I'll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist Page 8
I felt I deserved a real home, like the one on Park Avenue, since I had given Sonny a baby so close on the heels of our marriage, even though I’d been deeply conflicted. My unhappiness in New York made me concerned about having a child. If I brought one into this life, then I would never be able to escape. But I never discussed any of those feelings, and for Sonny my becoming a mother was a given. (Indeed, once I had Kathy, I thought my job was done. Perhaps because I was an only child, I wasn’t too anxious to have another. But while Kathy was still an infant, Sonny told me, “Now you’re going to have a boy.” But what if I didn’t have a boy? I wanted to know. “Then you’re going to have another until you do,” he said.)
As I suspected, motherhood had not been the bliss described in magazines. The low point came shortly after Kathy’s birth, during a summer rental in Atlantic Beach with Charlotte, Charlie, and their baby, Jimmy. The day after Sonny and I attended a large party with swimming, dinner, and dancing at a Great Neck club, I awoke to a high fever and a complete loss of feeling in my right leg. Charlotte and Charlie didn’t wait around for a diagnosis but evacuated immediately. It was most surely polio, which in the fifties was tantamount to the plague.
Nonetheless, a doctor with the stiff, high collar worn by men of his profession at the turn of the twentieth century, confirmed the bad news. I don’t know how Sonny wrangled the specialist in infantile paralysis into coming (it was hard to get them near a case of polio), but my husband was good at that sort of thing.
The club we’d been to emptied its pool after hearing the news. Nobody would walk on our side of the street. I couldn’t have cared less about any of that. All I cared about was having a spinal tap or being placed in an iron lung—and the new baby I had in the other room. While I can’t take the unknown, once the reality is there, I become very strong. I turned my head off and glided through my illness, lying in bed for several weeks, during which Sonny took very good care of me. Confined to the same house with me for a month, he was extremely attentive. Unable to lift my head off the pillow, I only had him to rely upon, and though Sonny was healthy, he was very frightened. The combination of need and fear brought us closer.
Sonny wasn’t quite as adept at taking care of a newborn, and the nurse we’d hired to help with Kathy had packed up and left like everyone else. My poor husband, who couldn’t open a can of soup and maybe didn’t know where the kitchen was in our apartment, fed her the bottle with the plug in the nipple and flushed her diapers down the toilet. Friends found us a wonderful Irish nurse who wasn’t afraid to come in and rescue an ailing family.
My parents had no clue about my illness until I was well enough to return home to our apartment and they arrived in New York City for a visit. My father took one look at me when I met them debarking from the 20th Century Limited at Grand Central station, and although there were no lingering effects from the polio, he said, “My God, what happened to you? Have you been sick?” They got very angry with Sonny for not telling them, but they couldn’t have done anything except worry if they had known.
Back in New York, I was determined to run as perfect a house for my husband as the one I’d grown up in. I was truly in love with Sonny from our first meeting. He crept into my thoughts at strange times. His hearty laugh (sometimes a phony one) and his voice, saying, “Hi. It’s me,” resonated deep within me. His presence alone elicited strong emotions in me. Once, while walking the dog, I was coming around Eighty-ninth Street just as he was coming out of the car on Eighty-eighth Street. The sight of him shocked me, almost like the screech of tires from an oncoming car, except this shock was a warmth in the pit of my stomach. Sonny truly excited me.
The perfect household began with the apartment on Park Avenue, and then there was the addition of Frieda, the cook. A very Germanic woman with very starched uniforms, she was like a general in the kitchen. The smell of her baking—blitz tortes, muffins, even her thick and crusty cinnamon toast—was not to be duplicated. During the day she wore a blue uniform and an apron purchased from the uniform departments at Bloomingdale’s. In the evening, when she served dinner and was summoned to clear the plates by a colorful Murano glass bell, she wore a white uniform and apron. The children—not to open the icebox!—called her “Frau.” She was supposed to help clean but, considering herself the cook, would only deign to dust the mahogany dining-room table—not an insignificant job, since it seated sixteen.
