I meant to play it cool with Lenny, I really did. All the way to the subway station I kept telling myself that maybe he had an explanation for this, and I should calm down and give him the benefit of the doubt.
When I saw him coming up the steps looking tired and drained from his day at work, I actually found myself feeling sorry for him. I decided to give him a chance to explain himself.
“Hi, baby. How was your day at work?” I started by asking.
“Tough.” He gave a great sigh. “They were rearranging the office today, and I was helping move desks, file cabinets, and computers the whole time.”
“Oh, that is tough.” I tried to sound concerned. “I bet you’re so tired, you don’t even feel like going to school tonight. And by the way, how was school yesterday?”
“School?” He shrugged dismissingly. “How else can school be but boring? Last night was no different from any other night.”
At this I felt the anger rising to my head once again. I had to struggle to keep my voice level. “Oh? And exactly what does that mean, Lenny? That you’ve been cutting school and going to the track on other nights, too?”
“The track?” This horrified expression crossed his face. “What are you talking about, Linda? I wouldn’t cut school and go to the track.”
With that out and out lie, I really lost it. I could hear my voice rising with every word I spoke, but could do nothing to control it. “Oh, you wouldn’t, would you? Well, I happen to have found out differently, Lenny. Not only have you and Sheldon been going off to the track on weekends, but last night you cut school and went there with Chris. So you might as well admit the truth and stop lying about it, because nothing makes me angrier than having you lie to me—nothing!”
At this Lenny started to laugh, which only infuriated me more. “Come on, baby, don’t be so upset. Calm down and I’ll explain everything.” He put his arm around me, but I shook him off.
“Oh, no, you don’t! You’re not going to sooth this problem away with your sweet caresses or your sweet talk, either, for that matter. I don’t want to hear that you were upset about a fight with your mother or something that happened at work so you had to let off some steam at the track, either!”
“But, Linda,” he said pleadingly. “That’s exactly what did happen. I had a terrible day at work yesterday, then had this awful fight with my mother because I made the mistake of going home to cook myself supper so I could save money because I was short of funds!”
“Short of funds! Then where did you get the money for the track?”
“I—uh—well, I borrowed some from Chris. I knew I’d be hot last night—I could feel it! And I was, too. I won, Linda; I had a hit last night of over a hundred dollars! That means I can take you out big this weekend!”
“That’s not what matters to me, Lenny! Can’t you see that all I want is for you to do the right thing and to tell me the truth?”
“How do you expect me to tell you the truth when you get so upset about everything? I knew you’d react this way—you take everything too seriously and get too mad!”
“So, I get too mad for you to be able to tell me the truth, is that it?” I managed to lower my voice a little. “Well, let me tell you something, Lenny. If you had come right out and told me about the track, I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but I would have gotten over it fast. But I can’t get over it when you lie to me, because then I can’t trust you. And there’s nothing worse than not being able to trust you—nothing!”
“You’re right, honey,” he said, trying to pacify me. “Why don’t you let me make it up to you? We’ll take the money I won and go to the track together tomorrow night and—”
“Take the money and go to the track with it! Are you crazy, Lenny? Take a look at what’s happening to you. All you ever think of now is the next time you can get to the track. You act as if you’re addicted to it!”
“Addicted?” He laughed as if what I had said was a big joke. “Come on, Linda. There you go getting carried away and making a big deal over nothing again. Which serves to illustrate why I didn’t tell you about the track in the first place.”
“Oh, so now you’re back to where it’s okay to lie to me, aren’t you?” I was so angry now my head was spinning. “I can see this conversation is going nowhere but around in circles, Lenny, and I think it’s time we stopped it right here. In fact, it’s probably time we stopped seeing so much of each other as well. You go to the track by yourself this weekend if you want to. I’ve got better things to do!” At that, I whirled around and stalked off down the street.
“But, Linda—wait!” he called after me.
I didn’t even turn around. If I talked to him further, I knew I’d really lose my cool. I had to get away from him now. I had to get away!
* * *
Ever since we had gotten back from the country, Nat had been asking me to come out to her house in Great Neck for a weekend. I kept putting her off because I didn’t want to be away from Lenny for so long. Now that I needed to be away from him, Nat was the first one I called.
“Do I still want you to come for the weekend? Of course I do, Linda! Why don’t you take the Long Island Railroad out here tomorrow after school, and I’ll pick you up at the station?”
Even though Nat had told me she would pick me up, I was surprised to see her actually at the wheel of the car. “You—you drive?”
“Naturally!” She laughed. “This is Long Island. All the kids drive here. You don’t have to be eighteen like you do in the city.”
“Right, I forgot. Long Island is so close to the city, but it’s like a different world.”
