The Ten Best Days of My Life (10 page)

She stands there and looks up at me like she's sorry, with the tips of her ears bent over.

“Well, look who it is,” I say to her. “I feel so fortunate that you could spend some of your precious time with me.”

She jumps up on my lap and starts licking my face.

“I'm sorry, too,” I say, petting her.

I grab a box of éclairs from the fridge, and Peaches and I head into the den to watch TV. I turn it to my favorite heaven channel, Your Favorite Television Episodes.
I Love Lucy
is on, the one where Lucy tries to tell Ricky she's pregnant with Little Ricky. My fave episode, of course. I watch my favorite
Mary Tyler Moore
episode next, the one where Rhoda brings Henry Winkler to Mary's house for a dinner party and Mary doesn't have a place for Henry, or enough veal Prince Orloff. Henry has to sit at a table by himself, at the window, while everyone else has a seat at the dinner table. What a crack-up. I start to get a little tired in the middle of my favorite
Brady Bunch
episode, the one with Davy Jones. Love that. Somewhere in the middle of my favorite
Taxi
episode (the gang tries to get Jim his driver's license), I've fallen asleep. I wake up a few hours later. It's the middle of the night. Peaches is still there beside me. My stirring wakes her up.

“Thanks for being here, buddy,” I tell her.

She rests her head on my stomach as we both fall back to sleep.

Maybe you only need one friend on earth, but in heaven I need all the friends I can get.

3

Back on earth, I had five proud names beyond my own. I was:

Bill Dorenfield's daughter (that was my middle name, Alex “Bill Dorenfield's Daughter” Dorenfield, as you can imagine, but that's not important for this particular “best day” chapter)

Maxine Dorenfield's daughter

Evelyn Firestein's granddaughter

Harry Firestein's granddaughter

Morris Salis's niece

I'm pretty sure you're aware of my grandparents and my uncle. Everyone knows my grandparents and uncle. On earth, even after they'd been gone from the planet for some twenty years, in certain situations, I was still referred to as Evelyn Firestein 's granddaughter or Harry Firestein's daughter or Morris Salis's niece. I always loved when someone would come up to me and say, “Aren't you Evelyn Firestein's granddaughter? What a great lady she was.”

I always loved that.

See, while I had a nice amount of friends, my family had truckloads. They ruled the social world of Philadelphia. I cannot remember a time at any of their homes when the phone wasn't ringing, except of course when someone was on it, which was always.

My father used to tease my mom when she'd be on the phone all night.

“It's inherited,” he'd laugh. “Between your mother and grandmother, the phone company will never go out of business.”

It was true though. When I envision my grandmother, I see her sitting by the yellow phone on the wall in her kitchen, talking until all hours about who was wearing what to the party (and what were they thinking) and the plans for dinner and trips to the Jersey Shore. There were always invitations to events, whether they were weddings or bar mitzvahs or charity this and benefit that, plastered on my grandparents' refrigerator. uncle Morris, who lived right next door to my grandparents, either always had a date or could be found at the neighborhood watering hole with his crowd of perpetual bachelors.

And there was always a dance.

My grandparents loved to dance. Even when they'd babysit, the record player would be turned on at some point in the night and there they were mamboing or rumbaing or doing a simple two-step. They were really good dancers, too. Everyone who ever knew my grandparents and uncle knew they were great dancers.

The last piece of Super 8 home-movie footage that we have of my grandparents is a short segment of Grandpop dancing with Grandmom in our kitchen. The movie cuts, and my Grandpop is then dancing with my mom and uncle Morris is dancing with my grandmother. Then four- or five-year-old me runs into the frame and I'm dancing with Grandmom and Grandpop, and Grandpop picks me up in his arms as we all do a two- or, rather, three-step. I don't remember this movie being shot; I assume it's my dad filming since he's the only one who's not in it. There's no sound on the footage, but everyone is talking into the camera, smiling, making funny faces. I used to look at it when I was down. It was only about three minutes in length, but that was all I ever needed. It always brought me back to that time when Grandmom and Grandpop and uncle Morris were still alive and life in my family was at its simplest. These were party people and the party was nonstop.

