Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York

  Copyright

  This edition first published in paperback in the United States in 2004 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  Woodstock & New York

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  Copyright © 1972 by Gail Parent

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  ISBN 978-1-46830-204-2

  For Lair

  Contents

  Copyright

  The Facts

  From Four to Twenty-one, Including Loss of Virginity

  On Jobs and Apartments; Miss Burke and Miss Melkin

  Halloween and Other Problems

  Europe

  The Second Year

  Fire Island

  The Wedding (Not Mine)

  Enough Already

  Arrangements

  Harold

  The End

  Epilogue

  The Facts

  A FEW YEARS AGO, on the East Side of Manhattan, not far from Bloomingdale’s, a man set up a business where he sold diet shakes, delicious chocolate milk shakes having only seventy-seven calories. Well, I tell you, fat young girls came from near and far and lined up around the block at lunchtime. Only seventy-seven calories and such heaven! I was one of the ones that had two for lunch every day.

  Many of the girls would ask the man what was in the drink. He just smiled and said, “A secret ingredient.” The girls started to doubt that the shakes had only seventy-seven calories. They formed a committee and went to City Hall (or wherever it is you go to complain). The man was investigated by the Food and Drug Commission (or whoever it is who does that sort of thing). There were more than two hundred and eighty calories in those diet shakes! How could he? “How could he lie like that?” was the cry.

  I’m committing suicide. DO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE A MAN LIES ABOUT CALORIES?

  Yes, I am going to kill myself. When they find my body in my small, overpriced one-room apartment, it will be slumped over this suicide note. My father will read it and nod his head. My mother will take it to bed with her and read a little each night with a glass of warm milk, slowly massaging wrinkle cream on her hands and face. My sister will skim through, and my friends … my friends? No, no real friends. Sorry.

  My name is (was?) Sheila Levine. Sheila Levine? People named Sheila Levine don’t go around killing themselves. Suicide is so un-Jewish.

  I lived, when I lived, at 211 East Twenty-fourth Street, formerly of East Sixty-fifth Street, formerly of West Thirteenth Street, formerly of Franklin Square, Long Island, formerly of Washington Heights. Which means there are only about a hundred thousand other Jewish girls like me. Exactly like me, all with hair that has to be straightened, noses that have to be straightened, and all looking for husbands. ALL LOOKING FOR HUSBANDS. Well, girls, all you Jewish lovelies out there, good news! The competition will be less. Sheila Levine has given up the fight. She is going to die.

  Why would a nice Jewish girl do something dumb like kill herself? Why? Because I am tired. I have spent ten years of my life trying to get married, and I’m tired. I know now it’s just not going to happen for me. Come on, I never had a chance.

  FACT: There are one hundred and three girl babies born for every hundred boy babies born. So, you figure I’m one of the extra three girls.

  FACT: Many Jewish boys, à la Portnoy, grew up hating-loving their Jewish mamas and vowing to marry a non-Jewish girl. So I’m ethnically undesirable. Flat-chested blondes are in—Jewish girls, Polish girls, Italian girls are out.

  FACT: Many non-Jewish girls want to marry a Jewish boy. They are encouraged by their mothers because Jewish boys don’t drink or run around and they make such good husbands. Jewish girls want to marry Jewish boys for the same reasons and because Jewish husbands let their wives have maids.

  FACT: This is the age of the Jewish homosexual. More Jewish boys became fags than Jewish girls became dykes. THIS COUNTRY LOST MORE JEWISH BOYS TO HOMOSEXUALITY THAN IT DID IN ANY MAJOR WAR.

  FACT: There are more boys who think marriage is out-moded, passé, than there are girls with the same thoughts. Women’s Lib, I hate to disappoint you, but there are few members who wouldn’t give up a meeting with you for a wedding night.

  FACT: New York City is now crawling with thousands of girls all looking for husbands, outnumbering the boys looking for wives.