This feeling was further reinforced as Nat drove through the quiet streets of private homes. How beautiful everything looked, the immaculate manicured lawns shaded by trees wearing colors of autumn splendor. I couldn’t help thinking of the contrast with noisy, dirty, graffiti-splattered Washington Heights.
But it wasn’t until we arrived at Nat’s house that I really became aware of how differently she lived. “This is gorgeous,” I commented as Nat showed me around the house that consisted of ten large rooms, beautifully decorated in traditional style, with wallpaper that matched the upholstery.
“Thanks.” Nat led me up the stairs. “That pink room down the hall is my sister, Louise’s, and this blue one’s mine. You can have the bed near the door. Dump your things on it, and we can go down to the kitchen to raid the fridge. I’m starving, and I bet you are, too.”
“Not really.” I sighed. “I always lose my appetite when I’m having a fight with Lenny.”
“Uh-oh. Are you two at it again? Well, let’s go downstairs and talk while I have a snack. You don’t have to eat anything if you don’t want to.”
The kitchen, filled with the last rays of the setting sun, was warm and comforting, and the doughnuts that Nat put in the center of the table looked and smelled so good that I couldn’t resist taking one. In between bites I told Nat all about the problem I was having with Lenny and the track.
Despite the fact that she talked so much, Nat was a great listener. Not only that, she also had worthwhile things to say. “It seems as if Lenny’s always going to be doing things you don’t like, Linda. If it’s not cutting school or going to the track, it’ll be something else, and there doesn’t seem to be much you can do to change it. So it seems to me you’ve got a choice to make here, as good old Jimmy would say. Either you can learn to accept him the way he is, or you can’t. If you can’t, I foresee you making yourself miserable over stuff he does for as long as you’re going together.”
My bite of doughnut stuck in my throat, and I had to wash it down with gulps of milk before I could answer Nat. What she had said was not what I wanted to hear, but it made sense. It was time to make a choice once again. I was aware that I was always trying to fix Lenny, to make him over to be the way I wanted, and I had plenty of evidence that each time I tried this, it didn’t work. If I couldn’t accept him the way he was, realistically I was better off without him.
But the thought of being without Lenny was so painful to me that I couldn’t stand to even think of it. I loved him so much, even with all his faults that I seemed powerless to change.
“You’re right, Nat,” I said with a sigh of resignation. “I am making myself miserable trying to change Lenny, and it doesn’t do any good anyway, so I’ve no choice but to stop. How come you see things so much clearer than I do?”
“Only when it comes to you,” she said. “When it’s my own problems I’m dealing with, I get as stuck as you do. Take my current situation with Andy, for example.”
“Right. What’s going on with you two?” I asked, feeling guilty for having so far monopolized the conversation.
“Well, I told you that I went to Rutgers for Homecoming Weekend, and how great that was,” Nat began. “We spent every moment together, and Andy was warm and attentive and simply wonderful.”
“Uh-huh. But what’s been happening since then?”
“Not much of anything. He calls me now and then, but he sounds really distant.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to pick up on someone’s feelings over the phone,” I pointed out.
“I guess. But he sounded much warmer before Homecoming. And he used to speak about coming in for a weekend and meeting me in the city. Now it looks as if he’s not coming home until Thanksgiving.”
“Maybe he’s bogged down with schoolwork. College is difficult, you know.”
“I know. But I still think that if I meant enough to him, he’d make the time to come in and see me. I’d do it for him if the situation were reversed.”
“Well, Thanksgiving’s only a month away now, Nat. The time will go by fast. You’ll get to see him, and then he’ll be home for Christmas and midyear break—that’s a pretty long stretch.”
“But after that there’s this whole period with no vacations until spring break. It’s awful to have a long-distance relationship, Linda! You don’t know how good you’ve got it because Lenny lives in your neighborhood where you can see him every day. If I were you, I’d make up with him as soon as you get home.”
“You’re right, Nat.” I smiled at her gratefully. “Now I only hope Lenny will want to make up with me.”
* * *
By the time I got home on Sunday, I was really missing Lenny. I was missing the city, too. As pretty as the suburbs were, it didn’t take me long to find out life there was far from exciting.
Nat had no crowd where she lived, no place where everyone gathered to hang out together the way we did. Everything was too spread out in the suburbs; you had to drive to get anywhere. Nat’s parents and sister, Louise, were really nice; I had a good time going out with Nat to dinner, to a movie at the 10-plex, and shopping at the mall, but I was itching to get back to Washington Heights where I belonged.
When I got home, I found out from Roz that all the kids were over at Sheldon’s house watching the football game. I asked her to go there with me, but she didn’t want to because she hadn’t been to Sheldon’s since their breakup.
