When I sang, though, it transported me. I was surgically removed.
My father thought I should record a demo and took me to a music store in Newark that had a small recording studio in the back. This sounded to me like he knew the music business and, best of all, that he thought I had some talent.
When we got there, the manager of the store led me into a tiny booth and went back around behind a glass window with my father. The ceiling was plastered with foam rubber, and the walls were lined with egg cartons. The guy behind the glass pointed to the headphones hanging on the wall, and I put them on. I adjusted the microphone and took out my guitar, sure I’d be discovered any second.
I remembered that my father said we’d be charged by the minute, so I didn’t dawdle. I tuned up quickly and started my song. My own voice reverberated in my head, and the guitar sounded distant through the one microphone.
Miraculously, we walked out with a thick vinyl record, and I wondered which record store would now sell it for us.
“What do we do with it now, Dad?” I asked.
“Well, let me talk to a few people I know and see what we can do. We’ll see, Juicy.”
His belief in me that day is what I remember most.
MY MOTHER GOT me my first gig at a fund-raiser. My big numbers were “What the World Needs Now” and “More.” Suddenly, I was the family star, and I relished the shift in attention from Linda to me.
Rehearsing with my father for the show was the most time we ever spent together alone. For our rehearsals, I would sit on the couch in the living room with my guitar, and he’d sit on the chair facing me. He taught me to breathe correctly while I sang: “Not with your shoulders, from the diaphragm—your shoulders shouldn’t move.” How to hit the high notes: “Think about the note, hear it in your head, and you’ll reach it, relax your throat muscles.” And the all-important: “Look at your audience when you sing, make eye contact, and smile.”
My father was a featured act at our swim club each summer, singing his favorite songs from musicals like The Pajama Game and South Pacific. My mother would be backstage, fixing costumes or troubleshooting a makeup crisis. Linda and I were out front, cheering for our star.
The time he spent with me sharing his music and knowledge was something I cherished—a gift. It was just between us, like the old days when he would put aside time to play catch with me in the backyard. With music, I had found a common ground that didn’t entail changing my gender. It was something we would share through the years.
PEEKING OUT FROM behind the curtain, I could see the simple setup. Just the wooden stool and microphone on the bare stage.
The school auditorium was full for the school talent show. I was in fifth grade, giving my first performance for a crowd, and I was nervous. I saw all my teachers, friends, and neighbors out in the audience. Even Roy, the crossing guard, waved to me from the back of the room.
It had been noisy just a minute ago, after Doug’s rock ’n’ roll band performed, but when I walked on stage it got very quiet. I went over to the stool while Mrs. Steinhart introduced me. She whispered, “Don’t worry, honey, they’ll love you!”
My heart pounded eighth notes as the audience applauded and I sat down. My parents and Linda were sitting in the second row. My father smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. Then he pointed to his own mouth, my cue to smile at the audience. My mother did not seem to be breathing.
I checked the tuning of my guitar one more time. My father’s eyebrows crinkled.
“Tune it before you go out,” he told me the night before. “It’s so annoying when bands come out and tune up their instruments for a half hour.”
But he didn’t understand. If one of the strings was flat or sharp, it would throw me, and I’d sing off-key. So I checked and double checked and avoided his disapproving gaze.
“This is a song called ‘Surgery’ that I found in a book of very old folk songs. I’d like to dedicate this to all the future doctors here tonight,” I said.
I got a few laughs at that line. My father thought it was very funny, but I was not so sure. He was tickled with the song itself and thought it was meant for me to sing.
I played the first few chords and started to relax, letting the music lift itself out of me, like it had been hiding there all along. It took me soaring in its updraft, propelling me to crescendo. Laying me out before the audience.
I played a measure and sang:
Surgery, surgery,
first you slice and then you stitch . . .
cut it out and you’ll be rich.
The audience faded to a soft blur and my fingers found the chords automatically. My hours of practice paid off, and I was totally immersed in the music. When I finished, there was a surprising amount of applause, and they were actually standing up. The crowd held me tight, and I let them have me. I filled myself with them and floated away.
chapter twenty-eight
2006
I FEEL CAUGHT BETWEEN the past, the present, and the future. Still collecting details on the crash and working to understand my parents’ lives, I’m trying to connect the dots to my own life. I also need to stay grounded in my present life, trying to build my writing business and planning for Justin’s upcoming high school graduation. Lately, we are discussing a graduation party, which he is resisting. I am a celebrator, but my son keeps a low profile. “Everyone is having a party, Mom,” he says. “No one will even want to come.” I’m sure that’s not remotely possible, since he has a great group of friends that are always around. We compromise and pick a weekend when no one else in his group has planned anything. A pool party in July sounds good, so we start putting together an invitation list, and I start planning the food. The planning keeps me from thinking about this next phase of my life where being a mother is not front and center. People tell me I will get used to having my son away, but I can’t imagine it.
I pull out a file of newspaper articles and start my day’s research to find out more specifics of the crash: what the neighbors were doing, how many escaped, and who did not. Somehow, this information seems important.
