Her One Obsession (6 page)

‘Oh, would you, Orlando? Gideon would hate my being called Baby,’ she told her brother.

‘Hey, wait a minute, Dendre. You’ve had one experience with this guy, known him for less than twenty-four hours, and already you’re concerned about what he thinks and feels? I think you’ve had too much, too soon with this guy. Give him some space to think about you and come after you.’

‘I’m seeing him tomorrow. We love each other, Orlando, in just the same way. Be happy for us,’ she pleaded as her eyes filled with tears. There was a tremor in her voice.

He took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Baby, you’re such an innocent. Men don’t love women the
way women want them to. They love women the best way they can, on their terms.’

‘Gideon has already told me that and it’s fine with me.’

‘And who’s going to handle Mom and Dad? I’m off tomorrow, remember. Put him off for a few weeks, give yourself some time, and don’t do anything rash is what I suggest.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not, for God’s sake?’

‘Because I’ll lose him. You don’t understand how remarkable he is, Orlando. He’s already my life.’

‘This is crazy!’ he told her.

Their conversation was interrupted by their mother at the foot of the stairs, shouting, ‘Dinner’s on the table, you two.’

Brother and sister rose from the bed together, looking at one another, not quite knowing what to do. This was not a family that kept secrets. Orlando opened his arms and Dendre ran into them, tears running down her cheeks. He would help her. He simply loved his sister too much not to.

Frieda Moscowitz was not the sort of woman who could talk of intimate things easily. She was a pots and pans home builder, a nourisher of her husband and children. Sex was a foreign language as far as she was concerned and so she was unable to talk to her daughter about it. Frieda assumed that the husband she would find for her would take on that job. It would be they, after all, who would be doing it together. Sex embarrassed her.

At the dinner table the four of them spoke about mundane things: local gossip, a cousin’s indiscretions. The meal nearly over, Orlando looked across the table at Dendre and made a signal suggesting she should speak up about Gideon. Several minutes passed before she said, ‘I met a man today – an artist, a poor and unknown painter who will one day be very famous.’

‘That’s nice, dear,’ said her mother as she rose from her chair to clear the dishes.

Silence fell heavily on the table. Orlando raised an eyebrow. When Frieda returned with a mould of orange and lime Jello piled high with strawberries in the centre of the ring, all Dendre could think of was how she detested her mother’s Jello. It was semi-hard, rubbery and tasteless. Gideon must never be served any. She made a mental note to be a better cook than her mother.

‘I would like to bring him home for dinner,’ announced Dendre.

Everyone at the table looked at her but it was her father who said, ‘Why? You never bring people we don’t know home for a meal.’

‘I want you all to meet him. He’s special and likes Mamma’s cooking. I shared my lunch with him today.’

‘Is he from Brooklyn?’ asked her mother.

‘No, Mother,’ answered Orlando.

The Moscowitz family believed the world began and ended in Brooklyn, like so many families born and bred in that borough. The wider world was conceived as a marvellous adventure but a foreign place, whether it be Manhattan, just across the East River, Boston or Paris. Therefore a look of concern passed between Frieda and Herschel.

‘So where is he from, Dendre, and how is it you know so much about this boy, Orlando?’ asked Frieda.

‘St Louis,’ she answered.

‘I’ve never met anyone who came from St Louis,’ said Herschel, chasing his bouncing Jello round his plate.

‘Neither have I, Dad. And, Mom, he’s not a boy,’ answered Dendre.

‘Oh,’ remarked Frieda, then stopped asking questions. Orlando knew his mother well. She was out of her depth with strangers or anything that intruded on her domain. Now she would retreat into silence. One thing about Frieda: she knew when she was beaten and always stepped back gracefully. It had been the tone of her daughter’s voice that had signalled that retreat. Herschel looked disturbed but said nothing.

The following day at college was torture for Dendre. She could think of nothing but Gideon and resented every minute spent away from him. Was it a dream? Wishful thinking? Had it really happened at all? Had it only been yesterday that a sexual life had opened to her? The hours seemed to drag by and then her last class was over and she rushed away to be with Gideon.

