Between a Heart and a Rock Place (2 page)

Sometimes I think that's what caused Mom to overreact to things. Because she couldn't pay attention to every detail of our lives, when something did happen, it was both shocking and expected. She became fatalistic about every bad thing imaginable. Some horrible evil lurked right outside the door, and it was waiting for us. It drove me nuts. But her fears had an effect on me just like they did on Andy. I grew up watchful, scared that somebody
might
try to grab me off the streets. In my pursuit of independence I became guarded—ready for anything. I tended to arm myself with a stick or something,
just in case
. Of course, my mother hated that, too.

“You're gonna put your eye out!”

I tried to stay away from the house as much as possible. I knew there was a peaceful world out there with adventures that were exciting without being fatal.

 

T
HE CONVERSATION USUALLY STARTS
this way: I'll meet someone who asks me how I seem so grounded, so normal. Maybe they'll tell me about an encounter they had with a rock star who acted like a complete asshole. The truth is that the way I am now is the way I've always been. People who get rich and act like idiots were always that way—only now they have money.

I've always described myself as a very common person. I grew up without a lot of angst or internalized problems. I didn't sneak out after dark to raise hell and cause my parents any sleepless nights. No drinking. No drugging. You will never see my name in some scandal sheet. It's just not gonna happen. I've never done anything in my life
that would excite a tabloid reporter. In fact, if you knew me now you'd never take me for a rock star. I'd be the mom driving her daughter to high school, the one who shops for her own groceries and carries them inside when she gets home, too. As Julia Roberts once said, “I'm just an ordinary person with an extraordinary job.”

After thirty seconds of talking to me, people will sense all that, and they'll ask me how I've been able to stay myself.

“You are who you are” is the only response I have for them. I know who I am. And I understand just what a stretch it was for me to end up where I did.

Moving out to Long Island was considered moving on up, but despite our idea of upward mobility, we were in far worse shape financially in the years after our move. Even two incomes couldn't make up for the added expense of having Ruthie, my uncle, my grandmother, my brother, and me all under the same roof. Consequently, we were always broke. Nobody talked about it, and my parents certainly didn't resent Nana and her two younger children. But the situation left us poor, and my mom and dad were perpetually worried. You could see it on their faces and hear it in my mother's stifled sobs when it came time to pay bills.

Every month like clockwork, I'd stand in the doorway, peer into our dimly lit kitchen, and watch as my mother sat at the table with a pile of envelopes, a pad of paper, and a pen in front of her. She'd make notes and scribble down numbers. She'd keep a handkerchief on the table and use it to wipe the tears from her eyes. If she knew I was watching her, she didn't acknowledge it, and neither did I. I never said a word, just backed away and went to bed.

Going to the grocery store with Mom was awful, because her choices always involved penny-saving decisions. She never bought anything extra, no backups, no luxuries—we were always on a strict budget. We never bought more than two rolls of toilet paper at a time. Not three,
never
four. Just two. You worried all the time that the toilet
paper would run out before payday. I hated that. Seriously. (Seeing my pantry today, you'd think I have a Costco franchise. In fact, Costco is one of my favorite places in the world, because I can look at all those items lined up and picture them in my pantry. I bet I own enough toilet paper to last a family of four for a year. I'm the same way with
everything
. I have stacks of frozen food in freezers, multiples of canned goods lined up on shelves. Friends and family could do their grocery shopping at my house, and they sometimes do. I feel secure knowing that I will never run out of anything, that my kids won't ever worry about not having school supplies for a project and that there will always be enough goddamn toilet paper.)

Partially because of our financial struggles, my family became a very tight group. My parents were easygoing, kind, and good-hearted. Strict without being disciplinarians. The worst I ever got growing up was a quick swat on the butt. The amount of love that my brother and I felt from my parents was intense, and to an independent girl like me, it sometimes felt more like smothering. Despite our closeness, they tried to insulate Andy and me from all the stress and hardship. I never saw them argue or ever be unkind to each other; they showed a unified front at all times. They were in love, and despite the shitty hand they'd been dealt, they were happy (except at bill-paying time). When everyone was together at night, we would talk about our days without discussing the serious issues that they had to contend with.