A nursemaid helped with the dishes at night and, depending on how well she got along with Frieda, shared her duties. A cleaning person came in twice a week, and once a week we had the services of a temperamental laundress, who wrapped the freshly ironed table linens in tissue paper before placing them in a chest of drawers. It was a full staff. Sonny, at home recuperating from a kidney-stone attack one day when the cleaning person and laundress were working, asked me, “Who are all these people?”
I tried to shop like my mother. I knew every person who worked at Empire, the greengrocer on Madison Avenue, and they me. The butcher, Holland Court, provided fresh eggs, legs of lamb, and huge beef tenderloins at Christmas. They would deliver to our apartment sometimes two or three times a day. My Frieda would call and order two pieces of calves’ liver for the children’s lunch, and if someone was added for dinner, they would deliver again. (Although rarely, I still treat myself to a visit there to buy Cornish hens; it continues to be the original family-owned business, with three Johns still calling me “Mrs. Halbreich.”)
My house always had fresh flowers, company or not. The bills were huge! When we entertained, formal dinners for twelve or fourteen, I created special centerpieces. One of the most beautiful consisted of scooped-out cabbages filled with fruits and red geraniums. I also love my three-tier epergne, which I filled with frosted grapes (grapes dipped in egg white and sugar and put in the fridge to harden). I went all over the city to purchase beeswax candles in colors to match the table linens. Sonny’s family employed a wonderful, dear man from the islands, Prince, as a chauffeur, whom we had wait table and bartend for parties in his immaculate white jacket.
I loved making a home, but I found taking care of Kathy and her little brother, John, rather boring, even though I loved them dearly. I particularly disliked going to the park and sitting with the other mothers. I found it maddening to listen to their talk of children’s toilet habits and schools they hoped for. I said as much to the children’s pediatrician when Kathy was an infant.
“I’d rather go grocery shopping or wax the floors on my hands and knees,” I said.
“Let me give you a hint,” he said. “Wrap Kathy up as if you were going outdoors. Take the carriage over to the window and open it. Rock her a couple of times. She’ll go to sleep and will not be deprived of the outdoors.”
I was not your light, gay mother who played games with them. My children were dressed to the hilt, though. That I liked doing. Mrs. D’Jay, who made organdy smock dresses, came to the house to measure Kathy. My friends and I all said, “Not the big collars. Tiny collars are for tiny faces.” Kathy, thin with cropped hair, looked beautiful and elegant in these very feminine dresses.
Two sisters on Madison Avenue ran a cluttered, noisy, and marvelous shop called Cerutti. Anita and Doris brought out velvet sailor dresses by Sylvia Whyte and good Trimfit socks while children ran around in their underwear, screaming and not wanting to try anything on. It was chaos, but out of it came great clothes. (Now Madison Avenue has so many sophisticated children’s clothing shops that it makes my head spin. But when I look in the window, I don’t know if what I’m seeing is for a six-year-old or someone getting married. Children today look like little replicas of their mothers.)
My mother knew a woman by the name of Florence Eiseman from Milwaukee who was starting in the children’s wear business. With all the very elegant children’s wear coming from Europe and New York, Florence was unusual. She understood that children don’t have waistlines but “protruding tummies” and absolutely abhorred
dressing little boys in miniature versions of grown-up suits. Instead boys had shirts and matching shorts for dress-up, and for girls she designed simple bodies accented with crisp grosgrain ribbon and graphic appliqués of fish, flowers, and trees that became her signature. Kathy and John became early Eiseman children, particularly because she did a lot of brother-sister outfits that I couldn’t resist.
With a gracious and clean apartment, a vibrant social life, and well-scrubbed and well-dressed children, the Halbreich household was the model of 1950s impeccability. However, the man paying the bills wasn’t a happy camper. Sonny, doling out a weekly sum for me on our dresser every Monday like it was a salary, always felt I spent too much.
