 
Getting Down to Brass Tacks  
 _My adventures in the world of jazz, Rio, and beyond_

Copyright (C) 2012 Amy Duncan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in reviews or social media.

ISBN number

eISBN: 9781623098858

First edition

Published by Book Baby  
Portland, Oregon  
503-961-6878 877-961-6878  
books@bookbaby.com

Cover photo by Robert Serbinenko / IVPIX  
<http://ivpix1.wix.com/robertserbinenko>

Cover design by Catherine H. Cole
GETTING DOWN TO BRASS TACKS

_My adventures in the world of jazz, Rio, and beyond_

(A pretty much true story)

Amy H. Duncan
DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to Stephanie Crawford and Joan Hill, who  
both never ceased to follow their hearts, and always believed in me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I'd like to thank my sister, Roberta Elizabeth Doucet, for being my second memory while I was writing this book. Bertie, as I called her, is no longer with us, but while she was I was grateful for her amazing recall for details--things I had long since forgotten--and these have added considerable richness to my story.

I'm also grateful to Muriel Vasconcellos, Christine Hartzell and my daughter Hilary Alexander for having the patience to read through parts of my manuscript and make comments and suggestions.

I particularly want to thank Vicki Jones Cole, my editor, who gave my manuscript a thorough going-over and made many valuable, vital suggestions.

And lest I forget, Dave Brown, wherever you are, you have my sincere thanks for urging me to start writing this book nearly a decade ago.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

MILES DAVIS - 1986

CHAPTER 1: WAR BABY

CHAPTER 2: EAST ISLIP

CHAPTER 3: NEWTOWN

CHAPTER 4: SUMMER TRIPS

CHAPTER 5: MIND EXPANSION

CHAPTER 6: MUSIC AND BOYS

CHAPTER 7: SCHOOL

CHAPTER 8: MA

CHAPTER 9: COLLEGE

CHAPTER 10: GROWING UP TOO FAST

CHAPTER 11: MOTHERHOOD

CHAPTER 12: LIFE ON SKID ROW

CHAPTER 13: MEXICO

CHAPTER 14: MEXICO...AGAIN

CHAPTER 15: BRAZIL

CHAPTER 16: I FALL AGAIN

CHAPTER 17: THE SEEKER

CHAPTER 18: CHANGES

CHAPTER 19: BACK TO MUSIC

CHAPTER 20: POP

CHAPTER 21: HOOFIN'

CHAPTER 22: NEW YORK

CHAPTER 23: EUROPE

CHAPTER 24: BRASS TACKS

CHAPTER 25: TOSHIKO AND JAPAN

CHAPTER 26: TRANSITIONS

CHAPTER 27: DJAVAN

CHAPTER 28: RIO DE JANEIRO

CHAPTER 29: IVO AND SAMBA IN RIO

CHAPTER 30: THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

CHAPTER 31: HOME

CHAPTER 32: BRASS TACKS, CARIOCA-STYLE

CHAPTER 33: WAKING UP

EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE

_When does one decide to be oneself? I think that 's what it all comes down to. You see, whatever one is, one must first know the truth about oneself. Everyone should make their own decisions and accept the consequences without complaining. _

-- Grace Jones

_I 'm sitting here at my laptop in my little apartment in Copacabana. This is the third apartment I've rented in this same building since I first moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1993, and it's one of my favorite spots on earth. The ocean is just one short block away in one direction, and stores, markets and restaurants of every kind are in the other. Lush trees with big, dark green leaves shade the black and white mosaic sidewalks, and there's nearly always a soft, gentle breeze blowing. It's been, as they say, a long haul, but I'm starting to feel that there's a new beginning right around the corner..._

I have tried, in this book, to bring out the guiding themes of my life, in the hope that they will resonate with others, both men and women. Where I couldn't remember all the details, I improvised a bit (I figured as a jazz musician that I was entitled!). I've changed a few names and disguised some identities to protect the privacy of those involved. However, all the events in the book actually happened.

So my readers wouldn't feel as if they were reading a textbook, I opted to use some dialog. Of course this means I put words in the mouths of quite a few people, because I can't remember exactly what was said, especially when it was years and years ago. But I believe I did catch the spirit of whatever the conversation was, and I apologize to the speakers (if they read this) if the words aren't exactly what came out of their mouths.

The expression "getting down to brass tacks" is presumed to have several different origins. This is my favorite:

In the latter part of the 19th century, when women went to buy cloth at the general store, the shopkeeper used to measure it by stretching it between two brass tacks hammered into the counter, exactly one yard apart. The moment of "getting down to brass tacks" was when the cloth was measured in this way, so that the customer could be certain she wasn't being cheated. Over the years the expression has come to mean "getting down to essentials."
MILES DAVIS - 1986

One day, when I was working as a music writer for _The Christian Science Monitor_ , I got a call from a representative at Channel 13, New York's PBS station. He told me that PBS was going to do a Great Performances special and they would like it to be covered by the _Monitor._

"You'll be interviewing Miles Davis," he said. MILES DAVIS?!! Omigod! I'm gonna meet MILES!! I was flabbergasted, not just because I was actually going to get to meet the man himself, but because I'd heard that Miles never talked to anyone. The PBS guy went on: "You're to pick up Miles at his apartment on Fifth Avenue and then take him to lunch at the Carlyle Hotel. We'll send along one of our PR people to go with you. We'll pick you up on Thursday at 3 p.m."

OK, I thought. OK, yippee! I'm gonna meet MILES!!

On Thursday a black stretch limo came to pick me up at 3 p.m. on the nose. Angela, the PR rep, was sitting in the back when I climbed in. She was black, classy and no-nonsense. She said, "Listen, Miles will probably give us a hard time, so be prepared."

I nodded, and guessed that she'd already been through this with some other reporters. The limo driver dropped us off in front of Miles' building. We spoke to the doorman and told him who we were. He rang up Miles, who said there was no way in hell he was going to do any damned interview.

Angela grabbed the phone from the doorman. "Listen Miles. This is the time we set up and you agreed to it."

I couldn't hear what Miles was saying on the other end, but whatever it was, it took a long time. Angela looked at me and rolled her eyes.

Finally she said, "OK, OK, Miles, we'll set it up for another day," and handed the phone back to the doorman, who smirked.

Angela said she'd call the limo back, but I told her I'd take the subway home. She said she'd phone me to set up a new date. I knew they had to get Miles to cooperate for the TV special, so I went home and waited for her call.

And call she did, the very next day, so we trekked back over to Miles' place. This time we actually made it up the elevator. Angela knocked on the door. Miles opened it with the chain on and peered out.

"No," he said.

"What?!" said Angela.

"I said no. No interview."

Angela put her nose about an inch from his and said, "Listen Miles, you're fuckin' with my job. I don't fuck with your job, so what makes you think you can fuck with mine?"

Miles opened the door.

"OK, you got twenty minutes," he barked in a gravelly baritone.

Miles was married to Cicely Tyson at that time, and their apartment was a big, open, sprawling, multilevel affair covered with gray carpeting. Cicely was out of town. All around the walls there were clothes racks. Miles' clothes, which he fondly referred to as "my shit," were hanging on them. These were the many imported outfits he'd had custom made by famous designers from around the world, and he didn't want to keep them hidden away in any closets. They were on display for all to see, with a big full-length mirror in the middle. I remember when Miles' album "Tutu" had been released a few months before, with a killer close-up of only his face, Miles' disgruntled comment to the press was "It doesn't show my shit."

Angela and I walked in, and I pulled out my tape recorder.

"Ohhh," groaned Miles when he saw it. I sat down next to him on the sofa and pulled out the mike. He moved back, then got up and walked away. I looked at Angela. She walked over to Miles' clothes racks and started poking through his clothes.

"Yeah, yeah," said Miles, perking up a little.

Miles was a style man. When all the other guys his age were still carrying the torch around the arena one more time playing bebop and standards, Miles was forging ahead, setting up rock rhythm sections behind his horn and wearing satin jackets and sequined pants on stage. Even though his trumpet playing never changed much, he still liked to inject it into new settings.

As jazz singer Eddie Jefferson sang in his lyric to Miles' tune "So What":

_" About the clothes he wears..._

_his style is in the future..."_

Miles was anything but old hat. He said:

"If you're not keepin' up with the times, you end up with 'bell-bottom music.'" He beckoned to me to join him and Angela as they took a closer look at his wardrobe. His jackets and coats were made from exquisite fabrics and leathers, things trimmed with peacock feathers, shimmering with silver and gold threads or sparkling with tiny reflective black studs. He insisted that Angela and I try some things on. I picked a Japanese black suede coat painted with white designs.

"Shit, that looks almost as good on you as it does on me." Miles hoisted up his baggy printed pants around his skinny waist. I was having a ball, but was starting to worry about the interview that I was supposed to be gathering for my editor. I knew I'd never get Miles to sit down and talk into the dumb tape recorder, so I said:

"Miles, I have a ten-piece band with a similar format to Birth of the Cool." It just slipped out, because I didn't know what else to say, and I wanted to make some kind of connection with him. Bingo. Miles smiled broadly, and said:

"Yeah, Birth of the Cool, really?"

Birth of the Cool, for those who may not know, was the nine-piece band Miles put together and recorded in 1949-50. It was, along with Gerry Mulligan's Tentette, one of the bands I'd most admired when I was a kid, and was undoubtedly one of the things that led me to my forming my own mini big band many years later. Miles grabbed my hand and dragged me over to his Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, which was set up alongside the clothes racks where Angela was still busy trying things on.

"Do you wanna take a lesson?" he laughed. He played some chords, and then asked me to play a couple of my tunes. In an instant we turned from an uptight journalist grilling a famous legendary jazz trumpeter into just two musicians swapping ideas. Now that Miles was relaxed and feeling good, I said sheepishly, "Hey Miles, we were supposed to talk about the TV show, remember?"

"I haven't seen it yet," said Miles. "I don't know how the idea came up. They asked me to do it. I probably won't like it."

"Why's that, Miles?"

"Because what you see yourself doin' doesn't look the same as you think you look...you know what I mean? I'm not so sure I want to see it right away."

Actually, when I got a chance to preview the show the next day, I was happy to see Miles looking quite fit, sipping mineral water and eating sugar free candies. His bout a decade before with various health problems, as well as injuries from a car accident, had kept him out of music for more than five years. I asked him about it in our "interview."

"I was sick," said Miles. "I was an alcoholic. I used a lot of coke. If I had kept on playin' I'd be dead." He told me he hadn't thought about his music at all during that period, that he'd put it out of his mind, which reminded me of some years before when I'd stopped playing myself and didn't even listen to music. When he finally did come back, though, he was ready for a fresh, new approach. But some of his fans, and even his colleagues, complained. They wanted the old Miles, the _Kind of Blue_ and _Seven Steps to Heaven_ Miles back again.

"It's like clothes," he said, pointing at the racks around the room. "Some people look wrong in these new clothes," he said. "Music is the same way. I play styles. If it's reggae, I play reggae. If it's calypso, I play calypso--I don't play the blues when I play 'My Funny Valentine.' When you play styles, you'll always be up to date, but...I won't force one style on top of another style. It's like wearing a sweater over a tuxedo."

I was intrigued by these remarks since, to me, his trumpet style hadn't really changed. But when I stopped to think about it, everything he played fit in perfectly with the backgrounds he chose.

Then he stood up and said, "Look, musicians feel like they haven't done anything if they don't feel that 'yes!' when they play. That happens when you play off each other."

Then he waxed philosophical and mused about whether some day it might be possible, by some electronic invention, to extract music from the air, music that had been played at some time in the past but had never been recorded.

"It's out there somewhere," he said, scratching his chin.

"How're your chops, Miles?" I asked, wondering how he'd managed to make his comeback so quickly.

"I've finally got my tone back," he said. "I sometimes hit a high note, but I don't hit it like a trumpet player who plays high notes--I hit it like _ptew!_ --like that, like a gun."

He looked at his watch. Over two hours had gone by since Angela and I arrived.

"OK, your twenty minutes are up," he growled. Then he smiled and kissed me and Angela on the cheek, and we were off. I was much happier with our casual chat than I would have been with a formal interview, and I wrote it up pretty much the way it went down, except for his frequent use of the S-word.

"Wow, I just met Miles Davis!" I thought, grinning from ear to ear.

Over the years, I ended up meeting and interviewing many artists who had been my heroes, some since childhood, like Anita O'Day, and others later on, like Brazilian singer Djavan. Somehow, though, meeting these people and writing about them left me with an inner sense of loss for all that I knew I could have done but hadn't, and could be doing but wasn't, with my own music. For you to understand my feelings, I need to go back to the beginning...

# CHAPTER 1: WAR BABY

_Ma and Pop were locked in their room, yelling behind the door. I could hear him swearing, and her crying and then the pushing and hitting. I could hear it all the way down the narrow stairs to the landing and up again into my room, and even though I put my hands over my ears and buried my face in Fred and Bill, my teddy bears, I couldn 't stop it. I could feel it vibrating inside of me, shaking the ground and making it drop right out from under my feet. Dreamlike, I suddenly found myself at their bedroom door, pounding, screaming "Stop it! Stop it!" Finally Ma opened the door... "Go back to your room, Amy. This has nothing to do with you. You always think you're the center of the universe, but you're not." I turned and ran out into the yard, throwing myself on the ground face down, my tears disappearing into the prickly grass. I rolled over and lay there on my back, looking up at the blue, blue sky, wondering where it ended, and if it didn't end...what was beyond that? After a while I stopped crying and stretched out, feeling the earth under me. Grateful that it was still under me..._

My mother knew that my father was a heavy drinker when they met in the 1930s. But Robert David Duncan was smart, good-looking and charming, what they used to call "debonair," and on top of that, he was a graduate of Yale University. Edith Hilda Bates was a down-to-earth pragmatist, and Bob was a dreamer. From the day they married, and especially after my sister Roberta (Bertie) and I came along, Edith made Bob Duncan into her special project, striving mightily and hopelessly to turn him into her idea of a responsible husband and father.

But Pop was a romantic and a _bon vivant --_ a writer who used to brag every chance he got that his family was full of famous artists and musicians, and especially that his grandfather, composer Robert Goldbeck, had been co-founder of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Pop himself never accomplished anything so grand, but he did play a little guitar and clarinet, had a big collection of jazz records, and liked to write humorous short stories.

Ma, on the other hand, came from a practical working-class family, and as her marriage to Pop started to deteriorate, he used to rub that in every chance he got, referring to her people as "peasants." Ma's reaction--perhaps to prove that peasant stock was more capable of running things than pretentious would-be writers--was to tighten the screws a little more, until she ended up orchestrating every move he made. Bob Duncan's reaction to this, not surprisingly, was to run away, but not before he had said to her, enough times that the phrase was engraved in my mind forever: "Get off my back!"

I was born two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 5, 1941, in New York City, while Pop has having a bout of the delirium tremens. They named me Amy (after a crabby old aunt on my mother's side) Hildreth (a family surname). I was an unexpected child, a second daughter, and that, along with Pop's condition at the time, may explain why there were so few baby pictures of me in the family album. There were lots of photos of Bertie, born nearly two years earlier, before Pop's drinking had gotten totally out of control.

I don't remember anything about my life until we moved to Cleveland, Ohio when I was a toddler. There we lived in one side of a duplex house with no grass in the yard--me, Ma, Pop and Bertie. The vague landscape of my memories includes hot summer afternoons digging in the melted tar in the street with a soup spoon; Bertie hosing down her arch-enemy, little curly-headed Cookie Papp; miniature renegade Tommy Lee Cash getting behind the wheel of his father's car and slamming it into the house we shared with his parents, making a god-awful noise and leaving dents in the clapboard siding; being persecuted by bigger kids; playing with Grain, Grawn and Legan, the imaginary friends Bertie made up who lived under the floorboards of our house; and listening to the grownups talk about the war.

To me the war meant we had to buy food with ration coupons instead of money and eat apple butter because there was no real butter. Or we'd eat margarine, which we called "marge." Marge came in a heavy plastic bag, like a pillow, and it was white like Crisco or lard. The bag had a little red button on it with the instructions: "Pinch the berry and squeeze the bag." Bertie and I used to fight over who would pinch the berry to make the red stuff ooze out and knead the bag until it turned yellow, just like butter. In those days you couldn't sell margarine that was already yellow, because everyone would think you were trying to pass it off as butter and that was illegal.

There were two big tragedies in my life at that time. The first was when I was around two years old and I dropped my composition doll Mary down the sewer drain. I stood there and watched as she floated away in the brackish, smelly water, and was too horrified even to cry. I ran into the house, screaming "Ma, Ma, Mary gone, Mary gone!" Then I did burst into tears, so Ma took me to the store and bought me a new doll. I named her Mary, too, and stayed away from the sewer whenever I played with her.

The second and worse tragedy happened one day when I was playing outside in our dusty, grassless backyard in my pretty little blue dress with the embroidered smocking. Bored and restless, I started poking around in the garbage cans, and somehow in my rummaging I grabbed a bunch of old razor blades that someone had thrown away. I looked down and was shocked to see my adorable little blue dress stained red with blood. I screamed, not for the blood or the pain, but for my beautiful dress. Ma heard my screams, and came out to rescue me. She carried me into the house and washed me up, put band-aids on my fingers, and admonished me to stay away from the garbage cans. Then she dressed me in a pair of overalls. I screamed louder.

"What's the matter with you?" she said, impatience rising in her voice. "You're all right now."

"No overaws. No! I'm _girl_. Want my dress!" I blubbered.

Ma laughed and said, "But Amy, your dress is covered with blood! I have to wash it!" I didn't care, I wanted my pretty blue dress. I sobbed uncontrollably.

I was crying out for my "girlyness" during a time when American men were off fighting the war and American women were home dressed in overalls that were a larger version of my own, holding down jobs in factories, making planes and tanks for the war effort. By the time the men came back from the war and the women were "eased" out of their jobs and back into the home as mothers and housekeepers, I would become a tomboy of sorts, spurning dresses and "girly" things and trying to assert my "boyness." Even though I was the smallest kid in my class at school and was terrible at sports, I still wanted to be tough and feisty, so I used my mouth. At the tender age of three, when Ma asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I replied unsmilingly, "A burglar."

Even way back then, during the war, I had a feeling that I was different from other kids, and from the grownups, too. It wasn't always an unpleasant feeling because it made me feel special. But the bad part was that I was so sensitive, touchier than any of the kids I knew, and certainly more than the grownups, I was sure of that. When I was really small, I didn't know what "sensitive" was, I just knew that a lot of things made me afraid or made me cry--going to new places, the way some grownups looked at me, having to eat unfamiliar foods. Bertie said I was a sissy.

Once, when I was around three, Ma took me and Bertie to have our pictures taken by a professional photographer. I didn't want to sit on the bench with Bertie while the big man fiddled with an ominous-looking black box that I was certain would shoot out knives, bullets, flames or worse when he pressed the button. I wanted to bolt and hide my face in Ma's skirt. But she was raising us according to the "snap-out-of-it" method, so I had no choice but to sit there and try not to cry or wet my pants. I kept that photo for years. There I was--a tiny girl in a flowered dress and pigtails, eyes round and wide with terror.

Ma didn't know how to deal with me. She was a sensible woman who expected her daughters to be the same, and she wanted us to be thick-skinned, too. She was a strict disciplinarian, very controlling, and not particularly warm or affectionate, although she had a great sense of humor. I had no idea when I was little that she was already afraid that I'd turn out to be unstable like Pop, so she was always on guard to make sure I didn't make a "fuss" about things.

# CHAPTER 2: EAST ISLIP

When I was four we moved to East Islip on Long Island in New York state. I don't remember much about it, except that our house had a little pond with a bridge over it in the back yard, and the beach we went to in the summer was segregated--although I didn't know what that meant at the time. I recall pressing my nose up against a chain link fence and seeing people with brown skin on the other side. I was fascinated. I had never seen a person with brown skin. I didn't understand why we couldn't go over there and play with them. They were different, so I reasoned that they must be special.

What I didn't remember--Ma told me this story many years later--was that when we were still living in Cleveland and I was just a toddler, one day she took me and Bertie to the dime store and we sat down at the soda fountain for something to eat. There was a big black man working behind the counter, wiping up our place with a damp rag. I had never seen a black person before, and I pointed and cried in delight, "Ma, look at the brown man!" My mother cringed with embarrassment, and the man behind the counter swore, threw his rag down on the floor, and stomped out of the store. I wish I could have said, "Wait! Wait! Some day I'll marry two black men and be a jazz musician!" Too late.

Music. I didn't realize it when we moved to East Islip, but the seed that would later grow into an all-consuming passion had already been planted. Pop had a collection of records that included the popular white big bands--Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, Harry James, Benny Goodman--and black jazz bands like Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Duke Ellington, as well as some classical music. Ma used to sing. She knew a lot of great old tunes like "Don't Fence Me In" and "Down Among the Sheltering Palms." She could play the piano, too, and sing in harmony. In fact, she once told me that she had sung in an all-girl quartet when she was younger, and they'd actually made a recording in one of those instant record booths they had back in those days.

Pop was a bit of a musician, too. He played some guitar, and had a clarinet stashed away in the closet and a couple of ocarinas that he called "sweet potatoes." He liked to sing funny songs to me and Bertie like "The Walloping Window Blind" and "Cocaine Bill and Morphine Sue"--we had no idea what that one was about until we got a little older, but we used to laugh every time he got to the part "Hey babe, won't you have a little sniff (and he'd make a snorting sound with his nose) on me."

Bertie started school when we moved to East Islip. Every day she went off, and I just stayed home and whimpered and whined all day. I couldn't bear the fact that Bertie was in school and I had to stay home. I wept and fussed Ma into a perfect stew, until finally one day she dragged me over to the school and begged the principal to sign me up for kindergarten. He was reluctant, but finally gave in when Ma convinced him how smart, well-behaved and mature (!) I was. So that's how I started going to school at age four. I was the youngest kid in the class.

I got to see Bertie every day in the school yard or the hall, but kindergarten turned out to be a bit more than I could handle. The first day, when it was time to go and relieve ourselves, I trudged along with the teacher and the other little girls into the big, white-tiled bathroom with its long row of stalls along the wall. The teacher said, "You go in this one, Amy. Just pull the seat down and do your business."

I went in and pulled the big seat down, hoisted myself up, and did my piddle. Then I slid off the seat, and when I did, a deafening roar came up out of the toilet that sent my heart right up into my throat. The toilet was opening up like an enormous, monstrous crocodile mouth, and a gurgling, sucking sound was coming from deep inside. I pulled my pants up as fast as I could and ran screaming and crying to the teacher.

"It's all right, dear," she said, patting my head. "It's just the toilet flushing. It flushes by itself. You'll be used to it by the next time."

Her voice was calm and soothing, but I swore to myself that there would be no next time. Every day after that, I held my bladder all morning long, and when Pop came to pick me up after school, the minute I saw him I just stood there in shame and fear and peed on the sidewalk.

But in spite of this daily trauma, I did find some happiness in kindergarten because I got my first chance to play music. One day Mrs. Prebenna, the teacher, sat us down in a semi-circle and handed out a different rhythm instrument to each of us. Some got two wooden blocks, others bells or a tambourine. I was fascinated and wanted to try them all. Mrs. Prebenna showed us how to beat out a rhythm and then sat down at the piano and played a song while we accompanied her in joyful cacophony.

After I'd been in school only a short time, the teacher noticed that I was having trouble seeing the blackboard. Pop was very nearsighted, and Bertie was already wearing glasses by this time, so Ma took me to the optometrist for an eye test. The doctor told Ma I had progressive myopia, too, and that Bertie and I had inherited it from Pop. I was fitted with a tiny pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. The first time I wore them to school, I heard a couple of kids whispering "four eyes," and even though I tried to ignore them, I couldn't stop myself from watering up. The teacher thought I had to go to the bathroom, because my eyes always watered up at the thought of having to face the terror toilets in the girls' room, even though I was eventually able to cope with them by peeing and then running out of the cubicle as fast as I could. I don't know if it was the glasses, but before long I started having headaches. I told Ma about it and she said, "You're too little to have a headache."

When we lived on Long Island, Bertie and I had long hair. Ma combed out the snarls and braided it for us every morning before we went off to school. Sometimes people thought Bertie and I were twins, even though she was taller and we didn't really look all that much alike. It was mostly because of the hair and the clothes.

Ma liked to sew, and she used to make matching outfits for me and Bertie. I remember watching her at the sewing machine, waiting impatiently to see what pretty little dress would emerge from the pieces of cloth and rickrack.

Once she got the idea into her head that matching printed pants outfits would look cute on us, so she made printed slacks with elastic waistbands and matching shirts with short sleeves, collars and buttons down the front. The first (and last) day we wore them to school, everyone laughed at us and said we had come to school in our pajamas.

I knew there was something wrong with Bertie when we were living in East Islip. She became very quiet and hardly ever smiled. Years later she told me that she was always imagining she was inside a coffin. The doctor said she was suffering from the same "melancholia" that had afflicted both my Grandma and my Aunt Helen, except that they were already grown up when they had it. During my childhood I used to hear the relatives talking in hushed voices about Grandma's and Aunt Helen's melancholia and how both of them had gotten shock treatments, and how Grandma had spent some time in an asylum. I didn't know what an asylum was, but the shock treatments--whatever they were--sounded awful. I was glad that Ma didn't make Bertie have shock treatments. When I got a little older, I wondered why only the women in our family were crazy and not the men. When I got even older I came to the conclusion that the men had driven them crazy.

Bertie gradually got better all on her own, at least to outward appearances, defying all hereditary predictions. Things went back to normal. But there was always a feeling of tension in our home. At the time I didn't make the connection between Pop's drinking bouts and the loud, tense conversations between Ma and Pop; in fact, I wasn't even aware that he drank, or even what "drinking" meant. But it was around that same time that a new fear overcame me.

For some reason, I had developed an aversion to certain foods that bordered on sheer panic at the thought of having to eat them. One of these foods was Spanish rice--one of Ma's favorite recipes--and the other was apple pie. Odd as it may seem, just the smell of an apple pie baking in the oven used to leave me nauseous and trembling. I was terrified that Ma would make me eat it. For a while, she let me get away without eating it because she knew it would be an ordeal to try to force me, but I was still uneasy every time I'd see her in the kitchen peeling apples. It seemed to me that my luck couldn't last forever, and this kept me in a constant state of anxiety.

One evening after dinner, she served the dreaded pie for dessert again. I knew what was coming, because I had smelled it baking in the oven and had secretly prayed that she'd let me off the hook one more time. But this time she decided she'd had enough of my foolishness and that it was time for me to snap out of it, so she cut what seemed like a huge slice of the hateful thing and set it in front of me.

"Now, you're going to eat this, and you're not going to make a fuss," she said, her mouth a thin, grim, tight line.

I just stared at it.

Bertie and Pop looked down at their plates and said nothing.

"You eat it right now, or you're going to get a spanking," she said, her voice rising in anger.

I picked up my fork and broke of a tiny piece of the crust, and slowly put it in my mouth. I gagged and started to cry.

Suddenly Ma jumped up from the table, grabbed me by the arm and started hitting me on my rear over and over as hard as she could. I had a distinct feeling of wishing I were dead. Or that she were dead. Or that we all were dead. The humiliation of it, her beating me in front of Pop and Bertie...it was unbearable, unspeakable. She dragged me to my room, threw me on the bed and slammed the door. I remembered Mary, my doll back in Cleveland, floating away down the sewer drain. I felt like her. I wished I were her.

After that episode, all the fears that had been lurking inside of me became full blown. I didn't realize at the time that Ma was a pressure cooker just waiting for an excuse to explode. There was no way I could understand about her and Pop and the drinking. To me it just seemed that I had a mother who hated me and I didn't know what to do to get her to love me. Around that time I started having a recurring nightmare about being trapped in a theater where everything was red. Thick, blood-red carpets, red curtains, red lights, red walls, red ceilings. Then I would hear an eerie chorus of men's voices whispering "Downstairs, downstairs, downstairs," getting gradually louder and louder until I would wake up screaming.

I used to wear a little filigreed gold ring that Ma had given me. One day at school I was in the bathroom drying my hands with a paper towel, and when I reached up to drop the towel in the tall trash can, my ring came off and fell down inside. Panic gripped me. "It's lost, lost forever...Ma will kill me!" I was too afraid to ask someone to help me get it out. Surely the janitor would have fished it out for me, but I was too timid and ashamed to ask him. Strangely, Ma never even noticed that I wasn't wearing the ring any more, and I was very grateful. By now, I was thoroughly terrified of her and constantly watched my back.

Even though I was only four I could remember, with a sense of sadness and loss, the time when Ma, and adults in general, ceased thinking of me as "cute" and began to treat me with what I perceived as indifference and sometimes cruelty. That was when I started doing anything I could to try to get my mother to love me, even though I was afraid of her. I still felt, in spite of all my insecurities, that I was special and that somehow, at some point, she would recognize this fact and love me a lot. I was undaunted. I did everything in my power to prove to her that I really _was_ special, even _extraordinary_. What I couldn't see was that she actually did love me the best she could, in her own way.

# CHAPTER 3: NEWTOWN

In 1947, when I was six and Bertie was eight, we moved to a country town called Newtown, in Connecticut. It was winter and close to Christmas time, and Ma asked us where we'd rather spend the holidays--in East Islip or Newtown. We both immediately piped up and said, "In the new house!"

The first thing I remember about the move is that Ma cut our long hair off. It was as if we had gone through a rite of passage, from our old life in the burbs on Long Island to our new one--a fresh start for all of us--out in the sticks of Connecticut.

Our two-story house in Newtown had a couple of unusual features. One was that it was built into the side of a hill, so when you went in through the front door you were on the first floor, but when you walked across the room and looked out the windows, you saw that you were on the second floor. Then, if you walked downstairs, you'd be on the first floor again, because the kitchen door led right out into the backyard.

The other thing was the walls in the bedroom Bertie and I shared. They were made of natural plywood with dark, swirly patterns in them that stirred my imagination. I would lie on my bed and stare at my side of the wall, and the swirls would start to look like the faces of people and fanciful creatures. They became my friends, my protectors. I even gave them names. Many, many years later I would have the exact same experience with some swirly brown tiles in my bathroom in Rio de Janeiro.

Bertie and I were proud because our yard was a whole acre. Beyond our acre of mowed grass, there were many more acres of woods and fields, and no houses at all. When we first moved there, there was a chain link fence all around the yard and an enclosure with a pear tree growing inside it. Over the years, the fence gradually broke down until there was nothing left of it. We never bothered to have another one put up.

Our landlord Bill Holcombe, a big, handsome, burly man with a fuzzy mustache and a slightly southern accent, and his tiny, sophisticated wife Josephine--a wealthy and prominent Newtown couple--owned all the land as well as our house, and they wouldn't sell it or let anyone build on it. So the only other house we could see from ours was our neighbor Mrs. Moore's at the bottom of the valley behind our house, and then only when the brush was cut down so the view wasn't obscured.

Lillian Moore was the fattest person I'd ever seen, and always smelled vaguely of dried pee. She and her skinny husband Henry were old and hardly ever went out of their house. Their only company was a tiger cat named Peanuts. But Ma became friends with Mrs. Moore and used to go visit her and sit there and cry when she was having problems with Pop. Once in a while, Bertie and I would have to stay with the Moores when Ma had to go somewhere and she couldn't take us.

I didn't like it at Mrs. Moore's because it was boring and smelled bad. Henry just sat drooling in his chair and rarely said anything. Once he did tell us, though, that Indians used to play under the magnificent oak tree in our yard.

The Moores had a foster daughter named Eleanor who used to visit every now and then. The neighbors talked about her in hushed voices and said she was "mental." When she visited, she was always nice to me and Bertie, so I was confused about why people seemed to think it was a shameful thing to be "mental."

One day Bertie, Ma and I were at Mrs. Moore's during a terrible thunderstorm, so we waited inside until the rain stopped and the sun came out. Ma said goodbye to Mrs. Moore and Henry and got up to leave, with me and Bertie tagging behind. As soon as she opened the door and stepped outside, a big lightning bolt came down right in front of her and struck the ground. Yikes! Ma wasn't hurt, miraculously, but we all stood there trembling and it took us quite some time to calm down.

Funny thing, I always thought Ma was really brave because she seemed to be undaunted by storms and chided me and Bertie for being so nervous about them. But after the incident at Mrs. Moore's, I realized she'd always been afraid of them, too, but had tried to keep up a good front so that we wouldn't be afraid. She gave herself away, I now realize, by constantly talking about ways to protect ourselves and the things in our house from lightning (Never go barefoot! Unplug all the appliances in the house! The safest place in a lightning storm is in the car because you're sitting on rubber tires! And on and on...). Even though I eventually got over my fear, Bertie followed those instructions to the letter at the first thunderclap for the rest of her life.

Besides the house, we had a red barn near the road and a dusty, grassless area beside it that we referred to as "the parking lot." Ma often left the car in the parking lot, but in the winter or when the weather was bad, she used to leave it in the barn. Bill Holcombe kept half the barn for himself so he could build boats there. I used to peek between the cracks in the boards on his side of the barn so I could see what he was building. He always kept the door padlocked.

The Holcombes were good people. They rented the house to Ma and Pop for $115 a month--a three-bedroom house with three bathrooms. But after we moved in, Mrs. Holcombe came by one day in her mink coat and told us she thought the rent was too high, so she lowered it to $100. After that, she and Mr. Holcombe never raised the rent for all the years we lived there. Even after Ma and Pop split up and Ma married George Renda and then she died and George was living alone in the house--even then, nearly fifty years later, the Holcombes hadn't raised the rent. Before they died themselves, they willed the house and all the land around it to the Newtown Forestry Department, with the stipulation that the rent wouldn't be raised and that George could live out his days there, which he did.

I came to know every inch of our yard. I used to walk around the edge of it, lie down on it, roll on it, and sit on my "thinking rock" halfway between the house and the barn. I'd take off my glasses and study blades of grass, hard-working ants and four-leaf clovers with my myopic super close-up eyes. Once I picked thirty-three four-leaf clovers in the back yard and pressed them in a book. When I couldn't find them later on, Bertie said I had lied about finding that many four-leaf clovers. But I swear I remember picking them, counting them, and humming "I'm looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before..." as I carefully laid them between the pages of an old encyclopedia.

The grass outside Bertie's and my bathroom window was always wetter than the rest of the yard, kind of swampy, with lots of red Indian paintbrushes and tiny white and purple violets peeking up through the damp grass. And down in the back of the house there was poison ivy growing along the edge of the yard, with its shiny red groups of three pointy leaves that unfurled in the spring and then turned green. Ma was forever warning us to keep out of it. Over on the other side, beyond the mowed part of the lawn, there was a vast wall of deadly nightshade growing beside the artesian well, its tiny purple flowers with yellow dots in the middle looking perfectly innocent.

Then there was the natural spring hidden among the falling leaves just behind the giant thick-trunked oak tree with its heavy branches hanging over Ma and Pop's bedroom window, and I loved it more than anything else in the yard. A real spring, with icy bubbling water, where Bertie and I used to lower a tin dipper and drink from its ravishing chilliness on hot summer days. Once I found a frog in the spring. It was the first frog I'd ever seen; there were lots and lots of brown toads in the yard, but I'd never seen a smooth, green frog before, except in pictures in a book. I took him out of the spring and played with him for a while, but didn't have the heart to keep him away too long from his dark, watery sanctuary.

Some years later, Ma said we couldn't drink out of the spring any more because Mr. Holcombe told her the pipe was rusty inside. I didn't believe that such crystal clear water could be dangerous, so I used to sneak over and drink it when Ma wasn't looking. I've always had a thing about water, and I sometimes wonder if it started with that spring. I've always felt a need to be around water, immersed in it, if possible. Sometimes I actually wanted to jump down into that spring, and I used to sit on the edge and stick my legs down as far as they would go into the dark, icy pool. Whenever I went for walks in the woods, I'd always look for brooks and ponds. Bertie and I used to make miniature boats out of walnut shell halves with paper sails stuck on a match stick and race them down the streams that ran through the woods behind our house.

When I couldn't find a natural outdoor source of water, I would resort to my mother's bathtub, which really wasn't a bad substitute and a nice change from the stall shower in Bertie's and my bathroom. I'd fill it up full with water so hot and steamy that it made my thighs turn bright pink, and sit there up to my neck until it cooled down and my fingers got all white and wrinkly. Many years later I would finally live close to the beach, and my romance with the sea would become almost a daily ritual. The ocean would be my mercurial lover, some days calm and peaceful, others foaming and resentful, and still others devious and treacherous. I'd watch for its mood and edge closer and closer...close enough to get wet all over, but not so close that the undertow would carry me off, although the strong waves did knock me over more than once.

Ma's idea of a fun day at the beach was to drive us to Sherwood Island Park, a rocky, unappealing beach that was more than an hour away by car from where we lived. Because it was so far, we felt obliged to stay there all day. My memories of Sherwood Island Park are the rocky beach, the icy water, sandy sandwiches, sunburns, and the sickening ride back home in the car while Ma smoked the whole way. Bertie and I would have preferred Lake Quassapaug, because it had a water park and an amusement park. We needled and pestered until Ma finally gave in and took us there once. That was it, one time, and then it was back to Sherwood Island.

It's a miracle that I didn't die of some form of poisoning growing up in Connecticut, between drinking the supposedly tainted spring water and chewing on practically everything that grew out of the ground, both in the yard and in the woods. I was forever gnawing on roots, masticating grass and clover, and popping flower petals into my mouth. The only plants I stayed away from were mushrooms, because I'd heard so many awful stories about how you couldn't tell the edible ones from the poisonous ones unless you were an expert (and sometimes even they messed up) and the hideous things that would happen to you if you erred.

Bertie and I did a lot of gardening. Ma told us what flowers to plant and it was always the same things--mostly zinnias and marigolds. We grew everything from seeds for a number of years, but later on Ma started buying full-grown plants, mostly petunias, salvia and impatiens. I had a big red poppy plant around the side of the house that I was very proud of, but I missed dropping tiny seeds into rows, covering them with a thin layer of dirt, watering them, and then waiting anxiously for the first folded green leaflets to push their way through the soil.

From the time we moved to Newtown, I liked to escape into the woods by myself and pretend that I was stranded. I'd take a jar of water and some stale bread from the bread box and imagine that I was lost in the forest trying to survive on my own. Climbing over and around the clumps of giant rocks, I'd find a hiding place and just sit there listening to the sounds of the woods, looking over the big cliff down to the cement swimming pool that belonged to the Holcombes. We used to swim in it when we first moved to Newtown, but over the years we gradually stopped going there. I never knew why. The pool was never emptied. It gradually filled with rotting leaves and the water turned black and stagnant until, over the years, it finally evaporated. Before long, the empty pool was overgrown with brush and Virginia creepers and the cement had cracked.

Sometimes I'd wander all day in the woods, picking tufts of star moss to take home, trudging through the swampy hummocks where the skunk cabbage grew. The woods were full of magical things: winding brooks; bloodroot, the first flower of spring, which Bertie and I eagerly pulled from the ground so we could cut into the roots and watch the red fluid flow eerily onto our hands; the root cellar, not far from our yard, where someone long ago had once stored home-canned foods, potatoes and onions, and which was now just a dark, dank hole that held the threat of snakes, but which we couldn't resist crawling down into; the occasional snapping turtle loping along through the crab grass; in the spring masses of jack-in-the-pulpits, trillium, and every now and then a rare red wild columbine. Ma never worried about me or Bertie when we were out in the woods for hours. It was completely safe. The only unusual thing we ever encountered there was a group of transvestites dressed in their finery, traipsing among the pine trees, which I suppose was kind of shocking for those days, but which Bertie and I found quite amusing.

I had an imaginary friend I took with me when I wandered alone in the woods. Her name was Josie. I had read a story about her in a magazine and I wanted to be just like her. She was tough and not afraid of anyone or anything, and she wore a rope around her waist to hold up her jeans. I snitched a piece of rope from the tool cupboard and wore it to hold up my jeans, too. Josie and I had many long conversations during my walks in the woods.

Across the road from the barn there was a little pond hidden behind the crumbling stone wall that ran from one end of the road to the other. In the spring we could hear the sound of the peepers, which arrived just as the pussy willows began to sprout their soft, gray buds. Later on when the peepers had grown into frogs, I used to sit at the edge of the pond and wait for one to leap from the water, imagining that if I waited long enough, maybe a fairy would appear, too. I wrote this poem about it many years later:

_THE FAIRY POND_

_Twinkling with mirth,_

_I played beside the fairy pond,_

_An ebony cricket chirped,_

_And peepers sang merrily all the day._

_I knelt on the soft green moss,_

_And plucked the lovely trillium_

_To make a garland for my hair..._

_The air was still, sun warm on my skin,_

_The buzzing of a tree toad,_

_Among the million silent sounds_

_Of hidden life among the grasses._

_The water was dark and still,_

_Leaves floating languidly on the surface,_

_Hiding places for a fat green frog_

_That popped his head through long enough_

_To grab a lazy dragonfly with his tongue._

_Endless summer days_

_Beside the fairy pond,_

_I sink my toes into the mud,_

_And watch the bees hovering_

_About the honeysuckle._

_I wait, breathlessly,_

_For the fairies to come._

_I can almost hear their wings_

_Rustling softly behind the trees,_

_The faint, silvery sound of tiny bells._

_Will they come? Will they come?_

_It seems to me they did come once,_

_Long ago on a sultry afternoon,_

_With the sun setting behind the hill._

_I saw them, two or three, I think,_

_But I heard them first,_

_Their laughter like tinkling chimes,_

_Then I saw them, gossamer wings,_

_Floating just over the surface_

_Of the fairy pond, close enough to touch._

_I held my breath and closed my eyes,_

_Perhaps for a second too long,_

_For when I opened them they were gone,_

_And I was alone by the pond._

_They never did come again,_

_But I still went down every day,_

_And I go down even now_

_To wait for them and_

_Play beside the fairy pond._

Bertie and I had started school in Newtown. We both went to the Hawley elementary school, and had made some friends there, but since we lived in such an isolated place, hardly anyone ever came to visit, and Bertie and I rarely went to play at other kids' houses. Anyway, Ma didn't like driving us all over the place, and she made no bones about it. So we found ways to amuse ourselves at home.

I always carried a little solid rubber ball around with me. With it, I played a game called "Russia." This involved throwing the ball up in the air higher and higher and doing more and more complicated things before you caught the ball, like clapping your hands a number of times, turning around, jumping, etc. I spent many happy hours by myself playing "Russia." I liked doing things by myself, and it never occurred to me that I should feel lonely or miss having lots of friends. This knack for keeping myself entertained alone would stand me in good stead many years later when I would find myself living a solitary life...and thoroughly enjoying it.

But I wasn't completely alone, because Bertie and I often played together and had a lot of fun. We had a weird way of playing games, like jacks and tiddlywinks, for instance. We hardly ever played with them the way they were supposed to be played. We knew they were games, but didn't know how to play them and didn't really care. I used to collect those little metal jack thingies and use them, well, sort of architecturally, arranging them in patterns and trying to stack them up. Bertie and I had a game of tiddlywinks, but only rarely did we sit down to play the game where you snap the winks into a cup to win points. Instead, we'd line the plastic discs up in rows or create pictures with them by drawing circles around the outside of them.

I knew that there was an actual game called "marbles" but I had no idea how to play it. Sometimes I'd watch other kids trying to shoot each others' marbles out of a ring, but I didn't understand what they were doing and it never appealed to me. Nevertheless, I had a large collection of marbles in a cigar box. They fascinated me, with their swirly colors, and the way they sparkled in the sun. Bertie and I collected them and traded them with each other. Once we went to visit my Grandma and I found a box of old clay marbles in a closet. They weren't shiny and swirly like my glass ones, and most of them weren't very round, either, but I loved them. They were old and interesting and lopsided and nobody I knew had anything like them. I had fun arranging them in a circle and imagining little boys in caps and jodhpurs from long ago playing marble games with them in the street.

Pop liked to play chess, and he had a nice wooden chess set. The pieces were small and smooth and I loved the way they felt in my hands. I used them as toy soldiers, creating a battlefield under the dining room table, until I was around eight years old. That was when Pop taught me how to play the real game of chess and I finally learned how to use the pieces the "right" way.

Our bedroom had spare drawers, so Bertie and I made dollhouses in them, using the cardboard that came in Pop's shirts from the dry cleaner to build walls, and making furniture out of matchboxes, clay, popsicle sticks and anything else we could get our hands on, including Pop's empty .22 rifle shells, which we used for tiny drinking glasses. We fashioned little people to live in our houses out of pipe cleaners and scraps of cloth and made them speak with British accents.

But the most fun Bertie and I ever had playing with our dollhouses was with the Scrabble chips. We had no interest in playing the game in those days, but Pop had gotten a job working at a little Scrabble factory and he used to bring all the faulty chips home for us. They were made of real wood, so Bertie and I got to work right away, turning them letter-side down to make beautiful parquet floors for our "drawer houses."

Like most siblings, Bertie and I squabbled and fought. She would tease me and I'd figure out ways to get revenge. Once I dug up a jack-in-the-pulpit, peeled the white, peppery root, and gave her a piece. I told her it was a piece of raw potato because Ma always used to give us each a hunk when she was peeling potatoes in the kitchen. We loved the crunchy taste. I knew the root wouldn't be fatal because I'd selflessly tasted a miniscule piece of it myself. She ate it in one bite, and her mouth puckered up something awful, like she'd just sucked the holy bejesus out of a half dozen really acidy lemons. She yelled and cursed and punched me hard, and I just laughed.

The most fun Bertie and I had together was in the winter. There was always a lot of snow and the wind would sometimes blow it into drifts that rose up above our heads. To me, there was nothing more beautiful than the snow falling silently all night long and then waking up to a white world the next morning. We considered ourselves lucky to have not one, but _two_ hills in our very own yard. We used to slide down them on our sleds, on pieces of cardboard and on simple wooden skis that had straps we slid over our boots. When we got a little older and more daring, we'd drag our sleds down the road to a really big hill on a wide paved road. There was hardly any traffic in those days, especially when the roads hadn't been plowed, so we and the few other kids in the neighborhood had the hill pretty much to ourselves. It was a big thrill to go down that hill on our sleds--it was so steep, and so fast!

I can remember staying out in the snow until I was soaked and freezing, and then finally coming indoors and tearing off my boots and socks to reveal my cold, red, wet feet. We had a Franklin stove in the living room, and I loved it when Ma or Pop built a fire and I could sit in front of it until my feet thawed out.

My problems with Ma didn't end when we moved to Newtown, even though it was supposed to be a fresh start for all of us. She openly favored Bertie, who was obedient, helpful, easy-going and fun, and didn't remind her of Pop--who, by the way, did not straighten up and become superdad in our new setting, but continued to have bouts of heavy drinking.

I tried to please Ma by studying hard and doing well at school. I was smart and I knew it, and most of the classes weren't that hard for me. But when I brought home straight A's on my report card one time, she glanced at it, signed the bottom, and said, "Don't let it go to your head."

But then she decided to buy us a piano. She bought a little spinet so that Bertie and I could have lessons, but I knew she had bought it for herself, too. I used to love to hear her play Zez Confrey's "Kitten on the Keys" and "The Minute Waltz." She got around the keyboard really well and seemed to enjoy herself a lot. We had a bunch of song books from the 20s, 30s and 40s, and there was always music in our house. Ma got Bill Jones, the school music teacher, to give us lessons at home. After my first lesson, I learned to play _"_ Fur Elise _"_ by ear and "Jonesy," as we called him, was mightily impressed.

Ma made us practice for a half-hour every day, and for me this was no chore because I was fascinated by the piano with all its keys and the big range of sounds that came out of it. I started making up little tunes on my own and Mr. Jones made a point of telling Ma he thought I had talent. Bertie plugged along and got so she could play quite well, but she wasn't smitten with the piano like I was.

Aside from writing my own songs, I also made it my business to learn the words to every song that I liked on the radio or on a record. I kept a little green notebook and a pencil in my pocket and the minute I'd hear a song I liked on the radio, I'd scramble to get the lyrics down as fast as I could. I even invented a crude shorthand system so I wouldn't miss any words, and I learned a lot of songs this way. Whenever I watched the show _Name That Tune_ on TV I'd always win.

I practiced because I loved it, but I also secretly hoped that it would please Ma. After all, she was the one who had bought the piano so we could take lessons. Pop wasn't around much because he worked in Manhattan and took the commuter train in every day. By the time he got home there was only time to have dinner, do my homework, and then go to bed, so I didn't spend much time with him. In spite of this, Pop took a lively interest in my love for the piano and encouraged me in every way.

By this time Ma was becoming a little uneasy about my fanatical attachment to the instrument, but I just kept right on practicing. Sooner or later, I reasoned, she would come around and realize what a wonderful, special, talented daughter she had. But the joke was on me, because all the time I was knocking myself out to prove to her how great I was, she was worrying herself into a snit thinking, "Amy's just like Bob." Just like Pop. Moody, irresponsible, touchy, snobbish, self-centered, rebellious--most likely a future alcoholic, just like Pop. Even worse, I looked like him, which was a cruel reminder after he eventually left us.

Nevertheless, Ma really did love me, and I'm sure she believed she was trying to protect me. But I couldn't see the part of the picture where she was struggling to make ends meet when Pop lost job after job because of his drinking, and how she struggled even more after he left for good and didn't give her a cent to help support me and Bertie. I couldn't feel all the sorrow she endured because of his drinking, her broken dreams for a beautiful, happy marriage. All I could see was that she somehow had a vendetta against me. To me, the message was always, "Why can't you be like Bertie?"

Bertie was smart, but not hyper-sensitive like me. She wasn't complicated and strange like me, although she would have her share of emotional battles later in life. I know that I could probably have manipulated Ma into showing me more love and appreciation if I had conformed to what she wanted me to be, or at least pretended to. But I wouldn't. I _couldn 't_. And so Ma and I just continued to be at odds with each other.

A few weeks before my eighth birthday, Ma, Bertie and I were in Danbury, the closest "big city" to Newtown, walking through McCrory's Five and Ten, and I saw a cute big boy doll sitting on a counter. As we walked by I said, "Oooh, what a cute doll!" I was just running off at the mouth, as I often did when we went to stores together. When my birthday arrived, I was surprised and chagrined that Ma had bought the boy doll for me. I hadn't really wanted him, and I felt cheated because she had never asked me what I actually wanted. I felt like she was just clutching at straws to figure out what to buy me, because she really didn't know me or care about what I might really want. I named him Robby, but soon tired of playing with him. One day I tore his clothes off and carelessly threw him on my bed. Later on Ma came into my room and saw him lying there naked, legs akimbo.

"Look at the way you treat that nice doll I gave you!" she yelled. "Don't let me catch you leaving him like that ever again!"

After that I put Robby away in the closet and didn't play with him any more. Many years later, recalling the Robby fiasco, I realized that Ma had really thought I wanted him, and she had filed that thought away in her memory, making a special trip back to McCrory's to buy him just for me, ungrateful little wretch that I was.

I guess it was partly because I felt Bertie was Ma's favorite that I reacted that way about Robby. It seemed to me Bertie always got the attention and all the best stuff. When Ma bought little antique bisque dolls for us one time for Christmas, Bertie's was bigger, and had eyes that closed and teeth. Her things were always bigger and better. But then one year, to my great surprise, Ma gave me a Flexible Flyer sled for Christmas. I was so proud! Bertie didn't get any sled at all, and had to play with her old one, which was _smaller_ than mine, and _old_ , too.

Pop often brought me and Bertie festive presents from New York, but what I loved most was when he was more or less sober and in a good mood and made things for us or showed us how to make our own toys. He taught us how to use a hammer, a saw, and a wood plane. I liked to build little boxes and boats and kept up my carpentry skills right into adulthood. What thrilled me the most, though, was when Pop made us paper dolls. Yep, he used to make paper dolls for me and Bertie--not your run-of-the-mill ordinary boy and girl paper dolls, no siree. Pop was a bit of an amateur cartoonist, and he used to make up his own characters: fat guys with cross-eyes and handlebar mustaches, skinny ladies with pointy chins, big glasses and wild, frizzy hair, animals that existed only in his imagination, and then he, Bertie and I would make paper clothes for them with little tabs, filling them in with colored pencils.

Pop had a meticulous bent. He loved to draw charts and diagrams, or any kind of highly detailed sketch. He would have made an excellent draftsman. He loved to keep things organized, and made perfect little labels for everything, cutting out tiny pieces of oak tag and printing precise letters on them with India ink. I inherited a bit of that from him, I think, because I've always enjoyed working with fiddly things.

When we were a little older, Pop taught me and Bertie how to shoot a rifle. He had a .22 that was small enough for us to handle, and he'd nail an oversized red plastic record on a tree in the yard for target practice. Those records were actually "test pressings" from "Linda's First Love," the radio soap opera he used to write scripts for, and were pretty easy for us to hit. I absolutely loved shooting the .22 with Pop. One time his friend Frank Albanese came to visit and brought a bigger gun than Pop's lightweight .22. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it, but Pop said it was too big and heavy for me and had a kickback. I swaggered around, insisting I could handle it until they finally gave in. Of course the minute I pulled the trigger I landed on my butt, much to Pop and Frank's amusement and my embarrassment, especially since I had a major crush on Frank.

Ma taught us how to make things, too. She showed us how to make a doll out of a sock. Bertie and I had endless hours of fun making dolls out of our old socks. I had some brown socks and made a doll I named "Cocoa." Once I pretended she had her period and made her a miniature Modess sanitary pad out of cotton and gauze. I even put a little piece of blue thread down the middle to show which side was up, the way they did with the real pads back then. Ma taught us how to use the sewing machine too, and by the time we were in high school we were already making some of our own clothes.

I remember one Halloween there was a costume contest at a school party. I went all out to try to win first prize. Ma gave me some old white sheets and I dyed them red and painted intricate designs on them with gold paint. I was going to be a Balinese dancer. I made everything myself, including the headdress, and I thought it looked really great--I was sure I was going to win. But on Halloween night, much to my disappointment, a cute little blond girl wearing a store-bought witch costume from Woolworth's won first prize. But even though I was angry and upset, I didn't let that squelch my natural desire to create things from scratch.

One of the most exciting things that happened was that we got a TV. We were one of the first families in Newtown to have one. This was in 1950, and Bertie and I immediately became hooked on _Kukla, Fran and Ollie_ , the classic live improvised puppet show, where they made up the story lines as they went along. We even made our own puppets to match the ones on TV and put on our own shows at home. At night we watched the mystery drama _Lights Out_ or Groucho Marx's _You Bet Your Life_ or _The Jackie Gleason Show_ , which we used to call the "Jackie Greaser Show." Sometimes on the weekends we'd stay up late until they played the "Star Spangled Banner" and then the test pattern came on. We were so happy that Ma had decided to get the television.

The time when Ma was nicest to me was when I was sick. I almost looked forward to coming down with something, because she'd tuck me up in bed under the soft, cozy covers and bring me magazines and smile at me and talk to me. She'd make me Lipton's chicken noodle soup with Saltine crackers, and we'd laugh about what Arthur Godfrey said when he advertised the soup on the radio: the only contact this soup ever had with a chicken was when one ran through it with rubber boots on. Ha ha ha. But as soon as I got better, everything would go back to the way it was. I got sick a lot. I had several colds every year, and one good long bout of the flu that would keep me in bed for a week or two so Ma would have to bring my lessons home from school. And be nice to me.

At school I had the reputation of being a weakling and a scaredy cat. First, because I was really small and second, because I was the only kid in my class who wore glasses. The nickname I'd acquired in kindergarten back on Long Island, "four eyes," had persisted with a vengeance. The older boys and tougher girls teased me mercilessly, not just about the glasses but because I had been blessed with Pop's aquiline nose, for which I earned the lovely moniker "hawk beak."

