Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [20]
“Mom. We were married last week.”
She turned ashen. We were both underage. They could annul it if they wanted to.
“I’m sorry you didn’t think enough of us to come to us. Maybe you’ll manage your own family better than I managed mine.”
She left quickly to go to her room and cry it out. It was the first time in my life I had ever made a real defiant stand against my parents. Now, I was frightened.
GIDEON AND I had a tiny third-floor walk-up flat over a Chinese grocery on Larkin Street, on the edge of San Francisco’s tenderloin. Thirty-five dollars a month, furnished.
My introduction to my new father-in-law was a five-page letter, not unlike the Rocks and Shoals (the articles governing the United States Navy).
... I don’t know how much my sonny boy told you about his happy childhood in Philadelphia, but we are a very progressive family. I have no objection whatsoever that my son marries a shiksa (gentile) but he should not forget he is Jewish.
Enclosed are the recipes to make gefilte fish, matzo brie, borsht, gadempta fleysh, tsimmes, etc. when we meet personally, I’ll give you a test.
Mainly, you should see to it that Gideon writes to me every week. I hold you responsible. And it wouldn’t hurt a thing if you also correspond with me.
I don’t know why Gideon is boycotting Philadelphia. What’s so great about San Francisco?
From Gideon’s mother, a strange, simple message, “How could you do this to your mother?”
Gideon didn’t want to go back to Baltimore and Philly, even for a short visit as the war was coming to a close. “I’ll go back,” he said, “after my first book is published, and I’ll drive home in a Cadillac.”
Before the war ended, an event took place that should have tipped me off that I had married a wild man. Gideon had wangled a transfer from the hospital to duty at a supply depot in San Francisco. At that time the San Francisco Examiner and other Hearst newspapers were pushing for Douglas MacArthur, a soldier, to become supreme commander in the Pacific, placing him over the Navy and the Marines. A terrible front-page editorial was headlined MARINES DIE NEEDLESSLY and cited MacArthur’s skill at keeping down Army casualties. Of course it did not mention that the Marines were given by far the most dangerous islands to invade. Gideon and some three hundred enlisted Marines paid a visit to the Examiner. When the editor phoned the Shore Patrol for help—what do you know, not a single Navy or Marine officer of authority was left in town.
As the police arrived, I was told later, Gideon, as spokesman, grabbed the editor by his necktie and said, “The first cop that enters, we’re taking your presses apart.”
Result, the Examiner printed a retraction and the rest of the Hearst papers canceled the editorial. I recall this incident because it was the first time I saw Gideon refuse to back down, a situation that often would recur.
A BEAUTIFUL LETTER came from his sister, Molly. Molly wrote that she had waited for this day for so long. She said that many people loved Gideon and he had many good friends and caring relatives, but in a strange way, he was always very much alone. Molly said he desperately needed one person in this world he could call his own, someone to watch over him. And Molly wrote that she loved me because I loved Gideon.
Did I love Molly’s baby brother? Did I love him! Oh, I know all newlyweds are moonstruck with the wonderment of discovery, but we devoured each other. My tightly controlled emotions, disciplined by the untouching hands of my parents, had locked in my ability to show affection as effectively as if contained in a steel box. I never realized how tight it was and how tightly controlled my emotions had become. Love, deeply buried, erupted from me now.
We were slightly crazy. We tried everything, read every sex book we could get our hands on. He loved to make me blush when he came across something strange.
As soon as we sat down in a restaurant, our hands were under the tablecloth. We’d duck into alleyways. We’d make love on the ground in Muir Woods, just a few feet