My brother started gambling in college when he joined his fraternity, Pi Lambda Phi. At least that’s the story my parents told me. I don’t remember much because I was so busy with my own crazy adolescence, and neither my mom nor dad ever wanted to talk about Dennis’s gambling problem.
I remember once coming home after high school. Dennis had recently been home from college—he attended Drexel University in Philadelphia—for Thanksgiving, and Mom had just discovered that some of her good jewelry was missing from her lingerie drawer. Two detectives sat on the couch in our formal living room. We never entertained there, and for many years, we keep plastic slipcovers over the couch’s blue silk upholstery. At some point, however, the plastic was removed, and though the furniture was very outdated, the couches hadn’t faded and didn’t show wear. My family always relaxed in the den, decorated in Early American style, where we usually sat in front of the large TV console.
I joined the group in the living room and watched my mom’s face as she realized that my brother, not a stranger, had stolen from her. No break-in had taken place because there’d been no forced entry. And the thief knew where to look—and had expertly hidden the crime, closed jewelry cases, drawers, stuffed underwear on top of missing things to disguise the theft.
“No, we don’t want to press charges,” my mom told an overweight detective who sat uncomfortably in his tight uniform.
“Edna,” my dad said, “maybe that’s not for the best.”
But my mom gave my dad a look, and he shut up.
“My wife is right. This is a family matter. We’ll talk to our son, detective.”
Unable to put two and two together, I asked what was going on, but my dad only turned to me and said, “Later, Rae. Go to your room. This doesn’t concern you.”
“But…” I began. Then my mom looked up at me, her face stained with tears—mascara and eyeliner bleeding—so I walked first into the kitchen to get a couple of cookies, pour a glass of milk, then retreated to my bedroom.
The next day, a Saturday, my father took me aside during breakfast—my mom still asleep—and told me that Dennis was gambling at college and that this was the second time he’d been caught stealing. He was a political science major, and a group of them had joined a fraternity in September. There was a dog track nearby, and the fraternity brothers would regularly go there to gamble. Dennis had also stolen some of his tuition money they’d put aside in an account to which he had access. How much he had stolen, I wasn’t told.
We sat in the sunny kitchen at the table. Outside, I could see that Meadowbrook Pond had partially frozen over. My mom and my brother were late sleepers; usually my dad and I shared breakfast together. When my mom woke, she’d usually eat with Newsday, the Long Island daily, as her only companion. If left alone, Dennis would sleep until noon.
My dad worked most Saturdays and always left for the store by 9:15. Typically, I walked to the synagogue for the second Shabbat service at the Orthodox temple. At this point, I considered myself an atheist, but I enjoyed the ritual of attending the service and the community of prayer.
“What did he take?” I wanted to know. I’d made French toast from yesterday’s challah, and a mound of slices lay on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. I stabbed my fork into a couple, putting them on my plate. Although we no longer kept a kosher house, vestiges remained: my plate was a dairy, not a meat, plate. The same with the silverware. We had meat and dairy service and kept them separate—long-held habits from our earlier, more religious days.
“I’m not sure. Mom doesn’t want to talk about it. She told me not to tell you. Just to say that the incident is over. She’ll handle it. It won’t happen again.” Although my dad was a big eater, he stood up from the table, with many pieces of French toast left on the plate. He wore a pink button-down shirt and a pair of gray wool slacks. He picked up his suit jacket, hung over a side-chair, and carried it to the hall closet in our large foyer, where he put it on, along with his heavy cloth overcoat. “I’m off,” he said, buttoning up and walking over to hug me. He bent down, planted a kiss on my cheek. I was wearing my flannel nightgown and wooly sock slippers. “Love you. Don’t mention what I’ve said about Dennis to Mom. She’s already upset.”
I gave my dad a brief hug. “Have a good day. What time you coming home?”
“Early. Seven. We finished inventory yesterday. No need to stay late. Probably going out with Evelyn and Frank. Dinner, then cards at their house.”
I walked over to the front door, feeling the winter chill as I opened it and then again as the storm door slammed shut behind him. I watched my dad walk down the concrete path, then the brick steps that led to the driveway. He unlocked the door, got into his Buick Skylark. I stood in the doorway, looking into the empty suburban street, where, after backing out, my dad put the car in drive. I knew that he’d follow our street to Hungry Harbor Road, which would take him to Sunrise Highway, and then the Van Wyke Expressway to Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills. He’d park the car behind the store next to the delivery truck in the small parking lot and walk through the store’s back door to open up.
When we still lived in our Dunhurst apartment, Dennis and I would often accompany our father to the store on Saturdays. We’d get dressed up, me in a frock with white laced bobby socks, Dennis in a suit, often with a bowtie. We’d drive the half hour down Francis Lewis Boulevard and connect to Queens Boulevard. On these days, our mom would get a break from parenting, and our paternal grandparents would have an opportunity for a day-long visit between customers.
In the store’s downstairs, Henry, a Black man and the store’s only employee, would be responsible for applying gold-leaf to the furniture or for loading the truck for deliveries. Henry also ran errands, cleaned, retagged lamps and sale items. Lamps often went on sale, and when that happened, there’d be an exotic jungle of them clustered together on a large table in the front of the showroom.
On some Saturdays, if the store wasn’t busy, our grandmother would take us on the F train to Manhattan. We’d often go to Radio City Music Hall to see the show and movie. We watched How the West Was Won, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Ben Hur on the huge screen. I remember sitting in the theater’s red-velvet seats, Dennis on one side of my grandmother, me on the other, and excusing myself to go to the bathroom—the expansive white marble steps to the ladies’ room seemed grand; the toilets, divided by the same white marble slabs, were large, imposing, like relics from the Roman Empire. Women would gather in front of the entrance mirror in the anteroom, preening themselves like swans, leaning forward to touch up makeup and hair.
The Rockettes, already anachronistic, would lift their legs in their preshow chorus line extravaganza, and I’d listen to the strange clacking of their shoes hitting the wooden stage. They, along with the preening women in the ladies’ room, made me feel alienated, genderless—though I couldn’t express that. But I’d feel neither female nor male, as if growing up as a woman or man might not be possible.
Even on a Saturday afternoon, even if it wasn’t seasonally appropriate, my grandmother would wear her long fur coat. She’d paint her lips bright red and wear a pearl choker. A heavy-set, large-boned woman, she had a complaining voice that suggested: Beware, this isn’t good. The “this” might refer to her life as a woman or a wife, for I knew at a very young age that she and my grandfather weren’t happily married.
Once, I watched my grandfather hit her in the hallway of their Brooklyn apartment. Another time, sitting at her kitchen table, she took my hand, squeezed and kissed it—telling me to watch out for men—a warning that struck me as odd and out of context.
But at the end of our outings together, on the way home from some magnificent Manhattan show, we’d descend into the subway to catch the F train, then emerge from subterranean darkness into afternoon light, to slowly walk the five long blocks from the Queens station to the furniture store. We’d pass a large stone church, where the concrete yard was painted green to resemble a lawn. It was the same shade of green as the walls of the subway stations, and I thought that it was the ugliest color in the world.