Like any other kid, I wanted to be liked, to be popular, but I had this sinking feeling that it was never going to happen. When I was in the fifth grade I had a teacher named Miss Paquin. The kids all called her "old maid," but I thought she was very "with it" because every day she used to have us push all the desks and chairs to the sides of the classroom to make a dance floor. Then she'd drag out the record player and put on some music and we'd all partner off and start dancing. She taught us some basic steps and encouraged the shyer boys to ask the girls to dance. She expected the boys to ask _all_ the girls, not just the cute, popular ones like Juney Meyers, with her silky black hair and white angora sweaters, so I had plenty of chances to get out on the floor and cut a rug. Sometimes Miss Paquin would even set up square dances for us.

I remember there was a boy in the class named John Rice who had decided one day to put some firecrackers inside a tin can in his back yard and set them off. He ended up blowing off all the fingers of his left hand. None of the girls wanted to dance with him because they'd have to hold onto his stumpy hand, so I always ended up dancing with John. It kind of gave me the creeps at first, but I got used to it. At least he was a boy and had asked me to dance.

I remember becoming more clothes conscious around this time. Maybe it was because of the dances, but I wanted to look nice. To my mind, Ma had no idea what clothes would look good on me. Sometimes she let me and Bertie pick out our own things, but I remember she bought us some ugly, clunky loafers that I hid in the back of my closet and avoided wearing as much as possible. She still sewed a lot of our clothes, but at least she let us pick out the patterns and the cloth. One of my favorite outfits was a purple corduroy vest and skirt--Ma didn't make it, she let me choose it from a catalog. I liked the name of the color in the catalog: "wood violet." But my most favorite outfit of all was my red felt circular skirt with the poodle applique on it that I liked to wear with my brown and white saddle shoes. I went through a crinoline phase, too, and even had a hoop skirt for the short time that the rage lasted. Some of the girls I knew in high school wore dog collars on their ankles, on the right ankle if you were going steady and on the left if you were available, but I never got up the nerve to put one on my left ankle.

I didn't have a lot of friends at school, but when I was still in grammar school I did have one best friend, Darcy Halstead. She was scrawny and horsey, with stringy blond hair and buck teeth. Her mother Edna was scrawny, too, and nervous as hell. As far as I could figure out, she lived on coffee and cigarettes. I admired Darcy no end because she never cried when her mother or grandma hit her, which they did a lot. This was a source of amazement to me, that she just laughed it off when she had done something wrong and Edna slapped her. Darcy was tougher than I was and I wanted to be like her.

Darcy lived with Edna, her older sister Mickey, and her grandma and grandpa in a big house near Taunton Lake. Darcy's grandma did everything around the house and her grandpa sat in a wheelchair and couldn't talk. I was afraid of him. Edna would say, "Go ahead and talk to him, Amy, he can hear you and understand what you say," but I was tongue-tied in front of him.

Darcy and I were exactly the same age and were in the same grade at school. We both had the explorer's spirit, so we used to wander around the neighborhood looking for adventures. It was a pretty long walk from my house to Darcy's, but I went to her house more often than she came to mine. She used to say, "There's nothing to do at your house." It was true, it was much more fun around where she lived. For one thing, there were cow and sheep pastures. I had never been close to a cow or a sheep until I started hanging around with Darcy. We used to play in the fields, right in the middle of the animals. Once I stepped into a big cow pie. I nearly gagged, but Darcy just laughed and laughed. We also loved to play in the old cemetery next to her house, where we used to be bad and knock over the gravestones. My favorite times in the cemetery were when there was a freshly dug grave so Darcy and I could jump down in the hole and lie down and pretend we were dead.

But later on Darcy and I grew apart. By the time we were in high school I started thinking of her as "white trash." I saw myself as an "intellectual" and a "bohemian," while all Darcy seemed to care about were makeup, clothes and hairdos, things that really didn't interest me all that much once I got out of fifth grade and didn't have to look nice for the dances any more.

I started stealing little things when I was around ten. I saw some kids doing it and it looked so easy, just to pick up a piece of candy and pop it into my pocket, so I got into the habit of pilfering stuff at the shopping center after school. I never got caught, and so my "life of crime" began. There was a girl at school named Audrey. She was the new kid at school and a perfect little con artist. I was at once fascinated and repelled by her stories of how she would tell tall tales to shopkeepers, teachers and other grownups to get them to give her candy, money, and other things. I guess Audrey saw potential in me as a partner in crime, because she took me under her wing and tried to teach me her techniques for wrangling things out of the unwary.

Once when we were going into an ice cream shop together, she said to me, "I'm going to get us some free ice cream cones. Watch." I did, in mute terror and giddy fascination as Audrey told the guy behind the counter a sob story about how she had lost her purse but we really, really wanted some ice cream. In a flash, we were out the door with cones in hand.

But I knew I would never be able to follow in Audrey's footsteps, as much as I admired her. I was way too much of a scaredy-cat to do anything so bold. For one thing, I was afraid of grownups I didn't know and didn't like talking to them. Nevertheless, I was intrigued and attracted by the fact that Audrey was so sure she deserved to get things and that it was her right to have them, no matter what she had to do to get them. For me, stealing was easier because it didn't involve having to talk to people. It was a loner's occupation.

Stealing. Lies. Making things seem different from the way they really were. Getting something for nothing. Putting something over on someone--all these things started running through my mind, and I found myself strangely drawn to them. Even though Ma tried to bring us up "right," she never gave us anything to believe in. God was never mentioned in our house and we went to church only on the occasional Christmas or Easter. I basically knew the difference between right and wrong, but somehow wrong seemed much more appealing and exciting, especially when I thought about how horrified Ma would be if she knew what I was doing and how horrified I would be if she ever found out.

By the time I was in high school I was stealing lots of things, and so was Bertie. We'd cop lipsticks, gum, combs, little things. We kept it up right into college. The only time I ever got caught was in a diner in Boston when I was in college. I'd grabbed a brownie from one of those covered stands on the lunch counter, and a waitress saw me. She let me off the hook, but also let me know that she knew what I'd done. "You're going to pay for that brownie now, aren't you," was all she said, poker-faced. I was humiliated beyond words, but that didn't stop me from continuing to steal.

In spite of the ongoing strain between me and Ma, there were some happy times in Newtown. Some of my favorite memories are of baking things in our cozy downstairs kitchen. She'd make lemon or chocolate meringue pie, or chocolate chip cookies or fudge. When she made pie, she'd save the leftover dough from the crust and Bertie and I would roll it out and make cinnamon swirls. I suppose they were kind of hard and unappetizing, but we thought they were delicious. Of course we'd get to lick the bowl and the beaters when she made cookies or fudge. When she made Toll House cookies she'd always separate a little dough with no chocolate chips in it to make a couple of cookies for herself. It was inconceivable to me that she didn't like chocolate. How could anyone not like chocolate? But she always made chocolate stuff for us.

Pop was at the opposite end of the spectrum in the chocolate department. He always used to come home from New York with a gigantic Hershey bar, the ones divided up into little squares with a letter, H-E-R-S-H-E-Y, on each square. Many years later, when he was living in Mexico, he used to stash Hershey bars in the refrigerator to keep them from getting too soft in the semi-tropical heat; then at bed time he'd take one out and lay it on his bare chest so it would warm up a bit before he ate it. More often than not he'd fall asleep before he ever got to eat it, and would wake up with melted chocolate all over his chest. He also used to keep a can of Hershey's syrup next to the bed with a straw in it.

Maybe that's why Bertie and I had a penchant for eating brownies and fudge for breakfast, and it probably explains why, years afterwards, when I was pregnant for the first time, I used to gnaw off chunks of bitter Baker's chocolate, alternating bites with spoonfuls of sugar.

There were always lots of books around our house. I loved to read, and often had my nose in a book. When I was younger it was the Oz books, the Bobbsey Twins, Mary Poppins and Nancy Drew. I didn't just _read_ books, I _lived_ them. I'd get so absorbed in the stories that I'd lose myself completely. I'd start acting and talking like the characters, almost unconsciously.

By the time I was in high school I was making my own summer reading list, which included things like Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. Ma even gave me Shakespeare's complete works for my sixteenth birthday. Bertie and I especially liked the art books when we were approaching puberty because of the "dirty" pictures. We'd ooh and aah over Renoir's ample nudes and stare in fascination at Modigliani's skinny ones, looking over our shoulders every few minutes to make sure Ma hadn't sneaked into the room and caught us.

Well, with all that probing around in those art books, even though our motives weren't exactly pure, both Bertie and I both developed a love for drawing and painting. Nothing was more exciting that getting one of those super gigantic boxes of Crayolas with every color on earth in it. And then there were the beautiful little metal boxes of watercolors with their tiny oval trays filled with bright blues, vibrant reds, glorious yellows and shimmering greens.

Later on, when we outgrew Crayolas, we started drawing with charcoal and pastels that Pop bought us. Not soon after, we were gifted with oil painting sets, complete with palettes, brushes, and turpentine. Oh, how we loved that! My thing was mostly painting flowers, and Bertie liked to paint boats. When we couldn't think of what to paint, we resorted to paint-by-numbers, which we were too young to know we were supposed to ridicule.

But getting back to books, there was a book hiding on the shelf next to Ma's chair in the living room that I wanted to get my hands on. It was called "Forever Amber," and Bertie said it had all kinds of dirty stuff in it. "Jubilee Trail" was another book that had what to me was a steamy love scene in it. I got the strangest sensation as I read about the hero Oliver clasping the heroine Garnet hard to his chest so she could barely breathe and kissing her on the mouth.

Bertie and I were naturally curious about sex, and our curiosity began at an early age. Ma had never brought the subject up, so we did our best to find out on our own about what went on between men and women in the bedroom and how babies were made. There was a lot of talk at school, of course, and through listening to other kids and asking questions, we eventually came to feel that our sex education was complete.

One day Ma called me and Bertie into the dining room. It wasn't dinner time, so we knew something was up, and sure enough, she launched into the "I-think-you-girls-are-old-enough-now-to-talk-about-the-birds-and-the-bees" routine. "Oh, Ma," I said flippantly, "We already know all about _that_." Bertie and I ran back outside to play, leaving Ma with her mouth hanging open. Poor Ma. Or maybe she was relieved.

My "hands-on" experience with actual sex wouldn't come until many years later, and I wasn't exactly the kind of girl that the boys at school were dying to kiss, either. I remember going to parties at Virginia Wheeler's house where we played spin-the-bottle, though. Virginia, who was actually a nice girl, wasn't popular with the other kids because she was fat, so her mother threw parties for her so she'd have friends. We'd all hang out in the basement playroom while Ginny's mother stayed upstairs. Before long the bottle would start spinning, and I guess that's where I got my first kiss, although I honestly don't remember.

The kiss I do remember was when I was around 13 years old. The boy who kissed me was Ed Foley, a year older than me, and considered somewhat of a "hood." He had plastered-back blond wavy hair, pouty red lips and bedroom eyes, and I had a huge crush on him. He must have known it, because one day when he was at my house he grabbed me on the stairs and kissed me on the mouth. At that moment, I knew what the word "sexy" meant. I felt as if he'd taken off all my clothes and we'd done the deed, I swear, even though I had no idea of what it was like to do the deed. He never kissed me again, though.

Later on, when I was around 16, I met an older guy named John. He was blond, too, with glasses and thinning hair. I've never been attracted to blond men, but for some reason three of my early crushes were blonds. John was a con man of the first order. We used to go out driving around in his car just for fun. Once we stopped at a gas station and the attendant started chatting with us, asking us where we were going and things like that. John told him this wild tale about how I was running away from home and that we were going to elope and drive to Texas. He elaborated the story with lots of interesting details. I was flabbergasted, fascinated, and repelled all at the same time, that he could just sit there and lie like that with a straight face. It made me think of that girl Audrey, my first encounter with a con artist. When we drove away I burst out laughing, more out of nervousness than amusement, and couldn't stop. John said, "What's so funny?"

Anyway, back to the sex part. One night John drove me home and we were sitting in the car up in the parking lot next to the barn. It was dark, and he leaned over and kissed me. I kissed him back. I wanted him to kiss me some more, and he did. Then he started fiddling with my boobs and I let him do that, too, because it felt good. We were groping around in the dark and suddenly I felt something between my legs, trying to weasel its way into my underpants. I thought it was John's hand, but then I realized that he had both arms around me. Oops. I jumped off him so fast that I knocked his glasses off. I opened the car door and ran down to the house. He yelled after me, "You baby, you're just a baby!"

Then there was Kaz Gaizutis. I met him at an inter-state school musical event where I was playing piano. I had my hair cut very short and I was wearing big dangly earrings. Kaz thought I was cool and sophisticated because I was a girl and played jazz piano, and he was smitten right away. He was the third blond, and was Lithuanian. He even spoke with an accent, which I found charming and exotic. He lived in another town, but we exchanged phone numbers and addresses and started writing letters to each other. Kaz was older and had a car, and one time he drove to Newtown and took me out to the movies. Afterwards we sat in his car in the parking lot and necked. He asked me if I'd like to go to the beach with him and his friends the following weekend. I said I'd ask my mother and let him know. I felt very grown up.

Ma reluctantly said it would be all right to go as long as I didn't get back too late, so the following Sunday I made up a bunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, put my bathing suit on under my clothes and waited for Kaz. He showed up with his friends, and the first thing I noticed besides the fact that they were all older than me was that they seemed to like speaking in Lithuanian with each other better than speaking in English with me. It was a long ride to the beach, and I just sat there like a post wondering what the hell they were talking about. Sometimes they'd giggle in a snide way, and I was sure they were talking about me, probably calling me "four eyes" and "hawk beak" in Lithuanian.

We got to the beach and I ran straight to the water, where I could be by myself. Kaz ignored me and hung out with his friends. When lunch time came around, they took out fancy sandwiches made with meat and tomatoes and lettuce, and when they saw my humble pb and j's they giggled and rolled their eyes. I choked down a sandwich, praying that the time would hurry by so I could go home. Finally, when the sun was starting to set, we headed back. By this time I was bright red and sore all over. Kaz let his friend drive and sat with me in the back seat. He kept pawing me and it hurt something awful. I pushed him away and sulked in a corner until he dropped me off. He didn't walk me to the door, and I never heard from him again.

Looking back, I think I was quite clueless about sex in high school. Even though no one thought much about sexually transmitted diseases then and AIDS was still many years off, I had no notion of the kinds of messes kids could get themselves into having unprotected sex. I was absolutely horrified when I learned that a girl a couple of grades ahead of me had gotten pregnant and had tried to drown the baby in the toilet.

I was also flabbergasted when two of my girlfriends confessed to me that they had been experimenting with sex on each other for a year, and even more surprised when one of them told me she'd been using contraceptives and having sex with her boyfriend for ages. I had no boyfriend, knew nothing about contraceptives, and was starting to feel that I was way too innocent.

To me it was all scenes from another world--a world that had nothing to do with me, like the group of men who used to parade through the woods near our house with makeup on, wearing women's clothes. I knew one of Bertie's teachers was a "homo," but that knowledge didn't contribute much to what I didn't know about sex. When I was around 15, I was fondled in the back row at a little theater performance by a man in his 40s, and it neither frightened nor thrilled me. It just seemed like a naughty, fun thing to tell my girlfriends about.

I was much more interested in innocent pastimes, like pulling out our old photo albums. Most of the pictures in the albums were old, and as life went on and got more complicated, no one bothered to put the little decorative corners on the new photos any more and stick them in an album. Instead, they ended up loose in shoe boxes. Bertie and I would dump them out on the floor and laugh ourselves silly over the ones where someone was making a face on purpose, or where they just looked weird because the camera caught them at a funny angle.

I liked to look at the really old pictures, the ones in the albums. There was one of Grandma when she was young with three of her children, staring blankly into the camera. Ma must have been around five years old in this picture. Grandma had the two little ones in her lap, and my mother was sitting on the arm of the chair. Little Edith had no smile. Her mouth was a straight line, her hair in a short, severe bowl-cut. There was a later picture of Ma, a big one taken when she must have been in her early twenties. She had that same calm, expressionless look that my Grandma had, and her straight mouth had begun to turn down just a bit at the corners. I thought she looked beautiful, elegant, even glamorous. She had a broad face with even features and a slightly thick nose. Her eyebrows were carefully plucked. Many years later as she lay on her death bed in the hospital, not realizing where she was, she kept asking for someone to bring her some tweezers to pull out those bothersome eyebrow hairs.

# CHAPTER 4: SUMMER TRIPS

I always got the feeling that Ma didn't want to go to Nantucket for that summer vacation in 1949, but ended up going because Pop insisted. Her thing was going to what we always referred to as "the lake"--Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, where Grandma and Grandpa had a cottage. Pop hated going there because he had nothing but disdain for Ma's relatives. Nevertheless, Grandpa (Clarence Townley Bates, known as C.T.), with his greasy, yellowish-gray stringy hair, pipe hanging from his saggy lower lip and his filthy sleeveless "wife-beater" undershirt must have felt a certain sympathy for Pop, because he found him a quiet spot at the lake where he could write without being pestered by a gaggle of noisy kids and inquisitive women.

The kids were me and Bertie and our cousins Marcia and Priscilla, who were sisters, and Teddy, Jay and Libby, brothers and sister. After those years at the lake I lost touch with them, but Libby and I met again recently on Facebook, and I also found Ted and Jay, and two other cousins, Karen and Kathy Bates, who are twins. This was wonderful to me, because I never expected to be in contact with any of my cousins again.

I loved the lake. I can still remember the smell of the water, the round, smooth stones on the shore, finding a stone with a hole in the middle of it, or some flat ones to skip; the gentle plop, plop of Uncle John's rowboat bobbing in the water and the excitement when we'd put the outboard motor on it and go all the way around the lake, kicking up waves behind us; the daily trips to the candy store; the running and jumping off the end of the dock into the lake, sometimes catching our legs in the seaweed that Uncle John and Grandpa would cut down with big scythes, standing in the water up to their armpits; the minnow traps that Uncle Chuck would hang off the side of the dock; the food shopping trips with Gram where she'd buy bright yellow salty butter at one farm, fresh chicken at another and sweet corn at yet another; the big meals at the long table on the porch or outside sitting on the breakwater; the homemade vanilla ice cream and charcoal-broiled hamburgers; the late night games of penny ante poker in the living room, everybody throwing coins into a big dented aluminum pan in the middle of the floor; the cots lined up in the "annex," the added-on room Grandpa had built so we'd all have a place to sleep; the tall white enamel pot on the floor that would be full of pee by morning; the nocturnal trips to the outhouse when you had to do number two in the middle of the night, terrified you might step on a big bull frog in the dark, which I did once--with my bare foot.

Some of my happiest memories at the lake were the afternoons we all spent at the "grog shop"--the local tavern. The grownups liked to sit at the bar and drink beer, and we kids sat in the side room at tables, sipping orange sodas and Pepsi and stuffing nickels into the juke box. I was in love with Mario Lanza, and I'd put in a whole quarter so I could hear him sing "Be My Love" five times in a row. I loved the smell of the grog shop--a mix of polished wood and beer--and even today I like to sit in a dark, wood-paneled tavern just for the smell of it.

But Bertie and I loved Nantucket, too, in spite of the power play over vacation spots that went on between Ma and Pop. We rented a nice little cottage there, near the beach in Siasconset. I especially loved the Good Humor man, who had a silky red Irish Setter in his truck. I longed for the sound of his bell every day and the creamy taste of my favorite popsicle--real raspberry with seeds.

Bertie and I got to running with a rather tough crowd of kids on Nantucket and ended up having a couple of serious stone-throwing wars. But I loved it there, and years later I still enjoy looking at the black and white photo of me and Bertie in our plaid shirts, stretching a rope of seaweed between us at the edge of the sea.

One day Pop took me and Bertie down to the water, while Ma stayed back at the cottage. Pop had on rolled-up pants, a dress shirt with a pack of Luckies in the pocket and a fedora. He had never learned how to swim after his father threw him off the end of a dock when he was a kid. Nevertheless the three of us, hand-in-hand with Pop in the middle, crept closer and closer to the high waves. Suddenly a big one knocked all three of us down and sucked us out into the ocean. Gulp! I was struggling under the water thinking, "This is it. I'm gonna die. It's over." I couldn't see Bertie or Pop. I couldn't see anything. I just held my breath and waited to die. But then, just like that, I was scooped up out of the waves and into the arms of a big man I'd never seen before. I saw Pop's hat floating on top of the water. The man put me down on the sand and then went for Pop and Bertie. Saved! We were saved! Pop's cigarettes were soaked and he never did get his hat back, but we were very grateful to the big man.

After that, we usually went to the lake. It was there that I first learned about emotional manipulation--from my cousin Priscilla. Priscilla was a little older than me and Bertie and had curly dirty blond hair and one tooth that stuck out in front. I idolized her, and so did Bertie. Priscilla would amuse herself by playing us off each other. She'd grab me and whisper in my ear, "I'll let you sleep in the big bed with me tonight, 'cause I don't like Bertie any more."

Then the next day she'd grab Bertie behind my back and say, "Amy's just a baby, let's ignore her."

Back and forth it went until I was dizzy trying to figure out how to get Priscilla to be with me all the time instead of Bertie. She had both of us twisted around her finger and we just followed along, dazed by her power over us.

Priscilla wasn't especially smart or even all that pretty, but she was very charismatic, at least to me and Bertie, and I would do just about anything to stay in her good graces and be her favorite. This game went on for several summers, until Priscilla got bored and outgrew it. As I grew older, I'd think back on Priscilla and wonder why my experience with her hadn't made it easier for me to spot manipulators later on in my life instead of being fooled by them. That was a lesson I wouldn't learn until many more decades had passed.

Sometimes we'd visit Grandma and Grandpa Bates at their house in Sayre, Pennsylvania. I was curious about Grandma. I knew there was something wrong with her, but there was always an aura of secrecy about it. The house where she and Grandpa lived was big and creepy and had an old upright piano downstairs. I used to spend most of my time playing it because I didn't like going anywhere else in the house.

There were a bunch of bedrooms upstairs, and I dreaded sleeping up there because that's where Grandma's secrets couldn't contain themselves in the middle of the night. She would have awful nightmares and wake up screaming, a hollow, terrifying sound in the darkness. Ma would rush into her room and stay with her until she calmed down. I never did find out exactly what it was that spooked Grandma so much, but I figured that whatever it was, that was why she'd been in an asylum and had had shock treatments.

Later on I found out that she and Grandpa had never gotten along, not that it was a big surprise, because I'd never seen them do anything but grouse at each other. One of our cousins told me that Grandma had had a lover when she was younger and that she and Grandpa used to fight about it. There was a stain on the wallpaper in the kitchen where Grandma had thrown an egg at Grandpa and missed.

I always had the feeling that Grandma didn't much care for me, and I thought it was because I was too much like Pop, but later on I realized that she really didn't care much for any of us kids, or for anyone for that matter. Although she could be nice sometimes, Grandma criticized everyone, as Ma pointed out in a letter she wrote to Bertie years later when we were both in college:

"Mom is pretty good for 82...but she is still very, very critical about everybody. Heaven only knows what she says about me when I'm not there."

And Grandma was a racist, too. She had no use for anyone of color, and I always wondered what she thought years later when I married a mulatto and had a mixed race child.

# CHAPTER 5: MIND EXPANSION

Soon after we moved to Newtown, Ma decided we should get a dog. We got Sam when he was just a puppy. He was an English Springer Spaniel with a pedigree, but he was no show dog--far from it. Too big for his breed, he was kind of a klutz and, as we were to find out, more than a little neurotic.

The day we bought him we put him the car to take him home, and he panicked and barfed all over everything, including me. I hadn't been sure if I wanted a dog or not, but then I was pretty sure I didn't. Eventually I got used to Sam, though, and even grew rather fond of him in spite of his infuriating ways.

He was terrified of thunderstorms, and used to run around the yard in circles barking his head off. Finally we'd give in and open the door. He'd come scrambling in, shaking all over and wagging the whole back end of his body. Sometimes to get attention, he'd put his ear in his mouth and walk up to each person in the room, waiting patiently for one of us to say, "Awwww, Sam, you're so cute!"

Sam and Bertie shared the same birthday, so when it rolled around we'd always make a cupcake for Sam with a lighted candle stuck in the middle. He'd run around it and bark and sniff at it and always end up burning his nose.

Then of course there was the time he brought a dead woodchuck to the house and laid it on the front stoop as an offering. Pop kept throwing it back into the woods and Sam would drag it back. Then Pop would take it to the woods and bury it. Sam would disinter it and bring it back. Finally Pop burned the carcass, but Sam didn't give up--he just kept bringing it back, a little smaller and more charred each time, until Pop finally gave up.

We always had a lot of cats around, and Sam, instead of chasing them, seemed to like them. In fact, he'd sidle up to them and lick their heads affectionately. We thought it was adorable until we noticed that he would keep licking them until their fur wore off. We'd put Vaseline and hot pepper on the cats' heads, but nothing would stop him. Once he licked all the fur off one of the cat's heads, dragged it into his dog house and lay down on top of it. The next day we found the dead cat in Sam's house, bald-headed and stiff as a board. The dark side of Sam.

My father's best friend was Ivan Sanderson. Ivan was tall, elegant, handsome and very British (born in Edinburgh, Scotland), with slicked-back ebony hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. How Bertie and I loved him! Ivan was the epitome of sophistication and intelligence as far as we were concerned. First of all, he was a famous author and naturalist, and second--which was even more fabulous to our sheltered eyes--he was married to a beautiful black African woman from Madagascar who always had a miniature monkey, a marmoset, sitting on her shoulder attached to a chain pinned to her blouse.

Ma didn't share our enthusiasm.

"That Alma," she would start in, "She just thinks she's something."

Yes, well, Bertie and I thought she _was_ something--something wonderful.

Or she would say, "That Ivan and his airs."

But this didn't dampen Bertie's and my ardor for Ivan and Alma. Ivan had written more than twenty books, one of them a novel called "Mystery Schooner," and what was even more fantastic, a book about UFOs! _Nobody_ wrote, or even talked about UFOs then, as far as we knew, and _our_ Pop's best friend had written a book about them! This sparked a life-long interest in the phenomenon for me and Bertie.

Another of Ivan's curious interests was finding people who had the same name as his. He spent a good deal of time on this hobby and claimed to have found and corresponded with at least 17 of them, none of them related to him. Of course if it had been today, he could have found a bunch of them really fast on Facebook!

He also told us that he should have been born a twin because he had some double and multiple organs, including three kidneys and a double brain. Now that I think of it, he did have a rather large head.

Ivan and Alma had an apartment in Manhattan and a large animal farm in New Jersey where they kept a motley assortment of animals that included leopards, donkeys, goats, elephants and wild birds that Ivan not only studied but drew sketches of to use in some of the books he wrote. The apartment was in the Whitby building near Times Square, and Bertie and I loved to visit them there. It was dark and cozy and filled with strange, exotic, wondrous things. There were African drums and tropical fish and odd, stripey animals in cages. And there were always several of Alma's little marmosets jumping around.

From time to time when he and Alma were traveling, Ivan would have us "animal sit" for him at our house. One time he left a small, leopard-like animal called a genet with us in a small cage, and another time a coral snake in a jar. Bertie and I were the envy of our schoolmates, and if we'd had such a thing as "show and tell" in those days, I'm sure we would have nagged Ma to death to let us take those critters to school with us.

In 1955, there was a fire at the Sanderson's wild animal farm and all the animals were destroyed. My father believed that Ivan and Alma never really recovered from the shock. They had both suffered from various serious illnesses over the years until they finally died of cancer, Alma in 1972 and Ivan the following year. I will never forget them. They were a beacon of light in the sometimes dark world of my childhood.

When I was ten years old something strange happened to me. I gradually began to feel detached from everything and everyone. I walked around in a kind of trance, wondering who or what I was. I stared at my hands, my body, my face in the mirror and thought, What is this? Is this me? Who am I? What am I? I felt as if I were suspended in space. One morning while I was still in bed but wide awake, I had a vision of Jesus, dressed in a purple robe, standing at the foot of my bed. He didn't say anything. He just looked at me in a loving, comforting way.

Even though I never mentioned this to Ma, I think she was certain I was slowly going off the deep end because of my erratic behavior, and I caught her a couple of times talking with her friends on the phone and saying things like, "I just don't know. I think Amy may be emotionally disturbed." In those days, back in the 50s, nobody went to a psychiatrist unless they were really crazy. Seeing a "headshrinker" was considered a stigma, so I tried to make myself invisible so nobody would think I was "mental" like Mrs. Moore's daughter Eleanor.

I didn't understand what was happening to me and it seemed I had no control at all over the weird, unreal way I felt. I just couldn't accept the idea that all there was to me was a body with arms and legs and a head--a body made out of skin and bones and organs and blood that could be run over by a car or drown in a lake or burn up in a fire or be blown up in a building or just waste away with old age. It didn't make sense. I wanted to understand who I was and why I was alive. It was pretty heady stuff for a 10-year old, and I had no one to talk with about it. Ma wasn't the sort to dwell on existential matters (she had more important things to do) and besides, I wasn't even sure how to talk about it. I couldn't bring myself to talk to Bertie or Pop or anyone at school, either, so I just kept it quiet. All I knew was that I couldn't just live, unthinkingly, the way the kids I knew seemed to--eating, playing, sleeping, waking up, never wondering why they were here, why they existed.

After a while the strange feeling began to lessen, and things gradually went back to the way they had been. But something fundamental had changed for me, and my curiosity about life continued. For the time being I contented myself by lying on my back in the yard and staring up at the clouds or sitting on my "thinking rock."

But no matter how much I tried to live inside my head, it was impossible to distance myself from the tension that that was always going on between Ma and Pop. It would have taken a backhoe to dig through all the layers of accumulated resentment between the two of them. Sometimes they'd start fighting when I was in the house and I would try to stop them. They would almost always fight in the kitchen because it was right next to Pop's study, so I'd go down there and stand between them or just hang around near them, trembling with fear and hoping that my being there would make them stop. But it never worked. Ma would always send me back to my room, saying through her tears, "This has nothing to do with you!"

One time Pop nearly set the house on fire. We were eating dinner in the dining room and suddenly we smelled smoke. He was drunk, and before he came to dinner he had absent-mindedly put a lighted cigarette into the pocket of his jacket and hung the jacket up in the closet in his study. I ran upstairs in a panic, sure that the house would burn to the ground. But Ma, sensible as always, came to the rescue and put the fire out with a bucket of water. She always had to be alert and tough, because she never knew what Pop would do next when he was drinking.

When Bertie and I were younger, Pop made quite a bit of money. I really wasn't aware of it at the time, but he had some pretty important jobs as a writer and publicist, such as when he worked for BBD&O, the big advertising agency in New York, and when he wrote a couple of scripts for Playhouse 90 and Kraft Theater, the big TV dramas of the 1950s. But he ended up losing all those jobs because of his drinking. I was never really aware of his booze problem until we moved to Newtown, although Ma told me later about his having the DTs when I was born. I remember in Newtown that he was often drunk, and I'd do everything I could to stay away from him because I thought it was disgusting and embarrassing.

Since we'd moved to Newtown, Pop had been commuting back and forth every day to New York. Sometime Ma would drive to the train station to pick him up (he had never learned how to drive) and he wouldn't be there. She'd come home alone and there would be a lot of tension and crying. One time we waited for him to come home on Thanksgiving and he never showed up. Ma, Bertie and I sat around the dining room table, staring at his empty chair and the cold turkey while the tears ran down Ma's face.

# CHAPTER 6: MUSIC AND BOYS

Bertie had quit piano lessons by the time she was 14 because she had a social life, but I, being a loner, stuck with the piano even after Mr. Jones said he had nothing more to teach me. At that point he passed me over to his wife Betty, who was mean and sometimes made my eyes water up during my lessons. She would let me play only classical music, and in 1956 she arranged for me to perform the first movement of the G minor Mendelssohn piano concerto with the senior band at the high school gym for the annual spring music festival. Ma made me a silver dress with spaghetti straps and my picture was published in the local newspaper, the Newtown Bee, showing me sitting demurely at the piano staring down at my hands on the keys. It was, according to the Bee, to be "Miss Duncan's first major performance before a Newtown audience."

I was nervous long before the day of the concert arrived, mostly because the rehearsals had consisted of Jonesy (who was to be the conductor) trying to get the kids to play in tune and not to space out and come in at the wrong place on their cues, which they kept doing anyway. When the night of my debut finally arrived I was a nervous wreck. I had memorized my part, but I had a bad feeling about what might transpire that evening.

The gym was filled with people--students, teachers, parents, friends. The band members were all in their seats and I was at the piano and ready when Jonesy finally wandered in, baton in hand. We started out well enough and I relaxed a little, but about half way through the piece Jonesy cued in the violins and sure enough, some of them came in at the wrong spot. Not knowing what to do, they just stopped and then the trumpets and trombones got confused, misread Jonesy's next cue and came in wrong, too. Fortunately he had the sense to cut off the whole band, and at that moment my improvisational instincts kicked in (as they would many times during my life) and I just made up something that I thought sounded sort of Mendelssohnish to fill in the gap, while the band sat there in silence. Jonesy poked around and found a place in the score where he could cue them back in, and we somehow all made it to the finish line together. This was my first experience at faking it in public, and nobody was the wiser except Fran Goodsell, my guidance counselor, who took me aside after it was over and said, smiling, "Well, that was a creative touch!"

After that, I realized I'd had enough of Betty Jones, so I quit my piano lessons. I was thirteen years old.

One day Pop came back from New York with a present for me that neither he nor I imagined would have the far-reaching effects that it did. It was an LP of a blind jazz pianist I'd never heard of named Alex Kallao. I put it on the turntable and sat down to listen. I couldn't believe what this chubby little blind man could do at the piano. It absolutely took my breath away. He played as if he owned the keyboard and could make it do anything he wanted. He played everything, even classical music, by ear, since he couldn't see to read music.

As I sat and listened, a powerful, indescribable feeling came over me and I suddenly thought, "This is what I want to do--this is what I want to _be_!" I felt I just _had_ to learn to play like that. So from that day on I spent all my free time practicing the piano, and never swerved from my goal, even though I didn't have a piano teacher any more. I had made my decision, and that was that. Ma worried about me, as usual. But I was obsessed, and nothing could stop me. Pop was pleased.

It was the 1950s and nobody studied jazz. There were no jazz teachers, no jazz schools or jazz programs that I knew of, and even if there were, they weren't anywhere near where we lived, way out in the sticks. It wasn't like today, when a lot of high schools and even junior high schools have jazz bands. How would I learn to play like Alex Kallao? To improvise like him? Finally one day, when we were out shopping in Danbury, I begged Ma to let me go into a music store, and I found the only book they had that explained something about chords. It was a guitar book with those little squares with lines and dots to show the different chords, but it was better than nothing. I taught myself from that book, and from jazz records by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan and Thelonious Monk. My allowance was spent on them as soon as it reached my hands, and I spent most afternoons after school flipping through the jazz bin at Pfalzgraf's record store across from school in the mall. At home I tried to copy the improvised lines of the piano or horns the best I could.

Summer came around again and I spent my days indoors at the piano. Ma said, "What's wrong with you, Amy? Don't you have anything else to do? It's not healthy to stay indoors all the time. Why don't you go outside?"

She didn't understand that jazz was my life and that I was going to be a famous jazz pianist. How could I possibly explain it to her? I didn't care about anything else. I couldn't even think about anything else. When I discovered that there were actually a few women who had become famous jazz pianists, that made me dig in even harder. Barbara Carroll and Marian McPartland became my heroes. Then I found out about Marylou Williams, and Melba Liston, who played the _trombone_ , for God's sake!

I saved up my money and got a subscription to _Downbeat_ magazine. I read it and memorized the names of all the top players in the jazz polls. I even entered their "My favorite jazz record" contest, and to my surprise and delight, I won first prize, probably because I was a kid more than for the quality of my review. "Ellington at Newport" was my choice, and the folks at Downbeat sent me a copy of Leonard Feather's _Encyclopedia of Jazz_ as my prize. I never dreamed that one day I would be a real jazz critic and get the chance to hang out with Feather himself at jazz concerts.

At night I would shut myself in the bedroom and listen to my records with the lights off, so I could concentrate.

Ma would knock on the door--

"Why are you sitting in the dark like that with the door closed? That just isn't _right_ ," she'd say, and sometimes she'd make me go into the living room and watch TV with her and Bertie. This was her nightly routine--sitting in the living room every evening after dinner, knitting and watching TV right up until bed time, and she expected me and Bertie to keep her company. Being too caught up in the only thing that interested me--jazz--I was insensitive to her loneliness, and I dreaded those nights in front of the TV that took me away from my passion.

But there was another reason why I didn't want to sit in the living room with Ma. She had a habit that I just couldn't stand. She would always be chewing on something, noisily and purposefully, with her mouth open. If it wasn't gum, it was popcorn. Whatever it was, she seemed to take some of kind of perverse delight in making as much noise as possible. When she was chomping or smacking away, her eyes became glazed over and she seemed to be in a kind of trance. After many years of resisting being in the same room with her when she was having a chew fest, I came to the conclusion that she used her mindless munching as a way of hiding, of not communicating, and of protecting herself--from what, I'm not sure.

But for me it was sheer torture. I said something to her about it only once in my life, and she reacted with such hurt and anger that I never brought it up again. Bertie and Pop, when he was still living with us, felt pretty much the same way I did about it. It was hell every night in front of the TV listening to Ma smack and pop her gum or crunch her popcorn, and the never-ending click, click, click of her knitting needles.

One cold winter morning Pop walked out of the house and didn't come back. Ma sent me to look for him. I wandered around for ages in the snow and couldn't find him. He finally turned up, drunk as usual. Another time she made me look for where he might have hidden his bottles of booze. I found one stashed under Sam's dog house. I thought "Why doesn't she make Bertie do this?" I made up my mind that it was because she thought Pop and I were two of a kind, so I should be responsible for him and his bad behavior.

Pretty soon Pop started coming home only on the weekends and before long he wasn't coming home at all. One day Ma announced that she and Pop were getting a divorce, which didn't come as a surprise to me and Bertie. All I remember about the divorce was Ma nagging me at the court house to sit up straight and push the hair out of my face as I sat there slouched in my raggy green sweater and my hair that I hadn't combed since the day before. I don't remember what I felt about Pop not coming back any more, if I felt anything at all. What I found out later was that there was no money for Ma or us in the settlement, because Pop didn't have any. He took off for Mexico and that was that.

But before he left, while he was still living in New York, Pop sent me a letter inviting me to visit him. I was 14 years old and had never been on a train by myself, and besides, to visit Pop, of all people? So I could hardly believe it when Ma said I could go, and I was sure she'd change her mind. But she didn't.

Pop met me at Grand Central Station. I thought he looked a little threadbare, but I tried not to notice. He gave me a hug and said, "OK, off to the Cave." This was his nickname for the apartment he lived in. I was sure it was going to be exciting and exotic, like Ivan and Alma's place. With a name like that, it had to be. We walked all the way there, around fifteen blocks, with Pop pointing things out along the way that he thought would interest me. After block seven or eight I was tired of lugging my suitcase and listening to his endlessly boring tour guide chatter. He finally said:

"Do you want me to carry your suitcase?"

When we eventually reached the Cave I realized that not only was it not exciting and exotic, but it was too small for the two of us. It was a rundown, ratty railroad flat in the basement of a crumbling old building--small, dark, cramped, dirty and jammed with aging photography equipment, photographs and stacks of papers.

"I got you a room in a hotel," Pop said after he had showed me around the Cave, which took a little less than a minute. We headed out to the street again. The hotel was close by, at least, and there was a bed for me to sleep in, even though the bathroom was down the hall. But the place looked and felt creepy to me, and I envisioned myself peeing in the tiny sink in my room in the middle of the night instead of risking the long, dimly lit hallway that led to the john.

"I have a surprise for you a little later on today," Pop said. "I'm going to take you to the set of _Mr. Wonderful_ and you can meet Sammy Davis, Jr."

"Wow," I said. I couldn't stand Sammy Davis, Jr. or any of those "Rat Pack" guys, for that matter. I thought they were corny. Pop, sensing that I was underwhelmed, mumbled something about how he had been hired to take publicity pictures for the show.

So, after our lunch standing up at a hot dog stand we headed toward Broadway to the theater. I forgot all about how corny Sammy was when he came over and shook my hand. I mean after all, he _was_ Sammy Davis, Jr. and I was meeting him in person and he was standing right in front of me, smiling at me. I was surprised at how short he was, and I couldn't stop staring at his glass eye. He and Pop talked a little about the show and Pop gave him some photographs. I couldn't wait to tell my friends I'd met the great Sammy Davis, Jr. when I got back home.

After that, Pop took me to a real African restaurant, the African Room, where a friend of his was playing, the drummer Babatunde Olatunji. I found out he was famous, too. I was starting to think my Pop was a pretty important guy, even though he lived in the Cave and had put me up in a fleabag.

That night Pop dropped me off at the hotel. I was a little leery about being all by myself in the place, and horrified at what Ma would say if she knew, but I pretended to be brave so Pop wouldn't worry.

"I'll be fine, Pop," I said. He looked sheepish.

After he left, I couldn't figure out how to lock the door to my room. I pushed and pulled and twisted and yanked, but it still kept opening every time I turned the knob. Finally I gave up, put the door chain on and went to bed. It took me quite awhile to get to sleep because of the unfamiliar city noises outside my window, but I was exhausted from our busy day and I finally dropped off.

Sometime in the middle of the night a man's voice woke me up. It was coming from right outside my door. Whoever it was sounded very drunk. I lay still and stiff as a poker in the bed, my heart beating like mad. Suddenly my door opened...whack! The chain had stopped it from opening all the way. I was shaking like a leaf as I crawled further under the covers. Oh God, why didn't Pop let me stay at the Cave with him? The man kept forcing the door over and over, and I was sure the chain was going to snap and that he was going to come in and do unspeakable things to me.

Suddenly I heard another voice--it was another man, and this one wasn't drunk. He must have been a hotel employee. He tried to quiet the man down, and then led him away. I could hear him asking the drunk guy where his room was, and he kept saying, "THAT's my room!" referring to my room. Finally the sound of their voices faded away in the distance. My eyes were stuck open for at least another hour. I got up and peed in the sink.

The next day I told Pop what had happened. He had a pained look on his face and said he wished he could kill the guy. That made me feel a little better. And I felt even better when Pop took me to meet his Aunt Ruth that afternoon. He gave me the full rundown on Ruth Dubonnet on the way over to her town house in the East Fifties, telling me she was a high society dame who was once married to his grandfather and later on was engaged to Artur Rubenstein, the famous classical pianist. Her last name came from Monsieur Dubonnet, the wine magnate, who was her ex-husband.

Aunt Ruth was always taking some young artist, writer, dancer, singer or actor under her wing, and I think at one time Pop had hoped she'd do this with him. The reason that she never had became very clear to me years later when Aunt Ruth, not known for her diplomacy, took me aside at a dinner party and told me that my father was not only a terrible alcoholic, but a raging drug addict as well. I wasn't sure if I should believe the drug part or not. It was the first I'd heard about it.

Ruth owned the brownstone on East 63rd Street off Park Avenue, and the composer Jule Styne lived in the basement apartment. We rang the doorbell and a maid in a black and white uniform ushered us in. I'd never seen such luxury except in the movies, and when Ruth, tall, slender, sophisticated and flashing a stunning smile swept into the room in a silk robe, I thought I'd died and gone to glamour heaven.

"Oh GOD!" she boomed in a smoky voice. "It's my _niece_!--and how are you, Bob?" She gave us both a little hug and steered us into the sitting room.

"So, you are the pianist." She was dazzling, and I couldn't take my eyes off her.

"Um hm," I mumbled.

"Well, why don't you play something for us?" said Ruth, pointing to a shiny black Steinway baby grand sitting in the corner. Pop didn't have to urge me, because I wasn't shy about playing. In fact, the place I always felt the most comfortable was on a piano bench, so I gladly accepted Aunt Ruth's invitation. I sat down on the padded bench and began to play "I've Got a Crush on You," which was the first popular song I'd ever learned by ear. I played the melody prettily with block chords and then started to improvise. About half way through there was a knock at the door. In a minute the maid came in with a middle-aged balding man who said, "Well, I just had to come up--I thought I heard Barbara Carroll playing up here!"

I couldn't have been more thrilled! Who _was_ this guy and how did he know that Barbara Carroll was my hero?! He came over to the piano and shook my hand.

"How old are you, dear?"

"I'm fourteen," I said.

He smiled at me and said to Ruth, "This kid is going places, Ruth. Keep an eye on her, will you?"

Ruth turned to me and said, "This is Jule Styne, the composer, my dear, and you should be very flattered."

I didn't really know who he was, but when I found out later that he was the one who not only had written all the music to "Peter Pan," but also some of my other favorite songs, like "Just in Time" and "Time After Time," I was mightily impressed.

After Jule went back downstairs, it was time for us to go, too. Before we did, Ruth gave us a grand tour of the house, which had three floors. Then she suggested that I use the bathroom before we started back to the hotel. The thing I'll never forget about that trip to the bathroom were the gold faucets.

"Gold faucets!" I thought. "Now if that isn't just the _living end_!" I couldn't wait to get home and tell Bertie.

I still had another day to spend in New York, but the next morning Pop took me to the Cave, sat me down and said, "Say, I hate to ask you this, but..." I knew what was coming.

"...do you have a few dollars you could lend me?"

I dug into my purse and gave him a ten-dollar bill. We hung out in the Cave the rest of the day, and Pop bored me to tears by showing me tons of his photographs. Then he took me back to the hotel. The next day we walked around the city, had a hot dog, and then Pop took me to the train station.

"Thanks, Pop, I had a great time."

He hugged me and didn't turn his face away fast enough for me not to see a tear slowly making its way down his cheek.

Years later my mother wrote a letter to Bertie, when I was heading down to Mexico in my Volkswagen van to visit Pop, who was living in Cuernavaca. He had asked me to bring him a new typewriter and I was anxious about getting it to him as soon as possible:

"Amy may be in El Paso for a month, so you will have time to write her there. She was concerned about the typewriter for her father, but I told her to forget that. He can write in longhand, if necessary, until she gets there. I also told her not to let him know how much money she has, or he might try borrowing some of it."

After the divorce, Ma was on her own as far as supporting us and paying the bills were concerned. She got a job as the principal's secretary at our high school. It didn't pay all that well, and Ma was feeling the strain, but she managed to support all three of us somehow. There were even some good times. When she got her pay check her spirits would lift, and she'd say to me and Bertie,

"Let's go to Danbury and get you girls some clothes," and we'd pile into the old Chevy and head for Main Street. We always shopped at Genung's, which was Danbury's big (at least it seemed big to me at the time) department store. I'd always find some weird thing I wanted to buy.

"Oh, Amy, you can't wear that," Ma would say.

"Yes I can--I like it!" I'd retort. Sometimes she gave in and sometimes not. But at least we'd always get something to eat, some hamburgers or ice cream, and they were fun outings.

Ma was a great joke teller. Before she even started to tell a joke, she'd get a mischievous look on her face and start giggling. After she was sure she had everyone's attention she'd start in, but would always fall apart before she got to the punch line because she was laughing so hard. We never even cared if she ever made it to the punch line, because it was so much fun just to see her laugh, and to laugh with her.

But much of the time at home Ma wasn't much fun, and she was a task master. We had chores we had to do, which I hated, because I'd rather be in my room listening to my jazz records or in the living room working out some chord changes on the piano. I did like yard work, though, but only when I could do it alone. If I did it with Bertie, we'd fight about how far apart to plant the marigold seeds, and if I did it with Ma she'd be bossing me around the whole time.

Ma was never one to taxi me and Bertie to places very much, especially as we got older, so we, or at least I, stayed home a lot. When Bertie started going out with Hugh Brodie in high school, she got out of the house a lot because Hugh had a car. They never asked me along when they went out for a drive, because Hugh knew I hated his guts and he hated mine, too. It used to infuriate me the way he ordered Bertie around and even shoved her sometimes, and the way she acted like a total wuss around him. He was vulgar, crude and uneducated. He used to blow his nose on the ground, and he liked to kill kittens by putting them into a bag and tying it over the exhaust pipe of his car.

Hugh had a brother named Craig who was in my grade at school and a cut above Hugh, which wasn't saying much. One time we went over to the Brodie's house and Craig took me up in his room and showed me some playing cards with dirty pictures on them while he tried to put his hand up my dress. I tried to stay away from him in school after that.

I guess I was jealous, though, because Bertie had a boyfriend and I didn't, even though he was a rat. Although I didn't realize it at the time, Hugh was the beginning of Bertie's obsession with boys. I was no different, though, even though I was disgusted with the way she acted around Hugh. I always had a crush on some boy or another at school, but not one of them was ever interested in me. The other girls told me it was because I was "too smart." After that I tried to act less smart for a while, but I couldn't keep it up for long, and besides, I knew it was more because of my coke bottle glasses and my hook nose, no matter what they said. This logic failed to explain why Hugh liked Bertie, because she had coke bottle glasses, too, and bad skin besides, but I felt justified, and went back to being smart, arguing with my teachers in class and trying to show them how much I knew. The boys continued to ignore me.

In spite of the ongoing rejection, I was a true romantic. Maybe I absorbed it from the lyrics of all the songs I'd memorized since I was a little kid: "Here I go again, I hear those trumpets blow again, all a-glow again, takin' a chance on love..." "Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger, across a crowded room..." "Be my love, for no one else can end this yearning, this need that you and you alone create..."

I joined the drama club, mostly because Mr. Wolfer was the advisor. He was my favorite English teacher and I had a major crush on him. That year, when I was 15, we decided to do "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and I got to be Elaine. It was the ultimate romantic role as far as I was concerned, even though it was a comedy and my most romantic line was "Oh, Clarence, I'll never call thee a fop again. Never!" and spent most of my part yelling "Camelot calling Factory Five" into a radio transmitter. I took my glasses off on opening night and even though everything was a blur on stage, I felt lovely and desirable in my pink taffeta dress. Nevertheless, I think my line, "Would I were a man, I would smite thee down in one fell swoop!" was more fitting to my _real_ character than a helpless female in a pink dress.

I liked theater a lot, and I think I could have ended up being an actor had it not been for my obsession with jazz. Later on in life I got involved with musical theater, not as an actor, but as a composer and lyricist. I discovered I had a knack for writing "corny" Broadway-style songs. It makes me smile when I remember meeting Sammy Davis, Jr. when I went to visit Pop in New York.

As time went on, Ma liked less and less the direction she sensed I was going in. "Musician" was synonymous with "irresponsible" to her way of thinking. I guess she thought playing the piano was just for fun and then I'd get "serious" about something later on. But I secretly liked the idea that Ma objected to my practicing. I concluded that playing the piano, especially playing jazz, was dangerous and rebellious, and therefore desirable. So I continued to ignore her protests and spend as much time as possible every day playing the piano, practicing my chords and scales and teaching myself how to improvise.

By the time I was 15 word had gotten around that I was a decent pianist and I got the chance to play some little gigs with a bunch of older (i.e. dangerous) musicians from Danbury (i.e. the dangerous big city). Ma was dead set against it, but I screwed up my courage and told her, with my heart pounding in my chest, that I was going to do it anyway.

So I joined the musicians' union, Local 87, in Danbury, Connecticut. I had to go to an initiation ceremony where I was obliged to walk down an aisle between two rows of union members, all men, who towered over me and were two or three times my age. I was the first little girl ever to join up and I was very proud. Around the same time, I started giving piano lessons at a little music shop in Danbury. My name appeared in their ad in the newspaper, and I really felt like a big shot.

Eventually I formed a quartet called Amy Dee and her Three (more than 40 years later I found an old poster behind the refrigerator in Newtown for a show I had played in, presented by "Don Mello, that 'mello' man of mirth and melody," describing me as "Amy Dee, sensational teenage pianist"). In 1957 I played at the Elks Hall in Danbury with the Danbury Drum Corps and there was an article about it in the _Newtown Bee_ that said: "Amy, a sophomore at Newtown High School, is an accomplished pianist and has developed a style all her own." I was on top of the world--I knew I had a great musical ear and loads of talent and I was sure that I would become a famous jazz pianist like Barbara Carroll or Marian McPartland, leading my own groups and being picked as "best pianist" in the _Downbeat_ polls.

The truth is, though, that I was really just a novelty. I have no idea today what my playing sounded like then, but I do know that I could play more or less adequately only in three keys, and that my knowledge of musical theory was sketchy at best. I was completely self-taught, but the fact that I was a girl and only fifteen made the older guys want to work with me. I think it gave them some leverage in lining up gigs. But in spite of my limited skills, I knew that I had talent and a good ear, and had faith that I would keep progressing and getting better.

As I write this I am reminded of an incident that happened many years later, when some friends who had a band invited me to their rehearsal. Immediately I could hear everything that they were doing wrong, why their band didn't sound the way they wanted it to, and exactly what to do to correct the problems. I made a couple of suggestions, and everyone looked at me blankly. Undaunted, I continued to make suggestions until finally one of them took me aside and asked me to leave.

I know I came across as an arrogant know-it-all and of course I realized later that it wasn't my place to offer my opinion, but at the same time I knew I was right about the musical issues involved. I think that experience was one of the things that led me away from being a "sideman"--always playing in other people's bands, and toward being the leader of my own groups. I had started out that way with Amy Dee and her Three, and it continued pretty much the same throughout my musical career.

It was always easier for me to be the leader because I knew what I wanted, and in leading my own groups I was free to put my ideas into action. I was dead serious about this. A weak chord that had no impact, or a chord used in the wrong place, or simply a wrong chord was practically a matter of life and death to me when I was a young musician, and to be honest, I really didn't change that much in that respect when I got older.

Maybe it was because I had stuck to my guns about the music, but Ma suddenly did something that was totally out of character. I'd heard about a small music camp not too far from where we lived and had mentioned it to her offhandedly, never imagining that I'd ever be able to go there. But to my utter surprise she said we could somehow scrape the money together to send me to Laurel Music Camp. It was only for a week, so it wasn't all that expensive. I had never been to a camp before and really had never been interested, but this was a _music_ camp, so I knew it would be different.

As it turned out, Laurel Music Camp was one of the most intense musical experiences I'd ever had in my young life. Since I didn't play an orchestra or band instrument, I ended up singing in the choir. I discovered when I got there that when we weren't eating or sleeping in our lean-tos, we were rehearsing for a big performance at the end of the week. Six hours of rehearsals a day plus practice on our own, that was the routine at Laurel, which to my relief left very little time for sports or other silly activities. I loved every minute of it.

I sang so much and stretched my range so much that my natural low alto voice ended up in the soprano range, and I was even asked to sing a solo at the concert. I turned it down, though, because I had never thought of myself as a singer, and couldn't imagine doing a solo in front of an audience unless it was behind a piano.

Instead, I hunted around to see if I could find any other jazz musicians at the camp. I found Warren Hausman, a jazz pianist like myself, and I also found a bass player and a drummer. After that, I spent all my limited free time listening to Warren play and falling in love with him, or his music, I'm not sure which. I would also sit in with the bass player and drummer, and it was great to be playing with musicians close to my age for a change.

In addition to the grand finale show at the end of the week, we also put on a night of skits and general talent. I played an up-tempo version of "Lover" in a trio setting with the bassist and drummer I'd met through Warren. It was tremendously exhilarating, and afterwards I kept wishing that the camp would last all summer instead of just one measly week.

After that year, though, Ma decided I could go back again the next year, so I ended up going to Laurel Music Camp three times, playing the piano and singing myself hoarse. In fact, the last year I was there, I lost my voice altogether and had to lip-synch my way through the final concert.

