Between a Heart and a Rock Place Read online

  Before my grandfather’s death, my parents’ plan for their new life on Long Island had been for my mother to stay home with me and my newly born baby brother. That vision of Long Island life was dashed once my parents had three new mouths to feed. There was no way that my father could support everyone on his own, so my mom went to work, something that terrified me at the time. I wasn’t ready for her to leave me. Without her around all the time, I was forced to create a sense of independence, an emotional armor that helped me protect myself. For her part, my mom wasn’t ready to leave either. Even though she knew that she’d done the right thing by taking her family in, she felt robbed of her chance to be the stay-at-home mom she’d always envisioned.

  Both my parents worked in factories, Dad as a steelworker, Mom at an electronics company. I wasn’t a latchkey kid, but I became self-reliant early on. My grandmother May was also there to help, keeping house, cooking the meals, caring for me and my younger brother, but I never felt she was the adult in charge. My parents were still the parents, and she was my grandmother, a different kind of adult. She had a great sense of humor—she was a “cutup,” as they used to say, the kind of woman who’d get down on the floor and play with my brother and me—but she was also really strict. She’d wash your mouth out with soap in a heartbeat. You’d say one wrong word and she’d grab that soap and clamp you between her knees. Suddenly, that soap was in your mouth and you were spitting bubbles, wishing you’d kept quiet in the first place.

  Though she may not have always been parental, my grandmother was definitely a hard worker. We had one of those old-style wringer washers, where you can smell the soap and see the steam rising out of it. She was constantly pulling hot sheets through that wringer, her muscled arms toned and looking more like a longshoreman’s than a grandmother’s. Along with my mother, my grandmother also took care of the yard work and daily house maintenance. I don’t believe I ever saw my father with a screwdriver in his hand. He did backbreaking manual labor all day at work, and he was not climbing a ladder or mowing the grass when he got home. So that was left to the females, mainly my mother and grandmother.

  I suppose some people would question having your mother-in-law living in your home, but I think my father really appreciated it. The man was a saint, one of the most easygoing people I’ve ever known. And he adored my mother; as long as she was happy, he’d make any sacrifice. Besides, Nana was easy to have around. You’d never think of her as one of those cartoonish meddling mothers-in-law. She was too busy washing, ironing, and doing yard work.

  Living in the attic with my grandmother were my aunt Ruthie and uncle Billy. When we moved to Lindenhurst, Ruthie had graduated high school and was working, but she drove my mom crazy. She was a wild one. Boys were coming by in cars, honking their horns. Ruthie would run out to meet them wearing her pointy stuffed bras and tight sweaters, a little scarf tied around her neck, and bright red lipstick. Ruthie had a boyfriend named Bill whom I just loved. He was handsome and drove a big blue convertible. He’d pull up in front of the house and we’d hear honk, honk, honk. And out she’d run waving a cigarette. I remember a few times when Ruthie came home late and my mom was so mad that she backed Ruthie up against the wall and grabbed her by that neck scarf.

  “You better straighten up, Ruthie Knapp! Coming home in this shape.”

  I’m not exactly sure what she had been doing, but whatever it was didn’t sit well with my mother. My grandmother didn’t have any idea what to do with Ruthie. Ruthie was a force of nature.

  When I was about six years old, Ruthie got married, and the couple moved into the basement of our house. Unfortunately, she did not marry my hero, Bill with the blue convertible. The guy she married was an idiot who drank too much. Now instead of just one rebellious teenage girl causing trouble, we had an angry, abusive drunk living in the basement. You could hear him downstairs raising hell at Ruthie at all hours. It was like an asylum.

  One day it all came to a head. After we’d heard them fighting for a while, there was a great commotion, and they ran up the stairs. Ruthie burst out of the basement door and ran across the room toward the front door. Her husband came right up after her waving a butcher knife and looking like a madman. My mom, who had been standing in the kitchen, swung into action. She grabbed an iron skillet and cracked him over the head.

  “That’s it! You get out of my house right now!”

