Maureen and Sabrina
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Time. Where had it gone? Or did it stand still? Everything was a blur. Maureen had slept through most of it. Once she could put it all together, she learned she had been hospitalized for 15 days.
“You’ve been lucky, to be in a first-rate hospital, and get such good care,” a composed but guarded Sabrina said. “It’s been a long haul, but thank Heaven, you’re going to be all right.”
She’d visited often. Buddy and Annie had also come up near the end. But Maureen remembered only fragments. The heavy course of antibiotics and painkillers had diminished her sensibilities.
“When…when did they say I can get out of here?” Maureen asked excitedly.
“You’ll be discharged tomorrow. Buddy and I will both be here to take you home. Don’t worry about anything but getting well. I’ve already been to your apartment and had it cleaned. Your refrigerator is stocked with fresh juices and nourishing foods. You’ll need to take it easy before you can go back to work. They’re waiting for you, Maureen. They hired a temp to do the drawings. But you’re the one they want back.”
Maureen was grateful. She knew Sabrina had sacrificed time to do this for her. “Sabrina, I…..”
“Please don’t say another word. You were very ill…we were worried. And remember, I’d already given notice. So I could afford the time.”
“By the way….you’ve been without a cigarette for more than two weeks. I’d say that’s a good start on giving them up.”
….”Please, Sabrina…I hate to disappoint you but I’ve been smoking in the lounge the last few days. I bummed a few.”
“Well, who am I to preach. But eventually, I hope you’ll stop.”
“Easy for you to say, you never started. But I’m going to kick ‘em eventually, I promise,” Maureen said and she meant it.
The two women embraced. A bond had been formed that wouldn’t be easily broken.
“By the way, you slept through St. Patrick’s Day, didn’t even know it had come and gone,” Sabrina said with a smile.
“Well, now, I suppose I still have the luck of the Irish, to have survived this horror. I’ll settle for that!”
***** 1966
SABRINA
Sabrina Aldrich knew she was beautiful. After all, hadn’t she been told that since she was a little girl? It didn’t hurt that Sabrina’s mother had been one of the leading cover girls in the 40s. Sabrina had inherited her mother’s high cheekbones, lithe, lean body, and great legs. She had the kind of body that suggested she was holding a winning ticket in the lucky genes lotto.
Sabrina shared a warm bond with her mother and was proud of her many accomplishments. Jane Aldrich was not your run-of-the-mill society gal; nor was she the kind of vapid woman born to staggering wealth and towering position -- the type who just travels -- follows couture and generally makes herself useless.
No, Sabrina’s mother had come from modest beginnings. She was raised in a succession of foster homes after losing her parents when she was five. An older child, she had never been adopted. It would always leave a core emptiness within her. She never forgot her experience and wanted to protect other children from falling prey to the foster system, from moving from one family to another.
And so when Jane’s modeling career ended and after she was well ensconced in her marriage to the very social Dr. Martin Aldrich, she decided she’d go back to school. Jane acquired her degree and pursued a career as a social worker, specifically in the placement of orphans. She was determined to provide a safe haven for children; there were so many poor and abused children all over the United States, never mind in the world. She worked in this field for years, refusing far easier assignments so that she could make a difference and she did.
She also made a difference in her daughter’s life and how Sabrina viewed the world.
Sabrina had the innate sensitivities of her mother and her father’s intellectual curiosity. Martin Aldrich, a third-generation physician, was one of three men who helped develop a vaccine against a vicious strain of malaria. His endeavors took up a half-dozen paragraphs in Who’s Who.
Though the Aldrich’s were a secure, wealthy family residing in Greenwich, a toney upscale area of Connecticut, what was more significant to Sabrina were her mother‘s concern for others and her father’s important research that earned him an historic place in medical annals. She’d been raised with a social conscience and a respect for others.
Most of all, Sabrina didn’t want to be dismissed as just another pretty face. True, she was a cheerleader, a high school prom queen, and for the standards of her time, she’d been an achiever, a star. But Sabrina was very bright and definitely confident -- and damned if she didn’t want to make her own mark. “In the 50s, we weren’t encouraged to do anything other than be good children, get a good education, make the right marriage and raise families,” she explained. Ah, but she knew better.
As she finished high school, Sabrina knew she wasn’t interested in a serious relationship. That could wait -- what was more important to her was achieving a higher education and then to make something special of herself. As always, her parents were supportive.
