by Dawn Lerman
Totally immersed in my own drama, I had arrived empty-handed. I always had something for my sister, whether I was picking her up from school, a friend’s house, or coming to an opening night. I had disappointed her and I felt terrible. I apologized, telling her I would make it up to her when I was less worn out.
“You never forget to bring me something. I hope you are not turning into Mommy. You are even starting to look like her. Your shoes look like her hooker platforms that we used to hide when Ugly George would follow her down the street trying to videotape her for his sleazy cable show.”
She continued to antagonize me, stretching herself across her king-sized bed covered with Annie dolls and flashing her fourteen-karat gold Annie head necklace with the diamond eyes. “While you were at lame camp dances, I have been at wild cast parties. I know all about sex, homosexuality, and drugs that give you energy so you can dance all night. I even know how two men have sex, and two girls have sex, and how to turn a man on by sitting on his lap and calling him Daddy. I am not so innocent anymore. I probably know more than you,” she said, shaking her ten-year-old hips from side to side. “I will tell you all the bad things that we do backstage if you tell me what happened at camp and why you’re acting so weird.”
As much as I wanted to share my woes about Ethan and how Hank and I broke up, and how I just wanted to curl up in a ball and hide for a little while, I listened to April as she purposely tried to hurt me for abandoning her for the first part of the summer. As April told me tale after tale, I was horrified at how both my sister and my life seemed to be coming apart.
“One night when all us orphans were bored from doing the same show night after night, we decided to do high kicks without our bloomers so the audience could see our underwear. And one night, I overheard some of the moms talking, saying that they felt sorry for me because Mommy was so neglectful, often leaving me in the room by myself while she sat in the lobby with the marionette man that she met when all the kids were invited to a special performance of a puppet show. And did I mention that I never get up before one p.m.?”
Before my sister could utter another word, my mother came bursting into the room. “You have ten minutes to get dressed. We are going to the White House for lunch. It is a good thing, April, that your sister is here. She can help fix you up.”
“Who’s going where?” I asked.
“Me and all the orphans are going to sing ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ for Amy Carter,” April boasted. “She’s a fan of the show. She came backstage three times. After we sing, she is going to give us a private tour of the White House, and we are going to have a pizza party in their private bowling alley.”
While it was an honor to go to the White House and meet Jimmy Carter, it paled in comparison to watching my sister perform. I never grew bored of seeing her on stage, or watching fans waiting outside the theater for the chance to get her autograph. Supporting my sister and being there for her was more important than any problem I had with any stupid boys. I was back on track, cooking in the hotel suite, talking to my grandmother on a daily basis, and helping my mom create album after album of all my sister’s newspaper clippings. For the rest of the summer, I spent every minute with April, except when she was performing. We walked around downtown Washington, visited a house in Georgetown where the Wright Brothers once stayed, and went to a little convenience store every evening where they had frozen fruit bars made with real fruit.
On my last night in Washington before I had to return to New York to attend my sophomore year of high school, I gave my sister a little stuffed heart with big white angel wings for her dressing room. April smiled at me and handed the heart back to me. “I have my wings,” she said. “Now it’s time for you to find yours.”
Banana Bread
Yield: 1 loaf
1 cup sugar
1⁄4 cup unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing the pan
2 eggs, beaten
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1⁄2 cup full-fat plain yogurt (not Greek yogurt)
1 teaspoon vanilla
11⁄2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pan. In a large bowl, beat together the sugar and butter. Add the eggs, bananas, yogurt, and vanilla; blend well. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt to the wet ingredients. Mix well. Pour into the greased loaf pan. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 20 minutes and remove from the pan.
Note: This recipe was given to my grandmother Beauty by my grandmother Bubbe Mary. Bubbe used twice the sugar and sour cream instead of yogurt.
Beauty’s Savory Meatloaf Cupcakes with Mashed Potato Frosting
Yield: 12 cupcakes
FOR THE CUPCAKES:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup finely chopped onion
1⁄2 cup finely chopped carrot
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon oregano
11⁄2 pounds ground turkey or extra lean ground beef
1⁄2 cup ketchup (plus more for topping)
1 cup saltine crackers (about 20), finely crushed
2 tablespoons mustard
11⁄2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1⁄4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 eggs
Cooking spray
FOR THE ICING:
2 potatoes, boiled, peeled, and cubed
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons milk
Salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, carrot, garlic, and oregano to the skillet and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes. Set the veggies aside to cool. In a large bowl, combine the meat, ketchup, crackers, mustard, Worcestershire, and pepper. Add the cooled veggie mixture and the eggs, and mix it all together.
Coat a 12-cup muffin pan with cooking spray. Divide the meat mixture evenly among the cups. Top each muffin with a spoonful of ketchup that you spread over the top. Bake for 25 minutes. While the cupcakes are baking, mash the potatoes with the butter, milk, salt, and pepper. When the meatloaf cupcakes come out of the oven, serve with a scoop of mashed potatoes on top.