I now know of the Rangones, who rented rooms from Rosa Caruso at 306 Williamson. Ann Rangone, and her two boys— Emil, three years old, and Robert, just eighteen months—were at home that afternoon, along with Rosa and her husband.
Then there were Michael and Christina Pagoulato, who lived in the third-floor apartment above my parents. Michael came to America from Greece as a young man and fought in the American Army in WWI. After the war, he returned to Greece just long enough to meet his future wife. Michael and Christina had two sons, George and Thomas, who were studying at Trenton State College.
Karl Reuling Jr., a substitute teacher at St. Mary’s High School just down the street, rented a room from the Pagoulatos on the third floor. He kept his class late that day because they had misbehaved.
Next door, at 312 Williamson Street, Mary Kaspar was putting up some new wallpaper in her bedroom that afternoon. And, at 314, Mrs. Schwartz was babysitting for her four-month-old nephew, feeding him a bottle while her own two children played with their toys in the next room. Mrs. Fetske, who lived in the small converted machine shop about forty feet behind my parents’ building, was on the second floor, sewing. Her three children were in the next room changing their clothes after school.
Just before the crash, about a dozen kids walked from St. Mary’s High to the candy shop below my family’s apartment to drink sodas and play pinball.
Across the street, three hundred students were at Battin High in basketball practice, Debate Club, Drama Club, and rehearsal for the senior class play.
At St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, down the road, the nuns had just been briefed on their disaster plan. Director of nurses, Sister Maria Lawrence, concluded the meeting by saying, “We’ve already had one plane crash. Prospects for another seem remote.”
As I unearth more facts about the crash, the story gets slippery. More to the point, I still can’t pluck my own story from insid
e this larger one. The more I uncover, the more I disappear into the background.
chapter twenty-nine
JANUARY 22, 1952 (DAY OF THE CRASH)
2:21 PM
FLIGHT 6780 WAS over Cortland, New York, flying at seven thousand feet in accordance with the flight plan. It continued over Lake Carey, Pennsylvania, and reported in over Branchville, New Jersey.
chapter thirty
1960
I WANTED TO BE Queen Esther.
She was the real hero in the Purim play each year at Temple. Purim is the Feast of Lots, commemorating the Jews being saved once again from extinction. Always a good thing. There were never enough parts for girls, and I was cast as Esther’s uncle, Mordechai. I wore a black mustache and cape, which almost made up for not being the queen.
When I complained to my father, he said, “There are no small parts, Juicy, only small actors. Oh wait, you are kind of small!”
I instinctively loved Queen Esther, whose name is derived from the Hebrew saiter, meaning concealment. The story goes that she saw through to her hidden role to save her people. Her other name—Hadassah—references the clarity of her eyes to see beyond surface realities to inner beauty.
Esther belonged to no one. Her father died before her birth, her mother in childbirth. Loneliness nurtured her, preparing her for her purpose and making her a master at breaking through the illusory trappings of the physical world.
The Purim carnival after the play featured homemade games for the kids. Knocking over milk bottles, bursting balloons with darts, throwing ping-pong balls into fishbowls to win a goldfish.
My mother and father were always the “Pic-a-Pocket Lady” and “Pic-a-Pocket Man” at the carnival. My mother sewed the costumes on her brown Singer sewing machine. Sliding material under the needle, she turned the fabric around and around while she worked the foot pedal. She pulled out the straight pins as she sewed, holding them between her lips. Every year she added new colors and pockets and fixed the torn ones.
Her outfit had a swingy pink and blue flowered skirt covered with pockets. Strings of bright colored beads draped her neck. A poofy yellow silk flower in her blouse “just for fun.” Big gold hoop earrings to “fill my gypsy spirit.”
My father wore a straw hat from New Year's Eve. His vest and pants had about fifty pockets sewn on them. He wore a tray over his shoulders “like a cigarette girl” with extra prizes to refill the pockets.
A trail of kids always swarmed them at the fair, paying a nickel to reach into a pocket to get a prize—a little puzzle, a ball or a hard candy—with the money going to charity.
Linda and I could always pick a pocket any time we wanted. Celebrity status.
“Stay with your big sister,” my mother told me before the carnival started. “Come get me if you need me.”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant.
Later, she saw us both sitting in a corner and came to check on us. The toys in her pockets clacked as she sat down.
“The kids pushed me away from that bowling game. They said they are afraid they’ll catch whatever made me look like this,” Linda told her. She was eleven, and I was six.
I nodded yes when my mother looked over at me. She got up and walked away, coming back in a few minutes and telling us to go back to the game. Linda and I looked at each other, agreeing silently to trust our mother and try again. Sure enough, all those kids had changed their attitude. I learned later that my mother had gone over and explained that Linda was not contagious, and she elicited the support of the woman running the game.