The two of them met when they were just fourteen years old. They dated until Dad went into the army, then married as soon as he got out. Mom was a wonderful opera singer and had performed with the All-City Chorus when she was young. I believe she might have turned professional if she hadn't got pregnant with me. Mom has always had a big personality—very excitable and constantly talking. She has opinions, and she won't hesitate to tell you about all of them. My dad was the opposite—quiet, thoughtful, and reserved, more of a loner. In that way I took after my father. I wasn't shy, but I was a bit of a loner, too.

My mother was a perpetual optimist; good fortune was always just around the corner, and she was hell-bent on having fun until it arrived. Even if things were horrible, all could be fixed by a drive to Amish country or cutting out sandwiches with cookie cutters or making crafts. One time when we were on vacation in Florida, my brother and I fell in love with a capuchin monkey in a pet store. We begged my mother to let us get it and she shockingly she said yes. Anything that was fun was allowed and encouraged. We bought the monkey and drove him 1,100 miles in a Dodge with my parents, my grandmother, my brother, and me. We named him Jo-Jo and he lived with us for sixteen years until he died. The crazy thing was that I never thought it was odd to have a monkey. It was only after I began telling the story to people that I came to realize how unusual it was.

I always loved this positive outlook and spontaneity, but I didn't appreciate it enough when I was a kid. It seemed flippant and irresponsible; I didn't want road trips and craft projects, I wanted her to buckle down and fix everything. What I couldn't see was how selfless her behavior actually was. She couldn't see a way out, so she made the best of a bad situation. Her only concern was her children's well-being, protecting us from the harsh realities that she and my father faced.

Even though I was young, I was already far too pragmatic to appreciate her approach. I loved both my parents, but I viewed the way they ran their lives as flighty. That, combined with the fact that I'd grown up forcing myself to feel too much responsibility, created a detachment from them that drew out my solitary qualities and toughened me up. I'd assess my problems and fix them on my own. When something was wrong with me, it was my job alone to pick myself up and dust myself off. I became self-sufficient and determined, motivated by our problems with money and by my own belief in myself. Watching my mother try to pay bills made me a driven person, determined to never be in that same situation.

I don't want to overstate things. We never went hungry. The heat
and water stayed on. I had a great childhood with overworked but loving parents and a tremendous extended family. But the reality was that we were what people today call “the working poor.” We lived on the edge of poverty, and I hated living on that edge. I hated it for my mother and my father, for my little brother. Oh, and I
really
hated it for me.

So, despite all these money concerns, I had a good childhood. Our school was only a few blocks from our house, and I liked to hang around the school playground in the afternoon. It was always a good time with my friends around, but it was even better when everyone else went home and I was alone, with no one around to tell me not to swing too high or stand up on the monkey bars. So that's when I climbed up on the slide and stared at the sky, thinking about things, dreaming, picturing a world where dads weren't overworked and moms didn't sit and cry late at night over money, where people worked hard and
didn't
live on the edge of financial disaster.

Reading fueled my fantasy world. I was a voracious reader—books, magazines, and newspapers, anything in print. I loved to read about historical figures, about people who had done great things, about places far removed from North Hamilton Avenue. I started making up my own stories, putting characters and plots together, creating great adventures for my made-up cast. The great thing about coming from a multiethnic neighborhood was that you had all kinds of traditions and rituals to work into your tales.

In my dreams, I was Italian, not Polish-Irish. I don't know where it came from, but I
felt
Italian. One thing I loved about Italians was the food. Most of my friends were Italian and I tried to eat at their houses as much as possible. My mother and grandmother were Americanized, and they were also Depressionized. When my mom did feel up for cooking, she knew what she was doing. She'd learned the traditions of Polish cooking from my dad's mother, and she could make some pretty amazing pierogis. But because my grandmother did the day-to-day cooking, most of the time we ate very bland food—roast and potatoes,
bread, macaroni and cheese. (I don't want to sell my nana short when it comes to mac and cheese. She made her own pasta with a creamy sauce, and it was spectacular.)

