- Chapter 1 of Goodbye, Columbus features day one of this romance.
- It all begins with Brenda asking the narrator to hold her glasses, then gracefully diving into the pool. It's the first time he's seen her.
- She climbs out, takes back her glasses and says "Thank you" (1.1).
- The narrator watches her walk off, staring as she adjusts her bathing suit bottom.
- That night, he calls her.
- First, his Aunt Gladys wanted to know whom he is calling.
- When he says it's a girl, she wants to know if Doris, his cousin, introduced them.
- He says Doris wouldn't introduce him to anyone. Aunt Gladys says not to criticize.
- He tells his aunt that Brenda's last name is Patimkin.
- Aunt Gladys doesn't know any Patimkins. We are told that she wouldn't know "anybody who belonged to Green Lane Country Club" (1.4), which is where he met Brenda today.
- Aunt Gladys can't believe he's calling somebody he doesn't know.
- He tells her he plans to "introduce himself" (1.12).
- She calls him a "Casanova" (1.13).
- Aunt Gladys is making dinner for the narrator's uncle.
- The narrator says that each family member eats at a different time and that a different meal is cooked for each of them.
- Aunt Gladys eats first at five, followed by the narrator's cousin Susan at five-thirty, the narrator as six, and then his uncle at six-thirty.
- He tells us "There is nothing to explain this beyond the fact that my aunt is crazy" (1.13).
- While looking for "the suburban phone book" (1.14), he suggests that they all eat together, at the same time, especially when it's hot like this.
- She rebuffs him, saying "Twenty years I'm running this house. Go call your girl friend" (1.25).
- He gets Brenda's number and calls it, but she's out playing golf. He nervously tries to find out when she's due back.
- Aunt Gladys gives him a plate of pot roast and the trimmings. Dinner is good, but, as usual, a bit of an ordeal. Aunt Gladys comments on every move he makes while he's eating.
- After dinner he tries calling Brenda again. This time he gets her.
- Rapid-fire, he tells her he's the guy who held her glasses at the pool today, that he's Doris Klugman's cousin, and that he discovered Brenda's identity from her.
- She asks his name, and he says it's Neil Klugman.
- "What do you look like?" she wants to know.
- Neil says he's "dark" (1.51).
- She wants to know if he's a "Negro" (1.52).
- (Goodbye, Columbus was published in 1959, when "Negro" was still commonly used to refer to black people.)
- He tells her he's not and asks if he can come over and let her see for herself.
- She says she's going to play tennis, and he asks if he can see her after that.
- She hesitates for a moment and then agrees to let him pick her up after she plays.
- Neil drives out of Newark, New Jersey and toward the suburbs.
- The suburbs are a hundred and eighty feet higher than Newark.
- The perfect lawns of the suburbs are a contrast to the concrete and alleys of his aunt and uncle's place in Newark.
- He finds the tennis court where Brenda is severely beating her friend Laura Simpson Stolowitch at the game. Neil notices that she plays an intense game, but that she is equally concerned with "maintaining her beauty as it was" (1.71).
- Laura and Neil don't like each other. He asks Brenda why Laura's nickname is "Simp" instead of "Stolo" (1.74).
- She tells Neil that "Simp is her Bennington name. The ass" (1.75).
- (Bennington was and is a prestigious private college. Neil, as you'll see, is a working-class boy who finds such things pretentious.)
- Neil asks if Brenda goes to Bennington, too.
- She says she goes to school in Boston. This answer irritates Neil. He always names his college when asked: Newark Colleges of Rutgers University.
- (This is a prestigious school as well, but in 1959 staying home and going to a state college meant you couldn't afford to go away.)
- He asks her if she goes to Boston University, and she says she goes to Radcliffe.
- (Radcliffe was a prestigious woman's-only college (click here for famous alumni). Now it's The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.)
- They walk for a while in the dark, and then sit and talk.
- Now both Brenda and Neil are a little "edgy" (1.87).
- First they talk about cousin Doris, whose family moved to Livingston (the New Jersey City where Brenda's suburb is located).
- She asks Neil if he lives in Livingston and he says he lives in Newark. Brenda says her family lived there when she was a baby.
- Neil feels a little angry for some reason, and they walk.
- He asks her why she only "rush[es] the net after dark" (1.106).
- She's had cosmetic surgery on her nose.
- Brenda doesn't want to get close to Laura when she might be able to hit her nose with the ball.
- Neil asks why she had a nose job. She says her nose was bumpy before, and that now she is "prettier" (1.119).
- She says her brother is also getting a nose job.
- Neil wants to know why and Brenda implies that her brother will need to have his nose "fixed" (1.119) if he's going to get a job other than "gym teacher" (1.124). (It's not really clear why Brenda thinks being gym teacher is the only job for Ron unless he gets a nose job.) She says she and her brother both look like their father. (Read: have his nose.)
- (Neil and Brenda are both Jewish. In 1959, about fourteen years after the end of World War II and the end of the Holocaust, some Jewish people were afraid of "looking too Jewish." Even in the US, Jewish people faced discrimination. The nose Brenda and her brother inherited from their father identifies them as Jewish. Brenda and her brother thus want to "blend" into suburban American society.)
- Neil is very sarcastic about this whole matter and obviously disapproves of it.
- Brenda asks him: "If I let you kiss me would you stop being nasty?"
- They kiss and it goes well.