Queen Esther could see beyond the facade of reality and make others see it, too.
chapter thirty-one
1964
LUCY AND ETHEL were working at the candy factory, the candy conveyor belt moving at a moderate speed while they wrapped each candy in tissue paper. Then it sped up, and Lucy started popping candies into her mouth and stuffing them in her hat and down the front of her dress. The supervisor came in, and Lucy’s candy-filled hat flopped over her eyes and Ethel’s mouth overflowed with chocolate. As we watched our favorite TV show, I Love Lucy, Linda and I doubled up laughing. I was ten, she was fifteen, and this was one of those timeless shows we could still laugh at together.
We didn’t notice my mother standing behind the couch.
“Can you girls come up to the kitchen? Dad and I have something we need to talk to you about.”
Linda and I exchanged confused looks and followed her upstairs. My father sat at the kitchen table, and we took our usual dinnertime seats—Linda in the corner by the wall, me on the side by the refrigerator. My mother stood behind my father’s chair, the window of the built-in oven reflecting a halo around her.
“Girls,” my father started, “I don’t want you to worry, things will be fine, but I wanted to let you know that I’m closing up the store.
“It’s just not making enough money, and I owe quite a bit. But that’s not for you to concern yourselves. We’ll get through this and be better than ever.”
My mother put her hands lightly on his shoulders. “That’s right, things are going to be fine. It will just take a little while.”
I could tell that my mother had orchestrated this conversation.
I didn’t know then that the extra costs of Linda’s surgeries had put a big strain on the family finances. It was my mother who saw the store was a losing proposition and convinced my father to stop putting good money after bad and to move on.
“Nothing is going to change really. We’ll just have to tighten our belts for a little while. Then I’ll get another job, and we’ll be back to normal, okay, Juicy?” my father said with a wink at me.
I wondered how making my belt tighter would help. But I was convinced. My parents were all-powerful.
Linda said nothing and folded her hands in front of her on top of the table. She may have been thinking about how they would afford college, which was around the corner for her.
It seemed to me that my father was Goldblatt Jewelers. He had owned it for nearly fifteen years, and before that, he worked for Mrs. Goldblatt. I couldn’t imagine him apart from the store. His world revolved around the place where he built up clientele and friendships. He was there six days a week, with blue laws giving him one day of rest on Sundays.
Sundays, when I was little, I would follow him around like a puppy. Looking back, it was my mother who deposited me firmly under his jurisdiction on that day of the week. If he went bowling with his league, I would tag along. Or, if he was going to the hardware store to pick something up, my mother would tell him to bring me, too.
When my father closed his store, the “Everything Must Go” sale turned into a reunion for all his customers. It was just like the Christmas rush when the whole family helped out in the store. Those are some of my happiest memories. I was the quarterback of the team and could wrap a package in a minute flat or clean a tray of rings in no time. We arranged and rearranged the displays as things were sold. At this last sale, my father said good-bye to lifelong friends, with everyone swearing to keep in touch.
In a photo of my father in front of his store on Broad Street, he wore a diamond tie bar just visible above his jacket buttons— “Easier to sell them when I’m wearing one.” He posed proudly in front of his display window with the silver giftware polished by my mother, arranged by him.
After closing Goldblatt’s, my father got a job as a manager with a large jewelry chain. And he was very successful there, winning awards and trips. It was the first time my parents had a chance to travel—to the Caribbean; to the company headquarters in Texas; to meetings in L.A., San Diego, and San Francisco. These were the good times they talked about for years and remembered fondly in their eighties.
With the new job, calls from creditors stopped, and my mother started answering the phone again. She was calmer, and my father cracked more jokes. We had barbecues and holiday dinners with aunts, uncles, and cousins again.
After my father died, I found a letter from the
top executive of that jewelry chain in the strongbox under his bed: Al is an exceptional manager. His knowledge and experience in the jewelry business are invaluable as our top salesman.
The letter was folded twice over and yellowed with age. It was the only document, other than his wishes for cremation—“like his little girl”—held in the steel box.
chapter thirty-two
2006
THE AUDITORIUM IS packed with people, and I’m straining to find my son among all the blue gowns. The music has started, and the class is marching in from two doors on opposite sides of the room. I don’t know where to look. It’s also a little hard to see anything through the blur of water that has collected in my eyes. I didn’t expect the rush of emotion today at his graduation. Part of it, I know, is wishing my parents could be here to see their grandson graduating with honors, tall and strong and handsome, with his warm smile and a kindness of spirit that is rare in teenagers. My mother saw it though; she could feel it in his hugs, she said. Another part is that I am so very proud of this boy, and still another is that I realize the biggest part of my mothering job is behind me. I’m not at all sure I always did the best for him. I’m haunted by something someone said to me when I was pregnant, that the best thing I could do for my baby was to stay together with his father. That was the one thing I couldn’t do.
When I met Bob, Justin’s dad, I was sure I had found my soul mate. He was sensitive and kind. We cried at movies together. He was caring when I was sick. I thought he was responsible and that I could trust him, since he was a bank manager when we met. In the beginning, he was attentive and affectionate, though that faded pretty quickly after we married. We also had a common bond of being married twice before, which was sometimes a stigma with other men I met.
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