700 Sundays (6 page)

This little guy has caused problems for men throughout history. The great Thomas Jefferson had affairs. His boyhood friend Strom Thurmond—same thing. Kennedy, Eisenhower, Clinton . . . all men of power, and the power went right to their pants. Even FDR fooled around. This I don’t understand. Because if you have a chance to screw Eleanor Roosevelt every night of the week, where you going? A great woman, without a doubt, but not really a “hottie.” He actually faked being paralyzed so he wouldn’t have to have sex with her. He wasn’t only frightened of fear itself, he was frightened of that overbite. Now I had the same problem, right in the palm of my hand.

I was so horny. I was always ready. My glands were relentless. They were screaming at me.

NOW, NOW, NOW!

And I was ready for anything that looked hump-able. A bagel.

NOW!

It was poppy-seeded, I almost shredded myself to death.

A 45 RPM record.

NOW!

To this day I can’t look Lesley Gore in the eye.

NOW, NOW, NOW!

And then I saw The Girl.

NOW!

This wasn’t lust.

BULLSHIT!

No, it wasn’t. This was something different. This was love.

COME ON, YOU’RE TALKING TO ME NOW!

I fell in love with this adorable blond girl. First love. The kind of love that actually hurts. She was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. I knew what head-over-heels meant because I kept tripping and falling when I would follow her home from school.

THIS IS SO FUCKING BORING!

Finally, I got up enough nerve to ask her out and she said yes.

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

My first date. Panic. I walked to her house. (Driving was still years away.) She lived in Lido Beach, not far from the Nike missile beach. A perfect image for my condition. I was so nervous I couldn’t remember where she lived.

MAKE A LEFT!

It was the first global positioning system.

YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION!

Leave me alone!

NEVER! I OWN YOU!

I got to the door, I started to knock and I heard something that scared the hell out of me.

LET ME RING THE BELL!

I didn’t know what to do, I just stood there frozen.

FORGET IT. I’LL KNOCK!

And if they hadn’t cut off the top six to eight inches, I would have leveled the place . . .

So now we start going out, and it was the first time I made out with somebody in a movie theater, in the balcony of the Laurel Theatre in Long Beach.

NOW!

Then in the back seat of a friend’s car . . .

NOW!

Oh, she was Miss Right . . .

NOW!

And I got up enough nerve and I said, “You know what? I love you, I really do . . . Let’s go steady.”

“Oh, no, Billy I can’t do that. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to go out with you anymore. I really just like you as a friend.”

OH NO!

“Really?”

“I mean, I like you, but not in that way . . .”

“Uh-huh . . .” I understand. (But my glands don’t.)

WHAT ABOUT ME?

CHAPTER 8

T
he rejection was too much to take. The first time out, and you open yourself up to someone. You tell somebody that you care about them, you tell somebody how you feel about them, and they say, “I just don’t like you.” That hurts. I was mad. I was embarrassed. I felt like a fool. I was fifteen, and I was ready to settle down, and have a family. It felt so right, how could I have been so wrong? Why didn’t she like me? I couldn’t see straight for days. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. I didn’t think about anything else but The Girl. It was a Tuesday night . . .

October 15, 1963. I was sitting at the kitchen table studying for a chemistry test in the morning, and I didn’t give a shit. I had just lost The Girl. Who cared about chemistry? Was chemistry ever going to be important in my life? No. Was I ever going to need chemistry? No. I knew what I was going to be. I didn’t need chemistry. Was anyone ever going to say to me, “Billy, what’s lead?” And I wouldn’t hesitate and look him right in the eye and proudly say, “Pb.”

“Yes, it is, Bill. Yes, it is. Here’s a million dollars.”

That was never going to happen. And every time I’d turn the page of the chemistry book, I’d see The Girl’s face.

My parents came into the kitchen to say goodbye. They were on their way out to their Tuesday night bowling league at Long Beach Bowl. They loved bowling with their friends. They had so much fun doing it. And frankly, this was pretty much the only fun that they were having now because times had changed for us, and not for the better.

The Commodore Music Shop had closed a few years earlier. It couldn’t keep up with the discount record places that were springing up around Manhattan. That big Sam Goody’s by the Chrysler Building opened, and our little store was right across the street, and Goody’s just swallowed us up like a whale and a minnow. All those decades of great music and musicians and laughs and legends were gone, in the name of progress.
The New York Times
did a front-page story on the closing with a picture of Dad and Uncle Milt, Henry “Red” Allen, and Eddie Condon, playing one last riff in the now empty store. “Man, this is the end of an era,” they wrote.

