Finding Mary

A visit to a cherished next door neighbor, fifty years later, revealed a surprising revelation; you can go home again.

When my father died, the memories that encompassed me, swirling in and out of my consciousness in the futile hope of comfort, were not of the time and place I spent the majority of my life with him. Rather, my mind returned to a tidy, brick row house where we lived my first six years and whose address remains forever etched in my mind. 34-52-73rd Street, Jackson Heights.

It was not so much my childhood home in Queens to which I longed to return but instead, to a woman I cannot seem to forget. An Italian born seamstress who lived next door to my family and who will forever remain in my heart,

Mary Balducci.

She would be nearly ninety years old I calculated.  Her husband Alfred had died unexpectedly shortly after we moved and her only son Johnny, had long married and moved away.  We had not kept in touch after leaving Jackson Heights though in the weeks and months after, while driving home from New York City where my father worked, would make impromptu visits.  On those trips I would recall my father suddenly announcing in a jovial voice “Who wants to stop and see Mary?” and as my two sisters and I shrieked in excitement he would turn the car around for the short detour to 73rd street.  While my father sat curbside, we would race to her front door, ring the bell then wait hopefully. Mary never disappointed. She was always home.  Embracing us tightly with the same words, repeated again and again “my babies, my babies.”  Over the years these visits became less frequent and as we settled into the rhythm of life, eventually ceased all together. 

And I tucked the memories of 73rd Street and Mary Balducci neatly away.

The search was simple really.  No intense sleuthing, no years of tracking down leads on where she had gone.  No heartbreak in discovering she was no longer alive.  Just a google search revealing her address, followed by a phone number.  A chance to return to a past lifetime suddenly lay before me; Maria Balducci, 34-52-73rd Street, Jackson Heights.  She answered on the eighth ring, in the warm, lilting Italian accent I recognized immediately.  “Mary?” this is Kathy your old next door neighbor. My father died.  Can I come see you?”

They say you can’t go home again…

She greeted me in a simple faded housecoat and pink slippers, her black hair still thick and luxurious, defying her ninety one years.  “My baby, my baby,” she repeated over and over as I entered the hallway. “Come! Walk around! Go upstairs! Look! Remember!”

I tentatively entered her dining room and stood before the breakfront. I recall the bottom drawer always being filled with Juicy Fruit gum which Mary allowed us in abandon.  As she nodded, I grasped the two gold rungs and the drawer slid open easily, gratefully, as if all these years awaiting my return. It is said that our sense of smell is more closely linked with memory than any of our other senses. The aroma of Juicy Fruit gum filled the air.

They say you can’t go home again…

I walked into the kitchen where I had sat countless days at her table eating bowls of “skinny spaghetti” on top of which she painstakingly grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese bought from a market in Little Italy. Gazing out the window I spotted across the way, the neat line of row houses and then my eyes fell upon the one I sought out most, that of my childhood crush, James Latieri.

Years later after we had we left Jackson Heights, I encountered Jimmy quite by accident, at a Chaminade High School dance in Mineola, Long Island. After the dance , later that evening, I sat with my best friend Janet in the outdoor pavilion. We were soon joined by another group of teens we did not know but it was of little concern, being young and carefree we became friends in short order. Smoking cigarettes and contemplating life, the conversation somehow evolved to where everyone was born. The next few moments remain in my memory jumbled, but I recall the words “Did you say Jackson Heights?” I glanced at a lanky boy seated next to me. “Whoa! My best friend Jimmy was from Jackson Heights and he is on his way here right now!”

And then as if in a dream Jimmy Latieri, my six year old crush, materialized before my very eyes. Sauntering up to us, cigarette dangling from his lips he flung back his mop of long black hair and listened silently to the story of our connection. Trying to maintain his aura of cool, he lost it for a minute when he excitedly asked: “Kathy, is it really you?” We laughed together that balmy night transported from six to sixteen in an instant. His family like mine had moved to Long Island though he would never return to Queens or to 73rd Street. I imagined because Jimmy never had a Mary Balducci living next door.

