My responsibility as a writer is to assure people taking a chance in life is the only way to live, and so … I throw the dice.

THE WIND AND THE CHIME   

  

 

The throw of the dice this week lands on the wind and the chime.

At three in the morning the walls of reality merge with dreams, namelessness, restlessness, and an alertness of unspoken needs.    

 

What I think of at three in the morning is never the same at ten o’ clock in the morning.  The labyrinth of safety, colliding with the unknown, seems to be the most innocent of emotions. It is also a time that  springs bright eyed realizations, recognitions, and a time when our mirrors move toward us.  I see my looks fading. All I ever wanted was to see myself as pretty as my mother was.   

 

The wind is sudden as it whips through the spruce tree outside my window.   

I get up and wander downstairs, listening to the wood floors crackle at my footstep.  I walk outdoors onto the back porch.  The wind is like a mirror to me. This sound, so clear and unmixed in Santa Fe,  brings me back to the years in Hollywood. The nights my father went out allowing me the freedom to explore outside. I would run down Doheny Drive to Santa Monica Boulevard and just keep running.  It was on those windy Santa Ana nights that I’d run the longest. 

I was running because the need to express something was bulging through my body.   Back then I didn’t keep a journal at home. My father had discovered it and then questioned me about everything I’d written. 

This night is like that, only I don’t feel like running, I am listening to the sound of the chime and the wind. I am thinking of the music of Charles Lloyd, and the shadows that look like people, and the clouds that appear to have message,  and how everything is different when you are alone.

 

I dine without pause and usually finish before I’ve even wiped my mouth. I have extended conversations with the cats, Bugsy and Alice,  and moments are elongated.  I sit down at the counter and this wind and chime continues to circulate the house. It is an announcement- it is expectant of spring.  I jotted down some notes and knew what I wished to write about today.

 

April is expectant- there is expectancy everywhere you look. The buds on the stark tree limbs are about to bloom, the birds have evacuated their nests and begin singing early in the morning, and insects eject themselves from their hidden corners. I don’t know what spring is like for a man, I’ve never asked any man, but I am going to tell you what spring is like for one woman. 

The essence of spring is sensuous, and for a woman it is an overture.

We strip down the layers of clothing; replacing socks with sandals, and sweaters with t-shirts.  When I hear birds and watch them in the trees, I think of babies, and innocence. There are flowers about to shoot through the heavy clasp of winter dormancy, and when they do, the colors remind me to replace all the black pants and turtlenecks with pastel shades of peach and blue.    

 

The sunlight radiates through my skin and warms every thing. My heart  feels like it has been through a tune up.  My body wants to dowse in sea  water, and to eat less, and to run up canyon road, and listen to music, and dine al fresco, and get pedicures. Men, do notice your woman’s new pedicure, it will make her very happy.  All of this preparation is to tune up the romantic notes,  and to get YOUR ATTENTION. It is time to bring you out of the garage, or wherever you go in spring, and to notice that we are blooming. This is what I felt the night I heard the Charles Lloyd Quartet;  I heard him blooming. 

 

 Surprise us with flowers, a new hat, or a picnic on the banks of the Rio Grande.  Spring is time to redirect your attention to woman because we are at our best in spring.  Our attention is on our surroundings; we will want to buy flowers, and baskets and new cushions for the patio furniture.   We change our lipstick color, comb our hair different, and we look for new ways of expressing how good we feel. 

 

Today I see cherry blossoms in my neighbors’ yard.  They remind me of

a day in April at Golden Gate Park.  Then I feel young again, like I was in the park that day, when I was in love with a man who would prove to be one of the great adventures of my life. 

If you live in Santa Fe then you understand when I say-hurry up spring and start undressing.   

 

“Is there any feeling in a woman stronger than curiosity? Fancy seeing, knowing, touching what one has dreamed about. What would a woman not do for that? Once a woman’s eager curiosity is aroused, she will be guilty of any folly, commit any imprudence, venture upon anything, and recoil from nothing.”

