Brenda Patimkin Character Analysis

It was, in fact, as though the hundred and eighty feet that the suburbs rose in altitude above Newark brought one closer to heaven, for the sun itself became bigger, lower, and rounder, and soon I was driving past long lawns which seemed to be twirling water on themselves, and past houses where no one sat on stoops, where lights were on but no windows open, for those inside, refusing to share the very texture of life with those of us outside, regulated with a dial the amounts of moisture that were allowed access to their skin.

“I had my nose fixed.”
“What was the matter with it?”
“It was bumpy.”
“A lot?”
“No,” she said, “I was pretty. Now I’m prettier. My brother’s having his fixed in the fall.”
“Does he want to be prettier?”
She didn’t answer and walked ahead of me again.
“I don’t mean to sound facetious. I mean why’s he doing it?”
“He wants to…unless he becomes a gym teacher…but he won’t.” she said. “We all look like my father.”
“Is he having his fixed?”
“Why are you so nasty?”
“I’m not. I’m sorry.”

I felt the wet spots on her shoulder blades, and beneath them, I’m sure of it, a faint fluttering, as though something stirred so deep in her breasts, so far back it could make itself felt through her shirt. It was like the fluttering of wings, tiny wings no bigger than her breasts. The smallness of the wings did not bother me—it would not take an eagle to carry me up those lousy hundred and eighty feet that make summer nights so much cooler in Short Hills than they are in Newark.

The next day I held Brenda’s glasses for her once again, this time not as momentary servant but as afternoon guest; or perhaps as both, which still was an improvement. She wore a black tank suit and went barefooted and among the other women, with their Cuban heels and boned-up breasts, their knuckle-sized rings, their straw hats, which resembled immense wicker pizza plates and had been purchased, as I heard one deeply tanned woman rasp, “from the cutest little shvartze when we docked at Barbados.” Brenda among them was elegantly simple, like a sailor’s dream of a Polynesian maiden, albeit one with prescription sun glasses and the last name of Patimkin.

Money! My father’s up to here with it, but whenever I buy a coat you should hear her. “You don’t have to go to Bonwit’s, young lady, Ohrbach’s has the strongest fabrics of any of them.” Who wants a strong fabric! Finally I get what I want, but not till she’s had a chance to aggravate me. Money is a waste for her. She doesn’t even know how to enjoy it. She still thinks we live in Newark.

“Look, look, look here at this one. Ain’t that the fuckin life?”
I agreed it was and left.
Later I sent Jimmy Boylen hopping down the stairs to tell McKee that everything was all right. The rest of the day was uneventful.
I sat at the Information Desk thinking about Brenda and reminding myself that that evening, I would have to get gas before I started up to Short Hills, which I could see now, in my mind’s eye, at dusk, rose-colored, like a Gauguin stream.

When I began to unbutton her dress she resisted me, and I like to think it was because she knew how lovely she looked in it. But she looked lovely, my Brenda, anyway, and we folded it carefully and held each other close and soon there we were, Brenda falling, slowly but with a smile, and me, rising.

How can I describe loving Brenda? It was so sweet, as though I’d finally scored that twenty-first point.

But Brenda was gone and this time it seemed as though she’d never come back. I settled back and waited for the sun to dawn over the ninth hole, prayed it would if only for the comfort of its light, and when Brenda finally returned to me I would not let her go, and her cold wetness crept into me somehow and made me shiver. “That’s it, Brenda. Please, no more games,” I said, and then when I spoke again I held her so tightly I almost dug my body into hers. “I love you,” I said, “I do.”

“A week?” she said. “They got room for a week?”
“Aunt Gladys, they don’t live over the store.”
“I lived over a store I wasn’t ashamed. Thank God we always had a roof. We never went begging in the streets,” she told me as I packed the Bermudas I’d just bought, “and your cousin Susan we’ll put through college, Uncle Max should live and be well. We didn’t send her away to camp for August, she doesn’t have shoes when she wants them, sweaters she doesn’t have a drawerful—”
“I didn’t say anything, Aunt Gladys.”

