Daughter of the King

by Lansky, Sandra

  We planned a big ceremony for a few days off. Then Marvin and I went downtown to the courthouse to get a marriage license. Problem! As a minor, I needed both parents’ written permission. Daddy was on board; Mommy was dead set against it. So Daddy, who obviously couldn’t talk to Mommy, had to address himself to the one person who could—Paul. Paul, in his final year at West Point, thought the marriage was ridiculous as well, but Daddy made his request, and Paul relented. Paul would never refuse Daddy, even for something crazy like this. He took a train down to New York that night and somehow convinced Mommy to sign the paper. I still don’t know how or why he did it. Maybe just to get rid of me.

  Now it was all systems go. Two days to the wedding and I realized I had no trousseau, nothing to wear. Daddy took care of the money part. But I had no idea how to be a wife, or dress like one. Marvin came to the rescue. He said he knew everything about beauty and fashion. First came the clothes. Marvin loved to shop more than Mommy ever did in her happy days. Daddy had given me enough money for Saks or Bonwit Teller or both of them combined. Marvin took the cash and said why pay retail. He had connections.

  So we drove to Seventh Avenue to some dingy showroom in what looked like a warehouse. I tried on a lot of ugly dresses that Marvin dismissed because he said I was “too hippy.” It was over a decade before hippie meant something cool. Marvin meant I was too fat, which hurt my feelings. I was willing to starve to please him. Finally, he settled on a red dress with white polka dots that I thought belonged in a circus, and a bunch more, for our upcoming honeymoon in Mexico and Las Vegas. What did I know? He was the fashion plate, the man of the world. I bought what he told me.

  The morning of our wedding, Marvin picked me up and drove me to Brooklyn. A hairdresser friend of his worked in a beauty shop there. I didn’t realize Brooklyn even had beauty shops. From Mommy’s high-fashion days, I thought all salons were on 57th Street. When they finished with me, I might have been right.

  Marvin’s friend, who was very theatrical and flamboyant, decided to make me a blonde, a real blonde, not the natural dirty blonde I already was. To begin, the friend stripped my hair to a bright ghastly orange. “My God, I look like a carrot,” I gasped. Then he completely waxed off my eyebrows. Marvin himself penciled new ones in. He loved this stuff. He and his friend applied makeup and eye shadow, supposedly in the style of Zsa Zsa Gabor, but more like that of Marvin’s mother. This so-called beautician was better suited to doing special effects for monster movies. They oohed and aahed, but I felt like a freak. I walked into that beauty shop a sixteen-year-old and walked out a silver-haired, overly made-up matron, the spitting image of my mother-in-law to be.

  There was no time for vanity. Marvin then drove me to the Westover, where I had to pick up a lot of things for our honeymoon, and where I had decided to put on my wedding dress. Mommy was even more horrified than she was by my nose job. “I warned you, I warned you,” she cried, cursing herself for signing the consent form for Paul. “You look like your Grandmother,” she said, referring to her mother, who was anything but a beauty. “Please, darling, please. I beg you with all my heart. It’s not too late to stop this. It’s all wrong! Stay with me. Don’t do it.”

  I left her in tears. If Marvin had come up, she might have killed him. In my clown dress and old lady hairdo, I rode with Marvin down to an old synagogue on the Lower East Side that had served as a congregation for members of the Yiddish theatre. This was my second synagogue. The first was on a Calhoun field trip to the enormous and ornate Temple Emanu-el on Fifth Avenue. This place was very run down, though Marvin called it “historic.” Daddy was there waiting, as were Uncle Jack Lansky and his wife. Daddy and his brother looked funny to me in their skullcaps, which I had never seen them wear before. I know I looked even funnier to them. Poor Daddy. When he saw my hair and dress, tears came to his eyes, and they were not tears of joy. I had no one else there, no Citrons, no Paul, no Buddy, no Grandma Yetta.

  There were tons of Rapoports. This was much more their party than ours. Marvin’s normally sedate father was very excited to see me, so much so that he kept pinching my behind. I guess it was a gesture of affection. Maybe he was excited because I looked just like his wife.

  A rabbi performed the ceremony. I had no idea what he was saying or what the ceremony meant, with the tent and the business with stepping on the glass. To me it was all foreign mumbo-jumbo. I just said yes and basked in the chorus of mazel tovs. I kept reminding myself that all of this was better than going back to live with Teddy.

