Saturday's Child (19 page)

Probably it's the unofficial teachers who make the real impact: relatives, friends, lovers, bosses, rivals, therapists, mentors, and definitely one's own children. Animals, too, and gardens, can be teachers.

But then there are the ones who are
supposed
to teach, from whom we're
expected
to learn, if not wisdom then at least knowledge, if not truths at least facts, if not talents at least skills.

Shirley Wetter was decidedly one of those. I have no recollection of how Faith or Sally found her, or how they fashioned the arrangement about my working schedule. All I know is that, when I was not quite six, after a one-month bout at the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, I was out of there and enrolled at the Wetter Private School in Mount Vernon. My mother said it was because the academic standing at PCS wasn't high enough, even if it did grant priority status to my career. She was right, but she must have suffered a conflict between her longing for this child to become sufficiently rich and famous to pull the family up from its immigrant origins (“to better ourselves” was the phrase), and her equally strong desire, culturally implanted by those same origins, for the child to become well educated (“improving your mind is
so
important”). In retrospect, I'm touched that she tried to invent a middle way.

Shirley Wetter (Miss Wetter to me) was of indeterminate age, with a youngish face but graying hair; she ran a one-woman small private school out of her home in a “nice” residential section of Mount Vernon. Her mother and sister had originally run the school with her, but both were now dead. I realize that she was perhaps only in her late thirties or early forties, yet there were whispers about her being a spinster—yes, the word was in active use—because of a tragic love, something to do with his having died as they were about to be married. How much of the legend was apocryphal I'll never know, nor did Miss Wetter make you feel you could probe into personal matters.

She wasn't a cold woman, though. Partly it was the house itself that intimidated: a large, dark, wood, beautiful house about seventy-five years old. Only once, when I took sick in class and was sent to the upstairs bathroom
and then given permission to lie down in a guest room until my aunt picked me up, did I ever get to see the upstairs—dusty lace curtains and mahogany furniture stood out against the wallpaper's faded mauve roses. Mostly we were confined to the downstairs, to the hall and two rooms.

I can still remember my first visit to that long, dark hall, the little bench on which I sat while my galoshes and leggings were tugged off, the different-height pegs for coats belonging, respectively, to the Big Kids and the Little Kids. The main schoolroom—originally, I imagine, a dining room—was a pleasant octagonal shape, with three large windows in three of the walls. A round table at which four students could sit stood in the center of the room, and three smaller tables, each capable of seating two students, were off to one side. Miss Wetter herself sat at an even smaller table in front of a marble fireplace mantle. The adjoining room was originally, I assumed, the front parlor or sitting room: another fireplace, a long library table, bookshelves with the big reference books, and a sofa-and-chairs set lived there. And the piano, a splendid piece of furniture that hadn't been tuned in so long it was hardly any longer an instrument: a
rectangular
piano, in full Victorian carved mahogany majesty. I used to fantasize that Shirley Wetter, who seemed to have no relatives, would leave that piano to me when she died.

Miss Wetter taught an intensive two-session day—grades seven through twelve (the Big Kids) in the mornings, from 9:00 to 12:30, and grades one through six (the Little Kids) from 1:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon. Once I'd begun working on
Mama
, my rehearsal and on-air schedule dictated my other activities. We had no rehearsal on Mondays, but we rehearsed from 10:00 to 1:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, and on Fridays we were in the studio all day. An efficient if peculiar arrangement was worked out, so that I could attend my missed Friday afternoon school session on Monday mornings, sitting in with the Big Kids (until I finally became one), breaking for lunch, then returning for the afternoon session with my own group. Tuesdays through Thursdays I attended the afternoon session immediately after the train from rehearsal in the City had deposited Aunt Sally and me back in Mount Vernon.