  I have not seen my mother as angry before or since. I don’t think I fully appreciated it in the heat of the moment, but that took balls—taking a frying pan after a drunken man with a knife. Not exactly every one’s first instinct, yet that’s the kind of woman that my mother was.

  My reaction to the whole thing was shock. I was stunned that people would chase each other around with knives and speechless that my mother could be pushed into fits of temper. Ruthie and her husband moved out, but eventually she came to her senses and got a divorce. She remarried, this time to a darling man named Ralph, with whom she began a fine family and turned over a new leaf.

  If Ruthie was Mom’s outrageous sibling, her younger brother, Billy, was the quiet one. Uncle Billy was sixteen when we all moved in together, and I had a mad childhood crush on him. I thought he was my personal Prince Charming. He’d sit at the kitchen table doing his homework and looking so handsome, and I’d swoon. When his girlfriend, Marilyn (who’s now my dear aunt Marilyn), would come over, I’d be sure to sit between them or on Billy’s lap to make sure she understood who the alpha female was in this relationship. At four, I was absolutely convinced that he was going to marry me and I couldn’t understand why she was wasting her time there.

  My little brother, Andy, was also a sweetheart—gentle and funny, but tall and overweight as a child, as chunky as I was skinny. He was teased mercilessly as a kid too, and it upset me to see it hurt him so deeply. Being something of a target contributed to a general sense of worry that seemed to follow Andy everywhere, exacerbating a natural tendency he inherited from my mother.

  Mom was the biggest nervous Nellie I ever saw. It’s no wonder that Andy was so often afraid, because Mom found danger at every turn. She worried that my father would be in a terrible accident at work or on the road home. If my father was twenty minutes late getting home, she was on the phone to the police. She was sure that one of us kids would walk across the street and get hit by a car. She lived in fear that someone would kidnap us. If she was with us at a park or playground she was sure we were going to get hurt on the equipment.

  She was right to worry about Andy. My little brother got hurt so much when he was a kid that I called him Frankenstein—he’d been sewn back together that much. I worried about him incessantly and felt incredibly responsible for him. In my mind, with my mother working, accountability fell to me. He was my little brother, my duty. Sometimes it was the school that had to make the call to Mom’s work. “Mrs. Andrzejewski, this is Daniel Street Elementary. Can you come get Andy?”

  It was worse if he got hurt at home. Then Nana had to make the call, and she made everything into an apocalyptic event.

  “Mildred, you better get home. I think Andy might need to go to the emergency room.”

  Hysterics!

  “Is he bleeding? Is anything broken?”

  I was terrified every time it happened, not so much because of Andy but because of my mother’s reaction. In my head, everything was on me, as though I was the adult when Mom was gone. Whether it was real or imagined, that left me, an eight-year-old, to handle things. Of course, I was totally overwhelmed and ill equipped to deal with such circumstances, yet even at that age I thought of myself as the one in charge. My grandmother was a sweet, kind woman, but not someone you could rely on to take charge of a situation. My parents’ lives were overloaded with work, and though they sacrificed so much for us, they, through no fault of their own, couldn’t be there for us all the time. My dad worked constantly, and loving as he was, he was perpetually exhausted. When he came home the only thing he wanted to do was sit down, watch the ba
ll game, eat dinner, and relax. My mom wanted to be there for us, but the practical realities of her job made that difficult.

  Sometimes I think that’s what caused Mom to overreact to things. Because she couldn’t pay attention to every detail of our lives, when something did happen, it was both shocking and expected. She became fatalistic about every bad thing imaginable. Some horrible evil lurked right outside the door, and it was waiting for us. It drove me nuts. But her fears had an effect on me just like they did on Andy. I grew up watchful, scared that somebody might try to grab me off the streets. In my pursuit of independence I became guarded—ready for anything. I tended to arm myself with a stick or something, just in case. Of course, my mother hated that, too.

  “You’re gonna put your eye out!”

  I tried to stay away from the house as much as possible. I knew there was a peaceful world out there with adventures that were exciting without being fatal.

