Daughter of the King

by Lansky, Sandra

  Typing was for secretaries, the people the Pine Crest girls’ husbands would hire, not for the little ladies and pampered housewives-to-be. I made one friend there, Mary Ann Turner. Her father owned the patent on the cellophane that bread was wrapped in. That was the kind of rich girl atttending Pine Crest. Before the bus picked me up every morning at 6:30, Daddy joined me for my breakfast ritual of Rice Krispies and a daily vitamin. I never liked those vitamins, but they were orders from my once-beloved Dr. Eagle, so I followed them.

  Before I could figure out whether or not I hated Pine Crest, I discovered that I hated Teddy, far more than Paul ever dreamed of hating her. Living with Teddy, even though I had my own room and was gone most of the day in school, quickly became a strain, a battle for Daddy’s attention, a battle that Teddy would never win. As usual Daddy took me everywhere with him, to show me off to his friends, at handball, at card games, at dinners. To Daddy, I became the trophy child. To Teddy I became “the other woman.”

  If anything went wrong in the house, I would get the blame. One day after school, Teddy was waiting for me, hands cocked on her hips. She led me into the living room and pointed to a pastel portrait of herself hanging in the center of the wall. “Look what you’ve done!” She glared daggers at me.

  I couldn’t tell what she was talking about. “Huh?” I asked.

  She pointed out smudges on the portrait with her long, blood-red-manicured nail finger. “You did it. You ruined my picture.”

  “I didn’t touch it.”

  “Don’t lie to me! You ruined it.”

  Suddenly, the live-in black maid rushed into the living room, to my defense. “Oh, no, Miz Lansky. It was me. Don’t blame that poor child. It was me. I dusted it. It was dirty. I’m sorry, Miz Lansky.”

  “Get out!” Teddy screamed. I’m not sure who she was screaming at, me or the maid. I never saw the maid again. But Teddy never apologized to me. I ran out of the house crying and went down the block to see Grandma Yetta, who, after Daddy, became my best friend, my only girlfriend, in my new home. She was in her seventies then, and she spoke with a heavy Old World accent. But I knew she loved me. I stayed with her until dark, when Daddy would be home. When I got there, Teddy was all sweetness, as if nothing had ever happened. I bit my tongue. Never complain.

  There was another blow-up a few weeks later. Someone gave Daddy a little poodle that became fond of me. Teddy, who was phobic about animals, confined the dog to the kitchen at night. One school evening I was doing my homework and listening to the radio, which was way better than the homework. They were playing Patti Page’s “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?” Almost as if they were playing his song, the poodle began scratching at my door. He had escaped from the kitchen. Like any normal dog lover, I opened the door and let him in to enjoy Patti Page and Tony Bennett and Perry Como and Frankie Laine, all my “boyfriends.” And then I let the dog come to bed with me. No sooner had we fallen asleep than Teddy roared into my room and snatched the poodle from my arms. The poor dog began whimpering. I was even more scared.

  “I told you that dirty mutt was never to enter your room, never mind ruining the bed!”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” I cried.

  Daddy heard the fracas. He came in and quickly rendered his judgment. “She didn’t do anything wrong. Leave Sandra alone, Teddy.” Meyer Lansky’s judgments were final. Daddy took the trembling dog from Teddy and gave him back to me. Teddy turned on her heel and left the room. Daddy kissed me goodnight, winked at me, and closed the door.

  Down the hall, I could hear Teddy yelling at Daddy. It went on and on until I finally fell asleep, dog in my arms. The next afternoon Daddy picked me up at Pine Crest and told me great news. Teddy had left. I hoped it was forever. No such luck. Ten days later she was back. Daddy had to give the poodle back to the people who had given it to them. I tried to stay away from Teddy as much as I could, escaping to Grandma Yetta’s or sometime to Flo Alo’s. What I did know was that I couldn’t live in the same house with Teddy. I wanted to go home to Mommy. Bad as that was, it was better than this.

