Leggy Blonde: A Memoir (16 page)

R
icky and I broke up for the fifth time. My friend Lori said, “Enough with him! That guy is a jerk. You should go out with my friend Harry.”

I agreed to the fix-up, but I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind to meet Harry Dubin. We had dinner anyway. My first impression of the man who would become my first husband? Only positive. Harry was a kind and real gentleman. And handsome, too, with light brown hair, sparkling eyes, a bright smile, and a solid chest in a beautifully tailored blazer. The man had taste.

I enjoyed his company and we had lots of mutual friends. I was surprised we hadn’t met before. He had a worldly charm, and certainly knew his way around a restaurant. He told funny stories about his life in Washington, D.C., where he was from. I learned from Lori that he came from a family well entrenched in Washington society and that was in real estate there. (At this point, you might be thinking,
In Avivaland, every man is well to do and in real estate
. I can’t explain how or why I always hooked up with guys from wealthy families. Maybe because I come from one. Like attracted like. And then like repelled like. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. . . .)

With Harry, it was not lust-at-first-sight like with Ricky. When we parted for the evening, we kissed on the cheek good-bye. I thought,
He might call again, he might not. Whatever
. I wasn’t that into him. He didn’t seem bowled over by me either. I went home, and telepathically begged Ricky to call. He still had a hold on me.

A month or two went by. The next time I heard from Harry, he invited me to the presidential inauguration and inaugural ball for George W. Bush in January 1997. Although I’d been to Asia and Africa and Europe, I’d never been to our nation’s capital before. But for the inauguration of a president-elect I didn’t support? I was flattered Harry asked me to the ball, but he was not my prince. I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

He kept calling me, though, and we became phone friends. I ran into Harry in the city, and was pleasantly reminded of how entertaining, sweet, and funny he was. Compared to Ricky, Harry was a teddy bear, an all-American mensch. I couldn’t imagine him telling any woman that she had to learn to cook or to dress a certain way. He didn’t judge. His manners were impeccable. He seemed besotted by women in general. He was an inveterate flirt, but not in a creepy way. It was just part of his happy-go-lucky personality. He could talk to anyone like a lifelong friend.

My feelings for him started to change. He was someone I could relate to. I wouldn’t have to try hard or be on guard with him. Harry and I started going out to dinners regularly. Afterward, we kissed on the street. It was all still very innocent and chaste, though, for months.

The turning point was when Harry invited me to a wedding in Washington. We were going to fly down and back together. We hadn’t had an overnight date yet. We’d only kissed, and I wasn’t ready to share a bed.

I said, “I’ll go away for the weekend with you. But we’ve never been intimate and it’d be weird to share a room.” It’d be odd for any new couple to share a bedroom so early on, but especially for me. There was the prosthesis (and bathroom) factor to consider.

He said, “Okay. I’ll get you your own room.”

Just like that. No fuss, no arguments. He booked two rooms at the Four Seasons in Washington for the wedding. He was just so easy! No arguments. No ego clashes. No judgments. Just smooth friendliness.

I went shopping for Washington-style clothes for the trip. I had a picture in my head of what D.C. society looked like: men in gray suits; women in conservative knee-length dresses. I picked out Jackie O–type sleeveless frocks, very conservative with high necklines. My friend Sarah took one look at them and said, “Where do you think you’re going? Washington isn’t
that
buttoned up. It’s just like Great Neck.” In the end, I borrowed a long cream Hervé Leger dress from a friend who worked with the designer.

Ricky came over to my apartment the night before our flight. We were technically over, but we still got together (for sleepovers) occasionally.

“I’m going to Washington tomorrow with Harry,” I told him as we sat on the couch, holding hands.

“Don’t go. I’m begging you! I need you! You can’t leave me. Please, Aviva!”

Ricky sniveled when he thought another man had moved in. He’d never been so vulnerable before. And you know what? It was so not
sexy. I looked at him that night, bleeding need all over the couch, and felt turned off by him. The spell was broken, finally. I went to Washington.

The wedding was beautiful. We danced and had a good time. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking,
Oh, God. I’m going to have to fool around with him
. Sarah had warned me that if I didn’t, he wouldn’t date me again. “There comes a time when you have to shit or get off the pot,” she said.

