Lucky Us, page 5
I peppered Iris every day. Who was Beatrice? Why was she so mean to Benedick? What was The Tempest about? When Iris stumbled, my father would roar whole soliloquies at her. When we couldn’t stand it anymore, I’d read aloud from one of the other Little Blue Books.
The Little Blue Books were little marvels. The Art of Reading. The Egypt of Yesterday. Balzac’s Short Stories. A Guide to Aristotle. My father said that there was not a single thing an educated man—even a gentleman—needed to know that was not in one of the thousand Little Blue Books. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius created the Little Blue Books, my father said, and he was a genius. A Jew and a socialist and a genius. He was not one of Nature’s aristocrats. When you hear that phrase, my father said, they mean the peasant who did them a favor, some gobshite by the side of the road whom they’ll never see again. Believe me, darling, they do not mean the Jewish gentleman whom we have just invited to join our country club. Later in my life, in fact, for my whole life, I’ve relied on the Little Blue Books to finish my education, and I saw why my father loved them so.
Every night, in the motels, I wanted to take a shower and wash my hair, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it while the other people sat in the next room, listening and waiting. My father and Francisco used the bathroom. My sister used it for hours and came out, her face lit up with cold cream, her hair in tight pin curls. I could sit there just long enough to pee.
On our last day on the road, I turned fifteen. I waited for someone to remember and then, finally, around the middle of the day, I said, during a lull, Oh, happy birthday to me, and Francisco pulled off the road. My father got out of the car and hugged me and my sister and Francisco kissed me on both cheeks and right in front of a Burma-Shave sign, they sang “Happy Birthday.” My father said that we needed to celebrate and we stopped for lunch, which we usually didn’t. We all had Coca-Colas and the house special, which was ham sandwiches on homemade bread. (“Those are our own pigs too,” the waitress said. “Marvelous,” my father said, and he winked at me.) My sister put her silver barrettes in my hair and Francisco went into his makeup box and gave me a tube of red lipstick. My father said he would wait until we got settled to give me my birthday present. I thought maybe they would spring for two rooms and dinner out but my father and Francisco went to an all-you-can-eat chicken dinner (“And they watch you like hawks,” Francisco said) and lined their pockets with waxed paper and napkins. They came back to the room with chicken legs and drumsticks and squashed biscuits and Iris and I ate everything, sitting on the floor of the motel room. We slept the way we always did, and in the middle of the night, I woke up and saw my sister leaning next to Francisco on the floor. I tiptoed to the bathroom, bumping the wall as I went.
“We can see you, birthday girl,” my sister said.
I said I didn’t want to bother them.
“Oh, it’s fine,” Francisco, said. “We’re just passing the time. Iris is in mourning for her life!”
“Not a chance,” she said. “Turn me loose.”
Iris cozied up to Francisco and my father slept on. I went back to bed.
OUR LITTLE PIECE OF Hollywood hadn’t been much like Windsor, Ohio, but East Brooklyn was like Mars. I kept my head out of the window to get a good look at the apartment buildings fifteen stories high and the wide boulevards, the sidewalks crammed with people in a hurry, buses and trains running right through and across the city, restaurants with awnings, Chinese food and Greek food and Polish food and Italian food, nice houses like my father’s in Ohio, and small shabby houses so close to their neighbors they could pass each other breakfast. It had a hat factory, now making helmets for the war, an elevator factory, and a carpet mill, women in pants going to and from the factories, and thousands of people minding their business, which was definitely not show business.
We walked up two flights of stairs, and Francisco’s sisters threw themselves on him, like he was back home from the front. They hugged Iris and me in a friendly, mechanical way and they eyed my father.
Looking back, I forgive them everything. They took in a skinny fifteen-year-old girl with thick glasses and a stubborn look and her sister, a stuck-up former starlet (with a former starlet’s ways) and a snooty Englishman with fancy manners and nothing else. They gave us beds and dinners and they stayed out of our way during the next days’ fierce cram session for the job interviews in Great Neck. When Bea suggested that my sister would look more governess-y (whatever that was; we were six people who had never seen an actual governess or a home that required one) with less red and more mouse brown, the two of them went up to Bea’s apartment and my sister came down looking like Olivia de Havilland. I’d never seen a husband, but I thought that both sisters were married, because they both wore wedding rings. Iris said I was an idiot and that anybody, including me and Francisco, could wear a wedding ring and no one could prove them a liar.
