A Willful Child

The Parties and the Music …they were pretty decent drunks, my dad and George—which is to say, they never got into fights with each other. The two of them usually started drinking in the kitchen while my mother and Betty would get “made up” for their Friday evening. My mother perched in front of the maple dresser, pulling on her nylon stockings, carefully adjusting the seams, blotting the blue-red lipstick on toilet paper, tucking stray ends of auburn hair with black hair pins. Laughing and gossiping, she took her time deciding what jewelry to wear, holding up various earrings, turning her head this way and that, while Betty, using the Maybelline brush, gave careful attention to her dark eyebrows. I’d lie on the bed watching them and listening to their stories and the clinking of ice in their glasses; the combined smell of Seagrams 7, Tabu Perfume and cigarette smoke filling my ten year old imagination about what it meant to be a grown-up woman. By the time my mother and Betty joined the men, the Seagrams and 7 Up had worked its magic. If their Friday night party was upstairs, they’d pull the Victrola into the glassed-in living room, get out the 78’s and move the furniture back against the one wall. George and Betty were so glad to have some private time, away from George’s wife, they’d be draped around each other, half dancing to Vaughn Monroe, while my dad would try to persuade my mother to dance or he’d just sing along and soft-shoe with the Mills Brothers. After a couple more drinks, my mother, who always needed to be the center of attention, would get a little loud, and she was never too embarrassed in front of George or Betty to accost my father with various complaints of the day. Sometimes it was the run-of-the-mill “you never” variety. “You never wipe your feet and I’m always cleaning up after you.” Or, “You never did go visit my mother when she was sick.” But there were many times when Friday night fights got more serious. “You never take me anywhere! You and George, always running around together. What’s the matter, ain’t I good enough to be seen with you?” Her tone of voice was sharp and mean but never shrill, and my father would try to soothe her with stone denial. “Aw, Melba, you know that’s not true.” It seldom worked. George would try to distract her—and protect my dad—by telling a joke or by trying to get her to sing one of her favorite songs. If he succeeded, we were all lucky, because hell raisin’ was her forte. Mother had an untrained but beautiful, husky voice and could sometimes be flattered into an a cappella version of one of her favorites. See the pyramids along the Nile. Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle….You belong to me. Or she might even do a Charleston to the ever-favorite oldie, If you knew Suzy like I know Suzy. Oh, oh, oh, what a gal! Temperamental and insecure, rail thin, beautiful and fragile, she was the lightning rod around which everything revolved in our house. As their Friday night parties wore on, my brother and I’d be sent to bed, but there was no escaping the music. The drunker they got, the louder the Victrola and the louder their voices. From my bedroom, I also could hear the music from the dance hall downstairs. I’d lie in bed watching the occasional headlight strike the limestone cutaways and hear both Dance, Ballerina, Dance from the living room and, from downstairs, Lefty Frizzell singing. I love you sooo much, it hurts me…Darlin’ that’s why I’m so blue. I’m afraid to go to sleep at night, Afraid of losing you. Half asleep, I’d wonder about the customers downstairs and who might be playing the jukebox. Was it that sailor from Omar, in full uniform, home on leave, who told me all about his travels around the world? Was he sitting on the bar stool playing those songs for me? One night, long after I’d fallen off to sleep, my father woke me, dragged off the covers, and told me to get up, that my favorite opera singer, Caruso himself, was downstairs and had come just to sing for me. I rolled over and mumbled something about leaving me alone, knowing they were all really drunk by now and I didn’t want to be part of whatever it was that was going on. Not to be deterred, and counting on my love of Caruso, my father picked me up, carried me downstairs and put me on the lap of a heavy, slightly tipsy stranger sitting near the coal stove in the dance hall. In my pajamas, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I squirmed uneasily, looking around the room to see what was going on. Then the stranger began to sing, and for a few moments, I was transported. I thought it was Caruso come back from the dead. I was as thrilled as I was scared, feeling the rise and fall of his large chest, and hearing live, in person, someone singing Vesti La Giubba from Pagliacci. I knew the aria from the scratchy album my dad and I sometimes listened to, and here was this stranger singing it just for me. I must have fallen asleep in his arms, as the next thing I knew it was morning, and I was lying there in my bed trying to piece together the events of the night before, trying to separate dreams from reality.