I wish I could use that whole time with my grandparents and uncle as my third best day. Next to Penelope, they were my best friends (though I don't count them in the friends category since they were related). No one in my life was ever as close to me or understood me better than those three people. Until I was twelve, it felt like my family life was nonstop laughter.

Now, as I told you, the miracle child was not to be trusted with a babysitter, so everyone took turns babysitting for me. It was a rotation thing. One Saturday night my grandparents would babysit, the next uncle Morris. As I told you in my second best day, there were bridge games to be played and movies to be watched, so my parents were rarely home on a Saturday night.

The others were always at our house though. Saturday nights were the most special, but truthfully there was rarely a day that I did not see my grandparents and uncle. My mom told me that when she first got married, my dad got so sick and tired of her family always being there that he told her to tell my grandmother to stop coming around so much. (Knowing my dad, it's interesting that he had my mother tell my grandmother. I think . . . no, I know, my grandmother was the only person in the world he was intimidated by.)

“You tell him that when he married you, he married the family!” Grandmom told my mom.

When my mom told my dad, he said nothing. My grandmother never had to say anything ever again. He knew the consequences of marrying the pretty Maxine Elaine.

I used to call uncle Morris my Santa Claus. Whenever I saw uncle Morris, he always had a gift for me, and I'm talking about seeing him almost every day. It could have been anything from Life Savers Pep-O-Mint candies to a life-size Raggedy Ann doll (who married my FAO Schwarz giraffe in a simple ceremony that I officiated and was attended by all the Dorenfield/Firestein /Salises when I was eight).

uncle Morris had a liquor store at 2301 South Broad Street in South Philadelphia. It was said that when Prohibition was over, he was one of the first to get a liquor license. No one knew how. I should remind myself to ask him sometime. I felt that uncle Morris had this secret life that no one knew about. Like I told you, he never got married because he felt he needed to take care of my grandmother and her sisters after my grandparents died. When my grandmother's sisters all died, Grandmom would say, “I can take care of myself. Get yourself a girl already, Morris!” He was like eighty at this point.

He never did though. I saw pictures in his albums of him out on dates with different women, but he just never married. To him nothing got in the way of taking care of the family. I admire that, don't you?

During World War II, uncle Morris made sure my grandmother got stockings and my mom got bubblegum (both were hard to come by at that time). When cashmere sweaters were all the rage in the 1950s, my mother had six. He was our Santa Claus.

So, now that you know the ins and outs of the Firestein/Salis clan, you can tell that they were really special people.

Like I said, I wish I could give you a bunch of different days, but since I can't, I'll give you the last one I remember (and if you're keeping track, the third best day of this essay).

I should mention something before I start though. Both my grandparents and uncle had heart issues. They weren't huge problems, mind you. Nothing that probably couldn't have been prevented with a good diet and exercise (of which there was none except the occasional dance). I just remember none of them eating salt in those last years. Nothing in their homes had salt in it. You don't really realize how much flavor salt brings to a meal until it's taken away, and when it was, dinners at my grandparents' house were never the same. Corn without salty butter or potatoes without salt, ugh. There was no more brisket marinated in ketchup or kosher legs and thighs of chicken full of brine or matzo ball soup with extra cubes of bouillon to make it thicker or even a slab of butter on an onion bagel. From then on it was egg whites with wheat toast, and dry white-meat chicken and fish that tasted like nothing. That was the only thing, though, that was noticeable through my eleven-year-old eyes, and I wasn't necessarily pissed off about it, it's just what was. Grandmom would ask if I wanted salt, but I wouldn't have any part of it when I was at their house. The thought of generously pouring the white taste sensation on anything and everything made me feel bad, like a slap in the face, because I could have it and they couldn't. So I stayed away from it, too. Oh, that, and Grandmom had to wear this bandage on her arm. It was like this big Band-Aid patch that she wore above her elbow. I asked her what it was, if she had fallen or something, and she said it had glycerin in it, medicine to make her feel better. How a patch of medicine on her arm could have made her feel better, I didn't know at the time, but I found out later in life.

