Monthly Archives: July 2023

Our Little King

When I was very young, my father was afflicted with a strange kind of wanderlust that impelled him to move his growing family often.  We lived in eleven homes before I was nine.  Fortunately for me, in those early postwar years, as they adjusted to their American lifestyle and learned to trust their safety, my mother and her sisters were virtually inseparable.  My grandparents bought a large faux Tudor house in Bayside, Queens, which had a revolving door for the three sisters and their children. My first first cousins and I were treated as near-siblings, and we lived in that house at various intervals, and for several years, we all but breathed in unison. Each of the sisters had married a man from a different culture, and we navigated a polyglot world, overseen by our Pater familias Henri Robinson, whom we all called Papa.

Papa was short and round.  In those days, over breakfast, we’d read the Sunday comics together, and I especially liked “The Little King,” a cartoon by Otto Soglow.

“He looks like Papa when Papa wears his long red bathrobe,” I told my mother.

“Oh, dear, please don’t say that to Papa.  You’ll hurt his feelings.”

I did tell him, but instead of being hurt, he was amused. He looked at me with a rare twinkle in his eye and laughed a deep, belly laugh that I don’t think I had ever heard from him before.  He hugged me, showing me an affection that was rare for the Old World man that he was.

Papa was a flawed man.  We all knew that, and instead of judging him, his wife and daughters laughed at behaviors that were anything but funny.  We admired him and understood that he meant well even when he did terrible things. I was, however, perplexed at times. It especially confused me that they all — including my mother — thought it was hilarious that he ran away from home when my mother, his third daughter, was born. 

It was one of the many stories Grandma loved to tell.

“He was so upset that I didn’t give him a son, he ran away, and I did not see him till six months later!”  She’d laugh until an emphysema-hacking fit interceded.  “I punished him, though.  I had the last word. He got Ruthi before he finally got our Johnny.”

Some of the stories were more understandably funny.  My favorite was what we called “The Accord Story,” another one that Grandma loved to tell.

“You know. We came in 1939, when we escaped from Europe. My brother Joe was our first sponsor. You’d think he was the one who saved us. He did get us our first place. A two-bedroom apartment like the one we had in Vienna. Only this one was in Wadley Heights, Harlem.

“Papa was in Cuba. His passport from Poland, where he was born, and the Polish quota was filled. So what else could he do? He traveled to Cuba.”

“That lovely Harlem flat was too small for all us.”

At the time, the family included my grandmother, my mother, age 16, her sister Ruth, age 13, John, age 10, and Herma, her oldest sister, who was in the second trimester of pregnancy.  Herma’s husband Borislav, a Serbian painter, was with Papa in Cuba; the two of them would join the others as soon as their visas were approved.

“You couldn’t argue with the facts. We had to move.” 

Papa’s brothers offered a rescue plan. 

“Those two — the scheisters! Your papa saw what was happening all around us. He had some money in American banks, and those two found out a way to swindle us. They got a quarry in Accord, NY. A quarry!! That they put in Papa’s name. They told us they got us a big new house, and we believed them. When Papa and Borislav arrived in the States, they had us settled in the quarry farmhouse.

“I knew that when Papa would see what they did, he would go . . . there’s no good word in English.  Zornig. Deadly. He could murder those two.  A quarry was the last thing my Henri would want. Furthermore, everyone hated the farmhouse.

It was a true country homestead.  No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no privacy.  Large and looming, the house had no bedroom doors and no place to take baths without open exposure. Not a suitable home in any way.

“I told them, ‘As soon as Henri gets here, you better make this right.'”

The brothers were never put to the test.  When Papa was back for less than a week, a fire broke out.

Grandma and the sisters were all in various parts of the first floor. Papa was upstairs in the room where he and Grandma slept.  John was outside. It was he who saw the flames shooting from the house and screamed at my grandmother, who screamed at the others.

“My china,” yelled Grandma.

“Henri!!  Get what you can from the bedroom.  And get outside!”

“The baby things,” screamed Herma. 