Mondays were my favorite. First, I got to be with the Big Kids, which meant I got to sit in the piano room and soak in by osmosis what would become my future curriculum. Also I got to have a real lunch break
instead of a quick sandwich wolfed down while lurching along in the train. Some days this lunch break meant that I walked five blocks to Aunt Sophie's apartment to be indulged in her cooking, but that was allowed only after I grew older, about nine or ten. When I was littler, I brought a sandwich and thermos with me and ate alone, sitting in Miss Wetter's hall, reading, which was a mild form of bliss. But other days, when it was warm enough in spring and early fall, Faith or Sally would bring me lunch, and we'd picnic on the broad steps of the Methodist church at the corner. They each ran true to form. Sally would bring a bologna, salami, or liverwurst sandwich on pumpernickel (which I came to fully respect only as an adult, yearning instead for bland white Wonder Bread like other kids ate), and she'd sit and read her newspaper while I munched. But my mother, characteristically, would make lunch into an occasion. Coming on her own lunch break from work at Lerner's, she might surprise me with Chinese egg rolls, or hot dogs in still-warm buns, or sliced chicken-breast sandwiches and thin sweet pickles on white bread with the crusts removed … and suddenly it would be a real picnic, a conversation, an intimacy. Sometimes I would put my head in her lap and doze while she stroked my hair. Those quiet moments of sitting, eating, talking, and simply being together on the sun-warmed granite steps live as treasured memories; even now they can render me temporarily able to forget whatever else she did that at times I've feared I might be unable to forgive.

At school we did the basics: the three Rs, plus geography, world and U.S. history, penmanship (sic), English (grammar, essays, book reviews), and what was then called social studies or civics. Study was taken seriously. Twice a week, we stood “on line” in a circle, waiting to be called on for rapid-fire math answers calculated mentally with no paper or pencil: multiplication tables, long division, fractions, and, later on geometry and algebra. On line (what a different meaning it has today!) also served for Doing Questions once a week: state and national capitals, match-the-author-to-the-book, naming grammatical parts of different sentences. I'd been reading well before first grade, so that was never a problem, and, given my memory, I was good at these firing-line spontaneous tests, enjoying them. In fact, I loved school. I was smart and knew it and knew that Wetter knew it, too.

The problem, of course, was that this tendency to know stuff and
worse, to
flaunt
it, hardly endeared me to the other kids. I didn't
mean
to ace out anybody; I just got genuinely excited about the work itself, and even more enthusiastic when I knew the answers. Furthermore, by age eight, I had already tried to ingratiate myself every way I could imagine, already failed miserably, and already given up hope of being liked for myself: I'd lost that contest to my image. It was painfully clear what my peers felt about this classmate who manifested herself on television live every week: awe and resentment. At the time, I didn't know Lao Tzu's warning that “the creation of envy in others is a great crime.” On the contrary, with their dismissive refrains of “So-and-so is just jealous,” Faith and Sally made me feel that the creation of envy in others was part of my job and that I should try to do it well. Still, I desperately wanted a real friend—not just Bunker the imaginary companion, not just the occasional kid actor hired for a one-shot on the show, and not just my dancing teacher's daughter who, while affable enough, was the handpicked girlfriend my mother chose for me.

I knew exactly who I wanted. I wanted Doris Scheidecker.

She was my age but taller than me, with sandy, tousled hair and blue eyes. She wasn't at all pretty, and she wore corduroy pants and flannel shirts. Some of the kids whispered that her family was poor and that she had a three-quarter scholarship, which didn't surprise me, because Doris Scheidecker was very, very smart. I skipped a grade twice, and so did she. She was, in fact, my only real competitor in the gold-star-high-marks-who-is-smarter department, and I loved her madly for that. I was ecstatic when I beat her at answering a question, but I even enjoyed losing to her, and the frequent times when she and I would be the only two left on line (when you erred you had to sit down) were so exhilarating that my mouth would dry out and my palms would sweat as if I were about to hear the floor manager's Stand-By backward five-count to going live on air. But Doris Scheidecker did not requite my lust for friendship. Doris Scheidecker did not like this little sissie who wore dresses and never coveralls, who disappeared every Friday but got to study with the Big Kids Monday mornings, who must have seemed rich and who really was famous and, as if all that weren't enough, was obnoxiously smart to boot.