  FACT: SHEILA LEVINE AIN’T NEVER GOING TO GET MARRIED. SHE NEVER HAD A CHANCE.

  So, Pop, you’re saying to Mom, “So she didn’t get married yet. So what was so bad about not getting married that she had to go out and do this terrible thing to herself?” (She killed herself, Pop. That was the terrible thing she did. Say it, you’ll feel better.)

  Come on now, be fair. You and Mom are the ones who taught me how important it is to be married.

  Born: August 12, thirty years ago … “My, what a beautiful baby.” … “So, it’s a girl, Manny? You know what that means, you have to pay for the wedding. …” One day old! One day old, and they’re talking about weddings.

  Mom, you told a story. “I took Sheila to the doctor when she was a month old, and I was so upset because she had a tiny little scratch on her face. You know how concerned I am about faces. You know what the doctor told me? He said, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry yourself, Bernice. It’ll be gone by the time she gets married.’ ” Married? There it is again, Pop, and I was one month old!

  You taught me good. You bought me dolls and little stoves and little dishes to play house with. I was the mommy; Larry Singer was the daddy. “Look at the two of them. See how nicely they play. Wouldn’t it be something if they grew up and got married?” You know who’s talking. It’s the girl’s mother. You hear the word “marriage,” it’s always the girl’s mother.

  It’s not only the parents’ fault. I heard it everywhere. I read Dick and Jane, and they had a mommy and a daddy who were married. Noah’s Ark, they came two by two. Everything comes in pairs but Sheila Levine. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Sheila?” … “I want to be a wife and a mommy.” … “Good girl.”

  Yes, I learned at a very early age that I had better get married. A Jewish mother wants her sons out of the Army and her daughters down the aisle. From the crib we hear, “It will be the greatest day of my life when I dance at your wedding.” “If only I should live to see my children married, I would die a happy woman.” I tried. I tried to get married and have a king-size bed and gold towels and sterling silver service for twelve. I tried for years, and what do I have? I have my old bed from home, and towels with holes because single girls buy blouses instead of towels, and four forks—three stolen from my mother, one stolen from Sardi’s.

  From Four to Twenty-one, Including Loss of Virginity

  AT FOUR I was madly in love with Alan Hirsch, who was madly in love with Cynthia Fishman. He played doctor with me but swore he would marry her when he grew up. At age four I was already the other wom
an. I should have known then. But no, I had hopes.

  At seven, although there was no young man on the horizon, I already had my whole wedding planned. I sat with my best friend, Ruthie, on her white bedspread with my shoes off, and with the help of Lydia Lane, paper bride doll, we worked out the big event step by step. I don’t remember all of it, but I do remember that Ruthie and I would have a huge double wedding, under crossed swords at West Point. Ruthie did have a wedding; only it was under a chuppah in the West Bronx. I don’t blame you, Ruthie. I don’t blame you at all. Congratulations and may you live to see your daughters marry.

  At fourteen I knew what marriage was all about. I no longer discussed it with Ruthie. I left Ruthie in Washington Heights along with all my beloved “baby toys” that I fought to take with me to Franklin Square. “Why take them, Sheila, you never play with them anymore.” I wanted my baby toys, Mother, because I was moving to a strange place and I was scared. You let Melissa take hers. Lydia Lane and her entire trousseau were thrown down the incinerator. An omen?

  So at fourteen I sat on my white bedspread with my best friend, Madeline—the names were much classier in the suburbs—and together we figured it out. Marriage was having a Jewish count crazy about you. We would have a house in Manhattan and a house in London and a house in Paris and a house in Rome, and we would travel from house to house to house to house with our husbands. Madeline also got married and still lives in Franklin Square not three blocks from her mother. Are you happy, Madeline? You may not think of yourself as happy, but would you trade places with me? Your home with the fake fur toilet seat for my grave?

  Am I shocking you, Mother? Are you plotzing and dying and very embarrassed that your daughter killed herself? I’m truly sorry if I have embarrassed you. You could tell the Hadassah ladies that I was murdered by a jealous lover. I wish.