“MY cello,” wailed my mother.

“Oh, no, the cat!”  howled Ruth.

John joined the frenzy to get out as much of what mattered as possible. The kids carried linens, dishware, jewelry, clothing. Borislav saved his easel and canvases. But Papa was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s your father?”  called my grandmother.

“Last I saw, he went back to get things from the bedroom.” 

“Get out, Herma,” scolded Grandma.  “The smoke is getting thick.  Protect your baby.”

“Mama,” cried John.  “I keep calling Papa, and he doesn’t answer.”

“Get out, John.  Your father will find his way.”

Having saved as much as they could, the members of the family converged on the front lawn.  

Ruth worried. “I still don’t know where Papa went,” she whined.

My mother, who had walked around the house to assess the extent of the fire, said, “I won’t miss this house, that’s for sure.”  Then she looked up. “Omigod, Mama, look, up on the roof.”

There was Papa. Standing on the sloped roof of the house.  Calmly looking for a place to slide down.

“Henri,” called my grandmother.  “What are you doing up there?”

“I went back to the bedroom,” he called, “And when I started down the stairs, I saw that there were flames in the center of the house, so I came up here.”

“What have you rescued, Henry?” asked my grandmother. 

At this point of her narration, Grandma always stopped and looked us in the eye. 

“There he stood,” she would say.  “My brilliant bald husband.  Holding his hairbrush and his hand mirror.”  If we failed to laugh, she was crestfallen.  We made it a point to laugh.

The house was damaged beyond repair.  The family moved to Kingston in time for my cousin to be born there. And the story remains a moment of levity for a family that was otherwise plagued by tragedy.

But that’s not what this story is about.

  Down By the San Francisco Bay

“Well!”  

My friend Nick stood in front of his boss’s Ferrari, glaring at me.  Then he laughed. 

“Okay.  You’re going.  But you gotta wear flowers in your hair.” 

He leaned over to the little garden in front of my apartment building, plucked a hydrangea stem, and stuck it awkwardly into the space between my glasses and my ear.

“There,” he said.  “You’re ready.”

An hour later, I was on the plane, headed across the country.  Nick’s voice ringing in my ears.

“You know this is ridiculous, right?” Nick had counseled as he sat next to me at the gate waiting for me to board.  “He’s never going to change.  He can’t, Carla. For God’s sake, girl, he’s gay.”

I knew he was right.  But San Francisco!  Everyone wanted to go to San Francisco. And I had a reason. Well, sort of a reason.

I was going to patch things up with my sort-of-a husband Mickey.  

“Listen,” Mickey had said on the phone a week ago .  “I think you should come out here.  I want you to see my place, meet my roommates.  You’ll love it. . . it’s so much cleaner and cooler than New York . . . a place where we can make a great life together.“

We talked for an hour, and naturally, to my 19-year-old’s sense of wisdom, I was all in. I told myself that we never gave ourselves a chance, and we owed each other that much. We were pals first and foremost.  How could we fail? 

I mean.  That night in Albuquerque, the night we ran away together, when I got a bit teary-eyed listening to Simon and Garfunkle on the jukebox singing “Homeward Bound,” he got it right away.  “You wanna go home, don’t you.” 

“Wow,” I thought.  “Not only is he the best-looking guy in my class at UNM.  He’s deep.  Sensitive.”

“Let’s do it,” he said. And the next thing I knew we had dropped out of school and were on our way to New York City.  Somewhere over Arkansas or Oklahoma, I remembered that we might be in trouble.

“It’s against the law for an unmarried couple to cohabitate in the city.  We might not be able to find a place to live.”

He answered instantly. “So why don’t we get married?  After all, I like you, and you like me. . . . “

“Yes!” I was jubilant.

“Only thing,” he might have stammered a little here. “You know I’m gay, right?  I can’t –”’

“No problem,” I effused. “I’m frigid. I can handle a platonic relationship.” 

He believed me.

“Good,” he said. “And I promise I’ll be careful.”   

I believed him. 

