Early in my first marriage to Jay, the electronics engineer/writer/scientist/sci fi editor/handball player/guitar-banjo-tipple enthusiast/and drawer of voluminous schematics and electronic circuits, also former Merchant Marine radio officer during WWII, and radio ham, and sunken ship survivor, we were living on 8th Ave. on Manhattan’s West Side, just below 18th St. I was 25-something and he was 46. I thought he was better than sliced bread and he thought I was the funniest female on the planet.

One night, after dinner at a Spanish restaurant on 7th Avenue and 14th Street we were rolling home – we usually had paella and it was easy to eat too much. We were walking up 8th Avenue, when we passed two Dead End Kids in animated conversation. Suddenly, one stops, grabs his friend by the arm and says in a shocked voice straight out of the movies, “Wha?? Ya never red O’Henry?”

We laughed all the way home, and ever after when an occasion called for shock and disbelief, one of us would turn to the other and say, “Wha?? Ya never red O’Henry?!!!?”

Because of our age difference, yes, there were times when Jay felt I needed instruction. One particularly uncomfortable time, and eager to distract him, I looked at him woefully, put my leg in a trash basket, and pulled on an imaginary cord. “Goodbye, Cruel World,” I lamented. (Yes, it worked.)

Whenever he came up the stairs to our third floor loft on lower Second Avenue that we were then living in, I would call out helpfully and “haul him up” as if I were pulling on an anchor, making appropriate sounds of a rope under stress.

Nothing in life, to Jay, was without its scientific roots. He carefully calculated and wrote the longitude and latitude of 2nd Avenue on one of the support beams, and there the legend remained for many years. It was with great sorrow I let the painters cover it up when I was renovating the loft after his death.

The loft was in an old building that was once, I was told, a stable, another time, a brothel. There was a small, narrow restaurant on the ground floor, so you might guess we would, from time to time, have mice and maybe somebody larger. So Jay bought and set those little wooden traps and the mouse population began to thin out. One day the electric meter reader came in to check the meter and he and Jay were chatting. The fellow’s eyes kept straying to a little sign Jay had posted on a pillar. “Stantons – 8 -- mice, zero” it said. He didn’t ask but I know it bothered him.

Years later when Jay was ill and bed-ridden, I found an ailing and really huge rodent in the bathroom. I pounded him with a little shovel, scooped him up and threw him out a rear window into the parking lot, where he landed on the hood of a new, white sedan. I often wonder what that fellow thought when he found this thing on his car.

Jay, always absorbed in his experiments and reading, answered the door one day, early on, when we were still in the 8th Ave. apartment. We had a typewriter (remember those?) on a typing stand, next to our kitchen table, and I was working on something. I also wasn’t wearing anything – zilch.

The doorway had a full view of moi. It was a young man with a “working my way through school” scam and Jay was humoring him. So I called out, “Honey, please close the door,” and got no response. So I called out again with no luck, and finally I shouted, “Would you CLOSE THE GODDAMN DOOR.” Jay turned, startled (in his absent-minded professor mode). The young con artist beat a hasty retreat.

Steve Newberry, our classical/flamenco guitar friend came over one late afternoon around 6. It was summer, there was plenty of daylight. Jay was not home. Steve and I sat around chatting and I started wondering why Jay hadn’t come home from work -- at that time, he was writing technical manuals for Warner Electronics. Then, as if in a trance (you know those movies where the music swells, then wanes and the actor “gets it”?) I heard the sounds of the playground across the street rise in volume and recede. I went up to the roof with binoculars and looked across the street at the playground. I saw a familiar figure in a red baseball cap “pounding that ball!”

A bit later he came up the stairs, sweaty and happy with himself. I pointed a finger at him and said, “jacuse”! I am a reasonable person and if he wants to play handball, that is okay. What was not okay was me not knowing where he was. Steve was vastly amused and the two of them went off to talk, using their special language, mathematical equations. I fed them anyway.

We used to go to Washington Square park where there was a handball court (since whittled away by New York University sprawl). For a long time I just batted a ball on an empty court all by myself, while Jay played with serious handball thugs. Occasionally, there wouldn’t be enough guys for doubles and grudgingly, they would allow me to be the fourth. Actually, grudgingly is a kind word. I was okay as a defensive player, and Jay was fantastic on offense and we would often beat them. You can imagine the resentment. Beaten by a girl. #$%^%$. But I can’t take any credit. It was all Jay. Then it was cold steins of ale at the bar of a little Italian restaurant on 6th Avenue and 4th Street.

We would often swing by Balducci’s (a hole in the wall
fruit and vegetable market in those days) that was open 24 hours. Later Balducci expanded into an elaborate gourmet and “whole foods” market and opened in several pricey locations. But I remember it fondly, with its homely carts on the sidewalk. We’d buy fruit and grab a cab home to 8th Ave. Paul Newman used to shop there and I saw him there one afternoon. I didn't approach him. Mostly in New York we leave celebrities alone. (It was true about his eyes -- they were astonishingly blue and luminous, if that's the word.)

One Sunday, Jay and I left the handball courts and ran into Robert Sheckley, the science fiction writer. He was with a friend. I had on my handball stuff – chinos, high top sneakers, boy-type shirt with tails hanging out, no make-up. I was in handball personality mode. I am much affected by what I wear. (I remember one kid turning to his mother as we walked by one day, and asking, “Mommy, is that a boy or a girl?”) We stood on the sidewalk talking for a while and confirming that we would indeed be coming to Bob's wedding reception a few days later at his Village apartment. He was getting married to Ziva, his second marriage. Ziva was wonderful.

We showed up for the reception and I was wearing a black, silk shantung sheath, diamond pin (well, okay, rhinestones, but very pretty), black, high-heeled silk shoes, and make-up. (Yes, I was smashing – if I had been a foot taller, Vogue would have grabbed me.) I saw Bob’s friend from the sidewalk encounter and walked up to him. “Do I know you?” he asked. I reminded him -- “We ran into you outside the handball courts.” He backed away, “no, no,” he said in a strangled mumble, stepping back. He was in shock and I had one of those glorious moments that make multiple personalities a pleasure to own (so long as you know who you are and when). He spent the next hour pointing me out to other guests. God knows what he was saying.

Harry Altshuler walked in (Sheckley’s agent). “Here comes Harry to collect 10 percent of Ziva,” said one guest.
I’ll leave you on that note.

xx, Teal

P.S. I know I have posted about some of these events before, but I am in memory mode right now. Bear with me.