I did not learn the truth for fifteen years. It arrived in my New York City mail slot one day ten years ago in an envelope addressed by my father. Inside was an obituary from the Miami Herald. It was circled in bold red. Lucille Faye Garlovsky, it read. She’d died at age seventy from lung cancer (probably contracted in Aunt BoBo’s apartment, although it didn’t make mention). The beloved sister of two, mother of one, wife of none.
I called my father as soon as I received it. “I thought she was seventy in 1977,” I said. He said no, she was young, widowed early. I said I wondered what had happened to her in all the years since my Grandma Estelle died and we stopped going to Miami.
“Nothing,” he said. “She never left Imperial Towers 100 and she slept around ’til the day she died. Always had boyfriends paying her way.”
“So she was a hussy?”
“Of course,” he said, laughing. “You know who her best boyfriend was, don’t you?”
“Slip?”
“No,” he said. “Big Sid.”
I’d had no idea. Which was too bad, because that bit of information would have come in handy that season, during the Christmas dinner in particular. “Did she ever sleep with Slip?” I asked.
“Are you nuts?” my father replied. Then he qualified, “At least, I don’t think he did—but who really knows?” He told me I could ask him myself, but I didn’t have the nerve.
Rachel, however, the great inquisitor, did.
“What the hell do you think?” was Slip’s response. He was probably the only person to ever resist cracking under her pressure.
The only tricks I ever saw Lucille pull were the ones she turned on the pool deck with Slip the afternoon of the pool party—none of which, by the way, had proved too much for him. Now that I think about it, I should probably go back and extend the Jump Rope Scene so it ends in the movie like it did in real life, with Slip’s victory over Lucille. He told her he looked forward to seeing her in the Ladies’ Card Room, and would see what he could do to get her into the Men’s Card Room as a favor to the men. Cheering and hollering followed. And that was that. Except for Lucille saying, “You got a lot of stamina for an old man”—a comment that would, like so many do, take on more significance posthumously. At the time, we all ran off to swim and eat hot dogs. No one gave the matter another thought.
Except for Gladys Greenberg, who did nothing but stew on the situation. When the scene in BoBo’s apartment picks up again, she will admit to Grandma B that she was flabbergasted about having been upstaged by Slip and Lucille. “I know like I know my name is Gladys that Slip’s move to the far side of the deck was calculated,” she’ll mutter as my mother announces that dinner is ready. “Although I don’t know whether he meant to piss off Sid or me. Either way, I’ve cooked up consequences.”
Apparently, she had come to Christmas dinner to deliver them. Whether she’d intended to provoke World War III is another question, the answer to which we’ll never know.
Dinner will start civilly enough, with folks gabbing and jockeying for seats around the dining room table. Slip will sit down next to Lucille, and Estelle will sit on Lucille’s other side; my grandparents will be separated literally by the Hussy.
Interestingly, Estelle started right in talking to Lucille, although I didn’t get to eavesdrop because the kids were shuttled into the kitchen. Except for Rachel. Because of the number of kids and because Rachel was the oldest, she was bumped up to the dining room table, a promotion she milked for all it was worth. The audience will see her, in her blue satin disco suit, studying the give-and-take between Lucille and Estelle and then reporting her observations to us kids. “Estelle doesn’t seem to mind Lucille at all,” she’ll inform us. “She seems to like Lucille much more than she likes Aunt BoBo.”
In hindsight, I can see why Estelle liked Lucille. As I mentioned before, my observation is that the world has two kinds of people—the goodie-two-shoes who live by the book and scowl at those who don’t and the nogoodnickas, as Estelle liked to call them. Not the quintessential Bad Guys, but people who liked to bend the rules. People like her and Slip.
On their first date, Slip picked up Estelle in the company car. His business was bootlegging and his boss was a gangster. (If you watch the movie Casino, take note of the guy who gets blown away outside a restaurant. That guy was Slip’s boss.) Under the wooden seat of Slip’s boss’s car was a stash of alcohol. The seat was covered with a flannel blanket. Except it was summer, 95 degrees and, as my grandma liked to say, the only air conditioning was Lake Michigan, which is where they were headed when a cop thought flannel in the summer looked suspicious and pulled them over.