I tried to show Doris who I really was. In my pursuit of her friendship I jettisoned all pride. I brought her little presents: a paper origami bird I
learned to make from a Japanese actor who did a guest appearance on the show; a watered-silk violet ribbon I'd stolen from Faith's sewing kit, for Doris to use as a bookmark; one of my lace hankies Faith had monogrammed
R
, from which I'd secretly picked the monogram, patiently working with a pin and nail-scissors at the initial's limbs until I'd got it to look like a tiny mangled
D
instead. But Doris always shrugged, muttering, “I don't want that,” and turned away. I was slow and I was stubborn, but after three long years of this even I got the message. I told no one about the rejection, because I didn't want to hear the Job's comforters Faith and Sally always became in such cases. I kept my hurt to myself, over time acidifying it into a fuel that intensified my competitiveness. And when I won first in academic standing the fourth year in a row and Doris, as four-time runner-up, was forced again to congratulate me, I shrugged, “I don't want that,” and turned away.

Perhaps we might have developed a different camaraderie, a team spirit, had there been any teams. But there were no sports and no physical education, which doubtless relieved my mother and aunt. In clement weather the Little Kids were taken into the backyard for a fifteen-minute recess each afternoon. Supervised games were the order of the day, but these sometimes ran the Olympian risk of falling down on the grass, so I usually didn't get to participate. To her credit, Shirley Wetter disapproved (she always insisted I at least come outside for some air), but my playing nothing except musical chairs or circle dancing must have been part of the special arrangement for my “safety.”

Real
dancing took place elsewhere, but that was part of my career preparation. Once we moved into Manhattan and I'd graduated to toe shoes and work
en pointe
in difficult combinations, I took class five times a week under the tyranny of the revered, tiny, unintelligible Madame Nevelska at Carnegie Hall studios. But I'd already attended dance classes in Mount Vernon for six years—ballet, tap, and modern (most kids took only one, but I took all three), each taught by Grace Liccione, a striking woman with ramrod posture, huge dark eyes, and gleaming black hair worn in a long ponytail or wound in a chignon. She had a daughter (Faith's choice for my girlfriend) named Georgiana, who'd had been born with a slightly clubbed foot but who had been lovingly, mercilessly trained by her mother to, as Grace put it, “transcend” the disability and become an
accomplished dancer; Grace and Faith shared a friendship as well as an identification in maternal ambition. Each year the Liccione School of the Dance held a big recital at Wood Auditorium to which all the families came—as many as four or five hundred people. I remember dancing through various recitals as a Valkyrie, a Petunia, a Cowgirl, a Day Hour in “Dance of the Hours,” the Virgin Mary, and a Powder Puff. But my biggest moment came when I was cast as Cinderella in a special PTA night at the Robert Fulton School auditorium, for which Liccione presented a grand finale ballet. My narcissistic recollection of how hard I worked to earn the part and dance it well was humbled recently when, going over old scrapbooks for the writing of this memoir, I came across the program for “Cinderella”: blazoned across the front is the announcement “Featured Artist: Robin Morgan, TV Star.” Admission, you see, was being charged, and I was considered a draw.

But at the time, I didn't resent dance classes or feel particularly displayed or exploited. Grace Liccione had an authentic passion for all forms of dance and communicated that passion to her students. She made
everyone
want to excel, so I felt less alone in my drive to overachieve. But I
did
like the rest breaks we'd get. That was when Rosina Tinari (who was younger than me but bright) and Dorothy Drewes (who was older and wanted to become a professional ice skater) and Carol Sherman (who was kind of snotty about her dimples but played my prince in “Cinderella”), and all the other girls would get to collapse onto the wood floor, surrounded by mirrored walls. We would sit cross-legged in our sweaty leotards, facing each other's backs in a circle, and give each other back rubs or slowly brush each other's hair. Oh, the sensuality of that exercise! Young girls, ranging in age from eight to fourteen, in a giggly, innocently orgiastic ritual wherein you gave pleasure to the girl in front of you while being pleasured by the girl behind you! Mrs. Liccione would retire for her own ten-minute break, but Mrs. Cordes, who played piano for our classes, kept watch—and let us know she disapproved of the way her charges transformed themselves into voluptuaries, moaning Ooooohs and Aaaaahs of delight along with directions specifying “Ouch! Don't brush so hard!” and “A little more to the
right
, Dumbbell.”