Ilene Beckerman - What We Do for Love

Also by Ilene Beckerman
LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE

written and illustrated by
ILENE BECKERMAN

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

1997 by Ilene Beckerman. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

EISBN: 978-1-56512-907-8

Dedicated to
Frank Sinatra,
Burt Lancaster,
and
Stanley

It has taken me a long time to realize that men are neither heroes nor villains, but just people. Thats why I have portrayed the men in my past as composites. I have also changed names and identifying details to protect privacy. Everything else I wrote is true, however, especially about how hard it is to find love.

I love you. Ive loved you since the first moment I saw you.
I guess maybe I loved you even before I saw you.

Montgomery Clift to Elizabeth Taylor
in A Place in the Sun, 1951

When I was growing up, everyone in the movies I saw found true love. But even Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Ingrid Bergman had trouble finding true love in real life.

Mr. Right kept turning into Mr. Wrong. For me, too.

On the one hand, I was looking for undying love and an almost perfect person beside me in bed, even though my grandmother once told me, Stop looking for Prince Charming, Cinderellas already got him.

On the other hand, I never felt pretty enough or confident enough to think any man could be attracted to me once he saw me without makeup.

When I look back on the things I did for love, I dont know whether to laugh or cry.

It was 1950. I was fifteen, and crazy about Frank Sinatra. Frank was crazy about Ava Gardner. They hadnt even gotten married and already they were having big problems. My big problems were just about to start. Up until that time, Id been in love several times myself, but that was the summer I fell in love with Jeffrey.

Jeffrey was sixteen and the handsomest boy I had ever seen, even better looking than Montgomery Clift. Jeffrey liked my best friend, Dora. When Dora stopped liking him, he paid attention to me, though I was shy, never said anything, and wasnt as pretty as Dora.

That summer I was a waitress in a sleep-away camp in Port Jervis, New York. It was the third summer my grand-parents had sent me there. They didnt know what to do with me summers after my mother died and my father left. Jeffrey was a junior counselor at a fancy camp in Maine that had horseback riding and tennis. I was surprised to get a postcard from him:

I didnt mind what he said about the socks. He was so handsome, I would have washed them.

I answered his postcard with a postcard. It took me two days to think of what to say and hours practicing my handwriting so it would look good. Jeffrey didnt answer.

Since I went to an all-girls high school, it was hard to find boyfriends. Dora went to a coed private school and had a lot.

Fall came. One Saturday afternoon Jeffrey called me and asked if I wanted to see a movie that night.

We went to a double feature at Loews 72nd Street. The Glass Menagerie, with Jane Wyman and Kirk Douglas, was playing with a Western.

I was hoping we would sit in the balcony. I wasnt going to wear my glasses anyway. We necked through half of the feature and all of the Western. I couldnt believe how lucky I was to be with someone as handsome as Jeffrey.

After the movies, Jeffrey walked me home. When he said good night, he did the most romantic thing: he kissed my hand.

In my room, I turned on the radio. It was always set on WNEW, ready for Martin Block and The Milkmans Matinee. Martin Block loved Sinatra, too. I lay in bed listening to Sinatra sing Too Marvelous for Words. I thought about Jeffrey and about cutting bangs and growing my hair long like Jane Wymans in the movie.

October, November, and December were boring. I didnt have a date for New Years Eve. But my horoscope in the New York Mirror said the new year would be lucky for me, and it was. Jeffrey called me at 9 P.M. on January 6. He said he had to see me.

My grandparents owned a stationery store and we lived above it. Their apartment took one whole floor above the store. I had a small room on another floor. It wasnt hard to sneak out.

Jeffrey met me in the downstairs hall where my grandfather stacked the Sunday newspapers. We hid behind the Herald Tribunes and the Journal Americans and necked standing up, for about an hour and a half. We didnt get caught.

Just before he left, he kissed my hand.

When I got back to my room, I picked up the autographed picture of Sinatra I got for three Lucky Strike cigarette wrappers and fifteen cents, and turned on the radio. Frank was singing Night and Day. I thought he must feel about Ava the way I felt about Jeffrey. I sang along,... in the silence of my lonely room I think of you.

I didnt hear from Jeffrey again until June 10. I was at Doras, helping her get ready for a prom with a boy from a fancy prep school. She was trying to squeeze into a merry widow. Shed discovered Sara Lee cream cheese cake the week before.

The phone rang. It was Jeffrey. He asked Dora if she had a date that night. Dora told him I was there. Tell Gingy Im not going back to camp, he said. Im going to hitch down to Florida. Ill send a postcard. I was so happy Jeffrey was going to write to me that I wasnt so jealous of Doras prom dress.

I had to go back to camp as a waitress again that summer. On our day off, I went with a friend to see An American in Paris. I was glad I could wear my glasses. I moved Gene Kelly above Montgomery Clift on my list of favorite movie stars. I thought about cutting my hair short and curling it like Leslie Carons in the movie.

During the last week of camp, I finally got a postcard. It had a picture of Miami Beach and said, Its about 110 degrees in the shade here. See you soon. Love, Jeff.

Fall came. I had a boyfriend I didnt like, Steve. I let him put his tongue in my mouth while I thought about Jeffrey.

Dora told me Jeffrey had called her. I was jealous but didnt tell her. I called his house several times but hung up whenever somebody answered. The more I longed for Jeffrey, the more I let Steve do with me. I had to buy Pan-Cake makeup to cover up the hickeys on my neck.

Dora and I had worked out a code so we could talk on the telephone and her parents and my grandmother wouldnt know what we were talking about.