It’s the great thing about the war, she said. Anyone can be anyone.
BEA ASKED ME IF I wanted to get out and walk around the neighborhood while Francisco and my father did the last round of Emily Post’s rules for modern living and my sister recited Shakespeare and the forty-eight states. Carnie gave me twenty-five cents to go. I walked up to the corner store and bought some Turkish taffy. I walked around the block a few times and crossed the street, over toward some bigger houses and bigger trees and past a big brick building the size of a hospital or a high school. It had a big Jewish star over the tall white doors and Hebrew letters carved into the corners. The white wooden sign said PRIDE OF ISRAEL ORPHAN HOME. Around back, there was a playground, with a slide and a jungle gym and a teeter-totter. There were fifty kids playing in it. There were a bunch of boys around my age, playing baseball. The leather flapped when they hit the ball. It rolled toward me, and one of biggest boys, tall and blond, scooped it up and eyed me, then threw it to the pitcher.
“You ain’t in school,” he said. I walked to the corner of the building, leaned one hip against the brick, and ate my long roll of taffy. When the tall blond boy caught the ball again and tagged some short, fat kid out, he pushed back his hair and looked at me again. I took an actress pose, leg bent against the brick, arms folded. I put my glasses in my pocket and let him see my profile.
I walked past the orphanage every day. I kept my eyes open for the tall blond boy. These were my people: the abandoned, the unloved, the phenomenally unlucky. Plus, they were Jews, and my age, and their cousins were being slaughtered every day in Europe. Germans could even come and invade and slaughter them here in Brooklyn. They, like me, must be worrying all the time. Sometimes I liked thinking about how brave I would be if I were facing Germans. I knew that it was disgusting to contemplate my own bravery and, even worse, I knew the brave one would be Iris, flirting with the Nazis, stuffing passports into her bra to save the old people and the Jewish babies. I’d be sitting on some staircase somewhere, with my nose in a book, squeezing against the banister when they came running past me.
7
Dream a Little Dream of Me
WE WERE EARLY. WE STUDIED THE TORELLI HOUSE FROM ACROSS the road, parked underneath a big oak tree. There were no sidewalks and the driveways were so long, the houses were a quarter mile past the stone walls or wrought-iron fences. A big forsythia bush draped over Carnie’s car. My father thought this was good camouflage.
He said, “Mediterranean style. Naturally, they’re Italian. I like the red tile. I imagine there’s a pool.”
Iris said, “It’s like Hollywood. They have houses like this all over Beverly Hills.”
My father said, in his quoting voice, “ ‘They were careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their … vast carelessness.’ The Great Gatsby.” Iris got out of the car to smooth her skirt and I got out to help her.
Francisco said, “I don’t think these people are careless. This money, they just got their hands on it. I tell you what, I bet Grandpa Torelli was running a fruit stand when this guy was a baby. Look at it, the bushes, the driveway, that’s a lotta Belgian block. Everything new.”
My father said, “All those in favor of the new and costly?” and Iris and I lifted our hands. We looked and looked at the lovely house, from all angles, trying to see into the rooms. We studied the white balcony on the second floor and the long gray cobblestone drive winding through the sea of green lawn. Francisco sprayed my sister’s hair again and told my father not to wear a hat, and after they disappeared up the driveway, Francisco and I sat back in the shade and played conquian until they came out.
Letter from Iris
27 Portobello Road
London
January 1947
Dear Evie,
I remember spying on the Torellis through the forsythia. Francisco did my hair in a chignon.
I thought the Torellis were very sweet people from day one. (Well, Joe Torelli looked like he’d been loading trucks all day. He smelled like provolone and he did love his family. I think I’ve just written everything I ever knew about Joe Torelli.) I remember the twins, Catherine and Mary, and the little boy, Joey, and Baby Paulie. The baby was known, pretty much, as The Baby, and he was not my responsibility. You probably liked him.