Back at home, still feeling stimulated by the supercharged musical atmosphere of Laurel Music Camp, I felt more dedicated than ever to my blossoming career as a jazz pianist. Being a teenage jazz musician in a small country town in the 1950s was, to put it mildly, unusual. I didn't have what could be considered a normal teen life, but I convinced myself that it didn't matter, because I loved playing music with my buddies.

Sometimes, though, I'd sit around feeling sad that I still didn't have a boyfriend. That's probably why I developed a crush on Drew Grouse. Drew was a drummer I often played with on my weekend gigs. He was a gangly guy, homely as hell with buck teeth and a club foot. I was totally in love with him. He was married to Arleen, who had false teeth at the age of 23. Drew used to call me up on the phone and we'd talk about music. Ma didn't like it and said it wasn't appropriate for a married man to spend his time talking to a teenaged girl on the phone. But talking with Drew made me feel grown up, and that he cared about me and the things that mattered to me. I would have many such crushes over the years, most of them never amounting to anything but wishful thinking. My crush on Drew soon fizzled out, too, much to Ma's relief.

Gigging during high school had its share of little adventures. One night we played a gig in Danbury, backing up a black doo-wop group. During the breaks, the guys and I got friendly with the singers. You have to remember that there were virtually no people of color where I grew up, and the only ones I even knew about were musicians like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. Because of my great respect for these jazz innovators, who I considered to be my mentors and heroes, I had developed a warm feeling toward black people in general, even though I didn't know any personally.

After the show, Drew and Arleen were talking about giving me a ride home, even though they would have to go out of their way. One of the black guys spoke up and said, "Hey, I live on the other side of Newtown. I could drop you off on my way home. Hold on while I get my stuff."

I said, "Sure," but Arleen was giving me a funny look. She took me aside and said, "You better go call your mother. She might not want you taking a ride with a nigger." _Nigger_? I couldn't believe my ears. But since she was a grownup and I was just a kid, I obeyed her and called Ma. She didn't like the idea, but she really didn't want to pick me up either, so she reluctantly said OK.

Needless to say, I had a perfectly pleasant ride home with this guy, and we talked about music all the way. Before this I had been totally clueless about racism, and I continued to be color blind, especially when it came to music.

Another time, I had an important gig and I was bustling around getting ready. I had planned to wear my black taffeta skirt and a white blouse, but just as I was setting up the ironing board to press the skirt, which was a wrinkled mess, there was a flash of lightning, a big clap of thunder, and it started to pour. Then the lights went out, as they almost always did when we had a storm in Newtown. It was getting late and I didn't know what to do. But once again, my improvisational bent came to the rescue. I grabbed Ma's heavy cast iron frying pan and heated it up on the stove. When it was red hot, I quickly passed it over my skirt. _Voil a_! No more wrinkles. By the time my ride arrived, I was ready and waiting in my neatly frying-pan pressed taffeta skirt.

When I was sixteen I got a call to do a steady gig at the Ball's Pond Hotel in Danbury. It was a summer job, and involved not only playing the piano at night, but also working as a chambermaid, waitress and short order cook. I had to wear a white uniform during the day and sweep the barroom floor, change the beds in the rooms and tidy them up. I also helped out in the kitchen and waited on tables until late afternoon. Then I took a break for a couple of hours before I started playing piano in the dining room. I would take a rowboat out on Ball's Pond during my breaks and read.

I worked with a sassy blonde girl named Gertie, who liked to torture old fat Em, the cook. Em was terrified of spiders, and one day Gertie brought a rubber one to work and stuck in on the wall in the kitchen, right behind the stove. When Em saw it she practically turned purple and we thought for sure she was going to faint right then and there. Gertie thought she was having a heart attack and got really scared. After that, she was a little nicer to Em.

One of my favorite pastimes at Ball's Pond was raiding the ice cream freezer. Em let us take whatever we wanted--huge scoops of ice cream, hot fudge, Lucky Whip, maraschino cherries, nuts, the works. But the rest of the job wasn't all that much fun. I stayed at the hotel four days a week. The bathroom was down the hall and there was no bed in my tiny room, so I had to sleep on three old sofa cushions on the floor. If it hadn't been for the fraying fake Oriental rug under them, the cushions would have separated even more than they did during the night, leaving my bum wedged between them and bumping on the floor.

The guests at the Ball's Pond Hotel weren't of the classiest caliber, and often during the night they would bang drunkenly on my door. It reminded me of that time in New York with Pop in that fleabag hotel, and I ended up peeing in the sink more than once at Ball's Pond, too.

But the worst part for me was waiting on tables. I didn't seem to have a knack for it. One day I tripped and spilled tomato juice on a guy and his wife who were having lunch in the dining room. I thought they'd be gracious about it, but they weren't. They yelled at me and called me an idiot. I dropped my head and acted humble, but I really wanted to punch their lights out.

Playing the piano at night was a little more fun, even though it consisted mostly of sing-alongs with half-snockered middle-aged couples breathing their booze breath on me and requesting things like "Toot Toot Tootsie" and "Darktown Strutters' Ball."

The best part of working at Ball's Pond were the after-hours poker games. I used to get together in the bar with a bunch of guys who worked at the hotel, and we'd play dime ante until the wee hours. I felt like a real hot shot after the tame little penny ante games we used to play at Grandma's cottage at the lake.

When the summer was over I was actually sorry to leave Ball's Pond. It really was a pretty cool gig for a sixteen-year-old to have back in those days. It was also a liberal education for me in how the "other half" lived, and a chance to be away from Ma for several days at a time. I learned a lot from Gertie and the guys who worked in the barroom. Their approach to life was different from mine, and from them I learned how to take things more in stride and not be so sensitive and touchy.

Bertie and I had a bunch of different jobs throughout our high school years. We used to do housecleaning and ironing for our landlady, Mrs. Holcombe, but we rarely babysat. I was terrified of children, especially babies. I'd hardly had any contact with them at all, and had no desire to deal with spit-ups, feculent diapers and senseless screaming.

I got a wonderful job not long after my summer at Ball's Pond, working for the poet and anthologist Louis Untermeyer and his wife Bryna Ivens, who was then fiction editor for _Seventeen Magazine_. There were a number of well-known writers and artists living in Newtown because of its proximity to New York City, and Louis and Bryna lived within walking distance of our house. They needed someone mostly to help out with the frequent dinner parties they held at their home, a small, unpretentious blue house located close to the edge of a country road, and they hired me.

Bryna, a diminutive, feisty woman unimpressed by her husband's height, bulk and vociferous ways, did all of the cooking herself, and I helped her. She taught me how to make delicious dark chocolate cake with raspberry filling and a scrumptious pie made from pitted peach halves filled with butter and sugar, snuggled into a cookie dough crust. She was meticulous and careful about everything, and I tried to follow her instructions and not make a mess of things.

Louis was boisterous and friendly, always smoking his pipe and asking me about my music. He found it remarkable that a little girl knew how to play jazz, or was even interested in doing something like that. Once he said to me, "Jazz is really 'below-the-belt' music, isn't it?" He looked suggestively down below his own belt and laughed heartily.

He and Bryna asked me to play the piano at a couple of their parties, and even though I felt intimidated by both of them, I was at home on the piano bench and did just fine. I loved Louis and Bryna. To me they were intellectual gods, and they knew so many important and famous people. One night they had a party and told me that there was going to be a surprise guest. I begged Bryna to tell me who it was, but she just smiled and said I'd find out soon enough. I guess I must have been nervous trying to imagine who the mystery guest could be, because I spilled a whole pot of coffee on the kitchen floor. I was on my hands and knees wiping it up, when Bryna came into the kitchen and said, "Amy, I'd like you to meet Marilyn Monroe."

Oh, come on! What?! I thought Bryna was kidding until I looked up. Somehow I managed to compose myself, crawl out from under the table and extend my hand to one of the loveliest creatures I'd ever seen. Marilyn seemed taller and slimmer than in the movies, and she was shy and sweet-mannered. She had come to dinner with Arthur Miller, who was her husband at the time, and his two children, Jane and Robert. I was thrilled beyond words, even though she seemed kind of sad and ill-at-ease, sitting on the sofa by herself most of the evening and saying practically nothing. I wished I could grab her by the hand, take her off to some quiet place and pick her brains to find out what she was really like. That wasn't to be, of course, but I comforted myself with the thought that I could soon go home and tell Ma and Bertie that I'd met _Marilyn Monroe_.

I also met Peter Beagle at Bryna and Louis's place. Who knew then that he would write _The Last Unicorn_ and become famous? They introduced him to me as a "very talented young poet." Bryna had discovered his work when he was still in high school, and later on he'd won first prize in a _Seventeen Magazine_ short story contest. He was only 18 years old when I met him, and so he hadn't even written _A Fine and Private Place_ (which he would write the following year), but he'd already won a college scholarship for a poem and story he had entered in a writing contest. _The Last Unicorn_ came later, in 1968. So the Peter Beagle I met was a young, eager poet who unselfconsciously transmitted the self-confidence of one who knew that he would be successful one day. Since I occasionally tried to write poetry myself, Bryna thought we would hit it off, and we did. We exchanged poems, talked endlessly about literature, art, the meaning of life, and other topics that appealed to our inquisitive minds.

Our friendship was extremely brief, however. Peter was on just a short visit to the Untermeyers, but we were so wrapped in talking with each other that we ended up forgetting our manners with Bryna. One morning we met at their house, had ourselves some breakfast in the kitchen and then rushed out for a long walk along the country roads. When we got back, Bryna was standing in the kitchen steaming because we hadn't cleaned up our breakfast dishes and had left crumbs all over the table. She scolded both of us like children, which we were to her, of course. I mumbled an apology, said goodbye to Peter, and walked back home. That was the last time I ever saw Peter.

I must have known at the time that Peter was interested in music, but for some reason I don't remember his mentioning it. So I enjoyed reading this from an interview he gave many years later:

"My great fantasies are not of winning Pulitzers but of being the rhythm guitar with Billie Holliday making her first recordings."

So I figure we must have talked about jazz at some point in our many conversations. I also learned from this same interview that he was a great fan of the bawdy French singer Georges Brassens, one of my own favorites, but the quote I liked best from the interview was this one, because it reminded me so much of myself:

"There are things you do when you've grown into them, and I'm a very slow learner."

I was sorry that I hadn't had more time to spend with Peter Beagle.

I worked most of the clubs and halls around Bethel and Danbury all through high school. One of my fellow musicians got me an "under-the-counter" fake book for $30. That was a fortune to me, but I had saved up some of the money I earned from my gigs and so I bought it. What a treasure! It had 1,000 song with lyrics, melodies and chord symbols, which I learned were called "lead sheets." I expanded my repertoire considerably with that book.

I played a lot of dances at Elks Halls and places like that, with trios and quartets, and often the pianos were pretty bad. They were almost always out of tune, and sometimes there were keys missing. I remember one gig I played where the piano didn't have any ivories on the white keys at all, and someone had painted them all black!

I was blissfully unaware that some of the guys I played with were using drugs. Once Drew Grouse told me that a bass player we were working with took "bennies." I had no idea what "bennies" were, so I asked around school to find out because I didn't want Drew to know I was so naive. Even after I found out that some of the guys got high, I never paid much attention to it. As long as they did the gig and played their part, I didn't care. I just sort of pretended that it wasn't going on. In any case, they were always discreet about it because I was just a kid, and of course no one ever offered me anything. Not that I would have taken any drugs, even if they did--I was too scared of losing control and feeling weird. I wouldn't even try a beer.

Sometime when I was around sixteen I had an experience that made me think I _was_ on drugs. I had a friend named Susan, and she, unlike me, had her drivers' license. I liked Susan because she said whatever she wanted, even though I was grossed out by the fact that she picked her nose and rubbed it on her bed sheets (that's why I didn't like staying overnight at her house) and wore her underpants two days in a row by turning them inside out.

Anyway, she used to borrow her father's car and we would go driving around at night, nowhere in particular, looking for something that would scare the crap out of us. One time we drove up a narrow, winding road that said "No Trespassing" and when we got to the top we realized that it was a dead end and there was a house right in front of us with two angry, slightly creepy-looking people standing at the door staring at us. We made up some lame excuse about being lost, and hightailed it out of there as fast as we could.

The night we really got our wish, though, was when we took a right turn off route 202 onto a road that curved gently through pastures and farms, looking lonely in the moonlight. We were talking and giggling when suddenly a bank of bright yellowish white lights that seemed bigger than a football field appeared right in front of us. There were hundreds of lights and they were moving toward us. Susan jammed on the brakes and I froze in my seat. Somehow she managed to turn the car around and we raced to back to 202, shaking with fear.

"Omigod, what was THAT??!" Susan screamed.

"It was a UFO, I just KNOW it!!" I screamed even louder.

"Omigod! Omigod!" yelled Susan, her hands shaking on the steering wheel.

"Let's get out of here!" I bellowed, clutching the sides of my seat, nearly peeing on myself.

She drove me home, tires screeching on the tar road. I told Bertie about it when she got back from her date, but I didn't say anything to Ma. Bertie and I stayed up late, whispering in the dark. At the time, we had been reading Ivan Sanderson's book, "Uninvited Visitors," and I felt that I now had proof of the things he had written about in that book.

I called Susan the next day. She came over and picked me up in the car and we went back to the road while it was still light out, thinking that we might see something that would prove to us that it was a hoax. We were still afraid, and even though a part of us wanted to believe it really was a UFO, the other part wanted to prove that it wasn't. About a quarter of a mile down the road, on the left hand side, we saw a big aluminum barn.

"That's it," said Susan.

"Yeah, that must be it," I said. "Our headlights or the moon reflecting off the barn."

"Yeah, that's right, it must have been the headlights or the moon."

We avoided looking at each other and then turned around and went home.

Years later, one of the guys in my band told me that he'd had two close encounters in Bethel, right near where Susan and I had seen our UFO. The first time, he was alone in his car and saw a huge craft hovering in front of him in the air. He stopped the car and got out, shone a flashlight at it, and it took off. The second time, he was in the car with his wife and twin boys, and they all saw some kind of ship together, up close, just for a few seconds before it zoomed out of sight.

Some time after that I read a book about UFOs that said that particular area of Connecticut was a "hotbed of UFO activity."

I worked my way through high school, living as a regular student in the daytime and leading my exotic night life on the weekends. I came in contact with a lot of people that might be considered "sleazy"--strippers, hookers, pimps, and so on. To me they were just people. I didn't pay much attention one way or the other. I was too consumed with one thing to care: to be the best jazz piano player I could.

But with all my intense devotion to my music, I still longed to have a boyfriend. I'd never had one, but my longing to have one had started at an early age. I'd had a crush on little Herbie Edwards in kindergarten, when we lived on Long Island. I was so happy when my teacher Mrs. Prebenna let me sing "Chicken Little" with him at the kindergarten graduation program. The feelings I had for Herbie, at that tender age, would be repeated many, many times throughout my life. They involved a kind of sweet longing, a self-conscious need for love and approval, tinged with a vague uneasiness.

After Herbie came a series of crushes in grammar school, and right on up through high school. They were frequent, and they were intense. The only times I was really happy at school were when I was panting after some boy--some boy who never even looked at me (I was convinced) because I was too short, wore glasses, had a funny nose and was too smart. But this never, ever stopped me from believing that I deserved love and attention. I always had hope--hope that somehow, some day, one of those boys would look at me and say, "Yes! She's the one I want." I lived and breathed for that day, the day a boy would realize that I was desirable and special.

When I was in junior high school I had a crush on Bob LeBlanc. He was three years ahead of me in school, and it was unheard of for a boy to date or even look at an underclass girl. I knew that Bob would never want someone like me. But I still talked to my girlfriends about him all the time, and we used to call him up on the phone and giggle. He let us be silly and never hung up on us. Bob was from "the wrong side of the tracks," which is one of the things that attracted me to him, because that made him different. He was skinny and not good-looking by any ordinary standards. He was swarthy with slicked-back black hair and a gaunt face. I knew he wasn't an especially good student, but he was well-liked by his teachers and his peers. I loved Bob more than I'd loved any other boy. He seemed like a grown-up to me. I used to watch him at his locker, laughing and talking with his friends, and I'd be transfixed with a combination of longing, envy, adoration, frustration and fear.

One time there was an important school dance coming up, and I dreamed of going with Bob. I knew it was a dumb, impossible idea, but Darcy said, "Go ahead and ask him. Why not?"

"You're nuts. He'd never go with me," I said, believing it, but not wanting to believe it.

So for the next week I vacillated. Should I ask him? No, I would never have the guts. I had never even spoken to him except on the phone during the "tease" calls. I lost sleep over it, and then one day the answer came. Write him a note! Yes! That way I wouldn't have to talk to him and he wouldn't see how embarrassed I was.

The next day, I wrote the note. I waited in the hallway by the door of his class. When the bell rang and everybody started filing out of the room I thought I could feel my heart crawling right up into my throat. My legs were wobbly and my hands were shaking. Suddenly, there he was, walking out with his friend Sue, cute and blonde. I quickly ran over to him and stuck the note in his hand. He turned, saw me, and smiled. I stammered a weak little "hi" and scurried off.

That night and the following day were sheer torture, as I waited for his answer. Two days passed. Nothing. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Then the next day at school, when I was standing at the drinking fountain, Bob came up and handed me a note. He smiled, said nothing, and then turned around and headed for his next class.

I opened the note and read, "Sure, I'd love to take you to the dance. Love, Bob." LOVE, Bob?? I wandered through the rest of the day in a trance. The dance was still a week away. How would I live until then?

Somehow I managed to, and then the feared but longed-for night finally arrived. Bob had decided we would double date with his brother Dick, a well-known juvenile delinquent, and his homely but nice girlfriend, JoAnne. Bob had a car, and the night of the dance all three of them came to pick me up. I had fussed and fussed with my dress, my hair and my lipstick, and when he came to the door to get me I was actually trembling.

Wonder of wonders, Bob, being the nice, decent guy he was, made me feel relaxed, and I ended up having a fun time at the dance. I was glad that JoAnne and Dick were there so I wouldn't have to keep up a running conversation with Bob. For me, it was enough to have him take me in his arms and hold me against his chest on the dance floor. I thought I'd swoon just from the smell of him. In my heart I wanted to believe that Bob could love me, but as the night progressed I began to sense that he had brought me to the dance because he was just a sweet guy doing a love-sick kid a favor. I knew he felt a little sorry for me. But I put all those thoughts out of my mind, because I was so thrilled to be there with him.

When he took me home it started raining, and by the time we got to my house the parking lot was slick with mud. So Bob grabbed me and carried me to the front door in his arms. I yelped and screamed so loud that he had to tell me to calm down, like a father. Like a grown-up man. Like a dad.

After that, I gradually lost interest in Bob. He never asked me out, of course. I knew he wouldn't.

I never had a real boyfriend in high school, although after the dance with Bob I did go out on a couple of unspeakably uncomfortable dates. One was with Ross Hill, a nondescript upperclassman, who took me to see a movie at the Town Hall. We sat way in the back of the theater because he wanted to, even though I liked to sit up close. He kept trying to neck and grope me through the whole movie. I felt like I couldn't breathe, and I pushed him away. That was our first and last date.

Another time, a boy in my class named George Powell called me up to ask me out. I was surprised because I didn't know George very well and we had less than nothing in common. But I was still excited and flattered because he was a _boy_ and he had asked _me_ out. It was a double date with my friend Cheryl Smith and another boy, so we were supposed to pick them up at Cheryl's house. When we got there, a whole bunch of kids jumped up and yelled "surprise!" It was the day before my birthday and they had organized a party for me. I pretended I was happy, but instead of really appreciating the fact that everyone cared enough to give me a party, I was depressed and hurt because George had been put up to ask me out. It reinforced my feeling that no boy would really want to ask me out, ever.

Somewhere in the middle of all my angst Ma did something that took me completely by surprise, even more than her offer to send me to Laurel Music Camp. She suggested that we take a trip to New York and do something special together. This was a first. Ma and I had never done anything before, just the two of us without Bertie. I was still in shock over the idea when she said, "I could take you to see those Japanese puppets you like."

"Bunraku?" I asked in utter amazement. I knew Ma hated stuff like that and thought it was pretentious. But she knew I loved Bunraku. Then she said, "And after that we'll go hear Barbara Carroll at the Carlyle Hotel."

What?!? Wow, I thought, who is this person pretending to be Ma? What happened to my real mother?

It was an absolutely wonderful trip. Magical, really, because not only did I get to see my beloved puppets and hear my beloved Barbara play, but Ma told Barbara on her break that I was a jazz pianist and Barbara let me sit in and play! She was so charming and gracious about it, too. Little me playing piano at the Carlyle Hotel in New York--it was just too much. And it was one of the few times I can remember feeling close to Ma. I really thought that she was proud of me and that she might be starting to understand me a little.

But when we got home, everything went back to the way it was, except that Ma started up a campaign to help me "fit in." Because she thought I spent too much time alone and had hardly any friends, she cooked up the idea to have a garden party at our house for me and Bertie. This surprised me a lot, because we'd never had a party that I could remember, even when we were little, and we had rarely ever had other kids over to visit, either. Well, Bertie and I liked the idea, so we started making plans. We invited lots of kids, mostly Bertie's friends, and we strung Japanese lanterns around the back yard.

My memories of that party are vague. I can't remember exactly what happened that made me want to hide in my room and bury my head in the covers. Maybe it was because everybody ignored me, or because Bob Fulton--the only boy there who liked jazz--wasn't interested in even talking to me. I stood in a corner in the dining room, listening to my Alex Kallao record and trying to show everyone that I was having fun. I couldn't wait for them all to go home.

After that party I tried harder than ever to pretend that I didn't care. To prove that I didn't, I starting acting more and more like "one of the guys" at school. It was better and safer to do that because then if no boy was interested in me it wouldn't matter--after all, I was just one of the guys.

And so when I was a junior in high school, I convinced myself that I wasn't really a "prom" kind of girl. But secretly I was dying to go to the junior prom, at the very least so I could make fun of it, so I got my friend Richard to take me. Richard was gay, although no one talked about things like that in those days, and maybe he wasn't even sure about it himself at the time. But he was the ideal prom date for me, since I knew my big crush John Radasci would never ask me. Instead, he asked my major rival, Cynthia White, the classical pianist. I was jealous of her not only because of John, but because, unlike me, she could sight read just about any piece of music.

Ma took me shopping and bought me a orangey-coral tulle strapless gown with a big puffy skirt. I thought it was gorgeous, even though it was actually hideous and made me look like a Halloween cupcake. Richard and I ended up double dating with Cynthia and John, because John had his dad's car. I swallowed my jealousy, because at least I would have a chance to be close to John. Off we went to the prom. We hung out for a while, danced, drank punch and criticized everybody's clothes and made fun of the decorations. Then Richard, John and I got bored. Cynthia was having a great time and had run off to dance with some boy. While she was on the floor, Richard, John and I concocted an evil plan.

"Let's do something wild after this is over," said Richard.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's over already," said John.

"Why don't we drive to New York?" said I, in true just-one-of-the-guys form.

Silence from the guys.

Then Richard said, "Yeah, you know, that's a great idea. My brother has an apartment in the Village. We could stay there overnight."

"Cynthia won't go," said John. "She's too terrified of her parents."

"Well," said I, practically panting and drooling, "Then let's go without her. We can take her home first."

"OK," said Richard. None of us dared mention how terrified we were of our own parents, or in my case, parent.

So it was a plan. We dumped Cynthia, never mentioning a thing about The Plan. Then we got on the highway and headed south.

About an hour and a half later we were in the city. We parked the car on the street in Greenwich Village and went to Richard's brother's apartment. It was nearly 2:30 a.m. when we got there, so we had to ring the bell a long time. Finally the brother buzzed us in, and we went upstairs to his apartment. He opened the door, hair disheveled, in his boxer shorts, mightily pissed off.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he said. He ignored me and John. A few bodies stirred on the floor behind him. I took a closer look and saw that there were at least six people sprawled out, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. There were empty beer cans, cigarette butts and paper plates with assorted partially eaten food on them scattered around the room. Richard quietly tried to explain that we needed a place to stay. Just for the night.

"Forget it!" Can't you see there isn't any room here? Boy, what a dumb thing you did, Richard!"

So Richard hung his head and we left. We tried to get psyched up to do something fun, but we were exhausted by this time, so we decided to head back to Newtown.

"I'd better call my mother. She must be freaking out," I said. I felt a combination of exhilaration and sheer terror at the thought.

We found a pay phone and I called collect. My mother was speechless, for once in her life. Finally she said, "I just don't know what to say. How could you _do_ this?"

"I don't know. Look Ma, I'm tired. We're coming home now," and I hung up the phone.

John kept falling asleep at the wheel on the way home, and Richard and I had to keep poking him, since neither of us knew how to drive. It was daylight by the time they dropped me off. I staggered into the house like a drunkard in my silly dress and headed toward my bedroom. Ma was standing in the living room, staring at me.

"Don't you ever _dare_ do anything like that again," she said, without much conviction.

"I won't, Ma," I said, turning my back so she couldn't see my self-satisfied smile.

# CHAPTER 7: SCHOOL

My school experience consisted of trying hard to be the best at everything except the things I hated, like math and gym. Ma was working in the school office, and it was tough knowing that she was right there, so close by. I always felt like she was watching me, waiting for me to mess up. So I worked hard and managed to do well in all my subjects except math and gym.

I loathed gym. We had to go to gym class every stinking day of the week in high school and wear dumb blue gym suits with elastic legs. We had to take showers every day in the gang shower with the other girls. Miss Anderson, the gym teacher, made my life miserable by trying to get me to show a little enthusiasm about something, anything, in gym, but I never could, or would. I have to hand it to Miss Anderson, though, she never gave up on me. I was a sarcastic, sharp-tongued little wise guy and I knew she didn't like me, but she still tried to help me get interested in gym class.

What she didn't know was that I was actually afraid of a lot of the things we had to do in gym, like tumbling (it made me dizzy), trying to jump over that stupid leather horse-thing (I was way too short) or playing volleyball (I was scared I'd hurt my piano fingers). Then there was the fact that I wore glasses, and I was sure I was going to break them in gym class. I tried to act smart by making fun of the things I was afraid of, but I don't think I fooled anybody. Finally one day, Miss Anderson said, "You know what, Amy, I bet you'd make a great cheerleader!"

Cheerleader!?! Uh, I don't think so. Nothing turned me off more that than to see those dopey girls jumping around at football games (which I also loathed), shaking silly pom-poms. I knew Miss Anderson was trying to find somewhere for me to fit in, but I just snorted. Ha! Imagine me--a bohemian, an intellectual _and_ a jazz pianist--as a ridiculous cheerleader!

And so gym class continued to be torture. I used to pretend I had my period twice a month, hoping Miss Anderson had a bad memory, so I'd have an excuse not to go. Then the music teacher, Bill Jones, unwittingly came to my rescue. Jonesy was a notorious wino and often was too smashed to teach his music classes. He got into the habit of asking me to take over so he could go rest his head on his desk behind the stage in the cafeteria/auditorium. I was only too glad to oblige, because these classes usually coincided with gym class, and besides, I loved leading the music classes.

It was rumored that Bill was Spike Jones's brother, but he didn't want to admit it because he was ashamed of Spike's music and so that's why he drank. It sounded a little far-fetched to me and I never found out if there was any truth in the story, but one thing was for sure--he definitely _looked_ like Spike Jones, right down to his dapper little bow tie.

Jonesy never really liked me much, but he knew I had musical talent, so he put up with me and even spurred me on. Just the fact that he let me teach his classes sent me the message: Jonesy respects me because of my talent, so who cares if he likes me or not?

So that's how I learned how to teach band class, write little arrangements for small vocal and instrumental groups, and organize talent shows. It was all through trial and error, by filling in for Jonesy. One time I put together a girl vocal trio and I sang in it, too. We did "Oh Baby Mine" and some other pop tunes in a show at Town Hall. I remember it mostly because Ma let me have my first pair of high-heeled shoes. Well, they weren't very high and the heels were kind of wide and clunky, but they were patent leather spectators and I thought they were just the living end. I loved being up on stage performing for a big audience. I felt more at home there than just about any other place.

Actually, we had a pretty great music program in high school. Along with the band, there was an orchestra and a choir, plus a couple of smaller groups, notably the Hayshakers, a "hick" band that featured string bass and washboard. The school had all kinds of musical instruments that you could borrow and take home. Once I took home a baritone sax that was bigger than I was because I wanted to see if I could play like Gerry Mulligan, but I took it back after a couple of days when I realized I could barely hold it without falling over.

Bertie and I ended up playing clarinet in high school because Pop had an old clarinet that he'd left in the house when he moved out. It was silver and very nice. We borrowed another one from the school, a black one, and they fitted us out in royal blue band uniforms with gold-trimmed capes and jaunty military-style caps. I loved playing in the band, surrounded by all that brass and the thundering drums, even though I never took the clarinet seriously. My friend Cheryl Smith was in the band, too. She played the trumpet, which was unusual for a girl in those days, and she was very good at it, too, good enough to enter all-state competitions.

I looked up to Cheryl, even though we were the same age and in the same class, and I knew she really liked me because she was the one who had the idea to give me a surprise birthday party. Cheryl was a good Catholic from a nice family who lived just a block away from the school. She had a sister and a brother, and they all looked like their mother--tall, blond, and pale, with slightly darkish circles under their eyes that made them look rather ethereal. I was attracted to Cheryl not just because of her trumpet playing, but because she was such a good person. She never said unkind things about people and she didn't swear. I liked the way she used to say, "I have to wash my head" instead of "my hair." I felt like a scrappy little bad kid around her, but I still liked being close to her goodness.

Bertie and I were real wisenheimers in school, and I was the more vocal of the two. I used to challenge my teachers to show them and my classmates how smart I was. Since I had decided I was one of the guys, I didn't care any more if the boys knew how smart I was. I used to argue in class, both with my teachers and with the other kids, until they either gave in or got mad, and I would never give up until I won. I shot fiery darts of sarcasm at anyone who tried to butt in and prove me wrong. Mr. Wolfer, my English teacher, had dubbed me "The Bitch on Wheels" and even wrote it in my yearbook with his autograph when I graduated. A part of me loved being called the "B.O.W." but the other part was hurt to the quick, because I knew that all my sassiness and bravado was just a cover-up for the way I really felt.

Bertie and I liked to speak French to each other in front of the kids at school and at home, too. We were the best language students in the whole school and we knew it. We thought we sounded like real Parisians. Mr. Ozanne, the French teacher, encouraged me to take two French courses in one year, and even let me take over his class and teach it once in a while. Later on, when I was a freshman at Boston University, I had a rude awakening. I took an advanced French literature course, and the professor asked us to write a paper. Wanting to impress, I chose dialectic materialism as my topic, without knowing the first thing about it. The paper was pretentious and shallow, and the professor verbally tore it to bits in front of the other students--in French! I was humiliated beyond words, French or otherwise.

But in high school nobody really challenged me, so I continued to try to convince everyone that I was different and special. After all, who else at Newtown High School spoke French fluently, played jazz piano on the weekends with grown-up men and got straight A's in English? I knew that most boys didn't like smart girls, but so what? I was ugly anyway, so being stupid on top of it wouldn't have helped a whole lot.

The funny thing is that, even though it seems I've painted a rather harsh picture of myself as a teenager, as someone that no one liked, I found out years later at a class reunion that a lot of the kids I had labeled as the popular ones had actually liked me. They thought I was smart, funny and generally a good kid, and didn't even notice all of my intellectual posturing. But it would take me many years to discover what "special" really meant in terms of my own identity and everyone else's, too, and that it was something that didn't need to be forced or used to defend myself.

Getting back to school, right around that time a new girl named Sara arrived. She came from another school in the middle of the year and I could tell immediately that she was an outsider. We became friends. She was a true bohemian just like me--an intellectual, and superior in every way to the other students, whom we considered to be "plebeians."

We took several younger, unpopular students under our wings and became a kind of existential gang. We all dressed in black from head to toe--black shoes, black stockings, black skirts, black shirts, and black berets--and refused to tolerate anything or anyone we considered beneath us, specifically gym class and kids who were popular and athletic.

We dreamed about how we would live in Greenwich Village some day. Even though I still secretly felt like a pariah, at least now I was part of something, a member of a clique. I considered becoming a lesbian but I was too chicken, and anyway, I couldn't find another girl who I was sure was one and I didn't want to embarrass myself. Besides, I liked boys.

But in spite of my new-found friends, my inner pressure cooker was about to pop. One day when I was a senior at Newtown High, I was arguing with one of my teachers during class, as usual. It wasn't an angry argument, just an intense, animated discussion. Suddenly, when it was reaching high pitch, I was overwhelmed by an indescribable sensation of terror and I felt that I was going to pass out or that I was dying, or I didn't know what. I started shaking and I couldn't breathe. I ran out of the room, all the kids staring at me, and down the hall to the nurse's room. Ma was working in the office, which was right next to the nurse's room, and she saw me go in. The nurse, Miss Kline, had me lie down on the bed. Soon the horrible feeling passed and I was fine, although still very frightened by what had happened. My mother came in, looking concerned, but when she saw that there was apparently nothing wrong with me she told Miss Kline that sometimes I tended to be "overly emotional."

I went back to class, but these episodes were to repeat themselves enough times that finally even Ma got worried. As for me, I was certain I had a brain tumor or worse. Ma took me to the doctor, because she was concerned about my going away to college the following year and getting sick. In those days the expression "panic attack" hadn't yet been invented, but the doctor, bless his heart, saw right away that my problem wasn't physical and prescribed some little green pills. They were tranquilizers.

# CHAPTER 8: MA

Over the years, the attitude of intellectual superiority I had adopted was directed toward a lot of people, but especially toward my mother. After Pop was no longer living with us, I used to imagine his life in New York, and later in Mexico, as bohemian and free while I was stuck with Ma the "philistine" in Connecticut. Bertie and I would both criticize her behind her back for not putting the "g's" on the ends of words like talking, eating and sleeping. She'd say talkin', eatin' and sleepin'. We got this from Pop, who used to ceaselessly put her and all of her relatives down as being "low class." I thought to myself, "So why did he marry her?"

The truth was, though, that Ma was really very intelligent and had a vast fund of general knowledge. She was the Trivia Queen. She could beat anyone at Trivial Pursuit and at Scrabble too, and she always knew all the answers on Jeopardy. She also kept up with what was going on in politics. She had strong opinions and wasn't afraid to defend them, often fiercely. As a girl, she had wanted to go to Cornell University to study to be a pharmacist, but it was rare for a girl to go to college in her day, and Grandma and Grandpa didn't have enough money to send her anyway.

Ma had acquired a habit over time, one that seemed to give her a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. She would write complaint letters to companies, politicians, anyone who had rubbed her the wrong way. These letters were pithy and well-written and she sometimes received equally thoughtful and well-written replies.

"That ought to pull 'em down a peg," she'd say as she licked the stamp and stuck it on the envelope. Ma had very definite ideas about how things should be run, not just around her own house, but in the United States of America and the world, too. I often thought that she would have made an excellent politician, maybe a senator or congressperson. Thinking back on it now, maybe her letters were a way of asserting herself as an intelligent, rational, independent thinker--a stark contrast to the sometimes sniveling and whining role she'd found herself playing with Pop.

Bertie and I lived in the disagreeable atmosphere of Ma always trying to turn us against Pop and Pop against her, especially after he left home, in the long, excruciatingly boring, single-spaced typed letters he wrote to us from Mexico or wherever the hell he was. They were full of sarcastic little digs about her, and she would grab them from us and read them. Then she'd fill our ears with all of his unforgiveable sins.

Even though I generally tended to side with Pop, this back-and-forth game confused and angered me to the point that I thought I was losing my mind. I just wanted both of them to leave me alone. I wanted to stay in my room reading my books and listening to my jazz records. But she needled me constantly, not just about Pop but about practically everything, until one day I blurted out in anger:

"I do everything you want me to around here. I wash the dishes and do the housework. What more do you want?"

An outburst like that was rare for me, and I had never seen her look so hurt. Her eyes watered up and I felt like a heel. But nothing really changed between the two of us, even though I always wished that somehow it would. When I was a little kid I did lots of things to try to please Ma. A few years ago, as I was looking through a manila file of mementos, I came across a Mother's Day card that I had made for her when I must have been around eight years old. I had carefully cut out tiny flowers and letters from pink and green colored paper and pasted them on the card. Inside, I had written this poem in pencil in my childish cursive hand:

_This will be a joy to you,_

_I can do the dishes too_

_So mother won 't you take a rest_

_While I try to do my best!_

Finally my high school years were coming to an end. Bertie had already graduated the year before and had gone off to Boston University to major in French and I had stayed home in Newtown with Ma. It was one of the worst years of my life. Without having Bertie as a buffer, Ma was on my case from morning to night. She was either after me to do some chore or smacking her gum in my ear. In the evening it was the obligatory TV watching accompanied by the ever-present open-mouth popcorn crunching.

Anyway, gum or no gum, popcorn or no popcorn, I couldn't get along with Ma. Period. Every chance I got, I'd escape to my room to read Dostoyevsky or listen to Gerry Mulligan or Miles Davis records. Now I realize that she was just lonely, and even though I was lousy company, at least I was a body with a pulse.

I wanted to go to the Berklee School of Music, a jazz school in Boston, and in my opinion the hippest college in the world. But Bertie was at Boston University, so Ma insisted that I go there, too. We had gotten some scholarship help and she had arranged for government loans to cover the rest. She had it all figured out. I believe that she didn't want me to study jazz, but I also think part of her determination to get us a liberal arts education was because of her own disappointment about never having gone to college.

I was very unhappy that Ma wouldn't let me go to Berklee. She said it was because they had no dorms and I was too young to live in an apartment. This was absurd, as she later discovered, because when I lived in a dorm at B.U. I managed to get into as much if not more trouble that I probably would have living in an apartment and studying what I really wanted to study.

Looking back on that time, I think Ma was still really resentful about her breakup with Pop. Just how deep this resentment went came out one time when she went to Boston to visit Bertie when I was off visiting friends. Bertie told me later that during a conversation with Ma, the subject of Pop came up. Ma was badmouthing him to such a degree that Bertie couldn't take it anymore, so she said something in his defense. Ma got up from her chair without a word, turned around, went out and got into her car, and drove back to Connecticut.

Some time after that, to Bertie's and my relief, Ma started seeing George Renda. He was a second generation Italian from Danbury who used to refer to himself jokingly as a "woppy-doodle," and he knew a lot of the guys I'd played with in different bands when I was in high school. He was divorced and had a little daughter named Molly who was an awful brat, but turned out just fine when she grew up. George was a great guy. He was kind and funny and had a million stories about his childhood and youth that he used to tell with a little chuckle and a mischievous look in his eye, in a way that would have us feeling the textures and smelling the smells of those long-ago days. He always kept us riveted, waiting for the punch line.

George was a jazz fan, too, and we had many conversations about our favorite players and bands over the years. After Ma died we all kept going to Newtown just to visit George. He was getting older and shorter of breath because he had emphysema, but I think he enjoyed seeing the family. Shortly before he died he told us his last story. It was about his shoe brush--a gift from his grandfather. He showed it to us and explained its history, obviously taking great pride in its excellent quality. "See?" he said, "It's not even worn after all these years. I'd like to go to New York some day and give this brush to some lucky shoe-shine boy in Grand Central Station."

Best of all, George really loved Ma, right up to the day she died.

# CHAPTER 9: COLLEGE

So off I went to college with mixed feelings, but anxious to get away from Ma and Newtown. My goal at Boston University was to become a true intellectual, since I wouldn't be able to devote myself to my music that much anymore.

But what I hadn't anticipated upon my arrival in Boston was my terror of the city itself. I had grown up in the country, and my only contact with a really big city was an occasional trip to New York under the watchful eye of my mother and where we always went to the same places. In Boston I was suddenly on my own, and I had to deal with intimidating things like riding the trolley, the strange city doors with their complicated locks, the endless noise of cars and trucks in the streets, the throngs of people elbowing each other on the sidewalks. I ended up swallowing a lot of those little green pills that the doctor in Newtown had prescribed for me.

Bertie and I lived at the Harriet E. Richards House, a dorm for bright but poor girls. Our house mother was Mrs. Hume, a sweet, ineffectual elderly lady who had no clue as to how to control a houseful of rowdy college girls. The way we paid for the privilege of staying in this budget-priced accommodation was to do our own housework and to take turns cooking. The cleaning part was bad, but the cooking was even worse. Everyone used to dread the weeks when the girls who had absolutely no talent for cooking were in charge of the kitchen. We had to eat it, whatever it was, even if it wasn't recognizable as food. There were lots of late night pantry raids because of this particular system. I myself was no champ in the kitchen, either, although I did retain a few tips that Bryna Untermeyer had shown me. One time, I unwittingly reversed the measurements of the baking powder and flour when I was baking a cake. This was easy to do, because all the food staples came in large containers that looked alike. When I opened the oven door to see how it was doing, the thing came crawling out of the pan like the Blob, much to the hilarity of the other girls in the kitchen.

Late at night, when Mrs. Hume was asleep and we were done raiding the pantry, we'd sit around the kitchen table playing whist, and when we got bored with that we'd build little towers with wooden kitchen matches and then light them. It's a miracle we didn't burn the place down. Poor Mrs. Hume!

The year before Bertie went to B.U. we met E. Winthop Hall, otherwise known as Wyn, in Newtown, through some people we both knew. He was 6 foot five, had Mick Jagger lips, drove a smashing little sports car, came from a filthy rich family, and was a total bohemian, a jazz lover and an amateur drummer. We adored him, especially because he helped save us from our dull life in Newtown when he visited there. The best part was that he lived in Boston, so when Bertie and I were there, we got together with him and he introduced us to his friends. They were all either musicians or bohemians or both, like Jack Corea the poet and Andy Bator the bass player (whose nickname was Master Bator). I remember Wyn's apartment--a hole in the wall with a black bathroom and the inside of the toilet painted red and purple.

Somehow, miraculously, or maybe because we had been turned off by Pop being such a drunk, Bertie and I never got into the drinking and drug scene, even though we were surrounded by it. This was the beginning of the 1960s, don't forget. Everyone we knew was crazy on some level and loved to do crazy things. One night we had a big party at a Chinese restaurant, and Andy Bator swallowed a whole teaspoon of Chinese mustard. This to me was the height of daring and hipness, and much better than drinking or taking drugs.

Wyn always had a girlfriend, someone tall and model-like who didn't talk much. I remember when he introduced me to the music of Ray Charles. We went nuts when we first heard the record _Ray Charles at Newport._ Wyn thought I was such a cool kid because I played jazz piano, and we had a lot of fun listening to music together. He and I met up many years later after I'd been married and divorced a couple of times, and we had a lovely time at his beach house, digging clams and talking about our "wild" youth.

After I'd been in Boston for a while and felt more settled in, I gradually inched my way into the jazz scene by hanging around the jazz clubs and at the Berklee School of Music. Still resentful that I wasn't studying music there instead of liberal arts at B.U., I made it my business to get to know the music teachers at Berklee. That's how I met Ray Santisi, who not only taught at Berklee (and still does at this writing), but also played the best gigs around the area because he was a dynamite piano player. Short, dapper, and a man of few words, Ray took a liking to me for some reason. I played a few things for him and he liked what he heard enough to help me get into some of the local jazz clubs for free. I was a little intimidated by him, but not enough to stay away.

Ray and I were in touch off and on right up through the early years of my first marriage. He knew I was having financial difficulties at the time, so he gave me piano lessons and didn't charge me anything. He also encouraged me to write an arrangement for a small jazz ensemble and had some Berklee students play it for me. Through Ray I met a lot of other musicians and eventually became part of the Boston jazz scene myself, playing in most of the jazz rooms. Many years later I sent him a copy of my first CD, and have never ceased to be grateful to him for all the support he gave me.

But before I got to the point of playing the good rooms, I needed to pay some dues. I wanted to start playing the piano somewhere, anywhere, so I sought out a couple of agents downtown. In those days I was a hippie with hair down below my waist, no makeup and peasant dresses. Somehow I felt that image wasn't what these agents were looking for because they usually booked hotels and restaurants, so I decided to change my look.

I got my first appointment with an agent named Cohen, and before I went downtown to meet him I put my hair up in a French twist, slathered on lots of makeup and bright red lipstick and squeezed into a tight skirt and a blouse with a plunging neckline. I even bought a pair of high-heeled shoes for the occasion and teetered on them over to the trolley.

Mr. Cohen was underwhelmed. "You look like an old lady," he said. "Turn around." I remembered this some years later when I saw Ellen Burstyn in _Alice Doesn 't Live Here Any More_ when an agent said the same thing to her and she retorted, "I sing with my face, not my ass." I wasn't a singer in those days, but you get the idea. Cohen must have sensed my true identity because he said, "Look, I've got a couple of little hippies that work for me, no makeup, long hair, it's no problem."

So he got me a job working in a slightly seedy hotel in downtown Boston. I was the piano player for the lounge shows, which consisted of has-been singers and a motley assortment of comedians, magicians and soft-shoe dancers. There were two enormously obese black guys with horizontally-striped red and white T-shirts who called themselves the "Two Tons of Fun" and sang a song about pretty girls on the beach; a thin, nervous songbird who always wore long sleeves (it was rumored that she had terrible scars on her arms); and an overweight, middle-aged blonde comedienne with stretch marks on her breasts who did a semi-strip as part of her act.

While we performed, hired "ladies" sat at the bar and plied the customers with liquor. I was an anomaly. With my home-sewn brown wide-wale corduroy dress, my thick glasses and no makeup, I sat in a dark corner during the break and knit scarves. But I didn't feel self-conscious, because I figured I wasn't any weirder than anyone else there, and I actually ended up making friends with some of the performers. The gig lasted for a couple of months and then I was out looking again.

At Boston University my favorite subject was English, so I was furious when I discovered I had been put into an English class with a bunch of blockheads because I had scored low on my college board exam. I put on my best feisty attitude, marched over to the English Department and demanded to be moved to a better class. Dr. Link, the head of the department, looked at me with a mixture of annoyance and amusement and told me what I already knew about my score on the college board exam.

"Didn't anyone bother to look at my English grades in high school for the past four years?" I asked "They base their decision on one lousy test?"

Dr. Link looked at me curiously and said, "I think we can find the right placement for you."

He put me in Emily Brady's advanced English class. I'll never forget that first day. In blew Emily, tall and willowy, wearing a flowing black cloak. Her black hair was cut in a pageboy with bangs, and her dark brown eyes were as big as saucers. It wasn't long before I discovered that she was as brilliant as she was beautiful. She seemed to like me right away and I absolutely adored her. For the rest of that year it was Emily who kept me from going off the deep end and who inspired me to do my best. She encouraged me to send some of my essays to the _Partisan Review,_ and I even got a few personal rejection letters praising my work ("interesting, but not what we're looking for at this time") instead of just the standard slip. I was pretty sure now that in addition to being a great jazz pianist I would also become a famous writer, pecking away at my typewriter in a little cottage by a lake while I sipped herbal tea and listened to Thelonious Monk.

All the boys in my English class were totally in love with Emily and I was too, in my own way. I used to lurk in the halls just to see her sweep by in her long cape, hoping she would see me and stop to chat. She used to drive around in an old 1948 Plymouth woodie station wagon, and I thought she was the absolute epitome of intellectual cool. Being young and impressionable, I was certain that Emily could see right into my soul. She took a lively interest in my music, and she and her boyfriend (whom I found rather crude, not nearly good enough for her) went to hear me play several times. My first year at B.U. _was_ Emily.

Emily introduced me to writers like Ford Maddox Ford, Anne Sexton and Virginia Woolf, and taught me concepts of analyzing literature in ways I had never thought of before. As a result, I began to make connections between the characters and ideas in books and things that were going on in my own life. Emily and I became friends, and the friendship continued even after I got married and had a baby. But I lost touch with her after her husband died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack following the birth of their son Andrew.

A few years ago I was thinking of Emily, as I often have over the years, and decided to try to find her on the internet. I knew she had remarried and what her last name was, so I looked her up on the B.U. website. Sure enough, there she was with an e-mail address, so I dropped her a little note. In her response, Emily said she remembered me well and had a vivid image of me sitting at the piano. I learned that her son had become a math professor and that she'd had a book published, _Virginia Woolf and the Visible World_. A flood of memories came back to me of Emily lecturing in the classroom, sharing her insights about various authors with us, injecting humorous comments in between. I found out that she was living alone, like me, and loving it.

That first year at B.U. I also became friends with a guy named Jim Wylie and he got me interested in joining the staff of the college poetry magazine, _Patterns_. Jim was black with squinty, long-lashed eyes and thick glasses. He was an intellectual snob in the extreme, with a pretentious way of talking, a biting wit and a sarcastic tongue. He referred to those he saw as his inferiors as cretins, which he pronounced "creh-tins." Jim helped ease me into the closed little group of poets, writers and artists at B.U.

I did join the staff of _Patterns_ , and even though all the staff members were upper classmen, I didn't feel intimidated because I saw myself as their equal. Our job was to get together and read poetry submissions to the magazine. After a few of these meetings, I realized that I was dealing with an extremely intelligent, but quite haughty, supercilious, critical, and even nasty bunch of people. I often felt that my opinion didn't count, but I refused to be bullied and stood my ground.

In fact, I decided one day, since I wrote some poetry myself, that I would submit a poem to _Patterns_ under a pseudonym. I thought it was a good poem, and I was pretty sure it would be accepted, even by this uber-critical bunch. Imagine my chagrin when they literally ripped my work to shreds at the next meeting. They were unbelievably sarcastic and cutting and they even laughed and poked fun at my poem! Of course I couldn't let on how humiliated I felt, and I also couldn't just sit there silently, so I weakly tried to defend the poem. They all turned on me in utter scorn. "Are you KIDDING? This is GARBAGE!"

After that, I decided I was tired of being a hot shot intellectual. I resigned from the _Patterns_ judging staff and decided to do something that was much more in line with who I really was. I designed a linoleum block cover for the next issue of the magazine, with a great sense of relief.

Jim had a friend named Stephen Love who was part of the clique that ran _Patterns_ magazine. He was a wonderful poet, or so I thought at the time, and a true bohemian. He was emaciated and pale, with black hair, sensual lips and black-rimmed glasses. He always looked slightly unkempt and unclean. I developed a giant crush on Stephen Love, first because of his name, and then because I thought he was the embodiment of intellectual hipness.

I pursued him relentlessly. When I finally managed to get into a necking session with him at his apartment on his blackened sheets--he had the filthiest apartment I'd ever seen, next to Jim Wylie's--after about two minutes of thrashing around he jumped up and said, "I have something to tell you." Before I could say "What?" he blurted out, "I'm gay!" I was devastated. I don't remember what I said, if I said anything at all, but I do remember that I was sure it was my fault. Either he was lying because he found me repulsive, or he was telling the truth and I was dumb enough to fall for a "sissy." Of course I never bothered to ask myself why I had fallen for a sissy. It never occurred to me that it might have had something to do with _me_. I wouldn't even begin to think about such gender issues until many years later.

Even though my first year of college wasn't so bad, mostly because of Emily, I still had an uneasy feeling that I was heading for a fall. I had made the Dean's list that year, but it was a hollow victory. That summer was the worst of my life, even worse than the first summer without Bertie. This time Bertie was there, but something had changed inside of me and I could feel myself descending into spiritual darkness.

As I said before, my family was not religious. My grandmother was what they called a "high Episcopalian" but rarely went to church and never read the Bible, as far as I know. My mother also considered herself an Episcopalian, but was not a churchgoer. As for Pop, well, he was a very secular sort of fellow and didn't seem to have any beliefs about God, not that we ever talked about such things. He used to say jokingly, when asked what his religion was, that he was a Druid.

When I was around thirteen years old I joined the Congregational church on my own, probably for social reasons more than spiritual, but I still considered myself to be a seeker. I was confused about religion but curious about life. I wondered what it all meant. Why was I here? What was the point? I wondered about God, about evil, about death, and Christianity didn't seem to have the answers I was looking for. I wished I had someone to talk with, but I couldn't find anyone who shared my inquisitiveness about the meaning of life, so I looked for books that might be able to explain it to me.

The books I found kept me from going completely mad that summer. I ended up spending the entire vacation reading P.D. Ouspensky, Edgar Cayce and Paramhansa Yogananda. My mind was filled with other dimensions, other worlds, and I started to feel detached from my day-to-day life. It was an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling, reminiscent of the way I had felt back when I was ten years old, as if my body didn't belong to me, as if it weren't who I was. The more I read, the more dissatisfied I felt with the things I was learning in college. They all seemed so earth-bound, so fallible, so unreal.

My mother was concerned about me. She came into my room and stood over me--

"Why do you stay holed up in your room reading all those books? What good is that going to do? It's not normal--you should go spend some time outdoors."

I put the book down and stomped out of the house. Ten minutes later I was back in my room, reading my books.

Fall rolled around, and Bertie and I went back to B.U.

I knew right away that something was terribly wrong. I found myself face to face with frustration and dissatisfaction with the things I had to study at college, things I couldn't accept anymore because of my summer reading. My consciousness had started to expand, and this had created what seemed like an insoluble conflict, as far as conventional education was concerned. Science, history, and even literature seemed like something from an alien world. On the one hand I felt angry and rebellious, but on the other fearful and fragile, because my summer studies seemed to have turned my universe upside down.

Then I met Joanne Davis. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen--statuesque, with long, long wavy blond hair falling to her waist, beautiful big blue eyes, milky skin and a soft, caressing voice. We met in geology class, a three-hour evening session with Dr. Reese.

Joanne took a liking to me because of my cutting wit. She had a great sense of humor and like to fool around during class. So we became the wisecracking duo, always arguing with Dr. Reese, passing notes and giggling. I was so happy that she was my friend. I could hardly believe that the stunning Joanne, who made heads turn every time she walked down the hall, would take an interest in someone like me. I was smitten, and did everything I could to make her laugh, to make her like me more. Being with her helped me forget about my existential crisis, at least for the time we spent together.

One day Joanne said she was thinking of moving to a different dorm. I told her about the Harriet E. Richards house and said she might be able to live there, too. I knew her family didn't have a lot of money, and I thought she might qualify for the "poor girls'" dorm, but the real reason was that I wanted her close to me. She seemed interested, so I took this as a sign that she wanted to move in and be my roommate. How lucky could I get? To have the most beautiful and intelligent girl at B.U. be _my_ roommate! In my mind I had the whole thing set up. I even mentally decorated my side of the room to complement hers. Then, one day after geology class, I said to her, "I just can't wait until we're roommates!"

Her eyes narrowed and she said, "Wow. Wait a minute. I never said I'd move into your dorm. You're jumping to conclusions." There was an awkward feeling between us, and I quickly covered up by saying, "Oh, yeah, I know. I was just kidding." But my face felt hot and my heart was thumping. I felt like a stalker. Joanne looked at me strangely, and then turned and walked away.

From then on she avoided me in class and sat on the other side of the room. I could tell that she now saw me as "needy" and a "leech." I was devastated and humiliated. It took me months to get over Joanne.

As my loneliness grew, my grades fell. I didn't have any classes with Emily that year, so what was the point of being in college? I hated all my classes, and I could feel the pressure building. I felt obliged to try to stay on the Dean's list, but could hardly drag myself to class. I started having panic attacks again and swallowed a lot of little green pills. I wasn't getting along with the girls at the dorm. It seemed that all the spiritual reading and studying I'd done over the summer had not helped me at all, it had just alienated me from whatever remained of so-called normal existence that I was trying to grasp onto.