“Millburn they live?”
“Short Hills. I’ll leave the number.”
“Since when do Jewish people live in Short Hills? They couldn’t be real Jews believe me.”
“They’re real Jews,” I said.
“I’ll see it I’ll believe it.”

When the puny sixty-watt bulb was twisted on, I saw that the place was full of old furniture—two wing chairs with hair oil lines at the back, a sofa with a paunch in its middle, a bridge table, two bridge chairs with their stuffing showing, a mirror whose backing had peeled off, shadeless lamps, lampless shades, a coffee table with a cracked glass top, and a pile of rolled up shades.
“What is this?” I said.
“A storeroom. Our old furniture.”
“How old?”
“From Newark,” she said.

“I’m just going to run a half today, Bren. We’ll see what I do…” and I heard Brenda click the watch, and then when I was on the far side of the track, the clouds trailing above me like my own white, fleecy tail, I saw that Brenda was on the ground, hugging her knees, and alternately checking the watch and looking out at me. We were the only ones there and it all reminded me of one of those scenes in race-horse movies, where an old trainer like Walter Brennan and a young handsome man clock the beautiful girl’s horse in the early Kentucky morning, to see if it really is the fastest two-year-old alive.

Up on the beach there were beautiful bare-skinned Negresses, and none of them moved; but suddenly we were moving our ship, out of the harbor, and the Negresses moved slowly down to the shore and began to throw leis at us and say “Goodbye, Columbus…goodbye, Columbus…goodbye…” and though we did not want to go, the little boy and I, the boat was moving and there was nothing we could do about it, and he shouted at me that it was my fault and I shouted it was his for not having a library card, but we were wasting our breath, for we here further and further from the island and soon the natives were nothing at all.

“Okay,” I said. “I just wish you’d realize what it is you’re getting angry about. It’s not my suggestion, Brenda.”
“No? What is it?”
“It’s me.”
“Oh don’t start that again, will you? I can’t win, no matter what I say.”
“Yes, you can,” I said. “You have.”

Here you need a little of the gonif in you. You know what that means? Gonif?”
“Thief,” I said.
“You know more than my own kids. They’re goyim, my kids, that’s how much they understand.”

Only Brenda shone. Money and comfort would not erase her singleness—they hadn’t yet, or had they? What was I loving, I wondered, and since I am not one to stick scalpels into myself, I wiggled my hand in the fence and allowed a tiny-nosed buck to lick my thoughts away.

God, I said, I am twenty-three years old. I want to make the best of things. Now the doctor is about to wed Brenda to me, and I am not entirely certain this is all for the best. What is it I love, Lord? Why have I chosen? Who is Brenda? The race is to the swift. Should I have stopped to think?

Then he looked at me. “Whatever my Buck wants is good enough for me. There’s no business too big it can’t use another head.”

I smiled, though not directly at him, and beyond I could see Leo sopping up champagne and watching the three of us; when he caught my eye he made a sign with his hand, a circle with his thumb and forefinger, indicating, “That a boy, that a boy!”

What had probably happened was that he’d given up on the library and gone back to playing Willie Mays in the street. He was better off, I thought. No sense carrying dreams of Tahiti in your head if you can’t afford the fare.

What was it inside me that had turned pursuit and clutching into love and then turned it inside out again? What was it that had turned winning into losing, and losing—who knows—into winning? I was sure I had loved Brenda, though standing there, I knew I couldn’t any longer. And I knew it would be a long while before I made love to anyone the way I had made love to her. With anyone else, could I summon up such a passion? Whatever spurred my love for her, had that spawned such lust too? If she had only been slightly not Brenda…but then would I have loved her?

I looked hard at the image of me, at that darkening of the glass, and then my gaze pushed through it, over the cool floor, to a broken wall of books, imperfectly shelved.

I did not look very much longer, but took a train that got me into Newark just as the sun was rising on the first day of the Jewish New Year. I was back in plenty of time for work.