CHAPTER 1
"Your mother's had a stroke. Come right away." It wasa Sunday afternoon in March when Ellie, my thenninety-year-old father, called to tell me that my mother,Gladys, eighty-five, was in critical condition and in theintensive care ward at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs,California. My wife, Julie, our two and a half-year-old son,Michael, and I jumped into our car and raced the two hoursto the hospital from our home in Los Angeles. While Julieparked the car, Michael and I hurried in, just in time to catchthe last wave of my mother's hand to her grandson and me,her youngest child. My mother's eyes focused on us for a fewseconds before she lapsed into unconsciousness and, withina few weeks, her death. I knew that she had waited for us andonly wondered whether she was telling us hello on our wayin or waving good-bye on her way out. But, unknown to meat the time, her death and its aftermath would rule my lifefor the next six years.
Even though my parents had been married for more thansixty-one years, my father's grief was amazingly short-lived.He was completely over it in a couple of days. When I saidI missed her, he'd respond with a detached "Well, she wasyour mother." When Julie commented on how well liked mymother was, he replied, "Well, she kissed everybody, didn'tshe?" It was definitely strange, but I felt that, since he'd neverbeen alone before, his survival mechanism might be kickingin. Still, I had flashbacks of meeting them for lunch not longbefore and noticing that they were holding hands.
At the time that my mother died, my own family was inthe process of a major job change and relocation from LA toSan Francisco. I felt bad about leaving my father alone, andwanting to take care of him in the short time I had left beforeleaving Southern California, my wife, son, and I moved inwith him, sleeping on a huge air mattress in the middle ofhis living room. It was a very difficult time for us—job stressplus relocation stress was now compounded by the deathof my mother. Julie and I were constantly on edge, arguingfrequently, and our attempt to save money by sleeping on thefloor of my father's small apartment suddenly seemed utterlyludicrous.
About a week after we arrived, Julie and I were woken upin the middle of the night to see my father, dressed only inhis underwear, pacing back and forth between the kitchenand his bedroom. He repeatedly swore, "Fucking whore!" and"That no-good dirty son of a bitch!"
I didn't know what was going on, but then I suddenlyrealized that—oh my God—he was talking about my mother!He cursed her and every member of her family—past, present,and future. Julie and I were frozen in place. We finally turnedto look at each other, but we were both too stunned to say,or do, anything.
Ellie had no idea we were awake because, in his mind, hewas whispering. My father was severely hearing impaired formuch of his life, and his whisper constituted anybody else'sscream. He kept repeating, "Fucking whore," and, "Let themall drop dead!" for over an hour, until he finally went back tobed. I stared at the ceiling, glad that Michael was still asleep,and debated whether or not I should have confronted myfather. But I wondered whether, in the end, it was any of mybusiness.
When he continued his angry diatribe into the next day,I had no choice. I thought, Maybe he's in shock and is angryabout being left alone. But I was in mourning, trying toprocess my mother's death, and I couldn't take his unendingnegativity. He was watching a baseball game in the den andmumbling endless profanities about my mother, her sister,and even my grandmother when I confronted him: "Thinkwhatever you want to think, old man, but don't ever say itout loud again."
He began to mount a feeble protest but then stopped andpaused for a long moment. Still staring at the television, hesaid, "All right ... I don't know ... maybe I was just a flop inbed!"
I was too shocked and embarrassed to say anything.
My mother was a great beauty with natural white-blondehair and blueeyes and possessed of anaffectionate nature, whilemy father, though nothandsome, had moneyand style. They werehuge fans of Hollywoodmovies and movie starsand lived as if they were areal Hollywood couple—expensiveclothes, thebest restaurants, and a house in one of the toniest areas ofLong Island. Once, when my brother and I were little boys, wewere on vacation in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and gatheringin the lobby of our hotel for a formal dinner.
A woman and her husband approached my mother andsaid, "We're so sorry to bother you, Miss Turner, but ... maywe have your autograph?"
They actually thought that my mother was glamorousHollywood star Lana Turner! Before my totally surprisedmother could answer, my father took her arm, led her away, andsaid to the couple, "Miss Turner doesn't sign autographs."
Ellie wasn't a tolerant or patient person. During thecultural revolution of the '60s, our house was a majorbattleground—my older brother, Gary, and rock and roll onone side and my parents very firmly planted on the other.
One day in the late '50s, my then teenaged brother repeatedlyplayed the '45 recording of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" foran entire afternoon. After a few unheeded warnings to stop,Ellie went into his room, picked up the record, and smashedit to pieces over the edge of the desk, saying, "Get that niggermusic outta here!"