  After the ceremony, we drove up to the Versailles at 151 East 50th Street, for the wedding reception. That day we had driven out to Brooklyn, up to the Upper West Side, then down to the Lower East Side, and now back up to midtown. I hoped our highway to eternal happiness would not follow such an erratic course. The Versailles was a famous supper club that featured French singers like Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier. The Versailles was Daddy’s show, and Daddy’s treat. The father of the bride had the great Edith Piaf there to serenade Marvin and me with French chansons d’amour. Between her big showstoppers, like “La Vie en Rose,” an American combo sang “An Old Fashioned Wedding” and “Almost Like Being in Love.” I didn’t think about the “almost” until some time later.

  The Versailles was decorated like an over-the-top French chateau, the kind of décor that got Marie Antoinette beheaded, tons of crystal and silver and unicorn tapestries and fake copies of Renoirs and Cézannes. There was a French menu with foie gras and caviar and steaks with béarnaise sauce and rack of lamb, all the stuff they didn’t serve at Rapoport’s Dairy Restaurant. The waiters kept saying not to worry, that everything was kosher. There were toasts and dancing and endless photos and a fortune teller who seemed shocked that I was the bride. “You? You’re a baby,” she marvelled. She read my palm and said, “You will have a long life.” She didn’t say a “long and happy life.”

  I wasn’t looking for omens. I was worried about our wedding night. I had as little an idea about what to do then as I had about how to look for the wedding. All I could hope for was that the night would go better than what had come before. Our honeymoon hotel was Marvin’s bachelor apartment at 360 East 56th Street, right off Sutton Place, one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city. I had not seen Marvin’s place before, just as I had not met his parents. And following Mommy’s Jimmy C orders, I hadn’t gone any further with Marvin than a lot of kissing, nothing more.

  Now was the moment of truth. I knew something big was supposed to happen. Actually I was hoping it wouldn’t, that we could somehow put it off until we got to Mexico. My appendix surgery was barely a month before. I still had scars and pains. Moreover, I had never been naked in front of a man before, except Dr. Eagle and that didn’t count. I hadn’t even had a drink at the party. I was too young, and the Versailles wouldn’t serve me for fear of losing their liquor license. Because Meyer Lansky was there, the whole world, and the cops, were watching like hawks. I had nothing to calm my anxiety.

  I went into Marvin’s bathroom and changed into my new flannel nightgown. There was nothing sexy about it. Marvin had picked it out. Maybe his mother had one, too. I was taken totally by surprise when I came out of the bathroom and found Marvin lying in bed, completely naked. Aside from the accident with Daddy in the shower, I had never seen a grown-up naked man. And I had never, ever seen one with an erection. Gee!

  Marvin gently pulled me down on the bed beside him. He started kissing me and tried to take off the nightgown. I was worried about messing up my awful hairdo and looking even worse the next morning on our flight to Mexico City. In those days travel was dressy and glamorous. You had to look your best. Marvin took charge and calmed me down. He seemed to know what he was doing. Whatever it was was quick and didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would.

  Marvin did what he had to do, then rolled over and went to sleep. There wasn’t any cuddling or a lot of mushy declarations of love and passion. Those were embarrassing. That didn’t bother me, but the ne
xt morning I saw that the sheets were covered with blood. “That’s for Maddie,” he told me. Maddie? I was confused. Maddie was his maid. She would clean things up. I was worried that the blood was caused by my incision opening up. Marvin assured me that was not the case, and gave me a brief lecture on the birds and bees. “Got that, Mrs. Rapoport?” he asked. He could be cute and witty. I finally felt that I belonged somewhere, to someone. Meanwhile we had a plane to catch and a real honeymoon to go on. Honeymoons were where babies were made, and, as I would soon find out, nobody wanted to be a father more or faster than my new husband. Why he was in such a tear would be the new story of my life.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE HONEYMOONERS

  “Don’t drink the water!” That was the only travel advice the revelers at the Versailles kept giving us for our honeymoon to Mexico. They didn’t tell us about museums or cathedrals or pyramids or volcanos or other things that I had seen in the travel brochures Marvin had collected. Just the water. The idea was that we were at risk of getting terribly sick, so we had to be extremely careful. Why go there? Why? Because it was a deal. Marvin’s mother had worked out a swap for catering office parties with a travel company called Perillo Tours, a kind of blintzes-for-tacos trade, and our honeymoon would not cost a penny. That, to Mrs. Rapoport, was worth the dysentery risk. “Deals,” whether for clothes or travel or restaurants or whatever, were very important to Marvin’s family, who liked to trade their dairy delicacies for anything and everything. That was business.