After graduating Barnard College with honors in 1962, Sabrina took some time off, knowing after the summer she would pursue a career.
She decided to share a summerhouse on Fire Island -- a popular area off Long Island -- with three other young women, all from good families.
It was a summer of discovery singing hits like I Want to Hold Your Hand, from that brand new group, The Beatles. But after the fun, stumbling, drink in hand along the crooked boardwalk; from one party to another, Sabrina had had enough. Feeling restless, she was ready to do something with her life. Yes, she was sure of it -- she wanted a good job -- some way to test her own value.
While her parents would have liked her to come back home, she convinced them she’d have to live in Manhattan, where the job market was extensive. She was determined to make it to the top and Sabrina didn’t mind using family connections to get a foot in the right door. It wasn’t difficult to persuade her mother to help. With her Grace Kelly looks, bouffant hairdo of the day and a strong academic record in tow, Sabrina would be one of the few women who’d shatter the glass ceiling.
At the beginning -- even with the right school and background and connections -- it wasn’t that easy. She spent many months knocking on doors. Before long Sabrina could recite the standard rejections of the era: “We like you, but if we hire a woman and she gets married and moves on, then the training we invested is gone. Also, women do get pregnant, and…”
Teachers, social workers -- these were suitable positions for women. If a woman wanted to enter the more masculine arena of competition, where CEO’s of companies were always men, and directors -- even of creative departments-- were male, women had major barriers to surmount.
After four months of fruitless searching, Sabrina heard of an opening in the ad department of B. Altman’s. The position: head of the copy department, really quite a plum spot for anyone, never mind a young woman with no experience at all. She asked her mother for help. Jane Aldrich knew the family that still had major control of the Fifth Avenue store. One call was all that was necessary to begin the course of action that would install Sabrina in this top position.
Having natural writing ability (she always did well on her term papers at Barnard) Sabrina hastily put together a portfolio of composite ads. Some of them were quite clever; others were obviously borrowed from successful ad campaigns. But it was enough to get an interview and consideration. Her makeshift portfolio and family connections got her the position that paid a phenomenal (for that time) $300 a week.
The portfolio went over well. They really liked her ideas. But she had no expertise with the scheduling of ads, supervising two other copywriters (with far more experience than she) or working with the art director and artists.
All Sabrina’s life, things were made easy. Besides her good looks and family background, she never had to be concerned about money. And so until she was ready to move out on her own, Sabrina knew she could live in her parent’s pied-a-terre on 58th Street and Park Avenue.
Now, Sabrina had a challenge before her and loved the idea. She worked her tail off, spending the next six months learning every aspect of the work so she could prove she was more than up to the task. She read books on retail advertising. And she didn’t care how many hours she’d have to work to prove herself. Sabrina single-mindedly dug her heels right in and stayed long hours. Every morning she turned up at the office at 8 a.m. before anyone but the cleaning crew had arrived. And she’d get right to work. She became skilled at every facet of running a retail-advertising department. She learned how to oversee the production of slick, well written ads on the fast-paced schedule that was the cadence of this up-scale department store.
Soon, she’d gained the respect of everyone in the department. She effectively supervised the writing and scheduling of ads on house wares, fashions, sports and gift pages that ran regularly in all the major New York newspapers. No matter that she was just 22. She knew she deserved their respect. She bought a sign for her office desk that confirmed her philosophy: ‘SUCCESS STOPS WHEN YOU DO’.
****
“Maureen, this is a fabulous illustration,” Sabrina exclaimed, admiring the beautiful sketches Maureen had made for her first Sunday double fold. She liked Maureen, always glib, funny, a cigarette constantly in her hands, or between her lips while she sketched away at the drawing board.
Soon the two young women -- from such diverse backgrounds -- became after-hour drinking partners. Maureen introduced Sabrina to the folk singing set down in the Village. They would regularly spend Friday nights laughing, drinking, and flirting with the men they met.
After midnight, when Maureen was showing signs of having a little too much to drink, and the cigarette smoke at the bar was getting to Sabrina’s more sensitive lungs, Sabrina would take a taxi home. She knew Maureen wouldn’t mind. Maureen bid her a quick adieu, and then retreated to a back booth with the crowd, trading jokes, discussing politics, and thoroughly enjoying herself. On the floor next to her in an old case, was her guitar. She never knew when she would feel a song coming on. She’d always loved singing.