Guy De Maupassant, “An Adventure in Paris.”

 

 

 

  

MARIETTA AND ME

 

  ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS

   The throw of the dice this week lands on the continuation of last weeks, adventures in moving again.

I’d just walked into Jack Taylor’s haberdashery. Jack was looking at from behind his big signature black eye-glass frames; one of the largest frames I’ve ever seen.  He didn’t recognize me right off.

“Jack–it’s Luellen.”  I kissed him on the lips and he smiled.

“How are you?” he said softly.

“I’m good. I was just driving by, and saw your sign. What a place you got here, it’s beautiful.”

“What? I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

“I SAID IT’S A BEAUTIFUL SPACE YOU HAVE HERE!”

“You know how many customers come in off the street?” he     asked.     

“How many?”

“One.In a whole year, one customer.”

“Oh Jack, that’s awful.”

“What? I can’t hear?”

“IT’S AWFUL TO HEAR THAT.”  

“ Look out the window.”  He said. I turned to look, and a young man was passing by. He was hunched over, plugged into an Ipod,  dressed in crotch hugging jeans, a sweatshirt, and lace-up shoes.

“Look at that-no one dresses. They all look like that,” he said.  

“ Jack, they look like that everywhere.”

“Call Bonnie,(his wife)and ask her to come down to the shop.”

I wondered why he didn’t have a hearing aid; knowing Jack, it wasn’t stylish enough. Bonnie got on the phone with me, while Jack sat, staring into his memory through floor to ceiling glass windows.  What separates Jack from all the others is that Jack’s continental suits are custom fit to the customer by Jack, and no one else. His tailors hand stitch each item; with custom lining, handmade bottom holes, and your name woven into the pinstripes.

I remembered back to the summer of 94, when Jack used to fancy-foot around the shop on Camden Drive; calling out orders, answering phones, greeting customers, and yelling at me,

” Luellen, don’t just stand there. For crying out loud, count the suits or something!”  Whenever I went to do something, he shouted, “For crying out loud Luellen, don’t do it like that!” He repeated the same script to me every day for three months. He had a similar script for everyone in the shop. His tailors, some of whom have been there thirty years, shake their heads in frustration and sew. Behind all that shouting and hollering is one of the good guys, a guy who would give you the shirt off his back, a guy from Brooklyn. 

Bonnie, his wife for some fifty years, speaks with a flare born from the genes of an actress. She’s theatrical without being in the business. “Oh Luellen darling–it’s so good to hear your voice. How are you? Did Jack recognize you?”

“Oh yes, right away.” I fibbed.

“I’m surprised. He can’t hear, his eyes are bad, but he won’t leave the shop.”

“Bonny, he said he has no customers. Is that true?”

“Unfortunately, it is. We both thought new customers would come from the second generation, but it didn’t happen, so what can you do? All the old ones are failing or dead. Tell me about you. Are you married?”

Bonnie and I chatted while Jack talked with Soaring Crow. I was looking at Jack the whole time I was on the phone. I noticed the way he raised his brows, and shut-tight smile that resonates a New York edgy resignation. His expressions were so familiar to me from working with him that summer.

“How’s your daughter?” I asked Bonnie.

“She died four years ago.”

I was watching Jack, “Oh Bonnie, I’m so sorry.” Jack’s eyes darted back to me. I promised Bonnie I’d come back and we’d all have dinner. I told her about the memoir and she remarked, “I have lots of stories about your father. He was a character.”   

After I hung up the phone, Jack yelled, “Is Bonnie coming down?”

“No. She’s not up to it right now,” I answered. He pressed his lips into a thin disappointedly accepting line. For twenty years Bonnie worked side by side with Jack. She knew every customer, and made them feel like family. As a young teenager dad used to bring us in the shop. Bonnie always made an effort to be our friend.     

“Look out the window, there’s another one. See what I mean?” Jack said.