# CHAPTER 10: GROWING UP TOO FAST

One day I was at Jim Wylie's apartment and there was a young man there I hadn't seen before. He was sitting down in an easy chair smoking a pipe, but I could tell he was tall. He looked like he might be Mexican, I thought, with his curly, slightly thinning black hair and kindly brown eyes. There was a gentleness about him that immediately drew me to him. Jim introduced us.

"Amy, this is Ron Boutte."

Oh, so he's French, I thought. Later on I'd find out that he was from a Cajun background and that there is a little town named Boutte in Louisiana where his ancestors came from. I also would learn that Ron wasn't a student at B.U. or anywhere and that he came from the projects where he lived with his mother. To my joy, I soon found out that he was an artist and an intellectual, in spite of his lack of "higher education." He was well-spoken and very, very smart, although quite shy. I fell hard. We barely spoke that night, but I felt we would meet again. We _had_ to.

And we did.

I used to hang out at a cafeteria in Kenmore Square with other students from B.U., ostensibly because it was a great place to study, but mostly because they had these incredible giant chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. But mostly I hung out there because I hoped Ron would come in, which he did once in a while. He would say hello, but not much more. Mid-terms were right around the corner, though, so I tried to buckle down and study and not look up at the door every minute to see if he might be walking through it.

I didn't have much luck concentrating on my books, though, because all I could do was think, or rather, _obsess_ about Ron. I couldn't focus, and I went to my exams feeling ill-prepared and nervous. When I got to my American History mid-term, I had a horrendous panic attack and went running out into the hall. The professor excused me from the exam, but said nothing about a makeup. Although I didn't know it at the time, that was the official end of my college career.

I didn't recover quickly from this panic attack as I had from the ones in high school. I became more and more terrified and paranoid, afraid I would have another one. I couldn't understand why this had come on me so suddenly, and why I couldn't find any peace of mind, no matter how many little green pills I took. My roommate asked permission to move out of our room, and Mrs. Hume stuck an unpopular redheaded girl in with me. I felt like I was coming unhinged. One day as I lay in bed, I had the sensation that the floor was moving under me. I hid under the covers in terror.

I knew I had to do something to help myself. I hadn't told Bertie about what was going on with me, to this day I'm not sure why, but finally I decided to drag myself out of bed and go find a doctor. I staggered out of my room and somehow made it over to the B.U. infirmary. If it had been today, I probably would have been given some Prozac and sent back to class, but there was no Prozac back then so the doctor told me I should see a therapist. I called Ma. I cried into the phone and told her I'd had some kind of nervous breakdown. She was very sympathetic and nice, and didn't tell me to pull myself up by my bootstraps or snap out of it as I was afraid she might. I think she was really afraid for me.

The next day I went to see the college therapist, a short, comfortable sort of fellow named Dr. Fireman, who gave me some tranquilizers that were stronger than my green pills, and I was able to get back to some semblance of a normal life. I started seeing Dr. Fireman on a regular basis. I don't remember what we talked about, but I do recall that it was calming just having someone listen to me and be kind.

There was a break after the mid-terms that I never completed, so I stayed at the Harriet E. Richards house with Bertie. I didn't feel like making the trip to Connecticut to be with Ma, and she didn't insist. Somehow during all this mess, Ron and I finally got together, with a good deal of pushing on my part, motivated more by fear of being alone than by anything else. He was painfully timid and had had practically no experience with girls, even though he was 29 years old, but he agreed to see me, and even kissed me goodnight at the dorm door one night.

However, a few days after that kiss I got a letter from him saying he couldn't see me anymore, because he felt he didn't deserve me, he was just a stock boy in a shoe store, he was too old, etc. I was in shock and immediately the thought came, "I can't let this happen! I need him! I _love_ him!"

I knew that he worked at Joseph Antell's shoe store on Newbury Street, so I went there one chilly day close to the time I knew he got off work and waited on the corner. I stood on one foot and then the other, freezing, with my hands jammed down into my pockets. Finally I saw him come out of the store--but he was with another man. "Oh, hell," I thought, but I followed him across the street as he and the man got into a car.

In a desperate move, I ran over and knocked on the car window on the passenger's side, where Ron was sitting. He was completely taken aback to see me there, but since he was with the other guy I guess he felt he couldn't just ignore me, so he rolled down the window.

"Uh, hi," he said with an awkward little smile. "Um, what are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you, please...can I get in?" I said, my mouth dry as a paper towel.

He introduced me to Joseph Antell, his _boss and the owner of the fancy shoe store_ (Oh, my God, what have I done?), and I got in the back seat. Mr. Antell, who did his best to make small talk on the way, dropped us off at Ron's place in the projects. We walked up the stairs in silence, and he took me in to meet his mother--what else was he going to do with me? Dump me in the street?

Ron's mom, Alberta, greeted me warmly. She was a brown-skinned woman, a lot darker than Ron, and I could see him in her eyes and the cultured way she talked. I'm sure she was a bit flabbergasted that I just turned up on her doorstep with Ron, unannounced, but on the other hand I think she was actually happy to see that Ron had finally brought a friend around, and a girl at that. If she only knew.

After that, Ron didn't push me away any more and I started going over to his place a lot. I was taking my tranquilizers and seeing Dr. Fireman, so I was feeling a lot better. Besides, I was in love. Once I stayed overnight. Alberta didn't seem to mind that Ron and I stayed in his room together, and I actually ended up losing my virginity that night. It was all rather traumatic and uncomfortable, especially knowing that Alberta was right there in the living room, watching TV. Also, I had now officially broken curfew, following in the footsteps of my equally naughty sister Bertie, who had recently committed a similar offence. The result was that the trouble-making Duncan sisters were thrown out of the Harriet E. Richards House.

I knew I wasn't going back to school, but the thought of going back to Connecticut and living with Ma never crossed my mind, nor did it Bertie's. So we rented an apartment in Allston, not too far from B.U., with Isabel and Pat, a couple of girls from the dorm. I got a job as a key punch operator. I used to gather up the little paper chips and bring them home to use as kitty litter for my new cat, a stray I'd found in the street. I could work only part-time, because I found it hard to take the pressure, even on medication.

In fact, after Ron and I had been together for a while, I started slipping back, and most of the time I felt shaky and unstable. I hardly had any money, and I was ashamed to ask Ma for any, so I used to go down to Faneuil Hall to the outdoor market and pick up discarded vegetables and fruit off the ground. I'd buy a chicken and eat it down to the bone, and then cook the bones for soup and add the cast-off vegetables I'd found at the market. It was during this period that I became particularly adept at finding things in the trash to use around the house, a skill that I perfected throughout my life, except that now they call it "recycling" instead of garbage picking. I gave myself the sad little nickname "bottom-of-the-barrel Amy."

One day, I was at home lying on my narrow, cot-like bed next to the window, daydreaming. The sun was streaming in the window, and I was feeling more peaceful than I had in a long time. Suddenly I found myself floating near the ceiling and looking down at my body on the cot. I wasn't afraid. It was so lovely that I wanted it to last forever, but after a moment I was back in the bed, in my body. I felt a sense of loss and disappointment and a strange longing. To this day I have no idea what, if anything, triggered that experience. I wasn't ill, and the only drugs I was taking were tranquilizers. I had been taking them for a quite a while and nothing like that had ever happened before. I remember that every time I would lie down on that cot after that, I'd hope and hope that it would happen again, but it never did.

Instead, that narrow little bed with the squeaky frame became the place where my first child would be conceived.

# CHAPTER 11: MOTHERHOOD

One day in 1960, Jim Wylie told me about a new movie that we just _had_ to see. "Sure," I said, having no idea that I would see this film more than 35 times over the years until I finally bought the video, and then move to another country because of it. The film was Marcel Camus's _Black Orpheus_ , a re-creation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth set in Rio de Janeiro during the famous carnival there. Jim, Ron and I went to see it together.

In the darkness of the theater, when we saw the vision of a ferry boat arriving in Rio, with the pounding rhythms of samba filling our ears and the many shades of brown bodies dressed in multi-colored clothes singing, sweating and undulating to the beat of the music, it was all we could do to sit still in our seats. What was this? Jazz I knew, but what was this primal, irresistible thing? I grabbed Jim's hand and said these prophetic words,

"I want to go there--I want to be part of _that_!"

That particular dream wouldn't come true for awhile, though, even though the magic of that night in the movie theater would linger for months in my thought. Once again I had put music on the back shelf, thinking that _having someone_ was what I really needed and wanted. I had played a few gigs during college, but nothing had ever amounted to anything.

Ron and I were getting closer. I was not savvy about birth control and before long I had the feeling I might be pregnant. At this point, perhaps because of the tranquilizers, my life had become so dream-like that it seemed I had no control over anything that happened to me. I just drifted along with whatever seemed to be going on. I vaguely knew that I didn't want a baby, but I thought I loved Ron, and that was all that mattered. I literally could not see beyond that. Ron, for his part, was just as confused as I was, so when my pregnancy was confirmed we, with the distorted logic of immature, emotionally unstable people, decided to get married but give the baby up for adoption. I didn't tell Ma. She didn't even know that I was with Ron.

By the time we actually did get married, we had changed our minds about the baby and decided we wanted to keep him or her. I was five months pregnant and still hadn't told Ma anything, although I had confided to Bertie. Our wedding day was depressing. I wore a frumpy turquoise polyester knit dress and an old lady hat, and felt fat, unattractive and resigned. Bertie and her current boyfriend were our witnesses at the tiny chapel where we got married.

Ron and I rented an apartment on Charles Street on Beacon Hill, a tiny railroad flat that we eventually fixed up to look rather cozy. I will never forget our first week in that apartment. The day after we got married I had written a letter to Ma telling her that the deed was done, although I didn't mention the baby. I was too terrified to call her.

One night, after the day I calculated that the letter must have arrived, Ron and I both work up screaming-- _at the same time_ --in the middle of the night. I was trembling and sweating, and we just lay there, clinging to each other. I'd never been so frightened in my life. When I finally did speak with Ma and told her about the baby, she cried and said, "How could you do this to me? How could you not tell me?" Her rage and hurt were palpable over the phone wires. It felt as if there were a stone at the bottom of my stomach. We didn't speak for a long time after that.

I went through the motions of being a grown-up woman expecting a child. Most of the time I felt like a child myself, wanting someone to take care of me. I was nineteen years old and I was afraid--afraid of being alone, afraid of having a baby, afraid something would happen to Ron, afraid of losing my mind. I used to call Ron every day at work in a panic, and sometimes he would leave his job to come home and calm me down. One day I hallucinated that the cans and boxes on the kitchen shelf were moving by themselves. I became totally dependent on Ron and sat home every day in terror and dread that something would happen to him and I'd be alone again. And then what would I do?

Time went by and I got bigger and bigger. At only 5'2" I was too big for my height, and toward the end of my pregnancy I couldn't walk up the stairs to our apartment unless Ron held my elbows from behind. I went to regular doctor appointments at the hospital and they said I was all right, but that I should watch my weight. I didn't feel all right. I had a hernia, varicose veins and big purple stretch marks on my abdomen, and I couldn't find any comfortable position to sleep at night.

Finally the day arrived when I thought I was in labor. My water hadn't broken, but it seemed like the baby was on the way, so Ron and I left for the hospital. We stayed there for a whole day and nothing happened--the labor stopped. The doctors sent me home. I was unbelievably depressed, thinking that the baby would never be born and I'd be pregnant for the rest of my life.

A few days later I went into labor again and we went back to the hospital. This time, because I was so big, the doctors wouldn't take no for an answer, so they broke my water and put me on a drug to induce labor. Sure enough, I went into heavy labor. But the doctors examined me and said that the baby was in posterior position, that is, with its face pointing up towards my belly instead of down towards my spine. Also, this was a very large baby with a huge head, they said. I was having a difficult labor--I remember physically fighting the nurses when they gave me "twilight sleep"--a painkilling and amnesic effect from a mixture of morphine and scopolamine--and pushed me down on my back.

After 26 hours they put me under ether and yanked poor little Madeleine out with forceps on June 22, 1962. I knew nothing about any of this since I was unconscious. When I revived, the nurses told me that Ron, who had been sweating it out in the waiting room, became panicky when the doctors told him there were complications. He thought I was going to die and insisted on going into the delivery room, which wasn't allowed in those days. He kept insisting and begging, though, and started banging on the doors of the delivery room, so the doctors, instead of calling security, very kindly let him scrub and put on a green uniform so he could watch me die. I didn't know he was there. I didn't know anything.

All I remember is going under--the cone over my nose and mouth, everything becoming rhythmical and geometric--and moving into a cartoon world where there were strange little houses with picket fences and flowers in a fourth dimension. Later they told me I had lost all my blood and had had a complete transfusion (lovingly donated by Bertie and a college friend, John Lane). Some weeks later, back at the hospital for a checkup, I sneaked a look at my hospital file and discovered that I had suffered cardiac arrest, my fingernails had turned black, and I was, for all intents and purposes, dead. I remember going through the tunnel that people talk about who have had near-death experiences, although I don't remember seeing any people in it as some claim they have. What I recall most clearly is the sense of being in another dimension.

Somehow, brave little Madeleine struggled her way into this world. She weighed nearly nine pounds and her head, covered with long black hair, was all pointy and lopsided from the squeezing and the forceps. The doctors warned me that she might have brain damage, but I was still in a dream world and didn't really hear them. When they brought her to me, I couldn't register the fact that I had a daughter. I was too sick, too tired, too worn out to be able to feel anything. Ma drove from Connecticut to Boston and came straight to the hospital. When she saw me and the baby she just sat there and wept. All was forgiven.

Even though I didn't seem to have any motherly instincts, when the nurses took Mad away from me the first day and said I couldn't breast feed her because her face was partially paralyzed, my old fierce and feisty self came to the fore.

"I WILL breast feed my baby!" I insisted. I didn't realize that the doctors, without my permission, had given me a drug to dry up my milk. When one of the nurses told me, I was undaunted and sent Ron to the hospital pharmacy to get me a breast pump. I sat there pumping madly away until my milk came back. In those days, breastfeeding was looked down upon, especially by women of the lower classes. I was in a "poor" ward at the hospital, so my ward-mates all looked at me with distaste when I first put Mad to my breast. I drew the curtains around my bed to block their stares.

It took me exactly nine weeks to learn to love little Madeleine. I went home, but I had to stay in bed because I could barely move. I couldn't pee because my poor bladder had been crushed in the delivery, so I had a catheter with a plastic bag strapped to my leg. I was a sorry sight. All I could do was feed little Mad, and to do that Ron would bring her to me and lay her down beside me in the bed. At first she seemed like a little stranger. I tried to feel something for her, but I couldn't. Just getting through the day was all I could handle, and that was hard enough, sometimes too hard.

Then suddenly one day, when she was nine weeks old, she looked up at me and smiled. Something broke, and it was as if the sun had just come out after months of rain. That was it. I was a goner. From then on it was Mad, Mad, Mad. Every little thing she did was so precious, so amazing, so perfect, so miraculous! All my buried motherly feelings poured out of me. I began to feel better. Even my nervous attacks seemed to fade away. My bladder went back to normal, and I could get up and take care of my baby. Ron was happier, too, and we started to make a real life for ourselves in that cramped little railroad flat on Charles Street.

# CHAPTER 12: LIFE ON SKID ROW

When Madeleine was nine months old we felt we needed more space, so we moved to a loft on Columbus Avenue in the South End of Boston. In those days the neighborhood was seedy with drunks sleeping in the street and in building hallways. A lot of musicians lived in the area, many of them junkies, and there was an old black hobo named Curley who lived in back of our building in a tar paper shack that had knives of all sizes and shapes hanging from the walls. It was a pretty scary neighborhood, but we didn't have much money and the rents were cheap.

The building we lived in was a dilapidated tenement with three stories of lofts up over a Jesus Saves mission, and we had rented the one over the mission for $60 a month. It was just a raw space with a big hole in the door and no partitions. The toilet was sitting out in the open and there was only one sink and a stall shower. When we went to look at it, Ron said to the landlord, "What about the door?"

"Hey, it's a door," said Mr. Slumlord.

So we patched it up with a piece of plywood and painted over it. Many nights we'd come home and find some bum fast asleep pressed up against that door.

Over the next three years, Ron and I fixed the place up. We put up walls, painted, stole some ceramic tiles from an abandoned building on Huntington Avenue in the dead of night for our kitchen floor, and even painted a mural on one of the walls--a picture of a medieval band that we copied from a record jacket. Later on when we moved out, the J. Geils band--obviously not appreciators of fine art--moved in and covered it up with black paint. I painted the bathroom bright, high-gloss red and made curtains with wide black and white stripes. It was really fun fixing that place up, and a creative outlet for both me and Ron.

After we were settled in the loft I got back into music. We scraped the money together to buy an old Chickering baby grand piano and I started to hold jam sessions at night. Mad, bless her heart, was a placid baby and slept through all the noise. None of the neighbors complained, and even Ron managed to tolerate it. It felt good to be playing again.

I was gradually getting used to being a mom, and Ron's mother was pleased as punch that we had had a baby girl, since she had had two boys, Ron and his brother Butch. But I used to dread going to see her at her stuffy apartment in the projects. I was young and self-centered and it was boring there, even though I was fond of "Mom Boutte." Her sister Mady, who with her husband Mingo had adopted Maria Cole, Nat King Cole's future wife, when she was a little girl, had crocheted some little pastel colored sweaters and things for Madeleine. I thought they were perfectly hideous and corny looking and I refused to use them. Poor Mady. Years later I still felt bad about not dressing Mad in those little sweaters and taking her over to visit Alberta and Mady more often.

When I became a journalist more than two decades later, I interviewed Natalie Cole, whom I had met when she was a little girl and Mad was the recipient of her hand-me-down clothes. The first thing I said to her was "I think you know who Mady and Mingo are." Her jaw dropped open, and I explained that I had been married to her great aunt's son. She was very surprised, but didn't let on whether or not she was pleased to discover this family connection.

Ron and I were absurdly poor when we lived on Columbus Avenue. He had quit his job at Antell's shoe store and was working as an apprentice surgical technician for $27 a week. I wasn't working at all because Mad was still so little and I felt I needed to be with her. I tried being an artists' model for a while, but it was too cold in most of the studios and I had a hard time sitting still. Somehow we squeaked by, and then I finally found a job that had flexible hours so I could leave Mad with Ron.

I can't remember how Bertie and I met "Nu" Chandler during the time when we were at B.U. He was a tall, good-looking light-skinned black, a railroad man who liked to hang around the jazz scene. He told us he was called Nu because when he was born, his parents couldn't think of a name for him, so they just called him "the new baby," which eventually morphed into "Nu." He and his girlfriend Estelle had opened a little second-hand shop called The Artichoke right down the street from us. When I found out about it I went over there to see if they'd hire me. Nu said he could use me part-time, so I worked it out with Ron to leave Mad at home with him while I was at the Artichoke.

Everything was fine at first. Estelle, a dark-haired woman with very white skin, intense black eyes and a deep frown, seemed to like me because I was good at keeping things in order and wasn't after Nu. Estelle drank. A lot. She had bottles of vodka hidden all over the shop, and she and Nu used to fight about it. As time went on their fights became more and more violent, until they started getting physical. One day in the middle of a heated argument, Estelle threw a bottle at Nu and hit him on the head. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the floor. I crouched down behind the counter until he finally pushed her out the door and then staggered out after her.

I decided to take a week off from work until things calmed down. Nu seemed relieved, and told me to check in with him later. Even though I needed the money desperately, it made me nervous, never knowing what those two might do. So I cooled my heels, Ron and I tightened our belts, and I stayed away from The Artichoke.

When I went back the following week, Estelle was gone. Nu acted like nothing had happened, and I didn't say anything about her absence. I just got back to work, business as usual. But Estelle never came back. Ever. One night I was out at a gig with a couple of neighborhood musicians, and one of them told me that Nu had hired two guys to "take care of" Estelle. Apparently they had taken care of her in an alley in back of The Artichoke. I guess she didn't have any relatives, because no one ever came around checking, not even the cops. The whole thing weirded me out. Every time I looked at Nu all I could think was "this guy is a murderer," although I never really found out for sure. I quit the job, giving him some lame excuse.

After that, I became a professional thief. My neighbor, Jan Minsk, was my partner in crime. She had a little boy named Linus and her husband Alan was a mainline heroin junkie. They were dirt poor like us and lived in the loft above ours, a dank, open space full of old bicycle parts and drug works--needles, thin rubber tubing, bent spoons, etc. Jan and I used to put the babies in their carriages and go out stealing. We'd head downtown to the big department stores and fill the carriages with stuff. We'd take turns looking out for each other. It gave me a little thrill, especially if I suspected someone might be watching us.

We lived in the middle of rampant thievery and crime because of all the junkies and dealers in the neighborhood. The drug of choice was opium, which the guys shot up after burning off the alcohol from a prescription drug for stomach pain called paregoric. There was a doctor name Hyde--no joke--who kept the junkies supplied. The way these junkies got their money was by stealing, and their favorite thing to steal was records. I can remember Roger Hurwitz, who later became Bertie's first husband for a short time, and Bill Wellington, a dissipated tenor sax player, cutting holes in the linings of their raincoats and stuffing them full of LPs, which they would later sell on the street. Then they'd take the money and go see Dr. Hyde.

I wasn't interested in drugs. I was actually afraid of them for the same reason I feared alcohol--I didn't like the idea of being out of control. But a musician friend told me that I would play the piano better if I smoked a little marijuana because it would relax me, so I decided to give it a try.

With much trepidation, I bought a "dime" ($10) bag and lit up. I was afraid I'd lose it, have a panic attack or worse, but nothing like that happened at all. I started to feel happy and relaxed, just like my friend said I would. So I kept smoking. I'd light up in the morning and just keep smoking, one joint after another, all day long. My time-space perception was altered, I had the munchies a lot, and I thought it was fun. It didn't seem to interfere with my taking care of Madeleine or with anything else I had to do, so I just kept it up.

I smoked steadily for a period of about one month, but three weeks into my experiment I realized that I didn't really feel high any more, and that every time I smoked all I wanted to do was take a nap. I also noticed that the potheads I hung around with were paranoid--they were always imagining things, that the cops were watching them, that somebody was bugging their phone, things like that. Even though I never got to that point, I was starting to think that this reefer thing wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

The real clincher came one night when I recorded myself playing piano at a club while under the influence of the weed, remembering what my friend had said, "You'll play better if you smoke some dope." While I was playing I thought I sounded _so cool_ --I felt like a genius! But when I played the tape back, it sounded really lame, even though I was high when I listened to it. That was it. I stopped smoking reefer and never touched any drug again. A good thing, too, because it wasn't just pothead paranoia, it actually was very easy to get caught in those days. The cops used to snoop around "bad" neighborhoods like ours, and rumor had it that if they pulled even one pot seed from between your floor boards with a pair of tweezers, they'd haul you off to jail.

But back to my real life of crime. There was a big blonde woman named Dorothy who lived across the street from us. She used to go into the fancy department stores and take four or five dresses and coats into the dressing room. Then she'd put one on top of the other and walk out of the store. Daphne, her homely little daughter, used to cling to Dorothy's hand as she casually strolled out the door, and nobody ever suspected anything. This was in the days before they had numbers to check what you took into the dressing room or tags that set off alarms when you walked out of the store.

Dorothy, as far as I know, never got caught, but Jan did get caught once. She was wheeling Linus in his carriage in the supermarket and someone saw her stash a bunch of steaks under the carriage mattress. She cried a lot to the security guard about how poor she was and her family had nothing to eat, so they let her go.

When I met Jan, she was a professional stripper. She used to go out on the road and leave Linus with Alan, and sometimes she even took them with her. Alan didn't care as long as he had enough money to stay high. Later on he converted to Christianity and became very grim and unhappy. All he could talk about was death and being with Jesus. At the time I almost wished he'd go back on the dope, at least he was happier when he was shooting up. It made me wonder about Christianity, even though I hadn't thought about anything spiritual in a long time.

Jan was successful as a stripper even though she wasn't pretty and there wasn't anything special about her body. She said the guys in the audience went wild because she'd go out on stage in her street clothes instead of some frothy, sexy number with feathers that peeled off in layers. She'd take off her little tailored jacket, and then her button-down shirt and they'd just flip out. It was funny, because not only was Jan not particularly good looking, but she was actually rather masculine. Sometimes I wondered if she was a lesbian, the way she used to hold my hand when we went to the movies together, and look at me in an odd way. It used to turn me on, but I was afraid to let it go any farther than just the hand holding. Later on Jan had another baby, Emily, and quit being a stripper.

Eventually Jan and I stopped stealing, but I didn't get the urge out of my system for many years. I've thought a lot about why I did it, and I know it really wasn't because I was poor. It had something to do with believing that the world was unfair and that I had gotten the short end of the stick, and therefore it was all right to take from people who had more than I did. Also, there was something exhilarating and exciting about it, especially the thought that I might get caught. I'd feel a scary, titillating thrill when I had a close call. It took me years and a lot of spiritual searching to understand my way out of this behavior.

Word had gotten out about the jam sessions I was holding at the loft, and musicians like Bayard Lancaster and Keith Jarrett, who was just a teenager at the time, started coming by to play. We mostly played far out weird free bag stuff, and that's when Sam Rivers came into the picture. Sam, who died at the age of 88 in 2012 while still performing actively with his Rivbea Orchestra in Florida, was the grandpappy of avant-garde jazz, and took us all under his wing. He got a little thing going at a club in Roxbury, a black neighborhood, and we'd all traipse over there once a week to do an impromptu session. Sam never cared who showed up, or how many, he'd always make something out of it. Sometimes there were two bass players, or two drummers, or no drummer, or no horns and three piano players, but he'd always get something musical happening. He'd make up a little musical phrase and maybe add a chord or two and then he'd have us all play it together. Then he'd just let us develop on that bare bones structure. Sometimes we'd take solos, and other times we'd all play together, developing and expanding on the motif Sam had given us. Usually it would start out like a mess, but with Sam guiding us it would occasionally develop into something really exciting. Sam was teaching us how to listen. He said you have to listen to the other players, not just yourself, especially when the music is free. In other words, the structure had to extend to the musicians themselves--it wasn't just about the notes. We had to learn how to be our own structure, responding to each other, playing off each other, building on each others' ideas. There had to be a sense of, well, brotherhood, if I can put it that way. That simple wisdom I learned from Sam has remained with me to this day. And even though I never became a free jazz player, I later discovered that the concept tended to pop up in my compositions and lent them contrast and excitement, even humor.

Years later, after a period of not playing at all, I ran into Sam in New York. I told him I wasn't playing, and he gave me a look that was filled with both intensity and kindness and said, "You HAVE to play." That's the way he was with all of us.

Of all the musicians that came to our loft, with the exception of Keith Jarrett, the one who impressed me the most was Charlie LaChapelle. He was just a skinny little kid, not even twenty at the time, but he played the upright bass with so much feeling and was so responsive to everyone who played with him that he was always in demand. When I first played with Charlie, I began to understand what real musical collaboration was about. Most piano trios I had heard consisted of a pianist _accompanied_ by a bassist and drummer. At the time I hadn't yet heard Bill Evans' _Sunday at the Village Vanguard_ with Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums, the absolute epitome of soul-searching musical collaboration, but I already knew that I wanted my bass player and drummer to play _with_ me, not _for_ me. Charlie was the perfect one to do this, and I spent many happy hours exploring music with him.

Sadly, Charlie was not only a heroin junkie, but an alcoholic. He had a pacemaker by the time he was 40, but surprised us all by living as long as he did. He died at 50.

A wonderful pianist named Joe Ayoob lived across the street from us. He never came to the jam sessions because he felt he couldn't play well enough, which I could never understand because I thought he was brilliant. Joe and I became great friends and remained so for many years. He had a beautiful touch on the piano, and although he was essentially a jazz player, a lot of his ideas came from classical music. He wrote haunting melodies, too, and I always wished he would join us at our sessions.

Joe had a girlfriend, Jean, and I didn't find out until years later that she was his "beard" (pretend girlfriend)--Joe was gay, and I think that was one of the reasons he kept to himself and didn't want to play with the rest of the guys at the jam sessions. In those days it seemed there were no gay men playing jazz, although later on I would find out that this wasn't true.

Sometime in the middle 60s, Joe told me he had cancer. He went into the hospital and the doctors said he had cancer of the lungs, the eye and the brain, and that he had six months to live if he was lucky. He couldn't accept this cruel verdict, so he left the hospital and looked for an alternative way to get healed. He discovered a place called the Simonton Cancer Center, in Texas, where the healing was done with mental imagery. He asked me to go with him, since the people who ran the place said it would be good to have someone with him that he felt close to. But I couldn't just leave, because I had to take care of Madeleine, so he went alone. I didn't hear from him again.

Time went by, and I ran into Charlie LaChapelle one day and asked him if he'd heard anything from Joe. He told me he'd heard that Joe had died. I was saddened, but not surprised by the news. Some years later, I was playing at a restaurant in Boston and some friends came in to hear me. At the end of the set, one of them came over to me and said,

"We have a surprise for you."

I looked around and saw a man walking toward me. It was Joe Ayoob, back from the dead! I just stared at him and thought I was dreaming. But it really was him. The story about his death had obviously been exaggerated. After hugging each other for a long time, we sat down at a table and he told me his story. He had actually gotten healed at that place in Texas. They had trained him to visualize his good cells as little warriors on white chargers beating off the cancer cells, who were other little warriors on black chargers. I was flabbergasted, to say the least. We were in touch for quite a few more years after that, and during that time he never had a relapse.

Over the years I saw a lot of fights in clubs, and especially at wedding receptions. I played at many weddings during my years in Boston, and it was amazing to me how two people who supposedly loved each other could get into a fight on their wedding day and smash cake in each other's faces. And sometimes there was really dangerous violence on my gigs, too. One time I was playing in a club not far from where we were living on Columbus Avenue, when a guy came in waving a gun. I was behind the baby grand over in the corner when he started shooting. Maybe he was drunk, or crazy, or looking for somebody--I never found out. I was trapped in the corner and couldn't get out, so I lay on the floor under the piano until the police came, handcuffed the offender and took him away. After that I didn't really do much club work for a while. Mostly I just stuck to the jam sessions at home and the ones with Sam Rivers on Sunday afternoons in Roxbury.

After I stopped smoking dope I noticed that I wasn't feeling very well a lot of the time. I had gained weight, and it seemed that everything I ate made me feel fat. I had been brought up on a meat and potatoes diet, and even though I had tried changing my eating habits more than once, I usually ended up going back to my meatloaf, hot dogs and roast pork. One night I cooked up a mess of ham and cabbage for me and Ron for dinner, and later on I felt so sick I thought I was going to puke. I had an absolute terror of vomiting, so I sat up all night trying to resist the waves of nausea that kept rolling over me.

The next day I just lay around, feeling weak and depressed. A few days later, Kent Carter, a bass player who sometimes played in the jam sessions at our loft, stopped by. We were talking and I ended up telling him about my food problem. He said to me, "You know, you should try macrobiotics. It'd be good for you and your family."

"What's macrobiotics?" I asked.

"I'm not really sure, but I think you eat a lot of brown rice and drink tea."

Since I was always open to suggestions and new ideas, and because I was desperate to make a change--any change--I made it my business to find out everything I could about macrobiotics. I discovered that there was a Japanese guy named Michio Kushi who was the head of the macrobiotic organization, and that it was much more than just a way of eating. It involved Zen Buddhism, and the macrobiotic diet itself had to do with balancing yin (the feminine force) and yang (the masculine force) in the food. This reawakened my interest in spiritual things, which had been dormant for quite some time, and I got into macrobiotics with zeal and devotion.

When I first started eating the macrobiotic diet I was looking for a way to improve my health without resorting to drugs and doctors, and to lose weight. At first it seemed to work pretty well. I put myself on what was called a "number 7" diet, prescribed by Kushi and his wife Aveline, which consisted of eating only grains, and was considered to be the highest form of eating. The result was an immediate and massive cleansing of my intestines and a feeling of relief, so I took this as a sign that macrobiotics really worked. I spent the next seven years trying my best to understand how much salt (yang) to use, how much fruit to eat (yin) and so on. Only after all that time trying to achieve this precarious balancing act did I finally conclude that there was no perfect balance, or even anything close to it, and the answer to my physical problems and spiritual longings was not to be found in manipulating _food_.

I now see macrobiotics as a mind-numbing cult, like so many other cults that focus on food and sleep deprivation (Michio told us we should always be a little hungry and a little cold, and never sleep too much). The tendency is to believe that the leader is a Godlike figure and that his word is sacred. For many years I tried to accept everything Michio and Aveline said, but my naturally rebellious nature eventually won out. In any case, the Kushis never really considered me to be a good macrobiotic disciple. Once Aveline accused me of being "too yang" when I showed up in a boisterous mood at her house, and some of the other macro folk admonished me that I should be more obedient and submissive.

The idea was that the woman was supposed to stay in the kitchen and prepare perfectly balanced food for her family. Well, Ron never took to the food at all, and Mad was too little to care, at least at first, but when she got older and was in school, she used to sneak out with her little friends to get candy (strictly forbidden on the macro diet). Later I found out that Michio's favorite hangout was Dunkin' Donuts--Mad and I caught him there red-handed once.

But I did buy the party line to a large degree--large enough that I literally stopped playing or even listening to music for those entire seven years. In macrobiotics, women weren't supposed to have such ambitions, although the Kushis' daughter Lillian's dream was to become a jazz pianist. So I stayed in the kitchen, chopping, grinding and sauteing. It's not hard to figure out that for someone like me to swallow the macrobiotic philosophy, it had to have been brainwashing.

I finally did leave macrobiotics, but it took me many, many years to get over all the hang-ups I had about food, and to this day I sometimes feel as if I just _have_ to have some brown rice.

# CHAPTER 13: MEXICO

My marriage to Ron was not working out very well. He would go into depressions that lasted a month at a time and would hardly speak to me. I knew he was angry at me and I also knew it was not without reason. I wasn't easy to get along with, and I was also depressed and really didn't care about anything, especially after I stopped playing the piano. All I wanted to do was sleep. When Madeleine took a nap I prayed that she'd stay asleep so I could sleep, too. I did try to play the piano again, but every time I sat on the piano bench I'd get an excruciating backache. And I had to take care of Mad. I knew this was the most important thing, but sometimes it was all too much for me.

Ron and I decided that things might improve if we had a change of scene, so we moved out of the loft and rented an old townhouse on a nearby street in the South End of Boston. The place was a mess, but we naively thought we could fix it up by ourselves, the way we had the loft. We tried, but there was way too much to do without outside help, which we couldn't afford. As I stood on a ladder scraping off layers and layers of wallpaper with paint in between each layer, trying to imagine how wonderful the place would be when we finally got it all prettied up, it gradually dawned on me that I had complicated my life, when what I needed to do was simplify it.

It was 1964 and Mad was three years old. I was a mother and a wife, but I was only 23 years old and I didn't like who I was, where I was, or what I was doing. I wanted something else, although I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. I felt like I had my toe on the starting line, waiting for the gun to go off. When it did, I would run. Just run. Run away. That's it! Why hadn't it occurred to me before? I could just up and leave. Ron wouldn't miss me. He barely ever spoke to me. All he did was smoke his pipe and sit at his chess board. He'd probably be glad to be rid of me. I let the seed of this idea grow in my thought until it became a plan.

By this time, Pop was living in Mexico with his new wife, Maria. Mari, as they called her, was a pretty Mexican girl, two years younger than me, whose smooth black hair and high cheekbones revealed her Indian blood. She would have done just about anything to escape the poverty and oppression of her working-class family, so when Pop appeared in her life, she probably saw him as her savior. He was certainly the epitome of the sophisticated gringo, and like many lower class Mexicans, she probably thought he was rich because he was American. All gringos were rich. And of course Pop must have been pinching himself at his good luck, to find such a young beauty at his age. So they got married, and were living in Cuernavaca when I decided to run away from Boston, Ron, and what I saw as my dead-end married life.

Of course I planned to take Madeleine with me--there was no way I would leave my baby girl behind. Besides, I didn't intend to stay away forever. It was just a trip, after all. Through some macrobiotic friends, I had met a guy named Bill Reade who had a van and was planning to drive to Mexico. Here was my ticket to freedom. Bill and I had become friends and had started hanging around together, going out to eat, to hear music, things like that. The most exciting thing we did was to go see the Beatles live. It was 1966 at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. I loved seeing the Fab Four in person, even though the audience was yelling so loud you could barely hear a thing. A girl broke out of the crowd and tried to climb up on the stage, but fainted before she could make it, and the security guards had to carry her out. Actually, I enjoyed the opening act, a band called Cyrkle, more than I did the Beatles, because at least I could hear them. Recently I found this comment on the internet about that show from a website called _The Beatles Bible_ : " _This tour would end up being the Beatles ' final tour in front of a live audience. By this time, the Beatles had grown tired of the same routine, with each concert not being heard over the roar of screaming fans."_

Bill said he'd be happy to have me along on the trip to share expenses, but there was a catch. We'd have to go to Mexico via Detroit. Detroit? He explained that his mother lived there and he hadn't visited her for a long time. So Detroit was part of the deal. I told Ron that I was leaving, and just as I had predicted, he didn't seem surprised and made no attempt to stop me.

On the long trip, I found out something about Bill that I hadn't known before. He was obsessed with the idea that aliens were after him. I mean _aliens_ , like from other planets, not illegal immigrants. He kept talking about this, and all the plans he was making to avoid their "getting" him. I humored him, but had my doubts about whether my decision to make this long trip with him had been such a good idea.

We got to Detroit and ended up staying for two weeks. I didn't mind, though, because I made some new friends there, and Mad had lots of grownups fussing over her. They found it fascinating that at the tender age of three, she knew how to eat with chopsticks--part of her macrobiotic training. Anyway, just as we were getting ready to start off for Mexico, we heard that Janice Joplin was going to be performing with Big Brother and the Holding Company in Chicago, so a group of us decided to go there first, and then Bill, Mad and I would continue on down to Mexico, leaving the others to their own devices to get back to Detroit.

We all crowded into the back of Bill's van and headed to Chicago. I don't know if it was because Bill was expecting the aliens to appear at any moment, or if it was just a coincidence, but we were driving along in the dark when the sky suddenly lit up as if it were broad daylight. It lasted only for only a couple of seconds and then it was black outside again. Bill jammed on his brakes and so did everyone else on the highway. It was a miracle nobody smashed into anybody, at least as far as we could tell. Bill's face went white, and the rest of us just hugged each other and giggled nervously. "What the hell was _that_?" said Bob, the guy sitting next to me. "Must've been some kind of UFO," said Ann, grasping her husband Ken's hand, and Bill stiffened. We read about it in the paper the next day, and the fantastic light in the sky was reported as being a boloid--a kind of bright meteor. I had my doubts, being a firm believer in extraterrestrial life, and of course Bill was convinced that the aliens had finally found him. We just kept driving, of course, but nobody said another word until we got to Chicago. Mad fell asleep in my lap.

We got to the club at 2 a.m. and were relieved when they let us in with Mad, who was sleeping in Ken's arms. Janis was on a break when we got there, and since Bill knew a guy in Big Brother and the Holding Company we got to go backstage and meet her. She was very friendly, and got a big kick out of seeing a little kid with us, and we all chatted for a while. Then she got up on stage and did her stuff, and it was spellbinding. I was struck by her combination of power and sweetness--a hard thing to pull off, I thought. By this time we'd all convinced ourselves that what we'd seen was a meteorite, so Bill, Mad and I got back on the highway after we dropped the others off at the bus station.

We pulled over to sleep for a while, and the next day we just drove and drove. Eventually we crossed the border into Mexico, but we still had a long trip ahead of us through the scrubby desert before we reached Cuernavaca, where Pop and Mari lived.

When we finally got there, Bill dropped us off and Pop greeted us with open arms while his pretty wife stood just behind him smiling shyly. They had a nice apartment with terra cotta floors, Mexican paintings and artifacts on the walls and on little tables and shelves. The whitewashed stucco wall outside was covered with bright fuchsia bougainvillea. The weather was sunny and bright, and I was immediately enchanted with Mexico. And I was more than ready to make friends with Mari. I loved the idea that Pop had married someone close to my age, and Mari, although she was timid, seemed nice enough. But there was a problem. She didn't speak any English, and I didn't speak any Spanish. I tried my best to communicate with her, but we got nowhere.

After a week or so of bewildering hand gestures and awkward silences, I decided it might be better for me to leave Mari in peace and settle somewhere else for a while to spend some time working on my non-existent Spanish in a situation where I felt less embarrassed. I decided on San Miguel de Allende, a bustling artists' community where a lot of foreigners lived, and Mad and I hit the road again, this time by bus. I was determined to stay in San Miguel until I improved my conversation skills, and as soon as we arrived I tried, in my bumbling Spanglish, to talk with as many natives as possible.

Mad and I rented a little house with a yard full of flowers in San Miguel. We bought a rooster and a chicken and named them Vanya and Vashti. The house was all stone inside, with a fireplace in the living room. Every few days the wood seller would come by on his donkey and we'd buy _le ña_, small logs that we used for firewood. We had been warned to be careful because there were often scorpions hiding in the leña. So we learned to shake out our shoes in the morning, because the scorpions liked to hide inside of them, down near the toe where it was dark and warm. One day I found a small grayish one hiding under a piece of lettuce I'd left on a plate in the kitchen. I'd already learned that the big black ones weren't so dangerous, but the small gray ones were capable of killing a small child, so I was always on the lookout for those furtive little traitors.

Mad made friends with a little Mexican Indian girl named Guadalupe, who lived next door. She used to climb over the stone wall into Lupe's yard and spend the whole afternoon playing with her. Before long, Mad was speaking Spanish like a native, much to my chagrin, because I was still struggling along, having to translate every word mentally from English to Spanish before I could open my mouth. Guadalupe and her family took Mad to Catholic mass every Sunday, which was Mad's first exposure to organized religion. Mexican churches usually have incredibly gory statues of Jesus, and since I never went along on these Sunday excursions, I wondered what Mad's reaction might be. But she never said a word about it and always came back from church happy, so I continued to let her go.

I needed to earn some money, so I got a job at the local art school as a nude model. It was easy to get hired, since nobody asked me for working papers or a permanent visa and none of the Mexican women would pose naked. One day I was heading home from the school and a couple of native women wrapped in _rebozos_ and carrying baskets stopped me in the street. They asked me what I did at the school and I told them, in my halting Spanish. They looked horrified. Since I knew they could certainly use the money, I asked them why they didn't model at the school. One of them pointed her finger to heaven and said:

" _Por Dios_."

Well, that made me feel like a big sinner, but it didn't keep me from going back to the school the next day and taking my clothes off in front of all those students who were probably just as sinful as I was, at least in the eyes of those women.

Every morning I'd take Mad with me to the market, even when I didn't really need to buy anything, just so I'd have a chance to practice my Spanish. It was tough at first, but since I already knew French and had a good ear, it wasn't long before I was able to carry on a decent conversation with the locals. When I felt I could speak almost as well as Madeleine, I decided we should head back to Cuernavaca so I could finally have a genuine gab fest with Mari.

I gave Vanya and Vashti away to a little boy after running around the yard all morning trying to catch Vashti, and Mad and I hopped a bus back to Pop's. What a difference the Spanish made! Mari and I became friends right away. I discovered that she was a very simple girl, almost childlike, who loved to buy pretty things, tell jokes and just have fun. We became inseparable. Mari was crazy about Mad, too, and delighted with the way she spoke Spanish so freely, just like a little Mexican kid.

When Pop started drinking again, Mari and I joined forces against him. She confided in me and told me she was already tired of being married to him. She used to take me and Mad to the hot springs nearby, and she would flirt with all the guys. I couldn't blame her. She was young and beautiful, and Pop, even though he was smart and funny and not bad looking, was an old man in her eyes. She had gotten what she wanted, which was to get away from her family, but now her fancy was turning in other directions.

Mad and I ended up staying in Mexico for nearly a year. I never played the piano even once the whole time we were there, and being a professional musician was beginning to feel like something from my distant past. I did eventually learn to play the guitar, though, which was better than nothing. Mad and I were still on the macrobiotic diet, which was easy to follow in Mexico with all the natural foods there. They even had little rustic mills where you could take whole wheat berries, rice or corn and have them ground into fresh flour.

In 1966, Mad and I said goodbye to Pop and Mari and went back to Boston, after spending some time in Texas with Ma's relatives. We flew back home, and it was our first time ever on an airplane. It was a night flight and we both sat with our faces pressed against the window, looking at the magical strings of lights and traffic way down below, like sparkling necklaces on a black velvet gown.

Everything seemed so strange in Boston after being in Mexico. Even the air seemed heavy after all those months in the high altitudes of Cuernavaca and San Miguel de Allende. Ron and I made an abortive attempt to resume our life together, but it was too late. The trip had changed me for good, and I knew I couldn't go back to the way things were before. I filed for divorce, took Mad, and moved to Brookline, not far from Boston proper. It was an amicable split, however, and Ron and I remained friends.

The apartment complex--if you could call it that--that Mad and I moved into looked more like an old army barracks. Since I was divorced with a five-year-old daughter to support (I didn't even ask for child support from Ron, because he was as broke as I was), I couldn't afford anything better than a cold water flat for $27 a month. I used to heat the water up in a big pail on the stove and fill a galvanized tub so Mad and I could take a bath. I did my best to make the place homey. I painted the walls a warm mustard yellow, got some furniture and a not-too-worn fake oriental carpet from the Salvation Army, and even found some nice things in the trash (bottom-of-the-barrel Amy, remember?).

I got a temporary job as a secretary for the Head Start organization, and I guess they must have been pretty desperate for teachers because after I'd been working there for only a couple of weeks they asked me if I'd be interested in teaching a Head Start class in Roxbury. I took the job because it was steady, paid more money, sounded interesting and challenging, and best of all, I could take Madeleine with me. Roxbury (where I used to play jam sessions with Sam Rivers) was a rough neighborhood, and there were no white people living there at all in those days. All the kids in my class were black. They liked me, though, because I used to bring my guitar to school and sing and play for them.

But my casual approach to early learning didn't set well with the parents, who thought I should be teaching the three R's and getting their kids ready for first grade instead of entertaining them with silly songs. I tried to toe the line, but it just wasn't in me to be so hard on a bunch of 5-year-olds. Their fun would end soon enough when they entered public school. So after only one school term, feeling that I would probably be fired anyway, I quit that job and went back to music.

I got a job as a singer and pianist (and sometime guitarist) at a Mafia-owned club in downtown Boston, where I could make some decent money. It was good to be back playing music again, even though I was a little rusty from so much time off. But the guys who ran the place seemed to like me and they paid well and always on time.

This was the height of the free-flung, sex-crazed sixties. Everybody's goal was to see how many notches they could carve in their bedposts and we all went at it with fierce determination. But it didn't take long for dumb animal instinct to start to bore me. The constant parade of men began to feel like an assembly line, and it was all just too much trouble to keep up the pretense that the next one would somehow be "better," not to mention the juggling I had to do to keep Mad from knowing what I was up to.

I felt like I was choking. It seemed I had lost track of what was right or wrong, and I didn't realize the potential danger I was exposing myself to, not to mention Mad. At one point I had two boyfriends at the same time and I was beginning to suspect that one of them might be a criminal, possibly even a killer.

Right around this time I felt something start to shift in my thought. There was this quiet little feeling that kept coming over me that I wanted to be good. I felt that I'd never been good, not really, and that I had often not been nice or helpful to people. For the first time, I took a good look at myself and wanted to change. But it would be a long time before I would act on that desire with any consistency, and meanwhile I couldn't figure out how to weasel my way out of the mess I had gotten myself into, except by running away. So that's what I decided to do...again. This time I knew exactly where I wanted to run to.

I'd never forgotten the movie "Black Orpheus" that I'd seen with Ron and Jim Wylie back in college, and the thought of Brazil would pop into my mind from time to time. I knew no one in Brazil and had no idea what I would do there, but I didn't let that stop me. I knew something would work out. It always did.

I got the idea to ask around the macrobiotic community to see if there were macrobiotic people in Brazil. I was given the name of a man in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, Theodore Lorgus, who owned a macrobiotic restaurant there. I wrote him a letter in English, hoping he would understand it, and within a couple of weeks I got a reply from him (in perfect English) saying that he would love to have me and Madeleine come and stay in his house with his family, and he also offered me a job in his restaurant. I was very happy and encouraged by his generous offer.

My idea was to buy some sort of vehicle and drive as far as I could in the direction of Brazil, stopping at Pop and Mari's place on the way. That was the extent of my plan, but I knew somehow that I could and would get to Brazil. I continued to work at the Mafia club and finally scraped together enough money to buy an old Volkswagen van and get it fixed up. But I didn't have enough money for new tires to replace the balding ones that came with it.

One night when I was playing at the gig, an elegant, well-dressed elderly gentleman came in with several other people and they sat down right near the piano bar. I noticed that he was watching me the entire time I was singing and playing and barely spoke with his friends. When it was time for my break he immediately stood up and walked over to me.

"Hello," he said with a kindly smile. "My name is James Pettibone and I've enjoyed your playing and singing very much. What's your name, dear?"

"Thank you," I said and told him my name. Mr. Pettibone asked me to join him at his table, where he introduced me to his friends and invited me to sit down. It was very pleasant and they all asked me lots of questions about how I got started in music, did I like my work, and so on. As the conversation progressed and I began to feel comfortable with this little group, I ended up telling them my secret: I was planning to drive to Brazil with my five-year old daughter in a second-hand VW van.

Mr. Pettibone's eyes opened wide and he said, handing me his business card, "You're an adventurous girl! I'll tell you what--I'm the president of the Vulco Rubber Company. If you stop by the office one day before you leave and sing a song for me and my colleagues, I'll give you four new tires for your van."

I couldn't believe my luck! I had no reason to believe that he wasn't serious, so the following week I took the subway to the Vulco company and rode the elevator up to Mr. Pettibone's office, guitar in hand. I was greeted by a group of smiling people, including the ones who'd been at the club that night. They all shook my hand, along with Mr. Pettibone himself, who hugged me warmly as if I were his daughter. I sat down with my guitar and played and sang "When I Fall in Love" and "Guantanamera." Everyone applauded, and then Mr. Pettibone led me into his office, where he signed a voucher for the tires. I thought, "This is the way life is really supposed to be!" I thanked him profusely and he shook my hand and wished me a safe trip.

My best girlfriend back then was Pasta (aka Marjorie). She was married to guitarist/singer Michael Hurley and had three kids named Daffodil, Jordan and Colorado. They lived across the hall from me and Mad at the barracks. Being a free-spirited hippie like myself, Pasta saw nothing odd about my taking Mad out of school and heading for Brazil in a VW bus. In fact, she and Michael had made a trip to Mexico not long before in a 1951 Plymouth that didn't go over 35 miles an hour. She helped me pack our sleeping bags, Coleman stove, a big burlap bag of brown rice and Madeleine's toys and our clothes into the van. I made patriotic red, white and blue striped curtains for the windows. When I told Ma we were going she didn't say much, but Bertie told me later that she had written her a letter saying it was a shame that I had turned Madeleine into such a little gypsy.

"You're as crazy as I am," said Pasta. "I guess that's why I love you." We hugged, and Mad and I were on our way. We didn't even have a radio in the van, but I didn't care. I felt free again, being on the road. The April snow was melting as we headed south.

# CHAPTER 14: MEXICO...AGAIN

_Alone, where the moonlight is cold and still,_

_She roams where the waterfalls surge and spill,_

_A staff and a satchel are all that she has,_

_And her world is full, warm and free,_

_Glad and strong._

_They say, back when she was a little one,_

_She heard the call of the fairies ' song --_

_Its strain lingered long in her wandering heart,_

_' Til she followed it, found her way, far away._

_CHORUS:_

_This is the nomad 's song,_

_Find her and come along. Lalalalala, etc._

It was 1968 and I was on the road to Mexico again. This time, though, I had my own wheels and didn't have to be beholden to someone else's schedule, itinerary or alien abduction paranoia. Mad and I created a little home right inside our blue and white VW van. We drove straight south, as if we couldn't get away from the cold fast enough.

Sometimes we stayed in motels, but more often than not we slept in the van, parked on the street in a spot that felt safe. I had just enough cash with me for essentials like gas and food, and I divided it up and hid it in various places in my clothes (pockets, shoes, bra) and in the van. Mad kept herself busy playing in the back or sitting up front with me and looking out the window. When she got bored we'd stop and find something fun to do--a movie, a park or a zoo.

Just as we were driving into Atlanta, Georgia, there was a problem with the van's ignition. I was able to get to a garage, but it was closed and all the mechanics had gone home. However, a kindly security guard offered to let us stay in the van, locked inside the garage, if we would swear secrecy and be sure to be up and dressed the next morning before his boss got in. We were so grateful, and felt safe knowing that our newfound friend was sitting just outside, armed and ready for any eventuality.

The next morning he tapped on the window bright and early to wake us, and when his boss and the mechanics arrived, we looked as though we had just pulled in. They fixed the ignition in short order, and we were on our way with a wink and a hand squeeze from our guardian angel.

We traveled west across the southern states to Texas. I had a friend in El Paso, a Mexican woman named Elsa whom I'd met on my first trip to Mexico. She was now married to an American guy named Marshall Hill and they had two small children. Elsa and I had kept in touch, and she had invited us to spend some time with them on our way to Mexico and Brazil. So instead of taking the easternmost entrance into Mexico, we drove all the way across the Texas desert to El Paso to stay with Elsa and her family.

It was a strange, dreamlike trip. We'd been warned that it could be dangerous to drive across the desert and that we should stock up on water and food before we left because gas stations were few and far between. A breakdown in the desert with no food or water, they said, could be fatal. So I stopped and bought plenty of extra food and several large bottles of water and we set out, not without some trepidation on my part.

Two solid days of sand stretched out before us, endlessly, with the sun beating down, gradually fading to chilly darkness. I sat with my hands resting lightly on the wheel. There were no other cars on the road, and I gradually drifted into a reverie where the rest of the world ceased to exist. I thought about the book I'd read years ago, _Autobiography of a Yogi_ , and I mused that this might be what it was like to transcend the world and have a body only when you wanted to, or to be in two places at the same time. On and on we went, Mad somehow keeping herself occupied in the back of the van or staring out the window at the endless sand dunes.

We didn't have a breakdown and we didn't run out of gas, and eventually we arrived in El Paso at Elsa's place. It was fun to see Elsa again and we sat around gossiping and giggling for a couple of days, while Madeleine played with her two kids. Marshall was out of town. But then Elsa started getting chummy in a way that made me feel the way I used to with Jan Minsk. She would put her hand on my thigh or "accidentally" let it rest on my chest and then look at me in a strange way. I didn't find it unpleasant, but it made me feel uneasy.

But when Marshall got back he immediately sensed what was going on, as if he'd been through something similar before. Of course there wasn't really anything going on, but after two days of silently letting me know he barely tolerated my presence, he suddenly asked me to leave. Elsa protested, but I told her it was all right, it was time for us to leave anyway.

The only problem was that I hadn't been feeling well, and the day we were supposed to leave I felt worse. I had a terrible sore throat and a fever. I tried my macrobiotic remedies, but nothing helped. Finally Elsa drove me to see a doctor, who asked me to open my mouth wide. When I did, he said, "This is the worst case of strep throat I've ever seen," and prescribed some antibiotics.

When we got back, Marshall announced:

"You have to leave tomorrow."

"But she's sick!" Elsa said, clenching her fists. Silence. I knew I had to leave, so I packed our stuff and Mad and I hit the road the next morning. I was terrified. I was always terrified when I was sick. I didn't know how I'd make it to the Mexican border, and what would happen to Madeleine if I died? I was in a panic, but I just gripped the wheel and kept driving. Trembling with weakness and fear, I finally reached the border. I showed the guards our documents, and as soon as we crossed over into Mexico and began the long drive down to Cuernavaca, I started to feel better.