Mrs. Torelli answered the door. Edgar introduced us and came up with some impressive horseshit about his experience and mine, and he offered dignified silences, and barely stifled sounds of admiration for the furniture (big, dark) and the views (long, green). He offered his letters of reference and mine and I did everything he did, because my experience at MGM was not for naught. He put his hands behind his back and slid over to a big picture window. I slid right behind him. We watched the Long Island Sound while Mrs. Torelli read our letters (written in a beautiful script by Francisco) and then handed them back. Mrs. Torelli indicated that butler was maybe not the exact word one would use, that maybe the Torelli household did not really require someone of Edgar’s stature. Edgar was unfazed. He was gracious. Majordomo, he suggested. One might, he said, do whatever driving is required for Mr. Torelli and the family, and serve on more formal occasions, and run the household in a general way. Mrs. Torelli was not a poker player. She beamed. She wondered what they would be calling him and Edgar said that Acton would suit him fine. Mrs. Torelli tried out Mr. Acton and Edgar stiffened, fractionally. Just Acton is suitable, madame, he said, and put his hands behind his back. She was wisely reprimanded, happily forgiven, in thrall. Between you and Edgar, I’m surprised I ever got on the stage at all. Mrs. Torelli was not formal, and not used to being rich, but she was European and she understood class differences, even if she’d been mostly on the short end of them before. This move to Great Neck was as much of a leap for them as it was for us.
We were never anything except Miss Iris and Mrs. Torelli. She’d gathered the children around her in an Old World tableau in the vast burgundy living room. The two girls were round and pretty in navy-and-white sailor dresses, with black curls heaped up and down, and Joey was a stick of dynamite in navy shorts and a vest and a half-done bow tie. The baby was in a domed lacy bassinette fit for a little prince.
“The girls start school next year,” Mrs. Torelli said. “I’m not gonna bother with the kindy-garden. They’ll start first grade. I want them to be … they need to be …”
“Prepared,” I said.
She nodded and put her hands on Catherine’s (or Mary’s) hair. We were in business.
I felt bad that I was selling her this shoddy bill of goods, myself, when what she wanted was the best for her girls, so that the other girls, whose mamas were slim and blond-streaked and casual in their shirtwaists and Cadillacs, would play with her Cathy and her Mary. She walked us through the house and I made the same kinds of noises Edgar did. There was nothing not to like. The kitchen was fit for a good restaurant, with miles of marble and a pair of bright-yellow refrigerators. It was a sun shower. Very cheerful, madame, Edgar said, and Mrs. Torelli said whatever she said and I said nothing because Reenie walked in then, holding a bag of groceries, and I thought I would pass out.
Do you remember how she looked? I don’t think we ever talked about how she looked. If she were a man, I would have said to you, What a dreamboat, what a catch. You don’t say to your little sister, Oh my God, isn’t the Torellis’ cook the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen? Isn’t she a dish, with that wide Madonna forehead and big eyes and big red mouth, everything wonderfully big and nothing too much? And even an infidel like me could see she had the soul of a saint, all goodness. No, you don’t say that. And I know you didn’t see in her what I saw.
I hope I never love anyone again.
Hoping to hear from you,
Iris
WE MOVED INTO THE CARRIAGE HOUSE, ALSO KNOWN AS OVER-the-garage. The Torellis had two cars, a black Cadillac and a black Lincoln. We settled ourselves and it wasn’t really that different from back in Ohio, except the carriage-house living room was smaller, the food was better, and we didn’t have a piano. I was apparently never going back to school, and I had a pool to swim in when the Torellis weren’t home. My father and my sister went to work on the other side of the swimming pool every day and I stayed out of the way, or went to Brooklyn to visit Bea, Carnie, and Francisco, who now had three apartments in the same building, and Bea and Carnie still had invisible husbands. Four days a week, I got myself to East Brooklyn (I could do it in my sleep: bus to the subway station, train to Flushing, subway to Gates Avenue station, turn left, and walk six blocks to Bea and Carnie’s salon, La Bella Donna). For fifty cents a day, I swept up hair, folded towels, cleaned the bathroom, and made lunch for Bea and Carnie and me. Bea was teaching me to shampoo (Don’t pull, never rub, use your finger pads), and the ladies liked the feeling of my small hands. Carnie introduced me as a niece and they told everyone, like my father had told the Torellis, that I was a genius, and a little small for my age and had already graduated high school at just fifteen. No one asked why a genius like me was the maid-of-all-sorts at a beauty parlor. I took notes about hair color and eyebrows, matching lips and tips, and beauty parlor rules. (You do not say, Hey, your roots are showing. You say, Maybe a little touch-up. You don’t say, Holy Mother of God, what happened to you? You say, Maybe Evie could get you a cuppa tea or a Coke.) I worked my way through Charles Dickens and I kept up with Photoplay. I walked past the orphanage, on my breaks, watching for the tall blond boy.