“Yes Jack. I do. Listen, I want to thank you for giving me a job that summer. I never had a chance to thank you. It really meant a lot to me.”

He smiled. “I can’t sit here all day and count the birds. What am I gonna do?”

“What do you want to do?” I answered.

 He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you have any hobbies, anything else you like besides suits?”

“I love to paint.”

“Paint?” Well that’s what you should do.”

“Look over there,” he gestured with a heavy arm. On the wall behind me, half a dozen oil paintings were hanging. I noticed one of a young sailor standing next to his ship.

“I really like that one Jack. I think you should paint.”

 “What?”

 “I said, RETIRE AND PAINT.”

He shrugged his shoulders. I kissed him again and he didn’t move from the chair. He needed me to raise him up, close the shop, and lock the door. I would have done it if he was all alone. I wanted to take him back to Santa Fe and place him at the Audubon, and let him paint the swallows.

 I walked out and looked back once. He was staring out the window. I thought about the stories he used to tell, like the time Mickey Cohen came rushing through the shop and dropped a suitcase at Jack’s feet, “Hold onto this until I get back.” Mickey had commanded.

“What was in it Jack?”

“Whatta ya think? Stolen loot. They all used to come through the shop on the way out of Ducker’s Barber Shop.  I couldn’t stop them–they did what they did–I don’t even know what they did, but use my phone all day.”  

After I left Jack, Soaring Crow drove me over Laurel Canyon to meet Marietta, my mother’s friend.  We had just passed Lookout Mountain when I recalled being there. It was painted right before my eyes. Lizzie, one of the wild ones in high school, and I used to drive up there in her British racing green Volvo. She loved going to mountain tops. We’d get high, and lean into the flickering spray of lights imagining all we were missing by beings so darn young. We didn’t know then we weren’t missing anything. We had it all; a big bubbling hot city filled with mysteries, puzzles, romance, and opportunities. Neither one of us had dreams of college and marriage. Lizzie wanted a baby, and I wanted to runaway to a distant splendor in the grass. As Soaring Crow descended the canyon and inched towards Studio city, I glanced over, and noticed a street sign, Sunshine Terrace.

“That’s where Kenny used to live with his parents. I bet his mother is still there.  I’m going to call her.” Kenny was an irreplaceable boyfriend at eighteen, who later became the man who guided me towards writing. He used to shout out loud about how f—g good my poetry was, and how I should be published. Who can let go of a guy like that.  

Kenny’s dad, Bernie the big shot, who everyone tolerated because he was a WWII Nazi military prosecutor, had died years before. You couldn’t butter your bread without Bernie finding something fishy about it. Soaring Crow met Kenny back in the nineties, when Kenny dropped by his house on his way to living in a campsite in Escondido. He stayed a month.      

“Kenny! What a case that one is. You gotta love him. I understand him now. I know why he bailed out of society. I thought he was weird back then.” Soaring Crow chuckled thinking about Ken. He always had a neatly organized backpack, a cigar in his mouth, and carried a little black book with all his notes and phone numbers. He was an herbal tea importer and an inventor of gadgets.    

We drove into the strip center on Ventura Boulevard fifteen minutes early. I called information and got the phone number for Ken’s mother, Anna Marie.

“Hello Anna Maria, it’s Luellen.”

 “Oh Luellen how are you? It’s been a long time.” That was an understatement. It had been thirty years or more.”  Her voice revealed so much. She spoke in long unwavering sentences, and it reminded me of how long-winded Ken could be when he got on his philosophical podium.  She was Austrian and her accent smoothed out the awkward moments.   

“I’ll be 84 this week.”

“Really? Well Happy Birthday.”

“ Oh thank you. I’ve been in this house fifty years.”

“ Wow, that’s amazing. It’s a beautiful house. I always admired your cooking and gardening.”

“ I don’t do much of that anymore.” 

“ How is Ken doing?” I asked.

“ He moved to Guatemala.”

“ Really? When was that?”

“ Five years ago.”

