—
The Cardozos had put aside enough money to pay all of Jim’s medical school costs and to subsidize him during his internship and residency. They wanted him to be a surgeon; they didn’t want money worries to drive him into a less prestigious, less demanding specialty. When they said, after he was admitted to Columbia P & S, that he should live at home and not in the dorms—to save money they had saved—he said he would take out a loan and become a dermatologist. They folded. He emptied his closet and drawers, went off in a taxi, and never lived at home again. His father taught accounting at Brooklyn College and did taxes on the side; his mother taught home economics at Washington Irving High School. They had worked and saved all their lives to secure Jim’s future. He was their only child, bright and uncommonly handsome, a Jewish Gregory Peck. They lived in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, in a small rent-controlled walk-up on East Eighty-Ninth between First and Second. They moved there from Flatbush when Jim was a year old. They wanted him to meet a better class of people. Russian and Polish Jews had taken over Brooklyn.
Jim’s parents thought it useful for his future medical practice for him to know and socialize with gentiles, but their chief goal was to put him in the way of prominent Jews, Lewisohns, Seligmans, Warburgs, people who could make his career. They joined Temple Emanu-El, so Jim could be bar mitzvahed there, even though it was very expensive. “Tax deductible,” Mr. Cardozo would say every time he paid the dues. Jim went to Stuyvesant—private school was beyond their imagination as well as their means—and they expected he would go to City College, then New York Medical College. When he was admitted to Yale, they figured out a way to pay for it and began spinning a fantasy of Columbia medical school. They worked out the numbers. In the long run, they’d be fine; they both had pensions. Their friends envied them. Jim was a credit to the race.
When Jim told his parents junior year he wanted to marry Eleanor Phipps, they threatened to cut him off, no money, no contact. “We’ll sit shiva,” his mother said. Jim who had dated other gentiles and had gentile friends was shocked. His parents had never said anything to him about marrying Jewish. “We assumed you would. We assumed you would want to,” his mother said. “We have been Jews forever, going back to England, to Holland, to Spain, to Babylon, to Solomon for heaven’s sakes. We’ve been in this country for over two hundred years. Your Jewish daughter could join the DAR. You’re Sephardic, not some Ashkenazi arriviste who thinks Leon Uris is a genius and Israel is the pinnacle of Jewish civilization.” His father let his wife do the heavy work, adding only, “I bet she never saw a circumcised penis before.” Jim walked out of the apartment, afraid he would punch his father.
Briefly, Jim and Eleanor plotted to defy their parents. Over Easter vacation junior year, they spun schemes. Plan 1: They would run away to California; Eleanor would work as a secretary, Jim would attend UCLA’s medical school. Plan 2: They would stay in New York and live in the Village. Jim would work for a bank or corporation until he had enough money saved for medical school. Plan 3: They would break their hearts and break up. They chose Plan 3. They couldn’t imagine their lives without their parents’ support.
—
Jim didn’t introduce Anne to his parents until the wedding invitations had been ordered. He invited them to dinner at the Russian Tea Room; he wanted a festive and noisy place, one that didn’t allow for serious conversation. He had put off the meeting for months, dreading his parents’ response. They tended in uncomfortable social situations to be cagey and condescending, like a salesclerk at Cartier, trying to size up a badly dressed customer. He saw, from their turned-down mouths, that they were disappointed. Anne wasn’t as pretty as they would have liked, and she was short. He ordered Champagne.
“We’re getting married in three months,” he said, smiling at Anne, “on Sunday, August twenty-fourth.”
“Won’t it be too hot then?” Mrs. Cardozo said. “September is better. You should do it in September.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” Jim said.
A week later, Mrs. Lehman called the Cardozos to discuss their guest list.
“Where is the wedding to be held?” Mrs. Cardozo asked. “And the reception, where will that be?”
Mrs. Lehman was startled by her questions—she had assumed they knew—but she showed no surprise. She never did. “Showing surprise puts you at such a disadvantage,” she told her daughters.
“Temple Emanu-El, of course,” she said, “and the reception at the Harmonie Club.”
“Where’s the Armory Club?” Mrs. Cardozo said.
“Harmonie, as in musical notes. It’s a brisk three-minute walk down Fifth,” Mrs. Lehman said, her tone taking on its own briskness. Jim’s list had fifty people on it. Mrs. Lehman told the Cardozos they could invite another fifty. When Mrs. Cardozo offered to pay for more guests, Mrs. Lehman stopped her. “We wouldn’t think of it. I know how hard it is to decide whom to leave off,” she said. “Could you send the names and addresses by the end of the week?” Until the Cardozos showed up at Temple Emanu-El and saw the packed sanctuary, they had thought the wedding would have no more than two hundred guests.