While the Beat Generation had peaked in the 50s, Maureen and her set still looked up to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg as semi-deities. Some of her drinking companions had gone south in the 60s, to be part of the non-violent protest movement first begun by Rosa Park’s refusal to sit in the back of a bus followed by a young Reverend Martin Luther King, a Ph. D at 26, taking up the gauntlet.
On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court had ruled that segregation was against the law. Many courageous Negro college students would invade all-white lunch counters waiting to be served. They would wait for hours and hours. They would not be served.
The sit-ins began in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960 and then spread throughout the South. For deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome someday; a lyric attributed to Pete Seeger became the theme song of the 60s. After the alienation of the 50s, with icons like Marlon Brando on his motorcycle and James Dean, starring in the movie Rebel Without A Cause, a new generation wanted to achieve independence. Brando and Dean were forces of an age group searching for a different identity.
For those who could only talk about independence but were emotionally bogged down -- too much baggage, old scars that didn’t heal, there was the discovery of Milltown in the 60s, soon followed by the popular Valium, one of the many, “I Don’t Give A Damn” drugs that would dangerously mix with booze and cause many tragedies in ricochets and overdoses that could not be reversed.
There at the Whitehorse Tavern, seated in a back booth, guitar in hand, Maureen strummed as her group of fellow inebriates sang the defiant songs of the age. By 2 a.m. she had enough. Ben Tolson, the handsome reporter from the Times had come by. She took him home that night, her latest trophy, she thought. What she didn’t learn until months later was that she had also picked up a vicious strain of gonorrhea that would eventually impair her reproductive system.
An interest Maureen and Sabrina both shared was an affinity for modern art. In 1959, the most controversial creation of Frank Lloyd Wright had opened on Madison Avenue. It was a bold, circular structure called the Guggenheim Museum of Art. Maureen loved it, and went monthly.
A rare exhibit of Picasso’s Guernica opened that spring and brought both young women there. “I wish I could do something 1/100th as good,” Maureen sighed. “It’s such a magnificent, bold work.” It was amazing, how art could soothe her soul.
“Hey, what the hell, we’ve been here for an hour, let’s go see if there’s a line over at Cinema II; they’re playing the new Beatles’ movie, and I need a laugh or two,” Maureen finally suggested. It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night was upbeat, light fare.
“Sure, a good idea,” Sabrina agreed.
After the movie, the two friends walked along Third Avenue, stopped at a local pizza joint for a slice. Maureen wasn’t feeling so good.
Maureen looked awfully red and flushed. “Are you all right?” Sabrina asked.
“I don’t know, I have an awful stabbing pain in my right side.” She winced. “It was bothering me all through the movie.”
Within a few moments both knew Maureen was having some sort of excruciating attack. Appendicitis? “I can’t eat this thing,“ Maureen said, and put her pizza down. She was sweating profusely.
“You need to see a doctor, immediately,” Sabrina said, grabbing her handbag and Maureen‘s. “Let‘s get out of here.”
Sabrina found them a taxi, helped Maureen, who was wincing in pain into the cab. “Take us to the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital,” she told the driver. Maureen looked awful, as if she might pass out from the pain. Sabrina waited patiently for hours while her friend was diagnosed and then admitted. “She’s running a 104 degree fever and we don’t think it’s her appendix. We’ll know more after tests,” the young intern reported.
That weekend would be touch and go. Maureen had unknowingly developed peritonitis, the result of a fallopian tube that had finally ruptured, infected by the disease she had picked up from that handsome reporter two months earlier. Two weeks later she left the hospital weak, pale, run down. The spirit had been drained out of her. She still would need two more weeks of antibiotics.
When Maureen’s mother, a God-fearing woman who still attended daily mass, learned that her willful daughter had been hospitalized, she chose not to visit. “Jesus, Joseph and Mary!” she cursed. “It had to lead to something like this, that damned fool would never listen!” She was convinced that her rebellious daughter had finally been punished for her erring ways. “That’s what that kind of life has brought her,” she sobbed to the local priest at the parish house. Worse, she feared her daughter had had an abortion or something equally evil. She was ashamed, determined to keep it a secret. She’d confide only in Father O’Reilly, who promised to pray for her wayward daughter. No, she couldn’t visit her; it would be too hurtful, and it might seem like she was condoning her daughter’s shameful behavior.
