Kitchen Privileges Page 12
June and I elected to go for it and with some trepidation attended the first session. There were about fifteen of us in the class. The instructor introduced himself. “My name is Fred Vest,” he said, smiling. “Now I want you all to introduce yourselves to me, and then I will demonstrate to you how really easy it is to commit names to memory.”
We dutifully obeyed. He repeated our names, paused, and then greeted us by name, without a moment’s hesitation. “Your names have been committed to my memory,” he said. “I will never forget any of you. Now let me explain how easy it is for you to be proficient in the same way.”
He cleared his throat. “You notice how I repeated each of your names when you introduced yourselves. You must always do that. Then, looking directly at the other person, you must repeat his name twice, picturing it written in bronze across the sky. At the same time, you must associate the name of the person you are meeting with something about him or her that will become your word association that will trigger your memory when you meet him again. For example, my name is Vest. Fred Vest. I am vested with authority in this class. As you write my name in bronze across the sky, keep the thought that I am vested with authority.”
Vest, I thought. He’s vested with authority. I had his name down pat. I was sure of it. Frank Vest. For the next thirteen weeks I called him Frank and either he didn’t notice or didn’t care.
There was a distinct emphasis in the course on learning to raise the tone level of our voice, and therefore raising the tone level of the people around us. The idea was that when you woke up in the morning, even if things weren’t going right, if you were worried about anything or upset about anything, if you got out of bed moody or grouchy or depressed, you would undoubtedly pass those vibes on to everyone you contacted. Your husband or your wife and kids, or the guy at the newspaper stand, or your fellow employees—you could lower their tone levels through your woebegone demeanor or curt greeting.
On the other hand, if you acted cheerful and optimistic and smiling, and had a spring in your step, you’d be passing around good vibrations that would influence everyone you greeted. In turn, they would respond in a cheery way to you, and then they would be influencing the people they greeted, buoyed as they had been by your sunny demeanor.
It made sense to me. All through twelve years of Catholic school, I had been taught to follow the example of St. Francis, and to be an instrument of peace. One sweet elderly nun had warned us that sometime someone might be very rude or unkind to us but that we should never respond in kind. She explained that maybe that poor, dear person had just received terrible news, perhaps about the grave illness of someone he or she loved very much, and had never intended to offend us. Then, too, there was the possibility that the poor, troubled soul who had unwittingly offended us had done so because he or she wasn’t feeling well, or maybe was even very ill and about to die. Wouldn’t it be a terrible burden for our conscience if that person suffered a heart attack a moment after we had lashed out at him or her, leaving us to know that our unkind words were the last words that sweet, troubled soul ever heard on this earth?
That possibility had always worried me. I’m sure my father’s sudden death had a lot to do with it, but I have always had a hard time even telling someone that his big, fat foot was resting on my sore toe. To me, the advice about cheering up the world was simply an extension of everything I’d been taught, but at the Dale Carnegie course, they added a new wrinkle on how to go about it.
The trick, we were told, was that upon awakening, we should sit up in bed, throw out our arms, and shout, “Good morning, day!” Up would go our tone level. Guaranteed. We practiced in class.
The following Saturday, I decided to give it a whirl. Warren had been gone for nine months, and I woke up feeling snake low. Weekends always were harder, because all the men in the neighborhood were around, and their presence emphasized the fact that Warren was gone and that I was alone. I sat up, threw out my arms, and bellowed, “Good morning, day!”
My hand hit something. That something was the tray with a pot of coffee, orange juice, and an English muffin that the kids had laid on the bed. On Saturday mornings, they would do that, then get their own juice or cocoa, come back upstairs and get into bed with me. I called it our “souls at sea” get-together. Pat and Carol would be propped against the head-board to my left and right, while the other three sat cross-legged at my feet. The whole effect kind of resembled a crowded lifeboat.
Following the advice of an article I’d read, I’d changed the décor of the bedroom to give it a different look, my room not our room. Now orange juice and coffee and melted butter were dripping down the sides of the new bedspread and onto the new carpet.
With Carol, in one of our modeling shots.
I ran for a towel, began to sop up the mess, and had a lot of words to mutter under my breath, no three of which were “Good morning, day.”
Actually, June and I were apt Dale Carnegie students and both won awards at the graduation ceremony. The award was a pencil with the reason for the honor printed on the side. June’s pencil read, “First in personal experience,” honoring her final speech at the course. Mine read, “First in human relations.” I absolutely forget what speech I gave to deserve that singular honor, but one night in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, I was jotting down a phone number, and a guy a few feet away began smiling suggestively at me.
I couldn’t figure him out until I realized that I was using my Dale Carnegie pencil, which announced that I’d won first prize in human relations. Maybe he thought I was advertising.
It was on graduation night that I realized I’d been calling the instructor by the wrong name and humbly accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to become a second Herbert Hoover in the memory department. On the other hand, June went on to become a very effective speaker and was elected a freeholder in Bergen County, a position she held for years.
