Charles Levenstein

The Market


Some say that summer has finished,
The sun is falling, hints of winter
Are in chill air, and the rain here
Is not soft, it insists on attention.

Then the sky clears, the mind
Forgets clues, loses all subtlety,
The sun, that lying harlot with plans,
Warms and seduces, I love you she says.

In the market her progeny, tomatoes, squash,
Peas still in their pods, lie waiting
Like Romanian orphans, Choose me!
Says the string bean, I long to adorn your stew!

I say, fill your basket! Golden corn,
Small round spuds with purple skin,
Boston leaves, mesculun, even spinach –
Fill your basket, sun is more fickle than words!

Artichokes


Artichokes have a way of sneaking in,
subversive as the mysterious aubergine –

But a straightforward pizza which has resisted
Hawaiian pineapple, pine nuts, even mustard greens,

somehow opens its arms to the leafy intruder
with pickled heart, Margarita is innocent --

An honest mistake, marinated, next it will be
cauliflower and a tawdry life of vegetable excess.

Greens


Lettuce is so frivolous –
But perhaps I’ve gone too far.

Iceberg is a solid citizen.

Mesculun, despite its name, dispenses
No hallucinations, gets me no closer
To god or other supreme vegetarians.

Mustard greens, now they are like salt,
Down home folks, something you can
Sit down with and talk –

As opposed to snooty sprouts or high falutin’
Watercress delicately presented in
Sandwiches with circumcised crust.

I prefer spinach, baby or adult,
Spinach gives you your money’s worth,
Can be cooked or laid out naked,
And in either case, is beautiful
And does the job.

My father claimed greens are for rabbits,
But it is not true:
They feed the people.

Against Roots


The idea of eating roots is not appealing,
Perhaps an overly squeamish reaction
Similar to insisting on closed doors, shades
Drawn after five, ironed handkerchiefs,

And my real objection is not to carrots,
Although they need not make such a display,
Potatoes are more discreet and turnips
Can hold up their heads anywhere! No,

It’s the disturbing peanut, who hangs
About in bars, mixes with other nuts
Of higher caste, the gracious walnut,
Distinguished cashew, the leechee –

Peanut, not even a root! is a social climber,
It’s latest presumption to hang about with
Organic foods and, unpreserved, three days later,
A lethal poison, a terrorist, not to be trusted.

Getting Married

I.

The first time was easy. We knew that parents on both sides would never agree to it. No one in my family had ever married out. On top of it, she was a Southerner, she was older than I was -- and she was probably some kind of communist. That’s not to say we did not have our own family communists. But the relatives split politically, half living in fear that the Rosenberg trial was forerunner to an American pogrom, the other half convinced that fascism was only two steps away. My mother threw Aunt Tilde out of the house after a fight in which Tillie said, “Some day there will be a war between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and your sons will be fighting on the wrong side!” My father liked Truman, my uncles and cousins in the Bronx were all for Wallace – and long after the election of 1948, the factions didn’t speak to one another.

On Mary Alice’s side, it is probably fair to say that no one had ever married a Jew, though some had met one or two. The family had crossed various Protestant boundaries – Daddy was a Baptist of some sort and Mama was very Episcopalian – but no one ventured across the Jerusalem or Roman divides. And the kid (me) was not even a Jew with money but probably some kind of Yankee communist. Mary Alice’s radicalism was expressed by her support for Dwight Eisenhower, not the traditional Southern Democrat. No one in any of the older generations thought this proposed marriage was a good idea. Worse, no one thought it was even close to a not-bad idea.

The only support we had was from the Bennies, my two roommates at school in Ithaca. Big Fat Bennie was a romantic, an actor, he could see only great things to come from the Romeo/Juliet wedding, although plainly he thought I was the Juliet and Mary Alice was Romeo. Little Bennie thought it would be a great joke on everyone, he would write a song about it and we could all get wrecked and celebrate – some day. This was not peer pressure – it was more like, in their eyes, a giant road trip.

So, instead of coming home from school for the Thanksgiving holiday, I traveled to Maryland to meet Mary Alice – and we were married by a justice of the peace. The witnesses were labor movement friends who were thrilled to help out – and the Bennies. I can’t remember if we had a honeymoon of any sort – probably not. Mary Alice went back to her job with the Dress Makers Union and I returned to school with the Bennies. I had just turned 21 and had six more months before graduation.

We planned via long-distance telephone calls to use the Christmas break to meet in New York and tell my parents and then go to Charlotte to let her folks know what we had done. What happened, however, was that by the time we got to New York, my parents had changed their collective mind. After all, it might be ok, maybe I would settle down a little, she seemed like a nice person, so what was the point in fighting this. I could not believe my ears. I suspect that one of my brothers had been lobbying – and had moved Mount Sinai. Even more staggering, Mary Alice was told by her folks that they would give our marriage their blessing. She was getting on in years and maybe this would be a good thing for her. (She was 24 years old at the time.) And they wanted the wedding to be in their home in the Spring.

So, once all the mountains had moved and the sea change occurred, we did not have the nerve to tell them that it was too late – we had already availed ourselves of a quickie wedding in Maryland. We didn’t tell them – we would be married in April in Charlotte as though nothing had happened.

II.

It was clear that my parents weren’t coming to any wedding in North Carolina. Neither of them liked to travel – and the South was a foreign country. While my father had worked in Florida during the war – he had sent me a picture of dolphins in a water park that I found fascinating –, his stories focused primarily on the size of the cockroaches, ones that ran up the walls in restaurants and were considered wildlife by the waitresses. The South was a savage place, best to be avoided.

