“I don’t want to leave you, I like taking care of you, Mom.”
“You have to go and live your life and help your father.”
“Bye, Mom, I love you.”
I step into the elevator. I am memorizing my mother’s face. We have said good-bye so many times over the last few years, I never know if this is going to be the last one. I press the button for the ground floor. The elevator doors close, and then they open.
“Bye, Mom,” I say again.
She blows me a kiss. The doors close. And they open.
“Be sure to put your cat on a diet.”
“We will, Mom.”
“Don’t tell Jon Cryer I said he might be gay.”
“I won’t.”
“Are you going to write about this?”
“You know I am.”
The doors close. And open again. Neither of us knows what to do.
“It’s okay, Mom, why don’t you go back to your room and get some rest?”
But she won’t leave. She wants to wait until I’m gone. Maybe she is memorizing my face.
The door closes. Fourth time’s a charm.
Back at the building, I call for a cab, roll my suitcase past the grand piano, and see that the Shirleys and Lillians are assembling for exercise class at the far end of the lobby. “Shake it but don’t break it!” I yell to them. It’s unclear if they’ve heard me, but they smile and wave.
I’m so emotionally drained that I slump onto one of the lawn chairs in front of the building. The water in the fountain splashes against the tile, cooling the air and making a satisfyingly crisp slapping sound. Just beyond the cypress, Mayim E. Flamingo’s dazzling mosaics shimmer in the sunlight, like sequins.
have a cigar, harry
My mother made a remarkable recovery and happily returned to her exercise and poetry classes, but we should have known that my father wasn’t long for this world when the raincoat money, the poker cash he kept stashed in a London Fog trench coat, ran out. I got to see him play once. Everyone at the casino, the players and dealers, even the parking valet, asked about my mother’s health.
On that trip to Miami, I went by our old house and the current residents kindly let me in. The house had been updated, in keeping with the neighboring estates on Sunset Island II. My childhood bedroom is now an outdoor shower. The new owner gives me our hand-shaped brass doorknocker. My mom is still convinced that Sticky Fingers struck again.
I tracked down the artist who made Mayim E. Flamingo, who turns out to have been a student of my high school drama teacher. She intended for the flamingo’s name to be spoken aloud so that it sounds like the city of Miami—MayimE—but I never got a chance to tell my father that the mystery of the middle name had been solved.
My dad had a heart attack. In typical fashion, when he woke up in the hospital, he wanted Jack Daniel’s and gumbo. When I asked my father if he was okay with my writing his stories, he said, “If you think there’s money in it, go for it.” He lived long enough to see his grandsons and to tell me that he’d always hoped to get back to the low country. He asked me to put on Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou,” which I did. Handsome Harry is missed at Tel Aviv Gardens.
I inherited his gun, which I sold, a couple of poker chips, and a container of his last batch of gumbo. My sister gave her sons his designer ties, and my son got a Gucci belt buckle from the 1970s.
Perkins, our husky cat, has gone missing. A friend suggested that he was waiting on the Rainbow Bridge to escort my father over. I highly doubt it. If there were an afterlife, my father would be ordering a steak, getting a lap dance, and playing poker with his cousin Billy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am forever indebted to Bill Maher for introducing me to David Rosenthal and the Blue Rider posse, including this amazing trifecta: Aileen Boyle, Milena Brown, and Linda Cowen. I can’t express enough appreciation to my intrepid editor, Sarah Hochman, and my agent, Laura Dail, for their faith and patience during the writing of this book. So thankful for readers and friends: Maria Speidel, Jillian Lauren, Hadley Rierson, Ben Decter, Jeanne McConnell, Claudette Sutherland, Janelle Brown, Tonya Pinkins, Bart DeLorenzo, Keshni Kashyap, Diana Dinerman, Suzanne Rico, Dani Klein, Wendy Leibman, Aimee Lee Ball, Meghan Daum, Heather Havrilesky, and Scott Carter. I’d be lost without the Suite 8LA writers’ collective, founded by Erica Rothschild and Carina Chocano.
Thank you to my family for sharing stories and DNA: Lisa Gurwitch, Ezra Kahn, Jeff Kahn, Sandy Gurwitch, Shirley and Neal Buchman, Barry Ripps, Marci Ballin, Robin Gurwitch, Ruth Gurwitch, Shari Frankfurt, Robin Rosenbaum, cousin Monique, Michael Gurwitch, and Muriel Zimmerman.
