Sea Street

In Praise of My Wife

What follows is an excerpt from The Long Bridge Runner, currently on-line:

How sweet is first love. It comes on like the weather-wondrous and unstoppable-and dresses its prey in sunshine or rain. "Snow" is a more apt description-Snow, with its chilly indifference. Still, the hope of sunshine is powerful and profound-stirring dreams, dreams of the future. Dreams out of the first grade reader where the father is tall and dark and the mother-wife-is blond and petit, living as they do on a tree-lined street of cozy homes with pets named Spot and Fido. A rainbow crowns this world; and there some day, Daniel thought, he would live happily ever after-just him and the little blond girl.

This is how I thought it would be but three marriages later-one to a Japanese dress designer, one to a Jewish Med Student and one to a professional singer, Jackie Rojay, that many people on Cape Cod knew-taught me that I didn't know anything much about marriage. The failed marriages were mostly my fault; for starters, I was selfish and narcissistic but I couldn't see that the way selfish and narcissistic people never can.

At age 43 I hit a brick wall. My wife, Jacqueline, the singer, ran off with a plumber and I lost my business-ROJAYS Night Club, the forerunner of Star Bucks. I was very disillusioned. As an entertainer I had played Los Angeles, Vegas, Atlantic City, New York and London. Cape Cod figured into this because Jackie and I had a young son and he needed a place to go to school and live a normal life. But now he was in Florida with his mother. My other three children were in California with their mothers. I needed refuge. My parents had moved to West Virginia from the Midwest where my stepfather and his partner had purchased Mountaineer Gas, the state gas utility. It was there that I did a lot of thinking through the spring and summer of that year.

During this period of time I walked for miles every day thinking about my life and what I had done with it. I realized that for better or worse I had always been a star (one of the minor grade perhaps) but I had been the first trumpet player in the Army Band, a well-known jazz musician in Hollywood and for the last dozen years or so a successful nightclub entertainer. I had always put myself first and cast other people in my life in supporting rolls-it was all about me. That doesn't mean that I didn't care about my children or to some extend look after the women in my life but I seldom considered what other people needed because I was obsessed with what I needed-an audience, a room full of people where I could prove my worth night after night. This was my sanctuary, my safe, familiar retreat from the world around me. I was good at it and I was in control. All those years of practice and hard work and struggle paid off but now as I walk the streets I realized it had led to the fix I was in. Perhaps I needed someone to care about, to love and protect-someone I could draw strength from.

I must say that when the time came, I wasn't prepared. I wasn't prepared for the first time I saw Karen, saw her prancing down the sidewalk in Fairmont, West Virginia. I was playing a Caesar's Super Club with Jacqueline but Karen's dazzling looks, her southern girl prissiness, her way of walking with her wrist out in front of her like an aquatic creature so impressed me that I drove around the block to get another look. Of course, she was gone and I never saw her again for ten years.

I was divorced then, working with a pickup band. Rebels and Redcoats was the place to be seen and I was there when she walked in one night with a friend. She walked the same way, the ambling shambling gait described in the song "One" from A Chorus Line. I couldn't get up the nerve to approach her so I gave the maitre d' twenty bucks to copy her phone number off of the check she made payment with. One phone call the next day led to our first date.

Karen suggested Permons, the only three-star Michelin rated restaurant in West Virginia. 

The menu had no prices on it. This worried me and when the salads arrived they were full of assorted nuts. This worried me even more. I had spent my adult life in restaurants and nightclubs and knew that nutty salads meant something. It turned out that the girl who took the salad order was not a waitress or the waiter. No, indeed, the waiter arrived with the attitude of a descendent of the Hapsburgs-full white apron to the floor, a black formal vest and, as an indicator of the way things were, His sleeves were not folded up but rather held together with cufflinks that had Permons embossed on them.

"Permons," is what I had said to my stepfather when he asked me where I was going.

"Geeze, that's the most expensive restaurant in West Virginia," he remarked, "Here, take another hundred dollars."

That meant I had a total of two hundred and twenty dollars in my wallet and wondered ‘Would it be enough?'

The restaurant earned its Michelin rating. The filets were succulent, almost beyond the taste of meat and Karen ate hers with an intensity that made the hair on the back of my head stand up. She cut into it, sliced into it, chewed on it, forked it and finally put it between her juicy lips. She applied her napkin, a peach colored napkin, with a choreography of daintiness. She was darn near prissy, I thought and that was perhaps what had attracted me to her in the first place. Her beautiful cool prissiness.

