Bay Ridge: A Memoir

 Chapter One:

A mass of green and grey against blue. Houses along the water decrease in size as the avenues pull away from the ocean. Houses with big yards and barking retrievers, old reeds wound about white pillars; these are the castles I grew up fantasizing about. They were only a stone’s throw away from my reality: a six story red brick wonder with doors that changed color biannually depending on the temperament of the apartment COOP board.  My building sat smack in the middle of it’s block, on the precipice of being part of the better bred and falling in with the wrong crowd; we lived between Ridge Boulevard and Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Third avenue filled it’s lots with an array of eateries and shops as well as a bar on every corner. Pizzeria’s and coffee shops, we were the last neighborhood to catch onto the Starbucks craze, made it easy to get your caffeine fix or a fast snack and it wasn’t until I was much older and a college boyfriend said in his best wise guy accent: “Wanna grab a slice?” that I realized how stereotypical my Brooklyn experience had actually been.

Inside our home my parents fought against the boroughs alluring local flavor. Both of them grew up elsewhere, an anomaly compared to the born, raised and breeding culture so specific to the neighborhood and they were both proud of that fact.  My Father thought of himself more as a Manhattan man and loved calling himself a New Yorker, while my mother longed for the quiet suburb she’d grown up in. Perhaps it was this push and pull between his need to get ahead and her need to get away that kept our apartment in a state of disorder. At an early age I began to notice that our decor was far below the standards of most of my classmate’s homes.

My mother tried to decorate our apartment and keep it tidy. She adopted a theme for every room and started with the dining room since it was directly connected to the entryway. She wanted it to have a Japanese garden feel and adorned it with black and gold furniture, a china closet and a matching hand painted mirror, cabinet and a plant less pot that would eventually become the dumping ground for all the magazines my father never read. Then she went onto the first of our two bathrooms and decided it would have a beach theme. She painted it lavender, hung up some ocean art and scattered the window sill with sea shells. But this is as far as she got; none of the other rooms would ever find themselves decorated in any discernible theme.  

Perhaps if my father had been willing to dish out half the funds she needed for furniture, instead of buying pricey electronic gadgets and one too many cutting boards, she might have succeeded in keeping with her theme idea. Unfortunately my father could care less about home furnishings, after all this was just a stepping stone to our eventual penthouse by the park. He cared even less when it came to cleaning.

He was notorious for leaving his empty soda glasses out over night, tossing bills and other important papers on the dining table and then blaming everyone but himself when they went missing; he left his pants and shoes hanging everywhere except in the closet. To the untrained eye it seemed as though he was leading an active rebellion against my mothers platform of aesthetics but to me it was clear that anything like that would take way too much effort for my father. He was nothing more than a throw back to a previous generation who believed in women’s work. But when you got down to it all, he was really just a lazy slob who preferred to adopt grandiose ancient ideals to explain his dislike for cleaning: “I do the dishes and the laundry, that’s enough,” he’d say before passing out on the sofa and snoring. Sometimes I would stand over him and consider waking him up with a splash of warm soda. It was an exciting proposition but I never went through with it.

My father had tantrums more often than a colicky infant and while their catalysts varied, the most common of them all was Coca Cola. His romance with the syrupy goddess began at an early age and he felt a catharsis for the beverage the way one might for a Beatles song. He worshipped Coca Cola, even had a photo of himself as a child hugging an old fashioned bottle of it. He’d had it enlarged and framed to hang above his dresser; a testament of his loyalty to the soda pop God. Our fridge had to contain at least one bottle at a time and if it didn’t he would lose it. My mother knowing this began to wage a war against his sloppiness using his beloved soft drink as her bait. Though she never won, she did succeed in pissing him off immensely.

While each of these battles had a few minor variations, this is how it usually went:

My father would storm into the living room and stand in front of the television set stomping his feet and screaming: “Where is my Coke?! I need my coke!”

My mother, planted on the sofa would wave a limp wrist: “Josh, I’m trying to watch this.”

“You were home all day,” he’d push out his lower lip showing his bottom teeth, “I gave you a fifty for groceries and you, you, you...”

“I forgot. Just go around the corner and get one,” she’d say still waving but now with the remote in hand as if she could change the channel on him.

“Noooo, you go around the corner and get one!” His hands curled tightly into fists, shaking them up and down.

“Josh you’re acting crazy.” A high pitch laugh would then escape her mouth and this only enraged him further.

“You think this is funny? You think this is funny! You think this is-“

“No,” she’d say standing up. “No I don’t think this is funny. I don’t think it’s funny at all. I work twelve hour shifts and on my days off I cook and clean for this family and you, you, you can’t even bother to put your glasses in the sink after you use them!” And then she’d pick up the latest piece of evidence, a used glass that had been sitting on the coffee table for at least a day. She’d hold it as if she might strike him with it but instead she’d shove it in his face and scream: “The next time you leave your used glass out over night it’s going out the window!”

“Shut up Kathy, just shut up!”

“I mean it! Out. The. Window!”

And here was where the tables always turned; at this point having expended all his energy my father would become the calm one: “Kath would you calm down, for Christ’s sake.”

“I will not calm down,” her eye brows raised as she spoke, her tone frighteningly measured, punching every word. “How. Dare. You tell me to calm down. I will not. Calm. Down.” She edged him up against the television, “I was trying to relax and you come in here screaming and now you want me to calm down! You bastard!”

At this point my father would retreat, pushing her out of the way and walking briskly toward their bedroom. But she would follow after him yelling “I will not calm down! I will not calm down!”

Minutes later he’d be out the door and off to the corner store to get his caffeinated muse, his Helen of Troy, seductive syrup in a bottle. And shortly there after, my mother would be back on the couch as if she’d never left it.