Danny Shapiro (39:03)
Here, in no particular order, are some things Lenny told me that he and his wife didn't sleep in the same bed. That they hadn't had a real marriage in years. That she was undergoing electroshock treatment in a clinic outside Philadelphia, that he had cancer and had to fly to Houston three days a week for chemotherapy. That his youngest daughter, age 3, had a rare form of childhood leukemia. That he could not get a divorce for all of the above reasons. That he was heartbroken that he could not leave his wife and marry me. For a long time I believed him. With every bone in my body, I trusted that Lenny Klein was telling me the truth. When we talked about it, his jaw would tighten and his big brown eyes would fill with tears. His voice would quaver with pent up complex feelings that I couldn't possibly begin to understand. Poor Lenny. I marveled that so many bad things could happen to one person and I vowed to take care of him. I exhorted myself to be a real woman, one who could step up to the plate and be good to her man in his moment of crisis. Years later, I hold Lenny's lies up to the light and examine my own reasons for believing what, in retrospect, seems preposterous. I reread my old journals and notice the way my girlish handwriting deteriorated into a scrawl as I wrote. I have to be there for Lenny. He needs me and he's going through so much. I don't know if I can handle it, but I have to be strong. I try to remember that Lenny was a trial lawyer, that he Built an international reputation based on. On his own pathology. That he lied with an almost evangelical conviction. He prided himself on being able to convince anyone of anything. The lies had small beginnings. Lenny called me from a business trip and told me he was at At Montreal Airport waiting to catch a flight to Calgary. I checked with the airline and found out that the flight would take approximately five hours. So when Lenny called an hour later to say he had landed in Calgary, I very calmly asked him where he really was. Calgary? He said. No, Lenny, really. He stuck to his story. In the time that I knew him, he never, ever changed his story midstream. I hung up on him and called his family's house in Westchester. When the maid answered the phone, I asked to speak with Mr. Klein. And when he picked up the extension and I heard his rough, craggy hello, I screamed so hard into his ear that he dropped the receiver. He raced into the city. He let himself into my apartment and found me curled up in bed. He scooped me up and held me to his chest. His wife wasn't home, he told me. She was having shock treatment and someone had to take care of his daughter. He hadn't wanted to tell me because he'd wanted to spare me, to protect me from the horror of his life. Surely I understood. Shush, sweetheart, he murmured into the top of my head as I wept. My face beat red like a little girl's. So many people need me, he said, but I love you best of all. Two years have passed and something has gone wrong, terribly wrong with my life. I don't, in fact, think of my life as my life, but rather as a series of random events that have no logical connection. I am no longer a student. I dropped out of Sarah Lawrence after my junior year, supposedly to pursue acting. And I'm actually doing a pretty good imitation of an actress. But I'm doing an even better imitation of a mistress. Lenny's been busy buying me things. I don't particularly want these things, but they seem to be what Lenny is offering in lieu of himself. So quite suddenly, overnight, really, I find myself driving a black Mercedes convertible. And just in case I might be mistaken for anything other than a kept woman, I wear a mink coat, a Cartier watch, a Bulgari necklace with an ancient coin at its center. The Mercedes is a step down from the first car Lenny gave me when we had been going out for a month, a leased Ferrari. I don't know how to drive a stick shift, so the Ferrari was a bit of a problem. What I must have looked like a 20 year old blonde dressed like Ivana Trump, stalled in traffic, grinding gears, trying to find the point on the clutch to hold that ridiculous car in. Lenny rented an apartment on a pretty little street in Greenwich Village. A furnished triplex with a garden, a fireplace, and a bedroom with a four poster bed. He called it our house, as if he didn't have another home with a whole family in it an hour north of the city. He kept half a dozen suits in the bedroom closet and a brand new silk robe hung behind the bathroom door. There was an entire floor we didn't use, a large, airy children's nursery. My parents knew that something was up. They knew I was going out with somebody, but they had no idea who. I was drifting away from them and they were letting me go. One night I invited them over for dinner. I pushed all traces of Lenny out of sight, but of course there were clues. A glossy brochure for Italian yachts, a humidor in the center of the coffee table. I cooked up a storm and the place was filled with homey smells. Garlic, basil, coriander. It was winter and the snow was piled up on the sills. Spotlights in the backyard shone on the landscaped garden, the redwood table, the Adirondack chairs. I had my father's favorite music, Dvorak's Symphony for the New World playing on the stereo system. My parents rang the doorbell. They looked so solid standing on my front stoop, their cold red noses poking out from above, their mufflers. If nothing else, they looked like they belonged together. They were elegant and rangy, similarly proportioned. Unlike Lenny and me. Lenny is thick as a linebacker, and I had become so delicate the wind could have picked me up and blown me away. My mother strode into the brownstone as if it wasn't the weirdest thing in the world to be visiting her daughter in a lavish apartment with no name on the outside buzzer. My father trailed behind her warily, as if setting foot on another planet. My mother entered the living room, flung her arms wide, and did an impromptu dance to Dvorak. TRA la la la, she trilled. My father and I hung back and watched, our faces crumpled into awkward smiles. It didn't occur to me that she was frightened that this was a lot for her to take in, her college dropout daughter living in the lap of luxury. All I could see was her outsized self twirling around my living room in her fur coat and boots. I wanted a drink. I poured two glasses of chardonnay for my parents and a large vodka for myself, I figured that if the vodka was in a water glass, they wouldn't know the difference, especially if I drank it like it was water. My drinking had taken on a new urgency in the past few months. It was no longer a question of desire, but of need. I could not get through an evening like this without the armor of booze. I handed them their wine and directed them to the couch. On the coffee table, I had put out a plate of crudites