And the bands that I loved, the music of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Sidney Bechet, Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, Conrad Janis and the Tailgaters, and all the others, were replaced now by the Duprees, the Earls, the Shirelles and the Beach Boys. These original American jazz giants, the men, and women, who gave birth to all the rest of our music, were now reduced to playing outside ballparks with garters on their sleeves, wearing straw hats.

My dad now was fifty-four years old, and he was scared. With Joel and Rip away at college, he was out of a job. Oh, he did the sessions on Friday and Saturday nights, but he gave most of that money to the musicians to keep them going. Dad was also closing down the Commodore label, working out of the pressing plant in Yonkers. It was so sad to see him struggle this way. Nobody wanted to hear this music anymore.

Sundays weren’t fun that summer. Joel, Rip and I would go to the plant to help him box up the very last Commodore album, a Lester Young re-issue. The newly pressed records came down a conveyer belt, we put them in their jackets, then sealed them in plastic, put them in cartons, then into the trunk of the Belvedere, and delivered them ourselves to record stores. It was tough.

Dad was exhausted, and sad. Jazz was his best friend, and it was dying, and he knew he couldn’t save it. One day, a man came to the house, and Pop sold him his personal complete set of Commodore originals. I think he got $500 for them. And as the man took them away . . . It was the only time I ever saw my father cry.

That August, Dad was suffering from double vision in one of his eyes. They decided to put him in the hospital to run some tests. I don’t remember him even having a cold, so this felt very threatening. We stood in the driveway as Mom and Dad walked to the Belvedere, which was parked on the street, his small suitcase in one hand, his other arm around her. He wore a patch over the bad eye, and when they got to the car, Dad stopped and handed Mom the keys, sheepishly opened the passenger door and got in. He let her drive. I knew something bad was going to happen.

When he walked into the kitchen that October night, he looked worried. He looked upset. And when he saw me pining away for The Girl, he looked mad. We had just finished a month of Sundays together. With my brothers away at college, I didn’t have to share him. It was just the two of us for the first time . . .

There was one Sunday I remember in particular. It was October 6 of 1963. On that black and white TV set, we watched Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers sweep the Yankees in the 1963 World Series. I was so depressed. I couldn’t believe it, sitting there and watching Koufax and Drysdale and Maury Wills celebrate their four-game “dis-Mantling” of the Yankees. “Dad, I can’t believe this. How could the Yankees lose four straight?”

And he said, “Don’t worry about it. It will never happen again.”

But that night in the kitchen, as I blankly stared at my chemistry book, he started yelling at me.

“Billy, look at you. Look at you. You’re going to have to get your grades up. You’d better study because I can’t afford to send you to school. That’s how it’s going to work, kid. You understand? You get your grades up, maybe get some sort of scholarship or something, and you’re going to go. Don’t you understand what’s happening here? I don’t know how I’m going to be able to send Joel and Rip anymore. You’re going to have to get some sort of scholarship or something.” He continued, the intensity in his voice growing.

“Look at you moping around. This is all because of that goddamn girl, isn’t it?”

I snapped, “What the hell do you know?”

It flew out of my mouth. I never spoke to him like that. Ever. He looked at me, rage in his eyes. I was scared, didn’t know what to do. I froze. He was quiet now, the words measured . . .

“Don’t talk to me like that, please.”

And they left.

I felt awful. Oh, why did I say that? I ran after him to apologize, but they were in the car and gone before I could get there. I came back to the kitchen thinking, okay, calm down, they’ll be home around 11:30, quarter to twelve. I’ll apologize then, and maybe he’d help me study for this test. This whole thing was because of The Girl. I studied for another thirty minutes or so staring at the chemistry book. “That’s it. That’s all,” I said to myself as I shut the book, knowing I was going to take it on the chin. I went to my room in the back. And before I got into bed, I closed the door, but not all the way. I don’t like the dark. I left a little bit of light from the hallway coming through, and I fell asleep.

I was startled by the sound of the front door opening, and I looked at the clock, and it was 11:30, just like always, and I could hear Mom coming down the hallway toward the back of the house, where the bedrooms were, and just like always, she was hysterical laughing . . . or so I thought. I was still waking up, when I realized she wasn’t laughing at all. She was crying . . . and it got louder and louder and
louder
and LOUDER and
LOUDER
and
LOUDER
.