Carrot Muffins
Yield: 16 muffins
1⁄4 cup oats, divided
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1⁄2 teaspoon cinnamon
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1 cup light brown sugar
3⁄4 cup oil or melted unsalted butter or butter substitute
1 cup full-fat yogurt (not Greek)
1⁄2 cup unsweetned applesauce
3 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla
1⁄2 cup unsweetened coconut
2 cups finely shredded and dried carrots
1⁄2 cup raisins
1⁄2 cup walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pans with baking cups. Evenly divide half the oats among the liners and set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together the flours, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt and set aside. In a large bowl, with a handheld or stand mixer on medium speed, combine the brown sugar and oil. Beat in the yogurt and applesauce until thoroughly combined. In about 1 minute the mixture will be gritty and thin. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well. Mix in the vanilla, then stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients till well combined. Fold in the coconut, carrots, raisins, and walnuts. Pour into the prepared cupcake liners. Sprinkle the remaining oats on top. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
18
Studio 54
Traditional French Onion Soup, Pritikin-Approved Lentil Stew
The
first time I went to Studio 54 was on a dare. My old friend Robyn from the Little Red School House called suggesting we get together. When I told her I would love to see her, she suggested meeting at Studio 54 on Saturday night. Hearing the hesitation in my voice, she questioned if I had ever been to the popular club before. I assured her that I had.
“So funny we have never seen each other.”
“Yeah, so weird.”
Panicked by my lie, I put Marley on the phone with Robyn to say hi.
“We go all the time,” Marley said in a calm, convincing voice. “Don’t worry. We’ll have no problem getting in. Midnight it is. We will see you by the moon with the spoon.”
As soon as Marley hung up the phone, she turned to me with wide eyes. “Holy shit. I told her we would meet her inside Studio, by some moon.”
“How are we going to get in?” The closest I had ever been to Studio 54 or any club was driving by in a taxi while going to the Alvin Theatre to pick up a contract for my sister.
“I don’t t know how we’ll get in, but we just have to. Otherwise, she’ll think we are totally lame.”
The night we were making the plan, my dad happened to be home and he overheard us talking. He chimed in saying he had been a few times, but he had no pull. He had always been on a guest list or been escorted by a model after a shoot. “My best advice is walk up like you own the place,” he said, telling the story of how he had heard that Bianca Jagger rode up on a horse to enter the velvet ropes—and some other celebrity arrived in a helicopter that landed right on the roof of the building. “The club thrives on theatrics and variety. The owner likes the crowd to be like a ‘tossed salad,’ not too much of one particular type. So you girls need to look really different to stand out. And just in case you do get in, you should probably have an ID,” my dad advised, handing Marley and me forty-five bucks to go to one of the souvenir shops on Forty-Second Street to purchase the fake identification cards—making us a few years older than our real age of fifteen.
“Whatever is left, you girls can use toward the entrance fee,” my dad said, crossing his fingers as he wished us luck—even though he did not think the odds were in our favor.
Marley did not think we needed luck. She went to Music and Art High School and was an art major. She even took sewing classes on the weekends, so costuming was second nature for her. “I will make us harlequin outfits, mine will be black on the left and gold on the right; yours will be the opposite.”
“We could also wear my Annie satin baseball jackets,” I said. “I hear all the girls from the Broadway cast get in all the time. We can go around eleven o’clock and kind of merge with the crowd.”
Marley was nervous the whole week, calling everyone she knew for tips. “If we get in, this will totally change our status to super-cool. I have read about all the high-profile parties and celebrity sightings. It seems amazing.”
I really just wanted to see Robyn, but somehow, I got swept into this elaborate plan of reading Page Six to find out what celebrities went there and running around to thrift shops and the garment district to pick out interesting materials to create our outfits, while fighting over which one of us would get to make out with Mick Jagger. We also had to decide if we would keep our real names for our IDs or if we would use the last name of a celebrity—Redford, Taylor, Newman—to make it seem like we were related to someone famous.
“Mr. Bouncer, Mr. Bouncer, my father is Robert Redford. My name is Shauna, did you not see me in the society papers the other day?”
“Beauty always says I look like Elizabeth Taylor when she was younger. I can pretend I am her daughter.”
“Does she even have a daughter our age?” Marley questioned.
“I’m not sure. Maybe we should just stick to our own names since we both have some famous connections, my sister being an Annie orphan and your dad being a kind of famous coat designer. His winter tweed jacket even made it to the cover of Vogue magazine five years ago. I know your dad can definitely help us. Maybe he could even call Halston on our behalf. He is a regular at Studio. That would definitely get us in.”
