What Should I Do?
Bernadette Miller
Elaine concluded that Misha had probably never meant to abuse her mother when they married in 1977. Back then, Dorrie was still beautiful at sixty-three with long, thick red hair that framed her heart-shaped face. To tall, husky Misha, she must have seemed ultra feminine: petite with soft, dainty hands and long, manicured nails. Offering him soda in her tiny Brooklyn apartment, she shyly listened to him talk, and laughed at his jokes while modestly straightening her thrift-shop dress. He appreciated her frugality, relieved she wouldn’t drain him of money.
She rarely challenged him. “I can’t stand fights,” she said. It’s not in my nature.”
He smiled and kissed her.
During their Atlantic City honeymoon, Misha said he was still surprised that a beauty like Dorrie had placed a personal ad in a newspaper. His first wife, met at a dance, wasn’t nearly so beautiful, and she was temperamental. He’d tolerated her because of her substantial inheritance, enabling him to retire from the Post Office during his fifties. She’d died five years ago of cancer.
Giddy over several glasses of wine, Dorrie let slip, “Well, when a woman turns middle-age, it ain’t so easy finding someone.”
So Misha probably figured that after divorcing her second husband, Dorrie must have been desperate not to work as a secretary.
“I hope you didn’t marry me as a meal ticket!” he said during dinner.
She shook her head and bent over her plate.
Dorrie didn’t realize it at the time but the abuse started soon after they moved into his Brighton Beach co-op, when Misha also probably realized that despite her good looks, Dorrie wasn’t bright. She’d barely graduated from high school, whereas he’d endured two years of college accounting courses. Watching television in the living room during Elaine’s visit, his legs sprawled before him on the green sofa, he tested Dorrie’s knowledge by asking questions like whether she knew about the rich Jew who financed the American Revolution.
She called back from the kitchenette, “Misha, please don’t ask me complicated questions when I’m busy cooking dinner.”
He shouted back, “I bet Elaine knows! She has a masters degree in education. It wouldn’t hurt to use your brain sometime. How can you be so dumb?”
Elaine, face flushed with embarrassment, said, “I don’t know who financed the American Revolution.”
Ignoring her comment, he braced himself for supper, although he’d warned Dorrie he hated vegetables. His mother had prepared only burnt meat and watery soups, but his henpecked father, a railroad conductor, never complained. Nevertheless, in their alcove dining room, Dorrie still piled vegetables on Misha’s plate, arguing they were healthy. The baked sweet potato with marshmallow tasted good, but he frowned at her disregarding his requests.
When she also nagged him to take vitamins, he shouted, “I don’t need any! Leave me alone!” Then, while chatting with Elaine at the table, he caught Dorrie mashing a vitamin into his applesauce, and he sighed. He couldn’t watch her every second.
Maybe that’s why, when Dorrie said during another meal, “Misha, I have plenty if you’re hungry,” he’d stared at his plate with his thinning gray hair and pale blue eyes, and exploded, “You know I hate carrots! Give me something I can eat, for God’s sake!”
Seated opposite him, she calmly replied, “Try the brisket. It’s very tender. See if you like it.”
He ate some juicy brisket, which practically melted in his mouth, but because he was still fuming about the carrots, he grumbled, “The brisket’s okay.”
“Is it tender enough?”
“I said it’s okay! Let me eat in peace!”
In addition, Dorrie seemed fanatical about keeping his clothes clean. His mother hadn’t cared about the laundry, spending most of her time screaming on the telephone at imaginary callers. But Dorrie appealed to his vanity by pleading, “You look so handsome with clean clothes!” Then, she’d show him a blue polyester shirt she’d bought, hold it against his chest, and say, “See how nice it matches your eyes.”
Could he say no? Well, why should Dorrie care about saving money? She didn’t have a job, just spent her day doing housework. Perhaps he abused her because he felt women couldn’t be trusted, like his mother who’d yelled at him every time he tried to hug her, and in fact she was finally confined to a mental institution where she died. Misha might have thought a husband had better yell as soon as he spotted something wrong, before it worsened.
He didn’t physically abuse Dorrie. God forbid a six-foot man with a few muscles left should strike a wife who was five-foot-two. No, he merely made his wishes known so Dorrie would know who was boss. Dining out Saturday nights with her friends and daughter in a fancy restaurant, he’d snapped, “For God’s sakes, Dorrie, are you brain dead? I told you the fish is okay! If it wasn’t we’d know by the stink. Don’t ask stupid questions.” He resumed eating, ignoring the glances around the table, as if they thought he was cracked. At birthday parties, he kept to himself in a corner, refusing to shake hands which he said wasn’t necessary, and he watched Dorrie make a fool of herself by dancing with the other women since he’d forbidden her to dance with men. Perhaps he intended defending his rights as a husband, not allowing another woman to run his life, like his crazy mother. If he’d spoken up to her, instead of whimpering that she didn’t love him, he might have saved himself heartache.
