Shangri-La

In the Company of Women

I was one of four daughters, attended all girl, catholic schools my entire life, have no idea how to change a tire and never experienced the bright stadium lights at a night-time football game. My father did put up a basketball hoop once in our driveway, short-lived when the ball sailed through the glass pane of the garage door. There it stood neglected for years a sad testament to the son my mother never had.

My Scottish reared father never once expressed regret at not having a son. Rather, he reveled in his four daughters and life among them. He loved his girls. Though there were times we tried his patience. A flashback of his screams from the shower after being cut by a worn down razor blade used on too many female teenage legs. Or his aversion to the smell of nail polish remover. He hated the smell of nail polish remover. He was equally content watching a rugby match as he was a cooking show.

During his daughter’s bridal showers, all four of them, rather than fleeing for the afternoon as most men might, my father would delight in being part of the celebration. There he would sit center stage, in his recliner, newspaper in hand (a ploy to feign disinterest) among the squeals and chaos of thirty females. Every now and again as a new gift was unveiled he would lift his head up casually and remark “Ah what’s this one? Hold it up a little closer Kath…”

My sister Sheila, too experienced this sometimes disadvantage of not having grown up with or been schooled among boys. When she and my mother visited Lord and Taylor to buy her first boyfriend a birthday gift, the saleswoman paused in puzzlement as she inquired as to where she might find the men’s “blouses.”

In addition to my father there was in fact one other male in our family. A big, beautiful Irish wolfhound, brought back from a holiday in Ireland. I recall listening in on a now famous conversation in our family between my mother and the vet. “I need to bring Connell in to be spayed,” The vet’s patient reply: “You mean neutered Mrs. Dickinson. Connell is a male dog.” My sister and I stared at each other, and then burst into laughter. We thought that something must have gotten lost in translation as my mother, Irish-born, often had her own interpretation of words. Looking back however, I think she simply believed Connell like the rest of us, was female, at least in theory.

I married and ironically, have two sons. My husband has taught them several things his own father taught him; how to throw a ball, fix a leaky kitchen faucet, use common tools for simple jobs, be kind and respectful. My sons are equally in touch with their feminine side and have as many female friends as male. They have five female cousins whom they see frequently further adding to their comfort level with girls, not to mention the added bonus of always have a date for the prom.

You might ask how it feels being on the reverse side at this point in my life, living among three men as opposed to my mother and three female sisters. I take a little solace in the fact that our new dog, a tiny toy fox terrier named Anabel, is female. My father would have loved her.

Spare The Phone

While talking to my friend one morning on the telephone, I hear the distinctive sound of a child’s heavy breathing from the upstairs extension. “Is someone there?” Silence. “Can you please hang up? I am using the phone.” I hear an abrupt click followed by fleeing footsteps and the slam of a bedroom door. The culprit was no stranger but rather my ten-year old son. I sat him down and explained that conversations are private and it is impolite to eavesdrop.

Oh the hypocrisy…

Flashback thirty years, to my teenage self, lying in the coolness of my suburban Long Island bedroom. It is midweek during the summer and raining. I am bored having not yet begun my summer job. I hear my mother downstairs in the kitchen talking to Lily, who is both her cousin and best friend. They grew up in Ireland together on nearby farms. I knew the drill well. The two would chat for a while and then Lily would suggest she might “come over for lunch” the next day. My mother always agreed. And so it goes.

Their lunches generally lasted all afternoon into evening and were filled with stories of family, mutual friends and news from Ireland. The whirr of the blender competed with their laughter as they created a favorite après lunch cocktail, their signature frozen daiquiri. I often wondered on some days, how Lily made it home.

On that fateful day, I strain to hear their conversation, but cannot. Knowing it is wrong, I pick up the phone extension gently and await the next pause between them. Putting on my best Irish accent in imitation of my mother, I ask “Lily, why don’t you come over tomorrow? “ Lily does not miss a beat, “Why I was just going to suggest that dear.”

The next few moments remain to this day, both vivid and jumbled in my memory. I recall a momentary silence as my mother dropped the receiver and then, her thundering footsteps ascending the stairs toward my room. In my haste to lock my bedroom door, I leave the receiver dangling on the bed. Lily is still on the line. I try to hold the door shut but am no match for my adrenaline pumped mother who with the strength of Goliath pushes the door forward and lunges toward me. Generally a nonviolent woman, the incident has unraveled her to the core. Grabbing the only available weapon in sight, the phone, she begins to pummel me with it. In the ensuing chaos, I do recall one thing oh, so clearly… Lily’s voice calling out from the other end “Hello! Hello?” HELLO? Is everything alright? Dear?” in between the strains of my screams of “Mom, NO PLEASE, I’m sorry!” MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Strangely enough, though I saw her numerous times after, Lily never mentioned the phone incident. There is no doubt in my mind that having lain witness to the payback, if not in physical presence but in audio, was all she ever needed. And, I learned my lesson in spades. Though sometime, at family reunions, my sister with a gleam in her eye will beg me to recount the story of mom “and the phone” which remains to this day, an all-time favorite.

Screwdriver Parties

Pulling into my driveway late one afternoon, my eyes fell upon a dark sedan sitting idly. Unable to recognize a face through the tinted windows and noting a New Jersey plate, a state from which I knew no one, a slight feeling of unease ensued. And then as if in slow motion, a window went down and a familiar voice I had not heard in over ten years bellowed, “Kathy, it’s me, Jim Cappello!” I drove all the way from NJ to visit you. Look in the trunk!”

My old boss Jim Cappello whom I had worked with for over ten years at a publishing company in midtown Manhattan. Now eighty three years old and long retired, he had driven over two hours, on a whim to visit me at my home in Connecticut. It was the pretzels, he said. The pretzels made him do it.

He explained he was at his supermarket in New Jersey saw a bag of pretzels which reminded him of me and, the screwdriver parties. Every Friday at 5:30PM, in our small office on the 12^th floor of the Chanin Building, we had a screwdriver party. Jim and I who sold the display advertising and Barbara and Irene the Classified Department.

I can still hear his voice now, “Irene, get the ice, Barbara open the pretzels, Kathy go down and buy the O.J!” and Jim, well Jim always was in charge of the vodka. He was the perennial salesman. Outgoing, tenacious, social and charming. He loved a party. Our own little madmen ritual in that tiny office on the twelfth floor.

“Look in the trunk!” He said again. I gazed down at two brown paper bags, one filled with a giant bag of pretzels and a container of orange juice, the other, a bottle of vodka. “Let’s have a screwdriver! For old times.”

We sat in my kitchen, Jim and I, and talked of our lives since the magazine closed. He shared how his beloved wife of fifty years had died three months before and how lost he felt in the weeks that followed. I told him of the difficulty I experience in leaving my life in New York City behind for a small CT town in the suburbs.

We telephoned the classified girls, Barbara and Irene, who as luck with have it were both home. As each picked up the phone I would announce “Do you recognize this voice?” And then hand the phone to Jim who would bellow “Irene! Barbara! It’s Jim Cappello! I am at Kathy’s house. We’re having a screwdriver party! For old times.”

But it was not those Friday parties that bound the four of us together but rather the cadence of life, the highs and the lows as we worked side by side in that tiny office as the years ticked past.

The last thing we did together before he left was to walk down to the bus stop where my two sons, whom he had never met, were due home from school. As we walked back up to the house I wondered…was it the pretzels he had seen in the supermarket that prompted his visit or rather the need for comfort often found in days past? The reason was unimportant. It was a great day.