Gradually, I recovered completely as we drove leisurely down the two-lane highway going south. On the trip between Elsa's house and the border, Mad had steadfastly refused to try to speak Spanish with me and said she didn't remember anything. But the minute we crossed the border into Mexico, she started jabbering away like a little native. I took advantage of her loose tongue to brush up myself.

Between the little towns and villages there was only desert. It was a different route than the one we'd taken with Bill Reade, but the desert was the same--not like Texas, with sand dunes, but covered with scrubby brown plants and various kinds of cacti. Occasionally we'd see a man riding on a mule, an old broken-down truck, or one of the ubiquitous blue buses tear-assing down the road, passing us in a billow of dust. But most of the time we were alone on the road.

By late afternoon each day we'd start looking for a place to spend the night. I tried to avoid motels to save money, but I didn't dare park the van along the deserted highway at night, so we usually parked on a busy street in some little town. One late afternoon we drove and drove but didn't see any villages or towns. It kept getting later and darker, but no signs of civilization. By 10 o'clock I had been driving for fourteen hours and was worn out. Mad was already asleep in the back of the van, and I felt very alone.

I was starting to get downright scared, imagining us stranded on the highway for the night and being attacked by _banditos,_ when suddenly a tiny green sign popped up out of the darkness, off to the left of the highway. It said: _San Juan del Rio._ Since there was nothing but infinite blackness in front of me, I took a deep breath and turned off onto the secondary road leading to God only knew where.

The narrow road was unpaved and kept getting narrower, until we passed over something that looked like a bridge, although it was so dark it was hard to tell. Soon after, we saw the lights of San Juan del Rio. I eased the van into a clearing where there were a few small stucco houses. People had already heard the sound of the engine, and had come running out onto the street to see who had come to their village at this late hour. When they saw two _gringas_ --a young woman and a little girl--they started jabbering away in Spanish and pointing at us. Some of the bigger children ran up and started banging on the side of the van, while the smaller ones stuck close to their mothers, thumbs in mouths, clinging to their skirts.

A stocky middle-aged man with a heavy dose of Indian blood walked over to the van and said, "Buenas noches." I was grateful that I'd been brushing up my Spanish with Mad, and I explained to him that we'd been on the road all day, were tired and hungry and needed a place to sleep. He smiled broadly, revealing broken teeth and a couple of gold fillings, and pointed to a squat little building across the clearing that turned out to be San Juan del Rio's only hotel. A _hotel_! Hot damn!

But before our host escorted us there, he suggested I leave the van at his house, because he had a yard where we could lock it inside. "Los niños," he explained, shrugging his shoulders and pointing to some frisky adolescents who looked like they might not be able to contain their curiosity while we were asleep at the hotel. I felt a little uneasy about leaving our van with a man we'd just met, but when I saw how nice his house was, how cordial his wife was, and how safe and secure his yard was, I happily handed him the keys. I offered to pay him, but he refused. This really surprised me, since most of the poorer Mexicans I'd met always had their hand out ready for whatever the rich gringos would give them. Ah, if they only knew!

But I would soon find out that the people of San Juan del Rio were different. It was obvious that they had seen very few North Americans, since it seemed hardly anyone ever took that particular left off the highway, in the middle of nowhere. Our host escorted us to a tiny restaurant where we had delicious chiles rellenos, and then walked us over to the hotel. All the time, we were followed by hordes of kids of all sizes, and they were particularly fascinated by Madeleine, who was now wide awake and obliged them by chattering away in Spanish with them and answering all their questions.

The little hotel was charming. There was no running water, but they provided a pitcher and a basin, and the bed was comfortable and clean. We finally settled down for a long, much-needed sleep.

The next morning, the sun was shining brightly and San Juan de Rio showed us its colorful daytime face. There were flowers everywhere, bougainvillea cascading down the whitewashed walls and pastel stucco houses facing the _z ocalo_, the town square across from our hotel. We were greeted by several of the townspeople, including our host from the previous night. Again he took us to his house, where he unlocked the gate to his yard, and there was our van, ready to go. We packed our things and after warm hugs and smiles all around, were on our way.

To this day, I can't help thinking that "something" guided us to San Juan del Rio, and that there must have been angels of one sort or another watching over us. We had dramatic proof of this on our way back to the highway. We were driving down the same narrow road that we had come in on the night before, the only road in and out of San Juan del Rio. When we got to what I had thought was the little bridge from the previous night, although it had been hard to tell in the pitch blackness, I suddenly slammed on the brakes.

"Look! Look!" I said to Mad.

Our "bridge" was actually a couple of narrow old planks propped over a deep ravine. They weren't much wider than the tires on the van, and I remembered with a rush of fear how I had just driven straight on over them the previous night, and how easy it would have been to have missed them and fallen down into the ravine! I closed my eyes in gratitude. Then I gingerly put my foot on the accelerator and inched my way across the planks to the other side, giving thanks to God or whatever it was that had protected us.

Eventually we reached Cuernavaca, where Pop and Mari greeted us with open arms. It was so good to be somewhere where we could just rest for a while, away from the never-ending highway, and where we could actually have a real bath every day! Pop seemed to be in pretty good shape, Mari looked happier, and they were very glad and relieved to see me and Madeleine.

I guess I hadn't realized how exhausted and enervated I was, but the next day when I was taking a shower, I noticed that a lot of my hair was falling out. It kept up for several days until I really thought I might go bald. I ran to Mari, crying,

"Mari, my hair is falling out! All of it!"

"Don't worry, chica," she said. "You're just tired from the trip. No es nada."

But I couldn't believe it was nothing, and I began to feel more and more frightened.

That night Pop asked me, "What's your plan from here?" and I burst into tears.

"What's wrong?" he and Mari asked in unison.

All of a sudden the unacknowledged dread I had about continuing this trip just burst out of me. I was overwhelmed at the thought of having to move on..."I don't know if I want to keep going, or just go back home...but I don't want to go back home. There's nothing there for me!" Running, running, running, and never finding what it was I was looking for--not even knowing what it was that I was looking for or what I was running away from.

Pop put his arms around me and said, "Don't worry, kiddo, you can stay here as long as you need to until you decide what you want to do."

I felt a little better, but still had no idea what I should do. And my hair kept falling out.

# CHAPTER 15: BRAZIL

After a long rest with Mari and Pop, I finally screwed up my courage and made the decision to continue going south rather than go back to Boston. I was feeling better. My hair was a little thinner, but at least it had stopped falling out. I wasn't at all sure how or if we would make it to Brazil, but I kept remembering that offer from Mr. Lorgus, so I felt encouraged.

On a clear Cuernavaca morning Mad and I, with Pop and Mari helping, packed our things into the van.

"Cuida-te, querida," said Mari, hugging me tightly, and Pop joined in, wrapping his arms around me and Mad.

"Keep safe, and get in touch as soon as you end up somewhere!" Good old Pop, from whom I inherited my spirit of adventure.

I was still a little edgy, though, because I really had no plan for how we would actually get to Porto Alegre, which was very, very far away in southern Brazil. I had toyed with the idea of driving all the way to Brazil, but the Pan-American highway wasn't fully paved, and the rainy season was approaching. The idea of being stuck in the mud somewhere in Central America didn't appeal to me at all, so with no clue of where we were heading or how we would get there, Mad and I set out on the highway winding south to the Mexican border with Guatemala.

Once again, I was back to the same long days on the road, driving with my hands resting lightly on the wheel, and Mad in the back keeping herself busy, bless her heart. There were stretches of nubbly desert and little towns, and I'd pull the van into a safe-looking street at night so we could sleep.

Eventually we reached Oaxaca, which I had heard resembled Oz's Emerald City, and it was true. Everything was made of greenish stone mined from the local quarries. But we weren't there long enough to enjoy it, because I felt so driven to get going. I wanted to get to Porto Alegre as soon as possible.

Some days later we finally reached San Cristobal de las Casas, not far from the border between Mexico and Guatemala. I had been warned about anti-American feeling at the Guatemalan border and that the customs officers might give me a hard time, especially because of the patriotic red, white and blue striped curtains in my van windows. But I refused to think about that as I headed still further south, with one eye on the road and the other on the sky, which was glowering and threatening the start of the rains.

By the time we reached the border it had been raining steadily for two days. We stopped in a small town, and the water in the streets came up to my knees. I had to carry Mad in my arms. But we were so happy to have arrived close to the border that we decided to celebrate and go to a movie, so I sloshed along, still lugging Mad, and found a movie theater. We spent a pleasant afternoon in the dark with our eyes glued to the flickering screen. Afterward, the water had receded somewhat, so Mad and I waded to a restaurant to get something to eat and then found a tiny hotel for the night. The next morning we headed for the Guatemalan border and customs.

To my surprise and relief the border guards didn't threaten us, and were actually quite nice. One of them asked me what I was doing traveling alone with a small child, so I made up a story about meeting my husband in Guatemala City. They let us pass.

Why did everything in Guatemala seem so different from Mexico? How could crossing an imaginary line make me feel like I was in another world? Guatemala was lush and green, with tropical trees and bushes growing close to the edge of the road, and the women dressed in lively colors instead of the black and white rebozos I was used to seeing in Mexico. Not that Mexico isn't colorful, but it seemed as if all the colors in Guatemala were cranked up to high pitch.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant and ate thick tortillas with black beans. I would soon discover that everyone ate black beans in Guatemala, as far as I could tell. When we were comfortably stuffed, we got back in the van and kept going until we reached Guatemala City. I'd heard from American hippie traveler friends that it would be easy to sell the van there, so I had been formulating a plan. I was feeling better, stronger, and more convinced that I actually could make it to Brazil, one way or the other. Mad, in the meantime, just tagged along happily, enjoying all the new sights and sounds without a worry or care, which inspired me to put away any doubts or fears I might have had about continuing south. Part of my plan was to find a cheap hotel in Guatemala City and then run an ad in a newspaper to sell the van. I was sure I could sell it quickly, and for a good price, from what I'd heard.

We did find a cheap but not too sleazy hotel, settled in, and crashed on the beds. I turned on the radio and a Spanish version of the Zombies' tune "Time of the Season" came blasting out. Before we knew it, we were both sound asleep. It was six o'clock in the evening, and we didn't wake up until the next morning.

It wasn't long before I was forced to face the reality that it wasn't going to be easy to sell the van after all, and that even if I did manage to sell it, I wouldn't get much for it. I found this out by talking with the natives and with some Americans who had come to Guatemala with the same idea. It had all sounded so simple: run an ad, sell your car to the highest bidder, and move on. Except that there weren't any bidders, and even if there had been, you had to establish residency in Guatemala before you could sell your car legally.

Well, since it obviously wasn't going to happen that way and I didn't want to stay in Guatemala City forever, I decided to take the van to the Volkswagen company to see if they might buy it. Mad and I put on our nicest clothes and drove over to the pristine dealership, which looked more like a hospital with all its sales people dressed in white from head to toe, including their shoes. A salesman, who looked like he might whip out a stethoscope any minute, approached us.

"How may I help you?" His Spanish was very clear and carefully pronounced, no doubt for the benefit of the two "gringas."

"I'd like to sell my van," I said, getting right to the point, as we gringas are known to do.

"Ah, I'm very sorry _se ñora_, but we don't buy cars here. We only take them as trade-ins."

Well, that's just great, I thought. I'll trade in my van for _another_ car so I can drive down the Pan-American highway and get stuck in the mud.

The salesman saw my look of disappointment, and for a minute I thought he might try to take my pulse. I said, "Do you think I could speak with the manager for a minute? Por favor?"

"I think that could be arranged," said Dr. Salesman.

He led us into a large office with more windows than walls, where a pleasant looking middle-aged man with silvery hair and horn-rimmed glasses sat behind a glass-topped desk. Unlike the others, he was wearing a suit. An expensive suit.

"Hello," he said in a melodic voice. "What can I do for you?"

You can buy my worn-out old van for $5,000, I thought.

"I have a story to tell you," I said instead.

I proceeded to tell him how Madeleine and I had driven in our VW van from Boston to Guatemala and planned to go to Brazil, but we didn't want to drive any more so would he please buy our van so we could get a couple of plane tickets to Porto Alegre? ¿ _Por favor?_

As I rattled on, he sat quietly with his elbows on the glass desk and his hands folded under his chin. He seemed amused and somewhat amazed at the idea of two small females traveling so far alone. He got up from behind the desk, came over and stood in front of us, and held out his hand. First he shook my hand and then leaned over and shook Mad's. She giggled. I was afraid this meant, "I'm sorry, goodbye," but he said, "I'm impressed with your story. We don't buy cars here, but in your case I will make an exception. I'll give you 500 American dollars for your van."

Well, it wasn't quite the $5,000 I had hoped for, but I was so grateful I nearly kissed the guy's feet. He asked us to sit down again, and we made all the arrangements right then and there. He then explained that the transaction would have to be cleared through customs. This was my first experience with the slowly grinding wheels of bureaucracy south of the border. It ended up taking two weeks for the papers to clear.

But Mad and I managed to pass the time without going bonkers from boredom. We made a few friends and enjoyed wandering around the city, especially in the markets, where women with strips of cloth braided into their hair sold brightly colored embroidered clothing and bags or carried woven straw baskets filled with fruit on their heads. Mad's hair was long, so I bought some colored yarn and braided her hair with it. Toward the end of the two weeks, however, we ran out of steam and spent long hours just lying around the hotel room listening to the radio.

Finally the day arrived when we could pick up our money and the precious document that would allow us to leave Guatemala. It was against the law to sell a car there without customs clearance, and anyone who did so was not allowed to leave the country. As soon as I had the $500 in my hand we ran to the Pan Am agency and bought two tickets to Brazil. We sent a telegram to Mr. Lorgus in Porto Alegre telling him we were arriving...at last.

Theodore (Ted) Lorgus was there to meet us when we arrived at the airport in Porto Alegre. He was a diminutive man in his early sixties with a sweet smile, sparkling eyes, and a charming Brazilian accent. He drove us to a house where the people who worked in his macrobiotic restaurant were living. Our room had heavy curtains at the window and was crammed with dark Colonial-style furniture. I was surprised, because I thought it was tropical in Brazil and the furniture would be rattan and there would be hammocks hanging in the windows. I found out later on that Porto Alegre, being so far south, gets extremely cold in the winter, thus the heavy curtains. There was a big double bed, and after our long flight we were happy just to settle down and take a nap.

The next day, my new employer walked us over to the restaurant, which was close by, and introduced us to the kitchen workers. They were all women, dressed in white nurse-like uniforms and caps. My first thought was "I'm not going to speak Spanish," even though I knew they would understand most of what I said if I did. I wanted to learn Portuguese, and stuck to my guns, even though I couldn't understand anything the women said to me.

Mr. Lorgus put me to work in the kitchen and Madeleine played with the children of some of the other workers. It wasn't difficult work, but the food was very different from what I was used to in the macrobiotic restaurants in Boston. It was heavy and greasy, and nobody seemed to give a damn about balancing yin and yang. But it was tasty, I had to admit.

Once I started to grasp the language a little, I saw that Brazilians were completely different from any other people I had ever known. They seemed to accept life, and even though many of them were big complainers, their complaining was more just a way to pass the time and an excuse to talk. Basically they were happy with life. They didn't seem to let things get them down, and they never, ever hurried or let stress get the best of them, at least not the Brazilians I came to know in Porto Alegre. Hardly anyone wore a watch, and soon I put mine away, too.

One day a tall young man with a sunken face, transparent white skin and big teeth appeared in the kitchen. Right away I knew he wasn't Brazilian and that he was macrobiotic. Turned out he was French and was traveling around Brazil on his own. His name was Jacques, and since he spoke English, Mr. Lorgus introduced him to me. I was happy to have a chance to speak my native tongue with someone besides Mr. Lorgus and Madeleine, so we spent the afternoon together telling each other about our lives and our experiences with macrobiotics.

I could tell that Jacques was a hard-liner and that he must have been appalled to see the way the Brazilians prepared macrobiotic food, loading it with grease and salt, and chopping things any old which way instead of the orthodox macrobiotic way. Since I'd already been in Porto Alegre for a while, I had dropped many of my concerns about yin and yang through my increasingly pleasant contact with the lackadaisical workers in Mr. Lorgus's kitchen. But Jacques got into the habit of hanging around in the kitchen, leaning over my shoulder and saying things like, "You're putting too much salt in the food. It's too yang. You'll never make a balance that way, the way you're cutting those vegetables."

Oh God, I thought, bugger off! One day, after yet another barrage of criticism, I laid down my knife, turned around and told him to mind his own business. He told me I was worthless as a macrobiotic cook and I told him he was a tight-assed European. He stomped out of the kitchen in a huff.

I don't know if Mr. Lorgus got wind of what had happened or not, but a week later he decided to send us both to his other macrobiotic restaurant in Curitiba, which was around 340 miles north of Porto Alegre in the state of Parana. The thought of the long bus ride with Jacques sitting near me and Mad didn't exactly thrill me, but I was happy that I would get to know another part of Brazil.

So Mad and I packed our things and off we went. By this time my Portuguese had improved quite a lot and I was beginning to feel more at home. Madeleine, true to form, was already jabbering merrily away in Portuguese with anyone who would listen, leagues ahead of her mother.

Somehow Jacques and I managed to be civil to one another on the trip, probably because we were nowhere near a kitchen. And there were enough interesting things to look at out the window to keep us occupied along the way. When we arrived in Curitiba, we took a cab to the address Mr. Lorgus had given us and were greeted by a chubby, cheerful brown-skinned young woman with big round dark eyes named Horacia. She showed us where we'd be staying upstairs over the restaurant. Madeleine and I would share a room with Horacia and her friend and co-worker Aurelia, a tall gangly blond with a pointed nose who fussed constantly about the fact that her hair was falling out and she was only in her twenties. I tried to comfort her by telling her how my hair had been falling out, too, but finally stopped and grew back. She didn't look convinced.

Horacia gave us the grand tour of the restaurant and told me what my duties would be. The dining room was full of people chomping down yummy looking macrobiotic meals that, once again, looked nothing like what I'd known in Boston. In fact the diners themselves didn't resemble the skinny palefaces that used to eat at Michio's restaurant, either. These looked like normal people eating a normal meal in a normal restaurant. I wasn't surprised at all when Jacques announced that he would be hitting the road again.

The next day I jumped right into the routine, with Mad helping me chop vegetables and wipe the counters. Horacia gave her an apron and promised her she'd find some kids for her to play with soon. I couldn't believe how dirty the kitchen was. At night, when the restaurant was closing, the cooks would make a half-hearted attempt to clean up, but there were always crumbs on the counter, grease on the stove, and they often forgot to empty the garbage. It was a far cry from Mr. Lorgus's restaurant in Porto Alegre, where everything was pristine and spotless. Once in a while, during the night, Mad and I would go downstairs to the kitchen for a snack, and when we turned on the light a million roaches would scatter in every direction. And these were no ordinary roaches--they came in all sizes from little black ones to huge brown ones. And the big ones flew! I had never seen a roach fly in Boston.

After a few of these distasteful encounters, I formulated a plan. One night Mad and I stole down to the kitchen. Just outside the door there was a big deep freezer where the cooks put all the leftover food from dinner. We tiptoed into the hall, opened the freezer and uncovered several plates of food. Then I unplugged the freezer, and turned out the light and we sneaked back upstairs to our room.

About a half hour later we tiptoed down to the kitchen again, being careful not to wake Horacia or Aurelia. This time we took a flashlight. I quickly lifted the lid of the freezer and took a peek inside. There were thousands of roaches in there, feeding on the leftover food. In a flash, I slammed the lid down and stuck the plug back into the wall. Mad and I were doubled over with horror and laughter, trying to stifle ourselves so we wouldn't wake anyone. The next morning when we opened the freezer, the roaches were all lying on their backs, legs akimbo, stiff as a board. I took a deep breath and quickly cleared them out of there and threw them in the garbage before the cooks arrived, while Mad stood around and said, "Ew! Ew!"

Horacia helped us find a place to live, since it was really too crowded with the four of us in one room up over the restaurant. Also, Mad had had a bad experience with a giant roach one night when she woke up screaming with the darned thing crawling up her leg. Horacia jumped out of bed and turned on the light. She brushed the roach off and ground it under her bare heel. " _Uf a! Da aquele ruim na gente!_" she exclaimed, meaning that having a roach the size of a small mouse crawl up your leg in the middle of the night was just about one of the nastiest things imaginable.

The house we went to live in was made of old grey planks with spaces between them. It was propped up on stone pillars, so there was a space high enough for Madeleine to stand under it. Dona Izaura and her family, who were friends of Horacia and Aurelia, lived in the house, and they were happy to have me and Madeleine stay with them. But after a few days of their very Brazilian hospitality I, with my fierce need for privacy, knew I wouldn't be able to stand living there. There were too many people, too much talking and absolutely no place to go to be alone except outdoors, and even then I'd usually be interrupted by one of the family members wanting to talk.

Out in back of the house there was a big yard full of trees and there was also an empty shack made of the same grey planks as the house. It had two little rooms, and I asked Izaura if Madeleine and I could stay in it. Izaura was horrified, and found it incomprehensible that anyone would want to stay in a miserable little shack when they could be comfortable and happy in the bosom of her family.

"But I...I can't let you stay out there--that's just a storage space! You deserve a nice home!"

"Oh, Izaura, I just love the little shack," I said. "It's so close to the garden and the fruit trees!" She finally gave in, with a puzzled look on her face.

After we were installed in the shack, Mad and I spent a lot of time exploring the lush back yard. There were all kinds of fruit trees--a peach tree, a pear tree, an orange tree that had greenish oranges on it, a seedless raspberry bush and several banana trees. I had never seen a banana tree up close before and was intrigued to discover that I could cut it down with a kitchen knife--the trunk was like a giant piece of celery. Soon it would grow right back up again.

There were various edible things growing in the ground, too--a couple of varieties of wild potatoes and lots of collard greens. It was a wonderful yard, and Mad and I started to plant some things there. I loved to dig in the dirt, and it brought back memories of my childhood when Bertie and I used to plant our flower gardens in Newtown.

We had heard some wild stories about the kinds of bugs we might run into in Brazil, and Izaura enlightened us further by telling us that there was a kind of spider that gave off such a noxious stench that you had to run away from it as fast as possible to keep from being poisoned. I took this with a grain of salt, but one day when Madeleine and I were digging in the yard I thrust the spade into a nest of these very spiders. Instantly we were overcome with an indescribably horrible stench, like clouds of poisonous gas. I covered my nose with my hand.

"Run, Mad! It's the spiders!" I grabbed her by the hand and practically dragged her into the big house. We quickly closed all the windows and doors, but the smell still managed to seep in between the cracks in the walls. It took hours for it to fade away. After that I was very careful when I dug in the garden.

That wasn't my only experience with the exotic and strange bugs of Brazil. Another time I was getting ready to fix dinner and reached into the cupboard for a package of spaghetti wrapped in paper. When I opened the paper I saw that it was full of large black ants. Quickly, I closed the package and started to twist it. To my horror, the ants started to scream: "Tchhhhiiiikkkkk!!! Tchiiikkkkk!" The more I twisted, the louder they screamed.

And then there were the fleas...but I'll get to that a little later.

# CHAPTER 16: I FALL AGAIN

_Steel magnate Gray Mathers (to his wife, the Countess Constance): Get in the car. Now!_

_Constance: Perhaps you 've mistaken me for a spaniel...?_

-- From Tim Robbins' film, _The Cradle Will Rock_

Just as I was starting to think I couldn't stand my life for another minute without a man, I met Joao Alexandre at the macrobiotic restaurant. He was nice looking, a few years younger than me, and from a small town near Curitiba. He had light brownish-blond curly hair and an aquiline nose that resembled my own. Although he wasn't tall, he had a wiry, athletic body, and I found him attractive. He made his moves on me very quickly, and I was flattered. In my naivete, I didn't realize that many Brazilians, especially those from small towns, were completely mad for American culture, and that Joao probably couldn't believe his luck in finding an available...even _eager_ , American female right under his nose.

For some time I had been thinking about forming a real family again--a husband for me and maybe a little brother or sister for Madeleine at some point. Joao seemed willing, and I let him take the lead, never noticing that he had "green card" written all over his forehead. I wasn't savvy enough at the time to see that I was his potential ticket out of what he saw as a backwater life in a little town in southern Brazil. Many years later he told me he had always known he was meant to live in the USA.

I, true to form, was instantly and intensely smitten. I desperately wanted this to work out, and so I orchestrated a scenario of the perfect family. I think it was the combination of his being a Brazilian man and my macrobiotic training (women must be submissive) that made me behave in a way that was completely contrary to my nature. I was so blinded by my feverish need to make this fantasy come true that I never stopped to consider what Madeleine might be thinking and feeling. Big mistake.

I was so caught up in my campaign to get Joao to marry me that I was practically ignoring her. To myself and others I used the excuse that making us a family would be good for her, too, and so I never even noticed that Mad didn't like Joao. She preferred to spend time with our friends Rita and Carlos. Rita, an affectionate motherly sort, was crazy about Madeleine, and I knew she knew what I was up to with Joao, but she never said anything.

Even though I thought I was in love and was flattered by Joao's attention, I began to feel increasingly nervous around him. One night I was in the restaurant kitchen cutting vegetables, waiting for him to show up. He was late, and I grew more and more uneasy. When he finally turned up I was so rattled that I let the knife slip and cut my finger.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm just nervous."

He came from behind me and wrapped his arms around me like an anaconda.

"You should never be nervous around me," he said. "I'll take care of everything. I'll take care of you."

At that moment I didn't know that his promise to "take care of me" would involve not letting me play the piano in public, expecting a five-course meal on the table every night and his dressing up every Saturday to go out with his friends while I stayed at home waiting for him. I was not only not allowed to go with him, but I was forbidden to leave the house. Why did I put up with this? For the same reason so many women can't seem to get away from husbands and boyfriends who abuse them verbally and physically--they can't see any alternative through the haze of their own neediness, and they end up hurting their children as well as themselves.

I held off sleeping with Joao as long as I could because I fantasized about at last being virginal, even if I wasn't a virgin, when I finally married him, which I knew I would. When we first met, he wouldn't even sit on the bed near me because it was considered improper, but of course we ended up doing the deed on that very same bed before many months had gone by.

"There, now that didn't change anything, did it?" he asked, pulling up his pants.

I shook my head, but of course it had changed everything.

Izaura and her family had decided to move out of the big house, so when they left, Joao, Madeleine and I moved in. Joao bought wooden beds for us to sleep on, and I tidied up the kitchen. I was the image of the perfect Brazilian housewife, and I began to think I might stay right where I was forever. I was convinced that I was doing a good job building my new family.

Then the fleas came, as if they were some kind of warning or premonition of things to come. Big ones, hidden in the fur of the rats that lived under the house. They got into our blankets and bit our arms and legs in the middle of the night, making us jump up in our beds in pain. We'd turn the lights on and crack them between our fingernails. I took to ironing the sheets and blankets and dumping flea powder under the beds to get rid of them. They'd go away for a while, but always came back. We went to the source and put rat poison under the house, admonishing Mad to stay away from it. Life went on, and we went on battling the fleas.

Joao was friends with a couple who lived way out in the country in the interior of the state of Parana. Pepe was an older man, an Argentine in his late fifties, and his wife Mary, who was in her forties, was Brazilian. They lived with their German Shepherd Astrid on a large ranch with many acres, much of which they had transformed into an organic farm. But the most interesting thing was their house, which Pepe and Mary had designed together. It was a pentagonal, two-story stucco structure painted turquoise blue, with windows only on the top floor. The first floor was one large room, dark and cozy, with a clay stove in one corner, a big table with benches, and several over-stuffed sofas.

We decided to visit them, glad to get away from the fleas for a while. To get to their farm after we got off the bus, they had to drive us in their jeep through unpaved terrain, mud puddles and jungle.

Pepe was nearly deaf, but a great lover of classical music, so the stereo was usually blasting full volume. He loved sitting downstairs where it was dark, listening to his music. I asked him, shouting in his ear above a Brahms symphony,

"Pepe, why did you and Mary build the house with no windows on the ground floor?"

"Ah," he said. "I love my cave. If I want light, I go outside."

Mary was standing by the stove, cutting organic carrots from the garden.

"Well, I told him I do like to have a little light inside the house, so he agreed to put in a few windows upstairs."

She put the carrots in the soup pot with some other vegetables. Mary never cooked with salt, but the food was delicious. She was a sweet-faced woman with honey-colored hair. Once she confided to me, to my great surprise, that she had never washed her hair. At first I thought how disgusting, but I noticed that it didn't look dirty at all. In fact, it always looked clean and shiny. She wore it long and told me that she brushed it several times a day and that's what kept it clean.

Mary and Pepe were like two angels to me. I thought they were so wise, so pure, so unsullied by the world. I might have concluded that it was the solitary life they lived, but I think it was their natures that drew them to that solitary place where they could create the life of harmony and peace that suited them.

I had lived in the city since going to Boston in 1959 to attend college, but over the years I'd often missed the country. Growing up in Connecticut, I was always close to the earth, messing around in the dirt, barefoot, hose in hand, planting things, or wandering in the woods. Being with Pepe and Mary at their farm was nostalgic for me, and took the edge off the increasing sense of anxiety that was slowly seeping into my very bones from living with Joao. I helped Mary in the garden and collected eggs from the many chickens, ducks and quails she and Pepe raised. I chopped vegetables and fed the animals and played chess with Pepe. I was happy.

Although I was aware of the contrast between the way I felt in this bucolic setting and in our ramshackle house in Curitiba, I hadn't even begun to investigate why I was so uneasy in my relationship with Joao. Then one day Mary and I took a stroll together around the ranch, just the two of us, while Pepe and Joao stayed in the house playing games with Madeleine. I was telling her about how much I loved Joao, how special he was, how great we were together, and on and on, and she looked at me with just the slightest hint of scorn and said:

"It's just sex, dear, pure sensuality, and of course that's selfishness, and it won't last, naturally."

I defended myself, naturally.

During this period I got to know Joao's brother Cesar and his wife Cyrley, who was twenty years older than Cesar, extremely intelligent, and had cancer. She was very interested in alternative medicine and esoteric healing methods. I confided to her that I had always suffered somewhat from discomfort in my lower back, and she told me she knew of a Catholic priest who was also a hypnotic doctor and that he might be able to help me. It all sounded a bit outrageous to me, but I was intrigued, so one day the three of us, Cyrley, Joao and I, set off to see this healing priest. I was amazed when we got there to see that his "office" was set up in what looked like the ruins of an ancient church, where he also held Mass on Sundays, even though there was no roof.

The priest himself came out to meet us. He was a short, dark man with very thick eyeglasses that gave him a slightly creepy look. He shook our hands and invited us to go into what looked like the only room with an actual roof. He asked me what the problem was so I told him about my lower back, and then, gazing at his Coke-bottle glasses I said, as if to challenge him, "And my vision is really bad, too." I myself was wearing glasses with very thick lenses.

He put his hands on my face and then on my lower back and told me to face him and look into his eyes, because he was going to hypnotize me. I had heard the old story that you couldn't be hypnotized unless you consented to be, so since I wanted to cooperate, I decided I would yield to the doctor's wishes. I stood and faced him. He didn't say a word, but just stared at me, and then he said in a loud voice, "Sit down!" Suddenly I felt myself falling backwards onto a shabby old sofa behind me. That's when I supposedly "woke up" from the trance. I hadn't actually felt anything, and the impression I had was that I was just doing what he wanted me to do so I wouldn't make waves. Then he gave me a small vial of some sort of oil and told me to rub it on my temples and my lower back when I got home.

I did as he said with the odd-smelling oil when we got home, and the next day my face had swollen to almost twice its size. My lower back was swollen and red, too. And I itched. The itching was almost unbearable, and I felt like ripping my skin off or jumping into a lake. By that same night, a viscous liquid started oozing from all my pores in the places where I'd rubbed the oil. I asked Cyrley what the hell was going on, and she said I was "expelling poison." I suffered like a beast for several days, and finally everything was back to normal, meaning my lower back still hurt from time to time and I was still as myopic as ever. This was my first acquaintance with thought transference, or mind control. Little did I know, but I was soon to have an even more disturbing encounter with this kind of thing.

Joao finally asked me to marry him. We discovered that we couldn't get married in Brazil because I was divorced, so the plan was that we would go to the USA, get married and live there. Because of this plan, he decided to take me and Mad to visit the rest of his family in Londrina, a small city not far from Curitiba, so he could tell them the news. I felt the bad vibe as soon as we got there, especially from his mother. To her I was the gringa--an American divorcee with a _child_ , older than her son, who wore her skirts too short. His father seemed indifferent, but I sensed grating hostility from his three brothers and one of the brothers' wives, who later cornered me in my room and asked me about my sexual habits with my former husband, staring at my bare knees the whole time. We stayed only a few days, but when Joao announced one day that we planned to marry and move to the USA, all hell broke loose.

His younger brother Fernando went after him with a rifle. Mad was down the road at a cousin's house, and when the women there saw Fernando running after Joao with the rifle, they locked all the doors. Mad was trapped in there with them. I ran to the house and pounded on the door and screamed for them to let her out. Who knew what they might do, or what Fernando might do if he decided to break down the door in his rage? I knew they all hated me. Finally one of the cousins opened the door. I grabbed Mad by the arm and ran back to the other house, where we were greeted with cold stares. The next day the three of us went back to Curitiba.

Joao's mother was left nursing a murderous rage against me. The worst thing for her was that her favorite son had dumped his pretty blond girlfriend for me, which was news to me. And then I was going to take him away from her forever--to America! But never in my dreams did it occur to me that her revenge would extend as far as it ultimately did.

When we got back to Curitiba I began to feel unwell. I couldn't define what was wrong with me exactly; I had a low-grade fever and didn't feel like eating. We had been planning my trip back to the USA with Madeleine, and Joao was to follow us forty days later after what was then called his "fiance visa" was approved. But I just kept getting sicker and sicker. I lost a lot of weight and was appalled one day to see in a full length mirror that my knees had turned into bony knobs. Soon I couldn't go out in the street; in fact, I couldn't get out of bed, and had to cancel our flight. As I lay in the bed, I began to feel that I must somehow find the strength to get up and go home, back to the USA. I felt a kind of urgency about it that I couldn't explain. I had no idea how I would do it, because I was too weak to move.

I lay in that gray house on my bed, looking out the window, and really prayed for the first time in my life. I prayed with a kind of desperation--"God, are you there? If you are, if you're real, please help me." And for the first time ever, I felt something--some presence that I knew was more than just my imagination, and I was comforted.

Within just a few days I started to feel better. I re-booked our flight and Mad and I left Brazil.

At least six years went by before I found out what had happened to me in Brazil. I learned that Joao's mother had hired someone to do what in Brazil is called a "work" on me so that I wouldn't take her son away from her. This "work" is actually a curse, and is part of the Brazilian version of voodoo known as _macumba_ , a mix of African religions and Catholicism, and similar to _santeria._ Part of the belief is that humans can learn to contact and embody spirits for the purpose of healing or injuring someone. During macumba services, which involve drumming and dancing, worshippers are sometimes possessed by their _orishas_ , or gods. I had seen a macumba ceremony in the film "Black Orpheus," but had never had any contact with actual _macumbeiros_ while I was in Brazil. Even people who are not followers of macumba have been known to pay a macumbeiro to cast a spell on a wife, husband or lover, or to get a job or win the lotto. Joao's mother's intention in hiring a macumbeiro was deadly, and she was to repeat this a number of years later after Joao and I divorced and he married another American woman whom she saw as a threat.

# CHAPTER 17: THE SEEKER

Mad and I left Brazil on a 99°f humid summer evening and arrived in the USA the next day to be greeted by a 9°f Boston winter morning that froze the hairs in our noses. We didn't have any bona fide winter clothes, so we hugged our layers of sweaters close to us. The two years we'd lived in Brazil were when the government was a dictatorship, and there were stringent rules about what you could take with you when you left the country. We hadn't been allowed to take any money except for the minimum we would need for ground transportation, etc. when we arrived in the USA. I had saved some money from my work in Mr. Lorgus's restaurants, so I had bought some bootleg traveler's checks drawn on the Barclay bank and had hidden them in my underwear.

When we got into the city the first thing we did was run to the Barclay bank, only to discover that they wouldn't cash our checks because they'd already been countersigned. I argued with the bank manager, but he was without pity, even though I told him I had no money and he could see that I had a small child with me. So there we stood, shivering in our sweaters, tired to the bone, looking like shelter refugees, wondering what to do next.

I did have a few dollars in my pocket, just enough to get some food and make a phone call to Ma, but not enough for a hotel. Following my instincts, I headed for Sanae, the macrobiotic restaurant on Newbury Street. As soon as we got inside I recognized someone I knew, a woman from the old Michio Kushi crowd. She ran over and gave me and Mad a big hug, and I blurted out,

"Uh, do you think you could put us up for the night?"

She said sure (I love hippies), so off we went. Later on I called Ma and she wired some money for us to take the train to Newtown the next day. She met us at the station and threw her arms around us. Then she looked at me and said, "You're so _skinny_." She was right about that. I still hadn't completely recovered from the illness Joao's mother had inflicted on me.

Ma came through for us. She knew her bank manager personally, and he agreed to cash our traveler's checks. Good old reliable Ma.

We stayed in Newtown for a few days and then went back to Boston to the old barracks in Brookline to stay with my pal Pasta for a while. By this time, I was beginning to have serious doubts about whether I really wanted to marry Joao. I kept going back and forth about it in my mind, and finally one day I said to Pasta, "God, I don't know what to do, whether I should marry Joao or not."

She had her toddler, Colorado, on her hip and was stirring a pot of oatmeal on the stove.

"I don't want to tell you what to do," she said, without missing a turn of the spoon, "but I know you'd be happier if you didn't."

I ended up marrying Joao, against what turned out to be Pasta's better judgment. I didn't really make any decision about it; I just let things drift along and take their natural course, as I had often done in my life. Forty days after I arrived in the USA, Joao turned up with his documents all approved to get his green card. I met him at the airport and the minute I saw him I knew it was a mistake, all of it, but I did nothing. I just went along with it and tried to convince myself that everything would work out and that we'd have the family I'd been dreaming of all along.

So I transformed myself from the perfect Brazilian housewife into the perfect American housewife. We moved into a cheap, rambling railroad apartment in South Boston, where I enrolled Mad in school. I had dropped out of music altogether by this time, convincing myself that it was right for me to stay home, cooking magical macrobiotic food that would somehow make my husband and children healthy and happy. I had also convinced myself that playing music was egotistical. I remembered when I had stopped playing, when we were living in Curitiba. I'd been invited to play in a club, and Joao had refused to let me go. I gave in, mostly out of fear, and then tried to justify my decision. Now that I was back in the USA, not only did I not play, I didn't even listen to music any more. I stayed in the apartment with Madeleine, and before long I found myself dreading going out at all.

Nevertheless, I tried to live a normal life and be contented with what I had. Before long, I discovered I was pregnant. We were visiting Ma in Newtown, in winter, and I was sliding down one of the hills in the yard with Mad, on a flattened cardboard box. Suddenly the thought came to me, "I'm pregnant." I didn't feel different physically in any way. I just knew I was pregnant. I was happy about it, and Mad and Joao were, too. It seemed as if my dream of fleshing out our little family was finally coming true.

But even this bit of good news failed to fill the empty hole I had always felt inside, so I started looking again for some spiritual path or religion that I thought might give me the answers about life that evaded me. I opened myself up to anyone who would talk to me about God, truth, or the meaning of life. I let the Jehovah's Witnesses in and listened patiently to everything they said, went to spiritualist meetings, and read everything I could get my hands on that I thought might bring me enlightenment. I couldn't stop thinking about the time I had prayed in Curitiba in my desperation and had felt the presence of Something, which caused me to recover from my illness enough so I could return to the USA.

One day when I was around six months pregnant, I was walking across the Boston Common when I saw a table set up with magazines and books on it. There were a few people milling around, so out of curiosity I headed that way. When I got to the table, I saw that the people manning the table were giving away literature about Christian Science. My knowledge of Christian Science at that time consisted of Fran Goodsell, my guidance counselor from high school. People used to say of her, in hushed tones, "Fran's a Christian Scientist, you know, those people who don't believe in doctors and just sit around reading the Bible when someone is dying." The only other contact I'd ever had with it was when I'd walked by the large Christian Science church in Boston's Back Bay and read the words _First Church of Christ, Scientist_ engraved on it. I couldn't imagine what that meant, or what Christ had to do with science, but I'd never been curious enough to pursue it.

But now here was this table filled with Christian Science literature, so I thought, "Why not?" I was open to anything at this point, and the books were free. They had a thick one called _Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures_ by a woman named Mary Baker Eddy. The title intrigued me, but I felt shy about taking such a big book without paying for it. There was another, smaller one called _Unity of Good_. I liked the name, and it was thin, so I took it and made a quick exit before they had a chance to grab me and try to convert me.

When I got home I sat down and read the book straight through. I felt a stirring as I read. It all seemed to make so much sense. God wasn't an oversized human, He or She (or It) was a spiritual Principle that governed the universe scientifically and for good only. Since God was infinite Spirit and completely good, then evil and matter had to illusions. Jesus healed people because he understood this law, knew it so well that he was able to "unsee" the lie of illness, deformity, etc. Furthermore, it wasn't a supernatural thing, because Jesus taught it to others and they were able to heal, too. Then, with Mary Baker Eddy's discovery of this law, people in our day and age were also able to learn how to heal through this spiritual method that Jesus understood. It all seemed so logical, so intelligent, and I liked that. By the time I got to the last page, I was convinced that it contained the truth, the truth I'd been looking for my whole life--it was really more than religion, it was the study of the nature of existence. It reminded me of the time my Pop brought home that LP by the pianist Alex Kallao and I knew that very moment that I wanted to be a jazz pianist. There was no hesitation, no uncertainty.

Even though I had investigated spiritual disciplines off and on from an early age, I had never really looked into Christianity or read the Bible, so although I had openly prayed to God when I was so desperate in Curitiba, I found that I was somewhat embarrassed by the words "God" and "Jesus" and "Christ" when I first started reading about Christian Science. I also didn't like the idea of going to church, but I was so taken with the ideas in _Unity of Good_ that I found a Christian Science Reading Room so I could buy the thicker book I'd seen in the park, which as it turned out, was the essential Christian Science textbook. The librarian at the Reading Room was pleasant and helpful, without being pushy. She told me about Christian Science practitioners who helped people through prayer to resolve all kinds of things, including health problems. The part about healing sickness is what really interested me the most. I had long since distanced myself from conventional medicine, which I regarded with suspicion, and had depended on macrobiotic home remedies for a number of years.

Not long after I'd started studying Christian Science, Madeleine and a little girlfriend had been playing together in the kitchen, cutting vegetables and helping me prepare a meal. Mad wasn't quite ten years old at the time. She and her friend got to giggling and fooling around, and Mad's knife suddenly slipped, nearly cutting her finger in half. I didn't rush her off to the doctor, because I still believed in macrobiotic remedies, so I simply washed the cut and wrapped it up. It healed, but apparently the tendon had been cut, because after that her finger just dangled and she had no control over it. This was a hardship for her, because she was learning how to play the flute and the finger gave her much difficulty. I felt guilty that I hadn't taken her to the doctor, but friends told me there was nothing anyone could do about a severed tendon, not even the doctors. For some reason, it never crossed my mind that Christian Science could help her.

So time went by and I spent my days reading steadily, while a whole new world opened up to me. Finally I gritted my teeth and decided to go to church. I picked a Wednesday night testimony meeting, where people stand up and tell about their healings. I was very curious to hear what they had to say about how they were healed.

The night I decided to go to church, I took Mad with me. She sat beside me and we listened to a man read from the Bible and _Science and Health_ , sang hymns and then listened to the testimonies. At one point a young woman stood up and said she had been healed when she broke her toe after slamming it into a door. She quoted from the 91st Psalm, the part about God bearing us up in His hands, "lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." I was absorbed in what she was saying, when Mad suddenly started pulling frantically on my sleeve. She said, "Ma! Ma! Look at my finger!" I looked down, and her dangly finger wasn't dangling any more. She was moving it up and down just as if nothing had ever happened to it. I couldn't believe it. I felt as if I had been carried off to some other dimension. We sat there hugging each other through the rest of the service, and after that we relied on Christian Science for healing. Even though I never got a good grasp of it until much later on in life, it was a guiding force that helped me through some sticky situations.

When the time came for my second child to be born, I knew it would be a different experience from Madeleine's birth. Hilary was born in a Seventh Day Adventist hospital, where I opted for a natural childbirth. This meant no drugs, so I would be awake the whole time. I had a Christian Science practitioner praying for me, and crushed Joao's hand with each contraction until the nurses decided it was time to wheel me off to the delivery room.

For me, giving birth is like being in the twilight zone...it's more than pain, it's a kind of transcendental experience beyond pain, completely unlike any other sensation that a human being can feel. But this time, even though I was in "the zone," I was wide awake and knew everything that was going on. As soon as the doctor and nurses got me settled on the delivery table they discovered that Hilary, a large baby just like her sister, was also in the same posterior position that Mad had been in.

"She's fully dilated, but nothing is moving," said one of the nurses.

"We may have to use forceps," said another.

"It's too late for a caesarean," said the first, in a voice that sounded a little too cheery. It was all very deja vu.

Meanwhile I was killing to push, but the doctor said to hold back...yeah, like hold back the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, I'd like to see _you_ try it! Well, this is just great, I thought. I punched the doctor.

"OK," he said with a grin. "you can pu..."

Plooft...out came Hilary.

"...push now."

I was mad at myself, because I closed my eyes just as she popped out, and I had really wanted to look in the mirror the nurses had propped up to see her make her debut. It all happened so fast. Little strawberry blonde Hil slid into the world with her eyes wide open and not a peep out of her. Not that that would last for long. She was a very sensitive, jumpy baby, unlike her older sister, who had been placid and easy-going, but she eventually turned out to be an exceptionally bright, independent girl.

# CHAPTER 18: CHANGES

In the early 1970s, Joao, Madeleine, Hilary and I were living all squeezed together in a tiny apartment in Jamaica Plain, not too far from Boston proper. I had told Joao that when Hilary was born we'd have to move to a bigger place. He had gotten a decent maintenance job and although we were far from wealthy I knew we could afford something better.

Me: "We really need to move, Joao. This place isn't big enough for us and two growing daughters."

Him: "We can't afford it right now. There just isn't enough money."

Me: "Well, I think we can afford a better place if we cut a few corners here and there."

Him: "No, we can't. And I don't want to talk about it anymore. That's enough."

So I just kept my mouth shut, took care of the girls, and cooked our meals. He complained about my cooking. He wanted a complete Brazilian-style meal with several courses every night, and I was usually too tired at the end of the day to put it all together. One night he came home and stomped into the kitchen, snatching off pot lids and peering inside.

"What is this crap! I have to have something decent to eat!" He angrily started grabbing things and cutting up vegetables. I was making myself a cup of tea, and my heart was pounding and my hands shaking so much that I spilled the boiling water all over my leg. Immediately I ran into my room and tried to pray. It hurt, and it wouldn't stop. Joao came running after me, asking me if I were OK.

"It's your fault!" I screamed. "You're always criticizing me...everything I do! Nothing is good enough for you!" He looked chagrined and didn't say anything. I covered my leg with a cloth, went into the girls' room and shut the door.

The next day I went to the Benevolent Association, a Christian Science care facility, to have my leg properly bandaged. The nurses were so kind and loving that I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I ended up going there several times, because my leg just wouldn't heal. Only when I was able to forgive Joao was there any improvement. It finally healed, but left a scar in more ways than one.

Once again I had to admit that marriage wasn't working out for me. Even though I had gone into it with sanguine hopes for a happy new family, I was desperately unhappy with Joao. I made some halfhearted attempts to pray about the situation, but I ultimately came to dread the sound of the key in the lock when he came home from work at night, so much so that I finally figured out a way to get out of the apartment in the evenings.

Against his wishes, I went to the personnel department at the Christian Science Center and got a part-time evening job as a security guard. I was the first woman they'd ever hired for that position, and it made me feel empowered, something I hadn't felt for a very long time. They interviewed me and concluded that even though I was small, I was "tough" and "streetwise." They gave me a men's hideous froggy green uniform that I had to remodel to fit me, and I bought myself some frumpy but comfortable Earth shoes.

I proceeded to tromp through the Church Center every night, strolling around the perimeter of the reflecting pool, riding up the elevator to the 26th floor of the Administration Building and then walking all the way down and checking every office. It was dark and silent inside, but I thoroughly enjoyed the slightly eerie solitude of my job. It was so much better than staying home at night and having to explain myself to Joao.

When construction began on the portico of The Mother Church Extension, I had to climb up the scaffolding outside the church, which was kind of scary the first few times, and go inside to see if there were any bums sleeping there. I was a little disappointed that I never found any.

At that time, construction was also being done on the Sunday School, a modern cement structure that looked like a distant cousin of the Guggenheim Museum. There was a group of Haitian guys who worked as janitors at the center that I like to hang around with, and one of them told me in hushed tones that he had seen Mary Baker Eddy jump down off the Sunday School scaffolding one night!

The other thing I liked about the security job was being outdoors some of the time. Sometimes I'd have a partner when I patrolled the reflecting pool, and that's how I met Ben Alarcon. He was a trombone player, and as we trudged around the pool together, we naturally fell into conversation about our lives. I ended up telling him that I had been a jazz pianist but I didn't play anymore, and from that moment on he gave me no peace.

"You _have_ to get back into playing," he'd say. "How can you just stop?" And then he'd give me the low blow, "God gave you this talent...you have to use it or you'll lose it."

I would argue with him and say that I'd been away from music too long to go back, I had two kids to raise, blah, blah, but he gradually wore me down. Then one evening he announced, "There's going to be a show at the Publishing House, and Bob Roberts and I are putting a band together. You're going to be the piano player, and the first rehearsal is tomorrow afternoon."

He gave me a toothy smile, and I just stood there, not knowing what to say.

The next day, which was a Saturday, I made some excuse to Joao so he would babysit Mad and Hil, and Ben dragged me to the rehearsal...literally. I hadn't touched a piano in seven years, and my hands were clammy and my heart was pounding. Bob Roberts, the band director, was a famous musician nicknamed "the Silver Fox," who used to conduct the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra. Yikes.

The rehearsal was in the Sunday School building and there was a big shiny black grand piano in the corner that looked totally intimidating. I went in, with Ben's hand pushing against my lower back. The Silver Fox greeted me warmly and said, "Ben has told me all sorts of good things about you."

He what? He doesn't even know if I know a C from an F#, for crying out loud. But since I didn't seem to have any choice, I sat down at the piano and stared at the keys, which looked strangely foreign to me.

"Do you know 'Poor Butterfly?'" asked Bob. I looked at him and found myself saying, "Yes, it's been awhile, but I think I do." And suddenly everything came rushing back. How to play, how to find the chords, how to improvise, the whole thing. I played the chords, Bob played the melody on his trumpet, and then...I took a solo! And it was so strange. I felt that I was inventing melodies I'd never played before. It was the most energizing thing I'd done in years. I knew right then that I had to find the best piano teacher in the world and learn all the things I'd never learned before. But that wouldn't happen just yet.

Meeting Bob eventually led to other musical opportunities at the Church Center. One of the outstanding ones was a chance to work with Burr Tillstrom, the creator of _Kukla, Fran and Ollie_ , Bertie's and my favorite TV puppet show when we were kids. The Board of Directors had decided that they wanted to produce a short film for the branch churches about how to loosen up the services a bit and make them more friendly. It was really a radical move for the church in those days--the early 70s--and I was thrilled to be asked to work on the music. I'd be working with Burr, _All in the Family_ actor Jean Stapleton (who would play "Fran") and Kay Kyser--all Christian Scientists. I loved working with them. Burr was so humble and grateful for my help, Jean was a true professional, kind, patient and intelligent, and Kay Kyser, the famous bandleader of the old radio show _Kollege of Musical Knowledge_ , was hilariously funny and kept us all in stitches. The film was shown in various branch churches, but I didn't hear anything about it having positive results. Maybe the church members didn't like the part where Ollie the dragon referred to the ushers as "pallbearers."

Things were getting worse at home. Joao was verbally abusive, I was angry and depressed and concerned about the effect all of this was having on Madeleine and her little sister. Joao still refused to move us to a larger place, so I secretly found an apartment in Newton, a suburb not too far from Boston, and put a deposit on it. I was determined to find a decent place to live, even if it meant breaking up our family. I told him what I had done, and he pulled a veritable Rumpelstiltskin act, yelling and jumping up and down on the floor in a rage.

"How could you do this! You can't do this! Go get the deposit money back! We're not moving!" And on and on. Finally I said:

"The girls and I are moving into that apartment with or without you."

Of course I had no idea how I would support us, but that seemed like a minor issue at that moment.

"Then you'll have to do it without me!" Joao shouted, and went out, banging the door behind him.

Later on he came back and went into the bathroom and shut the door. I could hear the water running into the bathtub. He was in there for a very long time, and I finally went to the door and asked him if we was all right.

"Could you come in here for a minute?" he said.

I went in and there he was, sitting in the lukewarm soapy water with tears running down his face.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't want you to take the girls and go away. We can move to the new apartment."

So move we did, all four of us, but I wondered if it was really worth it to have to go through all that drama every time I made a suggestion. The apartment was spacious and lovely, with a big yard, and Madeleine loved it. I could put Hilary outside to play without worrying about her, and everything seemed fine.

But within less than a month, Joao's bathtub contriteness was history and he was back to his old self. He'd maneuver me into arguments that I didn't want to have and try to get me to say things I'd regret later. I'd nearly always fall into the trap, and then there would be a full-blown fight. I was starting to wish he hadn't moved to Newton with us.

One night, as he was shouting at me once again, something snapped. I picked up a chair and threw it at him. He dodged it and came toward me with his fists clenched. I said in a low voice, "Don't you dare hit me, or I'll kill you."

He stopped in his tracks and I said, "I want you out of here. Now."

Without a word, he picked up a few things and left.

Joao and I got divorced. We had to go to court, and he didn't have a lawyer. He said he preferred to defend himself. I had an assertive female lawyer who told him matter-of-factly how much he would have to pay in child support. Apparently he thought it was too much, because he actually pulled his Rumpelstiltskin act right there in the courtroom and the judge had to ask him to leave. Later on, my lawyer had to settle for less, because Joao insisted he couldn't pay what she had originally asked.

The settlement was small, and since my part-time security guard job didn't pay enough for us to live on, I knew I'd have to get a full-time job. So I went to the Church Center to see what they had, and they offered me a job in the billing department for the periodicals. It was just an ordinary office job, but I actually enjoyed it. I got a kick out of balancing the accounts every Friday. It was like playing the lottery. We'd all stand around holding our breath to see if the last figures jibed. When they did, we cheered. When they didn't, well, that meant we'd have to work overtime until they did.

I had to find a place to leave Hilary, who was now three years old, while I was working. Some friends told me about a Mrs. Dean, an elderly German Christian Science lady who cared for children in her home not far from where we lived, so I took Hilary to meet her. Mrs. Dean was one of those people who can't relate to other adults, but is great with kids. Hilary loved her instantly. I wasn't so sure, but she was inexpensive and conveniently located, so I ended up leaving her with "Missa Dean," as Hilary came to call her. The decision turned out to be a smashing success. Hilary met other kids her age, and learned from Mrs. Dean how to go to the library and eat sauerkraut (not at the same time).

