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 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
