There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (3 page)

Whenever her mother finally discovered—usually four or five hours later—that she had run away, they knew where to find her. The theatre lights would suddenly blast on and uniformed policemen would burst in with Mom’s mother and come to retrieve the runaway. The minute her mother would grab hold of her tiny arm, Mom would just point up at the screen and say, “Movin’ pictures, movin’ pictures!” Inevitably, Mom would get a whupin’.

All her life Mom simply loved movies. She would escape into the darkness of the theatre, and that’s where she found her home. She
told me she usually went alone, and inevitably some guy would try to be inappropriate with her. She claimed it got to the point where she would just scream out, “
Put that away!
” She said it happened once and three separate men jumped up to leave. Nothing derailed her love of the movin’ pictures. She was enamored of the glamour of movies and the fantasies they created. They were her original escape. It was fitting, I guess, for her to raise a child who would end up an actress.

•   •   •

Mom never seemed close to her mother, but she worshipped her father. They shared a special bond and a similar sense of humor. They both had a willingness to be silly. And neither cared about looking bad. Since birth he’d had a hole through the cartilage in his nose, and he would put a pencil through it and make a funny face to make Mom laugh. He’d imitate Charlie Chaplin in the movie
The Gold Rush
by sticking forks in two separate buns so they looked like little shoes and making the little bread feet dance on a tabletop. He’d chime in singing, “Now this is
abundance
!”

But even though Mom seemed to have revered her dad, I never got the impression that he was warm or overtly affectionate. Years later, upon my mom’s graduation from grammar school, he could muster up the sensitivity to write “Phooey” in her yearbook. I found it later and saw that Mom had asked only her father and one of her teachers to sign her book.

He worked hard to support his family during very difficult times. Even though I got the impression that my grandmother never cared for my mother and in fact even grew to resent her, to me it seemed that Mom did genuinely feel loved by her father.

Sadly, though, Mom’s dad died of lung cancer shortly after the “Phooey” incident. She was fourteen years old and this would be her
first real loss of love. Mom’s hero was gone and her mother was left yet again with three children to raise on her own.

•   •   •

Mom was able to stay in school and met the first love of her life in high school. He was a nice Italian boy named Salvatore Piccarillo and they became high school sweethearts. Mom would tell me stories about how she felt a part of his family and how his grandmother taught her to take one step at a time in life and not rush things or “sweat the small stuff.” She also taught my mother the importance of perseverance and progress. This little old Italian grandmother would place her fingers on the kitchen table, touching her pinky to her thumb. She would separate her pinky from her thumb and then slide her thumb to meet it. The back of her hand would arch up every time her thumb met her pinky, and as she continued, over the length of the table, it looked very much like a huge caterpillar slowly making its way to a place in the shade. She’d made it all the way to the end of the table by taking little steps.

Mom and her beau, Sal, spent all their time together, and they became the standout couple at their high school. I loved the idea that he was a football player, and I imagined them as prom king and queen. These seemed to be some of the better years of Mom’s life in Newark. She was said to light up every room she entered. She was special in every way.

After she graduated, Mom got a job working at Krueger Brewing Company, on an assembly line as a capper. She modeled a bit and was also often called out of work for photo opportunities to show her beautiful gams or greet various men in uniform. They would pluck her from the grind of the factory job and she’d have an interesting experience and hours off. Just like Marilyn Monroe in the famous photo from
Yank
magazine, it was always my mom who they wanted to show
off the product or be the mascot of a factory. She looked like she was imitating the famous Betty Grable pinup photo in the bathing suit. She wore only fire engine–red lipstick and always showed off her long, sexy legs. She was stunningly beautiful, and her laugh was infectious. She excelled at everything she tried, and she read people astutely. She knew she was somehow different from her peers and wasn’t the type to want to settle down.

Soon my mother started setting her sights past Newark and across the Hudson River to the bright lights and more cosmopolitan Manhattan. She wanted more. She wanted a big, fabulous life, and I guess she felt Newark couldn’t provide it. She showed no regrets in leaving anyone behind. I often wonder what her life would have been like if she’d stayed. It seems impossible that she would have been content.

Mom started to take the bus into New York City every day for work and eventually got a job at the famous Gaslight Café. Her salary was minimal, and she made the majority of her money in tips. She was a coat-check girl who met the regular customers with just a smile and a nod, as she was always horrible with names. Once, while introducing a boyfriend to her mother, she forgot her own mom’s name. She mumbled something and then just kept repeating her boyfriend’s first name, feeling relieved that she could at least access
somebody’s
name in this horrible moment.

Well, this inability to recall names plagued her forever, but particularly at the Gaslight, where remembering the clientele’s names ensured a larger tip. To counterbalance her deficiency, Mom would take the coat, cock her head with a wink, and go to the coat-check closet to retrieve a number check in its place. In the back, Mom kept a small notepad log of characteristics of the customers or tidbits about their lives—things they had mentioned or she had overheard. For instance: This man had a kid going off to college, had a sick family member, or had spent a holiday in a certain place. She also made a
note of tie color or hair color or physical characteristics. She’d write: “red hair with crooked nose: Bob” or “slick side part and black hair, smells of Old Spice: Jack.” For the ones with no name, she would simply bring the claim ticket to the man and in a flirty tone, hands on hips, say, “Now you, how come you’re not wearing my favorite yellow tie? Shame on you! Next time I want to see it. Enjoy your evening.”

The men all felt special and, with stoked egos, reached farther into their pockets for a tip.