Thank you, Hawara family, for inviting me into your home. Much gratitude to Rabbi Israel, Inez, Irene, David, Lil, Csilla, Pearl, Marty, Kaye, Anna, Ernie, Helen, and all of the Yettas, Shirleys, and Lillians at Tel Aviv Gardens. I appreciate all of those whose wisdom contributed to this book: Lisa Randall, Robert Reich, Barbara Ehrenreich, Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier, Bill and Slavica Harper, Manette Silberman and the Ahavas Chesed Sisterhood, Ian Dodd and Sunday Assembly Los Angeles, Allen Boobar, Reason Rally 2016, Cheryl Bianchi, Coleman Hough, Christine Blackburn, Christine Romeo, Kimberly Rubin-Spivak, Michelle Joyner, Richard Schechner, the Brittany Foundation, Phyllis Michelle Greenhouse, Glenn Rosenblum, Mark Freeman, and Craig Bierko and his dog Boo, who raises money for cancer: Text KIDS at 27722 and donate $10 to Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital from your phone bill. I value the continued support of the Kaplan-Stahler Agency, Melissa Campbell, Bradley Glenn, Metropolitan Talent Agency, and A.K.A. Talent. Big love to all the show people with whom I’ve shared dressing rooms, holiday meals, and Equity regulation cots; the Golden Bridge Community Choir for the songs and community that keep me going; and the ancestors on whose shoulders I slouch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress and the author of I See You Made an Effort (a New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist); You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up (coauthored with Jeff Kahn); and Fired! (which was also a Showtime Comedy Special). Gurwitch gained a loyal following during her stint cohosting Dinner and a Movie on TBS and years as a regular commentator on NPR. She’s written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Hollywood Reporter. Gurwitch was the news anchor on HBO’s Not Necessarily the News and hosted WA$TED on Planet Green network. Her acting credits include Seinfeld, Boston Legal, Dexter, and Melvin Goes to Dinner. A veteran of many lauded and even more misguided theatrical productions, she regularly performs at arts centers around the country. Gurwitch is a Jewish mother, a reluctant atheist, and an ardent environmentalist. She is empty-nesting in Los Angeles.
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* Even when I found regular work on a soap opera, Frances continued to send letters urging me to keep up my typing skills. (I neglected to tell her I had cheated my way through typing in high school.)
* Peanut butter gets gum out of hair. My mother never made us PB&J sandwiches because all of our peanut butter ended up in my hair.
* My son likens riding in my car to driving around inside that junk drawer that’s next to the fridge, but I haven’t gotten gum stuck in my hair in at least fifteen years.
* Pekingese are extremely popular with actresses. It’s so common to see those furry faces peeking out of celebrities’ handbags that you might think these puppies are standard accessories, like a change purse.
* VACTERL is an acronym for the constellation of birth defects. All were repaired except that he has a single kidney. “Well, you forgot to give me a second kidney, Mom,” is his go-to when I’ll ask why he forgot to clean his room/tell m
e he’ll be home late/complete a school assignment, and it’s hard to argue with that.
* I also said she had “issues,” which is why she didn’t come and visit us from this boarding school/institution. Just shoot me.
* It doesn’t.
* I have no doubt he was just trying to get out of doing homework, but I enjoyed the pretense that he wanted to spend time with me.
* This is also the premise of the J. J. Abrams series Fringe.
* A family mission statement is the same kind of mythologizing that motivated the Crusades and inspired international air guitar competitions. How important is it? Historian Yuval Harari writes in Sapiens that creating shared fictions allowed Homo sapiens to achieve dominance over Neanderthals, who didn’t have the brain capacity to conceive of strategies to unite large groups.
* Even though it was 1974 and copies of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine were on newsstands and many of our mothers’ nightstands, there were no male secretaries in our pool.
* I was also high on believing in Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling,” which hit the airwaves in 1974.
* “QIA”—“questioning, intersex, asexual”—is the latest addition to the “LGBT” acronym. I would like to suggest new nomenclature: “I’m all the things.”
* An irony is that when working in TV, script revisions, varied locations, and rotating directors are the norm. It’s the opposite of the comfort of stepping into the same world over and over that plays can provide.
* If you’re a show person, you know I’m paraphrasing Judy Garland. This footnote was not intended for you.
* If you’re a show person, you know I am referring to Maggie from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Stella from A Streetcar Named Desire. You don’t need this footnote either.
* Would it surprise you to also learn that Artaud ended up in a straitjacket? Still, he remains one of the most influential figures in modern theater.
* My cousin David worked briefly with Schechner. David drove a cab while he was in the theater company but ended up leaving the theater and opening a chiropractic practice. He had a plan B.
* My parents came to the Pyramid. They’d heard the East Village was a jungle and thought it would be hilarious if they wore the matching Abercrombie & Fitch safari outfits they’d gotten for a trip to the Amazon.
* It might take an entire other book to explain the plot of that play.
* This was instituted by our member from Iceland, where almost everyone is related. People raise children communally, so why not share panties?