Meanwhile, when it came to my clothes, I had become the “more” child. My first fur was a beautiful silky Russian-broadtail jacket, which was as fragile as lace and wore oh so poorly. The next was a blue fox jacket. But when Charlotte got a mink, I wanted one, too.
“My God, Betty. You already have a fur!” shouted Sonny, who was right but also belittling. The last thing I wanted to be was the nag in his life.
Clothes were not important to him; he had to be coaxed into buying a suit. However, they were to me, and it rankled me that he didn’t care about that. He seemed to have plenty of money to be the huge sport whenever the dinner check came around, since he was always the first to grab for it. I didn’t begrudge him this. His generosity was done in a kind way; the dark side was his fear of indulging me. Everything was for the outside world, and there was nothing left when he closed the door.
Just as I didn’t understand that my shopping was an attempt to fill a gap, stretching activity to cover long but shallow days, I didn’t understand why Sonny wanted to live more frugally than his parents did. I couldn’t have a discussion with him about these issues. Once Sonny had spoken, that was it. Arguing with him was like arguing with a piece of furniture.
His parsimony was a revolt against his father, who would hand me a couple hundred dollars out of the blue with simply a “Here, honey,” who bought me a diamond bracelet because, he said, “I know you don’t have much jewelry,” which made Sonny feel all of two feet tall. Even in the office, Otto didn’t let up on his son, who, according to him, didn’t do anything right. The walls were decorated with the biggest collection of stuffed fish anyone ever saw—stuffed marlins, swordfish, tuna, sharks—as a hanging testament to Otto’s passion for deep-sea fishing and his rough tenaciousness. He was a taxidermist’s delight! He was known for taking people, including his children, out on the boat and, no matter how the winds picked up, the waves grew, or the rain came down, refusing to turn around—just as he was known for breaking unions and making his son feel less of a man.
That was one of the reasons my father and Sonny were pals. Where his own father belittled Sonny, my father respected him. Otto was always saying he could have done a better job himself—I never heard him tell his son he had done a good job once. Meanwhile my father talked to him man to man. They had a profound connection, because my father was originally from New York, so he knew where Sonny came from. And just as Daddy disliked New York, so did Sonny, on a deep level, although he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. They also shared an occupation in retail, and Sonny trusted my father’s opinion in business. But mainly they simply liked each other. Their close difference in age but specific familial relationship made them uniquely twofold, brothers as well as father and son.
Sonny definitely didn’t have the same feeling for his father that he did for mine. Sometimes he responded to Otto’s taunts and the two got into violent arguments. Neither man was very verbal (my father called Sonny “Mr. Zipper Mouth”), and more often than not Sonny just walked out and turned to his Rob Roys at the nearest bar.
Because his salary was dependent on his father, he was beholden to the man he disdained. In turn, Otto and Florence felt they owned us. We never celebrated anything—holidays, birthdays, babies—without them. They were even included in dinners out with friends, my father-in-law heading into the restaurant first to smooth the way by tipping the captain royally and Sonny following behind.
Still, I didn’t accept their constant presence without a fuss. When Sonny asked his parents and his sister to come along to our anniversary dinner at the Colony, I pulled a long face that he understood immediately meant trouble.
“Forget it, Betty,” he said. “They’re coming.”
I wanted to take the Donald Brooks dress I’d bought for the occasion—a tight, long-sleeved, black velvet top and the most extraordinary full skirt in organza with big flowers of white lace—that I loved only moments before and light it on fire. It was hard enough to share Sonny with every maître d’ in town; now I had to also share him with his family—on our anniversary, no less.
At least Otto went out gambling with friends or on fishing trips. My mother-in-law, who was extremely needy and, like the rest of the shopping set, didn’t have enough to do to fill good, valuable time, became a major bone of contention between Sonny and me. He felt so sorry that she had to live with an impossible man who did exactly what he wanted in whatever way he wanted, that Sonny not only defended her at all costs but also identified with her.