Weeknights, the couple watched television: game shows, soap operas, the news, musicals, and old movies. But Dorrie’s dozing annoyed him. He’d shake her arm, demanding to discuss the program, and she’d reply sleepily, “I’m sorry. My mind wandered.”
As if all this wasn’t enough to make him grouchy, Dorrie had tried redecorating their small two-bedroom co-op as if it were The Taj Mahal, although, except for Elaine, they rarely had company since he’d said in the beginning he didn’t want people tramping through their home. No problem with his friends; he didn’t have any. As he often repeated: a wife is enough aggravation for a man. He wouldn’t invite more with strangers. He’d yelled until his gaunt face flushed scarlet and his eyes practically bulged from their sockets that the living room didn’t need new tulle curtains; who noticed fraying hems? But Dorrie went ahead anyway, and also ordered green carpeting to match the furniture. It looked comfortable, the plush carpet soft underfoot, but why all that needless expense? Just wasting his money, as usual!
Winters, Dorrie nagged him to repair the living room radiator, although he’d explained it was the landlord’s responsibility. Cold air didn’t bother him, his lungs were in good condition, perhaps inherited from his Russian ancestors, but Dorrie said she couldn’t stand it. Yet, she wouldn’t drape herself with a blanket, preferring to shiver on the sofa beside him, and expected him to pay for a plumber, which he refused to do. He still had plenty of money, but Elaine thought he might have worried about spending his last dime and ending up on welfare.
The abuse had alarmed Elaine and Dorrie’s friends. After a year of marriage, Elaine urged her mother to leave Misha. Nervously ruffling her auburn curls, Elaine said, “Under the circumstances, you should be able to collect alimony, along with your social security. Your friends would gladly come forward as witnesses.”
But Dorrie shook her head over coffee. “Honey, you like teaching high school science and being single, but I gotta have a husband. I didn’t love Misha, I saw him as a meal ticket, just like he said. I couldn’t stand working again or looking for another husband.” She paused. “I tried to compensate by taking care of him. Plenty of husbands are worse! Misha pays all the bills, lets me buy beautiful stuff. I think he loves me in his own way, but he had such an awful experience with his mother and first wife, he don’t know how to treat a woman.”
For twenty years Dorrie endured his abuse, until she finally lost her temper and blamed him for her catching pneumonia and going to the hospital. Yet, Misha visited her daily and wolfed down the five-dollar lunch.
“So, what’s wrong with the food here?” he told Dorrie while munching on cold hamburger. “You always buy the best and most expensive--determined to drive us into poverty!”
Elaine glared at him from the nearby hospital chair, which he didn’t seem to notice.
To make matters worse, when Dorrie returned home, Misha could hardly walk because of the pain shooting through his legs.
“Let me take you to a doctor,” Dorrie pleaded, but Misha shook his head. She knew he hated doctors for letting his parents and first wife die. Then she tried to help with leg exercises, and ended up spraining her chest muscles, and returning to the hospital. Misha yelled she shouldn’t have been so foolish, but he paid all her doctor bills and bought her a mink coat for helping him, in addition to his anniversary gift of a diamond heart.
But did she appreciate his generosity? Back home, she said heartlessly, “Misha, your negative attitude drives me crazy. Please stop whining all day, ļI’m a sick, old man, ready to die.’ You refused to see a doctor. You don’t want to get better. You just want to complain about it.”
“Well, why should you care? Your legs don’t hurt!”
But that afternoon he added six thousand dollars to their joint checking account to pay for his funeral.
And now, probably annoying Misha even more, Dorrie wanted to spend New Years at Borowack Lodge in the Catskills.
“Why can’t we go to the Segalman’s party in Brooklyn?” he’d urged. “There I can bring cheap wine. The Catskills cost a fortune.”
Patting her dyed red bouffant, Dorrie replied, “I might still look youthful but I’m eighty-three and not as energetic. I gotta have a week’s relief from cooking and housework, and you need a change from your health problems.”
“Okay, okay,” he grumbled, but he complained bitterly while using the car service, “I know you caught me at a weak moment when I let my guard down.”
Late Wednesday afternoon, as soon as they entered the hotel, he said it wouldn’t work out. Despite the ten-degree temperature outside, the lobby was freezing.
Guests bundled up in coats, huddled on fancy velour couches, rubbing their hands, or jamming them inside pockets, and stared at the marble floor and massive marble columns that made the room seem icier.
The pimply clerk behind the reception desk, looking as if he’d recently graduated from high school, apologized that they were trying to repair the heating system and to please excuse the inconvenience.
Misha warned Dorrie that with her delicate condition, her lungs being weakened from her previous pneumonia, they’d better leave.
“You paid a thousand dollars,” she reminded him, taking advantage of his thrift. “We should give it a chance. Maybe they’ll fix it.”
“Nah, they won’t fix it, and you’ll end up getting sick again. Let’s call car service right now, or it’ll cost a lot more than a thousand.”
Despite his seemingly reasonable remark, she replied that she desperately needed a vacation (obviously forgetting they were there because he needed it). He watched Dorrie shivering beneath several sweaters and a coat that she wore even in the dining room.
