’t work. He left the bowls and beaters and took the big contraption home in the trunk of his car. He’d work on it when Dorothy was out. She had promised Dr. Dressel, her old boss, a few hours in the coming week.

The day Edwin carried off the mixer, Bobbie’s sister Sylvia and her kids, Joan and Richard, rang Bobbie’s bell after lunch because they were all going to the Hayden Planetarium. Sylvia, a schoolteacher, had said, Bradley’s ready, as if she’d noticed blanks in his eyes where stars and planets belonged. Her own kids had often been to the planetarium. So the sisters walked to Fulton Street, urging along the children, who stamped on piles of brown sycamore leaves. Climbing the stairs to the elevated train, Bobbie was already tired. She’d have changed her shoes, but she liked the look of the red heels. They waited on the windy platform, Joan holding Bradley’s hand tightly. She and Richard were tall, capable children who read signs out loud in firm voices: No Spitting. Meet Miss Subways. They had to change trains, and as the second one approached, Sylvia said, Does Bradley know what to do in case we’re separated?

Why should we get separated? said Bobbie.

It can always happen, Sylvia said as the doors opened. The children squeezed into one seat, and Sylvia leaned over them. She had short curly hair that was starting to go gray. Remember, she said, in case we get separated, if you’re on the train, get off at the next stop and wait. And if you’re on the platform, just wait where you are, and we’ll come back for you. Okay?

Joan and Richard were reaching across Bradley to slap each other’s knees, but Bradley nodded seriously. Bobbie rarely offered directives like that, and he probably needed them, yet she felt irritated. At the planetarium, Bradley tried to read aloud words on the curved ceiling that was covered with stars. The theater darkened. While the stars revolved swiftly, a slightly spooky voice spoke of a time so far back that Bobbie felt disjoined from herself: she in her red suit would surely never happen. Anything at all might be true.

Then Bradley whispered something. Do you have to go to the bathroom? Bobbie asked. I can’t go in with you. If Edwin would marry her, he’d be there to take Bradley to the bathroom! The size of Bobbie’s yearning, like the age of the stars, was suddenly clear. But Bradley shook his head. No. No. I can’t remember what I do if you get off the train without me.

I wouldn’t do that, honey, she said, but of course he continued to worry. She could feel his little worry machines whirring beside her.

You scared him, she said to Sylvia as they shuffled toward the exit with the crowd, later. About being lost on the subway.

He needs to know, Sylvia said, and Bobbie wondered if Sylvia would be as bossy if she didn’t have a husband, Louis—an accountant, a good man; although Sylvia said he was quick in bed.

They spent an hour in the natural history museum—where Joan held Bradley’s hand, telling him what Bobbie hoped were nonfrightening facts—before taking the long subway ride home again. At the stop before theirs, Bradley suddenly stood and ran toward the closing doors, crying out. Richard tackled him, knocking him to the dirty floor, and Bobbie took him on her lap. Bradley had thought a departing back was hers. Oh, sweetie, she said, brushing him off and kissing him. She carried him as far as the stairs.

Well, I shouldn’t have said anything, said Sylvia as they reached the sidewalk and turned toward home. The train’s sound grew faint behind them.

Bobbie said nothing. If she agreed, Sylvia would change her mind and defend what she’d said after all. Bobbie glanced back at the three kids, who were counting something out loud in exultant voices—passing cars, maybe. Seven! No, nine!

I have chopped meat, said Sylvia at last, when their silence had lasted for more than a block. I’ll make mashed potatoes. Lou will drive you, later, okay?

That would be nice, said Bobbie. They reached the corner of Sylvia’s street and turned that way.

Unless you have a date? Sylvia added.

But it was cruel to make Bobbie say what was apparent. No such luck.

That guy has a problem, said Sylvia. It’s Saturday night!

Edwin says I look fat in that brown dress, Bobbie said. She never let herself think about Saturday nights. Edwin said his mother cooked corned beef and cabbage then, and minded if he went out. Remember that dress? With the design down the front?

That gorgeous dress! Sylvia said. To tell the truth, you do look a little hefty in it, but who cares?

In the dark, Bobbie cried. She hoped her sister would notice and maybe even put an arm around her, but that wasn’t their way. Maybe Sylvia did notice. I’ll make a nice salad. You like salad, don’t you? she said soothingly.

