I'm Glad I Did

S
ome people follow their destiny by accident. Take Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
. I was nine when I first saw the movie, and as soon as Dorothy sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” I knew she'd find a way to get there. True, she didn't do anything to make it happen; a tornado just happened to take her exactly where she needed to go. But somehow that song still made me believe she had something to do with it.

Knowing my life was not a movie, that there wasn't much chance of a tornado in New York City, and that the place I needed to go was only across town, I knew I'd have to get there by myself. So way back then, before I even hit a double-digit birthday, I made a decision. One day I would fly over my own rainbow and write a song like that one. A song that could make people believe in possibilities and dreams. One day I'd walk through those big brass doors of the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway, the place where my Uncle Bernie told me songs were “born,” and I'd make it to Oz, too.

It wasn't until seven years later, the summer of 1963, that I was able to figure out how to get there. And even though I may have done it on my own and faced my fear by choice, looking back now, it seems that most of what followed—the joy and the love, the tragedy and the loss, the craziness of it all—was meant to be. It was my destiny that summer to find out who my family was, who my friends were, and eventually, who I was.

The only part that didn't feel like destiny and never will was the cost.

There are three unbreakable rules in my family.

I'm hardly ever hungry at breakfast, and while I really love a good screaming argument (I believe it clears the air), I've managed to live with rules one and two. It's rule number three that scares me, crushes my dreams and destroys my soul. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is that I do not now, nor have I ever wanted to be an attorney.

Unlike my big brother Jeffrey, I have not inherited the legal gene. Jeff—who at the age of seven suggested a contractual relationship between us regarding use of the bathroom we shared—is clearly a Green. I was four at the time, so I accepted, proof only that I seem to have been born into the wrong family. If I didn't look so much like my mother, I'd suspect I'd been adopted, but we have the same face
(heart shaped), same hair (ridiculously straight, medium brown with red highlights) and the same big feet (don't even ask what size).

That morning in June, I had a bigger secret than my shoe size.

What I was keeping under wraps was a plan to break sacred rule number three by getting a summer job in the music business. A job that would no doubt lead to a total family flip-out. I had no intention of telling them anything about it unless I got it. Today was just an interview. I was painfully aware, though, that if anyone in my family of legal eagles thought I was hiding something, I was going to be cross-examined, so I tried to look relaxed and extremely normal as I ambled into the dining room and slid into my chair.

“Good morning, Irving,” Jeff greeted me, munching on cornflakes. “You look a little more uptight than usual. What's up?”

So much for my acting ability. My brother has called me Irving, as in Irving Berlin, ever since I was idiot enough to tell him that I wanted to write songs.

“Stop calling your sister Irving,” my mother instructed. She was cutting off the top of her egg with my grandmother's silver egg cutter, reading the
Herald Tribune
and monitoring our conversation at the same time. She was one of the few people in the world who could do three things at once and do all of them perfectly.

My mother, Janice Green—Janny—is a criminal attorney. My dad, Julius Green—Jules—is a judge. Jeff, the bathroom negotiator, is pre-law at Columbia. He's also working at
Janny's office for the summer. Could he be more perfect? J is the family letter, given the happy coincidence of my parents' first names. But J can also stand for lots of other things like “judgmental.” Or “joyless.” Or “just not understood.”

Janny and Jules named me Justice, and if that's not making a point and giving a kid vocational guidance, I don't know what is. My middle name is Jeanette after Jeanette Rankin, who was the first woman to serve in the United States Congress. Try living up to that. The only saving grace is that everyone calls me JJ. I hardly ever tell anyone my real name or why I got it. Nobody knows at Dalton where I graduated from high school last week, class of 1963. I'm sixteen, two years younger than most of my friends because I skipped a grade in elementary school and made one up in middle school rapid advance.

I mention this as proof that I am not too dumb to be a lawyer. I simply don't want to be one. I've known what I wanted to be ever since I was three years old and crawled up on the piano bench in my family's living room. Ever since I touched the keys and realized I could make my own sound. Ever since I heard the Latin music that Juana (another cruel letter J coincidence), our housekeeper, played on her radio. I've wanted to be a music maker, a spinner of dreams, the creator of some kind of new and beautiful noise, a poetic voice saying what others feel but can't express.

The problem is that in the Green family, saying you want to be a songwriter is the equivalent of saying you want to be an axe murderer—or even worse, a music business lowlife who rips people off, like my Uncle Bernie.

Juana whispered, “
Buenos días, cariña
,” and placed my usual toasted bran muffin in front of me.

“Justice, I think you're going a little heavy on the mascara,” Janny observed. “It makes you look unhappy.”

“It's not mascara, Mom, they're false eyelashes. Everyone's wearing them.”

“You are not everyone,” Jules reminded me from behind
The New York Times
. He peered over the headline
JFK SIGNS EQUAL PAY ACT
. “Your mother's right. You look unhappy.”

“It's her guilty look,” Jeff chimed in. “I remember it from when we shared a bathroom and she used it during my time.”

“Why are you talking about me as if I'm not here, Jeffrey?” I asked calmly. Whenever he did that, I wanted to rip out his vocal chords, but letting him know would mean he'd won. So I smoothed the skirt of my seersucker shirtwaist dress and smiled. “Don't you think that type of behavior is rude, Mom?”

“JJ has a point, Jeffrey. You two could debate it, but it's getting late, and I have to get to the office.”

Janny stood and slipped into her raspberry linen suit jacket. It matched her pillbox hat perfectly. My mom looked like Jackie Kennedy before Jackie did. Impossibly chic. So chic that people often took her for a model. She was also brilliant, charming, well read, successful—and one of only two women in her class at Columbia law. You might say she was a tough act to follow, or you might say it was better not to try. You might also say that trying to slip into the music business on her watch had to be a death wish.