  By the time I arrived at Syracuse University, I had my ideas on marriage really developed. My husband would have to be creative. He could be a lawyer only if he loved the theater; a doctor, if his hobby was painting; a painter, if his hobby was making money in the stock market.

  I had a lot of time to develop these ideas, mainly on Saturday nights when I sat in the dorm dateless. Yes, Mom. Yes, Dad. Dateless. I was shocked, too, Mom. You always told me I was the most beautiful thing you ever saw. I lied to you on the phone every Sunday night, when I called and reversed the charges. I made up boys’ names and everything. Why did you believe me? How come you thought I was so popular? Did you really expect your darling Sheila, five four, weighing in at a hundred and fifty-seven pounds, to be Queen of the Prom?

  “Look, Manny, how crazy she talks. Wasn’t she a beautiful girl when she was alive?”

  No, my sweet parents. I sat with the other dateless girls, some too tall, some too fat, pimples, bad breath, you name it. I sat with them all in Flint Hall, watching the datable dressing, borrowing each other’s sweaters and signing out. We waved them good-bye, and then we played bridge, listened to albums and ordered the hundreds of pizzas that added to our miseries. I wonder how many of the dateless became marriedless?

  Syracuse wasn’t all bad. I lost my virginity there. Quick, Dad, the smelling salts! Mom is plotzing again. “My daughter, Sheila, lost her virginity?”

  Yeah, Mom, I got lucky.

  Diane Rifkin, a girl who lived on my floor, was going with a guy named Steve in the worst fraternity at Colgate and he asked her if she had a friend for a friend of his for Winter Weekend. Three girls in the dorm turned down the offer, but I said yes.

  “Listen, I have a date for your friend.” … “What’s she like? Is she pretty?” … “She has an interesting face.”

  I went so that I wouldn’t have to lie to my Mommy and my Daddy on the phone. I also went because I wanted a Winter Weekend.

  Steve picked us up at the dorm. He piled our suitcases and me in the back seat of his old white Impala, and he and Diane got in front. I was the mother-in-law. All the way to Colgate, I stared out the window and tried not to notice Steve’s hand up Diane’s dress. Diane’s hand on Steve’s pants. The roads were icy. One good squeeze from Diane, and dear Lord, we could have been killed.

  My date was waiting for us at the fraternity house. Will Fisher. Mom, I told you his name was Will Fishman. I lied to make you happy. Were you happy?

  Will Fisher was very tall and very thin. He wore flannel shirts like the ones my mother forced me to take to camp. And he had ugly teeth. What did I expect? What did he expect?

  We all went to the basketball game on Friday night and sat in the stands with the rest of the fraternity and their dates. Colgate won. I was so happy. Why? I wasn’t crazy about basketball. Colgate meant little to me, and I didn’t like Will. I was happy because I wasn’t sitting in the dorm, playing bridge and eating pizza.

  After the game, Steve, Diane, Will and I went to a small Italian restaurant—Mama Something. Cheap food, red and white checked plastic tablecloths, hard benches, Chianti bottles with candles. We bought a bottle of cheap wine and went back to the cheap apartment that the boys shared. I didn’t want to go.

  “Sheila, darling, listen to Mother. Don’t let a boy touch you, you know where.”

  I had to go, Mom. I was trapped. I was trapped in a small room with unmatching madras spreads, with bullfight posters on the walls, with the Kingston Trio on the hi-fi and the whole place smelling like dirty laundry.

  “SHEILA, DARLING, DON’T LET A BOY TOUCH YOU, YOU KNOW WHERE.”

  Very soon after we arrived at this bachelor pad (Playboy should have done a spread on it. I’m sure the stained walls would have come out fabulously in the photographs) the lights went out, and Diane and Steve got right to it. For half the night, there was a symphony of sounds, unzipping, unhooking, breathing, sighing, panting, the mattress creaking, and guess what, folks? … It went so well … an encore. Bravo! Bravo, Diane! Bravo, Steve! You were great! I really enjoyed listening to you. A stag film for the blind.