Edwin’s house was empty when he came home on Tuesday. Dorothy was working, and the girls were at a neighbor’s. He spread newspaper on the dining-room table and fixed Dorothy’s mixer, the one that had been broken in the first place. It was not badly broken. A wire was loose. Then it occurred to him that the mixers looked alike, with bulbous arms to hold the beaters, and curved white bases on which bowls rotated. He’d bought Dorothy’s after seeing Bobbie’s. Edwin set aside Dorothy’s bowls and beaters. He carried Dorothy’s fixed mixer out to his car, then returned and put Bobbie’s broken one on the sheet of newspaper.

He jumped when he heard Dorothy and the girls arriving, but there was nothing to worry about. Dorothy asked, Did you fix it? and Edwin truthfully said, Not yet. She stood behind him, watching as he took apart Bobbie’s mixer. By this time it was hard to remember that the broken mixer was the one he had broken himself, not the one Dorothy had reported broken, and he listened attentively while she told him what she’d been about to mix when it didn’t work. As he listened, his back to his wife, he suddenly felt love and pity for her, as if only he knew that she had a sickness. He looked over at Dorothy in her thin white hygienist’s uniform, her green coat folded over her arm. She had short blond hair and glasses.

The girls had begun to play with a couple of small round dentist’s mirrors that Dorothy had brought from Dr. Dressel’s office. Mary Ann, the younger one, brought her mirror close to her eye. I can’t see anything, she said.

Wait a minute, said Eileen. Her light hair was in half-unraveled braids. Eileen turned her back on Edwin and Dorothy, and positioned her mirror just above her head. I’m a spy, she said. Let’s see . . . oh, Daddy’s putting poison in the mixer. Eileen would say anything.

I’m a spy, too, said Mary Ann, hurrying to stand beside her sister and waving her mirror. Show me. Show me how to be a spy.

Edwin couldn’t fix Bobbie’s mixer and it stayed broken, on a shelf in Edwin and Dorothy’s kitchen, for a long time. Meanwhile, Dorothy’s working mixer was in the trunk of Edwin’s car, and it was a natural thing to pretend it was Bobbie’s and take it to her house the next time he visited.

On many Thursdays Edwin told Dorothy a story about New Jersey, then arranged a light day and drove to Brooklyn to visit Bobbie. Bobbie prepared a good dinner that tasted Jewish to Edwin, though she said she wasn’t kosher. Little Bradley sat on a telephone book and still his face was an inch off the plate, which he stared at, eating mostly mashed potatoes. They’re better the way Aunt Sylvia makes them, with the mixer, Bobbie said on this particular Thursday, the Thursday on which Edwin had brought her his wife’s Sunbeam Mixmaster and pretended it was hers.

I’m sorry I couldn’t bring it sooner, babe.

Oh, I didn’t mean that. I just don’t bother, the way Sylvia does.

Edwin watched Bradley. With the mental agility born of his mixer exchange, Edwin imagined carrying Bradley off in similar fashion and replacing him, just temporarily, with talky Eileen. If her big sister was out of the way, Mary Ann would play with Bradley, while Bobbie would enjoy fussing with a girl.

What are you thinking about? said Bobbie.

I wish I could take Bradley home to meet my mother.

Take both of us. She won’t be against Jewish girls once she sees me, said Bobbie. I don’t mean I’m so special, but I don’t do anything strange.

She hurried to clean up and put Bradley to bed, while Edwin, who hadn’t replied, watched television. He couldn’t help thinking that his family was surely watching the same show, with Groucho Marx. Over the noise of Groucho’s voice and the audience’s laughter, Edwin heard Bobbie’s voice now and then as she read aloud. ‘Faster, faster!’ cried the bird, Bobbie read. Soon she came in and Edwin reached for her hand, but she shook her head. She always waited until Bradley was asleep, but that didn’t take long. When she checked and returned smiling, Edwin turned off the set and put his hands on her shoulders, then moved them down her back and fumbled with her brassiere through her blouse. Dorothy wore full slips. Edwin pulled Bobbie’s ruffled pink blouse free and reached his hand under it. Even using only one hand, he’d learned that if he worked from bottom to top, pushing with one finger and pulling with two others, he could undo all three hooks of her brassiere without seeing them. In a moment his hand was on her big round breast, and she was laughing and opening her mouth for him, already leading him toward her bed.

Edwin forgot that Dorothy had promised Dr. Dressel she’d work Saturday morning. As he dressed in Bobbie’s dark bedroom on Thursday night, she asked, Will you come Saturday?

Sure, babe, he said. He had fallen