The Kuppenheims

Here we are together for eighth-grade graduation at El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills, Kuppenheims and Feingolds. Both ladies in the photograph are smiling, but Mrs. Kuppenheim seems happy, and my mother somehow doesn’t. She was always hard to read. My dad, never one for pretense, looks simply annoyed, and Mr. Kuppenheim has no particular expression; he just looks old and sick. Short, bespectacled Curtis, my friend, stares frog-like at the camera, and I’m glancing sideways at something or, more probably, at nothing. Just waiting for the shutter to click, for the day to end. I know Dad hates things like this, and that Mom knows it too. That’s probably why her mouth is set in that imitation smile. The photo is one of those old Polaroid jobs with scalloped edges, taken by no one I can remember. Forty years later, after Dad died, I found it in his apartment.

It’s not likely that he meant to hang on to it that long, or at all. My parents weren’t friends with Curt’s; I’d be surprised to hear that they were ever together at another time and place. But, doubtless by accident, it was one of the few family things Dad left behind. He was a writer. He left me his books and movie scripts. Mr. Kuppenheim had been a radio comedian, but by the time of the photo, the late ‘50s, he had been long retired. He probably left his son a pile of old jokes.

Curt Kuppenheim wasn’t popular, and I didn’t particularly like him, but in the summer after graduation I needed a place to go. Just clumping around the house I made noise, merely by the act of breathing I did, and Dad insisted on quiet while he wrote. He got mad fast, and he didn’t issue warnings. It was no fun being home under those circumstances, and Curt

had a pool. He lived way up in northside Beverly Hills, where there actually were hills as well as pools. Usually I rolled across the city, coming and going, in a cab. Mom couldn’t take me because she might be needed for a story conference. I was never comfortable, at 14, telling a grown-up taxi driver where to go.

Curt must have watched for me. Through the window of the still-moving cab, I would see his front door open. After I got out, beach towel and swim trunks gathered in a floppy bundle under my arm, he would step out on his porch and wave impatiently if I stood still even for a moment. Maybe he was afraid I’d jump back into the cab and escape. Nobody came to his house but me.

“Come on, Raymond!”

“OK, I’m coming.”

Well, the swimming was good, just the two of us in that big kidney-shaped pool. We played pingpong too, and I enjoyed beating the crap out of Curtis at that. But most of all, I liked looking at his mother, who was a complete babe. She had a lot of black hair; a broad, white-toothed grin on full display in that graduation photo; and curvy hips and breasts that made the girls we went to school with seem like sexless sticks. I never saw Mrs. Kuppenheim enter the pool, although she occasionally referred to doing laps in the morning. In my bed at night I imagined her doing them nude. At least I got to see her in a one-piece swimsuit. She would lie in a chaise, taking the sun, and I would stare. Sometimes Curt would punch me on the shoulder to make me stop, and I would punch him back and whisper, “Screw you, Kuppenheim.” She wore these little opaque plastic lenses over her eyes when sunning, so how would she know?

I stared at her long, smooth legs and at the dark, curly pubic hairs that occasionally peeked forth from her crotch. But my favorite parts of Mrs. Kuppenheim were her breasts, bulging up at the top of her suit, glistening with tanning oil. Once the entire left one somehow slipped out of its cup, allowing me to examine, for the first time I could remember, a female nipple until Curt spoiled it by shouting, “Mom! Mom!” She tucked herself back in and laughed. We boys were in the pool’s shallow end at the time, and Curt noisily sat down beneath the surface. For a few seconds I stood still, the little waves from his plunge lapping around my waist, trying to fix breast and nipple in my mind.

