Mary's is up in south Elizabeth, in the West End...
Mary's is up in south Elizabeth, in the West End section, and that's where my parents startedThey had the milk business there on Murray StreetPatrick's, Sacred Heart in north Elizabeth, Blessed Sacrament, Immaculate Conception Church, all IrishThat's up in WestminsterWell, it's on the city lineActually it's in Hillside, but the school across the street is in ElizabethAnd then our church, StGenevieve's, when it started, was a missionary church, you see, just a part of StIt's a big, beautiful church nowBut the building that stands now--and I remember when I first went in it--"
That was as trying as it ever got: Dorothy Dwyer prattling on about Elizabeth as though this were the Middle Ages and beyond the fields tilled by the peasants the only points of demarcation were the spires of the parish churches on the horizonDorothy Dwyer prattling on about StCatherine's while Sylvia Levov sat across from her too polite to do anything other chanel big than nod and smile but her face as white as a sheetJust sat there and endured it, and good manners got her throughSo all in all, it was never anywhere near as bad as everybody had been expectingAnd it was never but once a year that they were brought together anyway, and that was on the neutral, dereligion-ized ground of Thanksgiving, when everybody gets to eat the same thing, nobody sneaking off to eat funny stuff--no kugel, no gefilte fish, no bitter herbs, just one colossal turkey for two hundred and fifty million people--one colossal turkey feeds allA moratorium on funny foods and funny ways and religious exclusivity, a moratorium on the three-thousand-year-old nostalgia of the Jews, a moratorium on Christ and the cross and the crucifixion for the Christians, when everyone in New Jersey and elsewhere can be more passive about their irrationalities than they are the rest of the yearA moratorium on all the grievances and resentments, and miu miu clutch not only for the Dwyers and the Levovs but for everyone in America who is suspicious of everyone elseIt is the American pastoral par excellence and it lasts twenty-four hoursThe Presidential SuiteThree bedrooms and a living roomThat's what you got in those days for having been a Miss New JerseyI guess it wasn't booked, so we got on board and they just gave it to us
Dawn was telling the Salzmans about their trip abroad to look at the Simmentals in Switzerland
"I'd never been to Europe before, and all the way over everybody was telling me, 'There's nothing like France, just wait until we come into Le Havre in the morning and you smell France' So I waited, and early in the morning Seymour was still in bed and I knew we had docked and so I raced on deck and I sniffed," Dawn said, laughing, "and it was just garlic and onions all over the place
She had raced out of the cabin with Merry while he was still in bed, but in the story she balenciaga handbags motorcycle was on deck alone, astonished to find that France didn't smell like one big flower
"The train to ParisYou see miles and miles of woods, but every tree is in lineThey plant their forests in a lineWe had a wonderful time, didn't we, darling?"
"We did," said the Swede
"We walked around with great big bread sticks sticking out of our pocketsThey practically said, 'Hey, look at us, a couple of rubes from New Jersey' We were probably just the kind of Americans they laugh atBut who cared? We walked around, nibbling at the tops of them, looking at everything, the Louvre, the garden of the Tuileries--it was just wonderfulWe stayed at the CrillonThe greatest treat of the whole tripThen we got on the night train, the Orient Express to Zurich, and the porter didn't get us up on timeRemember, Seymour?"
Yes, he rememberedMerry wound up on the platform in her pajamas
"It was absolutely horrendousThe train had already started upI had to get all replica omega seamaster planet ocean our things and throw them all out the window--you know, that's the way people get out of the train there--and we ran out half dressedThey never woke us upIt was ghastly," Dawn said, again laughing happily at the recollection of the scene"There we were, Seymour and me and our suitcases, wearing our underwearSo, anyway"--for a moment she was laughing too hard to go on--"we got to Zurich, and we went to wonderful restaurants--smelled of delicious croissants and good pates--and patisseries everywhereAll of the papers were on canes, they were hung up on racks, so you take your paper down and sit and have your breakfast and it was wonderfulSo from there we took a car and we went down to Zug, the center of the Simmen-tals, and then we went to Lucerne, which was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and then we went to the Beau Rivage in LausanneRemember the Beau Rivage?" she asked her husband, her hand still firmly held in his
And he did remember chanel classic flap i