I might have answered that that was not my tragedy, actually, but rather was what kept me from tragedy for so long.
Even on our honeymoon I was working, if only a little. I brought books along—mostly for entertainment, but also for continuing education, because that, to me, was entertaining also. It was light stuff—one called Women in Cosmetic Advertising, for instance—and no more taxing than the women’s magazines I frequently wrote for. The book even had a quiz, which of course I took, writing directly in the margins, because it was my book, and because I liked writing in my books.
Max and I were sitting on the terrace of our hotel in Milan, hometown of his parents. We had been traveling by rail all over the interior of the country.
I pulled the book out of my bag and set it on the table with our caffellatte and rolls with jam.
“Come on, Max,” I said. “Let’s play a game.”
“All right, Lils,” he said, used, by now, to my penchant for this type of fun; I was equally avid about comment cards and reader surveys.
“Try answering this list of questions about yourself, sincerely ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’” I read aloud.
“I can’t be anything but sincere when I’m around you, Lils,” he said.
And then I read:
“One. Have you changed your hairstyle at least once in the last five years?”
Yes for me. No for Max.
“Two. When you were feeling very ‘down’ did you ever buy a new hat just to cheer yourself up? (Did it?)”
Yes for me. Yes for Max. Our hat collections were quite formidable.
“Three. In a train, bus, or streetcar, would you rather study the people around you than read even the most exciting new book?”
Yes for me. Yes for Max. We’d make up stories about them together.
“Four. Did you ever speculate—just once—on how false eyelashes would look on you?”
Yes for me. No for Max. Though he never thought I needed them, and I agreed.
“Five. Do you read ‘Advice to the Lovelorn’ in your daily paper?”
Yes for me. Yes for Max. Especially now that we’d found each other. There was something gratifying in reading about the lovelorn when one had reason to believe, however mistakenly, that one would never again be lovelorn.
“Six. Do you like women—at least as well as you do men?”
Yes for me. Yes for Max.
“Seven. Can you think of at least one way to improve the appearance of each of your five best friends?”
Yes for me, excepting Helen, who looked fantastic, always. Yes for Max. He appreciated stylishness as much as I did. In Milan for one day, we’d already had him fitted for three bespoke suits. One just couldn’t find as high a quality, even in Manhattan.
“Eight. Are you interested in why people do things? (Are you also interested in what they do?)”
Yes for me. No for Max, unfortunately.
“Nine. Do you think requited love should be the most important aim of most women?”
No for me. Yes for Max.
“Ten. Have you ever, that you remember, spoken to a stranger in an emergency, a shared emotion, a sudden excess of friendliness—and enjoyed it?”
Yes for me, a hundred times on this trip already. Yes for Max, to a considerably lesser extent.
“It’s a ten-question quiz, right?” he said.
“Correct,” I said. “That’s it. Now let’s score it up.”
And then I read: “Give yourself ten points for each of these questions you’ve answered with a ‘Yes.’ If you’ve scored a sixty, stay with us—you can earn a living at cosmetics writing; seventy, you should go up in the world if you enter the profession; eighty or above means that you have the makings of a good advertising woman!”
“Tell me, professor,” Max said, “how’d we stack up?”
“I got ninety points,” I said.
“I suppose you might have the makings of a good advertising woman,” he said, and laughed.
“You got seventy,” I said. “So might you.”
As we finished our breakfast, I thought of how it was true: Max could be extremely persuasive. The only conflict we’d had on that trip, in fact, came from his attempts to convince me to do what I’d sworn I was unconvinceable on.
He brought it up again that afternoon, as we strolled through the public gardens. I was thrilling to the exotic flowers, everywhere in bloom.
“Lils,” he said. “If you like this, you’ll love living in Rutherford. We can have a garden of our own in back of our house. We can fill the whole front yard with flowers that are just like these. My pops can order the seeds.”
Ever since we’d left the New York Passenger Ship Terminal, Max had been trying off and on to get me to agree that what we really needed to do was move to the suburbs.