Whenever my doorman greeted me with the news that Mrs. Halbreich was waiting upstairs, my heart sank. I opened the door to find her perched on a chair in the den, alone in her Hattie Carnegie suit, her Mr. John hat, her mink stole, and her diamond stripes. Florence, a very pretty, rather regal-looking woman with a broad New York accent, would have been even more beautiful if her mouth did not take such a downturn.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, in what couldn’t have been called the warmest welcome in the world.
My eyes turned back in my head as I heard Frieda setting two extra places at the table. Florence took it upon herself to come over; it was her son’s apartment, after all. The excuse was that she had come to see “the children,” who were invariably being bathed. She always chose the low end of the day, when the children were cranky, whiny, and not so happy to see her. They would rather see me, but now I was cranky from seeing her.
I had nothing in common with this woman sitting in the den reading a magazine. We had nothing to discuss other than clothes and jewelry, and I didn’t want to talk about those either. It didn’t matter. She was really waiting for Sonny to arrive; this was the bus stop. When Frieda brought her tea on a tray with some homemade cookies, it made me even angrier. I didn’t like her and didn’t want to make her comfortable. It wasn’t very gracious, but I felt that she was the wedge between Sonny and me, whether that was true or not.
When Sonny, usually accompanied by my father-in-law, walked through the door, Florence lit up. She was so glad to see him.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, giving her a big kiss.
It didn’t take long for her to disparage her husband: “Why did you wear that suit?” Otto always wisecracked back in an equally ugly manner. I made an excuse to leave the room and call one of my friends from the bedroom. Five o’clock in the Halbreich house was no happy hour.
CHAPTER
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Four
But what would I do with the dining-room table?
As I lay in bed, my mind raced around the apartment, accounting for the things I had laboriously accumulated after more than a decade of marriage and whipping up fear over what I would do if stripped of all of it.
Where would I live?
Despite the late hour, I was alone with my thoughts. Sonny was out God knows where and with God knows whom. Even if he did return before dawn, he wouldn’t be himself. Drinking, started over lunch and stretched out until he tottered home, turned my charming, handsome husband into a slurring, unattractive, foul-mouthed man—a transformation it broke my heart to watch.
Even in a one-room with a bath, I could still take the dining table and the breakfront with the blue-and-white collection.
Sonny and I had found
ourselves in so many bad situations that I thought often about leaving. But our home, or rather everything in it (the furniture from Chicago, the six-inch television set, one of the very first, which my father bought, the china I collected after first landing in New York), always drew me back. Possessions, that basis of my social life and self-worth, had taken a firm hold of me.
So instead I asked Sonny to leave.
The first time he didn’t want to go. It was 1959; Kathy and John, ten and eight years old, respectively, were away at camp for the summer, which with its interminable days and shedding of outer layers was always particularly stressful on our relationship.
We spent Thursdays to Sundays at a cottage surrounded by mountain laurel on a lakefront in the Berkshires. Just as it had with our apartment on Park Avenue, money reared its ugly head as I set about making the cottage a home. Anytime I wanted to fix, change, or purchase something, I had to go to the source of the money himself, since I didn’t have any of my own. And I was always met with resistance. When I found some great rustic kitchen stools that I simply had to have for the cottage, he fumed, “What do you need them for?” (That one I did win: The stools are still in the house now owned and loved by my son.)
Bickering through the renovations, however, wasn’t the issue. What wore on my nerves was staggering through the summer constantly surrounded by a big group of friends who ate Frieda’s cooking and sent shrieks of laughter into the bucolic setting as they drank and drank and drank.
Sonny was a true party person. He needed a crowd. To that end, bars, where camaraderie is always in plentiful supply, were his preferred setting. With the excuse that he was taking our schnauzer, Max, on a walk, Sonny frequented Malachy McCourt’s eponymous bar near our apartment on more nights than he stayed home. What that dog knew on these very long walks? For sure he ate more pretzels than any animal had a right to.