My grandma, who knew what she was sitting on, crossed her pretty legs and smiled. “Why, Officer,” she said, “my boyfriend’s just taking me on a picnic.” She was scared, and perhaps it was out of fear that she was able to drop a tear from her eye (or maybe this was the beginning of her watery eye issue). Nevertheless, the cop apologized and let them go. A few months later they were married. “A couple of nogoodnickas, we were,” Estelle would say.
Well, Lucille the Hussy was cut from the same nogoodnicka cloth as Estelle the Gangster’s Wife, so one can understand why they enjoyed each other’s company—which is what they were doing, according to Rachel, when Gladys Greenberg, in her poncho the size of a parachute, said to Slip, “You better watch yourself.”
In the movie, heads will turn toward Gladys Greenberg as she rises slowly like the steam off the meatballs, pressing her thick hands against the table to hoist herself to her feet. She will thank BoBo for graciously including her and Lucille in the family dinner while Lucille shrugs and whispers to my Grandma Estelle, “I thought we were just stopping in for a cocktail before heading to Jai Alai.”
Finally, Gladys will begin. “As I presume you already know, the Board had agreed, thanks to Dr. Melman’s patients, to allow Slip back into the card room in exchange for, among other things, the promise of Slip’s future good behavior.”
“What do you mean, among other things?” From my spot in the kitchen, I could hear the panic in Grandma Estelle’s voice, as if she could sense the jungle print leotard hanging in Gladys Greenberg’s closet. I could hear my father tell my grandmother to relax and then Slip say, “I told you there would be strings attached.” He didn’t let on that he already knew what they were. Only BoBo was dumb enough to do that.
“Oh, there are strings,” Aunt BoBo will say. “Heavy duty.”
“How do you know?” Estelle will ask.
“Oh good God, Estelle, the whole building knows,” BoBo will answer.
“Knows what?” Estelle will ask again.
“It doesn’t matter,” my father will say.
But BoBo, pumped with Mogen David, will not stop. “Wake up, sweetheart. In exchange for letting Slip back into the card room, Gladys is getting a spot in your kick-line.”
“Says who?”
“Your son.”
My father will scowl at her. “Does it ever dawn on you to keep your big mouth shut?”
Silence will fall over the dining room as everyone stares at Estelle, awaiting her reaction.
She’ll stare at my father and slowly swallow her meatball. “You gave her a place in my chorus line?”
Still chewing, Gladys Greenberg will say, “I even have the costume.”
“Shut up, Gladys.” This line will go to one of my mother’s cousins. “I don’t understand,” Estelle will say in a whisper. “You sold me out? For him?” She’ll toss her head toward Slip.
My father will nod his head in admission. “I’m sorry, Ma. I knew you wouldn’t like it, but it’s for your own good. If we can get Slip back into his routine, your life will go back to normal.”
“Not with her in my kick-line, it won’t.” My grandma will point a finger towards the head of the table. “She’s insufferable.”
“And on top of that,” my Grandma B will add, “she can’t dance.”
“Besides, who says I want it to go back to
normal?” Estelle will say. “Now that I can drive, Slip’s routine is of no concern to me.”
Slip will interject: “Like hell you can drive.”
Rachel will say: “She’s showing us tomorrow.”
Slip will answer her: “No she ain’t.”
Estelle will answer him: “You just wait and see.”
Gladys Greenberg will interrupt the bickering by declaring that whether or not Estelle can drive doesn’t matter. “The deal is off the table after what Slip pulled on the pool deck today.”
“This is what you came to dinner to tell us?” my mother will ask.
“Are you talking about the jump roping?” Lucille will ask, her voice as slow and sultry as ever. “Since when is jump roping against the law?”
“When you are jumping rope with my brother, too,” Gladys will answer, using finger quotes around the term jumping rope. Here is where that missing bit of information about Lucille and Big Sid being an item would have helped out us kids.
