Old Books, Rare Friends Read online

  My father, a most musical gentleman, acquired a pianola in 1915. Many Sundays the family was summoned—my mother’s sisters and brothers and their offspring—to a musical recital performed by my father. Envisioning himself as Paderewski’s understudy, he dressed in a cutaway coat, striped trousers, a wing collar, and an ascot adorned with a pearl stickpin, and solemnly sat at the pianola “playing” the Moonlight Sonata or a Chopin waltz. The children, stiff in white starched dresses or suits, were not permitted a single beep. We were compelled to listen to Daddy adjusting the levers of the pianola, pressing on the pedals, emoting effusively. At the end, the adults applauded the performance and congratulated the performer. The children raced out of the room and released their pent-up energy in a pillow fight. Usually on Mondays, after Daddy had left the roll in the pianola, Adolph Jr. played it back, pressing his foot on the pedal and awaiting the clack, clack, clack of the finale, when the roll wound itself up. It was not unusual for my father to enter at just that moment, grab his firstborn by the ear, and plant a swift slap on his left cheek. Of course, he never hit his sweet Leonchen.

  On other Sundays, all of us, joined by my mother’s brother Max, his wife, Amy, and their daughter, Marion, two years my junior, climbed into Daddy’s Ford to visit Mother’s family in faraway Ridgewood, New Jersey. Our mothers commanded Marion and me to sit down simultaneously, smoothing our stiffly starched white skirts to avoid any possible creases. While our mothers and we were squeezed into the back seat, Adolph Jr. was placed on a small collapsible chair that rolled around constantly. The car crossed the great Hudson River on the ferry—probably one of the most exciting events of my childhood. Always there was an Italian singer on board who carried on his shoulder a little monkey, dressed in a short red velvet jacket and a cocked pageboy hat. While his master wandered around the many cars, the monkey held out a tambourine, into which pennies were tossed. Upon our reaching the dangerous Jersey shore, Daddy’s Ford inevitably suffered a flat tire, calling forth a handpump to pump the tire, midst Daddy’s fulminations against his wife’s verdammte family and the entire State of New Jersey. When we’d finally reach Ridgewood, we were always received with love, good food, a field to walk, and gardens to play in.

  Indoors, my grandmother, my parents, my aunts and uncles gathered to play whist. My mother, arrayed in a much admired new costume, always kept score. Her costume had been produced by my mother’s dressmaker, Mary Walsh Conroy. There was a huge tribe of seamstresses who paid house visits in those days before mass-produced retail apparel. Mary Conroy was one of the personalities in my early background. The third Friday of every month was devoted to her visit. Miss Conroy was a large, heavyset woman with a white powdery face. Her bosom was ensconced in a tight-fitting pink cotton blouse; her full pleated skirt would not have recommended itself to the atelier of Coco Chanel. She arrived before lunch and remained for the rest of the day, executing Butterick patterns with elaborations by my mother. She also designed my dresses, which I utterly detested, preferring the gaudy ginghams hanging from racks in Hearn’s or Adams Flanigan department stores.

  “Tand till!” Miss Conroy commanded, a row of straight pins protruding like sentinels from her mouth. “Stand still,” my mother interpreted, “while Conroy pins your hem.” Deftly, Conroy extricated pin after pin from her mouth and inserted it in my skirt.

  I learned what Catholic meant from Conroy when I asked my mother why we always had fish when Conroy came. “Miss Conroy is Catholic, darling,” my mother explained, “and we will conform to the demands of her faith.” “But we eat fish, and we’re Jewish!”

  Conroy dominated the lunch conversation, embroidering upon the exploits of her family, especially her brother James Michael, a policeman posted in the nearby Bathgate section. “Do you know that Jim caught two Eye-talian fellers stealing oranges from a peddler!” And she added, with her particular brand of prejudice, “We should stop the Eye-talian immigration.” Frankly, I was more interested in brother Jim’s two daughters, the twins Jeanne Frances and Margaret Cecile. “You wouldn’t believe those two girls are twins. Margaret Cecile has the most beautiful long blond curls,” Conroy remarked, eyeing my straight brown hair sympathetically. “Jeanne Frances has gorgeous black hair and sings like an angel.” During one visit I remember Miss Conroy coughing so hard at lunch she nearly choked, then pulling a fishbone out of her mouth with the same dexterity with which she extracted straight pins. Without missing a beat, she helped herself to a large portion of apple pie and commented, “My sister-in-law Maureen uses Flako crust for her lemon meringue.” At this point Daddy, slightly red in the face, excused himself. “I think patients are waiting for me in the office,” though no office bell had rung.