“Please, Dorrie, do you want to catch pneumonia again?”
She stubbornly shook her head. “They’ll fix it.”
By Friday, Dorrie gasped for breath. Misha called car service, and as soon as they arrived at their apartment building, he sent her to a Brooklyn hospital by ambulance; the doctor put her in intensive care, on a respirator. But this time Misha couldn’t visit because he couldn’t walk. Elaine persuaded him to see a hip doctor, who said the joint was worn out, and he warned Misha that an operation was too dangerous at eighty-five. The hospital supplied a wheelchair, walker, and an attendant.
Which meant that Misha saw himself stuck at home with a middle-aged stranger who worked until mid-afternoon (he couldn’t stand the attendant being there all day), and forced without his wife to order dinners from lousy neighborhood restaurants, having labored slowly and painfully with a walker to the bedroom phone. The only light in his day was hearing about Dorrie’s condition during his nightly call to her daughter.
Elaine assured him that her mother was improving, and he confessed that he missed her terribly. “I’m used to having a wife,” he told Elaine. “Seeing the empty seat on the sofa, where Dorrie used to sit, is like a piece of me got detached. I want her home, where she belongs...”
Day after day he told Elaine how he longed for Dorrie’s recovery. She’d been removed from intensive care and assigned a room, but other complications threatened. She’d lost another ten pounds, an embolism had lodged in her lungs, and an infection invaded her stomach from the antibiotics. Still, Elaine was certain her mother would recover.
“But she ain’t getting better--that’s what worries me!”
“My mother shouldn’t have worked so hard at her age! Don’t you realize how miserably you’ve treated her?”
“No, I never realized...” He paused in subdued silence, as if aware for the first time of his abuse. Then, he pleaded, “Let her get well, her life will be much easier! I fixed the living room radiator--I can’t stand the heat, but your mother will feel comfortable, no more pneumonia.” He then promised to hire a maid for Dorrie.
“She won’t lift a finger,” he told Elaine. “Just let her come back to me.” He paused, and managed to joke, “She has to be tough, putting up with me all these years! When she was here, I looked handsome like Rudolph Valentino. Without her, I wear filthy clothes and look like Boris Karloff.”
Two weeks later, Elaine called one evening, and said, “Misha, I’m coming up tomorrow to the apartment. Mother needs a few things.”
“Sure, come up any time, I’m looking forward to good news about Dorrie.”
But when his stepdaughter arrived and sat on the opposite armchair, staring at the green carpet, he drew back on the sofa, as if sensing something horrible had happened that he wanted to know, but didn’t want to know.
She finally leaned forward and said softly, “Misha, there’s no easy way to tell you this. Mother passed away yesterday at three o’clock.”
He stared, stunned. “What? Passed away? You mean she died?”
The daughter nodded and turned, daubing at her eyes.
Misha burst into sobs.
The daughter sat quietly.
A moment of such agony washed over him, he began beating his head with his hands. He wailed, “Why didn’t I call the doctors, instead of relying on you? Why did I let Dorrie die?” He swayed, moaning. Then he said, “How could this happen?” but the daughter shook her head. He looked accusingly at her. “You said she was getting better.”
“She was, at first. We both know how attractive Mother looked before her illness, but she was old. At Beth Israel she fought hard to recover her health. When her weight sank to a hundred pounds from loss of appetite, she was too weak to withstand complications. She died from cardiac arrest after contracting meningitis.”
Dazed by the news he shook his head. “Dorrie was my best friend, the only one who cared about me. Without her, I have nobody, nothing to live for. Oh, God, how could I lose her?”
He bent forward and moaned again, his body swaying in grief, repeating like a child, “God, why didn’t you take me instead? I put extra money in our checking account for my funeral so she wouldn’t have the expense, and look what happened...” He turned away, his face wet with tears. “I can’t live without her. I just want to die. God, please, let me die...”
Elaine tried to comfort him. “Mother wouldn’t want you to grieve like this. She was old and sick. There was nothing you could do.”
He looked up at her, his eyes streaming. “I could have visited her with my wheelchair, instead of worrying about the ambulette cost! I never cried like this when my own mother died or my first wife. All her friends loved Dorrie--everybody loved her. But I never appreciated her.” He buried his face in upturned palms. “What should I do? How can I go on?”
Suddenly, he gazed upward, as if memories prompted inspiration. “You don’t know how wonderful she was to me! Made me eat healthy food and take vitamins, and injured herself trying to help with my physical problems. Who else would cook meals like her? Your mother made the most tender brisket, and delicious baked sweet potato...” He waved at the living room. “See how nice it looks? She bought new curtains when the old ones wore out, and made sure the new carpeting matched the furniture. She was very intellligent! Saved me a bundle of money by refusing to hire a maid. As soon as I met her I wanted to marry her. Even in her eighties, she was still beautiful with a slim figure. The sweetest, kindest woman I’ve ever known. Dorrie was perfect.”
