The Road to Reality

by Dianne Burnett

With Nana gone and Mom working harder than ever, the house on Peppermint Road felt empty. Until Barbizon planted something to dream about in my head, I was spending most of my free time lying in my grandmother’s bed, watching reruns of I Love Lucy, and devouring entire boxes of Entenmann’s crumb cakes.

  After Nana died, Dad came to take us out more often. From the beginning, after he left Mom, he made a point of staying in our world, if not in our house. Most weekends, he’d call to say he was taking us kids out to dinner. Since Mom wouldn’t let him inside, we’d stand in the driveway and wait, which was okay when the weather was warm and we could play four-square or hopscotch, drawn with colored chalk on the driveway—but it wasn’t fun when we were shivering in the dead of winter.

  Dad was invariably late. With nothing better to do, we passed the time with songs. Sometimes we adapted the verses to “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” belting out “Two Hours We’re Waiting for Dad to Show Up,” but sometimes he never showed up at all.

  One Sunday afternoon we heard loud sputtering, and Dad pulled up in a white VW bug. He said it belonged to a “friend.” The next weekend, he picked us up in his car, and drove us to Uncle Nicky’s. While we were on the antipasto course, we heard that same loud sputtering and the white VW pulled up in front of the house. Out popped a voluptuous brunette in her 20s, dressed in a frilly blouse and skirt. So this was his “friend”? My heart sank seeing Dad with someone besides Mom. Especially since with this woman, who was 17 years younger than he was, Dad actually showed affection.

  A few Sundays later, Dad picked up my sisters and me on our way to visit our cousins. Vicki was riding shotgun, and Lisa and I were in the backseat.

  “Hey girls, great news!” Dad announced. “I’m getting remarried. You’re going to have a stepmom! And new aunts and uncles!”

  We were stunned.

  When we pulled into the driveway, everyone got out, except me. I wasn’t budging. I sat in the car, hiding under my poncho, crying in the backseat the whole afternoon. It just didn’t compute. Where was the happily-ever-after part of my family story? How could Dad marry somebody else? Did Prince Charming dump Cinderella and remarry, too?

  I grew more morose each day as the wedding grew nearer. For my brother, Steve, it proved entirely overwhelming. Like all of us, he’d hoped that Mom and Dad would reunite, but the wedding sealed the deal: Dad and Mom were splitsville for good.

  The day before the wedding, Steve was so distraught that he kept breaking down at work. Noticing that something was wrong, his co-worker offered him a handful of joints to help him relax before the ceremony. As a first-time pot smoker, Steve wasn’t sure how many to smoke. In the hour leading up to the wedding, he snuck off and smoked all four joints by himself.

  As jets took off and landed, the family gathered at the church on the grounds of JFK Airport, where both Dad and his soon-to-be-wife worked. Despite my misgivings about the relationship, I was the only one of my siblings in their wedding ceremony. At the last minute, Vicki and Lisa dropped out, not wanting to hurt Mom. I felt caught in the middle. I decided to be there for my dad, even though he wasn’t always there for me. I walked down the aisle holding a candle, and stood at the altar—thrilled to be in a wedding, yet trying not to cry because my father was getting married to somebody else.

  The organist began playing the “Wedding March.” My father’s wife-to-be walked down the aisle in a simple white dress. Dad joined her at the altar, and the priest gave the opening prayer. Just as the priest asked us to bow our heads, there was a loud crash from the back of the church. Everyone turned as Steve staggered through the church doors, weaving down the aisle and finally falling into a pew. And that was just the warm-up.

  The reception was at an Italian restaurant. Before dinner, Steve snuck off to the upstairs bar and tossed back several shots of scotch. He was so sad, but the alcohol didn’t help, particularly since he was already flying high. When he entered the dining hall, Aunt Helen whispered, “Something’s wrong with Steve.” She was right. He could barely stand up.

  Dad crossed the dance floor to talk to him. Steve fell backward, knocking over the speakers. Now they had everyone’s attention. Dad and Steve escaped to the bridal suite.

  Steve kept sobbing and crying out, “Why, why, why?!”

  Dad broke down, too. The bride peeked in, finding them both in tears. She was furious, feeling that Steve had ruined her wedding day. We were off to a fine start with Dad’s second wife, who shall remain nameless.

