Waiting on the moon, p.2
Waiting on the Moon, page 2
I could never understand why I was subjected to continual ridicule from my fifth-grade teacher. To avoid her inexplicably sadistic behavior toward me, I would often play hooky. Some mornings or afternoons, I would take the subway downtown, exploring far-off places such as Times Square and Coney Island. Late one morning, the downtown local subway train stopped at the 34th Street station, where passengers were told that they needed to transfer because of a broken water main that was causing a flood at the far end of the platform. This was a time when the local TV stations started showing live broadcasts of events happening throughout the city. Gabe Pressman, the popular news anchor, was always the first to arrive at the scene. Gabe was interviewing subway officials and passengers regarding the unexpected delay. I shimmied my way through the crowd and stood just behind him as he spoke into the camera. To make sure I’d be seen on TV, I jumped up and down, making funny faces behind him. I was soon joined by other truants looking to seize their moment in the spotlight.
When I got home later that afternoon, my mother was knitting on the living room couch, cigarette dangling from her lips.
“Peter, how was school today?”
“Oh, you know, Mom. The same ol’ stuff.”
“Got much homework?”
“No. I did most of it during recess.”
“Can I see it?”
“I left it in my desk.”
“What homework was it?”
“Oh, you know. The same old stuff.”
“Peter, you’re not lying to your mother, are you?”
“Mom, why would I do something as stupid as that?”
“Stupid is right! What the hell were you doing standing on the 34th Street subway station at ten thirty this morning, jumping up and down like a monkey, when you’re telling me you were in school? Like when I found that pack of cigarettes in your underwear drawer last weekend. Do you expect me to believe that Mr. Hoffman at the corner store sold them to you by mistake, thinking they were candy cigarettes? Do you really think your mother is that stupid? Jumping up and down on TV like a baboon. What if some of the other neighbors saw you acting like an idiot and not in school? Don’t argue with what I saw with my own eyes!”
“But Mom, you do wear glasses. And why would I be stupid enough to stand in back of Gabe Pressman, knowing I’d be seen on TV?”
“Now, Mr. Smarty Pants, you just incriminated yourself. Who the hell said anything about Gabe Pressman being there?”
At that moment, Max, one of our two Persian cats, threw up right next to the couch where my mother was still feverishly knitting.
Saved once again, this time by a hairball.
Pistol Pete… Age five with my mother and sister
3
PLAY YOUR HUNCH
My Father
MY FATHER WAS always a mystery to me. A brilliant and sensitive man who lacked formal education, he was a ferocious reader and a stickler for elocution who took great pains never to adopt a New York accent, speaking as though he were raised in a grand manor.
Growing up in Harlem, he somehow became fluent in many languages, but Italian was his favorite because of his love of opera.
As a young man he won a scholarship to study with one of the great vocal masters in Italy. Unfortunately, it was during the Depression, and he felt it was his duty to remain in New York and help support his family, which consisted of two older brothers, an older sister, and his parents. He answered an ad for a singer in a vaudeville troupe, and at the age of fourteen, he left home to become a member of the Shubert Advanced Vaudeville organization, traveling all over the country. He often described to me, in great detail, the train the Shuberts owned, complete with a dining car and sleeping bunks, which they used to carry all the scenery and actors to various locations. The train departed from New York City, making its first stop in Hartford, Connecticut, where they would play the local Shubert theater for three days before heading to Springfield, Massachusetts; Boston; Maine; and then out West, where he traveled as far as Houston, Texas.
When he returned home, at the age of fifteen, he found work in an exclusive shoe store near 42nd Street catering to an illustrious clientele, including Al Jolson and Irving Berlin. My father was obsessed with all the talents on Broadway and could rattle off every name. Part of his job was to identify famous customers when they walked through the door, then alert the owner so the patrons could be greeted personally and given VIP treatment.
When my father was in his late teens, his older brother Bernie embarked on a career as his manager and booked him on several episodes of a fifteen-minute show aired by the radio station WQXR. My father, accompanied by a pianist, would sing a medley of popular new songs emerging from Tin Pan Alley; thereafter, he became known as the Boy Baritone. That was the pinnacle of my father’s show business career until many years later, when opportunity unexpectedly knocked.
On that occasion, Uncle Bernie called my father. “Allen, I got you the chance of a lifetime. That new young host Merv Griffin has a show called Play Your Hunch. Three couples must guess whatever scenario the show might invent. Last week the comedian Jonathan Winters was on, and the three couples had to guess which woman was Winters’s wife. Was she contestant X, Y, or Z? Here’s what’s so exciting: next week, they’re going to hire a real singing waiter as a contestant! They want two other people who can also sing to try to stump the couples. It’s perfect. You go in there and outsing the singing waiter. What an amazing showcase for your talent.”
My father hung up the phone and looked like he’d been hit by a truck.
“Dad, what’s wrong? Something happen?” I asked. Clearly unsure, he told me Bernie’s plan.
“That sounds great!”
“I don’t know, Pete. I haven’t sung in so long,” he replied, full of doubt and apprehension.
“But Dad, I hear you singing around the house, and you sound fantastic! I think you should do it.”