After she had finished her filet and excused herself to go to the ladies room I noticed that every man in the restaurant stopped eating and watched what her body did to the silk lavender dress that she wore. Walking back toward the table, I knew that this was the most beautiful woman I had ever had anything to do with. I would only have her for an hour or two or maybe three. She would never date me again, I couldn't afford her, I couldn't even afford the thought of her and there was more to her than beauty; she possessed a playful teasing quality that she had shown in a tour of her office before we rode the fifteen floors up to Permons.

Her office was impressive, very impressive. She was no secretary; indeed, she described herself as the Tri-State Director of Tri-State Enterprises. "We have various holdings from West Virginia to Kansas" she said almost as an afterthought and then she teasingly sat on the front of her desk and crossed her gorgeous legs.

"My real background is in law. I read law at Morgantown. In fact, I started working for a lawyer when I was a freshman in High School."

And then, before I could think of anything to reposit she said, "Let's go eat," and jumped out onto the floor her pristine breasts bobbing in unison.

Yes, it would be over soon, I thought, ‘Why is she here with me-just because I called her on the phone and told her how I got her number and said ‘yes' when she asked if I had ever played in Fairmont.

I made up my mind before the dinner was over, before I laid out two hundred dollars to pay the bill, leaving slightly more than twenty dollars for a gratuity. I had twenty dollars left for gasoline and I would need it all to get back to Sterling-the sooner the better! This woman would never see me again and even if she said she would I couldn't afford it.

I thought to myself, before I go I'll do a little intellectual quiz and I began to talk about literature in a way that I thought would be impressive. Finally I asked, "Have you read Robert Browning?"
"Do you mean Elizabeth Barrett Browning's husband?" she asked thereby putting an end to my thoughts of intellectual superiority.

She wanted to walk around the block after we rode the elevator to the lobby and I walked with her without touching her. Finally she put her right hand inside my left elbow and stayed that way until I let her back in the car.

I was heading back to her house when she said, "Have you ever seen the river at night?" The Ohio was a block away and we parked above the marina and watched the reflection of Huntington upon the water. A coal barge passed by in front of a red and white tug. "It's romantic isn't it?" she said.

I laughed out loud, "A coal barge?" Then I started the motor and once again began the trip to her house.

When I got there I said, "Go in, please, and check everything, check your closets and your locks and all that and then come to the door and wave to me."

Karen felt as if she was being discarded and she was. It wasn't that she wasn't beautiful enough, smart enough, classy enough, sexy enough. On the contrary, she was much too much of all the above and when I saw her waving from her front door I pulled away with an uncharacteristic squall of my tires. But before I got to the freeway I remembered the record album and the roses that I had brought as gifts. She can have the roses, I thought but I only have about a dozen of those albums left and I drove back and knocked on her door and she had the album in her hand.

"May I use your bathroom before I go?" I said in a cold mater-of-fact way.

Afterward, as I started to leave she stood by the door and locked it and said, "It's getting too foggy. I don't want you driving in all this fog. You can sleep on my couch and I'll make you breakfast in the morning; and I didn't argue but I wasn't playing games, I went right to sleep thinking about my son in Florida.

In the morning I heard music which I recognized as being a record I had made ten years earlier, "Woke up this morning about noon or one, opened up the curtains and I let in the sun, I looked around for you but you're not there......" And as the record played Karen came back into the living room and knelt on her carpet and said, "I've played that record every morning for the last ten years. I've always wondered what you would be like. I had fantasies about you." She giggled nervously as she continued, "I truly did."

Her face was flushed now and in a very deliberate way she stood and held out her hand to me and led me into the dining room where she had set the table with juices, croissants and, what I came to know as, her legendary omelettes.

This was twenty-six years ago and Karen and I just celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary on March 5. In these twenty-five years she has taught me how to care for, protect and love someone because she has always cared for, protected and loved me. While having dinner at Albertos on our anniversary she raised her wine glass and said, "Here's to the next twenty-five years."

Realistically I think that's unlikely; but I'm going to take care of myself and try to live with Karen as long as I can.

Coming in May--Black, White and Gray--Obama's first 100 days.

Karen Rojay can be seen in upcoming episodes of The Dan and Dad Show, Saturday nights at 9:30 on Channel 17.