Down City

by Leah Carroll

  My grandmother and grandfather grew up in a time when being Jewish did not mean being white. Until the 1960s, when they moved from South Providence to Midland Drive in Cranston, they were, more or less, observant Jews. (Though my grandfather, after years of service in the military, quickly made it clear theirs would not be a kosher household. He cemented the deal by giving my grandmother her first bite of bacon.) My grandmother’s married name was Goldman but her maiden name was Solinger and with her blue eyes and blond hair people told her all the time they were surprised to find she was a Jew. Why wasn’t her nose bigger? Why didn’t she smell weird, asked her childhood classmates.

  They were a reform family, but celebrated the major holidays. What was most important to them was the culture. I’ve picked up the many Yiddish expressions that peppered my grandmother and grandfather’s speech. Sometimes it’s just the best way of explaining things. When I need to convey that something is a complete wreck, a disaster, a whole thing, it’s easiest to just explain, “Oy gevalt, a total mishigas.”

  My dad made it clear, in the early years especially, that I’d go to the synagogue with my grandparents on the holidays, and even though he had no faith, I was born into one. In some sense I think my dad was proud of my Judaism. He equated it with intelligence, and nothing was more important to him than intelligence.

  THERE’S A STORY that goes against the general mythology of my mom as a constant spritely ray of sunshine and maybe that’s why I love it so much. On Midland Drive my mom had gotten into a screaming match with a neighbor—nobody can remember about what. She picked up a rock and threatened to hurl it at the neighbor. Somebody called the Cranston police. When the officer arrived he put my mom in the backseat of his cruiser and Brandy, the rangy mutt, my mom’s fortuitous rescue dog, jumped inside with her and each time the officer approached the car to close the door Brandy let loose a fury of barking and growling. Over and over again, the officer tried to get back into his cruiser and over and over Brandy went wild. Eventually he shrugged. This was a neighborly dispute. He wasn’t going to risk having his jugular ripped out because a small young woman refused to back down from an older male neighbor. Exhausted, patience spent, he told my mom to get out of the car. She did and Brandy hopped out behind her, docile as a doe but with a look in his eyes that warned everyone else from coming close. And that was that. That’s the woman in the bottom photo, from the newspaper, I think. She was a force. “That dog was mean,” my aunt said, “but he loved your mom.”

  MY MOM WAS also a drug addict. Specifically, she injected cocaine. She was in and out of rehab for many weeks at a time before I was born. But this aspect of her life was alluded to rarely in my family when I was growing up. My grandmother talked more about my mother’s kindness, how she’d become friends with bad people and that was how she got into drugs. Bad Men. The Bad Men haunted my childhood. I had to be more careful than my mom was, my grandmother explained. Because my mom had been fearless and that had cost her her life. A little fear was a good thing. Don’t put your trust in a Bad Man, she taught me.

  THERE’S ANOTHER STORY about my mother’s drug use that I’ve heard repeated in various forms. It’s one of those things you look for: the repeating thing, the thing that after thirty years probably contains some nugget of truth, though it comes in different iterations, because at its heart it’s the same story.

  It involves my grandfather, my mother’s father, whom she adored and who loved her back and who was completely broken by her murder. So this is not an origin story of blame but one of addiction, and opportunity, and war.

  My grandfather, Louis Goldman, spent most of his childhood in the Jewish Home for Children, what would later become Miriam Hospital, in Providence, Rhode Island. By the time he was eighteen he was serving in World War Two. He met my grandmother at a USO dance in between his service in World War Two and his time in Korea. He was a cook, he played the bugle and the bagpipes, and he saw many, many people die.

  Maybe my grandfather had post-traumatic stress disorder, or maybe he had that combined with some other form of mental illness, but he never held a steady job, refused to leave the house for years on end, and once had to be escorted, lying across the floor of the backseat of a police car, across the Newport Bridge because the drive over gave him a panic attack so severe he’d grasped his chest and cried, convinced he was having a heart attack.