My mother was originally from Philadelphia and the only traveling she did was on the Pennsylvania Railroad, perhaps once in a couple of months, to see her mother and sisters.

So the plan we had agreed upon was that we would have a party in New York after the wedding. Plans are not nearly as exciting as surprises, even for mountains. A veritable tsunami was waiting for me when I arrived in Charlotte.

The tidal wave came in two parts. First, it seems that there had been a big scandal about corrupt judges in North Carolina and the particular judge who was supposed to marry us was somehow implicated – no murders or anything, just some unfortunate money changing hands – and he was no longer available. In fact, the idea of having a civil ceremony presided over by an official of the state had lost all charm. Therefore, Mary Alice and her mother had considered all alternatives and come up with Dr. Sidney Goldman, pastor of the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in Charlotte. Dr. Goldman, I learned, had a fairly recent Ph.D. in drama from Cornell University, and was from a long line of initially reformed and then apostate Jews. In his church there was a new construction, a work of art covering a whole wall, that included the Mogen David, Bhuddist symbols, and I’m sure images of Kali that have since escaped my mind. No Marx though. In any case, he was a very nice fellow and assured us that the service would be non-denominational and would minimize the role of God and/or gods in sanctioning our union.

Second, and this was the really big wave, my parents had decided to come to the wedding after all.

III.

In my mind, my father’s opinion was not an issue. He rarely said anything within the family, preserving whatever voice he had for his friends and electrician colleagues. Occasionally he would speak to my two oldest brothers who he seemed to remember. My brother Norman and I were clearly my mother’s children. This still bothers Norman, even in his old age, but it never occurred to me that things could be any different.

And my mother was a tyrant. I will not speak at all for Norman, but from my own point of view, she was not merely the queen of the household, she was the Medusa, the Venus, the Kali, you name the emotional volcano, she was it. I was much younger than my brothers (including Norman) and therefore was the recipient of her most deeply felt feelings and fears.) She had counted on me to be a comfort in her old age, to be a reasonable facsimile of the daughter she never had, but I had turned bad, like milk kept too long in a poorly chilled refrigerator. I had fled the family home, gone off to the hills of New York State to escape and incidentally get an education – I had become some kind of radical at a time when that seemed like a frightening thing to be. And now I was marrying outside of the tribe. Unquestionably, I was killing her.

I had never been hit as a child, never spanked, never disciplined with a slap or a belt, none of that. But I had been in complete and total fear of my mother’s voice and the enormous weight of guilt and duty that she communicated – sometimes without words, even, just a look, a withering look of suffering. My mother suffered very well – and I, plainly was the source of her greatest pains.

And there she was, getting off the silver train, my father and a porter schlepping the baggage down. There they were, two Jewish immigrants arriving in the new land, short and stout, my mother’s heart breaking but courageous, my father – who knew what he was thinking or feeling? He was there to help her endure this torture her youngest son, her baby, was now subjecting her to –.

IV.

Mary Alice was in charge of the welcoming, although I was along for the ride. We gave everybody hugs and carried the bags to her blue Plymouth in the parking lot. And as we walked and then sat in the car, she explained to my parents the new developments: no judge, Sidney Goldman would be presiding. And, although we were sure that they were tired from the trip, Dr. Goldman really wanted to meet them, so we were taking them directly to his office – barely mentioning that it was in the U-U Church downtown.

I must have been in a fog during the whole discussion. I remember seeing them, getting into the car, delivering them to the church , and leaving them alone with Sidney. I think that Mary Alice and I walked around, sat in the car, walked some more – it was probably an hour of waiting. And then they emerged from his office, my mother wiping her eyes with a special gauzy flowered handkerchief she had brought that matched her orchid suit, Dr. Goldman’s arm around her, assuring everyone that everything was going to be just fine.

In the car, my mother had only one thing to say: No one at home could know about this. No one.

V.

The wedding went on without a snag. It was held in the garden at Mary Alice’s parents’ home. There were flowers in bloom – I remember gardenias, especially, the most exotic perfume – and the friends and family were overflowing with Southern hospitality. I was dressed in a very slim black European cut suite – Mary Alice’s mother said that I looked like I had just stepped off an airplane (not, I thought, a boat). And Mary Alice was stunning – a white wedding dress with many crinolines, a white veil that failed to conceal her hair that flowed like a strawberry blond forest. Everyone smiled. Everyone was nice to my parents. My mother cried a little and my father wrung his hands, not in despair, but for want of something else to do with them. Dr. Goldman, Sidney, was wonderful, filled with hope and spirit and kindliness. Not bad at all. We toasted with champagne and drank George Dickel #7, I think. I absolutely cannot remember what we had for dinner. Nor can I remember when my parents left for New York – someone else must have taken care of them.

VI.

In a week we were back in New York City for the reception my parents hosted for Yankee relatives and friends. Of course, as my brother Norman told me, my mother had told everyone about Sidney Goldman and the Unitarian wedding. There was no expelling from the Jewish community, there was no ostracism, there was a little scandal, but everybody liked that. Cousins watched to see how the family dealt with the marrying out and in years to come it became clear that I had broken the ice. We all were moving into America, for better or worse. The only sad part was that the Bennies couldn’t get to the New York party. They sent a telegram: CONGRATULATIONS! SORRY WE COULDN’T COME. HOW ABOUT ANOTHER CEREMONY IN ITHACA?