BY SUSAN SHAPIRO | The following is an excerpt from Susan Shapiro’s new novel, “What’s Never Said,” published by Greenwich Village’s Heliotrope, officially coming out Aug. 3.
Setup: In February 1981, in Greenwich Village, Lila Lerner, an innocent graduate N.Y.U. student from a Jewish Wisconsin family, is upset when the professor she adores ignores her on Valentine’s Day. So she has dinner with a Turkish classmate, Tarik, at the Cookery on University Place.
When the wine came, Tarik took a sip and nodded for the waiter to pour.
“Why did you get a bottle from ten years ago?” Lila asked, wondering if it was still good a decade later, and if you got a discount for old stuff.
“A friend and wine best when old,” he said, clicking her glass.
Lila was intrigued by his accent and the way he sometimes left out connectives.
“You prefer red or white?”
“Definitely red,” she said, not mentioning that the kind they drank at home was Manischewitz.
“After graduate degree, you move home?” Tarik asked.
“No. I’ll get a job and stay here. I love the Village.” Lila drank up. The taste was growing on her.
“Your family let you do this?” Tarik poured more.
Lila shrugged. “Why not?”
“Dangerous alone. Before you marry…”
Lila finished her glass. “I might never get married.”
“Woman writer needs husband,” he insisted.
“Tell that to Sylvia Plath.” She poured a tall one she finished quickly.
He looked confused. “She had husband and two babies young.”
“Yeah, then her husband’s affairs ruined their family,” Lila said. “She would have been better off unmarried and childless. Like Emily Dickinson. Jane Austen. Elizabeth Bishop.”
“You don’t mean.” Tarik shook his head. “Something wrong with woman who doesn’t want to be wife and mother.”
“What do you mean by wrong?”
“Broken. Damaged. Not normal. Crazy,” he listed. “How you say — disturbed.”
“Why the f— would you say something so ignorant?” she asked, emboldened by the wine.
“Speak quietly,” he said through clenched teeth. “Not attractive for ladies to swear.”
“F— you!” she said louder, standing up.
He stood up too, his eyes jumpy, horrified. “Sit down,” he whispered.
Lila did not sit down. She marched out the door. She’d never walked out on a guy at dinner before. It felt totally cool, like she was the poet version of Gloria Steinem. Until she realized that she was overdressed and alone at 9 p.m. on the Saturday night of Valentine’s Day in a city of couples on dates. How humiliating.
Lila started to cry, heading back to her dorm to hide under the covers. Instead she went to Washington Square Park. Sitting on a bench, she lit her roommate Sari’s present: a red joint. Nobody noticed Lila amid the transvestites, hippies and students gathered around the fire-eater — even in freezing cold. A scraggly regular said, “Hey pretty clothes, what ya doin’ back here?”
“Dumped my date,” she said, handing him the joint. They shared it as a guitar player sang Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris.” She hummed along, tingly, dizzy, starving.
Remembering the $20 her mother sent her for Valentine’s Day, Lila decided to take herself out to dinner at Dojo. She changed into the flats hidden in her purse and waded through the hordes of bohemians and homeless men hanging out on decrepit St. Mark’s Place. It smelled of burning incense and the hot dog truck on the corner.
Lila marveled at the seedy bodega, dive bar, graffiti-lined record shop and tattoo parlor she passed. More crazy characters strolled this jam-packed East Village intersection than she’d seen in nineteen years in her hometown of Baraboo — population 10,000. She was awed by the downtown graffiti artists and foreign women selling used blouses and coffeemakers on the sidewalk — not noticing it was twenty degrees out.
All the oddballs were decked out as if Valentine’s Day was Halloween — girls in gowns with vampire capes, men in dresses, high heels and makeup. Everybody carried bizarre objects: antique chairs, bagpipes, a boa constrictor. She felt like she was floating, escaping from prison to live in this exciting drug-filled carnival.
At her favorite bookstore, St. Mark’s Bookshop, she treated herself to a poetry collection, Louise Glück’s “Descending Figure,” on sale for $2. Crossing the street, she sat inside at Dojo and read the angry female Jewish poet’s words, craving chicken yakimeshi. Sari had turned her on to this dive and awesome $4 meal. When Lila got her paycheck, she’d treat herself to this special dish. The only thing Lila didn’t like was the sliced onions. She’d pick them out one by one, putting a pile on the side.
Right after she ordered, she had a revelation. She stopped the waitress and said, “Excuse me, miss. I have a question. Can I get my yakimeshi without onions?”
“Sure, hon. No problem,” the waitress said.
Lila was amazed. Forget all her male Svengalis trying to teach her wisdom. She’d just learned the most important lesson on her own: You could order the world without onions! Just as it came, she saw Sari walking by through the window. She was alone too. What happened to her date Lenu? Lila ran outside and called out to her. “I left Tarik at the Cookery and smoked your joint alone in the park.”
“Lenu bangs me four times last night, then blows me off Valentine’s Day. It’s a stupid motherf—ing Hallmark holiday,” Sari muttered, then started crying.
Lila held out her arms, which Sari fell into. “I’m so glad you’re here. Come hang out with me.” Lila led her inside.
Sari sat down at her table, blowing her nose with Lila’s napkin. Then she stuck her fingers in the yakimeshi, picking out chicken and some carrots, plunking them in her mouth.
“Tastes different,” Sari said.
“I special ordered it,” Lila told her. “You can just order life without the onions!”
“Nice metaphor,” Sari said.
“Right? I know!” Lila cracked up, then asked the waitress for another fork, thinking she wound up with the exact right person she loved most on Valentine’s Day after all.
Shapiro will read from “What’s Never Said” at a “Shrinks Are Away Reading” on Tues., Aug. 4, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at St. Mark’s Bookshop, 136 E. Third St. Other authors reading from their new works will include Kate Walter, Neesha Arter, Royal Young and Kenan Trebincevic. On Wed., Aug. 5, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Shapiro will host a “Secrets of Book Publishing Panel” with book editors and literary agents at the Strand bookstore’s Rare Books Room, 828 Broadway at 12th St. (Buy a copy of “What’s Not Said” or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend.)