  At his departure Adolph Jr. produced from a matchbox his small pet, Jonathan, a turtle, which he placed on the tablecloth. Miss Conroy gasped. Jonathan scarcely moved, retiring to his shell. He too was overwhelmed by my mother’s couturiere. At this point Mother interjected, “Adolphschen, take that creature off the table and get ready for school, young man, and be sure to take your sister’s hand.”

  Once outside the house, Adolphschen—known to his school-friends as Rusty because of his flaming red hair—adjusted his skates, threw his books, tied in a red leather strap, in my direction—“Here, shrimp, carry them!”—and sailed off. I trudged slowly behind. By the time I got to school, Rusty was engaged in a fistfight with his former friend, Shorty Williams.

  Adolph Jr. never took my hand, never took me across the street. At the big crossing at Webster Avenue he raced ahead, looking for one of his many pals. And so it was that my mother’s dream of brotherly protection for me never became a reality.

  As we grew older, I became aware of my parents’ consultations and their growing excitement about finally owning their own house. One day my mother said, “Darling, I am going to show you our new home. It is like a palace.” And so we walked across Tremont Avenue from our rented house, up the hill to the Grand Concourse. One block west of the Concourse my mother showed me the new house. I had expected a palace like one of King Arthur’s; I had expected crenelated walls and a high tower. I turned to her and remarked, “Oh, how you exaggerate.”

  It was in fact a lovely house of fourteen rooms, porches downstairs and upstairs, and I had a large room all my own, while across the corridor Adolph Jr. resided with his pets and his chemistry set. Amazingly enough, ours was one of only three houses on the street. Beyond were the fields, and when I went to school my mother cautioned me, “I do not want you to walk through the fields to school. Rather, walk on the Concourse.” In those dim days the Bronx had not yet developed. It was a borough of private homes, gardens, and fields, a peaceful community. And yet even then my mother feared that in its fields might lurk a kidnapper or perhaps a rapist. Sensing her concern, I obeyed her.

  By 1918 the peace was finally proclaimed by the shrill cries of newsboys with their “Extra! Extra!” Our housekeeper, Honora Eliot Macdonald, hailed the end of World War I with her victory hurrah: “Now let’s kill the Kaiser!” Honora had a special distinction—she had six toes on her right foot. When I sought comfort from Honora after I had stubbed a toe, she confided in me, “Just think, honey, it would have been worse for me. I have six toes.” I forgot my pain and asked, “Can I see them?” That evening when I visited her room, she displayed her extra digit. I looked closely, both fascinated and revolted. I did not ask to see it again.

  As a child at P.S. 28 I had been imbued with an overwhelming love of country. At assembly we sang “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and “Hail Columbia,” concluding with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Every day we pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the Republic for which it stands. The school walls were adorned with portraits of our illustrious presidents—Washington, Lincoln, and the incumbent, Warren Gamaliel Harding.

  In 1921, when I was twelve, we spent the summer at Jackson, New Hampshire, and one of the great events of my early youth took place. A guest at the hotel, having advis
ed my mother and aunt that the President of the United States was visiting nearby Crawford Notch, said he would be glad to drive the children over to meet their glorious leader. My cousin Marion and I were selected for the honor, and lo and behold, we saw, standing on a porch in Crawford Notch, the leader of the United States, President Harding.

  The President smiled at us benignly as we cocked our cameras in his direction. As usual, I placed my hand in front of the lens, prompting Mr. Harding to step down and address me: “Little girl, that’s not the way to take a picture. You must remove your hand from the lens.” I was in a state of ecstasy. The President of the United States had addressed me personally. During this benevolent scene the Fox Movietone News had filmed the great Mr. Harding instructing a little girl. Now, feeling a close personal relationship with the President, I trailed right, after him when he strolled onto the golf links. A member of the Secret Service promptly intervened. “Little girl, you cannot follow the President onto the golf course.” “But I am a close friend of the President,” I retorted at the ripe old age of twelve. To no avail. Our close relationship had been cut short.