My first bona-fide date was with a fellow student from the course. He was on temporary assignment in the area with his company, and I think he signed up for the course simply to pass the time. Alas, I don’t remember his name. He was a pleasant-looking, quiet guy in his early fifties, and when he invited me to have dinner with him the following Friday night, I thought, Why not? It would be a welcome change from always being the extra woman at the table.
I’d been at the Tavistock office all that day. I got caught in traffic, and when I arrived home, I was only ten minutes ahead of the time he was expected. The kids had already eaten, and before I rushed upstairs to shower and change, I reminded them I was having dinner with a friend, that they should invite him in when he arrived and make him feel welcome.
They hadn’t really paid attention to the fact that I was going out, but now I was peppered with questions: “Who is he?”
“Do we know him?”
“Is Aunt June going with you?”
It was obvious they were not happy with the thought that I was going out by myself with a strange man.
Marilyn, now fourteen, came upstairs about fifteen minutes later as I was putting on makeup. “Your father’s here,” she announced. “He’s very big on hurricanes. That’s all he’s been talking about since he walked in the door.”
When I got downstairs, my fellow Dale Carnegie student was sitting in the wing chair, across from the couch. My five offspring were lined up and gazing at him, their expressions polite, but bored.
“But it wasn’t as bad as the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico ten years ago,” he was saying.
He knew I had children. Knowing about them and seeing them in the flesh, however, were two different matters. Anyhow, if the Dale Carnegie course had helped him to develop a winning personality, I couldn’t find it that evening, nor did he notice mine. When he dropped me off at home at ten o’clock, the kids were in the den watching television.
They looked up to see my reaction to my date. I realized that maybe they’d been worried about it. I said, “The hurricane in Puerto Rico didn’t hold
a candle to the one in Timbuktu.”
“What a jerk,” was their relieved comment.
That very nice man wasn’t a jerk, but they didn’t want any man to become part of their lives and neither did I. If there was one thing I was absolutely certain wouldn’t happen, it was that I’d get involved with anyone. There were two good reasons for that certainty. The first was that it’s hard enough for the natural parent to raise children. You would willingly give your life for them, but on the other hand there are times you want to send one or the other of them into orbit.
I knew immediately that I’d never take the chance of having my children in the position of having a stepfather who might not get along with all of them. I was certain that it would be better for them to grow up with the memory of a father they knew had loved them dearly and equally.
The second reason was that I wanted to give them a good education. I wanted them to go to fine colleges and to graduate school if they were so inclined. To achieve that goal, I had to work. I didn’t want any man to be in the position of dictating where my children would be educated.
Suppose someone had come along who was reasonably successful and wanted me to be available to be a stay-at-home wife? That would make me totally dependent on someone else’s generosity, and I wasn’t about to be placed in that position.
That doesn’t mean that even in that first year I didn’t hope that someday when the kids were grown up I’d meet someone I could care about. I missed being married. I missed the companionship, the closeness, the friendship that is the essence of a good marriage. In my diary I wrote, “The world goes two by two.”
Warrie graduated from the eighth grade in June. There was a party for the graduates, and he invited one of the girls in his class. He asked me to drive them. When we got in the car, he climbed into the backseat. “When we pick her up, don’t say anything, Mom, just drive, okay?”
On the way to his friend’s house, I felt a sudden sense of panic. I realized a new chapter was beginning. I was dealing with a son who was growing up fast, who was on his first date. How do you raise adolescent boys without a father? Would he put his arm around the girl? Would he kiss her good night? What about the facts of life? How much did he know?
Warrie interrupted my reverie. “It’s this house.” He got out of the car. “Now, remember, just drive, okay?”
“Sure.”
A moment later he returned, escorting a pretty thirteen year old with bouncy golden hair and a great figure. She nodded to me shyly. I nodded back, keeping my promise to say nothing. They got into the backseat.
“You know what?” she asked Warrie.
She sounded seductive. I strained to hear what she was about to tell him.
“What?” Warrie asked.
“My dog threw up today.”
“Oh, gee, that’s too bad.”
I relaxed. If that was the level of conversation, for the present, at least, I didn’t have to worry about budding teenage romances.
It wasn’t hard to keep busy. I was given a second radio series to write, The Alcoa News Calendar. The format was current events–type news followed by a safety hint from the FBI. The Alcoa company was one of the sponsors of the then popular television series The FBI, and the safety hint served as a daily plug for the series.
I based what I wrote on information sent to me by an FBI agent, who had to approve every word before it was aired. The safety hints went like this:
“If you’re going shopping and the parking area is crowded, be sure to park your car in a well-lighted area. However, if you ever feel you’re being followed, run to the nearest well-lighted house and ring the bell. If on the other hand, you feel you are going to be cornered, take off your shoe, hold it by the toe, and aim the heel at the bridge of the nose of your attacker.”
Another one began, “If you’re alone in the house and hear footsteps on the stairs…”
I’d always honestly claimed that I’d never been nervous anywhere, but after I’d been writing that series for a while, I found my eyes darting for a potential predator as I got in my car, soaked in my tub, or awakened to a strange sound in the night.