After a while, the job in the billing department started to change. I was being considered for a promotion, and there was a woman working with me who was older and had a lot more experience than I did, and she was resentful about it, with good reason. She was also black, which I think fueled her sense of unfairness, which I could also understand. I got the promotion, but from the start I felt it was Naomi's job. Also, I was bored and itching to get back into music, so after a few months I left, and Naomi slipped into my position, happy as a clam. I took some temporary jobs around the Church Center to tide me over until I could figure out what to do next.

To bring in some extra cash, and just for fun, I started making teddy bears on my sturdy old Viking sewing machine. I made them from fake fur, and decided to try to sell them by mail order. In those days there weren't all the clever and wonderful teddies that exist today, and I thought mine were pretty special. I made them from solid colors or two-tone, and they were completely baby-safe with embroidered eyes and mouths, and stuffed with polyfill so they were machine washable.

I ran an ad in _The Christian Science Monitor_ and got a few orders right away. Mad was excited, and she molded me a little bear out of sawdust and glue holding a red balloon for my mascot. I sold my bears to a number of different clients, mailing them out in shoeboxes. I even sold one to a man who was serving time in prison. It was a small two-tone tan and green one, which he had specifically requested for reasons only he knew. Many people sent me letters of thanks and appreciation.

Okay, if you'll 'bear' with me (sorry about that)--this story actually has a punch line--sort of. I had been making and selling the bears for a couple of months when I got a call from _The Phoenix_ --Boston's answer to the _Village Voice_ --asking me if I'd do an interview about my bear business. I was surprised, to say the least, and asked them how they found out about me. The woman told me that they read through classified ads in different newspapers, looking for interesting stories, and that they had seen my ad in the _Monitor_. I said sure, I'd love to do an interview.

They sent a reporter and photographer to my apartment and had me pose holding one of my bears while I pretended to sew on his eyes. The article came out in the next issue, and I was so happy. Even the picture looked good, with my little bear Mac nestling on my chest.

Well, it must have been the boobs, that's all I can think of...otherwise it made no sense. A few days after the piece ran in the _Phoenix_ , I got a surprising call.

"Hello, I'd like to speak with Amy," said a male voice.

"That would be me," I said.

So then this guy says he's so-and-so from _Playboy_ magazine.

"Right," I said.

"No, seriously," he said. "We saw the article in the _Boston Phoenix_ about you and your teddy bears, and we liked the picture. We wondered if you'd be interested in posing for our magazine with your bears."

I took another look at the photo of me holding Mac. What's sexy about that? There I was, a thirtyish housewife with Coke bottle glasses holding a bear and poking his eye with a needle. Boy, these people must be desperate, I thought. If it really was _Playboy_.

"Um..." I said, "In the nude?"

"Well, that's the idea," said Mr. Bear Fetish.

"Gee, I don't think I could do that," I said, thinking about my job at the Christian Science Center and how all the blue-haired ladies at church would have conniptions.

"Well, how about in a bathing suit? We'll pay you three thousand dollars."

Three thousand dollars?! Gulp! That would pay for me to study music at Berklee College of Music, at least for a while.

"Let me think it over," I tried to sound nonchalant. "Give me your number and I'll call you back."

I thought it over, and all the possible future ramifications. I didn't call back and they never called me back, either. So much for my career as a _Playboy_ "Bearie."

# CHAPTER 19: BACK TO MUSIC

_Ready or not,_

_The stage is set,_

_The lights go up,_

_The curtains part,_

_So I take a breath,_

_And I count from one to ten,_

_Won 'dring why I'm here again._

_Where is my heart?_

_It isn 't here,_

_It 's all a game,_

_A grand charade,_

_And I 've left myself_

_In another time and place_

_Where I know my heart belongs._

_Take me far away_

_From shallow dreams,_

_Down the road that 's calling me._

_Bring down the curtain,_

_Kill the lights,_

_And let my soul run wild and free._

_So, ready or not,_

_Away I go,_

_I close the door_

_Forever more,_

_And my heart and I_

_Breathe a long and lasting sigh,_

_As we spread our wings to fly._

Charlie Banacos used to stand over me with a big screwdriver in one hand and an even bigger hammer in the other, with a diabolical grin on his face, as I played my lesson for the week. He was the "best piano teacher in the world" I had been wanting, and also one of the funniest, sweetest and most guileless people I'd ever met. All he did was give piano lessons all day long, day after day, from early morning to early evening. Although he was an amazing pianist, he never played out anywhere, and preferred to stay at home with his family. He didn't even attend a concert at the little theater in Carnegie Hall when one of his compositions was performed, although his wife and children did.

Charlie had such a rep for being the best jazz teacher that I had to wait on a long list to get to study with him. I ended up staying with him for four years. He was a task master of the first degree, expecting me to practice at least five hours a day, which I actually tried to do, at least most of the time. Poor Mad and Hil...for years afterwards they were still humming the exercises he made me do over and over in every key. With Charlie, I changed from a very limited piano player to a much more competent one. I gained confidence and became a better improviser.

Then I met a wild guy named Berke McKelvey at the Church Center. He used to go to church services in old battered sneakers and a grimy red and white leather jacket, with his long hair hanging over the collar. I loved him for that. Berke came from a musical family, His father, Chuck, was a band leader in California, and Berke played a whole bunch of instruments. He had a great attitude about music and the musicians he played with. He always encouraged his fellow players and never criticized anybody. The enthusiasm and good will he put into all his gigs was infectious and the musicians he played with seemed to pick up on it.

Berke had put together a band called The Music Machine, and at one point asked me to be the keyboard player. It was five guys in smelly, stained white tuxedos and me. We drove all up and down the shore around Boston, playing parties, clubs, weddings and bar mitzvahs. We played everything from Michael Jackson to Strauss waltzes--whatever they wanted, we did it. I remember nights driving back to Boston from Cape Cod in the winter at three in the morning, Berke driving, hanging his head out the window and freezing his moustache trying to stay awake. We'd usually stop at an I-Hop pancake house for a huge breakfast along the way.

One time we had done a gig up north somewhere, I think it was in Vermont. It was summer, and on the way home we all suddenly got a major jones for a hot fudge sundae. We were out in the boonies somewhere with nary a restaurant in sight. After driving for about an hour, we finally spotted a tiny restaurant on the side of the road. We pulled in, went inside and sat down at a long table with benches and a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth. A smiling middle-aged lady with an apron came over and said:

"What can I get for you folks?"

"Hot fudge sundaes!" we all chirped.

Her face fell for a minute, but then she brightened and said:

"We don't have any hot fudge ready, but it won't take long for me to cook some up for you, if you don't mind waiting for a few minutes. We do have some very good ice cream." We thanked her, and then waited for about twenty minutes.

"I wonder what's taking so long?" I said to no one in particular.

Finally our hostess emerged from the kitchen with a tray full of cherry-topped hot fudge sundaes in big plastic bowls with plastic spoons on the side. They looked good! Nokes, our sax player, was the first to dig in. He grabbed his spoon and took a stab at the yummy-looking sauce covering the ice cream.

"Jesus!" He yelped, as the spoon shattered, little pieces of plastic flying everywhere. "this shit's as hard as my head!"

We all stared into our bowls. Sure enough, our long-awaited hot fudge had turned into dark brown cement. Twenty minutes on the stove was just a bit too long. Then our hostess came out and stood over us, anxiously waiting for our comments. When she saw Nokes's splintered white spoon, she just looked at us helplessly with an "oh my" expression on her face. Berke saved the day. He let out a huge guffaw that broke the ice, if not the hot fudge. Then, being the kind of guy he is, he nicely wedged his spoon under the brown cement and dug out what he could of the ice cream. The rest of us followed suit, and our hostess smiled and stopped twisting her apron.

"Well, at least the ice cream is really good!" she said.

I continued to gig, but I also did odd jobs for the church. One of the best ones I ever had was as a gardener at Mary Baker Eddy's former estate in Chestnut Hill, which had been turned into a kind of museum. Once again, I was the first woman they had ever hired for the job. The estate consisted of a large stone house on twelve acres and a carriage house.

I worked with an elderly Scotsman named Jimmy Sutherland and his scrawny redneck assistant, Dick. What a pair they were! Dick was a real dare-devil. He knew how to fly an airplane and had survived several accidents. Small and wiry as he was, I could imagine him falling with the plane and then just sort of spiraling across the ground without breaking a single bone.

One day before I started working there he had let his power mower fly off the edge of a cliff. Fortunately, he let go of the handle in time and didn't go over with it. When I started working with him he used to give me, on purpose, the leaf blower that was practically impossible to start, and he generally gave me a hard time about everything. But I liked Dick, crusty and ornery as he was. He and Jimmy used to bicker all the time like an old married couple, but I never got in the middle of it because most of the time both of them were wrong. I just minded my own business and stifled a chuckle.

I loved working outdoors, weeding around the bushes, digging up the tulip bulbs to store for the winter and pruning the grape arbor. I especially liked blowing the leaves, when I could get the blower started.

When it rained, Jimmy would take me down to the carriage house and we'd spend the afternoon polishing the brass and leather on Mrs. Eddy's coaches. Then he'd haul out an old phonograph and we'd dance to Scottish tunes. After work he'd take me down to the stone cottage where he and his wife lived, and she would serve up a plate of homemade shortbread hot out of the oven.

Nice as it was, it was a seasonal job, and soon I was looking for something else, at the Church Center as usual, because it seemed they always had something for me. This time they needed a part-time copy kid in _The Christian Science Monitor_ newsroom. Now this was something that really interested me, since I had always enjoyed writing and being around writers, so I started working in the newsroom as the oldest copy kid they'd probably ever had.

After I'd been on the job for a few months, running my daily errands, I asked the arts page editor if I could write a record review.

"Sure, go ahead," he said, "Of course I can't guarantee it'll be published."

So I wrote two reviews, and to my surprise and delight, they published both of them. After that I decided to write a few reviews every so often and just hand them in to the arts pages. They published everything I wrote, so one day I screwed up the courage to have a little chat with the editor about possibly writing a story. Once again I was surprised at how receptive he was, especially considering I had never graduated from college, let alone taken a journalism course.

He mentioned that Vincent Price was offering to give the _Monitor_ an interview on the set of _Mystery!,_ the new TV show on PBS, and asked me if I'd like to give it a shot.

"You'd be with a small group of journalists from other newspapers, so you can get the hang of how it's done. Just watch them and see what kinds of questions they ask. Then jump in."

"Thanks!" I said, "I'd really love to do that."

So the following week I visited the set of _Mystery!_ and met Vincent Price, who was not only charming and gracious, but fiendishly funny. I felt at ease right away and found myself asking him questions quite naturally. I was thrilled when I saw my first article published in the paper, and it gave me the urge to do more.

Eventually I started doing feature stories and reviews on a regular basis for the _Monitor_. Most of my pieces were about music and musicians, but occasionally I'd interview an actor or actress, too. I found it to be easy and enjoyable work and I liked meeting deadlines. I was especially grateful that a computer system had recently been installed in the newsroom, and that everyone who worked there would get free training. After I started using a computer, it was even easier to meet my deadlines, and I grew to thrive on them. In fact, the more hectic things were in the newsroom the more I loved it.

Since the newspaper job was only part time and didn't pay much, I got a gig playing piano with an electric bass player, an older guy named George Bushie, and a drummer named Harvey Wood, at the Top of the Hub, a classy restaurant on the top floor of the Prudential Center. It would have been the perfect gig, except that Harvey and George used to bicker and fight all the time, even during the sets. It upset me so much that my hands would shake on the breaks.

The gig was seven nights a week. I did one night of solo piano, three nights with just George, and then Harvey would join us on the weekends. I used to dread those weekends. Even though I had nothing against Harvey personally or even against his motor-mouth wife, who used to come to see him both nights, the gig was really starting to get to me. I was becoming more and more dispirited, and it was an effort to drag myself over to the Prudential Center and up the elevator to the 26th floor every night. And there was another problem. For several months, my hands and feet had been getting stiff and painful, to the point where it was becoming difficult to play. I thought I might be suffering from arthritis. Still, I saw myself as a musician and felt I had to bite the bullet and not complain.

One day, when I was doing my little part-time job at the _Monitor_ , I was called into the editor's office. He got right to the point and offered me a full-time job as Assistant Features Editor. I was taken aback, to say the least, and very flattered. I didn't know what to say. I thought about my job at the Top of the Hub. I would have to quit that job if I accepted the position with the _Monitor_ , and I was afraid that would mean I wouldn't be a musician any more. I told my editor that I was very grateful, and asked him if I could think it over for a few days. He said that would be fine.

I agonized over my decision for three days and couldn't even seem to settle down and pray about it. On the third day, I had a piano lesson with Charlie Banacos. Charlie and I would often talk about this and that, sometimes even about spiritual things, so I felt free to confide in him about my dilemma.

"So, Charlie, what do you think I should do? Should I stay at the Top of the Hub or take the job at the _Monitor_?"

Without missing a beat, Charlie said, "Take the job at the _Monitor_. Your playing will improve." I took his advice and within a week the arthritis symptoms disappeared.

# CHAPTER 20: POP

So I settled into the job at the _Monitor_ and quit the gig at the Top of the Hub. It was really for the best in a lot of ways, because things had gotten complicated at home. I had taken the girls and moved to a little house in Squantum, a small beach town on the South Shore outside of Boston, about a 40-minute drive away. It was the first time we'd ever lived in a house. Madeleine was fourteen at the time, and Hilary was four.

Everything was fine for a while, but one day I got a letter from Pop (who was living in Hawaii) saying that Mari had left him and he was deathly ill with cancer and had to have an operation. He said he might die, and even if he didn't he would have no place to go after the operation. The letter was written in a shaky scrawl. I sat down with the girls and said:

"What would you think about Grandpa coming to live with us for a while?"

Hilary just sort of stared, because she didn't really know her grandpa, but Mad said, "Well, that might be fun."

Actually, neither of them knew Pop very well, but Mad remembered that he had a great sense of humor and was always snapping photos. I was thinking that if he survived the operation, he could come and recuperate with us. We could help him out, and he could help us when he got better by staying with the girls at night when I had a gig. I wasn't sure how to get in touch with him, but the next day he called from the hospital. I told him that when he got out he could come and stay with us for a bit until he got better. Little did I know he would end up staying for two years.

So a few weeks later, when he was well enough to travel, he came to Boston. I went to pick him up at the airport. I waited for a long time, and there was no sign of him. The stream of passengers gradually thinned out until it seemed there was no one left, and still no Pop. Finally I saw him, being pushed in a wheelchair by an airport attendant. I ran up to give him a hug, and immediately smelled the liquor on his breath. Now I knew why Mari had dumped him. She had gone through numerous bouts of his slipping back into drinking, and had undoubtedly reached the end of her rope. Well, what could I do? There he was, whiskey breath and all, and there was no turning back. I pushed him to the baggage claim, we picked up his trunks and headed home. By the time we got there he was reasonably sober, and the girls were happy to see him, so I felt better. We had cleared a room for him upstairs, and got him settled in. It felt good to have him there.

The weeks rolled by, and Pop gradually recuperated. He really seemed to enjoy being with us, and I was glad to have someone to watch after Mad and Hil when I wasn't there. But after a while, I started to notice the smell of liquor on his breath. I thought it was strange, because there was no liquor store within walking distance of our house, and Pop didn't have a driver's license, not that I would have let him drive my VW van if he did. I kept quiet and just observed him. The idea of his drinking while I was out at night made me very uneasy, especially since he smoked, too. I imagined him falling asleep with a lighted cigarette in his hand and burning the house down.

Then one morning when Pop thought I was down at the beach but I was actually out on the screened-in porch, I overheard him talking on the phone. He was calling the local liquor store and ordering a bottle of vodka to be delivered to our house! I went over and snatched the phone out of his hand. He was shocked and hurt, and made a pouty little-boy face that made me want to slap him. I told him I'd heard everything, and made him call and cancel the delivery. He promised it would never happen again.

But it did, and pretty soon I saw that he was drinking steadily every time I was out of the house. So one day I sat him down on the bed and said, "Pop, I know you're drinking, and you have to stop because I won't have it in my house." I knew, of course, that he couldn't stop. I would have suggested Alcoholics Anonymous but he had never gone to AA because he couldn't stand all that "God" talk.

"Why don't you get off my back?" he said, the exact words he used to say to my mother. I said, "You know what? You are the most selfish person I have ever known. You don't give a damn about me and the girls, you've made that pretty obvious. OK, I'm making an appointment to take you to detox as soon as possible."

He stared blankly at me. He was drunk, but he knew I meant business.

I made the appointment, and the people at detox told me they would take him if he could walk into the clinic on his own two feet. When I got up the next morning to take him, he was in the bathroom and already drunk. He had been trying to shave himself and he came out of the bathroom with several cuts on his face and soap in his ears. Somehow he managed to get his clothes on, and I pushed him into the van. When we got to the detox, he couldn't walk in without leaning on me, but they took him anyway.

Pop stayed at the detox for a week. I didn't call or visit him. When I went to pick him up, he was sober, shaky, and contrite. We went home, I took him upstairs, sat him down on the bed and said:

"OK, Pop, here's the deal. You don't have to leave here. You can stay as long as you like. But if you ever touch another drop of liquor while you're under my roof, I'm going to throw you out in the street and I don't care what happens to you."

I didn't mean it, of course, but somehow my words struck a deeper chord in Pop than I ever would have imagined. He stopped drinking right then and there, and never touched another drop for the rest of his life. He ended up staying with us for two years and was an exemplary roommate. He helped me and the girls, and when we all felt it was time for him to move on, he found himself a nice subsidized apartment for the elderly on Huntington Avenue in Boston. I often wonder what went through his head during that week he spent at detox.

Later on, Pop got cancer again. He couldn't take care of himself, so Bertie picked him up with all of his stuff and took him to stay with her and her husband Jean-Claude where they lived in Connecticut. They had no room for him in the house, so Pop stayed in a trailer outside. Finally he got so bad he couldn't stay alone, and Bertie called me:

"I don't know what to do with Pop," she said.

"I'll come and help you," I said, not really knowing what to do, either.

As soon as I saw him I knew we had to get him out of that trailer and into the hospital, so that's what we did. I sat with him in the waiting room while Bertie filled out some forms. Pop looked at me and said, "I'm afraid."

All I could do was rest my hand gently on his head.

After Pop died in 1986, Bertie and I were going through some of his things when I came across some photo negatives. I held them up to the light and my eyes must have gone wide, because Bertie said, "What are those?"

"Omigod, you're not gonna believe this," I said. We held up the negatives, and there was Pop, nude, except for some transparent gossamer white scarves, holding his camera in one hand and his privates in the other in front of a full-length mirror. Bertie laughed nervously. I was floored, but mildly amused, too.

Afterwards I got to thinking about Pop and his aversion to gays, and how he had once complained to me that Ma "was insatiable" (which I thought was kind of an inappropriate thing to say to a daughter, although he was probably drunk). I also remembered how he had once chased me around the dining room table in Newtown when I was 12 years old, drunk as a skunk and with a decidedly lecherous look in his eye. And how one time Bertie visited him in Boston in the early 80s and he kissed her on the mouth in a distinctly unfatherly way. When you're a kid, you don't like to think about your parents and sex, but now that I was an adult, it was pretty clear that Pop had had some issues about it that came out when he was drunk.

After Pop had moved out of our little house in Squantum, I left Mad babysitting Hilary and thought all was well. However, some neighbors told me they had seen Mad and her friends out on the roof carousing while I was at work at night. I had been so busy that I really hadn't been paying much attention to who Mad's friends were, but I soon discovered that the whole lot of them were a bad influence and that she had taken up drinking and smoking pot with them.

Needless to say, when I found out she was carrying on like that when she was supposed to be watching Hilary, I was beside myself. I knew that it was tough on Mad having to watch her little sister while I worked at night. Nevertheless, I felt there must be some other reason why she had become so irresponsible, because it wasn't like her at all. I took a good look around at the people who lived in Squantum and realized that this was the wrong place for us. Peer pressure is a hard thing when you're a teenager, and Mad confessed to me years later that some kids at school had called her "nigger" and it had hurt her so badly that she was willing to do just about anything to "fit in."

I could see that the only solution was to get out of Squantum as soon as possible, so I found a place for us to stay in Newton with friends. I registered Mad at an excellent Newton Public school. She changed back into her wonderful self in a matter of weeks.

# CHAPTER 21: HOOFIN'

I was still unhappy with my piano playing. I'd had a few gigs off and on since I had quit the Top of the Hub, but I felt there was something wrong with my sense of time. It wasn't swinging the way I wanted it to. Charlie Banacos had showed me some methods to get my lines to sound more swinging, but I felt it wasn't just my hands and arms that were the problem (and I'm sure he knew that, too)--it was my whole body and the way I felt about it. I'd never been particularly graceful, not good at sports, and not much of a dancer, either. One night Mad, Hil and I were watching TV and the Nicholas Brothers were on.

"Look at the way they move," I said. "If that isn't jazz in motion I don't know what is." The girls were fascinated, too, especially with the way they tapped up and down the stairs. I'd seen lots of tap dancers on TV, of course, like Shirley Temple and Gene Kelly, but there was something different about the way these guys danced. I wanted to find out what it was that gave them that fluid, relaxed, hip way of moving, so I decided to find myself a tap dance teacher. I really thought it might help me with my piano playing.

I knew I didn't want one of those Broadway types that flailed their arms around and made big dramatic sweeps across the floor, so I asked around and someone mentioned Leon Collins. They said he was one of the old-time "hoofers" like Honi Coles and the Nicholas Brothers and the Copasetics, so if I wanted to learn the real deal, I should look him up. It turned out that Leon was giving tap lessons in a studio not far from the _Monitor_ newsroom, and his classes were all jammed, mostly with white women. I signed up, and got Mad and Hil into classes, too. Now we were the tap family.

Leon was skinny as a toothpick and loose as a mop, with a big, toothy smile, and he loved his "girls"--many of whom were well past middle age. He also played the guitar and sang a little, and was a walking jazz machine. There was always a tune running around in his head, accompanied by some new tap step he could fit with it.

Before long, Leon and I were having long conversations about music, and I'd stay after class to show him something on the piano or watch him work out an improvised line on the guitar. I turned him on to some tunes he'd never danced to, like Randy Weston's jazz waltz "Little Niles" and Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia," both which became part of his regular show repertoire. Leon was wide open to new ideas, and even made up some tap routines to a couple of classical pieces.

I enjoyed the tap classes and they really did help me with my rhythm, both on the piano and in general. But the best thing that came out of my association with Leon was that he asked me to be his musical director. This is how I came to be involved with many, many tap dancers over the years and be known as the "tap dancers' piano player." I got to know Chuck Green of Chuck and Chuckles, James "Buster" Brown, Leslie "Bubba" Gains and Charles "Cookie" Cook of the Copasetics, Bunny Briggs (who had danced with Duke Ellington), Jimmy Slyde, Sandman Simms, and then later on Greg Hines and Savion Glover.

The older tappers were all Leon's contemporaries and colleagues, and I even got to play with some of them, because of Leon. Once he took me to a jazz club in Harlem and Chuck Green was there. I sat in to play for him, and he danced in his socks! Everyone kept shushing me so they could "hear" his steps...shh, shh, softer, softer!

Backing up a bit--one night in the middle 70s, when I was still playing at the Top of the Hub, I was sitting behind the piano playing and singing a Jon Hendricks tune when I heard a female voice singing along with me. I looked up and saw a slender, gray-haired woman with a sweet smile and big brown eyes coming toward me.

"Hi, I'm Joan Hill."

That was the beginning of a long friendship with one of the hippest ladies I've ever known. Here is her version of our first meeting, when she was visiting Boston one time from California:

_" As I got off the elevator into the Top of the Hub one steamy, humid Saturday evening, I heard a voice singing and thought, 'Hey! that's me!' But it wasn't. It was Amy Duncan, who I'd gone to check out as recommended by my voice teacher after she'd heard the lyrics I write. She said, 'You should go check out Amy Duncan. She does the same stuff you do--Eddie Jefferson, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross...' So there I was and it was ME just the way I heard myself, only it was HER! I waited until she finished her tune ("Centerpiece"), then went up to the piano and here was this nice little woman-girl in a white tailored shirt and black pants with a beautiful no-makeup unpretentious face and I've loved her ever since."_

Joan was a former housewife and mom of five who had made the big escape from air-conditioned suburban California and headed east to devote herself to jazz and tap dancing. She played the piano, wrote jazz vocalese lyrics (lyrics based on improvised solos) to a lot of songs, composed her own tunes, and invented a tap notation method that she called the "Tap-a-scat-a-matic Bebop System" with which she cataloged many of Leon Collins' tap routines. But best of all, the minute I met Joan, I knew she and Leon were a pair. One day I went into the studio where he taught, and said:

"Leon, I have a friend you have to meet. Her name is Joan Hill and you are absolutely going to love her."

He looked at me quizzically. I handed him Joan's picture. He smiled. When Joan moved to Boston some time later, the first thing she did was go see Leon. He said:

"I've been waitin' on you, young lady," and that was it. They were together, both as love and music/performance partners until Leon died in 1985.

One of the best things Joan and I ever did was go to the Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival together. That's where I first got to hang out with legendary jazz critic Leonard Feather, who had lent a hand in organizing the festival. He acted as MC for the shows, helped out with workshops and made himself available to talk with visiting women jazz musicians. Leonard had known just about every important jazz musician who had ever lived, and had been present at many history-making moments in the music. He had also written eleven books, including the _Encyclopedia of Jazz_ (my prize for winning the _Downbeat_ "My Favorite Jazz Record" contest when I was a kid), had produced people like Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan and Lester Young, written liner notes for thousands of albums, and was an accomplished composer and lyricist.

Leonard and I hit it off right away. He reminded me of Pop, with his sharp, cutting wit and lack of patience with mediocrity. We got into the habit of sitting together at festivals and concerts, whispering and making wisecracks while we took notes with our flashlight pens in the dark.

Anyway, back to Kansas City. In 1978, a couple of enterprising and energetic women--singer/pianist Carol Comer and broadcaster Diane Gregg--organized a jazz festival for women that would end up running for several seasons and connecting female jazz musicians from all over the globe. I attended quite a few of them, both as a journalist and a participant. I'd never seen so many women musicians together in one place in my life. I also had never seen so many lesbians together in one place. It had never occurred to me before that so many female jazz musicians were lesbians, and I naively thought at the time, is it because jazz is considered 'macho' music? If so, then that would probably explain why so few jazz musicians are gay. Wrong. Over the past few decades, there has been more talk about how so-and-so (some famous musician, dead or alive) was or is actually gay, and more gay male jazz musicians have been coming out. So much for stereotypes.

In 1983 I was asked to lead an All-Star group at the festival. I was thrilled that two of my favorites since childhood--Anita O'Day and Marian McPartland--would also be headliners at that year's event. I put together a group that included the then 20-year old hot bebop saxophonist Carol Chaikin; pianist/trumpeter/singer Nadine Jansen, a 54-year-old who had been in the business for 39 years and played flugelhorn with her right hand and piano with her left and amazingly made it not seem like a gimmick; drummer Barbara Borden from the west coast all-female group Alive!; Texan Brandy Herbert on guitar (who replaced Emily Remler at the last minute); and bassist Carole Brown, who played in Kit McClure's all-woman big band in New York. I featured each of these women on a number of her choice and then, for our finale, I wrote an updated, boppish arrangement of the old Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune from _Oklahoma_ , "Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City" with a free jazz "organized chaos" section in the middle that Leonard Feather described in his review in _Jazz Times_ as a "riotous impression of Sun Ra." We got a standing ovation, even though some criticized me for not having everyone play on every number.

One year at the festival I met a woman named Marilyn, who would lead me into the nightmare gig to end all nightmare gigs. She owned a restaurant in a resort area in Wisconsin, loved jazz, and was dying to get someone to play at her place for the summer. She had come to the festival to recruit, and she approached me because she liked my piano playing. I told her that if it involved a jazz combo I might be interested, but that I wouldn't play cocktail piano. She said, "No problem, you can get some local guys together when you get there." Then she went on to tell me about how nice the resort was, and that it had a big swimming pool. I told her I had a 7-year old daughter, and she said I could bring her along. Mad would be off working at a resort herself that summer in Nantucket, so it sounded like a great way to have a vacation and make some money. I told her I'd do it.

So after the festival, Hilary and I packed our bags and got ourselves out to Wisconsin. When we arrived and found Marilyn's resort, we discovered that our hostess wasn't there--she was in a parade, sitting on top of a float dressed in red and white striped pajamas. We watched as the parade wound around and finally stopped in front of the less than impressive looking resort. Marilyn jumped down, bleached blond hair flying in the wind, and hugged us effusively, causing Hilary to stiffen a little. Then she called a teenaged girl over and said, "Oh, Sarah, show Amy and Hilary their room, OK?"

Sarah smiled and told us to follow her. She led us to a building behind the resort made of unpainted cement blocks, with garbage cans lined up outside, buzzing with flies. Our quarters turned out to be a cross between a jail cell and a funky college dorm room. Hilary and I looked at each other and shrugged. Well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

It was so bad. So, so bad. We spent the first night stuffing toilet paper in our ears to block out the sounds of Marilyn's inebriated, stoned "summer crew"--a bunch of college kids trying to see how much booze they could drink, how much dope they could smoke and sniff, and how much sex they could cram into the months of July and August before they had to go back to school--all to the accompaniment of mega-bass stereos cranked up to the max that made the whole cell block vibrate. I felt old and crabby...and deceived. The next day, after barely sleeping, Hil and I dragged ourselves out of bed.

"We could try the pool," said Hilary, trying to be cheerful. We put on our bathing suits and headed out. The minute we sat down in the beach chairs scattered around the not-big swimming pool, the battalions of black flies that had been buzzing around the garbage cans decided we were more appealing than last night's trash, and they started biting our butts right through the nylon mesh chairs. Hilary started to cry.

"This is a nightmare!" she screamed.

Ah, but that was only the beginning. I was supposed to start playing that night, but Marilyn had said nothing to me about the musicians for my band, and I couldn't find her anywhere. Around 7 p.m. one of the waiters from the restaurant came to my room to say that I would be playing piano in the cocktail lounge in an hour. Playing in the _what_? I was outraged. I stormed out of the room and went looking for Marilyn. When I found her sitting at a table in the lounge, she said, "Oh, don't worry, we'll get you a band by next week."

"That wasn't our deal," I said, feeling foolish that I hadn't signed a more detailed contract.

"Oh come on, honey, be flexible," she said, clicking her long, turquoise fingernails on the table. I felt my hands involuntarily contracting into tight little fists.

She got up and walked off. What could I do? I went and played piano by myself in the cocktail lounge. Let me explain something here. I despise playing solo piano in cocktail lounges. I know there are some pianists who love it, but I'm not one of them. I once told a fellow journalist that I would rather scrub his office floor and clean his toilets than play solo piano in a cocktail lounge. He thought I was kidding, so I said, "Try me. I'll be there tomorrow morning bright and early, sponge and bucket in hand." When you play in a cocktail lounge you have to: 1) play what the customers want, which is hardly ever what you want, 2) put up with customers hitting on you or talking loudly while they feel up their secretary's knee under the piano bar, or yell requests in your ear while you're trying to concentrate on your solo, 3) be polite and pretend you're having fun when you're not. It's a lonely, thankless, uncreative job. To me, music is a wonderful, joyous thing. Playing in a cocktail lounge is not music, nor is it wonderful and joyous. In a cocktail lounge you are wallpaper at best, or a whore at worst. OK, that's my rant about cocktail lounges.

So when Marilyn unilaterally decided that I would be her whore for the summer, against my wishes and contrary to what we had agreed upon, I was furious. I sat behind the piano looking disgruntled and depressed. I didn't care. I was stuck way the hell out in the middle of Wisconsin with black flies biting my butt, playing cocktail piano every night with no sleep, and worst of all, it was very far from the "fun vacation" I had imagined for Hilary.

But even in the bleakest situations, you never know when an angel will turn up. I was playing one night, and during my break a tall smiling fellow with white hair and sparkling blue eyes came over and said:

"Hi, I'm Gene Aitken. I teach jazz at the University of Northern Colorado."

"Wow," I said, "What on earth are you doing in this godforsaken place?"

"I'm playing with a bunch of guys from Colorado at the Common House--it's not far from here," he said. "Say, you look pretty bummed out."

"You can say that again," and I told him the story of how I'd ended up in the clutches of Marilyn the pajama girl.

"Well, when you get off here, why don't you come over and sit in with us? We don't start until later. I could pick you up."

I ventured a smile. "That'd be great, Gene, thanks."

After that, Gene came by every night and took me and Hilary to his gig. Gene played electric bass, and there was a drummer, a bassist and a male vocalist. Hilary immediately took to the guys in the band, and they to her. Sometimes, to escape from our cell block, we'd stay overnight at a house they'd rented with some other musicians. Hilary loved that, because a big burly guy named Lothar would make what he called "skank eggs" for her for breakfast--scrambled eggs deep fried in lots of bacon fat.

Well, Marilyn never got a band together for me, needless to say, so after two weeks of suffering in the cocktail lounge I walked into her office and said, "I quit."

"What? How dare you! We had an agreement!"

"Yes, one that you broke," I said. "I don't see any musicians around here. Where the hell are they?"

"You know what," she sputtered, her face reddening. "You're just a prima donna, that's what you are."

I stared at her.

"I want my pay and transportation money to get back east," I said.

She ended up paying me, but refused to give me any extra money to get home, so I had to find a driveaway car. It had no AC, and Hil and I sweated all the way back to New York with our heads hanging out the windows. But we were so glad to get away from Marilyn, her cocktail lounge, her cell-block and her black flies that we didn't care.

Gene Aitken and I became friends, and he ended up inviting me to the annual Greeley Jazz Festival at the University of Northern Colorado for several years to cover the event for one of their local newspapers. It was at one of the concerts there that I would have a life-altering experience that changed my musical direction forever.

# CHAPTER 22: NEW YORK

Sometime around 1980 I heard a rumor that Charlie LaChapelle was in town. I couldn't believe it-- _my_ Charlie, my favorite little junkie kid bass player from the old days at the loft, after all these years! I was playing with a quartet at the Ryles jazz club in Somerville at the time, just outside of Boston. He must have heard that I was around, because one night when I was at my gig he staggered in, dragging his bass behind him. I stopped in the middle of the tune, stumbled off the bandstand, and threw my arms around him. We just stood there, saying nothing, the bass leaning up against us. Finally Charlie looked at me, damp-eyed, and said, "Let's play."

He took his bass out of the case, and my bass player stepped down off the stage without a word, realizing that something special was going on. Charlie and I began to play, and it was like trying on a pair of shoes that fit so perfectly you don't even need to break them in. Even after all those years, he could still anticipate my every move, and I his.

Charlie was back to stay, and from then on it was me and him. Any gig I did, I called Charlie. We got together with Gray Sargent, a sweet guy and an extraordinary guitarist with a thick head of strawberry blond hair that any girl would kill for, and formed a trio. We worked up a nice repertoire, and for the first time, because there was a guitar to hold down the fort, I was able to get up from the piano and sing. For a long time I'd had mixed feelings about singing because I thought if I sang no one would take me seriously as a piano player. It seemed to me that people in general preferred to listen to the human voice and just couldn't be bothered with instrumental music. But somehow, in this little group with Gray and Charlie, singing became fun for me. Everything was fun with them.

There was a funky little jazz club in Boston called Michael's Pub, where all the hippest guys played, and I had always been a little in awe of the place, never imagining I could get a gig there. But Gray, Charlie and I did get a gig at Michael's Pub, and the mystique was dispelled the minute I sat down and placed my hands on the keys of the out-of-tune piano with the spongy action that all the "hot shots" had put up with before me. We played for two nights, and the audience liked us.

That trio was one of the best groups I've ever been a part of, and things would have gotten even better if it hadn't been for the fact that Charlie was always drunk or high on drugs. Always. Morning, noon and night. I had to scrape him off the floor and shove him into a cab to get him to rehearsals. I can't remember how many times he was late, or never showed up at all, and I put up with all of it because I loved him madly. I felt like we were joined together by a cosmic umbilical cord. He spoiled me forever as far as bass players were concerned.

But eventually I had to let Charlie go, because I wasn't getting anywhere, and Gray was getting fed up, too. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in all my years of being leader of my own groups. I dropped the trio, because there was no way Charlie could be replaced. It broke my heart, but I had to move on. After that I didn't see Charlie much anymore. Once I asked him why he had to be stoned or drunk all the time, and he said, "I'm afraid of my talent. It terrifies me."

I was growing tired of Boston. It seemed I had played in most of the clubs, met most of the musicians and played with a lot of them, and all I could think about was when I could move to New York. New York was _it_ for jazz musicians as far as many of us were concerned, and it was inevitable that I'd end up there at some point. But for me it was about more than just the music. I had always loved New York City since I was a little kid, not to mention the fact that I was _born_ there.

By the time I was in high school I imagined myself living the bohemian life in Greenwich Village, although I really had no idea what that meant, or even where Greenwich Village was, since Ma always followed the same routine when she took me and Bertie to "the city"--we'd go shopping at Best & Co. or Sterns, have lunch, and then go to Radio City Music Hall. That was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Manhattan.

The only problem was, I had no idea how I could make the move. I had very little money, and there were the girls to think about. Madeleine was pretty much grown up by now and had gone off to work at summer resorts in Nantucket and winter ones in Colorado, but I was reluctant to grab Hilary and carry her off to New York having no idea where or how we would live. I was pretty sure I could stay on as a stringer for _The Christian Science Monitor_ , but that wouldn't support us.

I thought back to the time when I had yanked Mad out of school and taken off to Mexico and then Brazil with her. What had happened to my spirit of adventure? Was it because I was older and more mature, or had I just become more cautious, or maybe more fearful? I went back and forth about this move for a long time until one day I said to myself, "OK, the truth is that if I wait around until I think I have enough money to move I'll never do it. So I'm just going to do it. That's it."

So I decided to sell my van and stay for a while with different friends in New York until I could find a place for me and Hilary. Since I didn't know how long it would take for me to get settled, I asked Bertie if I could leave Hilary with her and her family (Jean-Claude and their two boys, Eric and Philippe) until I could find an apartment and some work. She agreed, and so off I went, by myself, to the Big Apple.

I had a couple of friends who were willing to put me up in Manhattan for a while, but as soon as I got there I ran out and got a newspaper to look for an apartment. I knew exactly where I wanted to live--not in the Village, as I had imagined when I was in high school, but somewhere on the West Side so I could be close to Central Park. Somehow, narrowing it down like this made it easier to find a place. To my surprise and delight, I found a studio apartment on West 58th Street, just a block from Central Park. It was small and dark, with only one window looking out on another building that seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch, but I didn't care. I was in Manhattan!

A friend of mine, Mike Mailloux, had moved to New York from Boston a little before me. He was one of the tap dancers who used to hang around Leon Collins' studio, and we had become great pals. He was living in a hotel on the West Side and was working on a show with another dancer. He invited me to a rehearsal at Fazil's studio near Times Square.

Fazil was a Turkish guy who rented out rehearsal spaces in a run-down building on 8th Avenue that had leaky ceilings and holes in the floor. He also ran a nightclub on the second floor that featured homemade Turkish food, a live band and belly dancers on the weekends. Fazil's was the favorite spot of both hoofers and Broadway-style tappers, mostly because it was cheap, but also because it had atmosphere.

When I walked into Michael's rehearsal, I immediately felt at home. He and his friend Bernard Manners had assembled a fair-sized group of tappers and they were rehearsing numbers like "Sing, Sing, Sing" and some Count Basie stuff. Michael introduced me as the "tap dancers' pianist" from Boston, and before I knew it I was involved in the show, putting a band together and writing some simple arrangements. We decided to do some Lambert, Hendricks and Ross tunes because a couple of the dancers were also pretty good singers. LH&R, as they were known, had taken jazz tunes back in the late 1950s and put lyrics to the solos in what is called the "vocalese" style. I had been an LH&R fanatic since I was 15 years old and had heard them on the radio back in Connecticut. At the time, I'd nearly jumped out of my socks and thought, "This is the hippest thing I've ever heard!" So, since I already knew most of their numbers, this was an easy and enjoyable project for me to tackle. One of the dancers, Rudy, quickly learned the complicated vocal solo to a tune called "Blues Backstage," and we ended up deciding to call the show _Backstage Blues_.

We rehearsed several nights a week at Fazil's and Bernard, Michael and the other dancers became my New York family. I was happy to have some place to go and something to do, even though there was no money in it. After a while we started talking about doing a backer's audition so we could get some funding for the show, and realized that we would have to talk with someone from LH&R to get permission to use their songs. The group had been defunct since the 60s, Dave Lambert was dead, and Annie Ross was in England. That left Jon Hendricks, who had formed a similar group with some members of his family that he called Jon Hendricks and Company, so I suggested that we not only ask his permission, but invite him and his group to be part of the backer's audition and the show.

So that's how I ended up meeting Jon Hendricks. Actually, I had met him briefly years before in Boston when Bertie and I had gone to see Lambert, Hendricks and Ross perform at Storyville. I remembered it distinctly, because I was so impressed with Jon's spirit. When he sang, his eyes shone like polished jet beads, and his lyrics were full of little gems of wisdom about love and life.

So I was surprised and a bit disappointed when Jon came to a rehearsal of _Backstage Blues_ and reacted with disdain and suspicion. Thinking back, though, I can't say I blame him. After all, we just took his music and did our own thing with it, and _then_ called him to see if he wanted to be part of _our thing_. The truth was, he was amazingly gracious under the circumstances, and actually did the backer's audition with us--he, his son Eric and daughter Aria, and his wife Judith. We must have seemed like a sorry bunch of amateurs to him, but he put his all into the audition anyway.

Sadly, nothing ever came of _Backstage Blues_ because of infighting between Bernard and some of the dancers. Some years later, Mike Mailloux and I collaborated on a show he wrote called _Born to Swing_. I wrote all the songs and he wrote the lyrics. Nothing ever came of that show, either, except a short run in a high school gymnasium in Arizona, but I loved collaborating with him on those songs, something I had never done before.

During this time, my plan was to find a job playing piano somewhere so I could start making money and bring Hilary to New York to live with me. I bought the _Village Voice_ and did the rounds. I met a few musicians, and one of them told me there was a place that had just opened in Chelsea where they might need a solo pianist. I wasn't crazy about playing solo, but at that point I would have been grateful to have any job at all.

I went to this place, The Ballroom, the very same day, and asked to speak with the owner. His name was Greg Dawson, and I was actually taken aback by his graciousness and kind interest in me. Instead of the usual cold and indifferent "We're booked through next year," he invited me to sit down at a table and asked me about myself. When I told him I was a writer for _The Christian Science Monitor_ , he was impressed. He told me that he knew many journalists, and he expected The Ballroom, which had originally opened on West Broadway in the 1970s, to be a success because it would have some excellent publicity--thanks to him.

Greg hired me for the solo piano spot at The Ballroom. I played on a very nice grand piano in the front dining room four nights a week. This was a cut above the cocktail lounge gigs I'd done, because the place was classy and the patrons were, for the most part, intelligent and cultured people. Greg held shows in the back room on weekends, and occasionally during the week, too. When I first started playing there, a new show was opening called _Born Too Late_ that featured a jazz vocal group and an instrumental sextet. Naturally I got to know all the guys in the band, and sometimes they'd come out to the restaurant and sit in when I was playing.

The next thing I knew, Greg had reporters crawling all over the place, and one of them wanted to interview me. I ended up getting a feature story in the _New York Post_ as well as a very favorable mention in _The New York Times_. I couldn't believe my good fortune! I became part of Greg's "inner circle." He introduced me to people like Margaret Whiting, Kay Ballard and Carol Channing. I loved working there, and I hoped it would never end. But of course it did.

One dreary April day, Greg passed around a memo entitled "April is the cruelest month" announcing the demise of The Ballroom. I had been aware for a while that things were not going well, but with my usual optimism, I thought it would pass. After all, Greg himself had seemed so hopeful that things would improve. However, this was really the end, and before long I was out in the street again, looking for another gig.

Hilary did come to live with me before long. Times were tough, but we managed. She was very excited to be in the big city and I was happy to have her with me. After we'd been struggling along--gigs were scarce--one day I got a pink envelope in the mail addressed to "Ms. Amy Duncan." Inside it were six ten dollar bills and a pink card with this message printed on it:

_Faith makes all things_

_possible,_

_Love makes them_

_easy._

I never found out who had sent it, but somehow things started to get better after that.

I went down to the Village and found another solo piano job at a club called The Mermaid, on Bleecker Street. It was a typical piano bar with a little counter built around the baby grand where people could sit and set their drinks down. One night I was playing there when a tall black woman in a black velvet dress and huge dangly earrings came over and sat down very close to me. She was a little tipsy, and asked me if she could sing "Blame it on My Youth." I said sure, and when she opened her mouth to sing I took my eyes off the keys and just stared at her. Her voice came some deep place, filled with the sadness of late nights, cocktails, cigarettes, broken promises and abandoned dreams. She sang with superlative timing and phrasing, and a sense of swing I'd rarely heard except among the jazz luminaries. When she finished, I praised her to the point of embarrassing her.

"What's your name?"

"Stephanie. Stephanie Crawford," she said shyly.

We exchanged phone numbers and the next day I thought of calling her, but then forgot about it.

A month or so later I went to one of pianist Barry Harris's jazz workshops in a big loft on lower Broadway. There was a grand piano in the middle, and tables and chairs scattered around where people sat to listen to Barry talk and wait for a chance to play or sing. I was about to sit down when I saw Stephanie sitting at a table by herself. I almost didn't recognize her. She had no makeup on and was wearing a staid old Chesterfield coat. A far cry from the glamorous person who had stumbled into The Mermaid that night. She was clutching a thick stack of music. I went over to her and said cheerily, "Hi, remember me?"

She looked up without smiling and gave me a blank stare.

"You know, the piano player from The Mermaid bar."

"No, darling, I don't remember you," she said vaguely.

Well, all right, I thought. Then I said, "OK, can I look at your lead sheets?"

I sat down and she pushed them toward me. They were a mess, all scribbled, with some of the chord changes scratched out, but she had some very interesting songs in the stack.

"Are these all in your key?"

She said, "Girl, I doubt it."

I was convinced that Stephanie was an extraordinary talent, so I refused to be put off by her unfriendliness. I basically forced myself on her, told her I'd help her straighten out her lead sheets and put a repertoire together. Finally she loosened up a little and told me she hadn't had any gigs and that she'd be grateful if I'd help her at least get her lead sheets into the right keys. By this time I'd had my piano moved from Boston, so I invited Stephanie over to work on her music. That was the beginning of a friendship that has lasted to this day, through years of triumphs and disappointments, revelations and regrets.

It was the music that brought us together, and there were many things that we would learn from and about each other. One of the first things I learned about Stephanie was that she had been born a boy. She'd been raised in a big, poor family in Detroit, and by the time she reached puberty was already refusing to wear boy's clothes and making her mother, whom she called "Sis," zip up her dresses. Sis wasn't all that much older than Stephanie, and had brought her favorite child up to love music. Sis was always singing, and knew all the songs from the Great American Songbook. By the time Stephanie was in her middle twenties, she'd had a sex change (quite a pioneering thing to do in those days), and would soon be on her way to becoming an excellent singer.

Stephanie and I would sit at the piano for hours, examining each chord of a lead sheet until we got it right. She had no musical training, but her ear was so acute that sometimes I'd play a chord and she'd grab my hand and yell, "Wait! Wait, Aim!" Then she'd poke around the keys until she found just the right bass note, and I'd build the chord she wanted from that note.

We worked along like that until we got her repertoire in order, and then she started looking for gigs. There was a lot of prejudice then, and club owners sometimes wanted to stick her in drag shows, but her talent and determination usually won out. It led her to spend over eight years in Paris later on, where she recorded three CDs and taught vocal jazz to young French wannabes at two different schools.

I went to visit Stephanie when she was living in Paris. She was living in a tiny maid's room at the top of seven fights of winding stairs. I was so excited to see her standing in front of her building as my cab drove up that I hastily paid the cabbie and leaped out, leaving my wallet on the back seat. Immediately I realized what I'd done, but the taxi was already driving off. Stephanie, however, didn't miss a beat and took off after the cab, bolting down the street like a young colt until it slowed down for a red light and she ran over and pounded on the window. I watched in mute amazement and admiration. Stephanie Crawford, my hero.

Afterwards, we slowly climbed the seemingly endless narrow steps to her little room, where she made me sit down while she prepared a large beautiful salad for me. Everything about Stephanie was big. Nearly six feet tall herself, she liked to be surrounded with things that fit her, like enormous pots and pans and gigantic utensils, as if she'd been accustomed to cooking in restaurants.

Stephanie seemed to be quite happy in Paris. Since she had moved there, she'd recovered from a breakdown and a bad relationship, and had started practicing Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism, chanting "nam-myoho-renge-kyo" daily. She really seemed more at peace with herself. But one night, at a Chinese restaurant, after several glasses of wine, she started singing, "My heart is second hand, my heart is second hand..."--a line from "You are Not My First Love" (Howard/Windsor), a tune Mabel Mercer used to sing, and she began to weep. A few years back, we recalled this moment together during an instant message chat--Stephanie in Chicago and me in Rio de Janeiro--and I told her that that moment had touched something so deep in me that I didn't even know what it was.

"And I cried into my bird's nest soup," she said. I could almost hear her cavernous laugh traveling through cyberspace.

Stephanie loved my compositions. She once said, "Your tunes are like musical landscapes."

Years after the Paris trip, when I was finally getting ready to record my first CD, she wrote me:

_" It's high time your music was recorded. It's just time. Take the excitement and nervousness and dab it generously behind your ears. That's what it's for. It'll be fabulous. But on second thought, there's not an atom of risk in it. You're merely doing the work you were born to do. Risk is the possibility of loss. But lose what? You can't lose what you've got. All you really have to do at this point is enjoy it. That's all. And the world will come to your party. It sounds glib. But it's not. It's just a fabulous party. You'll have a ball and make a bundle and the experience will be worth its weight in gold. Bravo. Bravo. Go on with your bad self."_

Well, I didn't make a bundle, but the rest of what she said was pretty accurate.

# CHAPTER 23: EUROPE

The trip to Paris to visit Stephanie was my third time in Europe, but my very first trip across the Pond came about in this way:

One day, in 1984 or 85, after I'd been living in New York for several years, my diminutive British friend, Sheila Ditchfield, said to me:

"You've never been to Europe? You simply _must_ go."

I had been thinking about doing just that for a long time, but had never made a definite plan. As always, I didn't think I could afford it.

"I've got a gold card with a $2500 credit line," she said with a merry laugh. "Let's go!" Then with a positively evil look in her eye, she said, "You could pay me back later, what the bloody hell!"

Well, I couldn't resist that, and I couldn't imagine going through the rest of my life without knowing at least a part of Europe. Also, I'd just been through a bad relationship breakup, so I was ready to escape for a bit. It was school vacation time, so I settled Hilary in at my sister's, packed my carry-on and off we went.

The long-defunct People's Express airline got us to London for a mere $160 each, in a plane so new it smelled like it had just been unwrapped. The flight across the Atlantic was smooth, and just before we landed we were treated to an otherworldly sunrise with a bold streak of red painted across the horizon, while a full moon still shone brightly overhead.

We hopped a train and a cab to Sheila's friend Charles's apartment. Charles, a gentle fellow in his middle years, took us to a genuine English pub. I was in London! The thing that struck me right away was how _foreign_ it seemed. Since my background is mostly English and Scottish, I thought everything would seem familiar, but from the cars driving on the left-hand side of the streets to the preposterously bad telephone service to the omnipresent flower gardens and everyone calling me "ducky" and "love"--it was another world. I fought off jet lag while Charles took us to an Indian restaurant--the best tandoori I'd ever tasted--and I was very happy to be in the home of my ancestors.

The next day we toured the shopping areas and parks, and more pubs (Sheila drank her favorite white wine while I diddled with a soft drink), and then that evening we met Charles at Pizza on the Park, where Roger Kellaway and Eddie Thompson were playing duo pianos. On the break, I jumped up and played "Stella by Starlight" with another pianist who had gone up to sit in. The upshot was that the owner offered me a job the following night at a restaurant called Kettner's in Soho. My first gig abroad!

The Tower of London occupied my attention for the entire next day. It was raining lightly, and since Sheila had other plans, I set out on my own. I was interested, of course, to see the collections of armor, the crown jewels, and so on, but what really lured me there were the buildings themselves. This was something completely new for me. In the USA there are museums that have loads of ancient things in them for us to look at, but there aren't any entire buildings--something you can actually walk inside of--that are as old as the ones in Europe. I was especially fascinated by the really ancient structures, like the White Tower with its chapel and passageway and stairwells, made from freestone masonry in the 11th century. The 11th century! I spent quite some time just sitting in the chapel. I swore I could feel a presence there, not anything ghostly exactly, but some sense of life from those early times.

Later, in the evening, I went to my gig at Kettner's. On the way over in a taxi I was chatting with the cabbie and he warned me not to tell anyone that I was playing for money, because the laws in England were very strict about foreigners doing that sort of thing. I felt a little paranoid by the time I arrived at the restaurant, but soon realized there were no bobbies following me. The evening was identical to the many solo piano gigs I'd played in the USA--the diners barely listened, except for Sheila and Charles, who had stopped by to give me moral support. But at least I could say I had played in London.

It was August, and all of Europe was crawling with tourists of every variety. I was eager to get moving to our next destination--Paris. But before we left I wanted to squeeze in a few more things, so I went to Westminster Abbey, and had the same strange feeling I'd had at the Tower of London, especially when I saw the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots. Those lives lived long ago definitely left something that lingered.

After an afternoon tea at Brown's Hotel, the ultimate in British formality and coziness--a combination only the Brits can pull off--I headed back to Charles's place for a rest. The next day we took a day trip to Bath, where we visited the ancient Roman baths and hot springs, and strolled along the Avon River and up to the King's Crescent, a semi-circle of beautiful old homes overlooking a perfectly manicured lawn.

The day after that, Sheila and I headed to Mersham, to Stone Green Hall, a charming country inn, where she had arranged for me to play piano at a private party--my second gig in England! Sheila had made quite an event of it, writing out little program cards in longhand for all the guests, and they seemed to enjoy my simple performance. It was a lovely setting, with flowers everywhere, a conservatory with grapes hanging from the ceiling, a labyrinth made of high, meticulously trimmed green hedges, a rose garden with a gazebo by a little pond, sheep prancing in the meadow across the "ha-ha" (a little ditch to keep them out of the garden), and comfy rooms with soft, printed duvets and vases of flowers--all the old-world comforts a harried New Yorker could desire.

What struck me most about England, and Mersham in particular, was the light. Soft and diffused, it made whole landscapes look like paintings, and I understood firsthand where Turner had gotten his inspiration. As I strolled through the grounds of Stone Green Hall, I thought, "How peaceful it is here, and how civilized! Everything is so neat and proper, nice and pretty, and people seem to take a lot of care to keep it that way." Frankly, I enjoyed being pampered by the English, who were always offering me a cup of tea or patting my arm. On our last night in Mersham, Sheila's friend Jim, our host, took us to the local pub, where we played darts and soaked up the local vibes.

Early the next morning we headed for the white cliffs of Dover, where we caught the Hovercraft to Boulogne. I was amazed by this boat, which seemed to be an oversized inflatable raft with propellers. It skimmed across the top of the water on a cushion of air and got us to France in no time at all.