As the date of the program approached, my father spent long periods of time in the shower going through operatic arias in his resonant baritone. My mother, with the ever-present cigarette dangling from her lips, would yell, “Please, Allen. Quiet already! How clean can you get in there? If you don’t get outta there soon, your skin’s gonna wash right off.”
My father also took long walks in the park, singing away and smoking a cigarette through a holder. He was oblivious to the stares of the neighbors, who already thought he was quite odd, with his Bermuda shorts, sandals, and beret.
As he and I traveled by subway to the television studio for the live broadcast, I could see that my father was very anxious. Uncle Bernie met us outside and ushered us into a room where there would be a quick run-through rehearsal. Each of the couples would be sitting at a small café table. The singing waiters would stand behind a curtain atop a raised platform, one marked X, another marked Y, and a third marked Z. Merv Griffin would introduce them as the curtain opened. Each waiter would walk down the platform steps, singing and approaching the tables. The couples would then have to guess who the real singing waiter was.
Backstage, my father nervously paced as a fellow contestant warmed up by singing operatic scales at the top of his voice. We assumed it was the real singing waiter. Before Bernie left the dressing room to sit in the audience with some bigwigs he’d invited, he told my father, “Break a leg, Allen. Go out there and give it all you got! You’ll see—you’re gonna stump them. It’s a cinch.” Then he made a dramatic exit with a short tap dance and a triple spin.
Finally it was showtime; the singing waiters were to be the last segment of the show.
A staff member came backstage with a waiter’s jacket for my father to wear, a linen napkin to drape over his arm, and a set of silverware to place on the table. The three contestants were positioned on their X, Y, and Z platforms behind the closed curtain.
I scurried to the side of the stage, where I could watch my father, and I kept glancing at a small TV monitor to see how it was looking on air.
Merv Griffin stood center stage as he introduced the singing waiters segment. The curtain opened, and there stood the men dressed as waiters, holding napkins and silverware. My father was standing on the third platform, marked Z.
The first contestant, X, began singing “What Now My Love” as he walked over to the seated couple, set the silverware on the table, and returned to his platform. Next came Y, the man warming up with scales backstage. He was a tenor and had a strong voice—a little too theatrical for my taste, but he was good. He sang an aria from The Marriage of Figaro as he triumphantly walked to the second table, placed the silverware, and returned to his platform. Now it was time for my father. Merv announced, “Contestant Z, might you be the real singing waiter?” He then came to the side of the stage, where I was standing, to watch the TV monitor.
My father paused, raised his chest high, and came out with a beautiful note that he held for an impressively long time while he gracefully stepped down from his platform. He stopped just before the third table, still continuing the aria from Don Pasquale. He used his hand dramatically, as if he were performing on the stage at La Scala. The full-bodied notes he held, even as he reached up into the top of his range, sounded powerful and magnificent. The audience began applauding. Still singing, my father approached the third couple, and just as he was about to place the silverware on the table, he froze and went silent. Standing still, holding out the silverware, he realized he didn’t know the proper way to place it on the table. Merv Griffin, who was standing next to me at the monitor, said to a staff member, ”He had them all fooled. It was right in his pocket. What a schmuck!”
The air visibly drained from my father as he walked back to his platform. I wanted to say something to this Merv guy, but he was already out front, engaging with the couples before announcing Y as the real singing waiter. Backstage, I walked into my father’s dressing room, where he was sitting quietly, elbows resting on his knees. I could tell he was not only disappointed in himself but also embarrassed. “Dad, you were great! I never heard you sing so well. It was amazing!”
“Pete, let’s leave before Bernie or anyone else comes backstage.”
There was no need to say more. I helped him on with his coat and hat, and we left to catch the subway uptown. It was a quiet ride home. I don’t think I ever heard my father sing again until just before he died. He sang in the choir at the historic Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, performing one of his favorites from Handel’s Messiah. It was a piece that resurrected once more within him the voice I had always loved.
My father
4
THE TENDER TRAP
Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend
Second grade
MY FATHER WAS parallel parking when I first mentioned that I was getting married. I was surprised at how calmly he took the news. He locked the car, then we walked up the front steps of Uncle Bernie’s apartment building. My father rang the bell, and when Bernie opened the door, my father announced, “Pete’s getting married!”
“Great news!” Bernie said. “When’s the wedding?”
My father then suggested that it might be wise for me to get engaged before the wedding. Uncle Bernie agreed.
Being only six years old, I wasn’t versed in proper marital etiquette. “What’s an engagement?” I asked.
My father explained that before they get married, most people get engaged, and the man gives the woman an engagement ring.
“Where can I get an engagement ring?” I asked. I was in love with Joyce Fortunato. She sat next to me in our first-grade class, and I was mesmerized by her wavy blond hair, the light sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks, her doll-like lips, which looked as if they were perfectly painted on, her long lashes, and her deep blue eyes—well, she just shook me up. Joyce! Oh, Joyce! Why couldn’t I just marry her?
“Dad, where can I get an engagement ring?” I persisted.
He shrugged and answered, “We can stop at Woolworths on the way home and get one there.”
