Don’t Forget to Write

by Sara Goodman Confino

The best way to handle Daddy was to pretend I was sorry, then go back to doing whatever I wanted to when he wasn’t looking.

Not that either of my parents could grasp that the world was different now. When they got married, it was still the Great Depression, and they were worried about war breaking out. Now we worried about the Soviets, but that was no reason to rush to the altar.

I told your mother it was pointless to send girls to college, but she thought you’d meet a better husband there. You won’t find someone better than a rabbi’s son.”

“No one ever got ahead by being slow.”

Yes, I wanted love and passion and excitement. But the idea of being my own person—of doing what I wanted when I wanted and bossing everyone else around—was intoxicating.

“There are only three certainties in this world, Marilyn. Death, taxes, and Jewish mothers wanting to marry their children off.”

“What do you think?” Ada asked. “It’s bigger than I expected.” “May you say that on your wedding night,” she said quietly.

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And don’t ever let anyone tell you we’re the weaker sex.”

We can only teach them to fish. We can’t also teach them to cook, chew, and swallow.”

The Goldmans tried so hard to impress everyone that they failed to impress anyone.

“Youth is wasted on the young.

I wanted to write something sweeping like Hawaii or universal about the human condition like my favorite, The Great Gatsby. And all I knew was my own spoiled existence.

“I’ll give you the moon if you ask for it.”

“You’re not going to show up with a ring tomorrow, are you?” Freddy took my left hand, kissing the fourth finger where a ring would go. “I will if you want me to.” Then he wrapped his arms around me, Sally still growling by my feet. “I meant what I said, Marilyn. I’m yours. I’m not leaving unless you tell me to.” “And if I tell you to?” “You’ll break my heart.”

But they practically keep her under lock and key. It’s different for boys. As long as I don’t bring home someone they wouldn’t approve of, they don’t really mind if I go out.”

“A lady doesn’t tell stories that don’t belong entirely to her.”

And I didn’t understand how these men could claim to be attracted to the fact that I was free, then try to cage me.

“You haven’t asked me Freddy. And I’m not ready to say yes. You can ask my father until you’re blue in the face, but even if he says yes, I matter. What I want matters.”

They seemed so very much in love, which, with two young children, felt like an accomplishment. I tried to remember the last time I saw my parents show each other affection, and I couldn’t think of anything.

If I was asleep, I didn’t have to feel anything.

I blinked heavily, and then walked forward. The air had turned to soup, too heavy to move through as I normally would, and I was afraid it would drown me.

“I know heartbreak feels like the end of the world, but you need to eat and keep going.”

“I hardly knew him—and it turned out I knew him less than I thought. And he didn’t know me. He didn’t care what I wanted. He just assumed I’d be lucky to have him.”

I don’t want to be someone’s wife. I want to be myself.” Ada had the first pitying look in her eye that I had ever seen. “When it’s right, you’ll find you can be both.”

Literally everything was about what he wanted. His choices. His decisions. Where was I? Did I matter at all? Or was I just a means to an end?

He never asked what I wanted to be or do because in his world, wife and mother was the be-all, end-all answer to that question for women. It never occurred to him that I might have a different answer.

Ada had said that social class was sometimes negotiable in making matches, but often not. And I finally understood she didn’t mean money. She meant values. Core beliefs. The way we treated others. You could be rich as Croesus and still not have class.

But he had made his bed. And I had my own to make, unmake, and make again without him in it.

“The Asiatic flu pandemic of 1890. I barely remember him. He was only a couple of months old. I don’t know who got it first, but we all did. The rest of us recovered.” She stared into the distance. “Well, physically. My mother—she struggled.”

But as I went through the photographs that morning, I realized something—her mother never smiled in a picture after the baby died. Not once.

“We all have to make our own mistakes and learn some things the hard way.”

“Always say yes to new things,” Ada said. “It’s the only way you’ll be able to write about life—if you actually go out and live it.”

When she held us, did she think of the baby that never was?

“It’s one of the benefits of age. I can say exactly what I want. And the good lord help anyone who gets in the way of your tongue when you’re my age.”

“I didn’t stop you either.” “I don’t want someone to stop me. I want someone who will respect that I made a choice and want to clean up my own mess.”

I had seen that life didn’t have to look like my parents’. And that opened up a whole world before me that I never knew existed. I couldn’t go back now.

You’re like a tiger. You might destroy me. And I kind of think that might be worth it.”

“This is what I mean though. I don’t know what you’re going to say or do. And I want to—I want to be here to hear it and see it and experience it all. I know we don’t really know each other yet, but I’m saying I want to.”

He might have said he liked me because I was wild, but the reality was he still wanted to put me in a cage. And if I fell for sincere eyes and a smile, I was going to be walking into that cage myself while he locked it behind me.

“That right there,” I said, pointing at him. “That’s the problem. ‘I.’ I don’t want someone who solves problems for me. I want someone who lets me be an equal partner. And I know that may not exist, but if it doesn’t, I’m fine being like Ada and not being tied down.”

He considered this for a moment, the different worlds that we lived in just based on the bodies we were born into and the roles our families expected us to play in them.

I had never met a man whose sole interest in me wasn’t getting his own way. My father and my brother both wanted me to be the perfect reflection of the family, seen but not heard. It was a role I was destined to fail in. I didn’t have my mother’s stoicism or ability to let things roll off her back. And Rabbi Schwartz didn’t care if I wanted to marry his son; he just wanted to save face. Even Freddy cared about what I could do for him—putting off college so he could finish his school and then assuming I would marry him to save him from his mistake. Not one of them had ever actually asked me what I wanted or respected the fact that I had a brain in my head. Until Dan.

How could she watch the children and grandchildren who could have been hers if the world was different and not feel bitter about what she never got to have?

The world loves to destroy what it doesn’t understand. Some things can be hidden to be protected. Some can’t.”

“We’re a lot of scandalous women masquerading as house cats in our family.

But she was wrong—she wasn’t masquerading as a house cat. She was a leopard, camouflaged against her surroundings, but still living her life exactly as she saw fit.

If I could have crawled into her skin and become her, I would have. She was fierce and ferocious and feminine all at the same time.

You already filled her head with this writing nonsense. No respectable man wants a woman with a career.” I was seething. Both at the implication that all I was good for was marrying someone and also at the insult to Dan, who had been clear that if I wanted to write, that was what he wanted me to do.

But you’re no plucked flower that will wilt and die in the city. You, my girl, are a phoenix. And it may feel like the end of the world, but you will rise from the ashes into something even stronger.”

“That desire for freedom. A gilded cage is still a cage. Most people don’t see the bars that hold them. You and I do.”