Gazing out Mary’s kitchen window, I noted the tall looming high rise apartment building still standing adjacent and in that moment, remembered the terror of “the gray-haired lady.” As we played in the garden below she would appear at the window, ten stories above, fling it open and then toss an empty Vodka bottle out which always seemed to miss us by only inches. It was not being hit by the bottle I feared, but the strange, calm smile that would appear on her face right after she threw it. I often dreamed of the gray haired lady for years after we left who unlike Mary, represented a darker side of life during my short six years in Jackson Heights.

I asked Mary about the turtles. Could we walk out back to her garden? The line of row houses each had a small, fenced in yard behind them, a backyard of sorts. Mary’s husband Alfred, tended to several Box Turtles which he kept in a beautiful pond he had created in the corner of their garden. As a child, I loved to help him feed them and attribute my lifelong love of turtles to this early introduction. As Mary and I entered the garden we stood silently in front of the pond now dry, overgrown and turtle-less. But in that moment I felt the spirit of Uncle Alfred beside us and knew in my heart he was once again caring for his turtles, in another place and time.

She had remained in her home on 73rd street, at ninety one years of age, a testament to her will and independence. She still left her front door unlocked and insisted she was not going to any “old age home” as her relatives urged. She continued to take the subway to Little Italy to purchase the finest ingredients for her Italian recipes. She told me of old neighbors on the street, the ones who had gone and the few that remained. I told her about the lives of my sisters and how we had remained as close as ever but it was an unspoken understanding that she and I had always shared the closest bond. I expressed to her the heartache of losing my father; she told me she never quite got over our leaving Jackson Heights and the loneliness she felt after.

And then it was time for me to leave her once again.

Six years later, my mother died. I had no contact with Mary since our last visit but once again felt the need to see her. She would be ninety seven years old now. What were the odds? I waited for weeks then picked up the phone. After several rings a recording. The number had been disconnected. I was not surprised but nonetheless felt I needed closure. I pondered my next step. And then I recalled that Mary’s only son Johnny, lived in Bayside Queens. As a child living next door I had met him only a handful of times. I searched for his name and found the address. But instead of calling, I wrote him a letter. Maybe because I did not want to hear of Mary’s dying through an impersonal phone call, maybe to buy a little more time to process she might be gone. I wrote him of my visit with his mother six years ago. I described how I sat in his childhood kitchen eating tri color ice cream at 10AM in the morning from a china bowl. I shared the indescribable feeling of walking around his home and how it had felt exactly the same. I told him about the still faint aroma, fifty years later, of the juicy fruit gum. I wrote of my memories of feeding the Box Turtles with his father. I told him how much I had loved his mother and my need to know what happened to her.

I ended my letter to Johnny with the simple words “you can go home again.”

Johnny called back two weeks later. I was strangely relieved not to be home that day, as if to be spared the dreaded news. He spoke to my husband and told him how much he enjoyed my letter. He loved the part about his father and the turtles, he had not thought about the Box Turtles in years. He recalled how much his mother and father loved our family and Mary’s heartache when we moved away. She never quite got over it, he said. Yes, she was still alive but they had sold the house on 73rd street and had moved her to a nursing home just last year. It was unsafe for her to live alone and she had experienced recent dementia. He had the address if I would like to visit…

There is a portrait which hangs in the family room of my home. It shows myself and my sisters as children, alongside my beautiful and youthful parents. A picture that if I brought to show Mary in the nursing home, would be easily recognizable. Her babies. Four smiling girls, frozen in time. I have taken the picture down off the wall so I can easily place it in my car. It sits waiting in the corner of the living room. Waiting. It has been there for a while now. Yes, next week for certain, I will visit her.

Maria Balducci died in 2016, at the age of 99 years.