2
The Beach

“Brian!” I yell from the top of the stairs. “Where’s the beach bag with all the pockets?”

“I think it’s in the guest room closet,” my husband responds. “What about the green duffle bag?”

“It’s probably in the same closet. I’ll look.”

We’re rushing around packing for a trip to the beach after a busy day at work. I’m exhausted. Grace, my daughter, flies into the room, flops onto the bed, and says to me, “I can’t wait to go to the beach, Mom. When will we get there?”

Before I can respond, Brian is in the doorway answering her question.

“We should leave by 5:00 a.m.,” he says. “If we do, we’ll be there about 9:00 a.m.”

“God, why so early?” I say, whining through work fatigue. “Isn’t this the start of vacation? It should mean more sleep.”

Brian looks at me, realizing I’ll have to be convinced. “We both hate traffic,” he says. “The longer we wait, the more traffic and accidents we’ll run into on the beltway.”

I hear the word accidents, glance at my daughter, and begrudgingly agree. “Fine,” I say. Brian’s logic is just too sound and, as I get older, I’m more and more fearful of dying in a tragic accident.

“We’ll be the first on the beach,” he reassures me.

Grace bounces out of the room. “Yay! I can’t wait to get to the beach!”

I can’t wait either, despite my irritation and exhaustion. I was raised on yearly doses of beach vacations. My earliest memories are of my father, mother, and entire family converging on the Jersey Shore for extended periods every summer. Those trips, and the trips with my husband and daughter now, are the happiest memories I possess.

This evening, I wander around our house for hours, double-checking bags obsessively to make sure we have everything. The anticipation of the summer’s first beach trip starts for me in early spring. As soon as the sun starts to warm away the winter, I begin rummaging for bathing suits, towels, and sunscreen. I think I’m driven to do this because it’s easy to become intoxicated by the beauty of an ocean view, and I crave the feeling of the sun penetrating vitamin D into my skin. The beach has always elicited for me feelings of calm and revival.

I have trouble getting to sleep knowing I’ll be coaxed into the car so early tomorrow morning. But as I lie quietly in bed next to my lightly snoring husband, I see sunsets, sunrises, calm oceans, choppy oceans, kids climbing on sand mountains, and adults toasting in celebration of just being at the beach. My mind wanders to my childhood trips to the Jersey Shore. I smile and finally drift off to sleep.

*

As a child, I never slept well the night before our summer vacations to Ocean City, New Jersey. We would spend up to six weeks each summer at a rented beach house, though on the weekdays my father would commute to work in Philadelphia, leaving my mother and me to our own devices. Then, on the weekends, our clannish Italian Catholic family, from both sides, would congregate to eat huge meals together, which added another rich dimension to our summers. It was a revolving door of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Adult family members would sit under umbrellas discussing politics and the Phillies, while kids would tiptoe to the water’s edge, then run away screaming from the waves crashing on the shoreline.

I remember the smell of the salty air and the feel of the wheels of my stroller rattling over the Ocean City boardwalk. I remember my requests for ice cream, salt-water taffy and fudge, and being indulged only occasionally with waffles and ice cream. And I remember spending hours on the same rides at the amusement pier, my favorite being the little boats that just went in circles and that had a little horn I could toot while pretending to be a boat captain.

My parents loved the beach and they prepared for our vacations just like I do today. Dad would strategically pack the car with beach chairs and umbrellas, just as my husband does now, and Mom would gather beach essentials, like the perfect pail and shovel to make sandcastles, just as I do for my daughter. At times, the hurried pace of packing gave way to stress and anxiety and on our car trips to Ocean City, I would sometimes overhear my parents’ conversations as these emotions surfaced. This was one such conversation from the summer of 1973.

I was sitting at the kitchen table picking at my breakfast, a three-year-old giddy for summer vacation to begin, and watching my mother prepare our sandwiches for our trip. “Can’t you take any time off and stay at the beach for a week?” my mother asked my father.

“I just have too much going on right now, Fran,” my father replied. “We’ll have long weekends. Isn’t that enough?”

“I guess it’ll have to do,” said Mom. She slammed a knife on the counter and walked to the next room.

My father followed her. I jumped up and followed them both, too. “Business is good right now, Fran,” said Dad. “The Premier is making good money. You should be glad I have these opportunities.”

“Yeah, sure I’m glad,” said Mom sarcastically, as she busied herself with the packing.

“You should be,” my father fired back. He stormed out of the room.

The moment we arrived at the beach house later that day, I jumped out of the backseat of the car and onto the gravel drive, shouting, “Come on. Let’s go!” My mother rose slowly from the passenger seat, still quiet from the argument earlier. She quickly grabbed some bags and hustled into the house. Dad peered over the open trunk lid, knowing their discussion wasn’t over. I pulled my little suitcase into a room with two twin beds and took out my bunny, coloring books, and the frosty pink lipstick I had stolen from my mother. Then I heard arguing in the background.

