Dad had just “gotten back,” our code for his return from rehab. When he said he was stopping by to drop off some checks for Mom, she told him to meet us at the dance studio in South Jamaica where I was taking ballet and tap lessons with the daughters of her Jamaica friends.
When the lesson ended, Dad was waiting for us on the sidewalk, standing in a pool of sunlight. He looked good, as if he’d been scrubbed clean. His cheeks had filled out and had some color in them; his clothes fit better, as if he’d put on some weight. On the walk home, he extolled the virtues of orange juice and told us he finally found an apartment so Fritz and I could spend weekends with him.
In those years, Dad was in rehab or the hospital fairly often— I didn’t always know which. After a serious case of lobar pneumonia landed him in the ICU in 1963, he was prone to that illness, and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day didn’t help. Since he’d returned to New York and Trump Management, his drinking controlled him at least as often as he controlled it.
As far as I knew, Dad had been living in the House since Mom had the locks to the apartment changed, something my grandfather had done at her request—without complaint, for once. Dad had cleared out one side of the attic, set up an army cot, and put a six-inch black-and-white TV on top of his old National Guard trunk, which doubled as a coffee table.
I don’t know why he opted to live in the attic, although, with its southern exposure, it was bigger and more brightly lit than his childhood bedroom—a small, dark, depressing room we called “the Cell.” Being in the attic also made it easier to avoid my grandfather when he was in the House.
Over the course of the next few years, Dad would move back into the House whenever he came out of rehab. If he was well enough, or if my grandfather wasn’t home, he’d join us in the library on Sunday mornings to watch reruns of Abbott and Costello movies on WPIX (Channel 11 in New York City). While we waited for the movie to start, we guessed which one they’d be showing; I always held out hope for Hold That Ghost or The Time of Their Lives.
The television in the library was nestled in the built-in bookcase on the far side of the room, which held little else other than photographs. A solitary chair a few feet away was reserved for my grandmother. By the time “Popcorn,” by Hot Butter, started playing, we had already fought over who would get Gam’s seat, the only one in the room with a good view of the television. Whoever won also got control of the broomstick that Dad had fashioned into a remote control. Gam’s severe osteoporosis landed her in the hospital more frequently than Dad’s own illnesses, and her chair was replaced with a hospital bed whenever she returned from the rehabilitation center where she received her physical therapy. But she couldn’t reach the TV dial, so Dad carved a slit into one end of the broomstick that fit over the raised edge of the channel dial. This way, Gam could change the channel simply by rotating the broomstick one way or the other. We could walk across the room and change it ourselves, but it was so much cooler to be in possession of the broomstick.
My aunt Liz, who usually spent her weekends at the House, often joined us. She and Dad sat together on the love seat by the bay window, separated by the gigantic bowl of popcorn Liz always prepared.
Sometimes my grandfather stepped into the room, but instead of taking his usual place on his love seat by the door, he stood there, hands in the pockets of his suit trousers, bouncing up on the balls of his feet and whistling. He was annoyed at having been displaced, but, though he never joined us, he didn’t kick us out, either.
As soon as Liz saw him, she jumped up, crying, “Oh, Poppy, Poppy!” She grabbed his arm with both hands and asked, “Can I get you anything?” My grandfather stood passively, ignoring her, as if she weren’t even there.
“Poppy?” There was an undercurrent of unrequited longing so deep that even I, at five years old, noticed it. Liz stood on the tips of her toes and strained to kiss her father’s cheek. I had never seen my grandfather do anything physical—he didn’t play sports, he didn’t exercise—but he was very strongly and solidly built. In one swift movement, he spun away from his younger daughter, disentangling himself from her grasp, and left us to the movie while he returned to the glass dining table in the breakfast room to read his newspapers.
This was so different from the gentleness with which my father treated his little sister. Fred clearly had as little interest in his middle child as he had in his oldest son—or me or my brother, for that matter.
As I grew older, our only interactions, apart from our formal greetings (a handshake, a quick kiss on the cheek, “How’s school?” “Fine.” “Getting As?” “Yes.”), were those in which my grandfather offered to buy my hair. I don’t think my grandfather had had a full head of hair since he was a teenager, and he regretted his receding hairline. Both my brother and I had thick blond hair. My brother’s hair was almost white blond, but mine had the advantage of being long, and we both got the same offer. It took a while for me to figure out that my grandfather didn’t really have anything else to say to me, and I suppose I was happy for the attention. This became something of a ritual and I came to expect it, never taking him seriously, until he started taking his wallet out of his pocket to show me the thick wad of hundred-dollar bills he kept in it.
“I don’t think it works that way, Grandpa.”