Replacement Child (14 page)

1963

“T
HEY LOOK LIKE
ragamuffins,” my father said, frowning, halfway through “I Want to Hold Your Hand” when we watched the new band from England on
The Ed Sullivan Show.
I was nine.

“Dad, what are beetles anyway?” I asked.

“They’re like roaches. Pests! Fits ’em. These
meshuganas
are just a flash in the pan. They’ll never last. They can’t even comb their hair!”

But I was entranced. First by Paul McCartney, then by the sound. It started my love affair with music, the silken thread to connect me to something my father also loved. I begged him to buy me a guitar.

Months later, he brought one home—the one I’d pointed out each time we went to Woolworth’s that was packaged in a cardboard box with a cellophane window and was marked $15.98. It had a mottled amber wood front with a black back and came with a red plastic pick, a black guitar strap, and a songbook.

“If I Had a Hammer” was the first song I could play all the way through. I learned songs by Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and
Mary; and, of course, the Beatles. My mother found a small music store nearby where I had lessons once a week, and I practiced every day after school. The steel strings cut through my soft fingertips until I built up calluses on my left hand.

My father would often be crooning “Moon River” while Linda played the organ in the living room, tipping his head up and closing his eyes when he hit a high note. She was nimble with the foot pedals, her legs strong now. Building them up from her leg operation was the reason we got the organ. I wanted a piano.

But now that I had the guitar, I started singing as I played, and my father seemed to take an interest. One day as I played in my room, sitting on my bed, I heard my father say to my mother, “She’s not half bad you know. Maybe I should show her some things about singing.” That was the first time I considered that I might have a talent all my own.

From then on, I could count on my father showing up while I practiced. He’d lean up against the doorframe of my bedroom for a few minutes at a time and shout advice as I sang.

“Always hold your notes on the vowel, not the consonant. No one wants to hear ‘Mmmmmoon River.’”

I listened hard and tried to do what he said. He never came into the room or sat down to sing with me. He was always on his way somewhere else in the house when he stopped by.

I never did learn to play “Moon River” or “The Impossible Dream,” so my father never sang with me. Linda and I couldn’t figure out how to play together, either. I strummed the chords of a song, and she played the melody, but it never came out as
music. So, when the family came over—the aunts and uncles and cousins—it was still just my father and Linda at the organ. I don’t know why I never sang with them. It seemed a kind of intrusion on my father’s singing style. Sometimes they’d ask me to play something for them on guitar. I was a solo act.

When I sang, though, it transported me. I was surgically removed.

My father thought I should record a demo and took me to a music store in Newark that had a small recording studio in the back. This sounded to me like he knew the music business and, best of all, that he thought I had some talent.

When we got there, the manager of the store led me into a tiny booth and went back around behind a glass window with my father. The ceiling was plastered with foam rubber, and the walls were lined with egg cartons. The guy behind the glass pointed to the headphones hanging on the wall, and I put them on. I adjusted the microphone and took out my guitar, sure I’d be discovered any second.

I remembered that my father said we’d be charged by the minute, so I didn’t dawdle. I tuned up quickly and started my song. My own voice reverberated in my head, and the guitar sounded distant through the one microphone.

Miraculously, we walked out with a thick vinyl record, and I wondered which record store would now sell it for us.

“What do we do with it now, Dad?” I asked.

“Well, let me talk to a few people I know and see what we can do. We’ll see, Juicy.”

His belief in me that day is what I remember most.

M
Y MOTHER GOT
me my first gig at a fund-raiser. My big numbers were “What the World Needs Now” and “More.” Suddenly, I was the family star, and I relished the shift in attention from Linda to me.

Rehearsing with my father for the show was the most time we ever spent together alone. For our rehearsals, I would sit on the couch in the living room with my guitar, and he’d sit on the chair facing me. He taught me to breathe correctly while I sang: “Not with your shoulders, from the diaphragm—your shoulders shouldn’t move.” How to hit the high notes: “Think about the note, hear it in your head, and you’ll reach it, relax your throat muscles.” And the all-important: “Look at your audience when you sing, make eye contact, and smile.”

My father was a featured act at our swim club each summer, singing his favorite songs from musicals like
The Pajama Game
and
South Pacific
. My mother would be backstage, fixing costumes or troubleshooting a makeup crisis. Linda and I were out front, cheering for our star.

The time he spent with me sharing his music and knowledge was something I cherished—a gift. It was just between us, like the old days when he would put aside time to play catch with me in the backyard. With music, I had found a common ground that didn’t entail changing my gender. It was something we would share through the years.

P
EEKING OUT FROM
behind the curtain, I could see the simple setup. Just the wooden stool and microphone on the bare stage.

