Free Old Neighborhood by Avery Corman Page B

Corporate Megalopolis,” she declared.
    “The what? I think you’ve got your labels a little mixed up there.”
    We finished the meal with small talk and as everyone was about to scatter, I said to Amy:
    “Whatever you think of your corporate father, I can do better than ‘Stop Nuclear Proliferation.’ It is, after all, what I do.”
    “Go ahead then.”
    “Nuclear Energy’s a Bomb.”
    “Not bad,” she said. “I mean—pretty good.” And I managed to gain a grudging smile from her.
    Beverly’s local stature earned more dinner invitations than we could accept from people in community organizations and the parents of children who attended the Institute. We were greatly admired as a couple, people wanted us gracing their tables like salt and pepper shakers.
    Because of the demands on our time, we established priorities in our domestic life—we became specialists at that—and appeared in public together only after determining that we both needed to go. “I need you for the Lamberts’ dinner party,” Beverly might say, and I would attend, fielding the inevitable discussions about advertising—people often had a favorite commercial they had seen. I would be moderately charming and get moderately sloshed.
    We were constantly busy with our obligations. Beverly was out several nights a week, I worked late at the office, we both traveled. Days could pass before we would catch up with each other with both of us not too exhausted to talk for more than a few minutes. We reached a point where our secretaries spoke to one another to remind us of any social commitments we may have had together. We did not like the idea, our secretaries as surrogates, but we did not resist, since it happened to be efficient.
    My first boss, Colby, had once said when he found me working late in the office, “They don’t pay you something for nothing.” As the president of an advertising agency, and with Beverly the head of a children’s art center, we were living at a high level of achievement, but also of pressure and responsibility.
    I always kept a pad near my bed in case I thought of a copy idea before I fell asleep. One night I jumped out of bed to write down “We never stop working for you,” to be the basis for a commercial for a brokerage firm with our agency. The commercial would show a broker bolting out of bed, jotting down an idea.
    Beverly’s pressures were similar. She was busy administering the school’s activities, working on curriculum, teaching the children, reading books and reports on art education and child psychology, making speaking engagements, dealing with parents. Then she thought of a concept for an enterprise that became nearly as profitable as the Institute itself—a summer camp. She rented unused space behind the Institute, added play equipment, a swimming pool, developed a summer curriculum, hired counselors who were art teachers, and the Nassau Institute of Children’s Art Day Camp was established.
    Leisure time had to be scheduled on the calendar. We planned a Saturday of antiquing in Connecticut, which was postponed three times before we were able to go. At an antiques shop, Beverly saw a landscape that she liked by an unknown primitive artist. The painting was too primitive for my taste and too expensive at $400.
    “I just don’t like it,” I said.
    “I do. I’ll buy it for my office.” And she paid for it out of her business checkbook.
    At another antiques shop I found something I liked that she did not, an old-fashioned soda-parlor jar for straws.
    “Where would it go?” she said.
    “In the kitchen.”
    “There’s no room.”
    “I’ll put it in my office then.”
    I was having difficult days at the agency, Tolchin and I were arguing bitterly. He was in favor of chasing every account on Madison Avenue that was having second thoughts about its advertising agency, so our company was spending inordinate time on new business presentations. Since a main selling point for our agency was