“Come on, Roz. Isn’t it time you got over that and started thinking of Sheldon like any other guy? After all, it was you who broke up with him.”
“I guess you’re right, Linda. Except that I know Jessie is going to be all over him, making out like crazy, to show me she’s got him now.”
“So, let her. Please, Roz, I need your moral support. I have no idea how Lenny is going to react after the fight we had.”
It was fortunate that Roz agreed to come with me, because when we arrived at Sheldon’s, we found the living room filled with boys. The only girls present were Jessie and her friend, Kathy Jones, neither one of them capable of giving me anything in the moral support department.
Lenny glanced at me when I arrived, but he didn’t say anything. His look was so antagonistic that I could feel my stomach clutch. I didn’t know how to go about getting close to him again. I sat down on the rug, about as far away from Lenny as I could get, and tried to develop some interest in the game. Unfortunately, it was near half-time, and one of the teams kept calling time out, so it was very boring.
Then, right before the clock ran out, the team the boys liked scored a touchdown, and they all began whooping it up. Of course Lenny’s voice was the loudest—he jumped up and down and screamed until his voice began cracking from the strain.
“I need a drink, Sheldon,” he croaked. “Got any soda?”
“Yeah, there’s some in the refrigerator.” Sheldon stretched out lazily on the sofa. “I’ve got potato chips and pretzels in the cabinet, too. How about you girls going in and getting them for us?”
“We girls? You have some nerve, Sheldon,” Jessie replied. “We’re not your servants or anything. Go get them yourself!”
“All right, Jessie!” Kathy voiced her approval of this stand.
“Come on, girls,” Lenny piped in. “You’re not interested in the half-time hype, anyhow. If you bring the stuff in now, we’ll clean up when the game is over—we promise!”
“All right. But I intend to hold you to your promise, Lipoff,” Jessie warned him. The four of us girls went into Sheldon’s kitchen and found the soda, snacks, and some paper cups.
“I’ll take Lenny his soda,” I said to Jessie. “I need some way to make up with him.”
“Yeah, what’s going on with you two?” she asked. “I heard you had a big fight over the track. What’s the big deal, anyway? I went with Sheldon last night, and we had a great time.”
“Yes, but Sheldon doesn’t lie to you and sneak off there behind your back,” I began. Then I realized I was wasting time trying to explain my views to Jessie. “Oh, forget all that stuff. I want to make up with him now, and that’s all that matters.” I put some ice into a cup and filled it with soda, then took a deep breath and walked back to the living room.
Lenny was sitting on one end of the sofa cracking a joke about the scanty cheerleader outfits, which all the boys seemed to appreciate. I must have really surprised him when I brought him the soda, for he sat there looking stunned before he murmured, “Thanks.”
“How about going outside to talk for a while?” I asked.
“Only if you think you can talk without going crazy,” he answered warily. But he gulped down his drink and got up to go with me.
Sheldon’s house was on Haven Avenue, the last street by the Hudson River. We went to sit on the wall there that overlooked the river and the great gray span of the George Washington Bridge. It was on this spot that Lenny and I had first revealed we liked each other and where we had come to talk over problems in the past.
The autumn wind that whipped off the water was chilly now, and I couldn’t help shivering. I had no choice but to get straight to the point. “Lenny, I realized something while I was at Nat’s this weekend.”
“Oh, is that where you were? I thought maybe you had decided to go out with some other guy.”
“Oh, Lenny. I would never do that, and you know it! I don’t want anyone else. I only want to know that things are open and honest between us. Will you listen to what I have to say to you?”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
I took a deep breath and began. “I realize there’s something wrong with our relationship if you’re so afraid of my reaction to something that you think you have to lie to me about it. I don’t want it to be that way, Lenny. I’m going to make every effort to accept you the way you are, no matter what you do, as long as you come to me with the truth.”
“You will? Do you really mean that?”
“Uh-huh. Try me. Tell me what you did this weekend. I won’t get mad.”
“Well—uh—well—I don’t know,” he stammered.
“Come on. I told you I won’t get mad.”
“You’re sure? Well, since you weren’t around this weekend, I went to the track both Friday and Saturday nights. I guess I was upset over our fight, so I didn’t do as well as I normally would have. But I won so much that night with Chris that I’m still up ten dollars overall.”
Ten dollars. He had been up over a hundred before I left. That meant he had lost a hundred dollars this weekend.
It made me sick to think of it, but I swallowed my anger. It wouldn’t do any good, and I knew that accepting Lenny, for better or for worse, was the only way I could get him to start telling me the truth about difficult situations. If he didn’t tell me the truth, I wouldn’t be able to trust him, and since love had to be based on trust, how could our relationship ever be able to progress?
To me, our relationship was the most important thing of all.