  THE CONVERSATION USUALLY STARTS this way: I’ll meet someone who asks me how I seem so grounded, so normal. Maybe they’ll tell me about an encounter they had with a rock star who acted like a complete asshole. The truth is that the way I am now is the way I’ve always been. People who get rich and act like idiots were always that way—only now they have money.

  I’ve always described myself as a very common person. I grew up without a lot of angst or internalized problems. I didn’t sneak out after dark to raise hell and cause my parents any sleepless nights. No drinking. No drugging. You will never see my name in some scandal sheet. It’s just not gonna happen. I’ve never done anything in my life that would excite a tabloid reporter. In fact, if you knew me now you’d never take me for a rock star. I’d be the mom driving her daughter to high school, the one who shops for her own groceries and carries them inside when she gets home, too. As Julia Roberts once said, “I’m just an ordinary person with an extraordinary job.”

  After thirty seconds of talking to me, people will sense all that, and they’ll ask me how I’ve been able to stay myself.

  “You are who you are” is the only response I have for them. I know who I am. And I understand just what a stretch it was for me to end up where I did.

  Moving out to Long Island was considered moving on up, but despite our idea of upward mobility, we were in far worse shape financially in the years after our move. Even two incomes couldn’t make up for the added expense of having Ruthie, my uncle, my grandmother, my brother, and me all under the same roof. Consequently, we were always broke. Nobody talked about it, and my parents certainly didn’t resent Nana and her two younger children. But the situation left us poor, and my mom and dad were perpetually worried. You could see it on their faces and hear it in my mother’s stifled sobs when it came time to pay bills.

  Every month like clockwork, I’d stand in the doorway, peer into our dimly lit kitchen, and watch as my mother sat at the table with a pile of envelopes, a pad of paper, and a pen in front of her. She’d make notes and scribble down numbers. She’d keep a handkerchief on the table and use it to wipe the tears from her eyes. If she knew I was watching her, she didn’t acknowledge it, and neither did I. I never said a word, just backed away and went to bed.

  Going to the grocery store with Mom was awful, because her choices always involved penny-saving decisions. She never bought anything extra, no backups, no luxuries—we were always on a strict budget. We never bought more than two rolls of toilet paper at a time. Not three, never four. Just two. You worried all the time that the toilet paper would run out before payday. I hated that. Seriously. (Seeing my pantry today, you’d think I have a Costco franchise. In fact, Costco is one of my favorite places in the world, because I can look at all those items lined up and picture them in my pantry. I bet I own enough toilet paper to last a family of four for a year. I’m the same way with everything. I have stacks of frozen food in freezers, multiples of canned goods lined up on shelves. Friends and family could do their grocery shopping at my house, and they sometimes do. I feel secure knowing that I will never run out of anything, that my kids won’t ever worry about not having school supplies for a project and that there will always be enough goddamn toilet paper.)

  Partially because of our financial struggles, my family became a very tight group. My parents were easygoing, kind, and good-hearted. Strict without being disciplinarians. The worst I ever got growing up was a quick swat on the butt. The amount of love that my brother and I felt from my parents was intense, and to an independent girl like me, it sometimes felt more like smothering. Despite our closeness, they tried to insulate Andy and me from all the stress and hardship. I never saw them argue or ever be unkind to each other; they showed a unified front at all times. They were in love, and despite the shitty hand they’d been dealt, they were happy (except at bill-paying time). When everyone was together at night, we would talk about our days without discussing the serious issues that they had to contend with.

  The two of them met when they were just fourteen years old. They dated until Dad went into the army, then married as soon as he got out. Mom was a wonderful opera singer and had performed with the All-City Chorus when she was young. I believe she might have turned professional if she hadn’t got pregnant with me. Mom has always had a big personality—very excitable and constantly talking. She has opinions, and she won’t hesitate to tell you about all of them. My dad was the opposite—quiet, thoughtful, and reserved, more of a loner. In that way I took after my father. I wasn’t shy, but I was a bit of a loner, too.