Her knees were weak as she pressed the button on the intercom and the door automatically unlocked. She trembled with anticipation and questions kept flashing through her head. Why had he not spoken through the intercom, was he expecting someone else,
was he angry because she had not stayed the night? She pushed the door open and entered the hall. Her eyesight was just adjusting to the darkness when the lights were turned on. She gasped and placed her hand over her heart.

‘It’s about time. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,’ announced Gideon from the top of the stairs.

All was right with the world. He still wanted her. How handsome he looked as he rushed down the stairs to sweep her into his arms. He kissed her lavishly on her face. Dendre began tearing at her clothes, wanting to be naked in his arms.

‘Tell me you love me?’ she begged.

‘I love you,’ he answered.

‘And you’ll never let me go away from you again?’ she pressed.

‘I’ll never let you go again,’ he repeated. ‘And those are not just words, Dendre, they’re intentions. I worked all through the night, look.’

Gideon placed her gently on her feet and, hand in hand, they walked up the stairs and then along the length of his studio. Dendre was astounded: huge drawings of her were pinned to the walls, some with splashes of colour. The red droplets of virgin blood were on one; red lips and fingernails and toenails on another. Others were in sepia and black. Most of the portraits were life-size; others were detailed studies of various parts of her anatomy. They were all astonishingly vibrant and raunchy. The emotion came through in her eyes: a hunger for sex, a body bursting with lasciviousness. Her sexuality seduced the viewer, embraced him as he had never been embraced before. Was this how Gideon saw her? Had she inspired him to paint so masterfully? He had translated her into a vision that would stir the coldest heart. What nineteen-year-old would not be flattered by his genius and lay down her life for the love of such a man? Dendre was thrilled by his work and threw herself into his arms.

‘They’re marvellous! I feel faint with excitement.’

Gideon threw back his head and laughed. ‘And so you should,’ he told her.

A moment of silence fell between them that only enhanced the sexual longing they had for each other. Love and lust together, the most potent of drugs, intoxicated them. For Dendre this second
experience of intercourse was even more thrilling than her first. Portraits of herself everywhere beamed down at her and their debauchery only served to excite her further. She heard herself asking Gideon to do things to her she had never even heard of. Where did all that come from – a will to be possessed utterly by him, to show him her desire to submit to anything for another climax with him, and another and another? She wanted to die and be reborn again and again in his arms in sexual bliss, and Gideon adored her for that. When, on their knees, Gideon behind her, he moved between both her willing orifices, Dendre felt as if she were losing her senses, so acute was the bliss of being so completely filled by him. She called out, screamed her pain and her pleasure.

Her hunger for sex to the extreme fired Gideon’s imagination and he whispered to her, never changing the rhythm of his fucking, all the erotic things they would do together.

When they were replete they fell asleep in each other’s arms on the bare boards in the middle of the studio. On waking, the scent of sex, the aroma of lust, still clung to them. Dendre wanted to lick her lover awake, to hold on to that scent they had created together, breathe it deep into her lungs. Where had the world gone, her family, her middle-class morality that told her she was behaving like a slut? Only Gideon really mattered to her now.

After lying on her side so that she might look at her handsome lover, feeling incredibly grateful that he should take on such a plain girl to love, she licked Gideon awake then proceeded to dress. He watched her slip one of her stockings up her leg then took the second from her hand and drew it carefully over the other. He kissed her knee and smiled.

There was something more in that smile than he had ever shown her before: a wealth of generosity, warmth, promise. With extraordinary tenderness he helped her from the floor and dressed her. For Dendre it was the final act that would cleave her to him until the day she died.

Chapter 6

Gideon was ten years older than Dendre, a man experienced in life. His world was big, wide and dangerous and that would frighten her mother and father. His not being of their faith would make him unacceptable as a husband for their only daughter. Those were the things going through her mind while she watched him dress.

‘I told my brother about you,’ she blurted out.

Gideon was just slipping his jumper on over his head. He hesitated then said, ‘Not revelations about our sex life, I bet?’

He saw the rush of blood appear in her cheeks and realised he was embarrassing her. Gideon went to her, took her in his arms and told her, ‘That was not said to embarrass you. It was actually meant to be a joke. What did you tell him?’