  Daddy would have been delighted to send us to Europe, probably in the $2,600 Regal Suite on the Italia that had attracted so much notoriety. However, the Rapoports made such a big show of taking care of everything that Daddy felt it would have been rude to try to override them. Besides, he was so shell-shocked by the blitzkrieg-shotgun nature of our marriage that he didn’t have time to think about the arrangements. Whatever, I was excited to be leaving the country and seeing the world. What was adventure without risk?

  The trip to Mexico City was smooth. We left a bitter snowy February in New York and landed in Mexico’s perfect eternal springtime. I only drank Cokes, Marvin only drank tequila, no ice, and we didn’t get sick. The main thing I remember was the sex. I had no idea you were supposed to do it every night, before bedtime, like saying your prayers, which I never did. I secretly fretted that I would have to do this for the rest of my life. At first I tried to be flattered that Marvin was so wildly attracted to me. Yet the sex wasn’t wild at all. He’d lie in bed in his boxer shorts, wait for me to come out of the bathroom, get on with the job, then roll over and go to sleep. It was like a duty, a chore, and before the end of the honeymoon, I found out exactly what the job was.

  “Are you pregnant yet?” Marvin began asking me. That was before I had a chance to miss my first period. I barely understood that was the first sign of pregnancy. There were other signs, Marvin told me. He had clearly read some pregnancy manual and had become an expert on the matter, an amateur gynecologist. I had never been to a real one. Maybe this was another Rapoport way to save money. He kept asking me if I was nauseous so much that he made me want to throw up. Did I go to the bathroom more often? Were my breasts tender? Did I feel tired? Of course I did, trudging up the steep hills of Taxco all day to silver shops. Why was he in such a hurry? Couldn’t we just take our time? It took nine months to make a baby. Couldn’t we at least enjoy a few weeks? I tried my best to make the most of it and feel sophisticated and grown-up. After all, I was a “married woman” now.

  The two main things Marvin loved were the shopping and the bullfights. Paying the bills with the huge wad of cash Daddy had given him for the honeymoon, Marvin sent his family a ton of Mexican curios, tchotchkes, as my new mother-in-law might say. Maybe he had plans to transform Rapoport’s into a kosher Mexican restaurant serving lox enchiladas. I hated the bullfights. I couldn’t stand watching a beautiful animal get stabbed to death. Marvin was obsessed less with the bulls than the matadors. He kept going on and on about how cool and handsome they were. He even found a costume shop that made traje de luces, or traditional matador suits, and wasted a whole afternoon trying them on. Somehow I was able to talk him out of it. Where in New York could he wear one, other than on Halloween?

  By the time we survived a very turbulent flight to Acapulco on a flimsy prop plane, I was so shopped out that all I wanted to do was lie by the pool. I was still under doctor’s orders not to swim, because of the appendectomy. I wished I could get a note excusing me from the ritual baby-making attempts. I was so sore. After Acapulco, we had another white-knuckle flight through the volcanoes back to Mexico City, took a big plane to Los Angeles, then a small one to Las Vegas. In 1954 Las Vegas was still a tiny town, a small oasis of gambling and a touch of Hollywood glamor in the middle of a very barren desert. Was this what Uncle Benny died for, was my first impression.

  If I couldn’t see the future, I could sense the allure of the present. It was nighttime and the February air was warm and scented with flowers. The glow of neon from the hotel signs lit up the desert night. It wasn’t Times Square, but Times Square was 20 degrees. This was 70. And you couldn’t gamble in Times Square. Daddy was there at the adobe shed of an airport, dressed in a fancy suit and tie, which stood out among the cowboy types in ten-gallon hats. Even in the Wild West, Daddy was pure New York. I thanked my lucky stars Marvin hadn’t arrived wearing that bullfighter suit. Daddy might have had him shot on sight.

  We didn’t stay at Uncle Benny’s (now Daddy’s) Flamingo. Instead, Daddy put us in the Thunderbird, his sprawling hotel with the giant neon head of an Aztec god at the entrance. Maybe Daddy’s idea was to continue the Mexican theme of our honeymoon, though I doubt it. Daddy wasn’t “artistic” the way Marvin seemed to be. We had our own cottage, a honeymoon suite they called a “lanai,” with a big private patio that had direct access to the Olympic-size swimming pool.