Like everyone else visiting Paris for the first time, I was enchanted by the beauty of its architecture, parks, and sidewalk cafes. And Paris turned out to be a musical adventure for me, too, just like England. After letting Sheila line up a hotel for us with her superior French, we headed for the Left Bank, where we found a little jazz club down a short flight of stairs. There was a quartet playing--piano, bass, tenor sax and drums, and they were quite good. The European jazz musicians as a rule seem to lean more toward the avant-garde than the American ones, and so some feel that they don't swing as hard. This may be true, but I find them imaginative and free, and fun to play with. I felt like playing, as I usually do when I'm listening to other musicians. I didn't allow my sketchy French to keep me from asking to sit in, and I had myself a grand time with my new Parisian jazz friends, who showed their admiration of my ability to play "free." My early training with Sam Rivers had stood me in good stead!

We stayed only a few days in Paris, just long enough to take in the Eiffel Tower, visit the Tuileries Gardens, and sit at a few outdoor cafes observing French life along the Champs Elysees, and then we headed to Corsica. As soon as we got there we rented a car and proceeded to drive around the outer edge of the island. Corsica is essentially divided into two parts: the French part to the east and the Italian part to the west. We drove down the French side, stayed in an absurdly inexpensive little inn, and then stopped off at an unusual beach where the water was deep turquoise and the "sand" consisted of small multicolored stones in deep reds, blues and greens.

The road going around the island was narrow, twisting and treacherous. I was doing the driving, and I went slowly, trying to avoid looking over the precipices where, way down below, rusty carcasses of cars that had missed one of the hairpin curves were decomposing. The only time I felt relatively safe was when a big tourist bus was in front of us, blocking the entire road and making it impossible for anyone to pass.

By the time we reached the bottom of the island, we were definitely out of "France" and into "Italy." Immediately everything changed. The traffic was heavier, the people were louder, and everyone seemed to be in a hurry. When we reached our destination where we would take the ferry boat over to Italy, we were greeted by a loud, pushy crowd, everyone shouting and gesticulating, trying to get to the front of the line to buy their tickets. The civilized and orderly life of England was now just a vague memory!

Sheila had friends waiting for us in Rome. It was the end of August, and hot as Hades. It seemed that the air had come to a standstill and I could hardly breathe. Although I had enjoyed everything we'd done so far, I wasn't mad about Rome. All I could see was an endless series of churches and monuments. I had to force myself to go to the Vatican museums, but I did end up enjoying them--I spent a good half hour craning my neck to study the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which hadn't been restored at that time--but I found St. Peter's Basilica oppressive and slightly sinister. To me, there was something grotesque about the opulence of the Catholic church in Rome.

Sheila and I were staying in close quarters with her friends, an Italian woman and her American boyfriend. Their constant bickering was worsened by the fact that we had to walk through their bedroom to get to the bathroom. After a couple of weeks in Italy (we had planned to stay longer), I told Sheila I needed some time alone, and that I was going to head to Switzerland by myself. I left her with her friends and hopped an overnight train to Zurich, very glad and relieved to get away from the arguing couple and the oppressive heat of Rome.

I had previously done quite a bit of solo traveling when I was covering stories for the _Monitor_ , and I enjoyed it. So being alone in Zurich I felt perfectly at ease...well, almost. I did run into language problems there. I thought there would be more English speakers, but I couldn't find anyone who knew more than a few words except for the young couple who ran the little hotel where I was staying. It seemed most people either spoke Schweizerdeutsch or French. I did run into a cab driver who spoke Spanish, but he was the only one. For the most part, I tried to get by with my bad French--which had deteriorated considerably since college--and a few words of English when I got stuck.

It rained most of the time I was in Zurich, but I was so glad to be away from the heat of Rome in August that I didn't care. I spent a lot of time in my room, and did a little shopping when the rain let up. On one of the sunny days toward the end of my stay I took a touristy cable car trip to Mt. Pilatus and saw some snow. It was a lovely trip with little Swiss chalets and cows with bells on the hillsides as we rode up in the car, just like in "Heidi."

Sheila joined me near the end of our trip and we flew back to the states together. We'd been gone for a month, and I was happy because now I could finally say that I'd been to Europe--at least some of it.

# CHAPTER 24: BRASS TACKS

Whenever I travel, my thought changes about things in my life, even though I may not be aware of it. When I got back from Europe, I found myself scrutinizing my musical career, such as it was. I hadn't really done much in a while, and was starting to feel that I wanted to record. I had met a number of interesting people connected with the music business through my journalism career. One of those people was Helen Keane, who had managed Bill Evans and JoAnne Brackeen, among other prominent jazz artists. Because I was a woman, she took a special interest in me and suggested that we work together. She said she could set me up with a trio and we could make a recording.

Helen was a tall, tough-looking, no-nonsense bleached blonde with big glasses. She was all business, but in her more relaxed moments she could be hilariously funny, and this was one of the things I liked about her. I thought we could probably do something really good together, and have fun doing it, too. She got the superb bassist Marc Johnson for me, who had been with Bill Evans in the final years of his life, and the drummer Jimmy Madison. She set up rehearsals and meetings with me and kept after me on a daily basis to make sure I was getting my repertoire together and practicing.

After a while I began to notice that Helen seemed to have two personalities. One was amusing and raucous and the other angry, controlling and paranoid. Often she would accuse me of saying or doing things that I hadn't said or done. It began to trouble me. One day she called me to ask me about some detail having to do with the recording. I gave her the information and she hung up. I had had my foot out the door when she called, so I turned on the answering machine and left.

When I got back about an hour later there were several messages--all from Helen. Just as I was about to play them back, the phone rang.

"How dare you ignore my calls!" she screamed.

"What?" I said. "What do you mean?"

"I had just spoken to you a minute before, and when I called you back you didn't pick up. How dare you do this to me! Who do you think you are?"

I explained to her that I'd had my foot out the door and that I'd gone out, but she said, "Don't lie to me! I know you were there! No one gets away with this with me!"

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

"Answer me! I'm talking to you!"

My heart was pounding, and I heard myself say:

"Helen, I don't think it's a good idea for us to continue working together."

I couldn't listen to the streams of invective that poured through the wires after that, so I hung up. That was the end of my dream of Helen Keane turning me into a famous recording artist. Afterwards, I felt some regret about what I'd done, because I actually liked Helen, but I also realized that if she was capable of that kind of irrational outburst once, she would be again, and it probably would have been an ongoing nightmare working with her.

Marc Johnson hung in there with me. He said we could still do a demo, so I got an English drummer named Keith Bailey and we went into a homey little studio in downtown Manhattan owned by pianist Fred Hersch. He had a glorious old Steinway piano sitting on an Oriental carpet in a small, wood-paneled room. I was insecure, but Marc just kept encouraging me. He was the best bass player I'd ever played with since Charlie LaChapelle, and since he had played with Bill Evans he knew how to respond to every little nuance and build on every phrase, helping me develop interesting solos that, as jazz musicians like to put it, "said something." We ended up doing a decent demo that included some of my original tunes, along with a couple of standards, "Stella by Starlight" and "Alice in Wonderland."

But the demo never developed into anything. After it was done, I started to get a feeling that I wanted to do something different with music. I still felt somewhat weak as a pianist in spite of Marc's encouragement, and I sensed that I wasn't progressing the way I wanted to. I asked myself why this was so. Was it because I just didn't have enough talent, or was I just too lazy to develop myself any further? Or maybe it was because I was supposed to be working in some other direction?

One thing I knew for sure: I really wasn't interested in playing in piano/bass duos or in trios any more, even though I had enjoyed making the demo. The fact was, most piano and duo gigs never led anywhere unless you had gotten to the point where you were playing in the top jazz clubs where people actually came to listen to your music. Most pianists of my caliber were stuck playing in restaurants and cocktail lounges where hardly anyone really listened, and when they did they'd request tunes that you hated or had played a zillion times and were bored to death with. Or they made you sing.

But in my heart, as I pondered and actually prayed about it, I knew that these weren't the real reasons I wanted a change. I felt deeply that there was something else I needed to be doing, something else that I _had_ to do. I went back and forth in my mind about it, until the thought came to me that what I really wanted was a bigger sound. Something forceful and more, well, _masculine_. I knew that the piano could be forceful and masculine, but I wasn't into that kind of piano playing. I loved Bill Evans because of his lyricism, even though he could be forceful when the occasion called for it. There was something in me, something I hadn't discovered yet, that needed to be expressed, and I was determined to find out what it was.

It occurred to me that I might try putting together a big band, but the idea of writing for a conventional big band of 14 to 18 players seemed too intimidating. I had no clue about writing for horn sections, and it really didn't interest me. I had done a little arranging over the years, but had never made a study of it or dedicated myself to it. Since I didn't want a big band, I thought maybe something just a little smaller, say 9 to 11 pieces. That seemed more manageable. I liked the idea of writing arrangements for a group, but another thing I wasn't particularly interested in was arranging other people's music. I wanted to write and arrange my own music. I sat down with a piece of paper and started to map out my ideas for this still-unformed band, imagining what the instrumentation could be.

I had recently written a piece for piano called "Monk Creeps In"--a tribute to Thelonious Monk, who had been my favorite pianist when I was a teenager. It was a quirky piece that had little breaks in it where a drummer could play fills, and now I was hearing it with more than just piano, bass and drums. My imagination started to warm up, and I could hear how the ensemble would sound and where the solos would come in. I heard a part in the piece where I could stick in a Latin section.

It was 1983 and I had been in New York for two years. I was grateful that I had managed to cram the Chickering baby grand that Stephanie and I had worked at into the tiny apartment that Hilary and I now shared. I sat down at it and began to score "Monk Creeps in" for a couple of trumpets, three saxes and two trombones, looking up the instrument ranges in a book I had. The only arranging I'd ever done before this was for high school talent shows and the one time Ray Santisi encouraged me to write something and have it played by some Berklee students years before. But I was undaunted. There would be a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums, too--ten pieces in all. I had to imagine all of it in my head, because I didn't have a band to try it out on and I knew nothing about sequencers and things like that. When it was done, it just sat there on top of the piano.

I had to go out of town for several days to cover the jazz festival at the University of Northern Colorado for my friend Gene Aitken, the guy I'd met at that horrendous gig in Wisconsin. I took Hilary with me and we flew out to Greeley. Our plan was to pick up Madeleine from the resort where she was working in Snowmass and bring her back to New York with us.

The Greeley festival was the usual collection of high school and college big bands and choruses, and my job was to write it up for the local newspaper. Little did I know that I was about to have the life-altering musical experience I mentioned earlier. The night it happened, Hilary and I were sitting in yet another concert hall trying to stay awake when the MC announced that a euphonium choir was going to play. "A what?" I sleepily thought, as eight guys marched out on stage carrying what looked like baby tubas. I had a vague idea what a euphonium was, but had usually associated them with Salvation Army bands. Well, when these young men lifted their horns to their mouths and started to play, I felt as If I were rising right out of my seat and floating to the ceiling. The sound was heavenly, haunting, ethereal. They played more or less in the same range as a tenor trombone, but these euphoniums didn't sound like any trombone I'd ever heard.

Immediately I thought, "I _have_ to have that sound in my band!" My band that didn't exist yet, but I knew it would very soon, now that I had found what I wanted. There was something so other-worldly, so downright _Elysian_ about all those euphoniums playing together--I'd never heard anything like it. But I knew I couldn't form a band just with euphoniums (where would I find eight euphonium players, even in New York?), so I thought, "BRASS! That's what I want, pure brass! No woodwinds! No saxophones! I'll mix the euphoniums in with some trombones, maybe a couple of trumpets..."

I thought of all the possibilities: trumpets, tubas, trombones, French horns, Eb tenor horns...and euphoniums, of course. Something about it just clicked. It had this boisterous macho feeling about it, but I knew it could also be sweet and lyrical. Loud, bawdy brass that in an instant could turn into a diaphanous tone poem, just by playing softer or adding a mute. I was in love with the idea.

Since I had moved to New York, I'd gotten into salsa and had spent a lot of Monday nights at the Village Gate listening to Ray Barretto's band, with my chin resting on the stage, mesmerized, while the dance crowd gyrated around me. I'd seen Tito Puente a bunch of times, too, and eventually ended up going to some of the uptown Latin clubs as well. I was hooked, not only on the intense rhythms of the timbales and congas, but on the brass--it was those arrangements for trumpets and trombones that really got to me. I didn't feel I could put a salsa band together and didn't really want to, but I knew I wanted that driving brass sound in a context that would be uniquely mine.

Now, after hearing that euphonium choir in Colorado, I knew what I wanted to do with the brass. I immediately scratched the arrangement I'd written for "Monk Creeps In" and rewrote it for a new configuration: two trumpets, two slide trombones, two euphoniums, tuba, piano, bass and drums. Perfect! I decided to call the still non-existent band Brass Tacks--I was finally getting down to the essentials, what I really wanted to do.

Strange as it may sound, right from the first there was something almost, well, _holy_ about Brass Tacks, as if it was a gift from the angels. From the first, I felt I had very little to do with it on a personal level, that I was just being carried along by a force much bigger than myself. It just seemed like such a natural thing.

After "Monk Creeps In" was finished, I was dying to hear how it sounded. I remembered the guys I had met at the Ballroom, where I'd had my first gig in New York. There was the trombonist Jimmy Masters, and I called him first. Jimmy was a bundle of love. I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone, and he was also one of the funniest people I'd ever met. He knew a lot of musicians, and helped me put the band together. He even found two jazz euphonium players! My plan was to make a demo of this piece, and then see what happened.

Right around this time, a most remarkable thing happened--I found a patron through a close friend, and she supported me for two years while all I did was write music for the band. This is one of the many reasons I've always felt that Brass Tacks was blessed from the start.

Jimmy and I got the guys together and recorded "Monk Creeps In" at Fred Hersch's studio. It was a little small for the band, since Fred's Steinway took up most of the space, but we managed to squeeze in, and the vibe was very good. The demo came out well. Ah, yes, it was good. There's something indescribably magical about writing an arrangement and then hearing it played for the first time, especially when it's your own music. Of course all of this has now changed with everyone (including myself) using computer music software, but back then it was only in my head and then on paper before I actually heard it played by live musicians.

That year I wrote and wrote for Brass Tacks. I would stay up late at night while Hilary was sleeping, writing arrangements and copying out parts. In the morning I would see all the music stacked up on the piano and have the oddest feeling--sort of wondering how it got there, as if I hadn't written it at all, as if little elves had stolen in during the night and done it. I could almost imagine I saw their tiny footprints on the piano lid as they crept away into the night.

It was 1985 and I had six charts done and was ready to debut Brass Tacks. Our first gig was to be at the International Paper Company on 46th Street in Manhattan (now known as "Little Brazil" because of its preponderance of Brazilian businesses). The musicians were in place, and I would be playing keyboard. It was to be an outdoor show on the plaza in front of the paper company. We had been warned that if it rained the show would be cancelled. The day before, rain was predicted on the weather report, but I just knew that God wouldn't let it rain on Brass Tacks on our debut! The morning was cloudy and threatening, but we all headed to 46th Street anyway, and do I have to tell you that the sun came out the minute we started to play? You know it did. We played two sets, repeating everything of course, because I had only written six arrangements, and the audience really seemed to love it. I was beside myself with joy.

At that time, Pop was still living in Boston in his little studio apartment on Huntington Avenue, but he kept close track of me and my musical activities. He was thrilled when I put Brass Tacks together, and came to New York for our debut. He strutted around like a proud rooster and took scads of black and white photos of the event which I still have today. He even put together a kind of poster collage of the band, cutting out pictures of us with a tiny pair of scissors. He put my head in the middle with the guys encircling me like a wreath.

So, that was the beginning of the Brass Tacks years. It wasn't easy keeping a band that size together, but I did have a couple of core groups of players who stayed with me over time. Many others came and went, because I had to do the project on a shoestring and most of the guys made their living playing music. I was really counting on their good will most of the time, because we rarely took in much money at our gigs and I couldn't pay them for rehearsals.

But we did get to play at the Blue Note, now the biggest touristy jazz club in New York, with clones in Las Vegas, Milan and four cities in Japan. Back then, in the mid-80s, you didn't have to be Oscar Peterson to get a gig there. Monday nights were open to just about anybody, so with demo tape in hand I went there to talk with Sal Haries, the manager. We got the gig, and that led to several more Monday nights at the Blue Note. The first couple of times we played there, Sal insisted that we bring somebody "with a name" as a headliner to play with us, so I called Lew Tabackin, the well-known saxophonist married to pianist/bandleader Toshiko Akiyoshi, for our first gig, and trumpeter Randy Brecker of the Brecker Brothers for the second one.

Now that Brass Tacks was getting around, I felt like I was really in my element. I knew that feeling I'd had about changing my musical direction had been right. I loved working with nine guys. I could be myself with them, and we had a lot of fun together. Plenty of joking went on at rehearsals and even on stage, but we worked hard, too, and even though there was never enough rehearsal time, we managed to put on some very good shows.

One thing that struck me was how much the guys respected me, even though I was a woman and pretty much self-taught as a composer and arranger. There were big gaps in my knowledge of the theoretical aspects of composing and arranging, and I often felt that I was flying by the seat of my pants. But nobody criticized me for it or made me feel bad. Instead, they helped me and gave me tips to improve the way I put things down on paper so the arrangements would be easier for them to read and sound better.

The only training in arranging I'd ever had was a couple of private lessons from Count Basie saxophonist Frank Foster, at his home in the suburbs. He didn't teach me any arranging techniques, he just showed me how to get my own ideas down on the music paper with some little suggestions to avoid writing complicated "road maps." I was grateful for his help, and a few years later, after Brass Tacks was somewhat known around New York, I ran into him at the Grammy Awards, where he'd just won a Grammy for the Basie Band, which he was leading at that time. I was there backstage covering the event for _The Christian Science Monitor_. When he saw me among the group of press people, he smiled, held up his award, pointed at me and said, "You're next." Well, that hasn't happened yet, but at least I can say that after more than 25 years, Brass Tacks is still alive, at least in my mind. Many years later, I hooked up with Frank on Facebook and we had some wonderful exchanges. He wasn't playing anymore because he'd suffered a stroke, but was still composing music on the computer and leading his band, "The Loud Minority," from his wheelchair. He died a couple of years later, and I still miss him.

In a way, I was glad I'd never studied arranging. I felt I had my own voice, and I would figure out ways to express it through trial and error, without being tied down by a bunch of rules. I was even a little afraid that if I studied arranging it might somehow spoil my music. Was I being egotistical? I don't think so. I was just following my intuition, and I think it paid off in the long run.

I was convinced that Brass Tacks was the best vehicle I'd ever found to express myself. I'd spent a lot of my life feeling that I had to explain myself to people, but with Brass Tacks, I didn't have to say anything in actual words, because it was covert, clandestine, subversive. I didn't have to come out and say, "Hey, this is who I am, y'all!" I could write music for the band instead--music that was happy, forceful, sad, funny, crazy, sweet, touching--all in my own peculiar way.

I remembered when I'd gone to the Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival how many of the women there had complained about the problems they had working with men. Quite a number of them had ended up forming all-woman groups because of this, but that wasn't for me. Not that I had anything against having women in my band, but I always enjoyed being around my guys, and they around me. I've had a couple of women in my band over the years, but I never felt I had to go looking for them just to make a point. Also, when I started Brass Tacks, girls and women weren't particularly encouraged to play brass instruments, so female brass players were few and far between. Nevertheless, I was always happy to find a woman who read charts and improvised well, too.

As a journalist, I had sat on panels at events where female musicians discussed their problems, and I frankly got tired of hearing them whine about how they couldn't get a gig or a record deal because they weren't men. The truth of the matter was that most of them just didn't play as well as their male colleagues. Some did, of course, and those were the ones who were successful and didn't complain about men cheating them out of opportunities. I once made a comment to this effect at one of those panel discussions and was lambasted by the female musicians in the audience. I didn't care. I knew that I myself was guilty of not developing my piano playing to its full extent, but I was darned if I was going to blame it on men.

Ultimately, it was my own weakness of character and lack of spiritual fiber that finally made it more and more difficult for me to go forward with Brass Tacks in New York. Indirectly, my lack of success did have to do with men, but not in a professional way. It was my ongoing belief that I needed to be in a romantic relationship to feel complete, and that was what was making me unbalanced and distracted, although I wasn't fully aware of it at the time. I'm grateful, though, that I always kept my relationships with the guys in my band on a strictly professional/friendly level and never allowed myself to get involved with any of them.

In spite of this, Brass Tacks kept plugging along as if it had a life of its own. It was hard to get gigs for a 10-piece band, but we did end up playing some outdoor shows for the phone company and Chase Manhattan Bank, along with occasional appearances at the Blue Note and the Knitting Factory. Pianist Barry Harris had a funky place in Chelsea called The Jazz Cultural Theater I had gotten to know just by hanging out there and having dinner with my musician friends (the menu consisted of "Chicken Dinner" complete with instant mashed potatoes you could practically drink through a straw, and "Meatloaf"), and messing around at the piano. The place was run down and ratty, with a slightly dank odor, and the walls were lined with worn overstuffed sofas, usually occupied by one or two strung-out musicians or down-and-out hangers-on.

Barry sometimes gave classes at The Jazz Cultural Theater. I attended a few, but generally stayed away because even though I had a lot of respect for Barry as a pianist, I didn't like the way he taught. He was always mean to the really good students and fawned over the ones who didn't have all that much talent. I guess he wanted to support the underdog, but I've never believed in that approach to teaching. It was embarrassing and infuriating to watch him browbeat the really talented players and humiliate them in front of their peers.

Brass Tacks played once at The Jazz Cultural Theater, and it would have been a great gig with the ideal jazz-loving audience if I hadn't had the flu. Somehow I managed to get through the gig without passing out, and would have played there again if it hadn't closed down shortly after that.

In 1985 I got a call from a man named George Spitzer. He worked for the record department of Book-of-the-Month Club and wanted to know if I would be interested in putting together some record collections and writing liner notes for them. Would I?! I accepted the job right away and started working for George, a bespectacled, serious fellow with a flair for understatement. He had gotten my name from a mutual friend, and knew that I wrote for _The Christian Science Monitor_.

Some of the jobs weren't quite up my alley, like Mitch Miller and Songs of America, although I ended up enjoying working on them in spite of myself. But when he asked me to do a Bill Evans package, I embraced it with all the force of my deep feeling and respect for the pianist's work. I was given numerous cassette tapes to select from, and I spent hours and hours listening to all the different solos, trio combinations, and a few quartets. But it was the trio settings that interested me most, especially Bill's early work with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. I plowed through hours of tapes with Eddie Gomez on bass--it was the trio that Bill had kept together the longest--but to me, his work with Gomez, although they had done many excellent performances together, didn't quite have the magic, the intimate communication of minds that his work with LaFaro did, and which he was able to recapture to a strong degree toward the end of his career with bassist Marc Johnson.

I took the tapes everywhere, listening to them on the subway, in Central Park, in restaurants, at home over the dishpan and even on the toilet. I started selecting tracks, then changed my mind, then reselected and selected and rejected again. This went on for weeks, and finally George asked me, "How's the Bill Evans project going?"

"Oh, fine," I said.

"Any idea when it might be ready?"

"Um, pretty soon, George, pretty soon."

Another week went by, and then another.

George called me and asked me to stop by his office.

"So, how's the Bill Evans project going?" he asked, looking at me mildly.

"Oh, great!" I said.

Pause.

"You know, Amy, I think it's time you weaned yourself from this one, or I'm going to have to confiscate those tapes."

I groaned. He smiled.

I went home and cold-turkeyed it. It was hard. I chewed on a pillowcase as I scratched out the names of several tracks I felt just HAD to be in the collection, but then there was also this one...and that one...and...I finally finished the thing, wrote the liner notes, and turned it over to George. The final package was a nice-looking LP boxed set with a picture of young Bill on the cover. I still wasn't satisfied with it, but then again I knew I never would be.

Meanwhile, since I obviously wasn't supporting Hilary and myself with Brass Tacks, I kept on at the _Monitor_ from New York. Things had opened up a bit and it seemed that the editors were pretty much giving me carte blanche about what I could write. I had given a lot of thought about writing reviews, either of recordings or live performances, and after having done quite a few, I decided to avoid them as much as possible, preferring to stick to feature stories. Since I was a musician, I could see that critiquing fellow musicians could end up being a serious conflict of interest for me, especially since I'd found myself in the position a couple of times of reviewing people I knew personally. I also noticed that some of my musical colleagues were starting to view me more as a journalist than as a musician. I think this was because I was always at the jazz festivals and other important musical events hanging around with the other critics, and not as a player. The word got around, and I wasn't sure I liked it. In fact, I was pretty sure I didn't.

Nevertheless, it was fun to get the chance to talk with people like Paul Simon (sweet and serious), James Taylor (sooo tall, and so friendly, -- he said, "How hip of _The Christian Science Monitor_ to hire someone like you!" when I told him I was a musician), Natalie Cole (my "relative"), Max Roach, Cheb Mami, Mel Torme, Dave Brubeck, Ice-T, Public Enemy and Queen Latifah, Youssou N'Dour, Anita O'Day (twice), Sandy Duncan, Liza Minnelli, Djavan (three times), Wynton Marsalis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Nana Mouskouri, Miles Davis, and many, many more. I had to write stories about music trends and issues and go to lots of concerts and clubs. My name was on the list of all the major record labels and quite a few of the minor ones. They sent me tons of recordings, so I also had plenty of listening to do, mostly after hours. In my interviews I usually had no problem establishing a rapport with the people I spoke with once I mentioned that I was a musician myself. Getting chummy with my interviewees was fun for me, but I remember it once got me into trouble.

I went to interview Gerry Mulligan for _The Christian Science Monitor_ at his house in Darien, Connecticut, sometime around 1982. Gerry picked me up at the train station, and right away we started gabbing about music like old buddies. I told him I played jazz piano, and that really opened up the conversation. When we got to his place we did the interview and then moved over to his grand piano. He and Mel Torme had co-written a beautiful tune called "The Real Thing" that I had learned by listening to the recording. Gerry asked me to play it. When I was finished, he said, "Not bad...very good, really. You only missed a couple of chords," and he gave me the original hand-written lead sheet to take home. We were about to launch into another conversation about music and composing, when his Italian girlfriend poked her head in and said, "Isn't it time for HER to leave?"

I'd meant no harm, of course, but at the same time I knew what she was feeling...I _felt_ what she was feeling. It was all so familiar to me. I quickly got my things together and Gerry drove me to the train station. After that I tried to be more discreet in my interviews with male musicians when their girlfriends or wives were around.

My dream was to make a recording with Brass Tacks, but I had no idea how to go about it. At that time you had to try to find a record label, although a few musicians were doing independent recordings. The problem was the expense. I had nine guys in my band and no way to pay for the recording and pay them, too. So I never was able to make a record in New York.

The endless and sometimes frustrating job of trying to keep the band together, get gigs, get all the same guys for rehearsals, or even a full band at all gradually became more and more difficult. By the early 90s it seemed that I had different guys for every gig and so many subs for rehearsals that the band that played the gig would hardly ever be the same one that was at the rehearsals. I tried to get grants and find a steady gig for the band, but nothing panned out.

We finally got hired by Small's, a little basement club in the West Village, after I spent weeks courting its eccentric owner. He fired us after two nights and wouldn't tell me why. Some of the guys said it was because he had a disagreement with my drummer, but I felt it was more likely that he just plain didn't like us. Brass Tacks' music didn't fit in at Small's. It was a bebop club, and by the second set the place would fill up with young "bebop Nazis" who sat there scowling, waiting impatiently for us to hit the final bar so they could start their jam session. To them we were just weird.

During this time I had been flying to Boston to tape cable television programs for _The Christian Science Monitor 's_ new Monitor Channel. When the channel was first launched, I'd been invited to play at a promotional event in New Orleans with Brass Tacks. It was a new experience for me, because I had to go alone with my charts in hand and use local musicians. Since I didn't know anyone in New Orleans, we contacted the musicians' union in advance and found a trombone player who said he could put together a band that had Brass Tacks' instrumentation.

He got an excellent group together, and to my surprise, the other trombone player turned out to be Wynton Marsalis' brother Delfaeyo. I won't speculate as to what Delfaeyo was thinking when he saw me for the first time, but it was pretty clear that he figured it would be a slam dunk--until he played the charts the first time. At rehearsal, I caught him shedding--running through his parts--in the hallway during the break, so I guess it wasn't quite the piece of cake he'd anticipated. But we all ended up having a fine time at the gig and turned out to be quite the hit that day.

After that, the powers that be at the Church Center in Boston had their eye on me and Brass Tacks. When they decided to hire political comedian Mort Sahl to do a mini tour, we were invited to be the house band. Mort was a jazz buff and heavily into Stan Kenton, so I thought he'd really dig Brass Tacks, but he didn't. I put together the best group of guys I could find, including Brian Lynch on trumpet and Robin Eubanks on trombone, but at Sahl's request, piped-in Kenton was played for the before and after portions of the taped program as the live audience was entering and leaving.

The guys were frustrated because all they got to play were 30 or 40 second bumpers at the beginning and end of the commercial breaks. Everything was tightly timed, and I had to use an electronic metronome to get the tempos just right. Finally, I complained to the producers that the guys weren't getting any solo space, so they agreed to cut out the recorded Kenton and let us play. We never heard a peep out of Sahl about it. We played three shows--New York, Atlantic City and Anaheim. It was the biggest thing Brass Tacks had ever done.

At that time the Boston church was pouring tons of money into their cable TV venture, and no expense was spared. They paid us well for rehearsals and shows for the Mort Sahl special. Since all the music was mine, I had requested that the producers of the Mort Sahl show enter into a licensing agreement with BMI, where I had all my music registered. They made up a contract and sent it off, and I didn't give it another thought. However, after the three shows we taped reran many times and I didn't get any royalties, I contacted BMI. They informed me that no agreement had been made with regard to using my original music for the Mort Sahl show. I faxed them a copy of the document the producers had given me, and BMI said that it was not a contract at all and had never been signed by anyone.

This was just one of the signs that all was not well with the ambitious Monitor Channel project. There were rumors about overspending, and even about people filching money. Some said that it was because they had hired so many people who were not affiliated with The First Church of Christ, Scientist and were not Christian Scientists. I wasn't terribly surprised when not long afterwards, the Monitor Channel went belly up.

# CHAPTER 25: TOSHIKO AND JAPAN

I felt bad when I met Toshiko Akiyoshi. I had written a big piece for the _Monitor_ about women in jazz, and had not included her in it even though I knew she was a jazz icon. My shabby excuse was that I wasn't really aware of her at the time, but it wasn't an excuse at all because I knew who she was. It was just a sloppy, inexcusable oversight.

When I learned that she had moved to New York from Los Angeles, I called her for an interview. It was my way of making up for my leaving her out of the other article. She invited me to the house she and her husband, saxophonist/flutist Lew Tabackin, had bought on Manhattan's upper west side. She greeted me in that shy, self-effacing way many Japanese women have, but she laughed easily and made me feel at home. I confessed to her in the interview that I had thoughtlessly left her out of my "big" story about women in jazz. She said, "Oh, it doesn't matter."

These words carried more meaning for her than I imagined at that time. As a woman in jazz, and the first Japanese woman to make something of herself in this music created and dominated primarily by American men, and particularly black American men, Toshiko was more than an anomaly. She had come to America in the early fifties to study at what was then the Berklee School of Music in Boston (now Berklee College of Music) and had managed to build a career for herself while she raised Monday Michiru (today an accomplished singer/composer/musician), her daughter from her first marriage to saxophonist Charlie Mariano. Later on, after she and Mariano divorced, she married Lew and moved to Los Angeles, where Lew was playing on the _Tonight Show_. After a while, Toshiko put together a rehearsal band which would later become the phenomenal Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, an ambitious 30-year project focused on Toshiko's compositions and arrangements.

In all my years growing up, I never knew much about Toshiko. I knew she was a Japanese pianist, but that was about it, maybe because they didn't have any of her records at the dinky little music store in Newtown, I'm not sure. In any case, my real introduction to her was through her big band many years later, and that was why I called her for the interview. I was completely, utterly blown away by her music. It came to me at the time I was putting Brass Tacks together that she was a kind of unspoken mentor, even though my music is very different from hers.

During our interview, Toshiko mentioned that she was swamped with work and needed a secretary. I immediately offered my services, and ended up working for her in various capacities, including house sitting when she and Lew were on tour. The three of us became friends. Then, in 1986, she invited me to go to Japan with her and the band as their road manager. I was clueless as to what a road manager actually did, but I immediately said YES. I had been obsessed with Japan since I'd fallen in love with the Bunraku puppets in high school. I'd been studying Japanese for a few years and couldn't wait for a chance to try out my meager skills in the land of sushi, samurai and sumo. We would be traveling with pianist John Lewis, formerly of the Modern Jazz Quartet, who was scheduled to play a couple of piano duets with Toshiko and the band.

I arranged for my neighbors across the hall to look after Hilary, who was now a very mature 14-year old and insisted on staying alone in the apartment while I was gone. I knew she'd be all right, between the neighbors and the doormen, so I packed my bags. Toshiko had gotten visas for everyone, and we all boarded the Japan Airlines plane, arriving in Japan in around 12 hours. As soon as we got off the plane in Tokyo, dozens of little men dressed in white uniforms swarmed around us like first responders, grabbing our suitcases and instrument cases. I got my first glimpse of how much Toshiko was respected in Japan and what a national treasure she was and is there.

The next day we flew to Aomori at the northern tip of the Japanese mainland. We arrived rather late in the evening and checked into a small hotel with miniscule rooms. My room was so tiny that I had to turn sideways to walk around the bed. But it did have a hotplate and a tea kettle. I was hungry, so I headed out to see if I could find an open restaurant. I found a little place right near the hotel, and went in. I was cordially received by a middle-aged woman wearing a kimono, who smiled at me, indicated a small table, and handed me a menu. Since I knew a little about Japanese food, I figured I'd find something right off--you know, sushi, tempura, ramen, stuff like that. Well, there wasn't a single thing I recognized on the menu, so I just picked something that didn't look too scary. When it arrived, it looked fairly normal: a ball of white rice, some pickled vegetables, and something that looked like a piece of fish. I grabbed my chopsticks and picked up the fish thing. The hostess smiled. I put it in my mouth and started to chew, or rather _tried_ to chew, but nothing happened...it just bounced off my teeth like a piece of rubber. The hostess kept looking at me and smiling and bowing. I waited until she busied herself with something else besides watching me wrestle with the rubber fish, then I wrapped the thing in a napkin and shoved it in my purse. I quickly ate my rice and veggies, paid the bill, and headed back to the hotel.

As I stood in the lobby waiting for the elevator, a magazine rack on the wall caught my eye. "Good," I thought. "I can practice my Japanese. I'll take a couple of these to my room." I got on the elevator with two gentlemen in black suits. I noticed them looking at me with mild amusement, and I figured it was because they didn't see that many gringos in Aomori. But when I got to my room, I understood. The magazines I was holding were hardcore porn comics! Pictures of fiendish looking guys with schlongs the size of mega salamis, doing unspeakable things to big-eyed little women in kimonos with nothing on underneath! I waited until late, and then sneaked out of my room and popped them into a rack so I wouldn't have to do it in broad daylight no doubt with more amused men in black suits staring at me.

The Japan tour was a round of one and two-night stands in different cities and towns all over Japan. For me, it was the first time I'd experienced what it was like to be "on the road," even though I wasn't playing in the band. My job was to keep everything organized and make sure everybody was where they were supposed to be at the right time. Easier said than done. The guys were quite a handful and I had to scramble around a lot to get them all together for the next bus, plane or train trip. Sometimes tempers flared, but I managed to keep things light by drawing funny cartoons on their daily handout schedules and keeping out of their way the rest of the time.

It seemed to me that they spent all the money they earned on the tour eating sushi and drinking beer and sake. I spent most of my time alone at the noodle bars. But I loved traveling through Japan, and Toshiko was happy to have another woman along. One day she decided we should take a trip by ourselves. She hired a car and a driver and we went to Kurashiki, a traditional Japanese town on the eastern side of Honshu, Japan's largest island. On the way there, I looked out the window and did a double take--there was an upside down house, with the roof on the bottom and the doors on the top! Toshiko told me it was a famous restaurant, a big tourist attraction. I thought, "hmmm, the Japanese certainly do have an interesting sense of humor!"

Kurashiki looked like a scene from a Kurosawa movie, with its quaint old-style homes and curved wooden and stone bridges over the canal that ran through the middle of town. Toshiko and I stopped at a small restaurant where they made buckwheat soba noodles by hand and picked wild dark green plants from a garden out back to put in the soup. It was delicious. We spent a delightful afternoon wandering through the streets of Kurashiki.

Everything in Japan was small. Since I'm small I felt right at home. In fact, for the first time in my life, I felt _tall_. When we first arrived, I got in line at the Tokyo airport to use the women's bathroom, and I was by far the tallest person there! It gave me a little thrill, I can tell you. But all the smallness and shortness and littleness was hard on some of the guys in the band, especially two of the trombonists, Hart Smith and Conrad Herwig. Hart stood 6 foot 5 and Conrad wasn't much shorter. Hart, who was a bit more happy-go-lucky than Conrad, took it all in his stride, and even let me take a picture of him jammed into a tiny plastic bathtub in his one-piece molded Yamaha hotel bathroom, with his knees up to his chin (and his clothes on, of course!). Conrad, on the other hand, got downright irritated when he kept banging his head on door frames, and said the Japanese should have more respect for American jazz musicians and build things that _fit._

Speaking of bathrooms, I wasn't quite prepared for the hole-in-the-floor variety, although I'd been warned, but what really got me were the unisex bathrooms in some restaurants, where you'd get up after squatting over the hole and run into some guy at a urinal right outside the door.

Traveling with a famous person let me in on some privileges I wouldn't otherwise have had. One day while we were in the airport waiting for a plane to our next gig, Toshiko and I decided to have some pancakes in one of the coffee shops. We were eating and chatting merrily away, when we heard Toshiko's name announced over the loudspeakers: our plane was leaving, and would we please hurry up! They held the plane for us, of course, because it was Toshiko, as we quickly swallowed the rest of our pancakes, paid our bill and went running to the gate.

One of the places I loved most in Japan was Hokkaido, in the northernmost part of the islands. We had a concert in Sapporo, and spent a day there. Toshiko, Lew and I went to a wonderful restaurant, where the food there was very different from the rest of Japan. Instead of noodles and rice, they served potatoes and squash cooked on a grill at the little bar where we sat. But most of all, I was fascinated by the people in Hokkaido. Some of them had brownish, almost reddish hair instead of black, and many had freckles. I learned that they were descendants of the Ainu, whom some scholars say were a Caucasian people who originally inhabited the islands of Japan, later on mixing with Koreans and Chinese to create the Japanese race.

I loved seeing Toshiko treated the way she deserved--which didn't happen often enough in New York, in my opinion. The concert halls were packed with adoring fans, and everyone went out of their way for her. We were greeted with parties for her in several cities, and in one place there was even a jazz club named after one of her compositions. All in all, it was a memorable experience being there with her and the band, and when we got back to New York all I could think of was going back to Japan some day. Toshiko said, "If you go once, that means you'll go back." But so far I haven't.

# CHAPTER 26: TRANSITIONS

By this time Madeleine had settled in New York and was making her way into the world of design. She'd always been interested in sewing, from the time I'd taught her when she was a kid, and she eventually ended up with her own business in Manhattan, sewing fancy slipcovers and window treatments for wealthy customers. She built that career on her own, with no college education or financial help, and I was mighty proud of her.

Hilary was fifteen and was more independent than ever. In a few more years, she would move to California and start her own business, too--also without a college degree. She had always been interested in dance, and she masterminded a swing dance event she called "Camp Hollywood," which at this date has been running and growing bigger and more popular for the last fifteen years.

When I first moved to New York in 1981 and was working at the Ballroom, I met Evans. He worked in the kitchen and used to stand in the door, watching me play the piano. It was hard not to notice him, because he had such a striking appearance. Tall, very black and extremely handsome, he looked as if he had stepped out of GQ magazine.

One night he walked over to the piano, where several newspaper articles about me and the Ballroom were piled up. He picked up one that had an interview with me in the _New York Post_ , and said:

"It says here that you work for _The Christian Science Monitor_. Are you a Christian Scientist?"

I told him I was, and he said, "So am I!"

That was how our friendship began. Evans was a pianist, too, and wrote songs. Our friendship has survived to this day, even though later on we made the silly mistake of getting married. When I look back on that marriage now, I think, "What was _that_?" I'd like to blame the female members of the Christian Science church we belonged to for pushing me into the marriage, because it seemed they gave me no peace about it--"So, when are you two going to tie the knot?" etc.--but I know I was just looking to fulfill the same need that had never been fulfilled when I'd married Ron and Joao. Somehow I still believed, foolishly, that I would find what I was looking for in an intimate relationship with a man.

So marry him I did, and we decided to let Madeleine and Hilary have his apartment in the East Village. I felt secure leaving Hilary with Mad, and of course I was always nearby. Evans and I stayed in my little place on West 58th Street for a while and then rented an apartment not far from his old place. Unfortunately it turned out to be the Lower East Side Horror--leaking pipes, insane neighbors, filth everywhere. We got off to a bumpy start, and things just got stormier with time. I was jealous and insecure and it seemed to me he was angry all the time. In less than three years we split up. But now, after all these years we're back in touch and friends again...and I've discovered that friendship is my favorite thing.

This was before the Monitor Channel folded, and I had been hired by the new cable station to appear on several programs. I'd already been doing programs for Monitor Radio for some time, and the producers saw potential in me to do on-camera television work. I flew to Boston every other week to tape the programs. The job paid well, so when Evans and I split up I rented an expensive little studio on Avenue B on the Lower East Side. I will never forget the sensation I had the night I moved in. I sat on my bed in utter, glorious aloneness and thanked God. It was the first time in my life I had ever lived alone. I felt as if I had just headed for the woods, those lovely, lonely woods I'd spent so much time in as a kid in Connecticut.

Shortly before Evans and I separated I got a call from veteran jazz pianist Marian McPartland asking me if I would be a guest on her _Piano Jazz_ radio program. It was a great honor and I didn't feel that I could refuse, even though my piano practice had dropped off to practically nothing during my marriage and I was feeling quite depressed about my lack of involvement in music. But I couldn't say no to Marian, so I did the program.

I rehearsed a few pieces, including a couple of vocals, and went into the recording studio at the Steinway Hall in Manhattan, feeling rusty and unprepared. But Marian was wonderful, as always, and put me at my ease. I started out with a tune I'd written, "Dove's Tale," and then played another composition of mine, the first piece I'd ever arranged for Brass Tacks, "Monk Creeps In." After that, Marian and I played together on Tadd Dameron's "Hot House" and I sang a lyric I'd written for it. So far so good...

Then I sang the Djavan song "Carnaval no Rio" in Portuguese, with Marian accompanying me at the piano. It was nerve-wracking, not just because of the Portuguese, but because It's a hard song to sing. But I got through it somehow, and even did another tune, one of my own, in Portuguese--"Passarinho do Mato," a tribute to Djavan. I asked Marian to play her beautiful song "Ambiance" and then we closed the show with an energetic duet on "Stella by Starlight."

Afterwards, I was sure that I had played really badly and that I had embarrassed myself on Marian's show. I thought the vocals had sounded especially awful. I was given a tape, but I refused to listen to it and put it away on a shelf. To prove myself right, as I was beginning to write this book, I pulled the tape out and listened to it after all these years, prepared to suffer excruciating pain and shame. But I was pleasantly surprised. I had played much better than I thought, and even my singing wasn't half bad...I only went flat a couple of times.

About a year before Evans and I split up, Ma called me one day. Her voice sounded a little weak on the phone.

"I've had a stroke," she said, trying to sound brave. "I can't use my left arm."

It was a week before Thanksgiving, and she was going ahead with her usual plans for dinner. The family was going to Newtown for the event, as we often did. I asked her how she was feeling, and she said she was fine. Within a week she was dead.

We went to the hospital to see her--me, Bertie, Hilary, Madeleine and George, of course. She was reclining on the bed, talking a mile a minute about something. I looked into her eyes and knew that she was already gone. There was simply no one home. Hilary saw it, too, but no one else did, maybe because they were busy trying to make her comfortable. She was talking only to Mad, who had always been her favorite. It was as if the rest of us weren't even in the room.

But she wasn't Ma any more. She was just a shell.

"Madeleine, go in the bathroom and get my tweezers so I can pull these hairs out of my chin," the grandma shell said, thinking she was still at home.

"Oh, I just can't stand that Sharon Gless," said the shell.

The next day we went back to the hospital and were all standing around in the hall outside her room. It was Thanksgiving Day. George came out of her room, put his arms around me and said:

"She's gone."

"I'm so sorry, George," I said, but I knew she had been gone for several days. Nevertheless, she continued to haunt my dreams. When I got home I dreamed about her every night for a week. The dreams were so real, so vivid, that I was sure she was still alive. It seemed she hadn't died at all--it was just a mistake. I felt vaguely disappointed to discover this, since our relationship had always been so strained, and was actually relieved to wake up and realize that she had indeed died. I didn't know it at the time, but those dreams were my only way of dealing with the depth of feeling I actually had for my mother but could never express, or even admit.

I sensed, though, that her death was not a relief just to me. George was sad, but I knew he felt a certain freedom, too. The first time we visited him in Newtown after she died, it was like a breath of fresh air. George didn't care what we did, what we ate, what we watched on TV, and he even let us take his car and go wherever we wanted. Ma had never let any of us drive her car and had always orchestrated everything we did when we visited.

Nevertheless, after she died, I thought about the good things she had done, and how much she had helped me and Bertie, and I wrote a letter about it to George, which ended with these words:

_So when you meet up with Ma, which you will at some point, please pass my gratitude. True, I used to fight her and give her a hard time, but it 's the good that remains in the end._

He loved that letter, and saved it until the day he died.

Much later in life, when I had already passed my 61st birthday, I had an awakening about my mother, and how my longing for her to love, notice and appreciate me had colored all my relationships down the years. My need to get her to love me and the clever and devious (and often unconscious) ways I did this became an ingrained habit that I indulged in, particularly in my relationships with my many boyfriends and husbands--the people who were supposed to be closest to me and love me the most. I just couldn't seem to shake the feeling of being ignored, disapproved of and unwanted.

Of course Ma _did_ love me, the best way she could. She just didn't give me what I needed, at least from my childish point of view.

Funny, though, the things you forget. I surprised myself not long ago when I was cleaning out some file drawers and ran across a bunch of letters I'd written to Ma when I was at Boston University. They belied much of what I've said about her here and our apparent lack of communication. Here's a little sample:

_Ch ere maman:_

_How are you? Guess what, I finally have a crush on somebody. About time, eh? I 've really got a bad one, I think. This guy is a senior, an English major. His name is Stephen Love, which sounds like a pen name but isn't. He's very intelligent and writes good poetry. He's about 5'11", slender, black hair, brown eyes, glasses. He's really the nicest sort, very friendly, sharp as a tack, with a fiendish sense of humor. Soooo, that has been occupying my time. It's nice to have someone to concentrate my interest on, you know?_

_Steve, Bertie, and a couple of other guys and I have been sort of pub crawling --have no fear, I haven't touched a drop--I just sit and observe. It's the first real social life I've had this year. It's great to indulge in a romance, but I'll have to be careful next semester that I don't neglect my studies (heh, heh)--oh it probably won't last long anyway._

_The sweater is great! It fits perfectly --shoulders, sleeves, neck, the whole thing. I just love it and I'll probably wear it at least 40 times without washing it. Yes sir, there's nothing like a hand-knit sweater. Everyone still admires that blue one you knit me, especially me._

_Write soon and brief me on what you 're doing, since it will be quite awhile before we come home again..._

_Love,_

_Amy_

# CHAPTER 27: DJAVAN

_LITTLE JUNGLE BIRD (Passarinho do Mato)_

_Fly away, on the wings of a bird,_

_Let me hear a song I 've never heard_

_A perfect sound all around_

_And inside of me,_

_A heavenly song that only few will ever know,_

_Few will ever know._

_Little bird, let me borrow your song,_

_Hold it close to me the whole night long,_

_And watch it spread in my soul_

_Like a holy light,_

_I 'll never let go until the song becomes my own,_

_The song becomes my own._

_Ah, then I 'll preen my wings for flying_

_And I 'll head up to the sky,_

_Far from the dull and ordinary life,_

_I 'll find a life sublime_

_In the song of my own little bird,_

_Haven 't you heard?_

_His melody will surely set you free..._

_So we fly, little birdie and I,_

_Far above, up in the pale blue sky,_

_We sing our song as we soar_

_In the open air,_

_A music so rare..._

_My little jungle bird and I,_

_My jungle bird and I._

Some musicians and singers have stood out to me in a way that a lot of people around me didn't seem able to understand. When I was 13 or 14 years old, I used to sit in my room in the dark, listening to Anita O'Day, who to me was the ideal hipster and represented everything I wanted to be as a jazz musician (except for the drugs), even though she was a singer. I'd put on vinyl discs of her singing standards and jazz tunes that she had recorded under the influence of heroin, in her husky, couldn't-care-less style, and be transported to another world.

Around the same time, I nearly fell off the kitchen chair the first time I heard Lambert, Hendricks and Ross on the radio singing jazz solos with words and harmonizing in their loose, swinging style. Years later I would spend hours and hours transcribing Bill Evans' piano solos and then trying to play them as closely as possible to the way he did. Certain recordings would strike me in a way I couldn't explain--I'd play them countless times until they were worn out. Or sometimes it would just be some little phrase that would grab me, and I'd set the needle back on the record over and over again.

In 1987, when I was still writing for _The Christian Science Monitor_ , a publicist pitched Manhattan Transfer's new album _Brasil_ to me and asked me if I would interview the group. I said sure, and they sent me a copy of the recording. There were a couple of songs on it that particularly caught my attention. One was "Capim," written by and featuring a Brazilian singer I'd never heard of at the time with the odd name of Djavan. It was literally love at first listen, and I immediately knew that he was one of those musicians I would listen to again and again, and get fixated on certain songs and phrases. I ran out and bought every Djavan album I could find.

I found out that Djavan was a pop icon in Brazil and had recorded many albums. A skinny black kid from the northeast, he had eased his way into pop stardom on the sheer strength of his monstrous talent. I saw something in his music that inspired my own. I eventually wrote a piece for Brass Tacks that I dedicated to him, entitled "Passarinho do Mato," or "Little Bird of the Jungle," but not before I had gone after him in my feisty journalistic way and gotten three interviews out of him.

I wanted to interview this guy so badly my temperature rose every time I thought about it. So even though I knew he didn't speak English and my Portuguese, which I hadn't spoken in years, was beyond rusty, I called his managers to set it up. The first interview was to be by phone from Germany. Phone? Germany? It would have been hard enough in person where I could at least read his lips, but on the phone? I was petrified.

I grabbed some Portuguese books and started reading out loud, praying that the phone connection would be clear and that he would speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Well, the big day arrived, and when he answered the phone and said, "Alo," it was as if he were in the same room with me. He was patient and spoke slowly enough so I could understand every word, and then when the interview was over, he said we should meet face-to-face when he came to New York. Wow! OK, I had already interviewed a lot of famous people, but this guy, well, he was special...at least to me.

I spent my time waiting for the next interview memorizing the lyrics to some of his songs. They were complex and difficult and there were many words, expressions and references that I didn't understand, but I picked up the spirit of his music because I felt it resonated with my own.

The New York interview took place in a big hotel in Manhattan. When I arrived, Djavan, dressed in a silky, long-sleeved brown printed shirt and dark pants, got up off the couch, walked over to me and kissed me on both cheeks, the way Brazilians do. We sat down side by side, and I pulled out my tape recorder. He was completely relaxed, and again very patient with my bumbling Portuguese. At one point we even sang one of his songs together. I had taken a photographer with me, and he caught some excellent shots of us. But the best part was that I had my Brass Tacks demo tape with me, and to my surprise, when I offered it to Djavan as a gift, instead of just stuffing it in his pocket and saying "obrigado," he insisted on listening to the whole thing right then and there, making comments as the tape rolled on. Forty minutes later, he took off the headphones, looked at me and said, "Voce tem milhares de ideias!"--you have thousands of ideas! I couldn't have been more pleased if he had asked me to make his next recording with him.

I had a third interview with Djavan several years later in Rio de Janeiro. Because the one in New York had been so much fun, I was really looking forward to this one. When I spoke with him in New York, he had an American manager who was trying to convince him to sing in English, and he was undecided about it. He had recorded a few songs in English on a recent album, and had asked me what I thought of his English, which was actually just phoneticized, since he didn't speak the language. I told him the problem wasn't his accent, but the fact that, in my opinion, most of his fans--especially his non-Brazilian fans--would rather hear him sing in Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese is so lovely and so musical, I told him.

Some time after that interview in New York, Djavan cancelled a tour that his manager had set up for him, and also left his recording company. There were a lot of rumors as to why he had done this. Some said the money wasn't right, others that his _pai de santo_ (an authority figure in the Brazilian macumba religion) had told him it would be bad luck, and a whole bunch of other stories, but my feeling was that he needed a radical change in his approach to his music.

This was confirmed when I interviewed him at Columbia Records in Rio. He was very late. I didn't mind waiting and was happy to see him--even happier that he remembered me from the previous interview. But this time he was different. He seemed a little distant, more formal, somewhat impatient. I didn't know if it was because we were in a more public space, but the interview was pretty cut-and-dried, not like the one in New York, where it felt like a couple of fellow musicians hanging out together. He made a point of saying that he was no longer singing in English and that he was concentrating more on his Brazilian roots. This pleased me, but made me wonder if he now viewed me, the gringa journalist, as from the opposing camp.

In any case, that was the last time I saw Djavan, except for when I went to his live recorded show in Rio for his double CD _Djavan ao Vivo_ , a commemoration of his 25-year career. I was just another member of the audience, and really had no desire to go back stage to talk to him and remind him who I was. Over the years I listened less and less to his music, but never lost my respect for it, or for him. It's just that my tastes had changed...I'd moved on, just as he had.

# CHAPTER 28: RIO DE JANEIRO

_Rio de Janeiro calls me and I run into her arms,_

_I can 't resist nor do I want to,_

_I 'm lost in the magic of a dream..._

_The air of Rio is a caress,_

_Ah, the air of Rio..._

_Whispers in my ear of music, color, rhythm_

_Ah, the irresistible rhythm of samba!_

_How I long for Rio every moment when I 'm away,_

_Put my life on the shelf,_

_Run to Rio where once again..._

_I am beautiful, I am beloved,_

_I am strong, I am free._

_The hills rise above the sea and they encircle me in love,_

_I stretch out my arms and Rio takes me,_

_The color, the rhythm, and the music and I are one._

It was the music that attracted me to Mazinho. He was the living embodiment of rhythm, a walking samba-soul, percussionist, singer, composer and skirt-chaser. He was irresistible, and since I was recently divorced, I went after him as if it was personal. It wasn't. It was about the music. He said he'd take me to Rio and introduce me to the heads of the samba schools, the large social organizations that make up the city's famous Carnival parades.

"That's the only way you'll get in--with _me_ ," he said with the arrogance of one who knows. I believed him, for about a minute.

When I realized that Mazinho's offer was nothing but hot air, I formulated another plan: I could write a story about Carnival in Rio de Janeiro for the _Monitor_. But I didn't want to make the trip alone, so I invited my Brazilian photographer friend Robert Serbinenko to go along with me and take pictures, because I knew he was eager to get back home to Brazil. I called him.

"Hi Robert. I'm going to Rio, do you want to go with me?" I said, getting right to the point.

"Oh hi, Amy, how's everything?" he said in his Brazilian way of greeting a friend before tackling the business at hand. "Yeah, I really want to go back, but I don't have the money."