“ Have you seen him lately?”

“Five years ago was the last time.”

“Is he all right?”

“He says he is. But I don’t know. We email, and sometimes he’ll call. I wish he would visit.”

“He couldn’t stand living in Los Angeles, or anywhere in the US.”  I added.

“He lived in Ensenada for years; then he decided to go to Guatemala. It’s so far. He loves the Latin culture. It’s too hot for me. He should come back and visit. I need a little help.”

“What about the other brothers?”

“Rick has cancer.”  

I rolled the rental-car window down and looked through people as they walked by. I didn’t tell her I was around the corner; I couldn’t just stop in and leave five minutes later.   

“I’m so happy you called. I’ll tell Ken when I write to him next time. Are you married?”

“No.”

“Oh well. So nice to hear from you. Come and visit sometime.”

“I will, I promise you I will.” 

As I left the car and headed upstairs to meet Marietta I felt a peck of familiarity with my surroundings. I was standing in front of the Starbucks, where Ken used to call me from when he was in town.

“ I’m over here at Starbucks, what a nightmare, I can’t even find a set a teeth in the place, nobody smiles. I’m telling you Lou, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to me. I got a headache and nothing even happened yet.” I wished he was sitting there, he could make bring hours of non-stop laughter.     

Soaring Crow opened the door to the Daily Grill. Seated on a high stool, next to the hostess, was a strikingly beautiful woman. Her hair was pulled back in a bandana, and fell to her shoulders. Her skin was snow white, with a frosty pink glow and her china blue eyes glistened when she smiled.

“Oh you must be Luellen.  I knew it right away; you look like your mother.”  To be continued next week.

Any dice to throw: Email: folliesls@aol.com

 

 

The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in waiting.   As children, our waiting depended on how long it took Mom and Dad to finish what ever they were doing, and pay attention to our needs.  Waiting wrestled with us, like a high-fever, and we resorted to nudging them, whining, even sobbing, if we were made to wait longer than we expected. During those formative school years, I waited all semester for the summer.   In Los Angeles that meant it was hot enough to go swimming in the ocean.   

When I lived in Hollywood, I rode two buses to get to Santa Monica.  The second bus dropped me off on Ocean Avenue, the parallel street to Palisades Park, and above Santa Monica Beach.   I ran down the ramp that connects to Pacific Coast Highway, and headed north to Sorrento Beach, another long block away, and when I reached the wide flat sands I stumbled in my tennis shoes trying to run in sand so thick it filled my shoes. I slowed down when I found my schoolmates clustered in a caravan of towels, beach chairs, radios, and brown bag lunches. I didn’t just take off to the ocean, I had to sit and talk and have something cold to drink.   The wait lasted until my hair started to frizz, and then when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I ran down to the shore. Limb by limb I let the embrace of the waves, inch higher and higher until I was tumbling inside their grasp, and floating into abandonment.   

        After I moved to New Mexico, I stopped thinking about the ocean.  I had to remove the memories from my thoughts, so I could continue to experience this spark of the world. The dry sage ocean of pink soil, and radiant blue sky that pinches your eyes when you’re driving through sunlight, the warmth of a desert night,  and the white snow on pink adobe.  It has a postcard perfection, even now, with curly brown leaves spread like trash in the streets,  and the trees almost naked, and the dead plants in the garden.  I try not to think of the ocean, the look of the sea from watery suntanned eye lids, or from the bluff at Del Mar, or the splashing of waves around my shoulders as I sink beneath the surface. I waited, like I did as a teenager, for that summer to come, so I could return to the sea. 

