arrows came fast.
“Aren’t you a married man? Still married to your wife? Don’t you have children? Are you leaving your wife? Who is supporting your wife and children?”
It went on like that until Arnie grew defensive and angry and walked out.
I confronted my father at the front door, wailing.
“How could you? How could you treat him like that?”
God knows what else I said, for my father slapped me hard acrossthe face. It was the first time in my life he had ever touched me in anger, and it hurt me and made its impression.
• • •
A fterward, I moved with Arnie into a second-floor walk-up in the Seventies on Third Avenue, above a bakery. To see their child—and at twenty-four, I was still a child to them—leave their home for the first time, with a thirty-six-year-old, white-haired man on his third marriage, not divorced, with three children? A Communist writer who couldn’t earn a living? They could not have dreamt a more tragic scenario, for themselves, for me. For all the advantages given me, the time, the love, yes, the money, the everything. Then this betrayal. This stealing of their child, their star. I was a big success on Broadway, written about, photographed in
Vogue
. My mother’s dream come true turned into a total and unexpected nightmare by my choice to love Arnie. As for Arnie having a clue as to how I was raised? None, and he never asked. At the time, leaving my parents’ apartment and moving in with him, I was still too much a part of my own past, still rebelling against my parents, to have any sense of how differently I was raised, or how absurdly—how spoiled, romanticized, focused on, petted, and worshipped I was. To me, that was normal.
Somewhere along the line, I did sense that I was to make my parents very proud. My father would have been content with a well-to-do, educated, conventional son-in-law and grandchildren who would perpetuate the Rosenthal bloodline. My mother wanted a star. Dance, song, acting, a child who would carry her longings to ultimate fulfillment.
• • •
I loved playing house. I loved being Mommy. Cooking. Laundry. I loved having an instant family.
My parents couldn’t conceive of how wanted this made me feel, how needy an only daughter can be for freedom, to be the girl boss of her own family, with her own money, such as it was.
I felt liberated. All these new responsibilities, these little boys, liberated me. I loved my new life. It all clicked into place.
On weekends Tommy, four, and Mikey, two, would visit. I’d run to our neighbor on the floor below to learn how to cook spaghetti with tomato sauce. I’d run to her to learn where the Laundromat was and how to use it. I bought a sewing machine, yards of fluffy green material, and made a really ugly fitted bedspread. I sweated through the summer; our apartment was above a bakery. The best thing about living there was the divine smell of bread baking in the early morning.
• • •
O ne morning my father appeared at our apartment. His left hand never left his coat pocket. I know he had either a gun or a knife and was there to kill Arnie. His face was as white as paper, his eyes, very pale blue, fixed. He was saying nothing, his eyes never left Arnie, he kept moving in on him wherever Arnie went—we were in the kitchen of the floor-through, we were between the stairs and the stove. I never stopped talking: “Please, please, please, Dad, please, Dad, go, please don’t do anything, please, I’m fine, please, please—”
Arnie just stared him down; his contempt for my father defeated my dad. Arnie shrank him, and he left. I cried for my dad. For his love. For his lifelong principles and manhood that had been dealt such a painful, shattering blow, that he felt he wasn’t man enough to save his child.
Abraham Rosenthal’s child, Witia’s child, Lyova, was now a blacklisted actress, living with a married blacklisted writer with three children from two prior
“Aren’t you a married man? Still married to your wife? Don’t you have children? Are you leaving your wife? Who is supporting your wife and children?”
It went on like that until Arnie grew defensive and angry and walked out.
I confronted my father at the front door, wailing.
“How could you? How could you treat him like that?”
God knows what else I said, for my father slapped me hard acrossthe face. It was the first time in my life he had ever touched me in anger, and it hurt me and made its impression.
• • •
A fterward, I moved with Arnie into a second-floor walk-up in the Seventies on Third Avenue, above a bakery. To see their child—and at twenty-four, I was still a child to them—leave their home for the first time, with a thirty-six-year-old, white-haired man on his third marriage, not divorced, with three children? A Communist writer who couldn’t earn a living? They could not have dreamt a more tragic scenario, for themselves, for me. For all the advantages given me, the time, the love, yes, the money, the everything. Then this betrayal. This stealing of their child, their star. I was a big success on Broadway, written about, photographed in
Vogue
. My mother’s dream come true turned into a total and unexpected nightmare by my choice to love Arnie. As for Arnie having a clue as to how I was raised? None, and he never asked. At the time, leaving my parents’ apartment and moving in with him, I was still too much a part of my own past, still rebelling against my parents, to have any sense of how differently I was raised, or how absurdly—how spoiled, romanticized, focused on, petted, and worshipped I was. To me, that was normal.
Somewhere along the line, I did sense that I was to make my parents very proud. My father would have been content with a well-to-do, educated, conventional son-in-law and grandchildren who would perpetuate the Rosenthal bloodline. My mother wanted a star. Dance, song, acting, a child who would carry her longings to ultimate fulfillment.
• • •
I loved playing house. I loved being Mommy. Cooking. Laundry. I loved having an instant family.
My parents couldn’t conceive of how wanted this made me feel, how needy an only daughter can be for freedom, to be the girl boss of her own family, with her own money, such as it was.
I felt liberated. All these new responsibilities, these little boys, liberated me. I loved my new life. It all clicked into place.
On weekends Tommy, four, and Mikey, two, would visit. I’d run to our neighbor on the floor below to learn how to cook spaghetti with tomato sauce. I’d run to her to learn where the Laundromat was and how to use it. I bought a sewing machine, yards of fluffy green material, and made a really ugly fitted bedspread. I sweated through the summer; our apartment was above a bakery. The best thing about living there was the divine smell of bread baking in the early morning.
• • •
O ne morning my father appeared at our apartment. His left hand never left his coat pocket. I know he had either a gun or a knife and was there to kill Arnie. His face was as white as paper, his eyes, very pale blue, fixed. He was saying nothing, his eyes never left Arnie, he kept moving in on him wherever Arnie went—we were in the kitchen of the floor-through, we were between the stairs and the stove. I never stopped talking: “Please, please, please, Dad, please, Dad, go, please don’t do anything, please, I’m fine, please, please—”
Arnie just stared him down; his contempt for my father defeated my dad. Arnie shrank him, and he left. I cried for my dad. For his love. For his lifelong principles and manhood that had been dealt such a painful, shattering blow, that he felt he wasn’t man enough to save his child.
Abraham Rosenthal’s child, Witia’s child, Lyova, was now a blacklisted actress, living with a married blacklisted writer with three children from two prior
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