  As a dry run for coming home, I got Daddy to let me fly to New York in early November to go to my favorite annual event, the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden. This was as big a deal in New York as the World Series. So was seeing Mommy after four months away from her. It was an emotional reunion. She was so happy on the first day, but then she lapsed back to her old sadness and despondency. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t handle Mommy; I couldn’t stand Teddy. I was the girl without a country.

  And then it happened. I was “saved.” On the second night of the Horse Show, a tall, fair, nice-looking boy came up to me at the Garden and introduced himself. Or rather, reintroduced himself. He was Marvin Rapoport. I had no idea who he was. I didn’t remember him, which seemed to deflate him. He reminded me that we knew each other from the Aldrich Stables long ago. Then it hit me. He was the spoiled rich brat who had stolen my horse Bazookie.

  “Come on,” he pleaded. “I didn’t steal him. Only borrowed. He was stunning.”

  “All right. You’re forgiven,” I relented. He seemed a lot nicer, and a lot cuter, than I remembered him. Also a lot older. As we talked and talked and talked that evening, I found out he was twenty-three. A grown man. Eight years older than I was. Why was he being so nice to me? Atoning for his theft? No, it had to be something else. Could it be me?

  Marvin asked if he could buy me a soda, then another. And another. We talked all evening and had a wonderful time. He knew everything about riding, jumping, and breeding, but we had a lot in common besides horses. His brother Raymond was Buddy’s age, and the two had been friends in New York. Marvin was from a rich family that owned Rapoport’s Dairy Restaurant down on Second Avenue. It was a New York dining landmark, nothing at all like Steinberg’s Dairy Restaurant where Mommy took all her meals. Rapoport’s, and its chief rival Ratner’s, were the Jewish Sardi’s and Dinty Moore’s. The Yiddish theatres, which had their heyday earlier in the century and whose leading light was Sholem Aleichem, who would inspire Fiddler on the Roof, were all close to Rapoport’s.

  All the actors and playwrights had hung out there. Even when they changed their names and went to Broadway or Hollywood, like Paul Muni or Edward G. Robinson or Lee J. Cobb, they continued to go to Rapoport’s and Ratner’s. A “dairy restaurant” was a very kosher, rabbi-approved place that did not serve meat or chicken. Today this kind of restaurant would be considered very healthy. Rapoport’s was famous for its smoked salmon and sturgeon, its lox and eggs, its blintzes, its soups and onion rolls. Because of my weird diet, I wouldn’t eat most of this stuff. I had never been to the restaurant, but I had certainly heard of it. It was as much a part of New York as 21.

  Marvin worked at Rapoport’s for his family, as a host and manager. Dealing with all the celebrities, he had a lot of charm. He knew just what to say. I remembered Mommy pointing that out years ago when he took Bazookie, then tried to sweet talk his way out of it. Now I liked all the sweet talk. At the end of the evening, he offered to drive me home. He had a fancy black Cadillac convertible with red leather interior. When he stopped at the Westover, I wished I were still living at the Beresford or the St. Moritz so I could invite him up for a snack. I wished Mommy was her old self, so I could show her off as the woman I was going to grow up to be. Now I didn’t dare. Marvin asked if we could meet the next day to go to the horse show again. I was thrilled to accept.

  We ended up going together for the entire remainder of the show, three magic nights at the old Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue. For me, the time was an Arabian Nights fantasy, the horses, the riders, the rich and glamorous patrons, and a man in my life, my own blond Valentino, my sheik of Araby. We never got tired of each other. We talked about his love life, which seemed so sophisticated compared to my adolescent innocence. Marvin had dated showgirls and actresses, he confessed, including Dyan Cannon, who years later would marry Cary Grant. But he hadn’t liked any of them.<
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  He said he was looking for someone “pure and special.” Me, me, me, I prayed.

  Marvin would pick me up at the Westover, downstairs, of course, and take me back. We also went over to the Aldrich Stables, the thing I missed most about New York. Daddy had sold Time Clock when I moved to Florida, so we rented other horses and rode in Central Park. It was wonderful to ride together with Marvin. We were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, a natural pair.