‘That we are in love and I’m going to marry you,’ she told him rather boldly.

He was amused and a smile broke across his face. ‘You’re quite sure of that, are you?’

‘You will never find a better wife. No woman will love you more than I will, and you know that. That’s why you’ll marry me. And for love, of course.’

This young and naive woman who was so pliable in his hands was right. Gideon liked her that little bit more because she was speaking the truth. He raised both her hands to his lips and kissed her fingers, then told her, ‘You don’t know me. Marriage to me will not be an easy life for you. My work will always come before anything else, that and my freedom. We’ll be poor and you will have to work to keep us alive, at least until I’m discovered. But one day we will have it all: success, money, an exciting and adventurous life. Are you certain you love me enough to live like that? Oh, and
one other thing – I’m a benevolent tyrant but a tyrant nevertheless.’

‘I’m Brooklyn, Jewish, family-minded, with a middle-class morality that knows nothing else. That’s what I will bring into this marriage, can
you
live with that?’ she asked him with metal in her voice.

There it was again, forthright honesty, a rod of steel for a spine, still a virgin in so many ways. Gideon quite thrilled at the idea of a lifetime of seducing Dendre into his world while dwelling in comfort in hers, the hearth and the home, a love he had yearned for since childhood and until now never received.

There could be but one answer. ‘When do you take me home for dinner?’ he asked with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his lips.

‘Tonight?’ she suggested, the happiness in her voice ringing like church bells.

‘Let’s go, I’m famished,’ was his reply.

‘I have to call my mother and tell her you’re coming. It’s only polite,’ she told him.

‘We can call from the bar round the corner,’ he suggested.

‘Gideon, my brother is waiting for us at the Angel. We can all ride home together.’

‘Oh, I see. He’s here to vet me?’

Dendre felt some embarrassment. ‘I was going to ask you to meet him over a drink? Please don’t be angry, but he wants to see what you’re like. He goes back to Harvard tomorrow and is anxious that I might be getting involved with the wrong man. You really can’t blame him for caring about me.’

‘No, I can’t, but he’ll have to pick up the tab. I have no money to pay for drinks at the Angel.’

Orlando was sitting at a table reading a book. Every time the door opened his eyes shifted from the page. So many people came and went the waiting was beginning to grate on his nerves. He had agreed to wait until five o’clock. It was five-thirty when he looked up from his book again, telling himself, This is the last time. No Dendre and I’m going home.

But it was Dendre and her man and they looked so happy, so full of the joys of love, it brought Orlando to his feet to wave
to them. Even before they reached his table and Gideon had said a word, Orlando was impressed by the man, seduced by his charisma. Gideon Palenberg had about him an aura of greatness, something that separated him from other men. It was there in every step he took, his sureness, power, the sexuality that could turn any woman’s head, the intelligence in that handsome face. Orlando could understand why Dendre had fallen so heavily in love with this man but his heart sank for his sister. Love her as he did, he was a realist. She had taken on greatness but could she rise to it? What he did know was that she had found a man in a million and she was right not to let him go.

Introductions were made and the two men shook hands. ‘I’d like to see your paintings,’ were the first words Orlando said to Gideon.

‘Easily done, come along.’

‘You might be shocked,’ offered Dendre.

‘They’re portraits of your sister, the best work I have ever done. And if you appreciate art, you’ll be thrilled by them, not shocked.’

‘Then let’s go,’ said Orlando.

Dendre made her phone call to her mother. The two men talked to each other easily while they waited for her return. Gideon found Orlando intelligent, sensitive, and knowledgeable about art. He was fascinated to learn that the Moscowitzes were in their own simple way a cultured family and that Orlando and the family had taken advantage of Brooklyn’s museums, concert halls and libraries where most families only watched TV for entertainment.

In the studio, Orlando was indeed thrilled but shocked as well. Who was this woman in the portraits? The other side of Dendre. Surely not Baby whom he had loved and thought he knew?

‘They’re magnificent, very exciting, Gideon. They’re great paintings,’ Orlando commented. And then the two men talked art and great artists.