  The headliners, announced on a hotel’s marquee, were Kathryn Grayson, whom I had just seen in the film hit Kiss Me Kate, and the Irving Fields Trio, playing in the Pow Wow Room. Daddy later introduced us to them and whoever else was performing during our tenday stay. One of the stars we met was Nat King Cole, who was there on business and stayed in his own gleaming airstream trailer on the grounds of the Thunderbird. Later we learned that black people, even a star like Nat King Cole, weren’t allowed to stay in the Vegas resorts, only in servants’ quarters on the poor side of town. Daddy’s management team had bought this special trailer so Mr. Cole could stay at the hotel without actually staying inside of it and triggering a nasty incident. The West, it seemed, was more like Estes Kefauver’s Old South than New York.

  I spent my days lying around in the sun by the pool, getting my fair skin slowly suntanned, watching Marvin swim and wishing I could dive in. But I had to follow doctor’s orders to protect my healing incision. Marvin was instantly hooked on gambling. Since his father-in-law owned the house, Marvin thought he could bet the house. I was too young to enter the casinos, but Marvin dressed up and assumed the role of a high roller. The minute he lost his first hundred dollars, Daddy was notified. Meyer Lansky quickly cut off his son-in-law’s credit and gave Marvin a cordial lecture: “Don’t bet more than you have.” What he didn’t say but was understood was, “Don’t play with other people’s money.”

  “Sure, Dad. Gotcha, Dad. Whatever you say, Dad.” Marvin dared not disagree with my father. However, the “Dad” word seemed to grate on Daddy’s nerves. He suppressed a slight cringe every time he heard it. Still, he remained polite and was always the perfect gentleman to my new husband.

  I would have loved to go horseback riding in the desert. After all, this was the West, cowboy country. There were horses everywhere. Because I was still recuperating, Daddy refused. If Daddy had known the workout I was getting every night, he might have changed his mind. That, or kill the guy who was doing this to his one and only baby girl. Marvin and I spent most of our time out of the lanai making the rounds of the assorted resort hotels,
meeting the Las Vegas uncles who owned them and collecting “tribute” for our marriage.

  We had an endless round of lunches and dinners, at the El Cortez with Dave Berman from Minneapolis, at the Desert Inn with Moe Dalitz from Cleveland, with Dandy Phil Kastel from New Orleans, who was also at the Thunderbird and just starting to build the Tropicana. We dined with Daddy’s investment partners at the Flamingo, Moey Sedway and Morris Rosen. Another partner, Gus Greenbaum, drove up from Phoenix to meet us and pay his respects. They toasted us, and Daddy toasted Morris’s son Jackie, and his wife, Benny Siegel’s daughter Millicent, who would soon have a child with the crazy name of Cinderella. They called her Cindy.

  At these celebrations, all of Daddy’s associates would raise endless rounds of drinks to me and Marvin. I was still stuck with ginger ale; Daddy didn’t want to lose his liquor license serving minors, even in a state where gambling and prostitution were legal. The finale would be to make a big show of presenting me with a fat envelope. As soon as we returned to the lanai, Marvin would tear it open and marvel at the loot. “I’m the banker!” he insisted. The envelopes invariably contained dozens of hundred dollar bills. We must have left Vegas with tens of thousands of dollars, enough to keep Marvin in horses and matador suits, if he wanted them, for a lifetime.

  Our honeymoon seemed to go on forever. No sooner had we flown to New York, loaded down with our vast bank haul, than we had to make another honeymoon trip to Miami with Marvin’s parents. We drove down in Marvin’s Cadillac. In Henderson, North Carolina, we were caught in a speed trap and a redneck officer who’d been hiding behind a billboard that said “Jesus Loves You” pulled us over. The officer had a cornpone accent that made Estes Kefauver sound like a Shakespearean actor. “Ya’ll Yankees,” he called us. “Where’s the fire, folks? Ya’ll Yankees gotta learn to slow down and smell the barbecue.” He examined Marvin’s driver’s license. “Rap-o-port,” he read the syllables, way slower than molasses but not sweet at all. “We ain’t got no names like that down here. That a Jew name?” he asked Marvin.