My dad picked it out. He said it had the best-looking stone and was the most practical, since the band could adjust to any finger size. I spent all night looking at the ring and couldn’t wait to present it to my beloved.
The next day, during recess, I told Joyce I had something to give her, but first I asked, “Will you get engaged with me?”
“Why should I?” she snapped.
I reached into my pocket for the ring, all wrapped in fancy tissue paper. I told Joyce I had bought her a diamond ring.
“Let me see it!”
I could sense how excited she was as I handed her the ring, which she tore from the tissue, her smile quickly fading.
“Are you sure this is a real diamond?”
I stammered, “Of course it is!”
“Well,” Joyce answered, her nose held high, “I want an ankle bracelet instead.” She squirreled the ring away in her blouse pocket.
This wasn’t the reaction I hoped for, but still, I told her I’d get her an ankle bracelet. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my father, who was sitting on the front stoop of our apartment building with Uncle Bernie, who didn’t take the news too kindly. He said carefully, “I feel you did the right thing, but maybe you just have the wrong kind of gal.” Then he added, “Take it from me, kid: I’m going to remain a bachelor. I don’t want to spend my life committed to only one woman. It’s like having the same meal for the rest of your life. I like variety, and I don’t use just one spice to cook.”
“But Uncle Bernie,” I protested, “you don’t know Joyce. I’m in love with her!”
“Listen, kid, when it comes to women, there’s no better person to advise you than your Uncle Bernie. I’ve spent time with more women than all the whiskers in your father’s mustache.”
We returned to Woolworths over the weekend and purchased an ankle bracelet with two small silver hearts dangling from a shiny thin chain. At last, when Monday came around, I got to class early so I could be ready when Joyce arrived. She was late and came in with one of my friends, Lenny Glass. As she sat down, I handed her the bracelet, which she quickly took, pocketing it in her blouse, saying, “In case you haven’t noticed.” She held her hand out to me, displaying a large diamond ring, then pointed down to her left ankle, adorned with a sparkling bracelet.
“Where’d you get those?”
“Lenny gave them to me and asked me to marry him.”
“Are you gonna?”
“I’m thinking it over,” she said, then she didn’t look at me or speak to me for the rest of the day.
I learned at an early age “the curse of an aching heart.”
Joyce and I were in the same class for six years, and it was apparent as time went on that she had no interest in either me or Lenny Glass. A true rebel, she was continually reprimanded by our principal for disruptive behavior, culminating in the memorable moment when she flipped a teacher the bird and called her a “fucking old hag.” Joyce was immediately transferred, and she never returned to our school after that.
Several years passed before I saw her again. One morning, late as usual, I was running through the schoolyard to make it in the back door. Joyce, looking street tough, wearing a leather jacket and tight black pedal pushers, was standing against a brick wall by the doorway, flanked by two similarly dressed girls with bouffant hair and spit curls coiled dangerously on their painted faces like vipers. A lipstick-stained cigarette dangled from Joyce’s ruby lips. “What’s your rush?” she asked. At the sight of this enticing trio, I was at a loss for words.
“Joyce, I’m late, but it’s sure good seeing you.”
“Yeah, good seeing you, too,” was her reply, which really took me by surprise.
“I quit fuckin’ school,” she added. “Who needs it?”
She flicked away her cigarette and said, “You know, I owe you something.” Suddenly she put her arms around me, pressed her soft chest into mine, and gave me one long, unforgettable kiss. Looking into my eyes, she said, “That’s for the diamond.”
5
THE FIRST LADY
Eleanor Roosevelt
AT SCHOOL I was considered a terrible student. My unpredictable coordination ruled me out of sports. In the classroom I couldn’t concentrate, and reading was difficult. Much later, I was diagnosed with what became known as dyslexia. Because I came from a musically gifted family, it was not a stretch to assume that I, too, would easily learn to play an instrument. But after I struggled through piano, guitar, and violin lessons, my attempts to develop any real skills left me completely frustrated. I was resigned to performing the slight and seldom ting-a-ling of the triangle in the school band.
Then one day, as luck would have it, I was chosen to be a spotlight assistant for my junior high school’s production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. On the night of the performance, the student in charge of the spotlight didn’t show up, so the job landed in my hands. I loved it. I became absorbed in reading the script and following the cues. Thereafter I became the spotlight person for every school production.
I also became a full-time member of the public address squad. Our responsibilities involved setting up microphones for the principal’s daily morning announcements over the PA system as well as for weekly school assemblies and occasional guest speakers in the auditorium. Our principal, Miss Selkow, was a stern, humorless disciplinarian with no interest in interacting with her students. Tall and thin, with unnaturally red hair worn in a tightly wound bun that sat atop her head like a pillbox hat, she looked as if she had walked out of a previous century. In her fitted jackets with padded shoulders, a cameo brooch on the lapel, and her ankle-skimming dresses, fire-engine-red lipstick, and rimless glasses magnifying her hawklike eyes, she stalked the hallways like a terrifying bird of prey. A stickler for cleanliness, neatness, and obedience, she was affectionately known by the PA squad as “the bitch.” Next to her office was a small glass booth where each morning she gave her address to the students and faculty.
