Gwenn
Dec.
12, 2018
I
always hear about these things late.
So, I
did not hear about Gwenn’s passing until just recently, too far after the fact
to adequately mourn her loss, yet not distant enough to feel without pain –
this despite the fact that I have not seen her in 40 years.
While
others who knew her better saw her in a different light, for me, Gwenn was like
a movie star. When ever she swept into the office of
the Bloomfield Avenue warehouse in those early days of my employment there, she
lit it up and left behind lingering good feelings that overrode any disasters
that might have befallen us prior to her arrival.
She was
always amazingly dressed, far beyond the blue-collar sensibility of a warehouse
worker like me, or even Stanley – who did not particularly like her, though
knew better than to show his distaste.
Stan
saw Gwenn as flamboyant where I saw her as classy – though in many ways she was
just like her husband, Donald, a product of the Newark Jewish community and the
white flight that sent many Jews to more remote parts of the state – and in her
case, to the shore area where she apparently returned later in life when she
remarried.
Her
obituary in the Asbury Park Press said it best when it claimed she “lit up the
room with her vivaciousness, her sense of humor and spunk” or should I say she
wandered in and out of my working world, always ware of me because I was always
are of her, and Donald being Donald claimed I hate the hots for his wife, when
it was something far more serious than even he could have imagined.
A
graduate of Asbury Park High School in 1965, she lived through the heyday of
the music scene there and her young life may well be reflected in the
autobiographical elements of early Bruce Springsteen albums, about the
boardwalk, fast cars and an energy long gone from that world by the time I
discovered it a decade later.
She
apparently lived in nearby Deal with her sister, Leslie, brother Louis, and
perhaps another sister none of whom I never met.
I never
learned how she met Donald, though both his and her families had roots in
Newark – her parents were Emanuel (called Manny) Kuskin
and Ida Byhoff (one source says her last name was Tunkel).
Manny
was born in Newark, and lived in a time with Ida in
Elizabeth in the 1940s and 1950s.
They
moved to Deal at some point in the late 1950s and lived there until about the
time when I started to work for Donald in 1974, when they moved to Florida.
Manny
made a living in lumber and apparently owned the Amboy Builder Supply company
in Perth Amboy.
Manny retired
in 1972 at which time he owned the Westfield-Cranford Lumber Company in
Garwood, and the Bond Lumber Company in Point Pleasant.
Manny
died in Florida about a year after Donald moved into the new warehouse on
Kaplan Drive, during a disastrous spring and summer that included a massive
power outage, Elvis’s death and a tornado strike that ripped up a corner of the
warehouse roof while we were in the buildings. I heard briefly about the death
in passing from Donald and remember how shake she seemed a few times I saw her
afterwards. Those were my last few memories of her before I left Donald’s
employ in mid-1978. Her mother died 33 years later in Neptune.
Gwenn
and Donald divorced at some point in the mid-1990s, after which she married
Harry Feldman, by which time I was long out of touch with any of them, but at a
point when their son Josh had already made inroads as a speech writer and legal
counsel for then President Bill Clinton, a platform off which he would
eventually make a successful big for political office as a congressman.
I don’t
know what Gwenn did for a living when I knew her. She later taught pre-school
at a local Jewish facility in South Orange. But when I knew her, she always
looked like and acted like a fashion model or at lease dressed up in fashions
that cost more than a month of my salary. I don’t recall seeing her pregnant,
but I do remember going to Donald’s house in North Caldwell to share a Seder
just after their son Josh was born.
At the
time, I was puzzled by the invitation, knowing too little of Jewish tradition
except those I occasionally encouraged while wandering the Eastside of Paterson
as a kid.
Their
home was as stylish as they were, yet not overdone. Both Donald and Gwenn
seemed to have a sense of eloquence not typical of the nouveau riche. Both
seemed determined to defy the label of “rich Jews” that might otherwise have
been applied to them after coming up out of roots that started in the heart of
Newark.
I
remember feeling inadequately dressed for the Seder, even though I had put on
what I considered at the time my best clothing.
I
remember how tasteful their private world was, the clean lines of functional
yet attractive furniture, a few house plants (I believe) and my seat at the
table with them – their infant son nearby (I don’t recall the daughter) and the
plates placed before me in a ritual I would later recall when attending other
more orthodox Jewish ceremonies such as the first hair cut as a journalist.
I did
not understand then why I deserved this, how as an employee I should get to
share was what clearly a private moment. I was stunned (but not put off) when
they read from some Jewish text. I was not asked to read as I later learned was
also part of the ritual otherwise, I might have made more of a fool of myself
than I thought I already had.
It was
a moment I would later recall often especially in relations to my betrayal of
their trust, feeling in retrospect how Judas must have felt at The Last Supper.
Although
Gwenn was a small woman, I never thought of her that way, partly because Donald
was not tall, and the two of them seemed to fit together. Both of them dressed
impeccably all of the time, but Gwenn seemed more flamboyant, yet still within
the boundaries of good taste.
So,
each time she swept into the old warehouse office, I found an excuse to come up
from my duties packing in the back – though for the most part I was dumbstruck
when I actually had to be in the same room with her, a fact lost on neither
Donald nor Stanley, or worse – her.
She being a playful person, she some how
found humor in exasperating my discomfort with a smile or a nod, and even all
these years later, I still blush at the memory of these ostentatious displays,
a well-meaning teasing that I late realized was a sign of affection as well.
Yet I
also think of Gwenn from the Seder when I saw a whole different side of her, as
if she was far deeper a person than she let most other people know about, her
chatter, her laughter, and her flamboyancy serving as a barrier against the
world’s intrusion on that part of her that went far beyond the slick surface
most people saw.
Born in
1948, Gwenn was younger than Donald by five years, and had much more in common
with my generation than she did Donald’s or even Stan’s, still in high school
when The Beatles exploded on the scene and changed pop culture forever.
Yet
three years older than I was, she seemed light years ahead of me in world
experience, something that often showed in her eyes and manner. Sometimes, she
titled head in a curious way, as if looking for a new angle to see what went on
around her or to shrug off everything the rest of the world worried about – and
sometimes, even her own worries.
Petite
did not describe her, even though she was small. She carried herself with
bearing that disguised her side. She filled a room with her personality and it
lingered behind her like a familiar scent long after she’d gone.
She
reminded me of my Aunt Alice, although not at all as serious.
Gwenn
could be serious, no doubt, but I mostly saw the playful aspect, a smile that
suggested she knew something nobody else knew, and whatever that was, it made
her laugh – not mockingly, but more like she knew the punch line to this joke
we call life and she wasn’t going to spoil it by telling anybody what it was.
She was
unbelievably erotic – at least to me, carrying around with her a femininity I
found extremely attractive, and this she knew and also found amusing, not in a
mean or arrogant way, yet she could not resist teasing me, flirting just enough
to cross-circuit my hormones and leave me speechless.
I
remember her having nearly constant laughing eyes, yet could sense something
deeper behind them, an emotion that I might have even thought of as joy.
She
seemed thrilled to be alive, and though I’m sure she had her moments of pain
and doubt, I never saw them, and Double seemed to be proud at the fact that she
was his wife.
I would
have been, too, if I’d been him.