  And so my grandfather had pills. I remember the pills, lined up on the table by his reclining chair, his entire day spent organizing which pill came next. In the 1960s and early ’70s, what would they have prescribed my big, tall grandfather, who was usually angry and filled at all times with a sense of terror? Seconal, maybe? Valium, certainly. And while my grandmother went to work each day in her neat blouse to keep the books at Klitzner Industries, my grandfather bought the groceries and he cooked all the meals, and he gave my mom some of his pills. Did my mom get high for the first time with her father? Some people insist upon it. They insist that he unwittingly got her hooked on something, that his collection of pills was a handy dispensary for my mom and that my grandfather gave her things to make her feel better because they made him feel better.

  Maybe he said, “Calm down, Joanie. Have one of these.” Or maybe he said, “Why do you look so tired, Joanie? Have one of these.” But those who imply that my grandfather got my mom “hooked” clearly have no experience with the shrinking doom feeling of anxiety and depression, no experience with the power barbiturates and benzodiazepines hold, vise-like, over your body. They have no understanding of the way addiction exists, a little genetic blip in our DNA, and waits, waits, waits for an opportunity.

  AND THEN THERE were the photos. My mother carried a Canon AE-1 with her nearly everywhere. At some point in my childhood I came into possession of a green three-ring binder, dated 1978 to 1981, filled with hundreds of contact sheets and negatives developed by my mom in the darkroom she’d rigged up in the closet next to our small bathroom. Three years of her life documented through her eyes. How long did I hold on to that binder before I did anything with the negatives? It was years I think. And in a way, I’m glad I waited so long to have the negatives developed. I’m not sure I would have realized how much they say about her otherwise.

  She photographed everything: her friends, children, birthday parties, weddings. She also went out on her own and photographed the things that interested her. There are rolls and rolls devoted to a union strike at the Institute for Mental Health. She also photographed Claus von Bülow’s heavily publicized first trial for the attempted murder of his wife. In a state as small as Rhode Island, the von Bülow trial, and the national attention it brought, was practically legendary.

  Claus was a Danish aristocrat and Sunny was an heiress and they lived with their children in the magnificent Newport mansion Clarendon Court. On the morning of December 22, 1980, Sunny was found unresponsive on her bathroom floor. She’d be in a coma for twenty-eight years before she finally passed away at the Mary Manning Walsh nursing home in New York. The prosecution argued that Claus had intentionally injected his hypoglycemic wife with insulin. Her death would have left him with twenty-one million dollars and the freedom to marry his mistress, soap opera actress Alexandra Moltke Isles. The defense argued that Sunny had overindulged in sweets and booze, celebrating the Christmas holidays, on the night she slipped into her long coma. Claus was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years in prison, a sentence that would be famously overturned by Alan Dershowitz a few years later.

  I try to picture my mom there in the crush of the crowds and press with her camera. What was she hoping to see? Was she just fascinated by the spectacle? It’s rare for Rhode Island to make the news, and when it does, everyone wants a part of it. The von Bülows would have been everything she was not: wealthy, cosmopolitan, and urbane.

  Her favorite subjects by far were dogs, children, and my dad. She photographed my dad playing basketball. She photographed him playing softball for the Providence Journal team. She photographed a clos
e-up of his flexed biceps. She photographed him lounging in a Burt Reynolds–style pose on a hammock; him sitting on the front steps of our house, a Chai, the Hebrew symbol for life, dangling from a chain around his neck. He would have been a compliant subject, my peacocking, handsome father with his thick black mustache and blue eyes. And she took more shots of him than she did of almost anybody else.

  She took selfies as well, her Canon AE-1 set to self-timer as she lounged hand on her chin in a wicker rocking chair. She photographed herself photographing herself in the mirror. In my favorite picture, she doesn’t get the shot quite right. She stands in front of the window of our living room in profile, naked, her belly round with me inside. Her head is cut off in the shot and she stands straight. She’s documenting, not memorializing. “This is me, pregnant. This is how my body looks.” It’s late August 1980. She’s twenty-six years old. She only has four years to live. My life has barely begun.