            Last week, I stood at the Del Mar seashore; it was like a summer day in August.  Except there were no kids playing ball and screaming, no boom boxes, or the running of the dogs, and no lifeguards  thrashing this part of the beach in their jeeps shouting, ‘ no swimming, no dogs off the leashes, no glassware,  and no surfing.’  They were missing, so were the beach runners, surfers, and wind surfers.  In fact, I was the only one swimming, on that first day at the beach.   Before I went into the water, I reclined on a big black boulder facing the sea, and let my eyes wander the scenes on a Tuesday afternoon. In front of me was an older man with graying hair, reading in a canvas beach chair.   He must be retired, he looked adapt to his spot about five feet from the shoreline.   I thought about that Dennis Hopper commercial, the one on retirement, and how I still cannot come to grips with the idea of spending my days on park benches or in cafes watching younger men and women live. 

            I noticed there was one swimmer on a boogie board. He was far out, and floating along, and I wished I’d brought mine with me, but it was in SC’s van. The last time I used it was when I lived in Solana Beach.  I also wished I had a new bathing suit, because the one I was wearing was busted and the neck straps were tied together in a knot so I could swim without losing my top.   The sun baked my body, and I let it without abeyance, without shading my skin, or wearing a hat, just enough sunscreen to keep the rays from invasion.  I closed my eyes and I opened them, and this is when the waiting business suddenly felt so important, so much so that I began to think about waiting as an aphrodisiac or something, that you have to make last while you wait for that moment that makes you feel immortal, childlike, and senses sharp as a wild animal.   

 I felt the beach flies, and the tang of salt on my lips, and when the seagulls swarmed above the water’s surface, like so many beads of a necklace, I thought,  this is more beautiful, because I WAITED. I didn’t give up on the ocean, or my place in it, or believing that I would have my day in the sand, under a faded denim blue sky, with cotton ball clouds floating above me.  I baked until the sweat drenched my pores, and then I raised myself up, and walked slowly to the edge of the water. It was a flat glassy day, and I felt the first sting of the chilly water on my feet, and then my knees, and then all at once I submerged. I discovered the best way to celebrate the day was to keep flopping backward on top of each wave as it crashed, and I did this for a dozen rounds, until I felt silly and weak, and dented with the surf.   I found that waiting thing again, meant something that I should write about, because all of us were waiting for the election, and the economy to recover, and our real estate to be worth something again, and for me, to be published in hard back with at least three hundred pages.  We are all waiting for this big change so we can feel secure and optimistic about the future.  There is something useful about waiting, something predisposed, that gives us the support and substance we need, so when the waiting is over, and we are all flush with success again, it will feel like the first time, it will overwhelm us with bitter joy, like the ocean.  

 When I left the beach I had enough jubilation bouncing through my body to take the risk of driving by Maurice’s house, the one he left three years ago, when he died under his favorite orange tree.  To be continued next week. Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com 

 

 

ADVENTURES IN UNCERTAINTY

EARLY WINTER

The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in uncertainty. I’m about to have a meltdown, and I’m not afraid. This is for all of you, who like me, are trying to adapt, change, make up your mind, or waiting for a miracle.

The last time I had no direction home was in 1994. I was living in San Diego and was the on-site manager of a townhouse project in the process of condo-conversion.

The phone rang in my apartment, breaking the silence.

“Turn on the A & E channel.” Rudy said.

“What’s on?” I asked.  

“Bugsy Siegel.”

“Are you watching it?”

“Yea! I’ll call you afterward.”

I knew the photographs of Ben slumped on that sofa, eyes bleeding down his face, was what my dad witnessed, from the same sofa. That’s about all my father told me, that he was sitting next to Ben, and that he was his best friend. He told me to honor Ben’s memory for life, and that I should never call him Bugsy. I believed what my father told me because he was always right. What I didn’t know is if my mother knew Ben, and if she loved him as my father did. It was our family secret, his name was not mentioned, but his sister was my Aunt Bess whom I loved. I met Millicent and Barbara, Ben’s daughters, and when we were together, Ben never came up in conversation.  

 When the reporter made the statement that my father was the point man, who conveniently disappeared into the kitchen during the time of the shooting, I was enraged. I wanted to strangle her. But it was when the photograph of my dad appeared on the screen, a man with thick graying hair, that I noticed an expression I’d never seen on his face-fear.

