Barnegat Bay - 15. Chapter 15

Of course, there was another reason my mother was distracted. Since the beginning of September, when she got back from Barnegat, she’d been working some evenings after school and part of most weekends to help get Franklin Roosevelt elected as president.

“He’s a really good man,” she told us all one night at dinner. “We’ve got to vote for him.”

There was never any question that anyone in our family wouldn’t – we were lifelong Democrats. So her words were aimed at Mary, whose politics we didn’t really know. They were something we’d never discussed.

And Mary didn’t put up a fight. In fact, she mainly smiled and shrugged. If she were going to vote differently, it would be in the privacy of the voting booth.

I knew Claire had been writing to Mary about Roosevelt, too, but Claire couldn’t be politically active in conservative Toms River, especially when she was trying to build a business career.

“Politics can come later,” she’d told us one weekend, when she was staying at our apartment. She and Mary were sharing our bed, and I was back on my skimpy cot.

“I thought you were getting a couch,” Claire said.

“We will. Soon enough.”

Claire went on to say that she could only politely talk about politics with her family. “I know how my brothers feel, but they’re very careful in front of our parents, too. It’s not worth upsetting them – they want us educated, but not in that way. Besides, neither of my brothers is old enough to vote.”

I had no doubts about Mary supporting Roosevelt because she was soon working besides my mother, going door-to-door, trying to persuade people how to intelligently choose. In our neighborhood, that wasn’t hard, because almost everyone believed the same thing. Occasionally, someone in business might disagree, but those people weren’t who Mom and Mary were trying to inform. It was the women who – even after a dozen years – might decide it was too much trouble to register. And some of the older women still believed politics was “for men.” So they had to be re-taught.

More importantly, Mary also needed to tell her family about our marriage. Our quick and secret getaway to Niagara Falls was partly because she didn’t want to fight in advance about my being Jewish – and she knew her parents and older relatives would never believe I “wasn’t religious.” Her three brothers accepted me immediately, explaining, “A lot of Jewish men’re in business – you can’t avoid them and, most of the time, you don’t want to – they’re very good.” Surprisingly, one of Mary’s younger sisters was worried, but that was mostly about our future – and – to her – our still theoretical children. “As long as they believe in the right god,” she told Mary, “I’ll give you my blessing.”

“It’s kind of the same family,” Mary gently pointed out. “Just father and son.”

“And The Virgin Mary,” her sister replied. “Who you’re named after.”

“I thought I was named after Grandma.”

“And who do you think she’s named for?”

Mary’s aunt had no concerns about us. In fact, after she visited us in the city, she gave us a large enough wedding present to buy a new couch – and matching arm chairs and side tables.

“You don’t have to do this,” we insisted, anticipating the day when she discovered our marriage was fake. We didn’t want her to be angry.

“We have the money,” Mary tried to persuade her. “We’ve just been shopping around the second-hand stores.”

“Forget about them,” her aunt said. “Every marriage should start with something new.”

As for my religion, she simply confided, “A Jewish man was once interested in me. This was after my first husband, and while I was just beginning to know my second. That was the same time I was trying to open my store – the first one, in Toms River – which was barely bigger than a newsstand. This man gave me a lot of good advice, but I don’t think we ever romantically went out on a date. But we shared a lot of lunches.”

“Was he nice?” Mary asked.

“They’re all nice,” her aunt immediately replied. “The men – they’re brought up that way. Though I can’t always say the same about the women.”

Before that discussion possibly got impolite, or before I got a little too curious, Mary moved us to a safer matter – national politics. There was no argument there, either – her aunt completely supported Roosevelt.

She liked my mother, too. Evidently, she wasn’t one of “those women.” The day Mary’s aunt visited us in the city, she also joined us for dinner at my parents’ apartment – there’d been no reason for them to meet on Barnegat. My parents had known Claire’s family for years, but they barely knew about Mary.

Claire also had a difficult time explaining our marriage to her own family, especially finessing why she wasn’t upset that – as her mother put it – “I’d gotten away.”

“Does he think Mary is prettier?” her mother asked.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Does he prefer women with lighter hair?”

”Mother...”

“Or was he disappointed because you’re so interested in business? I warned you about that.”

By that point, Claire said she was just laughing, and even her father was beginning to grin.

“I’m not the least bit worried about what Doc decides,” Claire had insisted. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Do you think that was telling them too much?” Mary asked, when Claire reported the conversation the following weekend.

“As we’ve said, they don’t know enough about what was going on this summer. So telling my mother what I did is like giving her only the border pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”

“And your father?”

“He’s still more concerned about my brothers.” She smiled. “Though now he’s suddenly worried about losing me – his free labor – before they can begin to work.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes – perhaps my biggest gain since I won on college.”

As with Claire’s parents, one reason Mary’s didn’t fight about me was because the were too happy she was both married and married to a doctor. And while there was some question about her moving to the city – no matter how close it was – that quickly went away. Especially, after Mary promised she’d visit Toms River every other weekend.

Claire was coming to New York on the alternate weekends, carrying mail and news. For most people, Mary never mentioned her marriage – so all mail needed to be handled through her parents’ address. “It’s kind of like having two different lives,” she admitted. “But I just don’t say a lot in my letters.”

That was also the way we’d decided to handle the rest of the gang – occasional, casual, letters from Mary to Spence and postcards to the rest of the guys. Spence as sporadically wrote back, often apologizing for the quick or short note, explaining it was their senior year, and they were all busy. And Al sent postcards that Larry and Mike signed.

We did tell my parents, shortly before Thanksgiving, that Mary was definitely pregnant. That’s the soonest logic allowed.