“Big Sid wasn’t jumping rope,” Rachel will say, using the same ball-buster tone and finger quotes around jumping rope that Gladys had. I remember that laughter at the innocence of her remark followed the meatball platter around the table.
Rachel and Marcy would spend days analyzing and repeating (with finger quotes) Gladys Greenberg’s next words. “You can’t just jump rope with every man you see.” To my sisters’ credit, they got as far as guessing that “jumping rope” was code for having an affair. But the nut was one they’d never fully crack because no one, not even Rachel, would accept that the dazzling Lucille would ever “jump rope” with the heinous Big Sid.
“How often does Big Sidney jump rope?” one of my mother’s cousins, also using the finger quotes, will ask.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” my Grandma Estelle will exclaim. Lucille will agree. “This is not what I had in mind when you said that we were just dropping by before Jai Alai.”
“Gladys,” my father will say, “if there’s something you came here to say, why don’t you go ahead and say it?”
“Fine.” Gladys, now sitting, will have her white napkin tucked into her red poncho and the loose skin under her neck will shake as her mouth moves, making her look like a giant turkey. “When I asked BoBo to stop in on your dinner, I thought we’d be announcing the good news that Slip’s sentence had been lifted. However, in light of this afternoon’s fiasco at the pool party, the Board has changed its mind. Not only that, but we’ve decided that if Slip pulls any more shenanigans, the Melmans will be asked to leave the building. One more strike, you’re out.”
Because I was sitting in the kitchen, I didn’t hear this remark or any of the discussion that followed firsthand. However, in the movie, cameras will be centered over the dining room table, a vast rectangular slab of wood that, with a combination of matching chairs and fold-ups, uncomfortably sat fourteen. So the audience will see and hear the whole scene, including someone—let’s say my father, since he is a man of calm and reason—responding to Gladys Greenberg like this:
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
“She’s saying that if Slip doesn’t stop causing trouble, they are going to kick him and Estelle out of the building.” This will be my Grandma B.
“Ma, you’re screaming.” This will be my mother.
Again, hers. “I’m just explaining.”
Next, Aunt BoBo. “Out of Imperial Towers 100?”
“Out of all the Imperial Towers. Buildings One through Eight.” This, of course, Gladys Greenberg.
Now, to mix it up, we’ll give a line to Philip, Aunt BoBo’s son—a do-gooder to a fault, but also a voice of sanity. “I think we understood what Gladys said. I think we are confused about how they can throw Slip and Estelle out of their apartment.” The script will direct the actor who plays Philip to over-enunciate and, as he does, shake a meatball-tipped fork like a maraca.
Slip, his mouth full of meatball, will respond, “They can’t do nothing.”
Gladys Greenberg will answer, “Oh, they can do more than you think.”
“They’re like the mob,” one of my mother’s cousins will comment, and everybody but Gladys Greenberg will laugh.
Now the script will read: Everybody talks at once. People around the table will sputter comments like, “This is ridiculous” and, “I thought they owned their condo” and, “Who are they, anyway?” Mixed in with this substantive talk will be the banal, like, “Does anyone need more meatballs?” and “Are the kids doing okay?”
As it happened, I wasn’t doing so great. I didn’t like conflict, and I didn’t like meatballs. I did enjoy sopping up the sauce, but I’d run out of bread. I went into the dining room for more just as Estelle got into the conversation.
“I don’t understand why they’re making such a fuss,” she said. “Doesn’t the Board have bigger fish to fry than Slip Melman?”
This observation turned out to be the catalyst for battle. Sides formed seamlessly—do-gooders v. nogoodnickas—which was, for the most part, the way people had seated themselves around the dining room table.
“Bigger fish, sweetheart?” Gladys Greenberg chuckled. She, as you might surmise, was on the opposite side of the table, next to Aunt BoBo and Grandma B. “Your husband uses the Men’s Card Room as a boxing ring, he ruined the pool party, and he’s threatening to send men into the Ladies’ Card Room.”