After the show ended, the phone rang.

“Did you see it?” Rudy asked.

“Yea.”

“Your Dad looked so young. Can you even imagine what he went through? Those guys were tough, they fought the entire government. I wish I knew how to do that; you know? Hello, are you there?”

“I’m here. I can’t believe they said he set it up. Dad was forty, the same age as I am now. Should I believe what they said? It’s shameful, it’s worse than what I imagined. He was a  man who murdered. I can’t talk about it anymore. If anyone in the office watched the show they might ask me if I’m related. What would I say? I feel like quitting, and going into hiding.” 

“You shouldn’t be ashamed. They were the original rebels. They made their own rules.”

“I gotta go now, this program gave me some things to think about. I’m learning about my father from television, because he didn’t want me to know anything about his life. What was he hiding?” 

The next day, when I was in my office, the guys were talking over coffee. One of them asked me if I was related to Allen Smiley, and I said, why. He told me he’d seen the documentary and wondered if I was related. I stood there, staring back at him, and intuitively knew I had to admit I was. ‘Don’t have me rubbed out,’ he told his group of agents. They all laughed. I wondered what my father would tell me to say.  “Well, don’t piss me off and I won’t.”  That’s what he’d want me to say, but the formidable shame that exploded was over powering.

By the end of the day, everyone in the office knew who I was, and most of them approached me, with their own censorious commentary about Bugsy, and the Mob. It made me defensive and obstinate. This wouldn’t go away; the office joke would be, Luellen is going to shoot you if you cross her.  

Once my father told me there was no such thing as the Mafia, he was shouting it, his face red as beets, his veins enflamed. I was thirteen at the time, just after my mother died, and it was the first time I was afraid my father would smash my head against a wall. I’d made the mistake of asking him what the Mafia was, after reading about it in The Green Felt Jungle, a book one of my girlfriends had seen. I read my father was a hoodlum, and an associate of Bugsy Siegel.

That night I paced the apartment, giving in to my imagination, and the allegations against Ben. I cursed my father, for dying without giving me answers, and my mother for keeping his secret safe. What I needed was someone to talk to about them, but their friends vanished after they died. I wondered if Millicent was still in Los Angeles and if she’d talk to me. I called information but she wasn’t listed. None of Dad’s friends were ever listed.

When I told Rudy I was leaving my job, he argued with my reasoning. But it wasn’t a shame he could understand, and eventually he agreed. Rudy was an ex-boyfriend, the best type of friend to have, and he was a rebel. My job was ending in a few months any way, when the condos went up for sale.

“ What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?

“One at a time. I don’t know, and I don’t have a clue.”

“Why don’t you go to Florence’s. She’s always asking you to come stay, and I’m sure she’d love your company, especially after the earthquake. You weren’t really happy in San Diego and you’re always talking about going back to Los Angeles.” 

“ Los Angeles is a collision of childhood bliss and death. I feel like a bird whose been thrown from the nest. 

“ Just try it out. If you don’t like it you can stay in the studio until you figure things out.”

I moved to Florence’s because she knew me for many years, and she understood me more than anyone else. I settled upstairs in the extra room, on a convertible sofa. My room looked out to Westwood Boulevard, where I used to transfer buses before going back to my dad’s Hollywood apartment. Where ever I went, something reminded me of the past I tried to forget.

Florence sat me down at the dining room table with a cup of coffee and asked me questions, one after the other, and I had no answers, or I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Why should that program on TV bother you? You knew your father was doing business with these guys.”

“I don’t know anything about Ben! I learned about my Dad from television Florence, okay, it’s a shock. People ask me about it, and I don’t know what to say. Oh yea, my dad was a gangster too.  What do you know about Bugsy?”

“Well, just what I’ve heard. He made Las Vegas, and he was in the Mob.”

“I saw Godfather, I know there is a Mafia but my father wasn’t in it; I know that for certain.”

“Darling, your father was connected, that’s all.”