My father's volatile personality and corporal punishmentmethods inspired far more fear than love. Ellie was volcanicand hot-tempered and, at his middle-aged peak, was built likea bull—about five foot eightand over two hundred andten pounds. When he wasmad, he'd hit us in the bodywith an open backhand,correctly thinking that if hehit us in the face, he'dprobably kill us. He'd say,"You're lucky! My fatherwould've murdered me."
Although he'd brag toother people about his sonsand their accomplishments,he rarely expressed affectiondirectly to my brother or me. To him, the congratulations oftoday weren't nearly as important as his expectations of usfor tomorrow.
Notifying friends and family of my mother's passing wasa strange walk down memory lane. Even the smell of theircrumbling address book was a sense memory of my mother'smothballs and cedar blocks. The pages contained the namesand numbers for everything from veterinarians for pets longdead to family and friends from yesteryear. Some recalledfond memories of great characters and good times, whileothers reminded me of my parent's stories of insults, hurtfeelings, and misunderstandings. It contained the names oflong-forgotten people from my own past—old girlfriendswhere, in the prehistoric days before cell phones, I mightbe reached. I saw the names of so many people I'd forgottenabout whom, at the time, I'd cared so much about.
At one point, I reached an old couple in Connecticut thathad been my parents' friends for many years. When the ladyasked me how my father was doing, I said that he was doingsurprisingly well and was already intent on getting on withhis own life. "Well, that doesn't surprise me," she said. "Youknow, I don't think they ever really loved each other. I'msure you understand, given all the things that had happenedbetween them."
I had no idea what she was talking about, and for onemillisecond, my curiosity threatened to overwhelm me. But Ididn't want to take the bait and replied, "I just called to let youknow that my mother is gone. Take care and good luck."
I hung up and recalled my father's profane late-night rant.But the bottom line was that I was older now, and I knew howthe game was played. I didn't feel the need to know the gorydetails because, for me, our family history had already beenwritten a long time ago.
Ellie wasn't a very sensitive guy. My mother put up witha lot, and it wasn't hard for me to feel sympathy for her,someone who might have had to look for love and pleasureelsewhere. I grew up in a swank but small house on LongIsland, and I was a reluctant witness to the fact that theirlovemaking lasted for no more than a minute or two.
I once saw my father hit my mother. I was about threeyears old or so when I went to check what all the screamingwas about. I saw his raised arm come down on her, but I wasa little too young to fully comprehend what was going on.
The next day, I asked my mother how she got "those blackand blue marks" on her arm, and she bitterly replied, "Yourfather ... who else?"
Even though I was very young, I could immediately tellthat she was sorry that she had said it. She tried to cover upher slip, but it was too late.
Money was my father's currency of affection. He was BigDaddy the Family Banker, and he let it roll. He was, for sure,a big spender—top hotels, expensive restaurants, the wholenine yards. Though my mother never had to work, she alsonever learned how to drive and was wholly dependent on myfather. From my perspective, Ellie wanted us to fear him, justas he had feared his own father, an old-school Russian whotook no prisoners.
My father was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1911, theson of horse thieves and hustlers who arrived here from Russiaby way of South Africa. During a horse-and-buggy ride fromLong Island back to Brooklyn in about 1918 or so, my fatherand grandfather stopped near a field of grazing horses. Mygrandfather took a long look, pointed to a horse, and said,"That horse is blind." My father, already experienced withhorses, looked the horse over and said, "He's not blind, Pop.He looks fine." To prove his point, my grandfather approachedthe rancher who was standing nearby and asked, "Is thathorse for sale?" He didn't want the horse; he just wanted tosee what the rancher would say. "Oh, you wouldn't want thatone," the rancher said. "He's blind in one eye." When they gotback in the buggy, my grandfather looked at my incredulousfather and said, "How do you think I knew which horses tosteal?"
Ellie's Brooklyn home was, by today's tight urbanstandards, a small farm. Built in 1915 by my grandfather at acost of about eight thousand dollars, a pretty penny in thosedays, it was a giant brick Victorian on a corner lot and set onalmost half an acre. Ellie, the youngest of four brothers andone sister, grew up in a yard filled with ducks, chickens, geese,goats, and even the occasional cow or two. He was last in thepecking order of an Old World family, where you spoke onlywhen spoken to and the punishment for stepping out of linewas swift and severe.
My grandfather was a successful salesman who, like myfather, made and spent a lot of money. All his children hadcars, clothes, and cash when that was only for the very rich.When my father met my mother through mutual friends, hewas twenty-nine and my mother was twenty-four. Accordingto my father, it was my maternal grandmother who stronglyencouraged them to get married. Though I saw some affectionbetween my mother and father, I never got the sense thatthis was any kind of fairy-tale love. For whatever reasons, heharbored lifelong and oft-stated resentments of my motherand her family.
