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“Mitchell, we’re family.” Myra stared at her son. “So I thought, ‘why stand on ceremony? So I tried again and called your wife and asked if she’d bring Mikey for dinner on Sunday. And do you know what your sweet wife had the nerve to say to me, Mitchell?”
Having a pretty good idea, he said nothing, but when she didn’t go on, “No, Mom,” he said tiredly, “what did Marsha say?”
“‘I’ll come if I feel up to it.’”—Actually, Marsha had said, “We’ll come if I’m feeling better”—“If she feels ‘up to it’! Don’t you have any control over your wife, Mitchell? Don’t you?”
Looking at the floor, looking anyplace but at his mother’s face or into her eyes, “Mom, please, I’m doing everything I can!”
___________________________________________________________________
Chicago, Illinois
May 15, 1957
The Pressure Cooker
Sitting alongside her daughter, “I wouldn’t let her get away with it!” Lighting a cigarette, “The nerve of your mother-in-law! Telling you, ‘you can’t be that sick’! How the hell would she know how sick you are? If I were you, Marsha, I’d tell her to go to hell! Better yet, I’d tell that gutless husband of yours to tell his mother to go to hell!”
“Mother, please!”
“But that husband of yours would never say that to his mother because he’s too much of a ‘Mama’s boy’!”
Staring at some imaginary, far off place, remembering Mitchell’s reaction and the slap she’d purposely wielded out of him last August when she’d called his mother a bitch and him a son of a bitch…
Mama’s boy? Marsha thought. Knowing she should have said something in her husband’s defense, Marsha said nothing.
May 16, 1957
Steaming…
“Mitchell, your mother’s very upset because you and your baby and that goddamned wife of yours haven’t been to the house in three weeks!” Poking his forefinger into his son’s chest, “Doesn’t what you want…” poke, “count in your house?” Poke, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Poke, “Are you…”
Knowing he shouldn’t, but letting the “goddamned wife” comment pass, half expecting his father to say…
“…a man or a mouse?” Walter said, poking Mitchell again.
“Dad, please!” he said pleadingly. “Will you and mom please lay off me? I’m doing everything I can! You know how stubborn Marsha can be!”
****
Coming into the apartment, “You look terrible!” Going to the crib, Rhea looked at the sleeping baby.
“Thanks, Mother,” she said facetiously. “I don’t think I even had an hour’s sleep last night.”
“Mikey keeping you up?”
“He’s been really restless lately, and in a place small as this,” motioning to the room, “every time he whimpers I hear him. Then there’s the night feedings.”
“You tell him you don’t feel well and you’re tired and he still won’t give you a hand with the baby, eh?”
“You’ve got to be kidding, Mother! My husband says it’s ‘not what a man does,’”—although, actually, Mitchell had been helping a bit more in the past two days—“and, Jesus, even if once in a while I get him to change a poopie diaper, he leaves it in the toilet for me to clean out.”
“Hate to tell you, sweetie, but you married a real jerk.”
Marsha said nothing.
May 17, 1957
Boiling…
“Sit down.” Wanting to talk to him about it, but really trying to smooth things over between Myra and himself before the actual start of the year’s sailing season, calling Mitchell into his office the moment he came in. “Your mother and me know things have been kind of tough for you at home…”
Kind of tough!
“…but you’ve got to try harder, because, unless…”
“Damn it, Dad! I told you I’m doing everything I can to get Marsha to…
Stopping him, “Yes, that, too! But what I’m talking about now is business… Look, you’ve just got to buckle down and start bringing more work into this place! We can’t just keep paying you for nothing, and unless something happens pretty soon, as much as we hate it,”—knowing he was not going to do it, but trying to shake him, more than Mitchell was already shaken—“we’re going to have to cut your draw.”
Okay, yes, things were slow, Mitchell knew that, but he’d been working at the studio for not quite seven months and sometimes it takes time, and a whole lot of call backs to get things going. Sensing a constriction in his chest, not sure how much of what his father said was motivated by the widening kink between his wife and his parents, or, okay, yes, he knew he wasn’t bringing in much in the way of business at that precise time—or actually, since he’d been there. But it did take time and he did have some pretty good prospects.
“Dad, you know it’s slow out there,” he said, defending his effort. “You know I’m out pounding the pavement every day! You know I’m doing the best I can!”
“Well, Mitchell, apparently your best isn’t good enough! You’re going to have to try harder, or…”
“We can’t pay our bills on what I make now, Dad! If you cut my draw, I don’t know what we’re going to do!”
“She’s trained. Why can’t your wife go back to selling lingerie?”
Oh, God, like I don’t have enough trouble already, he thought. That’s all I’ve got to do, is tell Marsha to go back to work! “My wife just had a baby,” he said, “and surgery!”
Well thought out, and discussed with Myra, who thought of this as a subtle means of attacking her daughter-in-law., “It’s better than a month and a half now, Mitchell!” Knowing what he knew of Rhea basically from what Myra had told him, pretty much knowing this would never happen, still, “She’s even got her mother right there, to watch Michael.”
“Dad, my mother-in-law has told us already that she’s not a baby sitter.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Your mother found a way to go back to work after we had Mortie, remember?”
“Yeah, sure I remember, dad! Mom took him to the studio with her.”
Bubbling…
Handing her daughter a cup of coffee, “Marsha,” Rhea then poured another for herself, “you look even worse today than yesterday. You two still at it?”
“Short of us snarling at each other every now and then, we haven’t spoken since Monday. And it’s not only that, but lately I’ve been worrying about money, too.”
“We’d hire your husband and pay him a liveable wage,” Rhea said magnanimously. “But what would we do with your brother? Fire him?”
