TMO 9: Faces 1

Westlake Village, California

May 14, 2021 —

4:o8 AM

Not wanting to wake my wife, but wanting the warmth of her body, moving slowly, I cuddle my backside, closely to Marsha’s hip.

Here, alongside this woman, this is where I belong.

Sleepily murmured. “Where you been?

“Outside.”

Marsha’s hand lightly onto my knee. “Oh.” Sleepily stated.

Eyes closing.

4:10 AM

Slumber…

4:11 AM

At the moments between semi-consciousness and sleep.

Wisps...

Looking at his watch: ‘12:26’.

Glancing at the swirling acclimation of snow outside, rushing to the phone booth he’d seen when he entered the lobby to meet Elizabeth.

Dropping a dime in the slot, dialling…

Des Plains, Illinois

A forgotten cup of tea on the oversized, Formica topped coffee table, folding clothing, Marsha was paying scant attention to “As The World Turns” when the phone rang. Rising wearily, going to the phone on the wall, “Hello.”

“Marsha.”

Unable to sleep more than a few minutes at a time, her attitude constantly swaying from anger to sadness to loneliness to fear of the future—to mostly loneliness and fear of the future—unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls at a time since that morning five days ago.

Now being the first time she’d hear from Mitchell since he left. “What do you want, Mitchell?”

Noting the tired, uncaring tone of her voice, “Marsha…”

Her eyes listlessly shifting to the television…

“We’ll see a marriage counsellor, if you’d like…”

“Oh, my God!”

Thinking she was speaking to him, “I miss you and I’ll do…”

“Oh, my ‘God’ Mitchell!”

The tone of her voice now of horrid amazement…

“Marsha, what’s…?”

“The president!”

“Kennedy? What?”

Other than the distant, muffled sound of television…

The line silent…

“Marsha, what?”

“Just now, in Dallas, President Kennedy…” Her voice rising. “He was shot! ‘Oh, my God’!”

“Jesus! Is he dead?”

“Don’t know yet.” Stretching the line, taking the receiver with her. “Mitchell, wait.” Turning the volume up…

“Here...” the announcer said “… is a bulletin from CBS News.”

“In Dallas, Texas...” Walter Cronkite announced “...three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by the shooting.

“More details just arrived. These details about the same as previously: President Kennedy shot just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mister Kennedy, she called, ‘Oh, no’! as the motorcade sped on.

“United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal.

“Repeating a bulletin from CBS, President Kennedy has been shot by a would be assassin in Dallas, Texas.

“Stay tuned to CBS news for…”

In tears now. “Oh, my God!”

“Please, Marsha, can I come home?”

The line silent…

“Marsha?”

“Yes, Mitchell, come home.”

4:11 AM

Eyes fluttering beneath closed eyelids.

The foggy thought: What if I hadn’t walked away?

Westlake Village, California

May 14, 2021

7:51 AM

Always an early riser. Well, not on this morning seeing that he’d gotten to sleep after four in the morning, but almost always awake and out of bed before his wife.

On this morning— though almost an hour later than usual —Marsha still asleep, putting his side of the light weight blanket to the side and quietly slipping from bed, padding bare-footed to the kitchen, Mitchell threw the switch turning the electric coffee brewer on.

8:12 AM

Finished with his habitual morning toiletry chores;

this Southern California, mid May morning on the cool side; still attempting not to wake Marsha, as he quietly slipped into a pair of Jeans and a short sleeved light weight sweat shirt, however…

Sitting up. “ ‘Morning, baby.” Shifting her legs to the bedside.

“ ‘Morning. Marcie. Tried not to wake you.”

“I know. You hungry?”

“Take your time.” Coming to the bedside, kissing her forehead. “Feel like sitting outside for a while.”

“Okay.” Marsha said. “I’ll call you when the eggs are up.”

Pouring himself a mug of coffee. Still bare-footed, going onto the redwood deck, rubbing his bare arms as he sat in the padded deck chair.

His feet resting on the lower baluster he watched the slow progress of a sailing dingy.

To hot to drink, taking a sip of coffee, he closed his eyes

to the glare of a rim of eastern sunshine pocking through a bank of grey clouds.

Mitchell Lipensky’s mind touching of his thoughts of last night— his thoughts of this early morning.

Happy to spend what was left of his life with Marsha.

Knowing that throughout the times of their bad times, that throughout the seventy-two years since meeting at the time near thirteen year old Marsha Goldman in 1949 in Union Pier, Michigan. their destinies — through their good and bad times seemingly preordained as here they are, together, and still in love.

But yet…

Well aware that the simplest, the smallest, simplest twist of fate— such as merely crossing from one side of a street to the other might for-ever alter life’s destiny

The women? The girls?

Those that Mitchell Lipensky had loved.

Lita!

Authors Notation: As a writer! As a teller of stories and the twists of fate that can and does alter the flow of a lifetime, occasionally the story must be engineered in such a way as to give the reader a better understanding and, ‘no’, we’re not going to reiterate that which had been written before, but more so the faces and first impressions of those that Mitchell Lipensky had loved— or thought he’d loved and what— if anything, he might have done differently to change the outcome.

So…

“Hey, Mitch!”

Swallowing my mouth-full of hot coffee. “Yeah, Mister Author?”