  Nonetheless, my patriotic fervor had been thoroughly roused and I could not wait to report the event to my mother. “I saw the President and I’m in the movies!” I cried. Immediately my mother, almost as thrilled as I, telephoned the news to my father. As a result, he spent three successive nights in a hot unair-conditioned movie, hoping for a sight of his younger child amid the crowds. Finally he was rewarded and saw the benevolent Mr. Harding instructing little Leona in the photographic arts. It did not matter at all to him that Fox Movietone News had filmed little Leona with her back to the camera.

  We spent the following summer abroad. My father had preceded us in order to take advance courses in dermatology offered at the University of Berlin medical school. My recollections of that trip are filled with churches, a few museums, and olfactory sensations. Being a Prohibition child, I was unaccustomed to the pervasive smell of beer and spirits with which all of Germany was redolent. When I returned home and was asked for my impressions of Europe, I replied, “It just smells different.” People were interested in my reactions, since travel abroad for a middle-class family was uncommon. Actually we traveled first class aboard the Hamburg-American liner the Resolute, probably an extravagant plunge, though I can’t see my darling aristocratic mother traveling any other way.

  The following summer proved quite a different challenge. By then I was fourteen, extremely short, extremely shy, turning inward to my books and my literary endeavors. After reading “Evangeline” and “Miles Standish,” I wrote a lengthy epic entitled “Peter van Dennsler,” largely stolen from Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Around the same time my parents gave me a birthday gift of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women series, each book bound in brown cloth. I devoured the novels one after the other, although I wrote no epic as a result. I had few friends outside the pages of my books. Disturbed by my excessive shyness, my mother took action and decided to send me to camp, where I would perforce mingle with my contemporaries. In my mind it would be a question of sink or swim.

  The camp she selected, first and foremost, was one that fulfilled her social ambitions. I was the only camper from the Bronx, the only camper who did not attend private school, and the only camper whose clothes did not come from the paragon of children’s fashions, De Pinna. I did not, at the time, know whether De Pinna was a statesman, a rare African animal, or a far-off country. I only knew that I had never heard of it, whatever it was, and was caught up short. Frankly, I was an anomaly in a camp of snobbish children, all of whom came from Manhattan and aped their mothers’ every move. Nonetheless, my status as an oddity ensured a certain notoriety, and much to my surprise I found myself among the popular. They called me Peanut and elected me mascot of the Brown Team. Knowing very little about basketball, I stated with confidence that I played side center, but was readily forgiven when I could not follow the rules of the game. As the summer progressed I found I had many friends, and my shyness evaporated. The three years I would spend at Camp Kearsage on Lake Sebago in the State of Maine would somehow prepare me for the rough-and-tumble of Bronx high school life.

  Madeleine FOR ME, LIFE BEGAN IN A seven-story apartment building on Lenox Avenue and 126th Street in Harlem, opposite Mrs. Hempel’s boarding house. There on a hot summer day in 1912—probably on the kitchen table—I was born. My parents already had a son, now nearly ten years old. My mother had been cautioned against another childbirth and doubtless went through agonies when, at age forty, she learned she was pregnant again. Although I was certainly not planned, I was warmly welcomed—a little girl, and the first in all the family for a long time.

  I never stopped feeling the welcome. In fact, I felt as if I was the fulcrum, the raison d’être, for the Harlem quartet. I felt far more important than I was, of course, but it gave a warmth to everything during my first decade. There was always a loving mother waiting for me when I came home, always a loving father to twirl me in his arms when he came back from his wholesale liquor business and met me on the street. As for my brother, Leonard, he was kind and sweet in an offhand way. He was remote—another generation really—and would become more remote as the years passed.

  My father, Moses R. Stern, had been born to German Jewish émigré parents. They had emigrated, as my mother’s parents had, during the early 1850s in the tide of German Jews who left their native land after the failure of the 1848 Revolution in Europe. They came for the freedom and economic security they felt they had lost. My father’s parents settled in Hartford, Connecticut, as my mother’s parents settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, both cities with sizable German Jewish populations.

