Chapter One

ONE: BACK TO HERSELF IN NO TIME

By the spring of 1956, on Long Island's North Shore, my mother had acquired many things: a husband; two boys, ages nine and thirteen; four bedrooms; one mink coat; a housekeeper and a miniature schnauzer named Pearlie and Bambi respectively; and, despite the palpable salve of these possessions, a dreadful black hole in the center of her soul where her dreams used to be. Perhaps Estelle Berman (nee Esther Levin) was nothing more than a postwar cliche, one more survival-driven daughter of immigrant parents, two parts old-fashioned respectability and a dollop of modern movie glamour, inspired to grab at a life of security tinged with trips to Bermuda rather than one of possible passion and the dreadful results such frivolousness might invoke. Maybe it was the tediousness of too many lunches of nothing more than portioned-out Jujubes, or the shame of so many overheard hysterics; her mother was indignant over the price of day-old bread, fish, and fabric, and perpetually accused the butcher of cheating her; charging her for meat weighed with the bone. Or perhaps it was ultimately the dress, the blue silk dress with layers of sheer cobalt chiffon and delicate smocking across the chest; the dress we would hear about for years, the one that went not to my mother, who stood transfixed in front of Felterman's Dress Shop coveting it for weeks, but to Miriam, my aunt, her baby sister, because Miriam was "fragile." With a sister who had cornered the market on fragility and a mother adept at selective hysteria, Estelle was left with little choice except to embrace practicality. So, in the summer of her nineteenth year, the belle