The husband we shared

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:20:00 +0000

The slim, dark-haired woman sitting at the table in the Westchester brasserie was reading "Pride and Prejudice." That was a predictor of a potential friendship, but our lives would eventually intersect in ways we could never have dreamed.

But this was how it began.

"You're reading one of my favorite books," I said, introducing myself. "You must be Carole."

A mutual friend had set us up. "There's a new family in town," she told me, "and the wife really misses the city. Invite her to lunch. She's a writer. You'll have a lot in common."

Really? I was a homemaker, wife of a professor, mother of two young boys. I freelanced some, and lived a comfortable, rather solitary life in a stone house on a rolling piece of land with a vegetable garden and a pond. I cooked and arranged flowers, carpooled and prepared dinner parties. I had longed to live in the city but never had the opportunity.

As we nibbled leafy things, Carole and I sized each other up. She wrote short stories for Redbook. She was interested in quantum physics and psychology. Was I? Not exactly. But Pilobolus? Rauschenberg? Mahler? Yes. The chance to stretch my cultural self was stimulating, beyond my usual suburban discussions of Boy Scouts and septic tanks.

What my father lost gambling

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 22:01:00 +0000

I never really understood my father.

Daddy was a "professional gambler," if betting daily on greyhounds and thoroughbreds could be considered a profession rather than an addiction. His mornings were spent at the desk in my brother's room, hunched over the Racing Form in his robe. And most of his days and nights would be at Hialeah or Gulfstream or the Miami Beach Kennel Club, doing mysterious things that seemed to pass for his life's work.

The only legitimate thing Daddy ever did to earn money was invest in a plot of land on nearby Di Lido Island, so when someone asked us what Daddy did for a living we were able to say he was in "real estate." In fact, I was so prepped by Mom to say those two words that when the teacher asked my name in kindergarten, I proudly blurted "Real Estate."

I noticed a curious thing about gamblers from an early age: Daddy didn't get excited when he won at the track. No, the adrenaline would be flowing, the monologue would be deafening and he'd come roaring into the house, pacing up and down and yelling -- when he'd almost won. And he'd be cursing when he lost.

So when he was quiet, I figured he'd won some money. He wasn't often quiet.

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The husband we shared

What my father lost gambling