AND IRIS WAS WATCHING Reenie Heitmann. Irene Lombardo Heitmann. Iris sat in the Torelli kitchen for six months, pretending she wanted to learn all about roasting chicken and the many interesting things you could do with green beans. She brought the Torelli girls into the kitchen and made cookies with them. She sat at the big table in the middle of the kitchen, after dinner, and offered to dry dishes or bring Reenie a glass of water, and if I came in for a snack, Iris looked daggers at me and I moseyed along. I couldn’t see it, about Reenie. She reminded me of one of the ladies on a spaghetti-sauce jar, but with a better figure. To give Iris room, I stayed in Brooklyn a couple of nights a week, on one of the couches, and once in a while, if Reenie went home early, Iris joined us. And talked about Reenie. She talked about what a special person Reenie was, and what a great cook, and what a beautiful soul, and her pretty eyes and the beauty mark right near her left eye and how unhappy Reenie was with her husband, Gus, because they couldn’t have a baby, but how good she was to him. Bea and Carnie didn’t say a word about any of it, and before it got too late, Francisco would walk us to the subway. One night he said, Iris, make a move, or move on. You’ve officially become the most boring dyke in America.
Iris listened to him. When Gus came for Reenie after dinner and the washing up, Iris told them that we were bored silly in the evenings and wanted to get away from the Torellis. (There was no reason to get away from the Torellis. They gave us platters of leftovers from Reenie’s four-course dinners, they put a washing machine in our house, and they made Catherine and Mary go to bed at eight. In the three years we were there, they never expressed an opinion about what we did after hours and they never knocked on the carriage-house door in the evening.) Iris said to me, Gus is a nice guy—spend some time with him. Play cards.
Gus Heitmann was what people called a man’s man. He fixed things and he had a deep laugh. He looked like he could carry you out of a burning building and he looked like the kind of man who would go back in to get your poodle. And even though he made fun of his own looks (Gable’s ears and Durante’s nose, he said), I liked his face. He looked like a big, wise animal, the kind that saw you before you saw it. There were no card games Gus didn’t play: poker, five-card stud, blackjack, gin, and even the crazy ones like Egyptian cut-ups and palace of my fathers, which I still don’t understand, except that you can hold twelve cards at any given time. Reenie and Gus drove us to their house on the other side of the train station once a week, and the four of us sat around and played cards and had a couple of beers. When Reenie wanted a late dinner she didn’t have to cook, Gus made spaghetti and meatballs, German-style, with cream and dill, and he did the dishes too. He was nice to Reenie, and always polite, but even I could see it wasn’t love. I asked him once how they met. We were both at a dance in the city, he said. She didn’t like the guy she was with, and I didn’t like the girl, so in the middle of the dance, I said, Maybe we should switch partners. So we did. The other couple, they’re married, three kids. Woulda been nice, he said.
When Reenie left the room, Iris’s face fell. Gus’s face didn’t change a bit.
After a couple of beers, Reenie would start to talk about how she wished they could have babies, or that she was tired of cooking Italian all the time, and then she’d say her feet were killing her. Iris would give me the eye and we’d split up into Iris and Reenie, Eva and Gus. Reenie and my sister would go outside for a smoke in the backyard or Iris would take Reenie into the bedroom and rub her feet with almond oil and then Reenie would give Iris a manicure and peace would prevail. Once in a while, Reenie would call out, How you guys doing out there? and Gus and I would say, We’re fine. Sometimes Gus said, Enjoy your hen party, but he said it in a nice way. Gus and I would play cards for another hour without them.