The three of them were sitting on the bed, discussing which drawing Orlando would like to have. ‘I can’t accept such a valuable gift, Gideon. One day it will be worth a fortune,’ he protested.

‘I know. I’m usually very mean about giving my work away, but I really want you to have it. I am, after all, taking something away from you and your family that is far more precious.’

Dendre thought that her heart would burst with love for Gideon. He considered her more precious than his work! Her brother already liked him, was indeed in some awe of Gideon. That was all the approval she really needed. It would be easy to win her mother and father over with Orlando on her side.

Gideon was appalled at the amount of time it took to ride the subway to Brooklyn and decided never to make the trip there again in this manner. The journey alone convinced him there would be no Manhattan-Brooklyn courtship. It would have to be marriage, as soon as possible.

Orlando used his key and the three of them entered the house. Herschel Moscowitz poured them all whisky, but no Frieda appeared. Gideon liked Herschel immediately, sensing Dendre’s father had a creative soul that had died a long, drawn-out death long ago. Life had beaten him but what remained was a loving, uncomplicated man who lived one day at a time.

‘You’re a painter, my daughter tells me?’

‘Yes, I am, and what do you do for a living, Mr Moscowitz?’ asked Gideon.

‘I’m a furrier.’

‘In what he does, my father is an artist in his own right,’ said Dendre.

Somehow Gideon was certain that was true. Herschel raised his glass and said, ‘
L’chaim
,’ as a toast before he swigged his drink down in one. He then announced to Gideon, ‘That means “to life” in Yiddish. We’re Jewish. And you?’

‘Well, I’m not Jewish.’

‘That’s all right so long as you’re a human being,’ said Herschel.

‘I’ll go get Mother,’ said Orlando.

‘No, let me. Just point me to the kitchen,’ said Gideon.

He had never felt so comfortable and safe as he did in that lacklustre, somewhat shabby house with its aroma of roasting chicken, cinnamon and vanilla, and in the bosom of Dendre and her family. He had never met people like this, so simple
and honest. Their kindness and lack of guile clung to them like a heady perfume.

On entering the kitchen Gideon came face to face with Frieda who was ladling chicken soup from a pot into a tureen. They gazed at each other for several seconds before she continued with her task.

‘I know I’m a last-minute guest but I’m a grateful one. You see, I already like your cooking,’ said Gideon, walking across the room to kiss her on the cheek.

Frieda was still recovering from having an uninvited if handsome stranger in her kitchen when he gave her that peck on the cheek. She felt his dynamic charm, something more than she had ever experienced before. Frieda knew instantly he was the one in the million everyone hopes to meet sometime in their lives. She could well understand why Dendre had brought him home to dinner.

‘How long have you known my daughter?’ she asked.

‘A little more than a day but it feels like a lifetime,’ he replied.

‘You’re a fast worker, Mr …’

‘Gideon Palenberg is my name. And yours?’

‘Palenberg,’ she repeated, and did not offer hers.

‘You must call me Gideon, and what shall I call you? Surely not Mrs Moscowitz – too formal,’ he told her.

She hesitated over using his Christian name but finally managed it. ‘My name is Frieda, Gideon,’ she told him.

She placed the lid on the tureen and went to the cooker to remove a pan of steamed dumplings. She placed one of the large fluffy dumplings on a saucer and handed it to Gideon along with a fork. She was captivated by him, though she sensed a power in him that was too wild and free for her liking. He was all the things Herschel had never been, that Dendre was not, and that frightened her. What did he want from her daughter when he could have most any woman he wanted? A stranger had invaded her house and none of the family would ever be the same afterwards. That, finally, was what worried her most.

‘Frieda, this is delicious,’ he remarked.

‘Gideon, you like my cooking, but how much do you like my daughter? Clearly enough to drag yourself out here to Flatbush
for a meal. That worries me. An innocent girl involved with such a charming and handsome man worries me even more. A cook I may be but I’m no gourmet chef and by your looks and manner it’s not ethnic food you’re used to and crave. You wouldn’t take advantage of a girl like Dendre, would you?’ she asked.

