The year was 1965. They had known each other in college, as
friends. Mom had always had a little bit
of a crush on Dad. He was Jewish. She had such a passion for all things
Jewish. He was bright and sensitive. But he did not seem available to her as
anything more than just a friend. There
was always something, she later observed, a little bit sad and broken about
him. His inner sadness attracted her to
him; he was a kindred spirit. Perhaps
she knew unconsciously that he had suffered some of the same abuse as she, in his
own formative years.
They had met through friends in the late 50s, while
attending Adelphi University on Long Island.
Dad had been the president of the student United Nations. They shared the same group of friends, or at
least their circles mingled. After
graduating college in 1961, they lost touch.
1962, 1963, 1964, all went by.
Sometime during these years, Mom had fallen in love with a
brilliant, but distant narcissist named Garapet. He was an intellectual, a bohemian who had
emigrated from Persia, from a wealthy Armenian family. Their first real conversation, they sat in a
park in New York City and birds alighted on his finger, like some Greek god of
nature, he was like Dionysus with his exotic looks and confident, free
spirit. She fell in love with him,
though her strict Catholic morality prevented her from doing anything more than
kiss him. After all, she was a virgin
and intended to stay that way until her wedding day. And he wooed her with his debonair ways. But predator that he was, he urged her to let
him make her his mistress. He offered to
set her up in an apartment and give her the finest things, if only she would be
his lover. She could not abide by
that. For some reason, he would not
marry her. Was his family Muslim? Were
they Orthodox Christian? That was still
a mystery to her, decades later, when she told me the story. But it just would not work, he told her. His family would never accept her. But he told her that he loved her and the
apartment was his offer of commitment.
She cried. How could he love her
and still make such demands upon her?
And so he cut off all contact with her.
He stopped returning her calls.
She was heartbroken.
For weeks, she could not reach him. Finally, she went to his apartment to
confront him. He answered the door,
surprised to see her. He did not invite
her in, but spoke to her at the threshold.
She could see inside that he was entertaining. In contrast to the rainy winter weather
outside, the apartment was warm, inviting, but meant for another. His guest, a very handsome young man, as
exotic as he was, who must have been a friend from out of town. With dark eyes and hair, he seemed South
American, a Spanish prince, a descendant of conquistadors. Absorbed in himself, he seemed unconcerned
with what was going on at the front door.
Garapet explained to her that he could not give her what she was looking
for, and that she would just have to deal with it. Take it or leave it. And so she left and went to her car to
cry. She cried for a long time. A
stranger, a woman, even approached her to see if she was okay. She would not admit that she was not,
claiming that she was fine; she pulled herself together and then thanked the
woman, driving off.
She even considered for a moment giving in, putting aside
her morals, just to be with him. She
loved Garapet that much. Then, she spoke
to her cousin, Nicholas, who was a friend of Garapet’s. They all had attended
college together. Didn’t she know? Nicholas asked her. Garapet was dating the man she saw in the
apartment. Had he not told her? Garapet was bisexual. She was stunned. In those days, this was still considered to
be very avant garde and was largely unheard of.
But even still, with her crowd of bohemian friends, this was not what
shocked her. After all, their friend
Corey was gay and it fazed none of them.
It was Garapet’s secretiveness that hurt her. That she was not his only love, that he had
lied to her and kept this from her. That
was what stunned and injured her. And
so, the beautiful man she saw inside the apartment was her competition, as she
described it. And he was some pretty
stiff competition, she would later
joke. As beautiful as my
mother was, in my eyes, I can only imagine what a beautiful specimen of manhood
he must have been to garner that kind of attention. And so she resolved within herself never to
love another man again. For weeks,
months, she could not forgive herself. Time went by and she received a salient piece
of advice from a friend of hers, an elegantly mannered and highly cultured
friend from Africa named Tobias Mechekana.
He said to her, pithily, “Barbie,” as he called her with his rolled Rs
and poised embouchure, “Do not be afraid of every pair of pants you see.” This advice from a wise friend convinced her
of her folly. And she resolved that
maybe, just maybe, if the right man came along, she would open her heart
again.
And in the early months of winter—in January, 1965—Richard
Greenberg called her, out of the blue. A
few weeks earlier, he had run into two mutual friends at the New York Public
Library and inquired if Barbara Merget was still unmarried. One of them, Bruce, said she was and gave
Richard her phone number. When he
called, they talked for hours, like old friends. She agreed to go with him on a date.
And so on this cold, January evening, he picked her up in
his car and took her to a restaurant in Nassau County called Andre’s. It was a French restaurant, swanky, the best
he could afford, which wasn’t much on his salary as a reimbursement agent at
the state mental hospital. That wasn’t
what he wanted to be doing, but it was a living. And so he saved up his money and took her
out.
The restaurant was a little bit dark, an attempt at mood lighting. It was a bit hard to see each other, but they
did not care. Even the fine French food,
replete with butter and cream, as good as it was, paled in comparison to the
conversation. As they sat across the
table from each other, engaged in lively and brilliant discussion, they made a
connection like they had never been able to before, with each other or with
anyone else. Dad said to his date: “I
want you to know that I’m really enjoying myself. The company is particularly delightful.”
“Well, they’ll be very happy to hear that,” she responded wryly,
almost deliberately avoiding the compliment, as if she had not even realized
that the compliment was meant for her. Her humility was charming to him.
When they left, exiting the back entrance of the restaurant
which opened out onto the parking lot in the rear, there was “black ice” on the
white concrete back steps. Mom’s shoe
caught a little bit of the ice and she slipped down several of the concrete
steps, and wound up sitting in the snow and ice that covered the black top of
the parking lot, with a wet bottom. The
maître-d’ witnessed, having stood by to see his guests off, and hurriedly
rushed down the steps to her aid, fearing a lawsuit and for the establishment’s
reputation, as well as expressing genuine concern about her well-being. Dad had rushed ahead of him, already at her
side. And she just laughed. Her bottom was a little bit bruised, along
with the dampness, but she was unhurt.
Just her pride. And she laughed
at her own clumsiness. And as the maître
d’ tried to help her to her feet, she just sat there and laughed in the cold,
Long Island winter night, the air crisp with a smidge of moisture from the last
snow that adorned the ground. And the
blackness of the night sky was pierced by the street lamps surrounding the
parking lot, like spotlights on the crucial scene in a romance movie.
Dad watched this marvelous creature whom he had never fully
noticed during their college years, so full of verve and joy and humor and
brilliance. At that moment, he had
fallen in love with her. And I, hearing
this story so many years later, fell a little bit in love with her myself.