After the party, we went to Harry’s room and fooled around.

The night was sweet. Harry made me feel treasured and respected. Unlike Ricky, sex with Harry hadn’t overwhelmed me, or turned me into an obsessed crazy person. I felt safe and sane with Harry, which, as I fell asleep next to him, seemed like a refreshingly healthy way to be.

As usual, I kept the leg on. Harry didn’t ask about it. I was only too happy not to have to tell the story on our first night. He didn’t ask about my leg on our second night either. Or the third. Or the hundredth. Not once, in our two years together, nor the ten years since our breakup. I used to think he didn’t bring it up for my sake. But I came to learn he avoided
any
unpleasant conversation like the plague.

•  •  •

Harry liked to go out to dinner, to a bar, to parties. As his girlfriend, I went along. We made a nightly tour of Manhattan restaurants and parties. Once again, I found myself in a relationship with a man who came alive at night, like Alexandre. It was one thing to burn the candle at both ends when I was a twenty-one-year-old undergrad. But now I was twenty-seven, studying for the bar exam, and worrying constantly about my mother. I was an adult, with real responsibilities. I just couldn’t keep up with Harry, too.

I woke up sick to my stomach each morning. The nausea lasted all day long. I cut out coffee, but that didn’t help. For a week, the queasiness got progressively worse. I’d get hungry for a soup or salad, and order it. But as soon as it was put in front of me, a wave of nausea hit hard. I’d rush to the ladies’ room.

The only possible explanation: stomach cancer.

I made an appointment with my doctor for an MRI. I couldn’t study. I couldn’t focus. I felt like I was wading through a fog. I described my symptoms to a friend. She said, “I spent nine months in a fog when I was pregnant.”

Oh, shit.
Not
stomach cancer. An at-home test confirmed I was pregnant. Until then, I’d been so careful—almost to the point of fascism—about birth control. Knocked up? This is just not my speed. I wasn’t married or even engaged. I’d envisioned a future with Harry—for a couple of months, but not the rest of my life. Was this gadfly the father of my future children? I couldn’t see it. Plus, I hadn’t been taking care of my health, and was taking caffeine pills to stay up late studying. I wasn’t so young anymore. I wanted to have children. But it wasn’t the right time.

Surgery Number Six: Termination of Pregnancy

I had to find a doctor who’d let me stay awake for the abortion. That took some doing. Finally, I found someone who’d shoot Novocain into my uterus, and let me stay awake. The abortion took ten minutes start to finish. I felt nothing. No pain, no regret. It was the obvious decision, and Harry supported it. We were totally in sync about it. Ironically, ending the pregnancy brought us closer together.

Three months later, in February 1999, my life had changed dramatically for the better. The bar exam was behind me. Whew! The
stress of studying was over. Harry and I were a solid couple, and doing well. We were lingering in bed one morning, neither of us ready to start the day. Harry reached for his pants on the floor for something in his pocket. He came back up with a ring.

It was a four-karat emerald-cut diamond set in platinum. Harry had sparkling, if conservative, taste. His sense of occasion, though, was a bit dull. The delivery was so nonchalant, I wasn’t sure if he was proposing, or just giving me a diamond.

“You’re asking me to marry you?” I asked.

“Okay.”

I paused. “Um, okay.”

And we were engaged.

The wedding planning process with Jonathan had been elaborate and complicated. This time, I kept it simple. We wanted a June wedding, so that only gave me five months to pull it all together. I was crazy busy getting everything done in time, and along with an extended trip to London, the engagement period blew by in a blur. I barely had time to think.

Even if I had had the time to leisurely analyze our relationship and my feelings, I would have married Harry. I loved the guy! I adored his family, especially his grandparents. Unlike Jonathan’s and Ricky’s fathers, Harry’s parents were very supportive of the marriage. Almost too excited. It felt great to be warmly welcomed into the clan Dubin. Harry’s brother Louis had been recently married himself to a wonderful woman named Tiffany. Tiffany’s family was involved in the real estate, banking, fashion, and art worlds of New York. Her mom had been a Ms. Israel and was herself a stunner and a no-nonsense woman. Her adopted father was A. Alfred Taubman, owner of Sotheby’s. They were a gorgeous couple, living a life that only a select few get a front-row seat to see.