and a bowl of olives. Quite a place, my mother said brightly, her gaze darting around the room at the white brick fireplace with its wrought iron tools, the glass wall overlooking the garden, the soaring ceiling. My father stared at the fringe of the rug, glassy eyed. He needed to be as numbed as I did to get through this night. Thanks, I murmured, as if she was paying me a compliment. I checked on dinner, using the opportunity to gulp some wine from the open bottle in the fridge. Vodka and white wine was a combination I knew worked for me. If I stuck with the formula. Things shouldn't be too bad in the morning, especially if I wasn't eating and I couldn't see myself eating. The music had stopped by the time we all sat at the dining room table, but I didn't notice then. If I had, I would certainly have changed. The tape filled the air with something other than the tinny, lonely sound of our three forks scraping against plates. I pushed my chicken from one side of my plate to the other. My stomach clenched and growled in protest. It seemed that my parents And I, after 22 years in each other's company, had run out of things to say. I already knew their views on the political situation in Israel, and we couldn't discuss my schoolwork. I was no longer in school. My father pressed a corner of his napkin to his lips and murmured something about the food being delicious. My mother agreed. My wonderful daughter, she said, shaking her head. You've turned into such a little homemaker. I looked at my parents across the table. Is that what they really thought? How could they just sit there? Some small piece of me wanted my father to fling me over his shoulder and carry me kicking and screaming to the car he had parked outside. I secretly wished that they would drive me home, deposit me in my childhood bedroom, and feed me chicken soup and saltines. I wanted to start my life over again, but I didn't know how. In the face of the most tangible proof that Lenny had been lying to me all these years, I remained with him. My little girl is dying, he would say whenever I noticed the discrepancies in his stories or My children's mother is having electroshock therapy. When I couldn't take my own confusion anymore, Was Lenny lying to me? Was I going crazy? I decided to hire a detective to get to the bottom of it. By this time, my parents knew all about me and Lenny in theory, but it wasn't something we could talk about. When I think back to my younger self rifling through the New York City yellow paint in search of a private investigator, I feel like I'm watching a movie about someone else. A girl so clueless she really didn't know that her desire to hire a detective was all the answer she needed. I chose a detective agency based on nothing more than its good address in the East 60s, a neighborhood filled with private schools at shrinks. This isn't what you think, I told the detective. I'm in a relationship with a married man and I want you to find out if my boyfriend is cheating on me with his wife. At this his eyebrows shot up. Come again? He claims his wife is in a mental hospital. He told me he hasn't been with her in years. And you think he might be lying? Said the investigator. Did I see the laughter behind his eyes? Or is my memory supplying it now? Because I simply cannot imagine a middle aged man listening to an earnest, overdressed 22 year old girl tell him that she thinks her boyfriend might still be sleeping with his wife. Yes, I said. Days later, I got the proof about Lenny's lies. In tears, I called my mother. Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do? I don't think so. A pause. Do you want me to call his wife? My mother and Mrs. Klein had met each other at a few school functions back when none of this could have struck anyone as a remote possibility. Yes, I said. Call her. I'll do it right now, my mother said. I sat by the phone and watched the minutes tick by. I pictured Lenny's wife answering the phone with a chirpy hello and my mother's slow, steady explanation of why she was calling. I had set in motion a chain of events which was now unstoppable. More than 20 minutes passed before my mother called me back. Well, I did it, she said. You talked to her? The world felt unreal. Hallucinatory. Yes. She called me a liar. She told me she has a happy marriage to a man who travels a lot, that he's on his way to California. And I said, no, he's on his way to see my daughter. My mother sounded proud of herself, immersed in the drama of the moment. How did she seem? I asked. What do you mean? Lenny's wife. Was she angry? No, my mother said slowly. She just didn't believe me. Danny. I spent the rest of that day in a state of awful excitement. Something was going to happen, and when Lenny showed up that evening at the apartment we were still sharing in the West Village, I was ready. He put his bags down and gave me a hug. The phone rang. My mother had given Mrs. Klein the number at the apartment and suggested she find out for herself what her husband was up to. Lenny picked up the phone on the kitchen wall. Hello? I watched him, and for the first and only time in the years I knew him, he looked genuinely surprised. He didn't say a word. He just listened for a few minutes, then hung up the phone. That was my wife, he said. I was silent. How did she get this number? I shrugged. I have to go. I'd imagine, I said faintly. When Lenny slammed out of the apartment, I was certain I would never see him again. I knew the truth now. It was staring me in the face, in the concrete form of flight lists and photos, and he knew that I knew. And besides, the whistle was blown. What could he possibly tell his wife? This was it, I told myself. Absolutely, positively. The end. It wasn't the end. Lenny still called 10, 12 times a day. He left messages on my answering machine. Hello? His voice filled my bedroom. Fox, are you there? Sometimes he didn't say a word. He would stay on the line for as long as five minutes, just breathing. Eventually he did get to me again, and for the next year that we were together, three days here, four days there, my life became unrecognizable to me. I idly wondered what it would take to get me to leave him. I wondered about this over bottles of chilled white wine or heavy glasses half filled with scotch. I was still wondering about it when I went to stay for a while at a health spa in California. The phone rang in my room one day. There had been a car crash on a snowy highway. My mother had 80 broken bones. My father was in a coma. They were lying in a hospital 3,000 miles away. And suddenly, in ways I could not have imagined seconds earlier, nothing else mattered. As I packed my bags, I remembered my mother twirling, dancing to Dvorak through the doors of Lenny's brownstone and the glassy look in my father's eyes. I prayed that my father wouldn't die disappointed in me, and I knew then what I had to do.