  THREE

  It feels like a long time, maybe a month after my mom disappears, that Dad picks me up at Grandma’s house. He says we are going to build our own life together. I hug Dad, excited to be going with him. Grandma bends down and squeezes me, her smell of lipstick and Kleenex and clean hair all around us. “I love you,” she says. “Be a good girl.”

  In the living room, I say good-bye to Grandpa. Spot perches on his lap and the two of them watch TV.

  “Say bye to Spot,” says Grandpa.

  It feels okay to be leaving with Dad, but I’ll miss Grandma and Grandpa. I don’t want Dad to know, because I don’t want him to feel bad, but he tells me, “You’ll visit every Sunday. I promised your grandma.”

  I ask Dad, “Will Brandy and Ali come to Aunty Rita’s with us?”

  We are staying with Aunty Rita, Dad’s sister, until we find an apartment of our own. Dad had to give Brandy and Ali to a special farm for dogs who don’t have homes, and when he tells me this he looks so sad I make a promise to myself I will never ask about them again.

  Things are different at Aunty Rita’s from the way they were at Grandma’s house. Aunty Rita smokes like my mom did. Grandma, Grandpa, Aunty Sandy, and Dad all think smoking is disgusting, but Aunty Rita smokes long cigarettes that say VIRGINIA SLIMS in elegant green lettering up the side. In the mornings, Aunty Rita taps the end of her cigarette against the kitchen sink waiting for her coffee to brew. At night, she stirs dumplings into a pot of beef stew as she blows cigarette smoke into the air and drinks a glass of white wine.

  Aunty Rita is so skinny that when she hugs me I feel her bones. I try not to squeeze too hard. She’s short, like my mom, but Mom was round and full, and Aunty Rita is sharp and pointed. When she gets dressed in the morning she pulls her camisole against her chest, looking into the mirror of her vanity, and says, “Let’s just hope you get boobies like your mom instead of nothing like me.” I blush at the word boobies and look away but I like the way she lets me sit with her all the time and doesn’t treat me like a little kid.

  DAD ISN’T AROUND the house much because he works double shifts driving trucks for the Providence Journal, saving money for our apartment. He delivers both editions of the paper: the Journal in the morning and the Evening Bulletin at night. I think his job is glamorous, because the newspaper is famous. Once Dad shows me how he fills the honor box with newspapers and explains what it means: Only take one paper. On your honor.

  He has a ring of keys with a key chain that is stamped EAST BAY DISTRIBUTION. The keys open all the honor boxes. We don’t need a quarter to open them like everyone else, and Dad says we can have free newspapers whenever we want them.

  When Dad leaves for work I’m afraid he will never come back. Sometimes when he leaves, I cry so hard I throw up, and Aunty Rita has to make a bed for me on the couch and put a wet washcloth on my forehead. We stay up late and watch movies in the dark living room, which feels special because I’m five years old and don’t have a bedtime. All night I watch the glowing tip of my aunt’s cigarette move up and down from the coffee table to her mouth. I fall asleep waiting for Dad to come home.

  Sometimes, late at night, she offers me a sip of her Michelob Light, and tells me stories about her parents, my grandparents, who died before I was born. She tells me how much my dad loved my grandma, who died when he and Aunty Rita were still kids.

  “Your dad and I are called Irish twins,” she says. “Do you know what that means?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Irish twins is what they called us in school because we were born so close together we might as well be twins. We grew up together. That’s why you two are here right now. Because I’ll always take care of you.”