The door flew open. The light blinded me, further confusing me, and she was on me in a second.

“Billy, Billy, Daddy’s gone. Daddy’s gone. Daddy’s gone.”

Uncle Danny was with her. They spoke at the same time, but I only heard one thing.

“Dad’s gone, kid. He didn’t have a chance.”

“Daddy’s gone.”

“Dad is dead.”

“Daddy’s dead.”

“Dad is dead.”

I didn’t know what they were talking about. I was so confused. I thought they were talking about their father. I said, “Grandpa died?”

Mom held my face tenderly and she said, “Billy, no. Listen to me. Listen to me. Darling. Dad had a heart attack at the bowling alley and he didn’t make it. They tried to save him, and they couldn’t. He’s gone. He died there, Billy. He didn’t come home with me. He’s gone. Daddy’s gone.”

She sat down on the bed next to me, and I put my arm around her. And the first thing I said to her was, “Mom, I will always take care of you, always.”

Then she looked at me, her red eyes glistening and said, simply, “Oh, Billy . . .” And she laid her head on my shoulder.

“I’ve got to call Joel. I’ve got to call Rip and tell them. Billy, how am I going to tell them that Dad’s gone? How am I going to tell them? Help me find the words. Get dressed. Your uncles are coming over. It’s going to be a long night. We’ve got a lot of planning to do. I’m sorry this happened, darling. I’m just so sorry.”

She kissed my cheek and she held me for a few seconds. I could feel her warm tears on my cheek, some of them cascading down my face and falling on my thigh. She and Danny left, leaving me alone in the room. I looked in the mirror, and I didn’t see a kid anymore. It was as if someone had handed me a boulder, a huge boulder that I would have to carry around for the rest of my life.

I went to the dining room. Her brothers, my uncles, were there, Milt, Danny, Barney. We all held hands with Mom trying to make sense out of what had just happened to us, just an hour before.

And the confusion was heightened by the red lobster scope spinning on the roof of the police car, which had pulled up in front of the house. The red light was flying around the living room, bouncing off the large mirror that was over the couch, and before I knew it, there was a police officer in the house. We never had a cop in the house before. It’s scary. Big guy in a blue uniform with a big gun. The sound of his leather boots on the living room floor.

He took off his hat, and I remember feeling surprised that he was bald. He kept apologizing for the timing of all of this. As he walked over to us, he got bigger and bigger. He stood right above me, the red light dancing behind him, and he handed me a manila envelope.

“What’s this?”

“That’s your dad’s belongings, son. I’m sorry.”

I opened it up, and it was simply his baseball hat, his wedding ring, his watch and his wallet. A man’s whole life in a manila envelope?

I had never held his wallet before, never. When you’re a kid, you never get money from your dad. You always get money from your mom. “Mom, I need money.”

“My purse is there, dear. Take what you want.”

A father never said, “Here’s my wallet. Take what you want.”

And I opened it for the very first time. It was simply his driver’s license and pictures of us. His wallet, dark brown leather, worn on the edges, was like some sort of holy book. I had never seen these photos of us before. Joel, Rip and I, from different times in our lives, carefully assembled. The last one was a simple photo of Mom, around the time they met—young, beautiful, timeless. I closed it, and never opened it again.

Ceil Weinstein lived next door. There was a hedge between the two homes about six feet high and four feet wide, so you very rarely saw Ceil, but you always heard her. She was a big woman with a very shrill voice and a laugh like an electrical storm, except now she was frightened.

“Helen, what is a police car doing out there? Is everything okay? Why are the police there?”

“Ceil, it’s the worst news. Jack died tonight. He had a heart attack at the bowling alley and they couldn’t save him. He’s gone. He’s gone. Jack is gone.”

Her anguished voice stabbed through the fall night.

“No, Helen. No, no. Who’s going to take Billy to the ballgames?”

Uncle Milt stayed in my room with me that night. He slept in Rip’s bed. Rip and I always shared that back room. I never had my own room, until I started going out on the road after I got married . . . Uncle Milt was great that night. He took charge, taking care of his sister, helping her make all the funeral arrangements. I remember feeling a little awkward as he undressed. I mean, on the night you’re told your father is gone, the last thing you want to see is your chubby uncle in his boxer shorts. We talked all night, the moonlight trickling through the window, giving Milt a blue tint as he reassured me he would always be there for me.