Marley said that her dad was not cool like my dad, and there was no way he would help us. “Besides, my parents would kill me if they knew we were going to a club. I told them we were staying home at your house, cooking all night. I even mentioned what we were making: your famous chili, homemade corn bread with the honey butter glaze, and the legendary China Town Fruit Salad with the lychee fruit. It was hard enough to convince my mom not to call your dad. Luckily, she trusts you. We just need to take the phone off the hook at your house so if she decides to check in, she will keep getting a busy signal.”
“We can also make a lentil chili so you can bring her a big hefty portion—that way she will never question it.”
“Who has time to think about chili?” Marley protested.
“I was just trying to help. Besides, I have the best new recipe. My dad has been on this new diet called the Pritikin Plan, and all the recipes are so easy to make and really low in calories and fat. We can eat a big bowl of chili before we go out, and make extra for my dad and your mom and still fit nicely into our outfits. It is a win-win situation.”
“These outfits are definitely not forgiving, so anything that won’t make us look bloated would probably be a good dinner choice.”
“And when you walk in the door Sunday morning with the chili adorned with onions, carrots, and celery, your mom will think we were home slaving over a hot stove all night.”
“Whatever you think we need to do so my mom won’t get suspicious. You know how my mom gets. Lately, she has even been smelling my hair to see if it smells like smoke. I told her it was from the smoking lounge in school where I go to do homework, but I’m not sure if she believed me. Every day she gives me the same boring speech. ‘Marley, if you smoke, you are not only hurting yourself, but our whole family. Marley, all you care about is fun. Life is about setting goals, and hard work.’ I don’t think either of my parents understands what it is like to be a teenager. This is our time,” she said, falling onto my bed reciting the lyrics to the hottest new disco song, “Born to Be Alive.”
Marley’s dad was a Holocaust survivor and her mother was a workaholic, helping her husband make a success of his business, so the idea of frivolous, carefree fun was not in either of their vocabularies. Marley was the opposite; she loved having fun and was usually pretty good at orchestrating elaborate plans. And tonight’s plan was pretty elaborate. I started on the chili while Marley got all our stuff ready.
The lentil chili needed to simmer an hour, so we had plenty of time to get dressed. With makeup strewn all over my bed, Marley got to work transforming us into disco divas—spandex outfits, teased hair, and makeup that glittered and shined. We dove into the eye shadow, lipstick, and rouge, smearing pink frosted lipstick on our cheeks, eyelids, and lips. As Marley blasted the disco single that she’d purchased at Tower Records, I began to feel in the spirit. She finished off our theatrical outfits with high-heeled red cowboy boots, before we ventured into the night.
To make sure we had enough money for an entrance fee, we opted not to take a taxi and instead walked in our six-inch heels from the East Side to the West Side. We definitely were noticeable, with our skintight clothes and clumps of wet silver sparkles on our faces and in our hair, and more than one guy approached us thinking we were working girls. I just kept my head down and walked as fast as I could, which wasn’t fast at all with those boots. Just when I thought my throbbing feet couldn’t take another step, we turned up Fifty-Fourth Street and there it was—Studio 54.
There were even more people and cars than we had imagined. The street was backed up with tons of long limousines lining it, and there was a sea of people—hundreds, maybe even thousands—all dressed in the most outrageous outfits. Some people were half-naked, wrapped in Saran Wrap, others in evening gowns, others dressed as Egyptian pharaohs, and s
till others dressed like the Village People—the cowboy, the biker, and the construction worker complete with a hard hat. I saw one woman completely painted gold from head to toe and wearing roller skates, and many men were dressed as women, with bright wigs that stood several inches high. It was a show in itself.
“Marley, there is no way we are going to get in. It’s a mob scene! We can’t even get close to the entrance. No one can even see us back here.”
“No is not an option. Just follow me.” Determined, Marley began pushing her way through the crowd, holding up two fingers.
Everyone was screaming out at the bouncers as they stood on fire hydrants to see above the masses, surveying the crowds to determine who would gain entrance.
“Steve, over here.”
“Marc, please, I’m on the guest list.”
“Steve, I am your cousin. We used to spend our summers together.”
“Marc, I was just here last night. I’ll just die if you don’t let me in this evening. I will do anything,” one woman promised, flashing her multicolored nipple lights. Everyone was trying to get Marc’s and Steve’s attention, and I had no idea how we would stand out amid all this chaos. But before I knew it, Marley had locked arms with Andy Warhol, and somehow we became part of his entourage sweeping past the velvet ropes. Going through the massive crowds, I was sure I was going to be squished to death. My heart was racing, pounding with both exhilaration and fear as we bypassed body after body.
“Can you believe it?” Marley exclaimed, jumping up and down once we were through the club doors. “Was that not the greatest moment of your entire existence? I will remember this day for the rest of my life!” Marley turned around trying to rejoin Andy’s crowd, but he had already been swept away by another entourage, and we were shoved into the line to pay our fifteen-dollar entrance fee where nobody even asked for our IDs—or cared that we weren’t eighteen, the legal drinking age in New York.