* Theater is far more egalitarian. Whether your role is large or small, you need to be present at the theater for the entirety of the production, while actors can be starring in the same film but never meet. Also, actors typically share dressing rooms in plays, while a movie star might have a caravan of trailers.
* Napping during a play is more prevalent during the carb-laden-meal holidays, but actors prefer nappers to unwrappers. No matter how slowly you open that fucking candy, we can hear it onstage!
* If I play your mother on-screen, you’re likely to do well: Shia LaBeouf and Vincent Kartheiser have played my progeny.
* According to my son, “roasted” is the new “scorched,” which was the old “dissed,” replacing the now positively archaic “burned.”
* Chimps and gorillas that bond through playing together as youngsters form alliances that continue throughout their lives.
* Some parents teach their kids how to cook or play ball. I challenged my son to cry-offs and relished beating him to the tears.
* Anthropologists have long posited that synchronous activities like dancing, singing, praying, and even deep breathing in groups lead to “collective effervescence”—positive emotions that break down the boundaries between self and group. People speak of the experience of joining in the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, in these terms.
* I am that person who finds it hard to tear myself away from binge-watching Transparent.
* Becca layered long silk drawers under her girdle, topped that with panties and nylons under both dresses and pantsuits. Her brassieres resembled iron lungs. She never wore a dress without a long slip. Watching her dress was both mesmerizing and terrifying.
* “Dauphin” also is the French word for “dolphin.”
* Just to note, my Northern ancestors kept kosher, but not the Southerners, really: it would be a shonda—that’s Yiddish for “crime”—to live on the Gulf Coast and not eat shellfish.
* The Jewish population in Alabama is so low that in 2007, one synagogue offered a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus to Jewish families who would agree to move to Alabama. It worked. As of 2013, the Dothan congregation had grown from thirty-eight to seventy-one families.
* We never knew Rebecca’s real age, because she lopped off at least a few years to be good marriage material, but nearing sixty, she claimed to be older so she could collect Social Security sooner.
* The “crooked ladder” is a term that was coined by sociologist James O’Kane.
* It was probably her Kiddush cup. Many Jewish families, even if poor, have one sterling silver cup used for holiday rituals; the sterling was thought to kill germs.
* Billy grew up to become a dentist. Members of our family were his first patients. I’m glad I didn’t know about the pool hustle when I was his patient, but he did have awfully steady hands when examining my teeth.
* I can’t confirm my dad’s part, but the prosecutor was fired and Joe and Sam were rumored to owe over a million dollars, in 1949 dollars.
* Rose’s worldview influenced all the cousins. Billy’s kids say their dad taught them that they needed three skills to be successful in life: to putt in golf, count cards when playing gin, and shoot craps. They played craps after dinner like other families played Monopoly.
* The Tank Corps is one of my father’s fabulous fictions, but the live sex act show featuring a performer known as Superman, because of his (alleged) eighteen-inch penis, has been confirmed by our cousins and written about in numerous accounts of Havana in the 1950s.
* Bubba was a president of AIPAC, the powerful Jewish lobbying group, and donated thirty-six million dollars to the University of Alabama, among other generous donations. When our cousin Robin wanted to join the Betas, a popular citywide sorority, in the late 1970s, she was turned down. It wasn’t until 2015 that a Jewish girl was allowed to be presented at Mobile’s debutante ball.
* This was an urban myth, and though we believed it, it never stopped anyone from peeing in the pool.
* Becca claimed to have discovered Elvis Presley. She said that Elvis played at one of her annual store fashion galas, and the timing would have been possible. Alas, no documentation exists.
* Over the last eighty years, five thousand villagers have been brought over. They hope to bring more.
* Along with not liking children or pets, Mom wasn’t a fan of cooking or Dad’s gumbo. “It’s too messy, too expensive, and too fattening!”
* I don’t think it’s an accident that the study was done at Emory, in the South.
* Great-Grandpa Sugar was something of a mama’s boy—he’s buried next to his mother, Goldie, not his two wives.
* The second season was shot in a place called What the Hell Were They Thinking? The acting was over the top, the dialogue sounded phony, the “sex club” looked like outtakes from Eyes Wide Shut.
* When my son was five years old, we took a road trip to the Everglades with my dad. He was elated that Ezra tried fried alligator, which, you guessed it, tastes just like chicken.
* Yes, that’s the second Sandy in this c
hapter; this is a story about a group of people with the same names.
* There are, to be fair, progressive people and artsy communities like Fairhope, on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, so it’s not a monolith.
* There is a bakery on the island, but it’s closed for termite control. I will call her son when I get back to L.A. He calls it Mirage Island, because it seems like you should be able to make a go of it, but with only a three-month season in which to make your money for the year, success was elusive for him.
Wherever You Go, There They Are Page 24