CHAPTER TWELVE
MARRYING MARILYN
In 1954 when we married, Marilyn was already a confirmed Francophile. Having spent her junior year in France, she dreamed of a honeymoon in Europe, whereas I, a provincial lad who had never left the northeastern United States, had zero interest in going abroad. But she was canny: “How about a honeymoon in France on a motorcycle?” She knew I was fascinated with motorcycles and motorbikes, and knew, also, that one could not rent such vehicles in the United States. “Here, look at this,” she said, and handed me an advertisement about renting a Vespa in Paris.
So off we went to Paris, where I excitedly selected a large Vespa at a rental station a block from the Arc de Triomphe. Although I had never even touched, let alone driven, a Vespa, I needed to reassure the suspicious manager of the station that I was an experienced driver. I mounted the Vespa and, as nonchalantly as possible, asked him for the location of the starter and gas pedal. He looked seriously concerned as he showed me the small button starter and told me that turning the handlebars controlled the gas flow. “Oh,” I said, “it’s different in the US,” and, without another word, took off for a practice ride while Marilyn wisely waited for me at a nearby café. Alas, I was on a one-way street that immediately fed directly into the hectic ten-lane thoroughfare circling the Arc de Triomphe. That ninety-minute drive was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life: autos and taxis zoomed past on both sides of me, horns blaring, windows unrolled, shouts hurled, fists shaken. I understood no French, but had a strong feeling that the cacophonies of the phrases shouted at me were not words of welcome to France. I stalled perhaps thirty times in my heroic circumnavigation of the Arc de Triomphe, but an hour and a half later, when I ended up back at the café next to the rental stand to collect my wife, I knew how to drive a Vespa.
Three weeks earlier in Maryland, on June 27, 1954, we had been married, and our wedding luncheon was held at the Indian Spring Country Club owned by Marilyn’s wealthy uncle, Samuel Eig. Immediately afterward I set about raising money for our European vacation—my parents were supporting me and paying my medical school tuition, and there was no way I could ask them to pay for this trip. For the past couple of years, my cousin Jay and I had sold fireworks for the Fourth of July at a stand we had built (Jay was the one who had bet me thirty dollars that I would not marry Marilyn). The previous year had been disastrous for the firework-stand business because of heavy rains on July 3 and 4, and we had the brainstorm of buying the entire leftover inventory from the other stands at a very low price and storing it over the following year in huge steel oil barrels. We had tested such storage the year before and the year-old fireworks had performed perfectly. We were blessed with splendid weather in early July 1954, and I earned more than enough money for a European honeymoon with my bride.
Immediately after renting the Vespa, Marilyn and I took off with small packs on our back for the French countryside. For three weeks, we motored through the Loire Valley, Normandy, and Brittany exploring beautiful chateaux and churches, mesmerized by the miraculous blues of the stained-glass windows of Chartres. In Tours, we visited the lovely family that had hosted Marilyn for the initial two months of her year abroad. Every day on the road we lunched in beautiful pastures on heavenly French bread and wine and cheese. Marilyn enjoyed ham as well. Her parents were more secular and adhered to no religious dietary laws, whereas I am one of the vast army of irrational Jews who have entirely jettisoned all religious beliefs but still eat no pork (except, of course, pork buns in Chinese restaurants). After three weeks we returned to Paris, took a train to Nice, then rented a tiny Fiat Topolino to drive through Italy for a month. One vivid memory that remains of our excursion through Italy was our stay on our first night at a small inn facing the Mediterranean. For the dessert of the prix fixe dinner, a large bowl of assorted fruit was placed on the table. We were delighted: money was growing short and we stuffed our pockets with fruit for our next day’s lunch. When we paid our bill the next morning we felt like dolts, as we learned that the fruit had been carefully counted and we were charged heavily for each piece snitched.
JULY FOURTH FIREWORKS STAND, MANNED BY JAY KAPLAN AND THE AUTHOR, WASHINGTON, DC, 1954.
Though it was a divine trip, I remember often being impatient and jittery, perhaps from culture shock, perhaps from not knowing how to live without grinding and studying. This sense of not feeling comfortable in my skin plagued me during my early adulthood. From the outside I was doing splendidly: I had married the woman I loved, I had gained admission into medical school and was performing well in every way, but deep inside, I was never at ease, never confident, and never grasping the source of my anxiety. I had some unclear sense that I had been scarred deeply by my early childhood and felt that I didn’t belong, that I was not as worthy or deserving as others. How I would love to repeat that trip now with the serenity of my current self!
Today, over sixty years later, memories of our honeymoon always bring a smile to my face. However, the details of our wedding day have faded—except for one scene: toward the end of the large wedding luncheon, Marilyn’s uncle, Sam Eig, the family’s stern and unapproachable patriarch, who had built a considerable part of Silver Spring, Maryland, and hobnobbed with the governor, named streets after his children, and never before deigned to speak to me, walked over to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and whispered in my ear as he pointed his other arm toward the entire assembly of guests, “Congratulations, my boy. You’re getting the best of the lot.”
Uncle Sam’s words of support still ring true: rarely does a day pass that I do not feel gratitude for having been able to spend my life with Marilyn.