“So the baby’s due in early summer,” my father quickly counted. That was his predictable response.

“That’s the way things work,” I confirmed, grinning. “When they work – you know it’s not always certain.”

“But since you got married on September twentieth… and saying this happened on your honeymoon…”

“Give us a little decency,” I joked. “Maybe sometime after.”

“ Okay, sometime after.” He repeated his counting, this time openly, on his fingers. “October, November, December. January, February, March. April, May, June. You could have a Fourth of July baby.”

“We’re not that patriotic,” Mary said, laughing – and knowing the baby was actually due two months earlier.

“As long as you’re not pregnant in the summer,” my mother told her. “That’s miserable.”

“She’d be on Barnegat, if that happens,” I reminded everyone. “You know it’s cooler there.”

My mother shrugged, but I swear my father was still trying to count things out – maybe to make the baby due when it really was. In any case, he didn’t say anything, and we made the formal announcement to my gathered family at Thanksgiving. That weekend, we told Mary’s family the same thing.

We’d already told Claire that we were telling our family, and we knew word would get around from there. There was no stopping it, and – at least – that ended the question of, “Why isn’t Mary getting a job?” That had come up soon after we got back to New York.

“Of course, you’re going to work,” my mother suggested.

“You know how hard it is to find anything decent,” I quickly headed off.

“Not for women,” Mom corrected. “For as little as they earn. And you sew. Even if you don’t want to work in a factory – and who could blame you – you can do alternations and make dresses.”

“Or take care of children,” my father put in. “Even cook or clean houses.” He screwed up his face at that idea. I guess he didn’t want his new daughter-in-law working as a servant.

“If anything, she can keep my books,” I suggested. “Or track my appointments and files.”

“And how would you pay for that?” Dad asked. “You already have this fancy apartment.”

He was joking. My – our – new apartment was the second floor of a narrow brownstone, slightly down the block from my tiny office. It had the same two rooms, only in our apartment, they were somewhat longer. The back one was a combined living room/dining room, with a microscopic kitchen, and the other was Mary’s bedroom. There was, again, a cramped bathroom in between, but at least it had a tub. In other apartments we’d seen, that was jammed in the kitchen.

“I’ll cancel my answering service,” I told my parents, and they seemed to approve of that.

“It’s not really bringing new money into your household,” my mother pointed out. “But it’s a better use of what little you have.”

“I’m not really poor,” I insisted. “And I could be a lot less careful if some people could pay me.”

“But you know they can’t. And you know how much they appreciate all you’re doing. And it’s part of why you became a doctor.”

My mother had said that. She, my father, and I were talking over one of our dinners. It’s not like Mary wasn’t there, and it’s not like she wasn’t amused at this kind of conversation. She just chose not to compete.

“You have such a funny family,” she often told me. “Now I see where Larry and Mike get that.”

“It’s not exactly confined by religion,” I replied. “Mike’s as Catholic as you are.”

“Then maybe it’s New Yorkers. – you always seem to have something to say. And so quickly. All I can do is laugh.”

“Laughing’s good,” I admitted, smiling. “As long as you don’t feel outnumbered.”

“No. It’s too much fun.”

With the job question settled, Mary did start to run my office. We replaced my cot in the storage room with a few more file cabinets, and she started to use my desk in the reception area. It didn’t have much of a view, but since most of the time, I never used my consulting room – which had windows on the back garden – she could work in there. It also had an extension phone. The only awkward times were when I had the rare male patient who’d come to my office for privacy, and Mary was stuck in the front.

“It doesn’t happen often,” she told me. “And I can always write letters.”

She also did that when there weren’t files, appointments, and billing – or non-billing, so we didn’t embarrass people with no money – to manage. Keeping track of me was time consuming and tricky, too. Not all of my patients had telephones, so Mary couldn’t always call where I was – or where I was intended to be – and tell me about an emergency or a change. Sometime, I’d get to an appointment and be told I wasn’t needed – though that didn’t happen a lot because people always seemed happy to see a doctor. More often, I’d arrive and be told that Mary had called and left a message, in the same way my answering service had done that before. And if it were a real emergency, which changed my schedule, once she’d gotten through to me, she’d have to call all the people whose appointments had been delayed and explain why.

“I’m just as busy as he is on some days,” she told Claire, when we were visiting Toms River. “Of course, I don’t know anything near what he does – but I’m busy.”

“So you’re not afraid of living in the city?” Claire asked.

“Who’s had a chance?”

That was kind of a joke. When Mary and I first talked about her moving to New York, she wondered what she was going to do with all her time.

“You can explore,” I suggested. “You’ve only see a handful of museums and a little of Broadway.”

“And the Statue of Liberty.”

“There’s more.”

“But alone? I don’t know anyone here.”

“You’ve never had trouble making friends – not that I’ve seen. You write enough letters.”

“It’s something to do.”

“You’re better than I am at staying in touch.”

“You’re always working.”

Even when I supposedly wasn’t – when we got home from dinner, and Mary settled at our small dining table to write, and I stretched on the sofa with a magazine – I was often still working. My magazine was most likely a medical journal, and I was reading to keep up. When Mary wanted to listen to the radio, she kept the volume low.

“It’s not what I expected,” she admitted, when we occasionally talked about it.

“Are you that unhappy?”

She looked at me as if I’d gotten everything backwards. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life.”

That knocked me out, and all I could do was laugh.

So there we were – behaving like any newly married couple where the husband works twelve hours a day and often gets calls on weekends, while the wife does everything she can to help out. And if I stopped long enough to think about it, I was having more fun, too.