You want to tell your readers about your first impressions of Marsha, Lita, Elizabeth and Barbara?”

“Yes, I think so… Hey! Let’s not forget Susan!”

“Susan? Yes! She started you onto the first step that has defined your life ever since…”

Now speaking only to you! Only to those of you that are reading my words.

12/8/51 Susan…

“... God, how I loved Susan! So much so that even now, even after seventy years there is not a single day that my mind does not touch on the memory of Susan.

As far as seeing her?

Seeing Susan from the kitty-corner side of of a Walgreens lunch counter, I envision that face that so reminded me of a young Elizabeth Taylor.

But I am aware that this was a figment of imagination that played within my mind at that life changing moment.

How do I remember Susan Friedman?

How do I see Susan now?

When we met, Susan was not yet sixteen and me not yet seventeen. So now, seventy years having passed, me eighty-six and Susan— if still alive, would be eighty-four.

Within my mind! How do I ‘really’ see Susan?

Lucky girl because this old man sees this girl…

This girl I have always loved I see as last I had seen her — on that fateful time we had tearfully been forced to part.

This old man still envisions Susan Friedman as a beautiful, teary eyed, teen-age girl of then sixteen.

Sensing a lump of emotion coming to my throat, I take another drink of coffee, as a different remembrance of a different girl comes to mind, an even younger girl.

“When was that?” You ask.

“Oh, almost forgot you were here. Guess it was? Hold on, give me a moment to think… I know I was twelve because I was still being forced into Hebrew School studying for my Bar Mitzvah. So I was still twelve. So it had to be in, uh… 1946.”

“This…” you ask “... is before you met Marsha?”

“Yeah. Met Marsha in ‘49.” and Susan in ‘51.”

“A two year rest period, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, Any and me…”

“Amy?”

“Amy Pearlman and me were both twelve and I guess

she was a couple of months older than med ‘cause once she’d had her Bat Mitzvah she dropped out of ‘Chader.”

“ ‘Chader’?”

“ ‘Hebrew School’..”

“Thanks! You loved this twelve year old girl?”

“Loved Amy? Actually, I think it was…

You know, now, at my age, even thinking about it makes me feel like a ‘really’ dirty old man. But back then— Sorry to admit, but back then, I kept thinking about what a twelve year old girl’s tits looked like.”

“This twelve year old girl? This Amy; she even have tits?”

Authors Notation: Hate to butt in! But in order to simplify Mitchell’s ‘Amy’ memory...

He’d had a crush on Amy Pearlman since the first time he’d seen her, sitting two seats forward and two aisles to the left.

Staring at her, Mitchell often daydreamed… trying to imagine Amy Pearlman naked.

This most likely because, slightly overdeveloped for her age, Amy’s mother recently had her fitted with a training brassiere, which she proudly wore. So while most of the girls in her Hebrew classes were breastless, or appeared to be breastless, Amy was outstanding, looking almost like an ‘older woman’.

To add to this ‘older woman’ impression Amy was also beautiful and, even at the age of twelve, Amy knew it!

Amy Pearlman had light brown eyes and soft, wavy hair.

Amy Pearlman was the girl, and later the woman that boys, and later, men, would stop to stare at and following longingly with their eyes.

To top it all off, Amy was smart, always in the top five percent of her class.

It was as though the genes of her parents had combined to make one flawless, beautiful, self-affected person.

Mitchell Lipensky loved Amy Pearlman, and showed it.

Amy Pearlman hated Mitchell Lipensky, and showed it.

“Okay…” I ask “... my turn now?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“Any way, I’d had an Idea about something I’d thought a whole lot about…”

“Amy’s tits? What she looked like naked?”

“Well, yeah. That, too. But this was something I’d wondered about since I was nine.”

“What’s that?”

“Know what? The whole thing was so stupid, I’m embarrassed to go into it, butt I’ll say that — I’d never thought about girls ever doing it…”

“Doing what?”

“Amy Pearlman farts !”

“Amy Pearlman farts?”

“Yeah., and swears,”

And then I fell into the girl’s toilet.”

“You fell into a girl’s toilet? How’d you do that?”

“Too stupid! Don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s it, then? You at least remember what Amy looked like?”

“Yeah, that’s it! And of all the girl’s in my life, I can’t even imagine her face.”

“So first came Amy Pearlman and then Marsha?

You remember what Marsha looked like when you met her?

“Yes. Because I knew her when she was a kid and when she became an adult.”

So, the first time you met her, what did you think?”

“My friend Norman and me were at the Palladium looking for girls.”

That’s when you met Marsha?”

“Yeah, and I remember thinking she was really cute, but…”

“ ‘But’?”

“She looked older than ‘just’ twelve.”

“You were hot for Amy when she was ‘just’ twelve.”

“Yeah, but I was twelve then also.”

“How old were you when you met Marsha?”

“Fourteen… Almost fifteen.”

“Oh, too old for Marsha then, huh?”

“Yeah. I thought so.”

“Any other girls you remember how they’d looked to you?”

Thinking. “Yeah, in a way.” Taking a drink of my now tepid coffee.

“What’s that mean? ‘In a way’?”

“Lita.”

“You knew Lita when she was a kid?”

“Not Lita. But how Lita looked when she was thirteen.”

“That’s confusing.”

Next: TMO 10: Faces 2