One night, Harry and I had dinner with Tiffany and Louis at Scalinatella, a great Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. The downstairs was cavelike, as if you were dining in an Italian villa’s wine cellar. When Harry excused himself, Louis and Tiffany looked at each other, and then at me. Something was up.

She said, “Aviva, we just don’t understand why you’re marrying Harry. We don’t get it.”

“We love each other,” I said, taken aback.

How did they perceive me? Or, the better question, how did they perceive Harry? All I saw was a handsome, kind, great guy who came from a solid family. By asking their question, it seemed like they were giving me a vague warning. I had no idea what they were referring to. Harry would never yell at me (like Jonathan), shove me across the room (like Alexandre), or criticize me (like Ricky). I did wonder about our security: Harry didn’t have a job or a killer instinct. He’d told me he had a trust fund and that money would not be an issue.

In a moment of sheer lunacy, I thought,
Tiffany and Louis are just jealous.

The following week, an old friend called me and said, “Harry is a sweet man.”

“He’s the best.”

“He . . . he can be a bit of an exaggerator.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He talks a good game, but he’s kind of irresponsible.”

I hung up and thought,
She’s just jealous, too.

Jennifer joined the bandwagon, raising an objection about Harry’s partying. “Why does he go out every single night? And where does all that money come from?”

I wavered a bit. This was Jennifer, a long-time friend. But then
again, she had two broken engagements with two gazillionaires and was desperate to get married. To continue a trend, I thought,
Jennifer—even Jennifer—is just jealous.

Maybe my blond hair was growing backward and clogging my brain. “Jealousy” was a convenient word I used to write off any Harry negativity. I put up mental roadblocks, and wouldn’t let myself think over them. If I had, I would have asked, “Jealous of
what
exactly?” Tiffany and Louis, a successful happy couple, had nothing to be jealous about. My friends didn’t really either. Why settle on that one explanation? I had nothing else to hang their objections on. Harry was a great guy! Everyone loved him. I liked it that he wasn’t rabidly ambitious like other Manhattan men. The high-testosterone males were ruthless and obsessed with winning. They were often self-centered and controlling. Harry was relaxed, not chased by his own vain need to prove himself. Plus, he had money. I had money. And we had each other.

A couple of months before the wedding, Harry, his sister, and I went to a function at the Waldorf Astoria to honor Billy Jean King. A woman named Aimee Mullins came on stage to say a few words. She was an impeccably dressed, beautiful blond professional athlete—and a double amputee, missing both legs below the knee. When she was on stage, I checked out her prosthetics. They looked completely lifelike. And she was wearing
heels
.

I nearly dropped my glass.

My prosthetic was pretty good. But it didn’t look like a real leg, and it wasn’t made for high heels. On Aimee Mullins, I saw something I didn’t know existed. Later on at the event, I ran across the Waldorf ballroom and straight up to her. Breathless, I asked, “Where did you get your prosthetics?”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

I explained myself. She laughed and said, “You have to go see Bob Watts in London. He’s the only one in the world who makes legs like these.”

My parents and I made the journey to England and spent a week in Dorset getting fitted for a custom prosthetic. (Small-world alert: The other person at Dorset Orthopedics that week was Heather Mills, the second wife of Paul McCartney, a former client of my dad’s. My father frequently told the story that when he was working with the Beatles, Linda Eastman was his assistant and a budding photographer. My father was one of the backers for the Woodstock Music and Arts festival, and made Linda the official event photographer. That was where Linda met Paul. They had a house near ours in Jamaica. I’d grown up seeing Paul and Linda and their children at Round Hill during Christmas holidays.)

Bob Watts made me two fabulous legs, one for flats and one for
heels
. Both were made of silicone, with toenails. I was going to walk down the aisle at my wedding, wearing this beautiful prosthetic, in sexy stilettos. I was over the moon. I couldn’t even speak. Most little girls put on high heels for the first time at seven or eight years old. I was going to wear my first pair at twenty-eight.