Great Men of Modern Jewish American History
Published in Issue #35 subscribe to unlock the full storyI’ve got this photo of Joey, in costume, from when he was in the class play in fourth grade. I didn’t take it. I found it, slipped under my front door, in a plain white envelope, one morning a couple of weeks after it was taken, certainly by one of the hysterical women in the neighborhood who was afraid I’d steal away her husband. It’s not a flattering photo.
This was nearly fifty years ago, and people didn’t get divorced like they did later. And especially Jews supposedly didn’t get divorced, just like Jews didn’t drink. Baloney! Some of them did both—like Marvin, for instance. Poor, beautiful Marvin. I should have known, and maybe a part of me did. But we were so young and in such a hurry.
My parents had made it clear that they had enough money for two years of tuition and room and board at the University of Illinois, but if I didn’t find some nice young Jewish boy to marry by the end of sophomore year, I’d be finishing up back in the city, at Roosevelt College.
I met Marvin at a sorority party in the late winter of my sophomore year. I was smitten with him: his slim, dark figure, hooded eyes, long eyelashes, his air of mystery as if he were a spy or royalty in disguise. He was an “old” senior—he’d spent two years in the Navy during the Korean War before continuing his studies—so he was four years older than me, but it...
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