  Do you have any idea what it’s like sitting on a bed with a virtual stranger whose teeth are bad and listening to fucking? All those naughty sounds falling on virgin ears. What the hell do you talk about? “So, Will, tell me all about your major,” and from across the room we’d hear, “Steve, don’t, that hurts.”

  “Do you like Bergman? I think Bergman is a genius, don’t you, Will?”

  “Diane, come on, roll over on your side.”

  Will was quiet and sneaky. Several hundred times he tried to touch me you know where. I wriggled away. He wriggled toward me. There’s not much wriggling you can do in a single bed. The hand tried to touch me. I moved the hand. The hand came back. His aim was pretty good, considering the room was pitch-black. I was scared. It’s not that I was sexually naïve. I spent a summer being a drama counselor at Cantor’s Hotel in the Catskills. Oh, the goings-on. Look, I spent a lot of nights heavy petting, okay? In high school, I necked for hours. The boy and I both went home with rashes, but this was different.

  At first we were just sitting on the bed. Then Will caught me off-balance, and we were lying on the bed. I remember I was lying there in a hot red wool dress.

  “So, Will, where you from?” I removed his hand.

  And from across the room, “Steve, wait, let me put the pillow under me.”

  “Albany.” The hand was back.

  “Albany, that’s great. One of the girls on my floor is from Albany. Rose Morrison.” I removed his hand.

  “I don’t know a Rose Morrison.” The hand was back.

  Then Will got my girdle off. I know what you’re thinking. How in the hell did Will get my girdle off if I didn’t want him to take it off in the first place? Persistence, that’s how. Little by little he rolled it down. God, it felt good to get out of that itchy thing. Yeah, I wanted it off. Let me tell you, a panty girdle is not necessarily a good chastity belt.

  The girdle unrolled and off (it caught on my leg three times; the whole project took him more than half an hour), Will got up and went to the bathroom. You know how appet
izing that is before sex? I had to go, too, only I was too embarrassed.

  “Come on, Sheila, darling, go to the bathroom before we get in the car.”

  “I don’t have to go.”

  “It’s a long ride to Grandma’s. You’ll be sorry.”

  I wouldn’t let him take my dress off. I held onto it like there’s some law someplace that says if you do it in a hot wool dress, it doesn’t count.

  My hand got tired moving his hand. My mouth got tired talking. I couldn’t keep up the small talk, and he couldn’t keep down his desire to do what his roommate was doing.

  So, finally, as the sun was beginning to rise, I, Sheila Levine, let Will Fisher touch me you know where and he did you know what. Got it up there, didn’t you, Will?

  So big deal. It hurt. No tiny spot of virgin blood on his madras spread or anything. So now I couldn’t be sacrificed to the gods. So I was lucky that I didn’t have a Will Fisher, Jr., considering neither of us bothered to stop his sperm from fertilizing my egg.

  Ruthie, remember when we found out how babies are made? We were sick. We couldn’t imagine how anyone could do it, especially our own parents. Did you ever do it, Mom?

  Madeline, remember how many hours we discussed what it would be like? We really and truly thought it must be a trip to heaven—violins, waves, the whole bit. Do you think Bob and Rhoda did it when we were in high school? I think so. They spent an awful lot of time together, and she was the only girl who didn’t have to have pimples removed from her yearbook picture.

  Oh, God, Melissa, do you remember when I told you? I was thirteen and you were eight, and I told you all about penises and vaginas and everything. You went crying to Mom.

  Mom and Dad, remember the night I walked in on you? I opened the door to tell you I had decided not to sleep over at Madeline’s, and there was a strange rustling of sheets. Did I catch you at it, you little devils? It was a Saturday night. Did you do it every Saturday night? Did I ruin a whole week’s fun by my intrusion? No. I couldn’t have. My mother would never do a dirty thing like that.