“You go if you want,” she said to her boys. “But I can’t. The girl has to change her ways.”
Most of the family, conservative, siding with their mother, stayed away. But Danny, Maureen’s youngest brother, finally came in the day before she was discharged. He handed her a bouquet of flowers. “I’m sorry about this, kiddo. Here’s fifty bucks from the gang to help out,” he said, handing her a white envelope.
“Mom isn’t up to coming in, I’m sorry…she means well, she really does, Maureen,” he stuttered.
“Tell Mom I understand,” she answered. But she didn’t.
That was the last Maureen heard from her family. In their own ignorance they’d determined that she deserved whatever happened to her. They were always of the mind that she was too damned wild, living alone as she had, and then not even finishing college. Didn’t they tell her to move out their way, return to school, become a nurse or a teacher -- make something decent of herself? If not a secure career, then she should be marrying and raising a family. Mary Catherine would light a candle for Maureen daily, praying to St. Jude for her salvation. But she could not bring herself to see her willful daughter.
Marriage? A family? The concept to Maureen seemed remote at this point. The doctors had explained that the infection had badly damaged Maureen’s tubes. If she should marry and ever hoped to have children she’d need surgery to try to reverse the impairment. Right now she was too damned sick to care.
When Buddy had learned that she was at Lenox Hill, he came to visit every day that final week, often bringing her Breyer’s coffee ice cream, her favorite flavor. Just a few days before she was released, Annie Rosenberg, her old friend from Hunter College, who‘d learned about her illness through the grapevine, had also come to see her. A new Annie, happy, smiling, glowing with news.
“I’m engaged -- a wonderful guy, so handsome, so sexy,” she shouted. “And we’ve known each other for only two months -- talk about love at first sight!”
All Maureen could gather was that her friend had placed a personals ad in the EastVillage Other, an alternative newspaper, in the personals column. Met a damned fireman named Tom Ryan, for God’s sake, and was going to marry him. Would wonders never cease?
She hugged Annie, wishing her the best of luck; really hoping this man would be good to her. The only firemen she knew -- including her own brother -- were male chauvinists. She’d dated a couple, and while they were hunks, they were cheap bastards, including her brother John. John had never called Maureen, asked how she was doing after her hospitalization -- and he was stationed at a firehouse in the West Village, so he could have even come to visit. It hurt but she didn’t expect much from any of them. She knew he was busy -- worked two jobs and, had to travel all the way out to Long Island where he lived with his wife and two sons. Maureen had noticed those few times she had seen him at home, that he acted dreadfully towards his wife.
As for dear Annie -- who was she to pass judgment on this happy soul? Maybe, finally, Annie would have good fortune -- and the answer to her dreams. She knew how much of a romantic her friend was, and Maureen truly hoped she’d found her Mr. Right.
That July, men walked on the moon for the first time, Maureen went back to work, and life started to feel better. But the nights were something else. She grew restless and couldn’t stay home any longer. She just had to get out, go back to the Old Cedar Bar, and catch up with her chums. She needed the companionship.
Dismayed at the doctor telling her that her system was all messed up, Maureen decided, the hell with it all. Why would she want to bring children into this mixed-up world anyway? And marriage? She hadn’t seen any award-winning ones, didn’t think it was worth the hurt. So though she’d been warned not to have any alcohol in her system for the next six months, within three weeks of being back at the bars she was sipping wine spritzers, smoking her Marlboros and getting a buzz on. The age of Woodstock was still burning bright.
Ben Tolson. That mother fucker. Maureen had finally figured it out. She had slept only with Ben for the month and a half before she ended up in the hospital, so she knew. She was well aware of his reputation -- he slipped his dick into any broad he wanted. After all, he wrote for the big deal Times. And dumb her, she was just another broad. So he’d been screwing around, infecting women all over town. But she’d do the right thing.
So Maureen sat down, wrote and mailed an anonymous letter telling Tolson he should check with a doctor before he destroyed any other lives. She never knew if the son-of-a-bitch did anything about it. Weird, but he never came around to the bars she frequented any more.
Years later -- though Maureen wouldn‘t find out for a long time -- Tolson, who had a passion for both sexes, was going to die of AIDS.
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