Dad, Mom and Me, 1955
The slam of dad’s 1957 Chevy Impala door was as unmistakable
as it was substantial. Then, the creaking and roiling of our heavy wooden garage
door on Gilbert Street in Mt. Airy at 7PM each night, precisely signaled that
dad was home.
Always next came the odd sound, and smell if it was summer,
as he sequentially gunned and stunned the engine of that massive Impala to coax
it up the short, steep angle of the driveway, halting it precisely within an
inch at both the front and back of the tight garage, gingerly centering it in
order to squeeze and sidle himself out of that automotive shoe box. But my
father, Jake, was an urban cowboy, and he could maneuver anything.
My blood quickened, heart pounding, love and anticipation
pouring from my entire eight-year-old self, at the subsequent thud of the
garage door, the back screen door squeak, the key click, and most reassuringly,
his leather-soled wing tips tapping and rapping across our concrete basement
floor, then thunking up the wooden back stairway into my waiting squeal,
“Daddy’s home!”
The sounds of my father. I’d once again beheld his nightly
corralling of the Impala. I was safe for yet another night. “Suselah! How’s my
girl?” he would inevitably retort as he hoisted me into his sinewy arms, the
waft of a cigar sweet as grass on his lips.
***
One night in the summer of 1958, mid July, the garage door
didn’t groan nor the Impala gun at its fixed 7PM schedule. It was July 11th,
a week after our annual family gathering at Jardel Park in the Near Northeast.
That night summer twilight mingled with the pale flicker of our
substantial RCA television console screen, bathing the living room with an
eerie light. Normally by now I would have been outside playing Dishpan, Red Rover, Dodge Ball, or
one of countless other summer ‘block’ games having greeted daddy and watching
him settle down for his dinner before bolting out.
But he hadn’t returned, and so I held an indoor vigil,
suffering the stifling inside air as our house slowly gathered humidity. The
evening was already Philly sticky, the cross breeze from the open back dining
room window and the front door barely stirring the clamminess, my small body
seeping nervous moisture in anticipation of daddy’s return.
As always, my mother, Emma, chain-smoked Kool’s from her throne
– the wide chair edged tight next to our upright Mirror Piano along the stairway wall. I’d worn a furrow in our bold
cerulean and crimson Persian carpet by racing back and forth to the kitchen
window, straining for any sign of dad’s return. I was now perched on the
painful nylon frieze upholstery of
our turquoise sectional, nursing my tender thighs, tattooed and imprinted by
its rough, tough, scratchy surface. The sounds of my playmates in the street
just outside beckoned, but I held my watch, half viewing Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger, as he and sidekick Jay
Silverheels as Tonto outwitted some
hapless villain or another.
A whirling red light filled our small living room hideout, fracturing
the activity of my playmates in the street, and din of our neighbors’ banter
who were parked in webbed aluminum lawn chairs and overstuffed cushioned chaise lounges that all but filled their
tiny cement front patios. Like a cloud of dust I bolted through our white
aluminum screen door all but jolting it from its hinges, leaping down two sets
of concrete steps. The uniformed driver exited the red car, the eponymous name for our city’s squad cars, and opened
the back door where a Mummy slowly emerged. A wave of nausea gripped me, but I
stayed focused, awaiting his full materialization.
Only one black and purple eye remained uncovered by gauze,
my father’s almost unrecognizable blue eye surrounded from head to toe by
bandages. His left arm was torqued, cocooned in a plaster cast slung from his
neck, held closely to his chest. His lips peeped through the mess of fabric
like two engorged slugs, and his mustache was tinted pink. His already ample
nose, though bandaged, swelled like a great mysterious tulip bulb. There were more
crimson smudges on the Mummy’s face, and his good right arm sprouted purple
fingers as large as small cucumbers. My father was a wounded walking garden.
“Daddy,” I croaked, “daddy, daddy,” rushing to envelop him
in my arms, my sobs racking my body, but the policeman who had emerged from the
other side of the patrol car held me back.
From somewhere inside that wrapped orchard came, “It’s
alright, let her.”
His voice, not the strong cowboy hero I’d heard my entire
life, was but an echo.
“Oh daddy,” I cried, as our entire neighborhood converged
upon our front stoop, my mother hovering, herself a zombie at the screen door.
***
By the end of July my father was preparing to return to his
job. He had been viciously mugged on the job, beaten to within an inch of his
life. I certainly did not want him to return, but return he would. “I collect
money, sweetheart, so I’m a target,” was his only explanation, “but don’t worry
it won’t happen again.” And it never did.
The mummy wraps and the full cast had been removed two days before
at Einstein Hospital on Broad Street, replaced by a short wrist cast. His face
resembled a puddle slicked with oil in sunlight – a sort of ghastly purple
rainbow, but somehow he’d shaved. Both eyes still bore crimson red flecks, but
those powder blue and steel irises were bright again. Most importantly, he
could wink.
On a quiet Sunday morning, the two of us sat at the red and
white Formica and metal kitchen table. During the intervening two weeks I’d
grown up fast. Under my father’s prompting that first terrible Sunday when I’d
secretly faced the prospect of life without my hero, he’d wisely and coolly
instructed me how to prepare our Sunday morning favorite, fried eggs, lox and
onions with toasted bagels and cream cheese.
Dad had sensed my fears, wordlessly providing stability and
safety in a simple cooking lesson. He had instructed me how to crack an egg
without the shell falling into the mixture; how to pour a droplet of milk in,
and beat it using a light wrist motion and long-tonged fork. Slicing the onion had
been quite another lesson. Holding his razor sharp kitchen knife with extreme
caution, I listened carefully as he explained how to make an almost nub of my diminutive
hand over the onion, slicing it first in half, then peeling, then placing the
blunt edge down, again with the nubbed hand so as not to cut myself. I bore the
stinging tears of success, welcoming my moist, salty eyes since I’d tried not
to cry when I looked at his brutalized body. Lox, eggs and onions provided a
recipe in courage throughout the rest of my life.
We were a team my dad and I. Fortune had bestowed us that curious
condition. My mother’s overall proficiencies in our life were quite limited. Directly
after my birth at age 40, she had suffered what was then called a nervous
breakdown, but later would be more properly known as severe post-partum
depression. The result, never mind the terms, was the same – she functioned on
the sidelines of our life, leaving me to learn early self-care, fervent father
adoration and teamwork. My dad cared for us both generously.
Jake worked two jobs, salesman and installment broker for Sam
Axel on Columbia Avenue, and the world’s best lox slicer at Ben & Irv’s
Delicatessen at 77th & Ogontz Avenue. He was 50 when I was born,
grandfather age really. He had been previously married and his adored first
wife had died young of breast cancer, leaving my father to raise a teenager, my
half brother Allen, as a single father. My dad was, for all intents and
purposes, twice a single dad in an age when most men weren’t.
On all accounts he never showed his burdens. His optimism
could fuel the emerging space program, and like the astronauts who were the new
cowboy heroes of my age, Jake saw limitless frontiers where others found
obstacles. My father matched my adulation for him, and raised me one.
XXX
Jake’s Girl is part essay,
part reflection. Mostly it is an early coming-to-age story of myself as the
daughter of one incredible, older father, Jack Schaefer, who for all the
burdens of his life never failed to provide his daughter with a sense of
security, safety, and everyday heroism. His bravery allowed me to grow up as a
self-assured woman, grateful to him, and fathers everywhere like him.