“Well, you can give me the silent treatment or enjoy being at the beach,” Dad said.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the beach,” she said, “or that we get this beach house for six weeks, Anthony. I just want your daughter and me to get as much of your attention as work. It’s always about work. And now you have this theater, so you talk more to Tony Arnone than you do to me.”

“Frannie, I just want us to have a comfortable life and that means working hard now.”

Peering at them now from the hallway, I saw my mother’s face soften—she knew that my father was being sincere about wanting to provide for the family.

My father took advantage of his opening and said, “Let’s unpack and get to the beach. It’s a beautiful day!”

She nodded in agreement and walked to the back of the house to finish unpacking. I retreated to my bedroom and began smearing Mom’s lipstick all over my lips and kissing the mirror. A short while later, Mom came into my room and found me covered in lipstick. With her hands on her hips, she shouted, “Anthony, I’m going to kill your daughter!”

When Dad entered the room and saw me, the three of us dissolved into silly laughter.

We were at the beach where it was impossible for us not to be happy.

*

Fifty miles away from Ocean City and six years before she became my mother, Frances Parrotto rushed up the stone steps of the Drexel Brook Country Club in the Philadelphia suburbs. The clicking of her high-heel pumps was the loudest noise in the hush of the early evening. She was twenty-one years old.

Frances was late meeting a group of girlfriends for drinks. She hated to be late and she was certain her friends Nancy and Carol were already inside dancing with the cutest guys. It was 1964 and this social club was a popular hangout for twenty-somethings on Friday nights.

“Hello, I’m here to meet Nancy Pagano,” she said, smiling sweetly at the doorman. “I’m Frances Parrotto.”

“Yes, let me check the guest list.” He reviewed the list and a puzzled look crossed his face. “I’m sorry, the Paganos don’t have your name on the list.”

“Oh, gosh.” She blushed flirtatiously. “Well, I am supposed to meet Nancy and . . . um . . . I’m already late and I traveled all the way from the city. Could I go find her and bring her up to the front?”

The doorman’s face softened instantly. “I know Nancy and if you say you’re a friend of hers, I say it’s alright to go on ahead inside. Have a nice evening, Miss.”

“Oh, thank you. You’re just so nice,” my mother gushed.

She had the bone structure and subtle grace that resembled Jackie Kennedy, so it wasn’t hard to charm her way in.

And if she hadn’t charmed her way in? Then she might not have met Anthony.

The club was busy. Women, dressed in their finest outfits, powdered and preened in the hopes of meeting their future husbands, and the men, tired junior executives, donned suits with loosened ties, having just left work. Anthony was among them, blowing off steam with co-workers, and he spotted Frances from across the room. He told me it was the blue dress she wore that first caught his eye. The form-fitting style accentuated her broad shoulders. She was standing against the wall and swaying to the music, an invitation to be asked to dance. He hoped his stark-white dress shirt offset his olive complexion in a good way and that the tailored jacket he was wearing hid his slightly overweight frame. He hoped that the trendy black-rimmed glasses he’d selected would detract a bit from the fact that, at the old age of twenty-three, he was already balding.

Anthony was not a good dancer but he figured that if he had any chance at all with the beautiful girl in the blue dress, then the dance floor was in his near future. Finally, he worked up the nerve to approach her. They made small talk over the loud music as they danced. She asked what he did for a living and where he was from. He said he was a jewelry insurance underwriter at Royal Global Insurance and that it was his first job out of college; he had just graduated from Villanova.

It was an unmemorable conversation, my mother told me. But when the song was over, Anthony invited her for a drink and, to his relief, she accepted. She was accustomed to having drinks bought for her. After the drink, Anthony didn’t overstay his welcome and departed Frances’s company by asking for her phone number. She gave it to him, later claiming to me she was indifferent about whether he would call.

He called her a few days later.

“Hi, this is Anthony. I met you a few nights ago at the Drexel Brook,” he stammered slightly.

“Oh . . . hello. How are you?”

“I’m okay. You remember me?”

“Well, sure. The jewelry insurer, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Well, I was wondering . . . I was wondering if you’d like to catch a movie at the Midtown and dinner in Chinatown this Saturday.”

“Sure, that would be nice,” she said, thinking she hadn’t been on a date in a few weeks.

“Great. Let’s say I’ll pick you up at seven?”

“Yeah, that sounds fine. Oh, by the way . . . when you come to pick me up, I have to tell you, my mother has an ocelot cat.”

“A what kinda cat?”

“An ocelot. She’s a South American jungle cat. I just want to let you know ahead of time. Kitty looks intimidating, but she’s really sweet.”

“Okay, thanks for the heads up,” he said.