  My mother was a perpetual optimist; good fortune was always just around the corner, and she was hell-bent on having fun until it arrived. Even if things were horrible, all could be fixed by a drive to Amish country or cutting out sandwiches with cookie cutters or making crafts. One time when we were on vacation in Florida, my brother and I fell in love with a capuchin monkey in a pet store. We begged my mother to let us get it and she shockingly she said yes. Anything that was fun was allowed and encouraged. We bought the monkey and drove him 1,100 miles in a Dodge with my parents, my grandmother, my brother, and me. We named him Jo-Jo and he lived with us for sixteen years until he died. The crazy thing was that I never thought it was odd to have a monkey. It was only after I began telling the story to people that I came to realize how unusual it was.

  I always loved this positive outlook and spontaneity, but I didn’t appreciate it enough when I was a kid. It seemed flippant and irresponsible; I didn’t want road trips and craft projects, I wanted her to buckle down and fix everything. What I couldn’t see was how selfless her behavior actually was. She couldn’t see a way out, so she made the best of a bad situation. Her only concern was her children’s well-being, protecting us from the harsh realities that she and my father faced.

  Even though I was young, I was already far too pragmatic to appreciate her approach. I loved both my parents, but I viewed the way they ran their lives as flighty. That, combined with the fact that I’d grown up forcing myself to feel too much responsibility, created a detachment from them that drew out my solitary qualities and toughened me up. I’d assess my problems and fix them on my own. When something was wrong with me, it was my job alone to pick myself up and dust myself off. I became self-sufficient and determined, motivated by our problems with money and by my own belief in myself. Watching my mother try to pay bills made me a driven person, determined to never be in that same situation.

  I don’t want to overstate things. We never went hungry. The heat and water stayed on. I had a great childhood with overworked but loving parents and a tremendous extended family. But the reality was that we were what people today call “the working poor.” We lived on the edge of poverty, and I hated living on that edge. I hated it for my mother and my father, for my little brother. Oh, and I really hated it for me.

  So, despite all these money concerns, I had a good childhood. Our school was only a few blocks from our house, and I liked to hang around the school playground in the afternoon. It was always a good time with my friends around, but it was
even better when everyone else went home and I was alone, with no one around to tell me not to swing too high or stand up on the monkey bars. So that’s when I climbed up on the slide and stared at the sky, thinking about things, dreaming, picturing a world where dads weren’t overworked and moms didn’t sit and cry late at night over money, where people worked hard and didn’t live on the edge of financial disaster.

  Reading fueled my fantasy world. I was a voracious reader—books, magazines, and newspapers, anything in print. I loved to read about historical figures, about people who had done great things, about places far removed from North Hamilton Avenue. I started making up my own stories, putting characters and plots together, creating great adventures for my made-up cast. The great thing about coming from a multiethnic neighborhood was that you had all kinds of traditions and rituals to work into your tales.

  In my dreams, I was Italian, not Polish-Irish. I don’t know where it came from, but I felt Italian. One thing I loved about Italians was the food. Most of my friends were Italian and I tried to eat at their houses as much as possible. My mother and grandmother were Americanized, and they were also Depressionized. When my mom did feel up for cooking, she knew what she was doing. She’d learned the traditions of Polish cooking from my dad’s mother, and she could make some pretty amazing pierogis. But because my grandmother did the day-to-day cooking, most of the time we ate very bland food—roast and potatoes, bread, macaroni and cheese. (I don’t want to sell my nana short when it comes to mac and cheese. She made her own pasta with a creamy sauce, and it was spectacular.)

  The Italians, however, did not see food as mere sustenance; they saw it as an art form. Mom knew that every time I went to play with one of my Italian friends, I was going to eat. She’d ask me what I had been eating, and maybe I would say, “Snails in red sauce.”

  “Shhhkeeve!” my mother would exclaim. That’s what Italians said for “yuck.” And wherever I ate, she used that language to tell me I had just eaten something she considered yucky.