The Italians, however, did not see food as mere sustenance; they saw it as an art form. Mom knew that every time I went to play with one of my Italian friends, I was going to eat. She'd ask me what I had been eating, and maybe I would say, “Snails in red sauce.”

“Shhhkeeve!” my mother would exclaim. That's what Italians said for “yuck.” And wherever I ate, she used that language to tell me I had just eaten something she considered yucky.

So there I was, a Polish-Irish girl who wanted to be Italian and whose best friend, Brenda Cherney, was from one of the three Jewish families in the area. When I wasn't building forts with the boys, I was playing paper dolls with Brenda. She was my outlet for all things girlie. Together we were starstruck little girls who worshiped glamour. We loved all the movie stars—Claudette Colbert, Cyd Charisse, Barbara Stanwyck, Doris Day, Judy Garland, and Katharine Hepburn. I thought that Maureen O'Hara was just the most beautiful woman in the world, that Sophia Loren was perfect and
so
Italian. But my absolute favorite was Audrey Hepburn, with her striking looks and high-fashion image in her films. No one looked like those people where I grew up. I obsessed over movies from the thirties and forties, admiring the women of that era for their grace and strength. What I didn't like was their passivity. I thought if you could combine being beautiful and being capable you could rule the world.

Brenda was one of the first people whom I listened to “popular” music with. We loved listening to 45s on my Victrola, and I kept the records in a little case with a poodle on it. The first song I remember buying was “The Twist” when I was about five or six. But I listened to all kinds of music. When we were a little older, we got into the Beatles, and became obsessed. The only fight we ever had was over the fact that she knocked my imitation leather “John Lennon” hat into a mud
puddle. I loved Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, not to mention big band music and show tunes. My family's selections were not always to my taste. They loved Jerry Vale (I heard “Volare” every day), and my mom and Ruthie listened to Perry Como, Andy Williams, and Louis Prima. I adored Louie Prima even then, but even though I wasn't as sold on their choices, I learned to appreciate all sorts of styles.

And of course, since Brenda and I were both boy-crazy, we talked nonstop about boys. I remember having a little friend, Bobby Leto, in the first grade, kissing him by the fountain, and then running off giggling about it. That was about the extent of what boy-crazy meant in those days. Kisses and giggles. But my second boyfriend was important, because he was my first great Italian love, Vincent Pizzello. Oh, how I loved him, with that black hair and those sparkling dark eyes.

Because of our neighborhood, I developed a great respect for other people's religions. Brenda's mother, Ida, taught me how to keep kosher, and I loved Hanukkah as well as Christmas. I enjoyed the traditions of both religions and the traditions of the various ethnic groups, the Germans, Polish, Irish, and Italians. In Lindenhurst, you embraced everyone's heritage, and I loved that diversity. There wasn't an issue about any of it. I'm not saying there was no prejudice, because I doubt you can ever completely get away from that. But for the kids, differences were simple and often about food or who owned the rarest baseball card. You ate poppy-seed cakes at your Polish friends' homes, potato pancakes with your Jewish friends, and good bread and pasta with the Italians.

Whether it was celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah, I
loved
the holiday season. I came by Christmas madness as naturally as Andy came by his anxiety—by following Mom's lead. Christmas was one time when she threw caution to the wind. All year long we worried about running out of toilet paper, and then came Christmas. There were presents for everyone, wonderful foods, visiting with the family
in Brooklyn. A similar phenomenon happened every summer. Suddenly we had money to take a wonderful vacation to a hotel with a pool or near a beach.

It was only years later, when they finally moved from the Lindenhurst house, that I found out these summer trips and Christmases were financed by constant loans they'd taken out against their home. By the time they moved, the loans had built to over $45,000 on a house that had originally cost them $7,000 because they had borrowed against it so many times. So not only had they not paid off a dime of the original house note, they were deep in the hole. For years they'd given us vacations and presents, never thinking about what the consequences would be down the road. This simultaneously endeared them to me and drove me crazy. Personally, I could've done without a week in Florida for a little more peace at home, but it made them happy to give us these things.