Mom crumpled her cash tips and shoved them in her pockets. At the end of the night she’d take the bus back to Newark, and her mom would be waiting with the ironing board up and the iron hot and ready. Mom would dump out the balled-up money and give them to her mom, who stayed up ironing the bills until they were all flat and in a stack. I’m not sure my mother ever got to keep any of this cash for herself. I suspect it all went to her mother for the care of the family. Mom never seemed to resent this and instead began to clock the prospects of a bigger world, one that didn’t involve a daily bus commute.

She began to grow away from Sal. They always remained friends (until the day she died), but she decided to go off on her own and move to New York City. She set out to get an apartment and was able to secure one with decent rent on the east side in the Fifties. She then began working in the Garment District in various stockrooms and, sometimes, as a model. Mom continued to send her mother money when she could. I have found thank-you notes from my grandmother and my great-aunt Lil thanking Mom for the rent money.

My mother wanted a more upscale career but had no experience or education in sales or management. But she didn’t see that as an obstacle. She often said to me growing up, “Brookie, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Don’t take no for an answer and never let ’em see you sweat. Figure out what you want and find a way.”

She applied and got a job at the makeup counter of the posh uptown department store Lord and Taylor. It would be here that she would meet
her longtime friend and my eventual godmother, Lila Wisdom. Lila was from Tucson, Arizona, and was younger than Mom by a few years. They became the best of friends, but Mom always saw herself as the captain of the ship. I only knew my mom as the captain of the ship, so this made sense to me. Lila was from a small town and had graduated from college. Mom acted like her bossy big sister, and their dynamic worked.

Because Mom also had zero training in the world of makeup beyond applying her ever-present fire engine–red lipstick and matching nails, she had to be creative and seemingly confident. Her job was to make up the customers and subsequently sell them products. Mom was right-handed and unable to use her left steadily or contort properly to use the brushes in her right hand to apply eye shadow and the like on both eyes. After creating a few Picasso-esque faces, she came up with a solution. She would do the left side of a woman’s face with her right hand and then turn the woman to face the mirror, hand her the brush, and, like a wise teacher, say, “Now let’s see if you can do what I just did to the other side of your face.”

Women loved the attention and instruction and were empowered by learning a skill from the expert. They bought copious amounts of products, and everybody was happy. Management thought Mom was a genius, and she was soon promoted. Lila was Mom’s boss in the beginning but soon Mom was practically running the place. It was a gift she had—how she could turn her weaknesses into seeming strengths. People looked up to her and thought she could do anything, even though she was technically not trained. She was a person who would never admit to not knowing something.

Mom was now meeting a more uptown crowd and soon had many new friends. She was exposed to the fabulous fifties in New York City and all it had to offer. Mom befriended many gay men who were hairdressers or in fashion, and she beguiled many members of the New York social set. Her usually brown-red hair was blond at this point. She was a five-foot-nine bombshell with a narrow waist; long, gorgeous legs; and a sexy hourglass figure. She seemed to celebrate her physique and had no issues wearing a bikini or minidress. She had a friend named Joanne who was a fellow blond. Joanne had a mean parrot that Mom taught to curse. Jo and Mom often wore one another’s bathing suits and always took fun pictures on various boats and with various men suitors. The same leopard one-piece has shown up in many photos of Mom as well as Jo.

Mom loved to have her photo taken and always had a glimmer in her eye and a glass in her hand. In photos of her with other people, your eyes are always drawn directly to my stunningly beautiful mom. The men were either handsome or rich, and you could tell they wanted to shower her with the good life—the life she so coveted.

One particular gay couple became Mom’s closest friends. They had
a place on Fire Island and often repeated the story of how one day Mom was walking one of their poodles on a leash on a boardwalk. The dog wrapped the leash around Mom’s legs and she got totally tangled up and fell head over heels on the wood planks. Her dress flew up over her head and she was wearing not a stitch of underwear.

Mom never parlayed her many talents into a profession but kept starting jobs, excelling in them by sheer street smarts and innovation, and moving on. She seemed to be searching for some kind of recognition or social status and an escape from her roots.

•   •   •

It wouldn’t be long before Mom met a man to whom she became engaged. I never heard much about him and was shocked and saddened when I found out why they never actually got to take a walk down the aisle together. Mom told me the story of his death every time she took me to have a cheeseburger at P. J. Clarke’s original Fifty-Fifth Street and Third Avenue location.

Turns out Mom and her fiancé, who I later learned was named Morton Gruber, were on a double date with a girlfriend of Mom’s and her boyfriend. They all were in the car together on the way to have drinks and dinner at P. J. Clarke’s. They were having trouble finding a parking spot and didn’t want the ladies to have to walk far. Mom’s fiancé was behind the wheel and suggested he drop the three passengers off at Clarke’s to get a table. He would find a spot for the car and meet them inside. Mom and the other couple went in and waited the normal ten minutes for a table and sat to order a cocktail. Some more time passed, and the group began to discuss how bad parking had gotten lately. Even more time passed and they began to get a bit curious and even slightly concerned. Did her fiancé suddenly get cold feet? This joke ended up being a terrifying and morbid premonition. Moments later, sirens were heard and red lights flashed through the paned windows. Everybody rushed outside and was horrified by what they saw.

This was at a time in New York City when Third Avenue was a two-way street. Evidently, Morton had parked the car on the opposite side of Third Avenue from the restaurant and was crossing the street when he was hit by a car. His body was thrown thirty feet. He was dead on impact, and by the time the ambulance came his watch and wallet had been stolen. The whole story was shocking to me. I couldn’t believe that people would steal off a dead or dying bloody man. And if he had lived, I would have never existed.