Mr. Kuppenheim rarely came out to the pool, so I never saw much of him. He seemed ancient, easily 30 years older than his wife. He was, I’d say now, at least 10 years her senior, and he was sick. A bad heart, Curt said, which was why he was so pale and walked so slowly. Usually he strolled around in striped pajamas and a red plaid bathrobe, cruising his house while smoking a cigar, like a doughty little tugboat puffing from its stack. He did not believe in locking bathroom doors, and I walked in on him several times while he was seated on the toilet, with cigar, reading the Los Angeles Times. The first time I was scared that he’d get mad and have a heart attack and die, but he only apologized for taking too long. From then on I tried to remember to knock, but when I didn’t and barged in on him, I would laugh afterward. When Curt asked what the joke was, I only shook my head.

And I wondered. Did they screw, the two senior Kuppenheims? Having asked myself that question, I couldn’t easily dismiss it from my mind. They must have once, or there would be no Curtis, but did they still? It seemed unlikely. I tried to picture the two of them going at it, the old man and the babe, but all I could clearly see was that red bathrobe flapping around the awkward, plunging pair.

I doubted that my parents still screwed, although both were relatively young and healthy. While not voluptuous like Mrs. Kuppenheim, my slim, petite mother was very pretty, and Dad was a big, rugged-looking guy. But though they had story conferences in his room upstairs, they never said much to each other elsewhere in the house. They watched TV, read, apart even when in the same room.

On what turned out to be my last visit to the Kuppenheims, Curt and I spent the first half of the morning sitting by the pool. By now, late August, we were both tired of swimming, and Curt, fed up with getting creamed at pingpong, wouldn’t play me anymore. On this day he wanted to go into town and walk up and down Beverly Drive, where the kids from school hung out. His mom, who hadn’t yet appeared that day, could drive us.

I thought about it. Being driven somewhere by Curt’s mom might be nice if I could sit next to her, sit close. I had constantly wished for opportunities to touch her, had even fantasized about faking a trip and sprawling full-length upon Mrs. Kuppenheim as she lay on her chaise, half asleep. Crazy, but rubbing my thigh against hers in the car--that I might do. Or might, if they didn’t have a big, wide Chrysler New Yorker, so that no “accidental” rubbing would be credible. I would probably have to sit in the back seat too, just as in my taxis.

And, furthermore, traipsing around Beverly Drive with Curt Kuppenheim was definitely a bad idea. About half of the kids down there liked me, but the other half didn’t, and no one liked Curt. He knew this, but always hoped that one day, as if by magic, his status would improve. But it wouldn’t, and being seen with him might lower my own.

I shook my head. “Naw. Don’t feel like it.”

“Oh, come on, Ray.”

I ignored Curt. Where the hell was his mom? It was past the time when she usually came out. I readied myself for disappointment. Maybe this would be one of the days when she would miss.

“Well,” Curt said. “Let’s go to that park near your house. There’s kids there too.”

Same problem, being seen with him, but also something else. Yes, Roxbury Park was near my house, which meant we might wind up walking there if I couldn’t think of a convincing reason not to. As soon as she saw us, my mother would begin hovering and shushing, anything to keep us from disturbing Dad. That was her hugely embarrassing pattern and the reason I rarely had guests. As Curt wasn’t stupid, he would get an idea of just how weird my family was, and he might talk about it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t want to make your mother drive all the way down there. Where is she, anyway?”

“She’s inside, dummy. In the house. Where else?”

And at that moment, casting my eyes toward the house, I saw his mom, standing behind the sliding glass panel that served the Kuppenheims as a back door. She was looking out, but up at the sky, rather than at us. Then she turned and, walking swiftly into another room, seemed to disappear.

I gazed out at the pool. She wasn’t going to sun herself today. She was busy with something inside. So I would swim; there was nothing else to do here, and at least it would get me away from Curt, still whining about going someplace. I got up slowly, I would swim slowly. The day would pass.

The sliding door slammed open. I turned, half standing, with my hands still on the metal arms of the chair. Mrs. Kuppenheim came out of the house in a rush, then stopped dead.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Curt said.

She was wearing slacks and a shirt instead of her usual one-piece, so my immediate feeling was disappointment. Nothing was right today.