  Marvin was my first real date, and I felt like Cinderella. I hated for it to end. When it did, I popped a very impulsive question. I asked him if he would escort me to my sweet sixteen party. I was trembling, waiting for the answer. Marvin smiled and said he’d be delighted to go. Then he kissed me goodnight, my first kiss since Jimmy C. Amazing! An older man had just kissed me. He was almost as old as Gordon MacRae, and almost as handsome. My life was transformed. I was dancing on air.

  If I had been thinking about leaving Florida and staying with Mommy, I gave up those plans. I had to go back to Florida and hold Daddy to his promise of a sweet sixteen party, a party I had wanted to avoid until I met Marvin. Teddy wouldn’t bother me now. I had a mission to accomplish. Marvin drove me to the airport. He kissed me goodbye. I was madly in love. Daddy turned out to be easy. He was a man of his word. Marvin called and wrote me letters, almost every day. I wrote back, mostly telling him how excited I was about coming back to New York. I didn’t have much to report from dull Florida.

  The month passed quickly, and in early December I flew back on Eastern to La Guardia, where Marvin greeted me with a big kiss. So romantic, so grown-up. Daddy didn’t come. Instead he called in instructions for the big night, December 13th, where we had two huge tables at the Copacabana on 60th off Fifth Avenue, filled with my friends from Calhoun and the stables, including Eileen, there with her future husband. There were no relatives. I would have liked Daddy there, but he might have had to bring Teddy. It was my party, and he knew she would have spoiled it.

  I invited Mommy. As expected, she refused. She wouldn’t leave the apartment. Nor were there any relatives, from either side of my family. It was the kids’ night. Marvin was by far the oldest one there, and I could see how envious all the girls were, with their teenage, pimply dates in badly fitting rented tuxedos. Marvin looked like Cary Grant by comparison. He dressed and danced beautifully. I was the belle of the ball dancing with him, and he was so smooth that he made me look like Ginger Rogers.

  The headliners that evening were the Kean Sisters, a comedy duo who also sang. They had a famous number with Ethel Merman from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes about three little girls from Little Rock. That night they did it with two girls. Then there were the famous Copa Girls, the stunning chorines with those huge towering headdresses. They were gorgeous, though not topless. For a nightclub, the Copa was pretty much family entertainment, a live version of Ed Sullivan.

  The waiters, who treated me like a queen, brought out the biggest birthday cake I’d ever seen. Then the whole restaurant stopped, and every table joined in “Happy Birthday to Sandi.” I had a feeling the whole place knew that Meyer Lansky’s girl was the guest of honor, and they paid appropriate respect. The only awkward moment was at the end of the party, when the valets couldn’t find Marvin’s Cadillac convertible. We worried that they had stolen it. One word from the boss, Julie Podell, who took his orders from the real boss, Uncle Frank Costello, and it magically reappeared.

  Returning to Florida couldn’t have been more of an anticlimax to my magic night. There were endless letters and endless flowers from Marvin, but I soon injected some drama in early January by getting appendicitis. They took me to a place called Doctors’ Hospital, where Grandma Yetta took charge and grilled the doctors, making sure they did the operation properly. “You better do the right thing! You take out her appendix,” she ordered them. “But nothing else!” Then she turned to me and kissed me. “I took care of it,” she said confidently. I could see where Daddy got his authority. Between the nose job and now this, I was getting to be an old hand at hospitals. For a second I thought about becoming a nurse.

  My room at Doctors’ Hospital looked like a botanical garden, there were so many bouquets from Marvin. In one of them, Buddy, who came to see me, found a note, with a big question: “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” in all capitals. Buddy, the gossip king, went into overdrive, showing the card to Daddy. Naturally, even with an IV in my arm, I was ready to say yes, yes, yes, I do, I do. Teddy would have been delighted to let me, just for good riddance. But Daddy, who hadn’t yet met Marvin, was typically cautious. He advised me that I was way too young, and that I should at least finish high school before making such major life plans.