That was in October.  By December, I had fallen in love with him, and he had contracted deadly hepatitis from his profligate lifestyle.  He left me to return to his native San Francisco, and though I cried myself to sleep for six months, by the time he called at the end of June, I was past the pain.  

I  should have known better. But San Francisco!

The ground agent announced we were boarding, and Nick put a little pill into my palm.

“Take this as soon as you get into your seat,” he counseled.  “By the time you finish the meal they bring you, you’ll be fast asleep.”

I woke up as the plane bounced onto the SFO tarmac.  It took at least ten minutes before I figured out where I was and why. I disembarked.  Mickey was not there to meet me. I wandered around the airport, hoping he’d show up. He did not.  I found a bus, rode to the city, and got off at Haight and Ashbury.  Where else would a 19-year-old New Yorker want to be in 1967?  Even though I didn’t know it then, it was the summer of love, and Haight Ashbury was where it was at.

On a pay phone, I called Mickey’s house.  His roommate said he told her to tell me he’d meet me at 5 PM by Buena Vista Park. Why had I thought he’d be excited to see me?

No matter. I was dazzled.  San Francisco seemed to me a vast mescalin dream, a rainbow of color, a cacophony of sounds, and a panoply of personalities and smells.  Beautiful half-naked people my own age floated by on their hallucinogenic clouds, couples let it all hang out between them, and everywhere there were people dancing in the streets. 

I wandered around, stopping to watch street theater, jumping away from a pickpocket, laughing at a puppet show, then ducked into a Tad’s Steak House and had some chicken and fries, before I sauntered back onto the street.  It was only 2 PM.  As I stood in front of the Tad’s deciding where to go next, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

“What’re you doin’ here, missy?” The question emanated from the very gruff voice of a very big policeman. 

“Waiting.”

“Yeah, sure y’are.  How much money you carryin’?”

“What? Money? A few cents, actually. I just spent my last three dollars on—”

“Okay, missy, you’re comin’ with me.”

“Why? What’d I do, Officer?”  I stammered.  I smiled at him.  He did not smile back.  Cops in New York were so much friendlier.  I liked NY cops. This guy was menacing.

“No back talk, lady.  Just keep your mouth quiet and come with me.”

I followed him, and he put me in the back of a wagon with several women in various pieces of quasi-garb.  A light flashed in my brain.  When the officer pulled me out of the van to escort me into the station house, I stopped and forced him to look right at me.

“If I were doing what arresting me implies I am doing, wouldn’t I have more than a few cents on me?  You don’t think I can do business?”

He did not respond.  Just yanked my arm and pulled me inside.  They didn’t formally arrest me, I guess, because they didn’t stand me in front of a wall and take my photo or roll my fingers in ink to get prints.  The clerk did ask me for a local address and phone number – I gave them Mickey’s info – before someone else pushed me into a cage, where I sat for I don’t know how long.  

I think I dozed off, and when I woke up, Mickey was standing outside the cage shaking his head.  

“Well,” he muttered, disgust dripping from his tone.  “I guess I was wrong.  First thing tomorrow, I’m throwing you back on the plane.  You’re going home.”

 I should have known.

So Long, Frank Gehry

When I was young, Reader’s Digest, a subscription to which my 9th Grade English teacher included in her yearly syllabus, ran a feature called “My Most Unforgettable Character.”  It was the monthly’s most popular feature, and I wrote a few character sketches and thought one day I would submit one to the magazine.  I never did.   Truth be told, I don’t think I ever really met my MOST unforgettable character until 2005, when I took a job as a guide on a New York City tour bus.

In that job, every day was a new adventure.  I was lucky.  Everyone I met was reasonably personable. Well, almost everyone. One time a pair of gang kids tried to hijack the bus I was on, but finding a police person was easy back in the days when crime was still against the law.  In a trice, the cops took the interlopers into custody, and our tour commenced without further incident.  The event stands out in memory because it was unique.  I came to hate the working conditions and the attitudes of the owners, my bosses, but the people I worked with, like the people I entertained, were, for the most part, people I enjoyed being around.  Some were, of course, more colorful than others, and none was as remarkable as Sarabeth.    