Mrs. Kuppenheim didn’t say hello to me, which was odd. She was always nice and often addressed me as “Honey,” but now it was as if I weren’t there. In nervous motions, she rubbed her hands up and down on her hips, and her face, serious, tight, reminded me of my mother’s face.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Curt asked again.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Daddy says he feels funny.”

She noticed me. “Hi, Ray honey.” She tried to smile, but only made it about halfway.

Curt’s dad came out in his robe, a rare outside appearance. He was barefoot. In a voice that surprised me with its depth and loudness, an announcer’s voice, he said, “Don’t worry, Barbara. I’m OK. I think it was just gas.”

This message, delivered so boldly, caused me to imagine him on the toilet, where I had glimpsed the old comedian more than once, noisily venting. I repressed a laugh.

“Oh, Max,” she said. “Oh, Maxie. Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure,”

“But you’re sweating.” His brow was covered with beads of sweat.

“It’s hot out today, Barb. Why should I not be sweating?”

“At least come back in. Come.” She took his arm. He pulled it away.

“Hot,” he said, in a speculative tone, as if it were scientifically interesting to encounter heat in Beverly Hills in August. He noticed me. “Curt’s friend. How are you? I can’t seem to remember your name for some reason.”

Again she reached for his arm. He pulled it back. “That’s where it hurts,” he said, “a little. Just let me get over it.” Now his voice was weak.

“Oh, you’re not right,” she said. “Sit down. Curtis, please give him your chair, or bring him one.”

“It’s nothing,” the old man said. “Just a little gas.”

At that I laughed; it was like a fart I couldn’t hold back. And he crumbled.

Thick black hair flying about her face, Mrs. Kuppenheim threw herself on the ground next to him. She clutched at his bald head, turned his white face toward her own. “Max!” she cried. “Darling! Don’t die! You mustn’t die!”

She loved him. It was undeniable. I was shocked.

He obeyed her and did not die, not then. Though Curt was shaking and crying, he rushed into the house and screamed at the maid to call an ambulance, which arrived in time. Mr. Kuppenheim’s fatal heart attack came four years later, when Curt and I were seniors at Beverly High. Everyone there thought it was a tragedy, for somehow Curt had become wildly popular. I don’t know how he worked it, because he and I had long ceased being friends or even casual acquaintances. I never went back to his house.

After the ambulance came and the paramedics said Curt’s dad would probably pull through, I changed and walked home, rather than calling a cab. I trudged down the Kuppenheims’ street to Sunset, whose sweeping curves I followed all the way to Beverly Drive. There, suit and towel still damp under my arm, I turned south.

There was nobody else on foot until I reached Santa Monica Boulevard, but from there to Wilshire thousands were walking, passing in and out of cafes and boutiques. I noticed several kids I knew, but they didn’t notice me. No one did. I was in another dimension. It would have been nice to dwell in it forever, but I had to go home.

Even then I knew I would never go back to the Kuppenheims, because I couldn’t face Curt’s parents. He asked me to come; in fact, he invited me the following week, after his dad had returned from the hospital, but I wondered how Curt could possibly want to see me.

In the tumult of that day, he must not have heard my awful, destroying laugh, but he knew how I had laid my dirty eyes upon his mother. Had they--his dad or mom--heard me laugh when Mr. Kuppenheim spoke of having gas, which he only did, gallantly, to assuage the fears of his wife? At least nobody knew how I had imagined them grotesquely in bed; no Kuppenheim knew, but I did. I was dirty. They had a clean love, the old clown and the babe, and I couldn’t touch it. But I had tried to, and for that I could not forgive myself.

When I got home, my parents were talking in the living room. Although their story conferences were usually held in his study, I assumed that was what this was, and knew better than to speak. Nonetheless, as I passed by, Dad made his sour face and Mom her tense smile. See them in the graduation photo? That’s exactly how they looked.

I made them that way. That’s my considered adult judgment. Their love, or whatever they had, I could touch, unlike the Kuppenheims’, and I spoiled what they had just by being alive.