  That Christmas was the first we ever spent away from Peppermint Road. My mother always had piles of sweetly wrapped boxes of chotchkies waiting for us under the tree; my dad’s wife gave us each one present—a sweater. Looking back on it, they were nice sweaters, but for kids hoping for toys, they might as well have been gym socks. I was already feeling down in the dumps, but as we sat around eating pumpkin pie, she smiled brightly and made an announcement: “I’m pregnant!”

  I tried to smile and join in the celebratory mood, but I almost burst into tears. That news shredded any last hope that my real mother and father might reunite.

  My father tried to thaw the frostiness we felt toward Wife Number Two—even taking us to Jamaica with them on vacation that year. But it was always touch-and-go with that woman, who gave new meaning to moodiness. I considered getting her a mood ring as a visual monitor. We never knew if she’d be acting like Glinda the Good Witch or the Wicked Witch of the West. Even if she started out on a nice note, something—a dropped spoon or an unfinished portion of tuna casserole—would send her mood “westerly,” and she’d start screaming and fly up the stairs and slam doors until my father ran up to console her for whatever alleged crime we’d committed that day. The scrape of a chair on the floor was enough to set her off, and heaven forbid if we spilled a glass of milk. I began dreading my time with Dad.

  My mother’s house on Peppermint Street grew emptier: Steve left for law school, Vicki moved in with her boyfriend, and Lisa was always out with her friends. Now that Dad had a new family, money was even more of an issue. If I wanted dancing or acting classes, I usually had to pay for them myself. I certainly wanted them, so I went on a babysitting frenzy—saving up until I had enough money to continue ballet and gymnastics after my dad pulled the plug on recreational pursuits.

  But I could never save up enough for The Barbizon School of Modeling. If I couldn’t be a model, I decided to try to at least look like one, spending hours reading fashion magazines, and hours more playing with makeup.

  Even though I was young, I was more determined than ever to do something big, to get out in the world, and make it—as a model or actress or singer or gymnast. I felt it was my destiny to cross the finish line, to make good on my parents’ dreams that had been kissed off and abandoned. Sometimes I envisioned myself performing on Parisian runways, sometimes on the stages of Broadway or Hollywood, but whatever the setting, in the fantasy that played out in the big screen in my head, I was a huge showbiz success, and the flashbulbs were popping.

  The only good thing about living in that era on Peppermint Road—where most of the time I was alone—was that I could watch whatever I wanted on TV, or crank the music and dance around the house. The Sister Sledge song “We Are Family” was my favorite of that era, ironic considering I didn’t have much of a family anymore. The other perk was that I could skip school without anybody knowing, and forge my own “excuses” the next day. I was also pretty much in charge of cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and making my own dinners, which in those days consisted of grilled-cheese sandwiches or casseroles or whatever variety of Entenmann’s cakes Aunt Ginny had dropped off on her latest visit.

  My father worried that I was spending too much time alone. When I was 14, he arranged for me to move out of the Peppermint Road house and into his townhouse in Syosset. There were pluses: the neighborhood was more upscale, and it was a quick hop into Manhattan—where I visited my Aunt Barbara frequently—and in the beginning, at least, I liked the idea of having fam
ily around. We loaded all my things into two cars, and it was when we were unloading them that I noticed a small snag: there really wasn’t any room for my things, since I was sharing a bedroom with my four-year-old half-brother, Domenico, later nicknamed “Nico.”

  I went from sleeping on my own princess canopy bed to sleeping on a toddler’s platform pullout with Superman bedsheets. Every night I tiptoed in the dark into the bedroom closet to change my clothes and quietly pulled out the platform bed, trying not to wake up my sleeping little brother. I felt as if I couldn’t have anything of “me” in the room.

  And I was now living with two “Felix Ungers.” Dad was always a neatnik, but my dad’s wife was “anal.” If I left so much as a crumb anywhere in the house, they noticed and yelled at me for hours. If ever, God forbid, I had friends over, afterward I scrubbed tables, chairs, and counters furiously with cleaner, wiping off fingerprints, fluffing the couch pillows just so, and vacuuming the carpet precisely the right way to thwart suspicion.