“You’re talking about a senior citizen,” one of BoBo’s daughters said. “Let’s not get carried away.”
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t carry on in there with all of the ladies like he does with Lucille,” Gladys Greenberg shot back.
“Excuse me?” Lucille looked up from her plate.
“Next year you should screen your Christmas guests more carefully, BoBo,” my mother said during a nanosecond of stunned silence.
In the same nanosecond, the audience will see Slip lean toward Rachel’s plate. “Can I have that?” he’ll ask, stabbing her last meatball with his fork as Rachel nods.
BoBo will begin to defend herself, but Lucille will interrupt. She’ll adjust her scarf, offer up an apology to the table, and say, “Rest assured the jump roping was all in good fun. And Gladys, your remarks are out of an inappropriate left field.”
She’ll push her chair back, and as she does she’ll place her hand on Estelle’s wrist. I found this gesture comforting—stabilizing, really—as I was worried that the news that Slip was carrying on with the ladies was going to cause Estelle to fall off her chair.
But Estelle didn’t flinch. She seemed to accept Lucille’s word that the flirting was all in good fun by taking Lucille’s hand.
On camera, Slip will seem to rise out of nowhere. He won’t scream, but he’ll speak to Gladys with a bona fide force and an emphasis on the F words, like a gangster’s last words before he pulls the trigger. “Who the fuck do you think you are, fatso?”
The script will order a beat.
And then, with the same fearlessness with which he punched Big Sid, he’ll fire away.
“I just thought he was hungry,” Rachel will exclaim as the meatball, a sweet and sour missile, rockets across the room. A slo-mo close-up will capture the meatball’s rotation as it flies off Slip’s fork and over the table, nicking the shoulder of Gladys Greenberg’s poncho before detonating against the mirrored walls.
Reactions to the splattered meat (which in the movie we’ll see initially in the reflection of the smeared mirror) will vary as much as the folks looking at it all.
I will stare.
Lucille will chuckle.
Gladys Greenberg will scream.
Grandma B will ask Gladys Greenberg if she’s okay.
My mother will tell all the children who have been pulled into the dining room by the “fuck you fatso” remark to return to the kitchen, although none will.
My father will tell Aunt BoBo not to worry, he’ll clean up the mess. Philip the do-gooder will tell everyone to stay seated.
Aunt
BoBo will go to get Windex and another bottle of Mogen David.
Finally, my Grandma Estelle will say in a voice new to me, “Sol Melman, that’s enough with the nonsense. I’ve had it up to my ears. If you so much as step one of your childish feet into the Ladies’ Card Room or start any other kind of trouble around here, you’ll be moving out ’cause I’ll be throwing you out.” She’ll throw her napkin onto her plate. “You can go live with Lucille for all I care.”
The camera will zoom in on Estelle as she speaks and then pull back. The script will call for absolute silence. It will tell actors to put on their stunned faces. Except for Lucille, who will snicker and mutter, “No thank you, darling.”
Of all of the stunned faces, mine was probably the most frozen. My grandma’s tone, I imagined, was the one she’d used to admonish my father for his youthful transgressions—a tone she’d tucked away many years ago. She herself seemed shocked to hear it, as though she didn’t know she still had the bite in her. From the way her hands shook and the color ran out of her face, she seemed to have summoned quite a bit of physical energy to bring it out.
Naturally, due to my ongoing concern that my grandparents’ wells of physical energy were about to run dry, I worried that this was an outburst that Estelle could ill-afford. My father must have been on my wavelength because he filled a cup with Mogen David and gently pushed it in her direction.
“Just a little bit, Ma,” he directed. “It’ll settle your nerves.”
When I told Laurel the story, way back during one of our walks to the Grey Dog Cafe, she told me that this whole scenario would have never occurred in her family because Mormons don’t drink.
“Aren’t your dinners dull?” I asked.
She said no. She said that growing up, she had a dormer full of brothers and sisters, enough to make dinners rowdy and too many for her parents to pay attention to. If she’d wanted, she could have taken a sip of anything without anyone noticing.
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