  Sometimes, when Dad doesn’t have to work a day shift at the Journal, he lets me stay home from school. On the days when Dad and I stay home he says we are Being Bums. Being Bums involves eating oatmeal covered in sugar, so much sugar that it crunches with every spoonful. We take our oatmeal into Aunty Rita’s living room and watch cartoons. My favorite cartoon is Inspector Gadget, and sometimes I talk to Dad pretending that my fingers are a phone, just like Gadget’s. I pull out an imaginary antenna from my index finger and say, “Ring, Ring.”

  Dad pulls out his finger antenna and answers the phone.

  “This is Inspector Gadget,” I say.

  “Can I talk to Leah?” asks Dad.

  I say, “Hello, Dad, this is Leah.”

  Dad, still holding the imaginary phone to his ear, asks, “Did you tell Miss Razza that Mom was dead?” Miss Razza is my kindergarten teacher.

  I look at Dad sitting at the other end of the plaid couch. There is a small mountain of pillows and blankets between us. I move my hand away from my face. I know Dad isn’t playing the game anymore and I’m worried I’m in trouble.

  “Did you say that?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Why did you say that? What do you think happened to Mom?”

  When I think of Mom I think of bones. She disappeared, and now she is dead.

  “Do you want to know what happened to Mom?” he asks. “Mom died in a car accident,” he says. “Do you understand what that means?”

  I understand what a car accident means. I’ve seen them on television, and I’ve passed them on the side of the road so I understood the destruction and danger. I know Dad is lying but I’m not quite sure about what and because I love him and because he looks so sad, I decide to believe him.

  “It means she’s not coming back,” I say.

  Dad says, “It means we’re our own family now.”

  YEARS LATER, AFTER my mom and dad were both gone, I thought a lot about the family we never had. After so many secrets and silences I was determined to learn more about them. I wanted to find the truth. In college, in 2001, I searched the Providence Journal archives and came across an article about my mother’s final moments. There was a description of her face turning purple as two men put all their strength into strangling her. At the time I was reading Yeats in one of my classes and I couldn’t stop thinking about the poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.”

  I know that I shall meet my fate

  Somewhere among the clouds above;

  Those that I fight I do not hate

  Those that I guard I do not love;

  My country is Kiltartan Cross,

  My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

  No likely end could bring them loss

  Or leave them happier than before.

  Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

  Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,

  A lonely impulse of delight

  Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

  I balanced all, brought all to mind,

  The years to come seemed waste of breath,

  A waste of breath the years behind

  In balance with this life, this death.

  It stayed with me because I associated it with my father, an Irishman, but as I read the vivid description of my mother’s murder a feeling rushed through me. It was a kind of sick
excitement. I was shaking a little bit in the computer lab at school as I read the article and kept thinking about one line from the poem. “A lonely impulse of delight…” That’s how it felt to read those words for the first time.

  And so I kept looking, for years, on and off, when the urge struck me.

  I hunted down documents, collecting a larger and larger pile over the years. In one, a police report, a Cranston police officer writes that “On Friday 3-1-85 at approx. 1615 hours, I learned that the Providence PD had received an inquiry from Johnston PD in ref. to missing person, Joan B. Carroll 30 YOA. In checking with Johnston PD I was, in turn informed to contact Det. Donald Alberico of Prov. Intelligence Division. In attempting to do so, I spoke with Det. Francis Altomari who informed me that the body of Joan Carroll had been tentatively identified as being found in Sharon, MA.”

  It’s unclear whether the police told my grandparents and aunt about the discovery of her body that evening. My grandmother insists that she heard about the body on the radio and my aunt insists she saw my mother’s skeleton on the evening news, though it doesn’t seem to make sense that the press would have known before them. She’d been missing six months. A young woman yes, but a drug addict also. Women “like that” often go missing. But when I continue to read the report, it states that the next morning, the officer responded to the Goldman home at 65 Midland Drive and spoke to both Mr. and Mrs. Goldman and their daughter in reference to the tentative identification of Joan Carroll. It was explained to them that the positive identification would not be able to be made until dental records had verified the same, but that they had good information to believe that the partially decomposed body of their daughter had been recovered in Sharon, Massachusetts.