Always a good provider, Ellie sold things on the blackmarket—I have no idea what—during WWII before becominga successful lingerie salesman. He never liked his name,which was unusual for a man. In school, they called him Elior Elias, which he hated, so he tried on names like peoplechange their underwear. At various times while growingup, I'd see mail for Allan Legon, Eli Legomsky (our Russianfamily name), Elias Legon, Allan Legion, and a few othersI can't remember. His given name was Elias, though in hisYiddish-speaking household it was always Elya (pronouncedEL-YAH), and he spoke Brooklynese, Yiddish, and Profanitywith great fluency.
My brother, Gary, got to California from his home in thesouth of France a couple of days after my mother had herstroke. When he arrived at the hospital, I jumped up from mymother's bedside to give him a big hug. But we actually hadn'tspoken to each other in over ten years. A lifetime's worth ofresidual bitterness, anger, and resentment had, for both of us,built itself into an insurmountable barrier. Whether real orimagined, bad timing and long-simmering undercurrents hadcreated a miasma of hurt feelings.
A decade before my mother had her stroke, we'd had amajor blowout, during which I'd said, "Screw you," to him,and he'd said, "Screw you," to me. That was the bottom line,and our estrangement had continued right up until thatmoment.
My relationship with my brother was, is, and always willbe complicated.
Gary had already been king of the castle for seven yearsby the time I was born, and I think I might have been anunwanted interloper. I was far too young to be the friendand ally that he needed in his quest for 1960s-style teenindependence, so his solution was to try and make me intoa good soldier. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at being asoldier and was too young and immature to appreciate hismajor good points—an already sizable intellect and a maturetaste in clothes, food, art, and music.
He was, and still is, willful and strong-minded, and whenI was young, he absolutely scared the pants off me. By thetime I was only four or five, he was already beginning his"war" with my parents. After my father broke "Tutti Frutti"in half, Gary gave me a look that asked, Whose side are youon? and said, "Just remember—I am cool; they are not."
Even though ten years had gone by, we picked up rightwhere we left off with the kind of shorthand only siblingsknow. In the sitcom of my mind, I see myself as the eight-year-oldof yesteryear, while he's still the fifteen-year-old boyknown around our house as The General—only, in my mind,dressed something like George C. Scott in Patton.
The past was at least temporarily forgotten as Gary,forever logical and dispassionate, tried to rally the sad-sacktroops he found. "She might come out of it," he'd say, thoughwe both knew that probably wouldn't be the case.
My parents never made plans for anything. They were sosuperstitious about their passing that they thought, if theyever made out a will, they'd just keel over and die on thespot. They never discussed with Gary and I how one of themmight live as a surviving spouse, and quite honestly, neitherof us ever thought that my father would survive my motheranyway. She was easy, pleasant, and much more relaxed, sowhy worry? He'd never outlive her ... right?
Only a few days after her stroke, the hospital called andtold us that my mother had to be moved to a full-care facility.I was surprised—why so quickly? I met with the doctor, andhe let me have it with a sledgehammer; she had to go becauseher stroke was massive, and they could do absolutely nothingfurther for her. His words sounded like a death sentence tome. I felt like I was in a Fellini movie—everyone's mouths keptmoving, but I couldn't hear any sounds coming out.
I had no family to help me with Ellie. Gary was leaving forFrance within the next few weeks, and he made it absolutelyclear that there was no chance he was going to put any timeor energy into our father. In truth, over the years, they'dalmost never seen eye to eye on anything.
Once, when Gary was home from college, my parentshosted a Passover dinner. In attendance were my mother'ssister, Evelyn, and her husband, Harry; my maternalgrandmother, Betty; and her third husband (very risqué inthose days), Jack. During a discussion over dinner about thepopular culture of the day (a hot-button topic in 1964), eighty-year-oldJack said that the Beatles were "crap."
My brother replied, "You don't know what you're talkingabout."
My father stepped in and said, "Apologize to yourgrandfather!"
Gary replied, "He's not my grandfather."
Ellie jumped to his feet and bellowed, "Apologize, I say!"
As my brother stood up to walk away from the table, myfather took a swing at him. Gary fended it off and startedbackpedaling with my father in full pursuit.
"Stop!" screamed my mother, chasing after them.
"Ellie, you'll kill him!" yelled my aunt Evelyn, who wasrunning behind my mother.
Gary continued backpedaling through the house andfending off the blows.
During this insanity, while they were backpedaling, Istepped in and tried to stop them (I was about twelve), but myfather pushed me down on the couch. "Get out of the way,"he growled; he was busy going after bigger game.
When things settled down a short time later, my motherand I visited Gary in his room. As he sat there staring blanklyat the wall he said, "I'm never coming back as long as he'shere."