It was a fair warning since Kitty, by instinct, would stalk around new people. You just didn’t know if the big creature was going to pounce or purr. The cat was a good indicator to any future spouse about his future mother-in-law. The pet ocelot solidified Frances’s mother Maria’s eccentric style. The wild cat was a perfect reflection of her personality—protective of her young and a bit on the wild side. And Kitty was beautiful, with a gorgeous, thick, tawny coat with swirls of black markings that changed from stripes to spots. Her underbelly was a cream color with the same black markings. On trips to the Jersey Shore, Maria would walk Kitty on a leash at the beach late in the evenings and let her swim in the ocean. It was like the parting of the Red Sea for anyone in their path.

Of course, Anthony braved the wildlife—he wouldn’t let anything get in the way of taking Frances on a date.

Still, after a few dates, Frances just wasn’t that interested in Anthony. She came home from one date with him and told her mother, “He seems like a braggart. Always talking about his career like it’s the most important thing. I don’t want to go out with him again.”

“Maybe he’s nervous, Frannie, and you should give him one more chance,” her mother said, realizing Frances was already twenty-one years old and had one broken engagement from her high school sweetheart, Bobby.

Frances protested, “Nah . . . I just don’t like his personality. He seems so full of himself,” and she drifted away from the conversation and headed off to bed.

Anthony, of course, did not feel the same way. He kept trying to contact her, but Frances avoided his phone calls.

He was puzzled since he thought the dates had gone well. He did a checklist in his mind: I took her to nice place, I was nice to her mother and that crazy ocelot, and I was a perfect gentleman. I’m also a decent-looking guy with a college degree. What gives?

Anthony sought advice from friends. He had no idea what to do. Finally a co-worker told him, “Look, a girl like this, who knows you like her, just don’t call her too much. Just every once in a while to say hello and don’t even ask her out so you don’t look desperate.”

He took the advice and played it cool. Anthony would call once every couple of months just to talk, and he never asked her out. Frances thought, Why the hell is he calling me and not asking me out? The intrigue and the mystery coaxed interest from this seemingly dead romance.

Then Anthony sent Frances flowers on her birthday; she thought that was the most romantic and thoughtful gesture. She was surprised he had even remembered her birthday and she was flattered he was still interested after all this time. She called to thank him for the flowers and only then did he ask her out. She accepted the invitation. It had been a year since their first date. He had been persistent in pursuing her, which was a telltale sign that he went after what he wanted and was relentless until he achieved his goal.

*

Two years later, Frances went on vacation for the Fourth of July with her girlfriends to the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey, and Anthony saw this as the perfect opportunity to surprise her with a visit and to formally propose. They had been dating for a long time and he knew she would be the perfect wife. It was time.

Frances suspected Anthony’s intentions were serious. But until she got a ring, she wasn’t sure. Frances loved Anthony but she also liked the attention of other men. A fun flirt of hers was Bill LeBar—a Frenchman and sometime date—who also happened to be in Wildwood over that same Fourth of July weekend.

Right after work on Friday, Anthony drove to the Jersey Shore with life-changing excitement in his chest and an engagement ring in his pocket. He arrived at the rental house where Frances was staying, but no one was there. It was a beautiful day, so he assumed correctly that everyone was at the beach. Still in a suit and tie from the office, he removed his shoes and socks and rolled up the bottom of his dress pants to climb to the top of a sand dune. Once he reached the top, he shielded the sun from his eyes with his hand and scanned the beach. He saw Frances splashing near the water and flirting with Bill and he watched with jealousy as Bill playfully scooped her up in his arms and carried her toward the ocean.

Frances looked over Bill’s shoulder and, to her surprise, saw Anthony.

“Put me down, Bill, that’s my boyfriend.”

“Who’s your boyfriend? That suit?”

Bill put her down and Frances grabbed a cover-up and walked toward Anthony. She felt the heat on her cheeks from embarrassment and the sun. She hoped that Anthony knew she was not the kind of girl who would date two men seriously at once and that he would disregard what he had seen with Bill. It didn’t mean anything. She was also terrified she might have blown the chance at landing herself a good husband.

When she was close enough to Anthony, she said nervously, “Well, hey you. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Anthony had no expression on this face and said, “Come with me. I have something for you in the car.” He thought he might as well ask. Even if she said no, at least he would give it a shot.

Frances sensed he was there to propose. But would he really do it after what he had just seen? She slid into the passenger side of the car, still wet from the escapade in the ocean with Bill.

“Frannie, it’s either me or the rest of the world,” Anthony said seriously. “I have something for you in the glove compartment.”

She opened it and took out a tiny box that held a perfect one-carat solitaire diamond ring. She gasped and clasped her hand over her mouth in surprise.