I took on a third series, The Art of Gift-Giving, furnished by S&H Green Stamps. S&H had a slogan for the stamps: “For all your gift-giving needs, even for the gift you want just for yourself.”
The format was for me to write about famous gifts in history, poignant gifts, funny gifts, gifts that changed the course of a life, gifts that led to another career. Bess Myerson was the celebrity narrator for this series. Like the Portrait of a Patriot series, it began with a question. Example: “Do you know about the gift that was turned against the giver?”
That program was about George III, America’s last king. Upon learning that his American colonists were getting restive, he sent over a statue of himself on horseback as a gift. When the Revolution broke out, the colonists melted it down and used it for bullets.
Or: “Do you know about the gift Queen Victoria gave her grandson?”
Victoria wrote in her diary that her grandson, Willie, the future Kaiser Wilhelm, was a tiresome little boy, but when he turned twenty-one, her birthday present to him was Mount Kilimanjaro.
I enjoyed doing the research necessary for all the series, but the days began to feel as though there weren’t enough hours in them.
The goal at the G. R. Tavistock office was to keep the series on the air. The longer they ran, the more profitable they were, because the start-up costs were being amortized. That was why whenever a series was up for renewal, it was crisis time. Everyone was dedicated to making that renewal happen. When a series was canceled, the wrath of G.R. descended upon the office.
Gordon Tavistock was a strikingly handsome man with a powerful personality. If you didn’t work for him, you’d find him charming. Working for him, however, was another kettle of fish. That first year I was a freelance writer, and as long as my scripts were good and on time, all was well. But then he sent word that I was needed in the office to have regular client contact and to go out on sales calls to advertising agencies and sponsors. He said that I could continue to write my current three series on the side.
The change in duties meant commuting into New York every morning and not getting home until 6:30 at night. Mother was absolutely against the idea. “Stay home and mind your children, Mary,” she urged. But I really didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t make even half the money somewhere else, and I didn’t want my children to be “gee whiz” kids who couldn’t attend the schools their friends were attending, or who couldn’t even consider going on school trips because there wouldn’t be money to send them. Being present in the office also meant that I could have a chance to be the writer of a new series if any of the ones I was working on were canceled, and that was terribly important.
I was aware that churning out the scripts was helping me to become a better all-around writer. When you have to tell a story in four minutes less product credit lines, you learn to write succinctly. I didn’t realize at the time that I was in training to be a suspense writer, in a genre where every word has to move the action forward.
When the first anniversary of Warren’s death came around, a new phase of my life began—carpooling into New York with my brother-in-law Ken and Clem Weber, whose wife, Rose, was one of my closest friends. When you’re commuting to business with men, it’s not like going out for a leisurely lunch with the girls. You have to be precisely on time when the car pulls into the driveway to pick you up.
Mornings became a scramble. The rushed routine went something as follows: Wake the kids up at quarter of seven. Get breakfast on the table. Skinny as the boys were, they were hearty breakfast eaters. Carol had a hard time waking up. I practically had to dress her, then shake her awake at the table. Patty, still loath to go to school, claimed to have a stomachache every day.
“You’re going to school,” I’d say firmly.
“My stomach really hurts.”
“You’re going to school, Pat.”
By twenty of eight, they were on their way. At quarter of eight, Clem, with Ken next to him in the front seat, pulled into my driveway, and I ran to the car. As often as not, my hair was still up, my makeup and jewelry at the bottom of my purse, and sometimes my stockings still needed to be pulled on. The guys said it was indecent to look into the backseat until we reached the George Washington Bridge because I was still dressing. Clem’s wife, Rose, said, “It’s a good thing I know you so well, Mary. Otherwise I’d be wondering why I sometimes find a pink curler or a lipstick in the back of my husband’s car.”
Portrait of a Patriot was my first and favorite series. Naturally it was necessary to do at least one program each on all the presidents. I had deliberately put off writing about George Washington because I considered him abysmally dull. The idiotic stories I had heard about him, such as “Father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree,” had given me the impression that he was a world-class nerd. I had read also that he had been in love with his best friend’s wife, and married Martha, an older, wealthy woman, for her money. The picture of the two of them, obviously mature, with young children at their feet, reinforced that nerdy impression. Then, too, he appeared so grim in all the portraits. Did he ever smile? I wondered.
Nonetheless, I had to write about him for the series, so I began to do research on him. The more I read, the more I realized how badly I had misjudged him. Washington was a towering and fascinating figure. Over six feet three at a time when most men were five feet seven or less, he stood literally head and shoulders above his peers. To my astonishment, I learned that he was considered the best dancer in the colony of Virginia. He also was a superb rider, so much so that the Indians paid him their highest compliment: “He walks and rides his horse like an Indian.” At twenty-six, he became a hero of the French and Indian War. At age sixteen, he had developed a huge crush on the so-called love of his life, eighteen-year-old Sally Carey Fairfax. They remained lifelong friends, but Martha was the true love of his life. Yes, she was older, but only eight months older—twenty-seven to his twenty-six—when they married.