‘Your mothering is showing, Frieda. I like that, it’s something I have missed all my life. I’ll not lie to you. Since you’re being so direct with me, I will be with you. Yes, I have taken advantage of your daughter, and tonight after dinner I’m going to take her home with me and take advantage of her again. And for the rest of her life I hope she will do the same with me. We fell in love. One, two looks at each other and we knew. Frieda, I want to marry Dendre and will feel proud and blessed to have you, Herschel and Orlando as family.’

Frieda turned the colour of ashes and a dizziness came over her. She stretched out her arms to steady herself and Gideon went to her aid and took her in his arms, holding her close to him. He tried to comfort her.

‘She’s only a child, Gideon,’ she managed.

‘Not so, Frieda. She is very much a woman – warm, sweet, kind, without malice. Just like her mother. We love each other, Frieda, and are willing to struggle through life together. Be happy for us, come along with us. I promise you’ll not be sorry. I may not be the husband you visualised for her but I am the one she has chosen.’

All his life Gideon was able to bend people to feed his ego, his libido, his art. Kindness, generosity, affability, are as intriguing as arrogance and it was all of those things that finally won over the Moscowitz family.

He swept Dendre away from them on that one and only time he visited Brooklyn, leaving the three others reeling from his visit and the loss of Dendre to a stranger. It had been too fast, too unthinkable for Herschel to handle, and when he kissed his daughter farewell it was he who broke down in tears.

While unpacking the few things she had brought to her new home, Dendre was thinking about that and what Gideon had said to her father. ‘Herschel, I know you’re hurting, but try and remember I’m
not stealing your daughter away from you. Our door will always be open to you, our hearts, our very souls. I’m marrying you and Frieda and Orlando as much as I am marrying Dendre.’

Gideon could not have said anything nicer, more generous. It eased the shock of having the family suddenly turned upside down. For that they were grateful to him.

In bed, enfolded in each other’s arms, Dendre told him, ‘You were marvellous with my parents and brother.’

‘That was easy because I liked them enormously. Are you happy to be in your new home with me?’ he asked as he fondled her breasts and kissed her stomach.

‘Blissfully happy,’ she told him as she slid on top of his body and kissed him. She knew better than to enquire about his own family. She had tried once and Gideon had made it plain he would not discuss them other than to say he had been raised by his aunt.

Aunt Martha remained a mystery to Dendre. Gideon rarely spoke about her. When she’d asked him about his aunt, Gideon had politely but firmly told her, ‘I’d rather we didn’t talk about her.’

Ten days after they met they were married. And in those ten days the pattern of Dendre’s life with Gideon was established. She began to know him as he had described himself to her. He was indeed a benevolent tyrant but he was besides decidedly in love with her and to have him loving her was all. Nothing else in her life seemed to matter but Gideon and his work.

As hard a life as it was for them, Dendre adored living as a poor, undiscovered artist’s wife. She still went to school but quit her night classes at Cooper Union and took a waitressing job in a coffee shop in the Village. Both she and Gideon thrived on their difficult circumstances. Every week they would pool their money then allot the funds they needed for housekeeping. The remainder went on art materials.

If they were poor materially, they were wealthy in other ways. Their love for each other, their sexual life, his work, made up for the cold water and lack of heat in the studio. Gideon’s work, his ego, his libido, his dreams, anything he desired, governed their lives – and that was just fine with Dendre. He was everything she wanted. Gideon was inspired, everything seemed to be working for
him, and he was generous in his praise of his wife in the darkness of the night when he was making love to her.

Dendre relieved him of the mundane chores in life: shopping, cooking, keeping their living corner clean, paying the bills, so that he might paint. They survived on Frieda’s food parcels that Dendre went to Brooklyn every week to collect. On rare occasions Frieda brought them to the studio. Those visits were infrequent because the poverty her daughter and son-in-law lived in upset her greatly. The few things she tried to give them to make their living corner look more like a home were rejected and she came to understand that offering them was wrong. They wanted nothing to clutter up their lives. In time she learned to appreciate the sacrifices Dendre and Gideon were making to live the way he dictated. Dendre’s wages and a small cheque from his Aunt Martha, or the rare sale of a painting, kept them going.