Free Her One Obsession by Roberta Latow Page A

Dendre’s mother, Frieda, quietly dominated the household. Both her parents were book lovers, readers and voyeurs, rather than doers. Of the two it was Frieda who lived vicariously through novels, hence her children’s names, Dendre and Orlando, found in two blockbusters consumed on the annual week’s summer holiday in the Catskill Mountains, Upper State New York.
    Dendre’s mind was reeling as she stepped away from her father. ‘How was school today?’ he asked. ‘And the art class, Baby? You had a good day, I hope?’
    Fortunately, Dendre was left with no time to answer because her mother arrived, saying, ‘Schel, every night she comes home, you ask her the same questions. How interesting a day can Dendrehave at New York University studying bookkeeping? Bookkeeping is bookkeeping.’ It was not said unkindly, more matter-of-factly, and Frieda, who clearly adored her husband, stroked his cheek and smiled as she spoke.
    ‘You’re right, of course,’ he answered meekly.
    ‘Supper in twenty minutes, you two,’ announced Frieda, and placing her arm around Dendre’s shoulders walked with her daughter to the foot of the stairs, giving her a hug before turning away to return to the kitchen.
    Dendre started up the stairs, stopped and sat down in the middle. This house and her parents’ love and respect for her wrapped themselves round her like the softest cashmere blanket. Dendre hugged herself. Her mother and father gave each other every support. Were she and Gideon capable of such love and devotion? Were they as capable of making enormous sacrifices for their children as Frieda and Herschel had made for theirs? All the family and her parents’ friends admired the Moscowitzes because of the life they lived: simple, stress-free, loving. Dendre realised that she had never heard a cross word in this house. Hard times (and there had been many), better times, they never complained, merely lived them out the best they could.
    The family – aunts, uncles, cousins – all much better off, financially and socially, claimed that it was Frieda’s love for her husband, her devotion to his and their children’s needs, her selfish selflessness, that had kept the family as
she
wanted it. A pointless criticism since they had no proof that her husband and children were anything but happy and well adjusted for it.
    A wave of anxiety swept over Dendre. She and her family lived in the bosom of middle-class morality. Theirs was a staid and boring life and they were content with it. Even now Dendre enjoyed being who and what she was, felt pride in her roots, though Gideon had seduced her away from them and showed her another way to live and love; above all to have a dream and follow it. She felt there was no turning back to her loving parents whose influence had kept her in the heart of the Jewish community which until now had always been the foundation of her life. To do that would be to give up Gideon and that was an impossibility. She wanted him to love her always as he had done that afternoon, again and again, forever. His passion had burned herdeep, marked her as his for life. She was his as she could never be another man’s.
    She heard her mother humming in the kitchen and understood that she was indeed Frieda’s daughter; she could love Gideon on a grand scale as her mother loved her father. As for Gideon, there was nothing of her father in him. Gideon would love her the best way he could and that would have to be enough for her. Dendre made a pact with herself that she would abide by this. That seemed to galvanise her. She sprang up from the stairs, taking the remainder two at a time, and went not to her room but to knock on Orlando’s door and walk straight in.
    Her brother looked up from the book he was reading. How handsome, bright, sweet and kind he looked to Dendre. She went to sit on the bed next to him. Orlando was the pride of the family, being in his last year at Harvard medical school.
    ‘Hi,’ she said.
    ‘Hi,