Lee and Joanne

I first encountered her while doing laundry one afternoon, wordlessly, robotically, tending to our clothes. She taking them out of the dryer and me, placing them in. I can still recall that subterranean, no frills room, whose stark walls and dismal atmosphere would make the perfect backdrop for an Alfred Hitchcock horror film. That was, until the day I met Lee, and the mundane chore of doing laundry suddenly became a shade brighter.

She stood five feet tall and as the saying goes, appeared no more than ninety pounds soaking wet, but possessed a jauntiness that masked her slight frame. Her short white hair was cut in a blunt, bobbed style, and just grazed her chin. I loved her hair, so sleek, straight and perfect, like a Barbie doll’s and when she laughed, swung side to side. She wore a pair of dark, Jackie’ O style glasses which hid a pair of almond eyes, deep chestnut in color and if you looked close enough, reflected a life of both hardship and soul.  The few times I saw her with her glasses off, I recall how her eyes, often cold and suspicious, could change in an instant, and sparkle with delight when I told her a particularly funny story, of which I had many.

Though well into her late seventies, she possessed a youthful spirit, shuffling around the laundry room in her signature style; a pair of faded, Levi jeans cuffed at the ankle and flip flops embossed with daisies. I still remember Lee’s Flip Flops as she stood at the washer, arms teeming with clothes. Those tiny, yellow, delicate daisies in direct contrast to her fierce nature.

Before our friendship materialized, she cast an imposing and stoic figure frequently visible around the apartment complex where I noted with some dismay, she was often arguing with someone. And as I recall, always won. I vowed to keep my distance as I generally disliked confrontation.

But a shared love of the sea sparked a connection that was instant and a memory that remains, though Lee is long gone. She had admired a tee shirt I was folding, pure white in color with just one perfect, turquoise blue wave splashed boldly across its center amid the evocative words, “California Dreaming.” “I love the beach,” she told me.

Her fondness for the seashore was instilled as a young girl. Growing up her family had owned a small cottage on Breezy Point located on the western end of Jamaica Peninsula in Queens, NY. Lee had inherited the cottage after her parents died. She loved this getaway from the chaos of the city and would visit at every chance possible. She described a grueling journey involving a bus ride, followed by the subway, two transfers and a decent walk before she reached her final destination. Breezy Point! and paradise found, her port in the storm. I hailed from Long Island, home to the epic Jones Beach, just a stone’s throw away from my home. And like Lee, found any excuse to escape to the seashore which we visited in abandon as children, teenagers and young adults.

I was a young mother during my friendship with Lee and we would sit in the apartment complex’s playground, mid-afternoon, as my young son raced in and out of the sprinklers. Those green park benches, ubiquitous back in the day, though scratched and chipped with age, offered a simple comfort and I imagine, could tell countless stories of the many who sat there before us. And during those lovely, endless summer days, we talked of life. The ebbs and flows, the highs the lows.

Lee was married to Marty a kind and gentle man who worked as a Super in a nearby NYC building and who I had met only a handful of times.  Her only daughter Joanne, who lived with Lee and Marty on the ground floor of their two bedroom Stuyvesant Town apartment, often sat with us on the park bench contentedly. Her age, was unknown to me, as she could morph from six to thirty-six during the course of a simple conversation.

As my son sat happily in the playground’s sand box one bright and sunny afternoon, Lee shared with me one of her life’s most dark and secret tragedies, describing how Joanne as a young girl fifteen years prior, while home alone in their apartment, was attacked by a maintenance man she had innocently let into the apartment. I never knew, nor had the heart to ask, if the incident, which clearly left Joanne traumatized, caused her innocent, childlike behavior, and the reason she did not work or have an apartment of her own.

We eventually moved from my beloved “Stuy Town,” to the Connecticut suburbs leaving Lee, Joanne and those comforting green benches far behind. On the morning we were leaving, Joanne, bestowed to my toddler son as a parting gift, her beloved teddy bear, its knotted fur, bruised and worn no doubt from years of hugging it close. “I don’t need this anymore,” she said simply. “I want him to have it…” Lee, who sat on the bench watching intently, nodded wordlessly.

Lee and I, as if in mutual acceptance of our impending loss, never spoke in person again but continued to exchange Christmas cards, each year penning a special note of remembrance to each other.

One year I quoted a Charles Dickens passage in my card, recalling how she had loved him. It was from one of her favorite tales, “A Christmas Carol.” Lee replied shortly thereafter with a note of her own, penned in her typical hurried, but artistic script:

“Only you could find this beautiful quote. You were always different. Stay that way.”

I have kept that sentiment tucked away in my dresser drawer, forever special to me as a compliment from Lee, rare in occurrence, was a thing to be treasured. I knew this one, had come from the heart.

Ironically, it was Joanne not Lee who I kept up with after we moved away. Every two or three months I sent her notes or cards often containing photos of my two sons as they aged from toddler, to teen, to adulthood. I would choose bright and colorful cards adorned with owls which she loved, and write of our lives in Connecticut. She would reply with a note of her own and always included an expression of gratitude for my friendship and a mention of love, from her mother Lee.

Before he left for college, my son approached me holding Joanne’s teddy bear gifted to him so many years before. “Let’s send it back to her mom, maybe she needs it more.” And we boxed it up with a heartfelt note, and returned the bear to his rightful owner who I imagine, welcomed it back with open arms.

And then one day, a letter from Joanne, more difficult than usual to read. She scrawled that she was frightened. Lee was sick and couldn’t remember things. She had something called, “Alzheimer’s Disease.” She didn’t know how to talk to her mother. 

I responded, “Ask her about Breezy Point…”

Not quite six months later, she wrote to tell me Lee had died. A life now folded away neatly, like those laundry days we once shared.

I continued sending brightly colored cards and notes to Joanne, throughout the years. My sons were now young men, off in college. I would tell Joanne of my oldest, a springboard diver who had won his first competition and that my youngest was attending university in Ireland, the land of his grandmother’s birth. She wrote how she loved to receive my cards. She wrote of how she missed her mother. She wrote of how she loved me and my family and wished we still lived close.

And then one night, after a lapse of communication from Joanne for more than three months, I returned home to a phone call on my answering machine. A male voice, unrecognizable, wracked with grief, his words delivered stuttering and stammering. After re-playing numerous times, I at last interpreted the garbled message and from whom it came.

“Kathy, this is Marty. Kathy, Joanne died.”

A long, painful silence followed, then his final words, “I never knew it would be this hard…”

I called Marty back the next day. He did not answer and has never returned the call.

I wondered from what illness, if any, did she die and searched endlessly for an obituary, desperate for an answer. I hoped she was remembered. I struggled for weeks seeking closure but could not bring myself to call her father again.

And then I realized, I never really knew her. And how she died mattered little. For I am certain I brought her joy through my cards and friendship, just maybe, during a time in her life she needed it most.

And that was all the closure I ever needed.

I sometimes think of those long-ago days as that young mother, sitting beside Lee and Joanne in the serenity of Stuyvesant Park. I can hear their voices still; Lees’s tone is shrill, her words tumbling out knowingly and confidently, Joanne’s is slow and steady, lilting, with a warm innocence, always aiming to please.

It is said that people come into your life for a season or a reason. I believe I was lucky enough to experience both, in my short good fortune of knowing Lee and Joanne.

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