  The obsession with tidiness had a profound effect on little Nico. At a very young age, he learned how to be a neat freak. His room was immaculate, with shelves dusted, clothes hung, and every last toy put away. Except for the décor and the Superman sheets, you would never have known that a little kid lived in the room.

  I felt like there was an ulterior motive for Wife Number Two asking me to move in. Both her and Dad had full time jobs, and someone needed to watch Nico in the afternoons until they got home from work. Every day after school I picked him up from preschool, cooked him something to eat, and played with him until they came home. I adored him, and despite our ten-year age difference, I really enjoyed spending time with him. But as I grew older, the hours I spent babysitting cut into time for my social life—and by then, I was starting to have boyfriends.

  One day, I took Nico down the street with me to visit my friend Kim, who always had friends over—which I was forbidden to do. Jamie, a cute kid from school, stopped by. Leaving Kim downstairs to play “Go Fish” with Nico, Jamie and I went upstairs, cranked Fleetwood Mac, and made out for 20 minutes.

  Unfortunately, Wife Number Two came home early that day, and finding that we weren’t home, she stormed over to Kim’s. Furious to discover that I wasn’t watching over Nico, she interrogated Kim as to my whereabouts. Not wanting to say I was upstairs, Kim said I’d gone to the store. My dad’s wife was livid, grabbed Nico, and called Dad. He called me at Kim’s, saying that his wife was so upset that it would be better if I just spent the night at my friend’s. I couldn’t fathom that such a trivial incident had exploded into such turmoil, and felt betrayed that my dad wouldn’t stick up for me. From then on, that woman had it in for me.

  On the upside, she hired a babysitter for Nico, allowing me more free time to get a paying job, which I desperately needed for books, clothes, and entertainment. I took on babysitting jobs, and three afternoons a week I also worked at the Lady Cake Bake Shop. On top of school and homework, it was exhausting, but the experience ingrained a strong work ethic in me. From then on, I always had a job—sometimes juggling two—and still kept up with homework and trying to have a social life.

  I met my first boyfriend on my first day of junior high. I was wearing tight Jordache jeans, suede pumps, and a white cowl-neck angora sweater. Looking for my locker, I noticed a tough-looking, dark-haired guy with a gold earring and a crazy look in his eyes.

  “Wooo, what a beaver!” he said as I passed.

  “Excuse me, did you just call me a beaver?” I asked.

  “Yeah. A beaver’s better than a fox.” He held out his hand. “I’m Tony.”

  I laughed. “I’m Dianne.” The bell rang. “See you around.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  A few weeks later, I was officially his “girl.” Tony was part of the rough crowd—the kind who carried knives and had homemade tattoos—even the football players were scared of them. He wasn’t an ideal first boyfriend, because he was obsessive, jealous, and overprotective. Any guy who tried to flirt with me, he’d threaten to pummel. Tony and I broke up after a few months, but from then on, I always had a boyfriend—and they were often annoyed that between jobs and school, I didn’t have much time for them.

  To make room for my social life, I occasionally cut classes—especially on sunny days when my friends and I headed to the Planting Fields Arboretum. It was in Oyster Bay, a scenic area of Long Island with rolling green meadows and fresh sea air.

  I was always happy to miss History class, taught by the “Lysol Lady”—so named for her propensity to constantly spray everything with that disinfectant. When we arrived to class, she immediately sprayed our notebooks to make them 99.99 percent germ free. If she touched anything, such as a paper on your desk, she held it up and sprayed Lysol on it till it was dripping. After inhaling it a few too many times, I decided I’d rather be in the great outdoors than surrounded by a cloud of toxic fumes.

  At our school, if you skipped class, the teacher wrote a pink slip, and toward the end of the day, the pink slips ended up in the front office. I knew where the slips were kept, so I developed a system to stay out of trouble. Entering the office, I’d create a distraction, and when the women in the office were looking the other way, I’d snag my pink slips—and those of my friends—out of the box. I was skilled: no one ever caught on. Sneaking out of my house when my detective father was around was a different matter.

