I first met Marina Gorodetsky when we worked for the City Planning Department. She was a clerk, and all the guys in my section were crazy about her. She had  green eyes, blonde hair and a buxom figure. Although she was an immigrant from the Soviet Union, Marina spoke English with only a slight accent. In the Soviet Union she had worked as a tour guide for English-speaking visitors while studying at Moscow University. At the City Planning Department, she may have made some mistakes since she was eventually fired. But that didn’t bother her–she was going to Brooklyn College for a teaching degree.

We became friends and soon started dating and occasionally going to bed together, but I didn’t think of her as an actual girlfriend. Maybe it was her constant complaining about life in the U.S. “When I came here, I thought I was coming to the land of Hemingway and Faulkner, but all Americans care about is big color TVs and VCRs,” she said. Marina also complained about her fellow Soviet emigres, calling them boorish, materialistic and uncultured.  

She also looked askance at American-born Jews—she had joined a choir at a local Reform synagogue and was horrified by the other women’s gossip about drinking, drugs and sex. And if her complaining about people wasn’t enough to give me pause, she also seemed to have problems with her appliances and electronics every other day. When she started describing what went wrong, I was lucky if I could get off the phone within an hour. 

Eventually, I left the City Planning Department to take a job as a reporter on a trade newspaper, but I still called Marina once a month or so. After she got certified by the Board of Ed and began teaching, her life settled into a predictable pattern. Marina practiced classical piano every day after school. In the summertime, she visited Europe. She told me that her fellow teachers’ lunchroom chatter about clipping supermarket coupons annoyed her and proudly said she only watched the BBC news, never CNN or the networks. Where,  she would often ask me, could she meet “cultured, European-Jewish types?” I had no answer.

About 10 years later, I decided to get married. Marina was angry about it. Talking about my wife-to-be, Ronnie, she said, “I have a much more beautiful face! You see the way she slurs her words? That means there’s something wrong with her brain!” After the wedding, she accepted the fact that I was married —although not entirely. On those occasions when we got together—usually on her birthday—she still would run her fingers down my shoulders and my back as we were walking. One time, she demanded that I kiss her and I gave her a peck on the forehead.

Around this time, things began to go wrong for Marina. A new principal who didn’t like Marina took over at her school and forced her out. She got a job at a school specializing in business and received high ratings, but the school closed at the end of the semester. She went back to the Board of Ed and started working as a substitute teacher, but got into hot water in at least half the schools where she subbed. Eventually, she got onto Social Security disability. When her psychiatrist prescribed anti-depression medications, she threw the prescriptions in the garbage.

With more time on her hands, Marina developed a new obsession: everything French! She bought CDs by Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, and Jacques Brel. On her birthdays, she insisted that we three—by now, my wife had joined us on our outings—go to a French restaurant. And it couldn’t just be any French restaurant, it had to be one that also featured French music. With the server, she’d go over every item on the menu, asking, “Is this really French?” Sometimes, she brought sheet music with her and badgered the manager to let her sing and play a few songs. I felt embarrassed. “I want nothing more than to sing in French!” she exclaimed. When she started dancing in the middle of the floor when the band played, I was terrified that they’d throw us out, 

Year after year, I dreaded our  birthday dinner and having to watch her try to push her way into singing and playing the piano. But one year, it actually worked!  We were at a French bistro in the East Village where a “gypsy jazz” band was playing Django Reinhardt-style music. After hearing Marina sing and play the piano, the band leader gave her some tips on singing, then invited her back on Monday night, when it wasn’t so busy. Soon, she was playing piano there once a week, just before the main performer took the stage. She’d play both traditional French songs and traditional Spanish songs. In return, she’d get $50 and a free meal.

That still left the question of her singing. Marina was a very accomplished piano player, but her vocalizing was uneven and sometimes off-key. What’s more, she didn’t project her voice. At the restaurant, she had asked to sing, but the manager said no. She finally took my advice and arranged for singing lessons with a Russian-American music teacher at her local senior center. Then, Ronnie and I took her to a karaoke bar that featured live piano backup. The piano player thought she was great and, after she had sung in both French and Spanish, he praised her as a “wonderful multilingual singer” and invited her back.

With her musical career taking off, her whole personality perked up: She was now playing piano at the restaurant once a week and singing at the karaoke bar once a month. The Edith Piaf of Sheepshead Bay finally found her niche.

***

Raanan Geberer grew up in the Bronx, went to the Bronx High School of Science, and currently lives in Chelsea with his wife Rhea and his cat Bonnie. He’s a semi-retired journalist whose most recent job was as managing editor for the revived Brooklyn Daily Eagle and he still writes a local history column for the Straus chain of weekly newspapers in Manhattan. He graduated SUNY Binghamton (B.A.) and Boston University’s School of Communications (M.S.J.). Aside from writing, music is his main hobby, and he plays several instruments.