“Doesn’t matter, Mother. Mitchell would never work at the Grill.”
“What’s the matter? The bastard think he’s too good to work at the grill? At least we’d make sure he earned enough to support his family!”
Her mother calling her husband a bastard didn’t seem to bother Marsha… not at all.
****
“Lipensky, come on over here, I wanna talk to you a minute.” Putting his arm across Mitchell’s shoulder, Al led him to a secluded corner of the warehouse.
Speaking differently when one-on-one then while pitching, “Look, Lipensky, when you first started I thought I had a real hot shot here, makin’ a ‘mark’ the first night out, then gettin’ another in less’n’a week? Well, for a new guy that ain’t half bad. But for the last… what? seven, nine days, you been takin’ two, three leads a night an’ blowin’ ’em all. And I can’t keep havin’ you blow leads that way!”
What Mitchell did not realize was that the “BIG $$$” ad was always in the newspaper, and that in this type of high pressure selling a rapid, constant turnover of salesmen was the norm. And, as each new salesman must buy his own sample case, usually by utilizing EZ Credit with its maximum rate of interest—which, not coincidentally, was all commissionable to Al and Sierra Marketing—the hiring and firing of salesmen was, in part, the way this game was played… And if a family man like Mitchell Lipensky came along, one with potential, a man who somehow made two sales in less than two weeks, his first two weeks, well then, this was a bonus and keeping him motivated with the fear of losing his job, Sierra Marketing would continue to feed him leads… but only for a while.
“Al, I’m sorry,” Mitchell said, “but I’ve had lots of pressure on my other job and at home, but I’m sure I’ll make a sale tonight!”
But he didn’t.
****
When he returned home, very tired, very depressed, and very much in need of…
Actually aching for a warm, affectionate touch, and most of all, desperate to put an end to this five day old, ongoing feud with his wife. To hold Marsha in his arms. To—though at that moment it was not sexual—to feel the warmth of her body next to his.
What Mitchell wanted more than anything in the world was to say, “Marcie, I’m sorry, honey! I love you, honey!” Then, take her in his arms, and hear her say, “Yes, Mitchie, me, too! I love you, too!”
However things did not work out quite that way.
As he entered their one room apartment, sitting on the sofa, watching television, Marsha ignored him.
Hoping for, but not expecting an answer, “Hi!” he said, feigning cheerfulness…
Receiving not so much as an acknowledgment that he had returned home.
On his knees before her, “Honey, look…”
Attempting to put his arms about her, Marsha brushed them away and, as though he were not in the room, not on his knees before her, cocking her head to the side to see beyond his head, she continued to stare at the television.
Truly believing both were at fault in this, but, “I’m sorry, Marcie! Please, baby! It’s enough already! Please, let’s make up!”
“Mitchell,” bringing her stony eyes to his face, “you haven’t spoken to me in five days,”—she hadn’t spoken to him either—“and now you come waltzing in and expect me,” said angrily, “to just accept your apology and fall into your arms!”
Knowing his wife… thinking he knew his wife—somewhat—he knew that recriminations were not the way to go with Marsha if he wanted to end this and, oh, yes, he did, he truly, truly did! Thinking that deep down she must be at least as much in need of a human touch as he—forgetting for the moment that she had the touch of a baby, maybe too much the touch of a baby, which quite possibly might part of the problem—“Marcie, honey! Please, baby, please let me put my arms around you!”
At this time knowing she—as if she hadn’t always known that she—had the edge, spitting the words at him, “I know you! I know what this is all about! It’s sex, isn’t it, Mitchell? You want to fuck me,” her voice rising, “don’t you Mitchell?”
Remembering her tone of voice on the night she’d decided to return to Chicago. Once again taken back by the vehemence in her voice. Trying to remain calm. “No, Marcie, I’m really not thinking about sex now… Well, yeah, I don’t want to lie to you and say that I don’t want to make love to you, when, yes, I’d give anything in the world to make up with you right this second and get into bed and make love to you. But no, that’s not what I’m saying now! Although,”—one of Mitchell Lipensky’s problems was he didn’t know when to shut up—“we haven’t has sex since… when?” Making a recrimination, “the beginning of March? And that’s… what?” Making another recrimination, “two and a half months ago! But now, Marcie, all I want to do is to hold you, and feel you in my arms.”
“Two and a half months, eh! You do remember that I had a baby and an emergency operation, Mitchell! You are aware that I’m still having trouble with my stitches! You do know I still don’t feel well, don’t you, Mitchell!”
Attempting to remain calm, “Yes, Marsha,” but not succeeding too well, “I do know that you had a baby!” His words sounding more sarcastic than sympathetic. “And believe me, I do know you still don’t feel well!”
Picking up on the tone of his voice—which in comparison to hers was melodious—“Okay, Mitchell,” said softly, venomously, “tell you what…” Ripping two buttons off, yanking her pajama top open, she bared her breasts to him. “Let’s do it! And if I begin to haemorrhage again,” her voice beginning to rise, “it’s okay! Just let me lay here and die and then you can raise my baby, and…”screaming now, “that goddamned bitch of a mother of yours can see him whenever she wants! Or better yet, because that’s what you really want, just move in with the bitch!”
Her voice waking Michael, he began to cry.
Not knowing what to say, afraid to say anything because he knew that anything he might say would only further inflame the situation. Looking from his wife’s breasts to her anger distorted face, sighing, standing, going to the crib he felt the baby’s diaper, and changed it. Then, lifting Michael from the crib, going to the window, holding back tears, he stood with his back to his wife holding his son’s warm head in the crook of his neck and shoulder looking out the window. Looking out the window he saw nothing.
