We’d moved from the Harry Belafonte building to the Beresford, a building that faced Central Park on the east, the Museum of Natural History on the south. Another rental till we had the money to buy an apartment and found the one we wanted to buy.
We gave our first big New Year’s Eve party in that apartment. The only apartment we ever had whose windows were on the park. So when midnight struck, the fireworks went off in the park and lit up the windows of the living room. We all stood there, our mouths open like children, going, “Ahhhhh, ohhhhh.”
Belinda was enrolled in Rodeph Sholom Day School; she could walk to school from the apartment, a little Thai girl singing Hebrew songs in chorus.
One spring night, Joey and I had one of our huge, loud, yelling fights. I slammed the bedroom door on him and went to bed, furious. As I lay there fuming in my white nightgown, eyeshades, and earplugs, it seemed I could hear music through the earplugs. I took them out. It sounded like it came from my living room. I pushed up the eyeshades and opened the door. Loud music, louder still as I walked barefoot down the hall.
There, in the foyer, were three young people: two boys and a girl, a trio. Cello, violin, and clarinet playing Bach, transported from where?
Joey was smiling, watching me watching them.
“Where are you from?” I asked. “Heaven?”
“Juilliard,” one said. “We were playing on the street, and he hired us.”
“They’re a present,” Joey said.
Three young strangers, pouring out their hearts, Bach’s genius, in my very own foyer.
See, that’s why I’m in love with him.
P.S. The thing with “the girl” was over. He was in love with me again.
Months later, in the city once again, I asked “the girl” to come over. Joey was lying down in the bedroom.
When he saw her, he became angry. He didn’t want her anymore.
“She’s my friend,” I told him.
“No!” he said. “She is my friend. That’s the way it is.”
And so “the girl” has stayed in our lives, and she’s our friend now for life.