  Daddy may have controlled the world, but the one thing he could not control was his teenage daughter. I was so willful. I wanted Marvin. Was it love, or was it a way of escaping the twin terrors of Mommy and Teddy? Right now I thought it was love, love, love. When I got out of the hospital, Daddy and I must have had dinner together at every famous restaurant in Miami, a different one every night, the Embers, Joe Sonken’s Gold Coast, and Joe’s Stone Crab. He tried to ply me with glamor and luxury and convince me that at sixteen, marriage was not the greatest idea, that I should give this relationship some time to develop. His pitch was that of the future Supremes’ hit “You Can’t Hurry Love.” Mine was “Get Me to the Church on Time.” To me, love at first sight was what love was all about—head over heels.

  Daddy and I were in a Mexican standoff. To break it, he offered to fly to New York to meet Marvin and, more important to him, Marvin’s parents. I hadn’t met them, either, which shows how blindly I wanted this to work. If they agreed, he would agree. My father, who thought he could out-negotiate anyone, was sure he could talk the Rapoports out of what he considered to be sheer madness. The appendectomy gave me the excuse to drop out of school for a while. Once out, I wanted to stay out. School seemed so trivial for this newly adult bride-to-be.

  In early February Daddy and I flew back to New York. I was turning into a real jet-setter, five years before the first jets started flying. Marvin picked us up in his Cadillac and drove us to his parents’ home in Long Beach, Long Island. Marvin, at five foot ten, towered over Daddy. I normally could never read Daddy, but when he first laid eyes on Marvin, he gave him that look of his. He covered it up quickly; that look had me worried. I sat in the back seat. Daddy and Marvin talked, mostly about Rapoport’s. Daddy knew more about restaurants than anybody in the world. He loved to eat, and he loved to talk about the business. That was a good sign, because Marvin talked with great authority and experience.

  Marvin gave us a tour of Long Beach, which, he told us, used to be known as the “Riviera of the East.” He showed us the French and Spanish-style mansions where some famous residents lived or used to live, Valentino, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Barrymore, Florenz Ziegfeld, all also patrons of Rapoport’s, Marvin proudly noted. His parents’ large house was near the ocean, though it was so cold the Atlantic looked frozen. Anna Rapoport was the boss of the family, glamorously dressed and just as assertive as Grandma Yetta. Anna was from Hungary, and she seemed as if she wanted to be as glamorous as fellow Hungarian Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was the front woman at the restaurant. Daddy Harry, a reserved, quiet man, did the books. But Harry was anything but back office. Harry Rapoport, after all, was Rapoport’s. He had his own charm, and a dry wit, and the customers loved him.

  We were sitting in the living room by a roaring fire. We had barely begun talking when Marvin stood up and presented me with a three-carat diamond engagement ring. I had never before seen Daddy at a loss for words. He was speechless. This was supposed to be a discussion, not a fait accompli. Awkwardly, the parents suggested Marvin and I go driving somewhere so they could talk to Daddy. They talked for hours and hours. In the end, I got my way. Mrs. Rapoport, I was told, had promised to treat me like a daughter, her daughter, to be the mother I currently lacked. She said, with two of her three sons all grown (the third was close to my age), she welcomed the chanc
e to be a real mother again, and to have a girl in the family she could fuss over the way she never could with her boys. This somehow broke down Daddy’s resistance.

  Marvin drove Daddy and me back to the Warwick Hotel on 54th Street and Sixth Avenue. With Miami now his main base, Daddy had given up the 36th Street apartment. The Kefauver hearings had made him too famous in celebrity-mad New York. In Miami he could still be anonymous. I could barely contain my joy that the marriage was moving ahead. I didn’t want to rub it in, because I knew I had beaten Daddy in this negotiation, and Daddy never wanted to be beaten. The next day I surprised Mommy by visiting her with my wedding ring on. That was my own fait accompli. Now she was the one who thought I was the crazy one. The tables had turned. I hadn’t told her about Marvin before, just as I had not told her about the appendectomy. That nose job was enough of a trauma for her. The marriage, she declared, was absurd, ridiculous. Just meet Marvin, I begged her. You’ll see. “I’ve already met Marvin,” she reminded me, fully alert and in control for the first time in a long time. “I have met him and I have seen.” Suffice it to say, I did not get her blessing. I returned to the Warwick; Marvin and I decided that the wedding should take place right away. If we weren’t going to wait, why wait at all?