The school auditorium was full for the school talent show. I was in fifth grade, giving my first performance for a crowd, and
I was nervous. I saw all my teachers, friends, and neighbors out in the audience. Even Roy, the crossing guard, waved to me from the back of the room.

It had been noisy just a minute ago, after Doug’s rock ’n’ roll band performed, but when I walked on stage it got very quiet. I went over to the stool while Mrs. Steinhart introduced me. She whispered, “Don’t worry, honey, they’ll love you!”

My heart pounded eighth notes as the audience applauded and I sat down. My parents and Linda were sitting in the second row. My father smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. Then he pointed to his own mouth, my cue to smile at the audience. My mother did not seem to be breathing.

I checked the tuning of my guitar one more time. My father’s eyebrows crinkled.

“Tune it before you go out,” he told me the night before. “It’s so annoying when bands come out and tune up their instruments for a half hour.”

But he didn’t understand. If one of the strings was flat or sharp, it would throw me, and I’d sing off-key. So I checked and double checked and avoided his disapproving gaze.

“This is a song called ‘Surgery’ that I found in a book of very old folk songs. I’d like to dedicate this to all the future doctors here tonight,” I said.

I got a few laughs at that line. My father thought it was very funny, but I was not so sure. He was tickled with the song itself and thought it was meant for me to sing.

I played the first few chords and started to relax, letting the music lift itself out of me, like it had been hiding there all along.
It took me soaring in its updraft, propelling me to crescendo. Laying me out before the audience.

I played a measure and sang:

Surgery, surgery,

first you slice and then you stitch . . .

cut it out and you’ll be rich.

The audience faded to a soft blur and my fingers found the chords automatically. My hours of practice paid off, and I was totally immersed in the music. When I finished, there was a surprising amount of applause, and they were actually standing up. The crowd held me tight, and I let them have me. I filled myself with them and floated away.

2006

I
FEEL CAUGHT BETWEEN
the past, the present, and the future. Still collecting details on the crash and working to understand my parents’ lives, I’m trying to connect the dots to my own life. I also need to stay grounded in my present life, trying to build my writing business and planning for Justin’s upcoming high school graduation. Lately, we are discussing a graduation party, which he is resisting. I am a celebrator, but my son keeps a low profile. “Everyone is having a party, Mom,” he says. “No one will even want to come.” I’m sure that’s not remotely possible, since he has a great group of friends that are always around. We compromise and pick a weekend when no one else in his group has planned anything. A pool party in July sounds good, so we start putting together an invitation list, and I start planning the food. The planning keeps me from thinking about this next phase of my life where being a mother is not front and center. People tell me I will get used to having my son away, but I can’t imagine it.

I pull out a file of newspaper articles and start my day’s research to find out more specifics of the crash: what the neighbors
were doing, how many escaped, and who did not. Somehow, this information seems important.

I now know of the Rangones, who rented rooms from Rosa Caruso at 306 Williamson. Ann Rangone, and her two boys— Emil, three years old, and Robert, just eighteen months—were at home that afternoon, along with Rosa and her husband.

Then there were Michael and Christina Pagoulato, who lived in the third-floor apartment above my parents. Michael came to America from Greece as a young man and fought in the American Army in WWI. After the war, he returned to Greece just long enough to meet his future wife. Michael and Christina had two sons, George and Thomas, who were studying at Trenton State College.

Karl Reuling Jr., a substitute teacher at St. Mary’s High School just down the street, rented a room from the Pagoulatos on the third floor. He kept his class late that day because they had misbehaved.

Next door, at 312 Williamson Street, Mary Kaspar was putting up some new wallpaper in her bedroom that afternoon. And, at 314, Mrs. Schwartz was babysitting for her four-month-old nephew, feeding him a bottle while her own two children played with their toys in the next room. Mrs. Fetske, who lived in the small converted machine shop about forty feet behind my parents’ building, was on the second floor, sewing. Her three children were in the next room changing their clothes after school.

Just before the crash, about a dozen kids walked from St. Mary’s High to the candy shop below my family’s apartment to drink sodas and play pinball.

Across the street, three hundred students were at Battin High in basketball practice, Debate Club, Drama Club, and rehearsal for the senior class play.

At St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, down the road, the nuns had just been briefed on their disaster plan. Director of nurses, Sister Maria Lawrence, concluded the meeting by saying, “We’ve already had one plane crash. Prospects for another seem remote.”

As I unearth more facts about the crash, the story gets slippery. More to the point, I still can’t pluck my own story from inside this larger one. The more I uncover, the more I disappear into the background.

JANUARY 22, 1952
(DAY OF THE CRASH)

2:21
PM

F
LIGHT
6780
WAS
over Cortland, New York, flying at seven thousand feet in accordance with the flight plan. It continued over Lake Carey, Pennsylvania, and reported in over Branchville, New Jersey.