  My father’s family remained in Hartford and my father remained a Yankee even after he became a New Yorker. He never lost his Yankee accent or his sense of humor. He was about ten years older than my mother—about fifty—and, to me, elderly in contrast to the parents of my friends. Yet he understood children and had a way with them. On Sunday mornings he took me sledding or to the lake in Central Park for ice skating, which he taught me, or to the Museum of Natural History. Later, he also took me to Sunday School, though he never, as far as I know, attended any temple service. He was a believer, especially in the hereafter, but never an observant Jew. He enjoyed me as I enjoyed him.

  My father met my mother, Lillie Mack, in a bowling club in 1901, when bowling, like cycling, was a popular pastime for men and women, and they were married in 1902. My mother was a woman of extraordinary wisdom and understanding. She had graduated from Normal College—later renamed Hunter College—and as long as she lived she would be the auditor and perceptive critic of everything I wrote. She could also turn out the best apple pie in America with a minimum of effort. She was a twin, and her family, named Mack, moved to New York when she was six months old. The story was that my grandmother had decided she would rather be a lamppost in New York than the mayor of Cincinnati (a feeling I heartily concur with). Both families—my mother’s and my father’s—were comfortable though not wealthy, and had much in common.

  After my parents’ marriage they settled near my maternal grandmother in Harlem, in an area I would frequently explore with my father. After dinner he would take me for what he called a constitutional, along the glittering highway that was 125th Street. There we would pass the well-lit shops, stop to watch a glassblower at work, glance at the great Alhambra Theatre, home of vaudeville performances; occasionally he bought me a bag of “plantations”—chewy chocolate-covered molasses candies—at Loft’s. Harlem, not yet headed for its decline, had begun as the garden spot of Manhattan. Its array of brownstones, each with a well-kept garden, fronted quiet streets where lampposts were lit at dusk by lamplighters. Nearby shopkeepers knew their customers personally. The neighborhood seemed devoted to families, greenery, serenity. The only apartment house was the one where we lived, at 101 West 126th Street, on the corner of Lenox Avenue.

  On the same street, at Number 133, my grandmoth
er lived, a very old lady who suffered from a long-lasting and mysterious ailment and always wore black. Her illness had begun, I gathered, when her dearly loved husband—my grandfather—died, and it manifested itself in a refusal to eat and an inability to sleep. She lived with an unmarried son (my mother’s twin) and an unmarried daughter, who must have been sore tried. From me she was always totally withdrawn. For the most part I paid her little attention and would scurry out to the backyard to ride the swing as high as I could. Once, with childish devilment, I hid in a closet and suddenly sprang out at her, but even then she demonstrated only the mildest consternation. She died when I was five, and on that day my mother said to me, “Just for today I’d like you to try to be quiet.” My unfeeling response was “Do all the other kids in the street have to be quiet today?”

  My Aunt Clara, wife of my mother’s older brother Will, was another matter altogether. A stout, comfortable woman, she was a wonderful listener and she provided me with the most enthusiastic audience I have ever enjoyed. When I was a little girl my mother underwent an operation at Roosevelt Hospital, and during that time I stayed with my aunt and uncle, who lived in the neighborhood. For me it was an enchanted time. It included a celebration for my sixth birthday, so exciting and so filled with gifts that when the glorious day ended all I could say was “How will I ever do tomorrow without this day?”

  One of the gifts, from my mother’s cousin, was what I called my treasure chest. It was a brown box divided into a dozen compartments, in each of which was a selection of stationery supplies. There were paper clips and cards and keyrings; there were labels and rubberbands and pen nibs; there was everything a writer could dream of, and perhaps I fancied myself a writer even then. I kept that box for years, cherishing it.

  One day during my “vacation” at Aunt Clara’s, my father took me to see my mother in the hospital. She seemed very high up on her bed, so high that I thought she was elevated near the ceiling, and she looked down upon me with a loving smile but seemed very far away, and I was momentarily frightened. Then I was asked to recite a poem to entertain her, and, omitting the customary curtsey that preceded such performances, I stood near her bed and recited a comic ballad I had memorized entitled “Epaminondas.” Years later I would learn that Epaminondas was an early Theban general, but there was nothing at all about any Theban general in my poem. My Epaminondas was a little boy who had all sorts of comic adventures. My mother was moved, not to laughter, but to a feeble smile. And my father grinned.