“To what was he connected, gambling, prostitution, what?”

“Oh stop it! That was not your life anyway. Now just calm down  and we’ll have a good time tonight. You want to rent a movie tonight?”

I hoped she wouldn’t rent a romantic drama because I had none in my life. I was unattached, separated by distrust, and aching to be part of a group. Trust was another boundary; I was taught not to trust anyone.

We lived like two unsteady nervous women do; checking on each other, making lists, and trying to get organized. When Passover arrived, the house overflowed with her children, grandchildren, and chicken matzo ball soup.

During Seder, I had to excuse myself before everyone before they finished because family gatherings splinter me, I fall backwards into my own history and ache for relatives. The unpolished conversations, and mocking, the jokes and communal laughter, it hits me like a tidal wave in the face. Family gatherings were abandoned by the time I was twelve. Florence pleaded for me to stay, but I said I had to write so she let me go.

After I left Florence’s I drove undirected around Los Angeles, like a reporter, stopping and making notes and then continuing on. I drove to Linden Drive, and looked at the house where Ben was murdered.  Then I went to a phone booth, and called UCLA Counseling Center. I didn’t know if I’d hang up, or make an appointment, but I knew the scratch for help was rising up and I could not control it any longer. I was sick of shame and secrecy. To be continued. Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com   

The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in uncertainty. I’m about to have a meltdown, and I’m not afraid. This is for all of you, who like me, are trying to adapt, change, make up your mind, or waiting for a miracle.

The last time I had no direction home was in 1994. I was living in San Diego and was the on-site manager of a townhouse project in the process of condo-conversion.

The phone rang in my apartment, breaking the silence.

“Turn on the A & E channel.” Rudy said.

“What’s on?” I asked.  

“Bugsy Siegel.”

“Are you watching it?”

“Yea! I’ll call you afterward.”

I knew the photographs of Ben slumped on that sofa, eyes bleeding down his face, was what my dad witnessed, from the same sofa. That’s about all my father told me, that he was sitting next to Ben, and that he was his best friend. He told me to honor Ben’s memory for life, and that I should never call him Bugsy. I believed what my father told me because he was always right. What I didn’t know is if my mother knew Ben, and if she loved him as my father did. It was our family secret, his name was not mentioned, but his sister was my Aunt Bess whom I loved. I met Millicent and Barbara, Ben’s daughters, and when we were together, Ben never came up in conversation.  

 When the reporter made the statement that my father was the point man, who conveniently disappeared into the kitchen during the time of the shooting, I was enraged. I wanted to strangle her. But it was when the photograph of my dad appeared on the screen, a man with thick graying hair, that I noticed an expression I’d never seen on his face-fear.

After the show ended, the phone rang.

“Did you see it?” Rudy asked.

“Yea.”

“Your Dad looked so young. Can you even imagine what he went through? Those guys were tough, they fought the entire government. I wish I knew how to do that; you know? Hello, are you there?”

“I’m here. I can’t believe they said he set it up. Dad was forty, the same age as I am now. Should I believe what they said? It’s shameful, it’s worse than what I imagined. He was a  man who murdered. I can’t talk about it anymore. If anyone in the office watched the show they might ask me if I’m related. What would I say? I feel like quitting, and going into hiding.” 

“You shouldn’t be ashamed. They were the original rebels. They made their own rules.”

“I gotta go now, this program gave me some things to think about. I’m learning about my father from television, because he didn’t want me to know anything about his life. What was he hiding?” 

The next day, when I was in my office, the guys were talking over coffee. One of them asked me if I was related to Allen Smiley, and I said, why. He told me he’d seen the documentary and wondered if I was related. I stood there, staring back at him, and intuitively knew I had to admit I was. ‘Don’t have me rubbed out,’ he told his group of agents. They all laughed. I wondered what my father would tell me to say.  “Well, don’t piss me off and I won’t.”  That’s what he’d want me to say, but the formidable shame that exploded was over powering.