  One school night during a snowstorm, a friend invited me to go out with her and some popular football players. I told them to meet me down the street so Dad wouldn’t hear the car. I snuck out, undetected, and had a great time. After the fun, they dropped me off first. To my horror, my dad had realized I wasn’t home, and had seen my footprints in the snow. As soon as the car pulled up, Dad came bursting out, wielding a gun, and proceeded to dramatically pull me inside. The next day at school, everyone felt so bad that they could barely look me in the eye.

  At Dad’s house, things went from tense to worse. One night when Wife Number Two called me to dinner, I was upset and didn’t go down. She raced up the stairs, cursing at me, dragging me down the stairs by my hair. She’d been waiting for an excuse to kick me out, and this proved to be it.

  For the next few months, I played musical houses—staying with friends for months at a time. They saved me: I felt more welcome at my friends’ homes than I ever had at my dad’s house. And I had tons of fun. One night while at Kim’s, the subject of eating came up. Our friend Vinnie bragged about his eating prowess, and I said I could eat just as much. We settled the debate by staging a “food-eating contest.” We called Mario’s Italian Restaurant and had them deliver a spread that covered the kitchen table—chicken parmesan, hero sandwiches, pizzas, pasta, the works.

  All the guys were rooting for Vinnie; all the girls were rooting for me. After an hour of incessant gorging, Vinnie bowed out just before throwing up. But in order to determine the winner, I had to eat one last thing to prove that I, in fact, had eaten more. All the guys were shocked that the skinny girl beat the guy, but deep down I always knew I was going to win, and I wasn’t going to stop until I did. Even at a young age, that was my mentality. It’s all about putting your mind to something and doing it, and not biting off more than you can chew.

  That spring, I moved back in with Dad and his wife. I was welcomed with a list of “rules,” including no makeup, and no phone calls after 8 P.M. I was devastated when Dad forced me to turn over my cosmetics that first night—and I later saw all of it in his wife’s makeup bag. But there were a few perks. She worked for an airline, they loved to travel, and we took some fun vacations.

  When I was a junior in high school, Dad took my sister Vicki and me to Italy to visit our relatives in Bari, a port city on the Adriatic coast, during Thanksgiving. On the heel of Italy’s boot, Bari marked the place where you would put a spur. It was November, and we picked olives from our relatives’ grove and fried them over an open fire, and that weekend we helped them press the olives for oil. They too
k us up on their roof overlooking the sea, and we rolled up our jeans and crushed grapes for wine, which they made in a wooden tub, followed by a feast where we consumed bottles of plonk (homemade wine) from the previous year.

  One of my very distant cousins who spoke no English developed a crush on me; he wasn’t a member of the family we were staying with, but he followed us wherever we went. One day, he finally approached me and started talking in Italian. Having no idea what to say to him, I complimented him with sign language on his sweater. He took it off on the spot and handed it to me.

  “Uh, that’s okay, thanks anyway,” I responded, trying to give it back.

  Dad insisted I take it. “Dianne, it’s an insult if you don’t. That’s how things work in the old country!” He said that when I had complimented my cousin on his sweater, it was some old-country code for saying I wanted it.

  On our last night in Bari, our relatives had a send-off dinner, and I dressed to the nines. For ornamentation, I pinned on my new onyx brooch. I’d saved for six months to buy it. Just as dinner was ending, one of my aunts admired the brooch—unfortunately, within hearing distance of Dad. “Give it to her, Dianne,” he whispered. “It’s the old country.”

  I smiled at her. “You know, there’s a sweater I’d really like you to have …”

  Back home that spring, I got a job waiting tables at Mykonos, a local Greek restaurant, and sometimes I’d be working till 10 P.M. While working there, I met my first love, James, the long-faced sous chef in the kitchen, who could have been a star on the silver screen. He made me feel giddy, with a heart-fluttering nervousness. He was ten years older than me, and we dined out together three times a week at restaurants that seemed exotic.

  Panama Hattie’s in a Huntington strip mall was our special spot. We’d been together almost a year when the Syosset High School prom was approaching. Despite our age difference, I went with James, who showed up in a limo and presented me with a beautiful wrist corsage. I wore a skin-tight, black, Spanish-looking dress with white polka dots and white ruffles off the shoulder and a slit up the leg—an outfit that Salma Hayek or Penelope Cruz might wear today, but rather risqué for Long Island in 1984.