Everything, though, was normal in our family. There was no stink made about the patch or the salt. Maybe there was, it just wasn't in front of me—don't upset the miracle child—but I can't remember that there was ever any cause for alarm.

Anyway, that's all you really need to know about that.

So, the last time I can remember all of us being together, the show
Annie
had come to Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre and I was psyched as psyched could be. We were going to make a party out of it. Penelope was allowed to come, and I was allowed to pick the restaurant. First I picked Murray's Deli. I was always a cabbage borscht fanatic, but Grandmom said, “I can make you better cabbage borscht at home. Pick a better place.” So I picked Benihana.

“With all that salt in the food?” Grandmom complained. “You can do better.”

So I picked a place that I knew she loved.

“How about Bookbinder's?” I said, trying to please her.

“That's a great idea!” she said, hugging me. “You are the smartest girl in the world.”

Bookbinder's, if you don't know, is a very famous seafood place in Philly. It's been around for like a million years. My grandparents and uncle went there when they were younger; so did my parents. It's an old standby. It's got everything anyone would want, even if you don't want salt in your food.

The best thing about the place is their strawberry shortcake, the second main reason I picked it, other than my grandmother coaxing me to go there.

We all got dressed up for the theater that night: Grandmom, Mom, and Penelope and me, in dresses; Daddy, Grandpop, and uncle Morris in suits. Grandmom always said that when you go to the theater, “You must dress nice so you can pay respect to the people on stage doing their job.” She even called Pen's mom to make sure she wore a dress. Whenever I go to New York to see a show, I still dress up (or at least I did). It pisses me off that people don't get dressed up for the theater anymore. It's so sad. I'm the only one dressed up when I go (or used to).

Back at Bookbinder's, I had the snapper soup, which is something that Bookbinder's is famous for. Pen had the fried shrimp and we split french fries (without salt so Grandmom could pick a few). I don't remember what my grandparents and uncle got, but I'm sure it had no salt in it.

Everyone talked at the same time in my family, and this particular night was no exception. I actually never even noticed it until Penelope pointed it out that night. When she said it, though, I could suddenly see it was like a blanket of words thrown up into the air and directed to anyone who wanted to comment on it.

“It's like a secret language your family has,” she said at the time.

How could Pen not hear what everyone was saying? Mom and Grandmom talked about the latest gossip, and Daddy broke in occasionally and said, “You're out of your mind, Evelyn, Mort Gainsburgh is not cheating on Sylvia.” Daddy and Grandpop talked about the Phillies, and uncle Morris broke in, “Harry, you're crazy, the Phillies have a major advantage over Detroit in Mike Schmidt.” uncle Morris talked to the bar about their liquor stock, and Mom would break in, “Morris, is that the vodka you had me try last week? It was great.” And there were people in the restaurant to say hello to, a lot of people. That was something that always happened. Whenever all of us were out, people came over to the table nonstop to say hello.

“It's Carol and Richard!” Grandmom would shout out as Carol and Richard ran over to the table to say hello and talk about the Philadelphia gossip of the day.

“It wouldn't be a Saturday night if Evvie and Harry Firestein weren't out on the town,” Ruth and Lou Goldman would announc as they came over to our table.

“Bill Dorenfield,” some lesser real estate guy would announce, coming to the table. “We were just talking about your Spruce Street project the other day.”

That was how it always was. I ignored everyone (but heard everything) and talked to Pen and ate my snapper soup as the parade of people went by. Occasionally, someone would refer to me. “Look how pretty she is, just like her mother,” Ruth Goldman would say, but I'd just keep to myself and crack an embarrassed smile at Pen.