Sarahbeth was my favorite person in the bus world. She was saving up for gender reassignment – her birth name was Stanley — but divorce from a greedy wife, mental illness in a daughter whom neither Stanley nor Sarabeth would ever abandon, and frequent gender transgressions that led to Stanley’s being fired, which left Sarabeth with no money for the surgeries.

Instead,  Sarahbeth made powerful self-assertions by wearing, in all weather, Bermuda shorts fashioned in bright orange sweatshirt fabric, frowzy blouses and tops that plunged below the prominent and rapidly graying chest hairline, and neon-colored sneakers.  Her hair and mouth were a whirling forest of bright tangerine curls and a soft, pillowy hot pink triangle.

“I’m a lesbian,” Sarahbeth explained to me the first time she asked me out to dinner. I was flattered.  No one I had ever met was smarter or funnier than this person, both qualities I have always found irresistible in a man.  I had no interest in being romantically involved with a woman, even a woman who was, anatomically at least, still a man.  I didn’t want to hurt Sarahbeth’s feelings, and though I turned down the invitations to dinner, to movies, to theater, we often sat together as we waited between buses, and I never tired of listening to the stories she told. 

The personal stories were harrowing, beginning with a lower East Side childhood, and the professional stories were infuriating.  This person had tolerated more than anyone’s fair share of abuse by the system over the years, and if I had had more imagination or a better apartment, I would have invited her over for sleepovers. 

My touring repertoire grew astronomically, thanks to Sarabeth’s knowledge of the city.  Having studied architecture, she was conversant with the nuances of styles of the eclectic buildings of the city. As an astute political observer,  she understood underpinnings of Tammany, why Robert Moses was more tyrant than savior.  She explained to me why the Breslin-Mailer campaign to create the great city-state, a movement I enthusiastically worked for, was basically moronic.  Having studied labor law, leaned heavily on her when we had labor disputes. When the company abused us, it was Sarabeth who spoke most eloquently and with the most erudition. She knew the score.  She understood what we were entitled to and what was being kept from us with malicious, greedy fury.

There was no bathroom for our relief.  For a while we were allowed to use the rest rooms in the Hilton Garden Inn, which was less than a block from our post, and the management there even encouraged us to buy goods in their gift store and food mart by giving us a twenty percent discount. 

One day Sarabeth farted and sighed loudly in a stall in the women’s room at the Hilton, and a tourist seated next to her, the woman in the next stall, securely separated by a metal wall and a locked door, freaked out at the sound of a male voice sighing on the tail of a roaring fart. She complained to the Hilton management.  After that, all guides were banned from the place.  No more comfy lounge seats, no more cheap candy bars, no more toilet. 

I left the buses to edit a book for the friend of a friend. The book was set in our City, but the author knew little about NY and wrote locations that were amiss, and a protagonist, who was supposed to be from Iowa but was more accurately an Englishman in New York.  To do the work, I went to London for a few months, and when I returned, Sarabeth was gone. 

Consistently, Sarabeth had argued that the conditions atop the buses were unfit for guides.  We had no place to sit.  We were required at times to perform chores – like helping the elderly up the stairs or carrying baby paraphernalia or lugging luggage up the stairs – that put undue strain on all our muscle groups.  We stood for long periods of time, jostled mercilessly about.

Sarabeth’s back and health could not take it.  She suffered pneumonia and bronchitis and then was injured and re-injured until she finally had no choice but to undergo surgery.  Like many back surgery patients, Sarabeth did not survive. The company, which never appreciated what an asset Sarabeth was, was relieved. Tethered by Sarabeth’s knowledge of the law, they had felt forced to retain her. Further, her illnesses and back troubles cost them money by way of pay they were impelled to dole out and by insurance rate hikes her claims inflicted.   The blood suckers were free at last. 

We tour guides, who loved Sarabeth, lost a precious friend.  New York City lost a champion.