“The ring could be bigger, but the stone is very good,” said Anthony as he looked at her face for a reaction.

Frances smiled back at him. She knew he didn’t care about Bill LeBar. She kissed him and was happy to be finally engaged. All of her friends were getting married and she didn’t want to be the last one. She slid the ring on and held up her hand to admire the glittering stone as it caught the sunlight. Yes, she was truly happy. They celebrated that night by going to a fancy dinner at The Long Port Inn.

*

My parents were married almost a year later on June 1, 1968. A few weeks before the wedding, my maternal grandparents took wedding portraits of my mother, as they had done with many new brides at their family-run photo studio.

The studio, located at the corner of Broad and Ritner streets in Philadelphia, was the place to go in our Italian American community for wedding, first Communion, and family portraits. The store had also been my mother’s childhood home. It was a big brownstone with bedrooms on the upper floors and a kitchen and living room area behind the storefront. This was truly the first work-from-home lifestyle, before telecommuting even existed.

Grandpa Frank was the photographer and the handyman, while Grandma Maria minded the books and helped customers prepare for their photo sessions. She had a knack for calming nervous brides on their wedding day. “Now, honey,” she’d say, “if you get all flustered your makeup will look terrible and your eyes will get all puffy. Do you want to look at puffy eyes in this picture for the rest of your life?” Grandma Maria also retouched photos by hand in the darkroom alongside my grandfather, using a magnifying glass and a palette of watercolor paints. My grandparents were a good team, both at running a business and at raising a family.

My mother’s slim organza silk gown with delicate beading was beautiful and it was neatly matched with a pill box hat with a flowing veil. The lighting of the studio was bright and various backdrops in blue and rose were adjusted into place.

As my mother stepped into position, my grandmother gasped, “Oh Frannie, you are absolutely the prettiest bride I’ve seen! I knew this dress would be perfect.”

It was the first time she would experience firsthand the banter between her parents as she was pushed and pulled in a million different directions to get the right shots.

“Now Frank, get the angle of Frannie from the right side. It will be so much better,” Grandma Maria said.

“I was just going to do that, Mary. You don’t have to tell me.”

As the pictures were taken, my mother daydreamed of finally moving out of her parents’ house. There was some sadness about moving away from home but also an eagerness to begin her life at age twenty-five.

Now the blending of their families would begin, taking on the good and the bad of both. The wedding brought a flurry of activity and lots of time for my parents’ families to socialize and plan. Grandma Maria, who leaned toward the contemporary, clashed at times in style and taste with my father’s mother, Grandma Emma, who was more beholden to Italian and Catholic tradition. To appease both of them, the ceremony was held at the neighborhood Saint Monica’s Catholic Church and the reception at the Venus Lounge, a popular nightclub spot in South Philadelphia. Tony Arnone and Dad’s younger brother Gabe were groomsmen. My mother’s best friend Fran, sister Dolores, and sister-in-law Nancy were bridesmaids. My parents honeymooned in Miami, only to brave a hurricane while in South Florida. At least they would have the sunny days at the shore later that summer.

Both of my parent’s families were in the midst of a transformation from the traditional Italian family with parents who were first generation Italian Americans to the mainstream, modern American family that was breaking away from the old traditions. With immigrant roots, there was nonetheless a heavy expectation to transcend this base and assimilate into America culture, and not only to make this transition but also to achieve and accomplish more than the previous generation. Anthony showed great promise, and with his beautiful Frances at his side, family and friends imagined they’d go far, such as a big, beautiful house in the better Main Line suburbs among the Wideners, Biddles, and Strawbridges. Perhaps Anthony would move up to one of the bigger investment houses in New York—Drexel Burnham, Bear Stearns, Bankers Trust—and they’d eventually live in Scarsdale or Short Hills or Oyster Bay. Everyone knew they would do well, but just how well?

*

My parents had met everyone’s expectations as a young couple. My father had a growing career and my mother was a busy stay-at-home wife with a young child. Their success afforded us the opportunity to spend summers in Ocean City, New Jersey, at a rented beach house. My mother and father finished putting away the clothes and groceries, and only then did we finally walk to the beach together. I loved this first excursion to the beach, me sandwiched between my parents and holding both their hands. Every few steps they would pull me high into the air and I would squeal in delight. We staked out a nice area close to the ocean. After pitching the umbrella in the sand and laying out the beach blanket and some snacks, my mother said, “Okay, Anthony, let’s take Kristin to the water.”

“Are you ready, little girl?” Dad asked, clutching my hand. My mother trailed behind us with a camera.

She asked a passerby to snap a picture of the three of us at the ocean’s edge. He took the photo. It was 1973.

This picture was taken right after the Premier Theater had opened and before my father started distributing Deep Throat. Walking around the beach that summer, no one would have suspected he was on the verge of a lifelong career in porn.