By the end of the day, everyone in the office knew who I was, and most of them approached me, with their own censorious commentary about Bugsy, and the Mob. It made me defensive and obstinate. This wouldn’t go away; the office joke would be, Luellen is going to shoot you if you cross her.  

Once my father told me there was no such thing as the Mafia, he was shouting it, his face red as beets, his veins enflamed. I was thirteen at the time, just after my mother died, and it was the first time I was afraid my father would smash my head against a wall. I’d made the mistake of asking him what the Mafia was, after reading about it in The Green Felt Jungle, a book one of my girlfriends had seen. I read my father was a hoodlum, and an associate of Bugsy Siegel.

That night I paced the apartment, giving in to my imagination, and the allegations against Ben. I cursed my father, for dying without giving me answers, and my mother for keeping his secret safe. What I needed was someone to talk to about them, but their friends vanished after they died. I wondered if Millicent was still in Los Angeles and if she’d talk to me. I called information but she wasn’t listed. None of Dad’s friends were ever listed.

When I told Rudy I was leaving my job, he argued with my reasoning. But it wasn’t a shame he could understand, and eventually he agreed. Rudy was an ex-boyfriend, the best type of friend to have, and he was a rebel. My job was ending in a few months any way, when the condos went up for sale.

“ What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?

“One at a time. I don’t know, and I don’t have a clue.”

“Why don’t you go to Florence’s. She’s always asking you to come stay, and I’m sure she’d love your company, especially after the earthquake. You weren’t really happy in San Diego and you’re always talking about going back to Los Angeles.” 

“ Los Angeles is a collision of childhood bliss and death. I feel like a bird whose been thrown from the nest. 

“ Just try it out. If you don’t like it you can stay in the studio until you figure things out.”

I moved to Florence’s because she knew me for many years, and she understood me more than anyone else. I settled upstairs in the extra room, on a convertible sofa. My room looked out to Westwood Boulevard, where I used to transfer buses before going back to my dad’s Hollywood apartment. Where ever I went, something reminded me of the past I tried to forget.

Florence sat me down at the dining room table with a cup of coffee and asked me questions, one after the other, and I had no answers, or I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Why should that program on TV bother you? You knew your father was doing business with these guys.”

“I don’t know anything about Ben! I learned about my Dad from television Florence, okay, it’s a shock. People ask me about it, and I don’t know what to say. Oh yea, my dad was a gangster too.  What do you know about Bugsy?”

“Well, just what I’ve heard. He made Las Vegas, and he was in the Mob.”

“I saw Godfather, I know there is a Mafia but my father wasn’t in it; I know that for certain.”

“Darling, your father was connected, that’s all.”

“To what was he connected, gambling, prostitution, what?”

“Oh stop it! That was not your life anyway. Now just calm down  and we’ll have a good time tonight. You want to rent a movie tonight?”

I hoped she wouldn’t rent a romantic drama because I had none in my life. I was unattached, separated by distrust, and aching to be part of a group. Trust was another boundary; I was taught not to trust anyone.

We lived like two unsteady nervous women do; checking on each other, making lists, and trying to get organized. When Passover arrived, the house overflowed with her children, grandchildren, and chicken matzo ball soup.

During Seder, I had to excuse myself before everyone before they finished because family gatherings splinter me, I fall backwards into my own history and ache for relatives. The unpolished conversations, and mocking, the jokes and communal laughter, it hits me like a tidal wave in the face. Family gatherings were abandoned by the time I was twelve. Florence pleaded for me to stay, but I said I had to write so she let me go.

After I left Florence’s I drove undirected around Los Angeles, like a reporter, stopping and making notes and then continuing on. I drove to Linden Drive, and looked at the house where Ben was murdered.  Then I went to a phone booth, and called UCLA Counseling Center. I didn’t know if I’d hang up, or make an appointment, but I knew the scratch for help was rising up and I could not control it any longer. I was sick of shame and secrecy. To be continued. Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com