"Listen, I've got a bunch of frequent flyer miles," I said. "And I could help you out, if you can help me."

"Help you? How?" he asked.

So I explained my idea about the story and the photos, even though I hadn't even approached my editor about it yet. Robert wasn't crazy about Rio, samba or Carnival, and his family lived in another state, but he agreed to go. After all, it was a good deal for him--a free trip home. This was 1990.

At the _Monitor_ , David Holmstrom wasn't the chief editor of the paper, he was the features editor, but he liked me.

"You've got guts," he said when I proposed the idea of going to Rio on a shoestring and doing a story about Carnival for the paper. "It'll never get past the head offices, but let's not worry about that. I think we can carve a bit out of the budget--it'll be tight, though."

"I can use my frequent flyer miles to get down and back," I said. "so all I'll really need is some expense money."

"I'll see what I can do," said David, and I just about hugged him right there in the newsroom. I had a good feeling about it. All these years after seeing "Black Orpheus," I was finally going to make it to Rio de Janeiro!

A couple of weeks later when I was in Boston again, David gave me the happy news. I'd be leaving for Rio in two weeks, and would stay for a month! When I got back to New York I spent the next two weeks running around getting things ready. "A bathing suit! I need a bathing suit!" It was February, summertime in Rio, and I couldn't wait to see the beaches there.

Robert and I arrived at the airport in plenty of time. I brought my camera so I could record every minute of this amazing event. I even took pictures of Robert in the airport lounge, and asked total strangers to take shots of both of us.

The trip was around nine hours, but I didn't care. It was nighttime, so I would eat, watch a dumb movie and then try to sleep a little. But it didn't even matter to me whether I slept or not, I was so excited.

Morning finally came, and the arrival at the Galeao International Airport (now called Antonio Carlos Jobim after Brazil's most beloved composer and musician). My mouth felt cottony and I was stiff from trying to bend my body into a pretzel in the narrow seat. But so what? I was in Rio de Janeiro!

Robert found an information desk at the airport where we were given the address of a Portuguese man in Copacabana who was renting a _temporada_ , a short-term furnished apartment. This was a smart move on Robert's part, because it would be a lot cheaper for us than a hotel. We got on a couple of buses and finally ended up in Copacabana, one of Rio's most famous beach areas. Even though I hadn't seen the beach yet, I felt something lovely about Copa just looking out the bus window. Most of the little side streets were lined with low trees that had big green leaves, and many of the sidewalks were mosaics made of black and white stones. Everything was small and cozy, and the streets were jammed with people. I felt at home.

We went to the Portuguese man's apartment and sat on incredibly hideous overstuffed furniture while I paid him in dollars for letting us stay in his temporada for two weeks. I had a hard time understanding what he was saying because of this thick European accent. Then he marched us over to the temporada, which was on the avenue we'd come down on the bus. It was a large place with a couple of bedrooms, not very clean (the landlord's thinly-veiled racist excuse was that there had been about ten people from Angola staying there before us), and with a phone that could be used only to receive calls--not that it mattered, since in those days the phone service was so bad you couldn't even be sure of getting a line.

Our landlord left us alone, and I kicked off my shoes and collapsed on top of a thin sponge mattress on one of the rickety wooden beds. The long flight was catching up with me. Robert sat at the kitchen table and read a newspaper he'd bought at the airport while I snoozed. He closed the windows and turned the ceiling fan on, because the noise from the street was so loud he couldn't focus on his reading.

Before long, I was rested and chipper and Robert and I began our adventure of going to the samba schools and trying to find people to interview. I found a tour guide who had the addresses of all the major samba schools--Salgueiro (Willow Tree), Mangueira (Mango Tree), Beija-flor (Hummingbird) and numerous others. We set out, me with my hand-held tape recorder and Robert with his camera. These places aren't really schools, but large gymnasium-like rehearsal spaces called _quadras_ where the people who participate in the yearly Carnival parades practice their routines. The big percussion band, called the _bateria_ , usually practices on Saturday nights and the quadra is open to the public for dancing and beer-drinking until dawn, for a small fee. I wasn't ready for what awaited me at the first samba school we visited, Mangueira.

I was standing in the quadra right in front of the high stage where the bateria played. There must have been around forty guys up there, the ones playing the _tamborins_ --small high-pitched hand-held drums played with a three-pronged plastic stick--standing in the front row. Behind them were the _caixas_ (snare drums) and _repiniques_ (tom-toms played with the hand and one stick, often used to lead the group). In the back, interspersed among the caixas and repiniques, were the _surdos_ (surdo means "deaf" in Portuguese), the big, LOUD bass drums that drive the rhythm of the entire bateria.

I wasn't prepared for the thunderous, swinging, overwhelming sound that exploded from the stage when the _diretor de bateria_ gave the downbeat, or whatever the heck it was that he did--the repinique played a little riff, and they all came slamming in, and I do mean slamming--I had to catch my breath. My heart nearly stopped, and then started pounding, in sync with the surdos, I think, and then my feet started to move. The next thing I knew I was being whirled around the floor by a chubby, smiling brown fellow in a red T-shirt. Robert was running back and forth through the crowd trying to get pictures. All I could think was: This is what I want to do. I want to play samba in Rio de Janeiro!

After that first wonderful night at Mangueira, Robert and I continued going around to the other samba schools. I really started to get a feeling for Carnival and what this event means to the cariocas--the natives of Rio de Janeiro. Every Saturday, the quadras were jammed with people of every size, type, age and color, including small children, sitting around the walls at flimsy metal tables drinking beers or sodas or out in the middle dancing. The baterias played all night long, from around 11 p.m. until past 4 a.m. until the kids all fell asleep in their chairs or on someone's lap, and the tables were covered with empty bottles.

The _Monitor_ also wanted some coverage of other Brazilian music besides the samba schools, and that's why I did my third interview with Djavan. I also interviewed Beth Carvalho, a popular veteran samba singer. Robert and I went to her home on a private road, high on a cliff overlooking the ocean. She wasn't particularly friendly, and when she saw Robert with the camera, she refused to let him take her picture. I had to use a cover from one of her albums for the article. She did give me some tips as to where I could go hear some small samba groups, though, and our brief conversation was enough to flesh out my article.

By the time we were getting close to the end of our second week in the temporada, I knew I wanted to stay longer in Rio. The newspaper had given me a month, after all. But Robert didn't want to stay. He was anxious to get home to see his mother and friends in Belo Horizonte. I didn't have a lot of money left, so I knew I couldn't rent the apartment for another two weeks. I decided to see if I could find someone who would put me up. I didn't know a soul in Rio, but that didn't stop me. I thought and pondered my options and it occurred to me that I might visit the local Christian Science church and see if I could find someone there who would help me. I was curious to see the church anyway, so I chose a Wednesday night when the custom is for members of the congregation to stand up and give testimonies about their healings. I headed out to Maracana, where the church was located in the shadow of Rio's famous soccer stadium.

When the period for giving testimonies was nearly over, I stood up and said I was visiting from New York and needed a place to stay because I was researching the samba schools for _The Christian Science Monitor_. I suppose it was what the cariocas might call _cara-de-pau_ ("shameless," literally "wooden face") for me to do this, but I was desperate to stay in Rio for my allotted month!

After the meeting, a woman about my age with curly blondish hair and big, warm brown eyes approached me and said, somewhat apologetically, "I live sort of far away, but if you don't mind that, I'd be happy to have you stay with me. I love to go to the samba schools." Her name was Maria da Conceiçao Ferreira de Almeida, and it was the beginning of a mutually supportive friendship that has endured to this day.

Conceiçao, as her friends called her, lived in Rio's working class North Zone (as opposed to the South Zone, considered the tourist area) in a rather desolate and dusty-looking part of a neighborhood called Iraja, a stone's throw from Rio's famous multi-lane highway, Avenida Brasil. The apartment she lived in used to belong to her parents, who had both passed away. Conceiçao had never married, and had been working at the same office job for over 30 years. Always interested in religion and metaphysics, she had gotten involved in Christian Science a couple of years before.

Turns out that Conceiçao not only loved samba, but had three festive girlfriends (Rita, Berenice and Edna) who also loved to go to the samba schools. Furthermore, she had a car, which meant it would be easy for us to get around. Rita was tall and chubby with a gummy smile, and Berenice, her mom, was just the opposite--she was skinny as a rail with bony wrists and feet that reminded me of a Don Martin cartoon. Edna was a slender, pretty light-skinned black woman with freckles. We became "the gang" and adopted the name _as bo emias_--the bohemians. Every Saturday night we'd squeeze into Conceiçao's tiny Chevette and head for one of the samba schools, usually Mangueira, which had turned out to be our favorite.

So not only did I get everything I needed for my _Monitor_ article, up close and personal with real Rio de Janeiro natives, I also made some good friends. I still had a lot of frequent flyer miles left from the Boston-New York trips for the _Monitor_ , and when I got back from Rio all I could think about was when I could make my next trip. I stayed in touch with Conceiçao, and a couple of months after I got home she called and asked me if I'd like to go out in Mangueira's Carnival parade the following year.

"There are some cheap costumes," she said, "and you can fax me your measurements. Then when you get here we can go to Mangueira to have them fitted."

Well, there was no way I was going to pass up a chance like that, so I immediately started thinking of ways that I could convince my editor to send me to Rio again to do another story about Carnival. The editors had been very pleased with my first effort, which they published as a two-page spread in the middle of the paper, so I felt my chances were good.

"How about a 'letter from Rio' kind of thing?" I asked David Holmstrom. "You know, something really personal, like my going out in the parade and writing about it."

I managed to convince him without too much wheedling, since once again I had enough frequent flyer miles for the trip.

Each school that participated in the parade had a theme and a special song based on the theme. Mangueira's was "The Three Lace Makers of the Universe," about the earth, sky and sea and the origins of the universe. Conceiçao chose some simple lacy costumes with short skirts, in pink and green, which are Mangueira's official colors. For the rest of the year I felt as if I were marking time until I could get back to Rio. Christmas and New Year's Eve rolled by, and the next thing I knew it was almost February and time to catch my flight south.

The first thing Conceiçao and I did was go to the Mangueira _favela_ (slum) where two elderly ladies fitted us for our costumes. Conceiçao had never been out in the parades before either, so she was just as excited as I was. When the big night arrived, we took the subway downtown in our costumes and headed for the _concentra çao_, the area outside the Sambadrome (the special avenue built for the parades) where all the samba schools lined up with their floats and groups of people in costume, waiting for the parade to start. This was fascinating to me because I got to see everything up close--hundreds of people in brightly colored feathers and sequins, wearing every conceivable kind of costume, from birds with gossamer wings to cartoon-like masks.

When our turn to enter the avenue finally came, we had to run to catch up with the others and I slipped and fell, scraping my knee and tearing my stocking. But there was no stopping now. The samba school directors were herding us onto the avenue like cattle, yelling and prodding us to move faster, faster--we can't leave any holes in the parade! We'll lose points! After all, this wasn't just for fun, it was a competition with a big money prize at stake, not that I gave a fig about that!

Once we were out there, things calmed down a little as the parade settled into a steady rhythm. We twirled around and danced down the avenue under the glaring scrutiny of the directors, who made sure we never stopped moving--or smiling and singing and looking as perky as possible. The bleachers were packed with people, mostly standing up, dancing and waving pink and green Mangueira flags as we glided by. I was having the time of my life, but I knew our school wouldn't win. Mangueira didn't have as much money then as they do now, and our parade was poor--the floats were small and unimpressive and the costumes were fairly simple compared with the more sumptuous ones of some of the other schools. We came in next to last, and were almost demoted to the group below us in the judging a few days later. But it didn't matter to me. After all, I'd been out in a real Rio Carnival parade!

I wrote up my "letter from Rio" for the _Monitor_ , which was received with equal pleasure and kudos by the editors, and then realized that would be the last time I'd be able to pull my "Rio Carnival correspondent" stunt. But I had caught the Rio bug, and knew I'd be going back the following year. I still had my frequent flyer miles and now I had friends in Rio, so I spent the whole year saving up money for my expenses, and sure enough, the next year the bohemians were back at the Mangueira quadra in full force.

Mangueira didn't let women play in the bateria, much less an American woman. But I had learned to play the tamborim with some sambistas in New York, and even though I wasn't an expert like these guys, I had memorized all the breaks of that year's samba. So I sat at our table with my tamborim, tapping away. This really seemed to piss off one skinny old-timer in particular, who kept vibing me from the stage. During the break, it was hard not to overhear him telling one of the other guys, loudly so I could hear him, that I was playing wrong and interfering with the bateria. Yeah, like he could really hear my dinky little tap, tap, tap over more than forty pounding drums!

One night the drummers came down from the high stage and played on the floor. I sat at my table right near them and accompanied the tamborim pattern with my hands because I hadn't brought my tamborim. One of the tamborim players saw me, offered me his instrument and gestured for me to get up and play. I did, and actually managed to play for almost two minutes before the director caught sight of me and ordered me to sit down. Earlier the same night an American guy I knew from New York had gone right up onto the stage to play and no one had said anything.

But I was not to be deterred. A friend had told me about a small traditional samba school out on the Ilha do Governador near the airport where he thought for sure they would let me play. So one night I got Conceiçao to take me there. I brought my tamborim, and right away the guys in the bateria asked me if I wanted to go out in the Carnival parade with them. Maybe they were desperate to flesh out their bateria, but I didn't care--I thought ah, this is more like it.

So I learned that the smart way to get into the samba world in Rio is to start small. Gradually I got to know the directors of this school, Boi da Ilha (The Bull of the Island) and they introduced me to another guy who had a _bloco_ , sort of a mini samba school, called Balanço do Cocota (Cocota Swing)--Cocota being another neighborhood on the Ilha do Governador--so I ended up playing in both groups and going out in two Carnival parades that year. Boi da Ilha marched downtown on Avenida Rio Branco and Balanço do Cocota held their parade in Madureira, a neighborhood that is home to two of Rio's most traditional and beloved samba schools, Portela and Imperio Serrano. That parade really reminded me of the film _Black Orpheus_ , and I was suddenly and happily aware of how my dream from the early 60s had actually and finally come true.

I went back to Rio again the following years and stayed with a friend in Copacabana. I paraded with Boi and Balanço again and became one of the "tamborim gang." I was obsessed. By this time I was on my own, because the boemias weren't interested in following me around in my little samba groups. But I wasn't afraid to take the two long bus rides out to the Ilha and come back by myself at dawn. Nothing ever happened to me and I knew it wouldn't. I was on a mission and I felt I was protected, no matter what. I'd sit on the bus alone at 4 a.m. in my samba school T-shirt and everybody ignored me. I'd seen guys get in fights at the quadra, and even pull guns, but none of it ever came near me. One of my tamborim buddies told me that nobody ever hurt anybody in the band, and I believed him.

# CHAPTER 29: IVO AND SAMBA IN RIO

_THE GIFT_

_A gentle wind blew across the ocean_

_And left you on my doorstep,_

_You brought a gift I didn 't see at first,_

_You kept it hidden in your smile,_

_Until I thought it was your smile, and nothing more._

_And I wanted you._

_But then, without a word, you said to me,_

_" It's not me you want, but this," and you gave me the gift,_

_Then you walked away._

_Now every day, I take it in my hands and turn it_

_This way and that way,_

_I watch it catch the light from every view,_

_And I 'm filled with wonder,_

_The wonder of this gift from you._

Just before I went to Rio the first time, I had been hanging around with Mazinho at Cuando, the neighborhood cultural center and samba rehearsal space, when Ivo showed up. Mazinho said, "This is the guy I was telling you about. He's the best samba player I know." I looked up. Ivo was a little under average height, a bit intellectual-looking, I thought, with his glasses, and he looked like he might have some Arab blood in his background. Other than that, he was just another Brazilian guy living in New York. It certainly wasn't love at first sight for me. He told me, several years later when we were married, that he had actually met me once before at a samba class at Cuando and tried to talk to me, but I had put him off. Apparently he'd had his eye on me ever since...who knew?

Some time later, Loisaida, our little local samba group (a Latino-style abbreviation of "Lower East Side") was scheduled to do a gig at a dance party, and we were to meet in front of Cuando. When I arrived, Ivo was standing there on the sidewalk. He said, "Hey, you look so pretty," in Portuguese. I ignored him.

After that, I'd see him from time to time at the samba percussion classes. I remember one time he suddenly started jumping around and jerking his feet and body like a madman--I thought he must be either drunk or possessed. In my ignorance, I didn't realize that he was a master of "samba no pe," traditional Brazilian samba dancing. Later on I learned that he had been a _passista_ , an official samba dancer, for the famous samba school Portela.

For the most part, though, I didn't see Ivo much, and really forgot about him until after I'd been to Brazil myself and had played in the samba schools and become more familiar with Brazilian culture and music. One time, between trips to Brazil, Loisaida had a gig in New Jersey and Ivo was there. He was sitting in the dressing room playing the surdo (the big bass drum) and singing a traditional samba song. I had learned some of these songs while in Rio, so I joined in and sang with him. Afterwards I asked him some questions about some of the lyrics, and he was very friendly. I could feel myself becoming attracted to him--or was it just the music? In the course of our conversation he mentioned that his girlfriend also spoke Portuguese. Well, I thought, that's that, then.

Later on Ivo produced a show in Queens and called me up to invite me to see it. I didn't go. Girlfriend or no, it felt like he was hitting on me. I had just split up with Evans, and even though I thought Ivo was kind of interesting, I wasn't all that keen on seeing someone right away. Also, I had the erroneous impression that most Brazilian men were liars and cheats, because a lot of the Brazilian guys I had met in the New York samba crowd were indeed liars and cheats. A little later, though, I heard that Ivo was giving samba percussion classes with Jorjao and Justin, two other samba players, so I went because it was something that really interested me and I wanted to improve my skills. I'd already paraded with some small samba schools in Rio playing tamborim, but it was hard for me to keep up with the other players.

I knew that Ivo was a great samba player, but when he tried to teach me how to play the tamborim correctly, I couldn't understand him. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. He just kept saying it was wrong but couldn't seem to explain why. Finally I just kept quiet and tried to copy him, the way I'd done in the samba schools in Rio. I realized that asking him a million questions would never help me to play "right."

I went to the classes for a while, but then Ivo stopped teaching. I couldn't stand to be in the same room with Justin, a Panamanian wannabe Brazilian who at that time was Ivo's partner and one of the most abrasive individuals I've ever met. He used to pick on all the students, particularly the women, and had even made a couple of them cry. So I stopped studying tamborim.

After that, I didn't see Ivo for a long time. I was struggling with my job at the _Monitor_. I had gradually stopped writing and was doing only television and radio spots, and was unhappy and frustrated with my job. I didn't like TV and radio as much as I had writing, and I felt I needed a change.

Finally, when the Monitor Channel folded, I was free. They gave me a year's severance pay, and I also had some small investments. I ended up blowing all of it and getting over $40,000 into debt, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Uncertain as to what I should do next, I moved out of my pricey apartment on Avenue B and into an inexpensive place on E. 8th Street. By this time Madeleine and Hilary both had places of their own, also in the East Village, so we were able to stay in close touch. My new place was a sixth floor walk-up, which was bad enough, but then problems with the landlord and noisy neighbors soon made me regret I'd made the move.

I'd briefly thought about continuing my journalism career with another newspaper, but I knew I wasn't really a journalist. _The Christian Science Monitor_ was special, unlike other newspapers, and I knew I wouldn't be happy working for some daily paper. In any case, I really didn't want to continue in that career. I still wanted to be a musician, but had no idea how to get back into the swing of things.

I was feeling restless and directionless, so instead of sitting down and really praying about the situation, I decided I should get out and have some fun to get my mind off my troubles. I started going out with some of my samba pals to S.O.B.'s, New York's hot Brazilian music club, and some other clubs. I was beginning to wish I had a man around again, but when I went to these clubs I'd always end up with some drunken slob on the dance floor looking for a one-night stand. I used to run into the ladies' room and hide, and then make a dash for it so they wouldn't follow me home.

One night I went to a samba rehearsal and was hanging around outside talking with some people. I looked up and saw Ivo walking toward us. I hadn't seen him in months. When he saw me he just about flipped out and showered me with compliments. This time I didn't ignore him. He grabbed me and didn't let go of me for practically the whole rehearsal. On the way out he still had his arm around me and asked if I had the same phone number as before. My long period of voluntary isolation from men had made me wary, but I had also reached the point of "what the heck." When he left, I said to a woman I knew, "Doesn't he have a girlfriend?" She said, "I'm not sure...I thought he was married."

Thinking it over I sometimes wonder: was it the men I fell in love with, or the music? Ivo was the perfect _bamba_ --a guy so steeped in samba culture that he lived and breathed it every day of his life and wasn't interested in much else. I loved that about him. He couldn't even ride in an elevator without banging out the rhythms of a Rio bateria on the walls, oblivious to the stares of those around him. Whenever he had an instrument in his hand, he was completely focused on what he was doing and absolutely nothing could distract him. I admired this in him because I had always allowed anything and everything to distract me from my music. Little did I know that Ivo would turn out to be my biggest distraction ever--especially from my own music.

I had seen him play and teach, and I was convinced that he should teach his own classes and form his own percussion group. But Justin was his partner, and they seemed to be joined at the hip. Ivo liked the idea of doing something on his own, but he didn't know how to get away from Justin. He was afraid that Justin would badmouth him to the other Brazilian musicians and make things hard for him. But I just kept insisting that he could do it and I would help him. I was relentless, and before long we started making plans to get some instruments together and begin teaching classes.

Well, Justin got wind of the plan and told Ivo I was dangerous. But we just went ahead anyway. We rented a dumpy room at Fazil's studio in Hell's Kitchen, Times Square, the same place where I had rehearsed "Backstage Blues" with the tap dancers when I'd first moved to New York. We started out with a couple of students, and there were problems right from the get-go. Ivo and I didn't see eye-to-eye about keeping things organized, charging people a fair price and making sure they paid it. He would invite his Brazilian friends and not charge them, while all the American and European students were paying. He seemed to have no business sense at all. Nevertheless, because I thought I was in love with him I was willing to do just about anything to keep us together and keep working with him.

I forced Ivo into marrying me. Even though he wanted to get his green card, I could see that he wasn't really interested in marrying me. In fact, when we first starting giving classes together he was still living with his girlfriend. But I did what I had always done. I just kept suggesting and hinting until he finally gave in. By that time he had moved out of his girlfriend's place and was more or less living with me. But we weren't getting along, and I was becoming more and more emotionally dependent, jealous and insecure. Ivo was a big flirt, and the way he was always touching the girls in class infuriated me.

In spite of these red flags, we set a date for our marriage. The night before we were supposed to go to City Hall with Madeleine and Hilary as our witnesses, he picked a fight with me over a dumb TV show and stomped out of the apartment. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling all night. The next morning he called and said everything was all right, and that he would meet me at City Hall. I showed up with my daughters, who were bravely and kindly trying to support my decision to marry yet again. Ivo said nothing about what he had done the night before, and we went in and got married. When it came time to kiss the bride, Ivo gave me a little peck and said, "A kiss is just a kiss..." Then he left me with Mad and Hil and went to New Jersey to meet his friends.

The next day we got together and talked about what we were going to do. Even though we had tried to start our little percussion school, I really wanted to leave New York and go live in Rio, and I knew that's what Ivo wanted, too. He came from a huge family, and most of them were still there. His parents had had a mind-boggling 20 children, and the ones who were still alive were mostly in Rio. Although he had twin sisters in California and two brothers in the New York area, he missed Rio after nearly a decade in the USA. He had made it clear to me after the wedding that this was just an "arrangement" so he could get his green card and I could get my permanent visa in Brazil.

So we packed up our things and moved to Rio in 1993. I left everything behind, including Brass Tacks, and barely gave it a second thought. The only thing I would miss would be my daughters, but once again, they kindly supported, or maybe tolerated my decision.

I wanted to have a real marriage, but since I knew how Ivo felt, I decided it would be better for me to separate from him after we got to Rio, so I asked my friend Conceiçao if I could stay with her until I found a place of my own. She agreed, and Ivo went to stay with Marcelo, an old intellectual whom he had lived with years ago when he was a student. After a few days he called me to say it was ridiculous for me to stay with Conceiçao, since we were married, and why didn't I go stay with him at Marcelo's? I was extremely surprised, and wondered if Marcelo had had a little talk with him. I was reluctant to go, but I finally did, with misgivings, because I hoped it might be a sign that Ivo wanted our marriage to work after all.

Life at Marcelo's place was unpleasant, to say the least. The apartment was very nice and was in a good neighborhood, but Marcelo had a young man named Carlos living with him that Ivo despised. And even though Marcelo tried to be nice to me, I could tell that he didn't like me. I found his Portuguese well nigh impossible to understand, since he spoke very fast and swallowed half his words, so it was difficult to hold a conversation with him. Ivo defended me up to a point, but was in such a constant state of irritation over Carlos that he started picking on me, too. After a couple of weeks of this I went out and bought a newspaper to look for an apartment--for myself.

As it turned out, Conceiçao helped me find a sweet little (very little) studio apartment in Copacabana just one short block from the beach with a lateral view of the ocean from the window. She knew someone in the administrative office that handled the apartment for the owner, and so, even though I had no work history in Brazil and my documents weren't quite in place yet, the owner was willing to let me put down a deposit instead of having to find a co-signer, which was the usual routine in Rio.

I moved in, and even though I was sad about me and Ivo, I was very relieved to be alone again. However, before much time had gone by, he started calling me and dropping by. But when he did he would always say things like, "This will never work," and "I don't want to live with you," so I never really knew what to think. Why did he even bother to visit me? It made no sense. I finally just gave up.

One day I met a guy, an artist, at a restaurant downtown. He started flirting with me and asked me to go out with him, and since I was feeling alone and rejected, I said I would. We went on the trolley to Santa Teresa, Rio's hillside artists' community, and then took a bus to the Tijuca Forest. I got home very late and the doorman said that Ivo had been there waiting for me all afternoon. He even left a note saying that things would work out, that he missed me, and that he wanted to go to church with me on Sunday! My date with the artist was nothing more than sheer rebellion, but I was pleased that it had made Ivo nervous.

Actually, I was sick and tired of Ivo jacking me around, so I met him at McDonald's one afternoon and told him that I was seeing someone else and that he would have to make up his mind. From that point on he became totally protective of me. He wanted to know who the guy was (probably so he could punch out his lights), said he was happy for me (sure), but I wouldn't tell him. In any case, I'd only gone out with the guy once, and then one day he had stopped by the apartment totally drunk, so that was the end of that.

As I look back on my behavior at that time, I can't believe how reckless and foolish I was. It never even occurred to me that I might be endangering myself by going to a deserted spot in the Tijuca forest with a total stranger. What was I thinking? Apparently I _wasn 't_ thinking. And then the way I let Ivo manipulate me. Why would I do that? All I can think of is that the only sense of purpose I had at that time in my life was to be with a man. That seemed to overshadow everything else. I had left Brass Tacks in New York, and really believed there was no way I could put the band together in Rio--in fact I never even thought about it at all.

But even though I didn't have Brass Tacks any more, at least I had samba. In fact, samba was what ended up bringing me and Ivo together--at least for a while. After our talk in McDonald's, we agreed to try things out in my apartment. The first thing we did after he settled in with me was to start haunting the samba schools. He knew that I had paraded with two groups from the Ilha do Governador, so we started going out to the major samba school there, Uniao da Ilha, every Saturday night. Ivo was able to get us into the rehearsals because first of all he was Brazilian, and second of all a great samba player. I rode in on his coattails. Our activities in the samba schools seemed to improve our relationship for the time being.

In the smaller schools I had always played the tamborim, but the tamborim section at Uniao da Ilha was really strong, and I couldn't keep up at all. Ivo suggested that I switch to caixa, the snare drum, and it turned out to be a good choice. I liked playing caixa and it was easier than the tamborim, even though I missed playing the special tamborim patterns. I learned caixa by standing next to different guys at rehearsal who could play really well and trying to copy what they were doing. Sometimes they would even stop and help me. They'd show me the beat, how to hold the sticks, how to play the accents.

I loved being up on the high concrete stage above the quadra with the deafening roar of the drums and the awful loudspeakers. The speakers were for the singers, the seven-stringed guitar player and the _cavaquinho_ (similar to a ukulele) player, who stood on another high stage across the quadra.

Ivo played caixa too, and sometimes surdo and repinique. He taught me how to behave in the samba school, how to be cool, not to get too friendly with some of the people. There were some tough guys there from the favelas, and you had to watch what you said and how you acted. This was easy for me because all I was interested in was learning how to play, so I just kept my mouth shut and watched and copied. I wasn't interested in making friends with anybody. The directors were tough, too. They'd yell at us and sometimes even push us if we were standing in the wrong place or we didn't get back from break fast enough. Once one of them yanked my arm so hard I thought he'd pulled it out of the socket, but I just kept on playing. After a certain hour no one was allowed to leave the stage so they could be sure to have a reasonably full band right up until after 4 a.m. After all, we were playing for paying customers, even though we didn't get paid ourselves.

But I didn't care about the stiff rules, the mean directors, the smelly bathroom, the stifling heat or the deafening noise. I was in my element playing with the other " _ritmistas "_--who were mostly men, although there were a few women scattered throughout the bateria, mostly playing shakers. I was happy to be up there, playing my drum as hard as I could, and I was more than grateful for the free soda pop they gave us on the breaks.

My biggest thrill was when the director of Uniao da Ilha, Paulao (Big Paul), a giant surly black man with a bum leg and a frog-like smile he rarely showed, agreed to give me a costume and let me go out in the Carnival parade. He had seen me with Ivo at all the rehearsals, and commented on my "assiduousness." Of course Ivo was a shoe-in, but for me this was a really big deal. Even though I had already been out with smaller samba schools and had paraded in the Sambadrome, to get the chance to go out with the bateria of Uniao da Ilha, a samba school from the _Grupo Especial_ --the top group--was a real honor.

That first year, Uniao da Ilha's theme was "Abrakadabra," and the members of the bateria wore black and white satin costumes with stars on them, long capes, bow ties, wristlets and black and silver boots. We even had top hats. My costume was too big, of course, especially the boots, and very heavy, but I was undaunted. I couldn't wait to get to the Sambadrome with my drum.

When the big day finally arrived, Ivo and I stood there in the dead of night (the parades are always at night to avoid the heat of Rio's sun) with more than 400 other drummers. Our school's name was announced and then the sky suddenly filled with red, white and blue fireworks. I just stood there, covered in goosebumps, and when I think about it today I still get goosebumps. Next came the downbeat and the thunderous sound of the drums as we marched out onto the avenue between the bleachers on one side and the loges on the other, filled with thousands of fans shouting, singing and waving flags.

This was so much more fun than parading with Mangueira because I was _playing --_I was right in the middle of that pulsating, overwhelming rhythm, I was a part of it. About half way down the avenue the entire bateria made a left turn, perfectly synchronized by the directors, into the "box"--a side area where we waited for the rest of the samba school to go by so we could bring up the rear at the end of the parade. Then we emerged from the box and continued to the _Apoteose_ , the arches at the end of the avenue. It seemed the entire parade had gone by so fast that I wished we could go back and do it again. And indeed, Ivo and I did do that one year. We went out with two different schools and changed our costumes at a friend's place near the Sambadrome. We knew of some people who went out in four, five and even more schools, scheduling everything carefully over the two nights of parades.

"Hurry up and wait" seemed to be the slogan at Rio's samba schools. Ivo and I would rush to the bus, then rush to the quadra, and then wait and wait until we could actually play. At the Uniao da Ilha rehearsals we always had to wait for one of the directors to show up so we could get in. The crowds would be pushing, and there'd be a long line of people trying to get through the turnstile where a taciturn old geezer would say _" sim"_ or _" nao"_ to anyone trying to get in for free, like us. When he said "nao," there'd inevitably be an argument, while the ones in line behind the would-be gate crasher would yell for him or her to pay up or get out. Ivo and I would always be there, outside the line, scanning the crowds for a glimpse of Paulao, Cosme or one of the other directors to notice us and let us in.

One time we rushed to a parade with the small bloco Balanço do Cocota and ended up waiting _five hours_ to start playing! But there was no logic to the "hurry up and wait" thing, and no predictability. Another time Uniao da Ilha had scored high enough in the Carnival for us to participate in the championship parade on the following Saturday. I guess Ivo and I weren't all that psyched to get into our heavy, hot, uncomfortable costumes and repeat a parade we'd already done, so we arrived late at the Sambadrome. We thought everything would be cool because of the "hurry up and wait" rule, but to our horror, the instrument truck had already left. Shame! We ran to the avenue, where our school was lined up and ready to go, instruments in hand. When we got there, Paulao was chewing out some guy who was so drunk he could hardly stand up. His costume was half on and half off, and his snare drum was hanging crookedly off one shoulder. One of the directors, swearing and yelling, pulled out a knife and slashed his drum head. "You're not going to parade tonight, my friend," he said.

Meanwhile, Ivo and I hid ourselves among the 400+ bateria, shrugging our shoulders when some of the players noticed that we didn't have any drums. The fireworks went off, and we started to move down the avenue, empty handed. We danced along for a while, and then someone suddenly thrust the drum with the broken head into my hands. I was so happy! I couldn't really play it very well because of the ripped skin, but I was just glad to have a drum to hold, and in a few minutes someone handed Ivo a drum, too. We had a fun time and learned a valuable lesson about "hurry up and wait" in Rio.

It didn't take me long to figure out that Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s was actually the Wild West in disguise. The feeling of danger was always in the air. If you saw a gang of boys, you quickly moved to the other side of the street. You learned to watch your back and divide your money up, shoving some in your underwear and just a little in your pocket. You rarely used a purse and only put a few _cruzeiros_ in your _pochete_ (fanny pack). When you entered your building, you made sure that no one was tailgating behind you that you didn't recognize.

The thing you have to understand about Rio is that the middle class--and yes, there is a large middle class--lives in very close proximity to the poorest of the poor because the favelas are usually in the hills up over the "regular" neighborhoods, which are referred to as the _asfalto_ (asphalt, because they have paved sidewalks, unlike many favelas). But the favelas are a world apart--they essentially have their own "government"--the law in the favelas is the law of the gun, and many of the men and boys are armed. Rio itself is divided into two parts--the South Zone, which includes the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, where the middle and upper classes live, and where the tourists go; and the North Zone, a vast area where both lower and middle class people live. There are favelas in both areas, steadily growing larger and more widespread.

Some of the samba schools we played in held rehearsals in the favelas, where scrawny teenage boys, their eyes flat and expressionless, with old men's faces from sniffing glue, stood holding machine guns with the nonchalant air of seasoned soldiers. The drug dealers ruled in the favelas, along with the police, and sometimes it was hard to tell which was which.

Ivo and I played in two samba schools that rehearsed high up in the hills of the favelas. We would climb the steep streets on rehearsal nights, and sometimes there would be a couple of PMs (military police) standing with their weapons at the bottom of the hill. They would occasionally stop us and hold up their hands to indicate that we couldn't go up. That's how we knew there was trouble, and a shootout was probably about to erupt.

My friend Djilma lived in the Dende favela on the Ilha do Governador. One of the samba schools we played with rehearsed there, Academicos do Dende, which was my personal favorite because it was so spirited and well-organized. One day Djilma, who was living with her niece, came home from work to find bullet holes in her door. She ran into the house--no one was home--and saw her niece's bed riddled with holes. Later on Djilma was able to move out of Dende, which became even more violent over the next few years. The samba school had to move their rehearsals down the hill away from the favela.

Ivo and I were staying down the hill, too, right across the road from Dende, in his sister's apartment. Right after Carnival that year there were shootouts every night in the favela. The guns, especially the M-15s, shoot a great distance, and one evening a boy who was playing soccer in the park with his friends, a good half-mile down from the favela, got shot in the hand. Every night, when we were already in bed, we'd suddenly hear the "bam! bam! toc! toc!" of the guns up in the favela, and we'd have to get up and go sleep in the back room, away from the window facing Dende.

It was dangerous all right, even in the tourist areas where there were also a lot of favelas in the surrounding hills. Once a man living in Copacabana in a nice middle-class apartment building got shot right in his bed. The shots came from the favela behind his building and went through his bedroom window. It was in the newspapers. But Ivo and I had other up-close and personal encounters with Rio's own brand of violence.

One day we got on the bus in Copacabana to go downtown. The bus driver swung around Leme at the end of Copacabana, went under the overpass, and slammed past the Rio Sul shopping center and into Botafogo, where he stopped by the beach to pick up passengers. Suddenly a man got on waving a gun. Immediately everyone in the bus jumped to their feet, including me, ready to run for it. Then the guy said:

"This isn't a holdup!" And Ivo grabbed my arm.

"Sit down," he said, as everyone else was scrambling to get off the bus. "He's looking for someone."

"But what if he finds the guy and starts shooting?" I said, my heart pounding, thinking Ivo had gone off his rocker. But I sat down. By now we were the only ones left on the bus--in less than a minute everyone else had cleared out, including the gunman! Ivo laughed about it for a week until I felt like punching him.

Another time I was returning alone from visiting friends in Tijuca, a neighborhood in Rio's north zone. It was around midnight, and the bus was heading down Riachuelo street downtown when the driver slammed on the brakes. I looked out the window and we were surrounded by police cars. There were PMs with machine guns and riot helmets. I was really nervous because I didn't have my ID with me. This was my first experience with a _blitz_ --a drug shakedown. Thank God they didn't ask us for our IDs. Apparently they didn't find who or what they were looking for, because in a few minutes we were on our way again.

So why would anyone want to live in Rio if it's that dangerous? Why would I want to live here? Well first of all, I've been referring to some specific incidents, mostly having to do with life in or near the favelas. After living in Rio for over a decade, I'd have to say that it's no more violent than any other large city--it just has its own style of violence, and the violence has actually lessened over the past few years. The scenes I'm describing here are mostly from the 1990s and early 2000s. Also, there's a kind of joy in Rio that defies poverty and violence here. In fact, it defies everything that I had learned growing up in the USA. People, although they complain, generally seem to accept life and make the most of it, no matter what their circumstances.

One thing I had to get used to when I first moved here was the carioca conception of time. Time in Rio is not time as I had been accustomed to it all my life. You can't pin it down here. It floats. It sashays. "Come by my place tonight--the party starts at 8 p.m." 10 p.m., 10:30 p.m., people start to show up. Or you're on your way to meet someone and you run into a guy you know on the way. So you stop and have a beer with him. Then someone else crosses your path, and you get into a long, involved conversation. Eventually you end up at your destination--maybe. This nonchalant relationship with time can be frustrating for a punctual, organized New Yorker, but I've found that over the years it has actually had a calming effect on me. I've learned to roll with it and work around it, like everyone else does here. The only time it really bugs me is when I'm paying for time at a rehearsal space and the guys show up an hour late for a two hour rehearsal.

And then there's the beach, of course. The beach right in the city, where you can go any time you want, stroll along the water's edge and enjoy a view of Sugar Loaf mountain and surfers during the day, and friends sipping coconut water at the kiosks under the moonlight at night. You feel at home. You look around and see that's it's not just eye-popping young women in bikinis on the beach. It's also old, fat, skinny, black, brown, tan, white, men, women, kids--people of every age, size and shape, most of them in bikinis, including the men. You relax. You already feel less self-conscious about your thighs. You watch the teenage girls and young mothers step down to the water, but rarely go all the way in. They carry a plastic container that they dip into the ocean and pour over their heads. Then they go back and sit under their beach umbrellas. The younger men sit right on the sand, or play paddle ball. Or they surf.

Sun-darkened men, boys and women parade up and down the beach selling things--suntan lotion, hats, sunglasses, bikinis, pieces of pineapple, popsicles, water, beer and soda, sandwiches and airy manioc biscuits (called _biscoitos de vento --_wind biscuits) that cariocas adore--they're a must at the beach. The vendors never give you the hard sell unless you're obviously a tourist. Usually they just call out whatever it is they're selling and you gesture them over if you want something.

You head back home. The streets are lined with lush green trees. People stand at little bars sipping _cafezinho_ (demitasse cups of very strong coffee) or drinking beer. Some of the men are wearing only their Speedo-style briefs, and the women miniscule bikinis with a sarong around the hips. There is chatter and laughter all around. Rio is warm, warm, and just oozes love and joy. The air of Rio is a like a caress, and there's almost always a gentle breeze blowing, even on the hottest days...

But back to favela life. Ivo had spent a lot of time in the favelas as a boy and young man and still had many friends there. In those days there was much more music, not only in the _morros_ (hillside favelas) but in the streets, than there is now. He used to take his _pandeiro_ (similar to a tambourine) and go to the Esquina do Pecado (Sin Corner), a bar in Copacabana, to play with his friends. Many of them lived in Chapeu Mangueira, a favela overlooking the beach at the far end of Copacabana.

Our friend Dodge lived in Chapeu Mangueira with his family, and our other friends Anu and Marlene lived there, too. Dodge was a musician and he worked at the post office. Eventually he and his family moved out of the favela. Anu and Marlene and their kids had a nice house that Anu had built from brick and decorated tiles, with a patio overlooking the beach way down below. It's beautiful, almost idyllic, in some parts of Chapeu Mangueira. You try not to think about the next time the police will provoke a shootout with the drug dealers, or vice-versa. You try to believe that the little children running up and down the hills, colorful kites in hand like something out of the movie _Black Orpheus_ , will be safe. In fact, parts of _Black Orpheus_ were filmed in Babilonia, another favela just a short distance from Chapeu Mangueira, further up the mountain.

One of the things that most impressed me the first time I went to a rehearsal in a favela were the children. I had seen Brazilian middle class children in Copa and Ipanema, many of them spoiled and cantankerous. But in the favelas, children rarely cry or whine, unless there's a legitimate reason to. They just amuse themselves with whatever is going on around them. One night I took my camera to a rehearsal and was soon surrounded by a crowd of little tan, white and brown faces, some toothless, all grinning into the camera, waiting for me to take their picture. They elbowed each other to get in front, but nobody fussed or fought. Later, when the drums started playing, they danced and played happily until the littlest ones tired themselves out and fell asleep in someone's lap. When the rehearsal ended, at 5 a.m., they were carried off to bed.

They seemed to love Americans, and liked to practice a few English words with me that they'd learned at school or from their older brothers and sisters, and constantly asked me to buy them a soda or some candy, which I was happy to do. Some of these kids even played in the bateria--mostly boys, but there were even a few younger girls playing the shakers. The smaller boys played the snare drums and sometimes the repinique, but if they were too small and really didn't know how to play yet, the director would angrily shoo them away and then they'd hang around the sidelines, banging away on dented soda cans with a stick or pen, copying the rhythms of the players. Within a few years most of these kids would probably be playing in the bateria.

After Ivo and I had gotten officially married in New York, I helped him apply for his green card. It took a long time, and after we moved to Rio we had to redo some of applications and forms. But finally the day came when we were to have our interview at the American Consulate. The one thing that made me nervous was how we would explain Ivo's many years in the USA. Legally, he wasn't allowed to work there, so I would have to lie and say I had supported him, which I didn't relish. Also, I was certain that the interviewer would find some way to trip us up. When our turn came, we were called into a tiny booth. There was a small table with two chairs for us on one side of a small table, and on the other side sat a small bearded man, his eyes expressionless and his mouth a slit. He asked all the questions I knew he would and I found myself feeling cornered. From the things he was saying, it seemed it was quite possible Ivo might be turned down. The questions went on and on, and Ivo and I just sat there, holding hands and trying to say the right things. Then he asked us what we did for a living and Ivo said he was a samba player, and that I was, too.

Our interviewer suddenly changed. His face lit up in a big smile and he said, "Really?"

Then he went on to ask us all kinds of things about what it was like in the samba schools, what instruments we played, and on and on. That was when I knew it was in the bag. The magic word, it seemed, was "samba." Ivo and I came away from the interview feeling happy and relieved. But that wouldn't be the end of our contact with consul David Brown.

A couple of days later I had to go back to the consulate to get some extra pages added to my passport, and when I walked up to the window, there was Mr. Brown, grinning from ear to ear. "Back here to make trouble, are you?" he said.

I looked at him for a moment and then said, "Say, Dave, have you ever been to a samba school rehearsal in a favela?" knowing full well that he hadn't. He looked at me with surprise and said, "No, I haven't." I said, "Well, why don't you join me and Ivo on Saturday night? We're going up to the Morro do Dende to rehearse." He said, "Sure, sure, I'd love that!" So we made a plan to meet.

Saturday rolled around and Ivo, Dave and I went out to the Ilha do Governador by bus, as usual, and then climbed to the top of the steep hill where the samba school, Academicos do Dende, was starting their rehearsal. That night we were to have a special treat, which was a visit from Master Odilon, one of Rio's top bateria directors. He was a handsome, imposing fellow who always carried a revolver under his white jacket and was known for creating some very inventive drum breaks.

We introduced Dave to our friends, not mentioning that he was the American consul, of course. He had a grand time watching the band and hanging out in the little bar overlooking the plaza where we rehearsed. He made himself at home, drinking beer and chatting with the locals. Ivo and I could see how happy he was, so afterwards we cooked up a plan for him to go out with us in one of the parades. Ivo took him aside and asked,

"Hey Dave, wouldn't you like to go out in the Carnival with us and play in the band?"

He grinned and said, "Well, sure, but I don't know how to play anything."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Ivo and I could show you a few things and then you could fake the rest...no one will notice."

Dave laughed out loud and said, "Well, OK, if you think so!"

So Ivo took him to another small samba school, Boi da Ilha, and introduced him as " _meu amigo, Davi. "_ The band director fell for it and gave him a costume. Things like this are easier in the smaller schools. If it had been one of the major ones, they would have asked him to do a test on the drum.

Later on I sat down with Dave and showed him the basic snare drum pattern, which he didn't quite get, but it was too late to worry about minor details like that. Carnival week was upon us and it was Boi da Ilha's night to parade in the Sambadrome. Ivo would be playing surdo, so he wouldn't be near me and Dave, who were both playing caixas. So it was me and Dave, side-by-side on the avenue, banging away on our snare drums. We started out and Dave didn't know which end was up, so he just marched along with his sticks waving wildly in the air. A couple of times one of the directors stood right in front of us and I was sure he was going to grab Dave by the ear and toss him out, but he just stared over the tops of our heads--good thing he was tall. We just kept marching along until the parade was over. It was a night of triumph and glory for the American Consulate, if only they had known! And Dave, who'd scared the crap out of me the first time I met him, remained a good friend for a number of years after that.

Ivo and I continued to be happy enough with our life in Rio, going to samba rehearsals every Saturday, parading in the Carnival and going to bed at dawn with the sun rising over Copacabana beach. But Ivo couldn't seem to find any way to make money, and my money was running out. So in 1994, after living for only two years in Rio, he decided he wanted to go back to New York. He realized that he couldn't make money as a samba player in Rio, at least not the way he could in New York, where he could give classes and put together his own band. He had tried numerous business deals with one of his brothers in Rio, but nothing had worked out and I don't think his heart was in it, anyway. I agreed to go back with him, even though I had a sinking feeling about leaving Rio.

# CHAPTER 30: THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

_To believe in something and not to live it is dishonest._

_\- Mahatma Gandhi_

We arrived in New York with very little money and had to stay with Ivo's brother for a while at his apartment in New Jersey. I didn't feel well when I got there, and over the next year or so, as we moved from one temporary living situation to the next while we tried to get something going with the samba, I would feel increasingly unwell. The fact that my health was breaking down during my marriage with Ivo should have been a red flag that all was not spiritually well with me, but I didn't pay any heed.

From the time we moved to Rio in 1993 until we split up in 1999, my health worsened. I was having elimination problems that gradually led to an overall sense of weakness. I knew I had the option of going to see a doctor, of course, but after a good deal of self-examination I knew that if I just tried to "fix up" my body, I'd never get to the root of what was bothering me, and there was definitely something bothering me, although I wasn't sure what it was. I knew I wasn't going to die, so I just kept searching and praying the best I could. But I wasn't seriously studying Christian Science, nor was I actively seeking help from a Christian Science practitioner.

After a while, feeling that I could never live up to the spiritual demands of Christian Science, I just gave up on it and shoved all my books under the bed. I started looking in other directions for healing--other spiritual approaches, acupuncture, meditation, and so on, but nothing really gave me any lasting relief.

While I was in this period of searching and doubt, Ivo was becoming more and more distant and vague. He was totally involved in his work, and nothing else seemed to matter to him. I suspected he had some kind of secret life that he wasn't telling me about, because he was hardly ever home.

I finally realized that my original motives for falling for Ivo had more to do with my love for samba than with my love for him. I was already involved in the samba scene and Carnival in Rio before we met, but he taught me a great deal and helped me become much more a part of that world he had grown up in. He gave me access that I never could have gotten on my own. However, the emotional part didn't work for either of us. I kept thinking, as I had with Evans, that if we'd just been friends, everything would have been fine. And in fact, I _am_ friends with him today.

After we'd moved into a sublet in 1994, while I was still feeling at least somewhat energetic, I tried to get into the swing of things. Ivo and I were dirt poor, so we tried a lot of different schemes to make money, none of which worked out, while he continued teaching Brazilian percussion. His classes were the only thing that seemed to be progressing. I tried to help him out, as I always had, but somehow I felt as if I were on the outside looking in. He wanted me to take care of the business end of things, but always argued that I was too rigid, while he continued to let all his Brazilian friends take the classes for free. I told him we'd never make any money if he didn't start charging people, and this eventually created a rift between us. Also, I resented being relegated merely to secretarial duties. I wanted to get more involved with the creative end of things--making up percussion breaks, things like that, but I never got any encouragement to do anything other than collect the money and keep things organized. In spite of these problems, we were eventually able to form a wonderful bateria we named Manhattan Samba, which is still successful at this writing. Madeleine joined the band, too, and played the big bass drum. She also met her future husband Hamilton in Manhattan Samba. We had some fun times in that band over the years.

Meanwhile, I wasn't working and Ivo wasn't making enough money for us to live on. We had gradually started paying for practically everything with credit cards. I'd had excellent credit when I was on my own, and I had several cards with large credit limits. But after a few years of this I realized that I was constantly applying for new cards and then paying off one card with the other. I had been brought up to be responsible about paying bills, and I just wouldn't admit that we didn't have enough cash to pay them. It was easier to pretend and use a credit card. I'd accept every card offer, and then, when they'd raise the interest rates after six months, I'd switch to another card with a low introductory rate. I thought I had it all together, Amy the macro manager, and if people would look at me askance, I'd rationalize, "Hey, that's the way things are in this world. Everything runs on plastic."

Living this way made both of us lazy. Ivo didn't have much initiative and sort of "let things happen" as far as his musical career was concerned. I was feeling worse and worse, both physically and mentally. Since there were no collection agencies after us, Ivo thought I was being clever with the way I "stretched" a dollar, but the truth is I was just juggling things, trying desperately to hide the fact that we were at the end of our rope.

When I was finally able to honestly face what we were doing, I immediately vowed to change. I told Ivo that I wasn't going to use credit cards any more to pay off our bills. I cut them all up and threw them away. I knew that I had to stop running away from responsibility. I'd always been good at running, but I knew it was time to stop. Ivo was upset about my decision, but I was adamant.

One morning, after endless months that had stretched into years of sensing that my life was going down the drain, I woke up, and while I was still in bed a vivid thought came to me: "Rio de Janeiro. I _have_ to go back to Rio." I told Ivo and surprisingly all he said was, "OK." Right away we started to make plans. We came to the preposterous conclusion that he could continue with Manhattan Samba and travel to New York on a regular basis. Neither of us was reasoning clearly, and even though I'd vowed to face our financial responsibilities, deep down I knew we were trying to run away from them by going back to Brazil.

But in my heart I knew I couldn't just run out on all our debts, so I suggested that we declare bankruptcy. I couldn't see any other way out. So that's what we did. Ivo had to give up his beautiful red van, his treasure. He held on to it as long as he could, but then had to turn it over. It was as if the life had been sucked out of him.

# CHAPTER 31: HOME

_I don 't wanna listen to your music any more,_

_It pulls me in, seduces me and drags me to the floor,_

_It creeps into my brain,_

_It seeps into my veins,_

_It chews me up and swallows me,_

_And spits me out the door._

_I don 't wanna listen to your music any more,_

_The stuff goes right inside my ears and oozes out my pores..._

_I can 't escape your rhythms_

_Your harmony 's a prison,_

_I 'm trapped inside your lyrics,_

_I can 't take it any more._

_I 'll throw away my walkman,_

_And burn my stereo,_

_So I won 't have to listen to your music any more._

The trip was fraught with difficulties, problems with our baggage, arguing and tension, but we finally arrived in Rio in July 1999.

The first weeks were chaotic and miserable for me, first staying in Ivo's sister Ivone's grungy apartment on the Ilha do Governador, where we used to go to the samba schools, and then Ivo renting a totally wrong place for us on Prado Junior, the most notorious street in Copacabana's red light district. The elevator, which was right outside our door, was so noisy that the whole apartment vibrated like a Boeing 707 every time somebody went up or down, and we couldn't sleep. The landlady was reluctant to give us our deposit back, but Ivo finally convinced her. So we were out on the street with our baggage the next day.

Ivo wanted to make all the decisions about where we would live, but I finally convinced him that we should move into a temporary apartment until we could find something decent. I wasn't feeling well, and at this point I just wanted a place to lay my head. It wasn't hard to find a place, since brokers are anxious to rent to tourists, and we found a small place in a fairly nice building right near the beach.

The next day Ivo went back to New York to work with Manhattan Samba. He stayed for two weeks and then came back to Rio for a short stay, but then he returned to New York and didn't come back for a month. I was actually relieved. Alone at last, I prepared my food in my tiny kitchen, listened to music on my walkman and went for walks on the beach.

Then Ivo was back. We looked at a few apartments, and he decided that the only one he would rent was on Av. Atlantica, right on the beach, but at the back of the building so there was no view of the ocean. I didn't particularly like this apartment, but at least it was fairly pleasant and had a decent kitchen. Ivo went back to New York again.

Time went on and I managed to make the apartment somewhat livable, although I only had enough money to buy a few pieces of office furniture. Ivo bought me a television, but I had no furniture at all in the living room, so I threw a mattress on the floor and used it as a sofa. I kept myself busy buying food, cooking, and going to the beach, which was right across the street. I made friends with a guy who came to fix my computer, so I didn't feel completely alone. Also, I saw Conceiçao once in a while.

I did wonder, though, what was going to happen to me and Ivo. As I sat there by myself, with plenty of time to think, I had to admit that I was happier when he wasn't around. This puzzled me a little, because I hadn't really given up on our marriage. Nevertheless, I always dreaded it when he came back to Rio, and I resolved to put all my things into my office and not let him in there when I was working on my music or anything else. I hadn't realized how much it had bothered me in New York when he would interrupt me every time I would try to work on my music. As I uncovered these feelings and made these decisions, it seemed that I was quietly and gradually, almost unconsciously moving him out of my life.

The next time Ivo came to Rio, he was acting very strangely. I asked him what was up and he said, "I like Rachel."

"Who's Rachel?" I asked.

"She's one of my students."

"Have you slept with her?" It just popped out.

"Yes," he said.

Without blinking an eye, I said:

"Well, then our marriage is over."

And even though I felt shocked and humiliated, I found myself saying:

"And you know what? You're doing me a favor."

How, you may ask, could I have believed that Ivo would be faithful with all the time he was spending in New York? Well, I can't answer that. I don't know how, except that I now believe part of me wanted him to cheat so I would have an excuse to get out of the marriage. I didn't have the courage just to tell him I wanted out.

It was very hard sleeping with him in the same bed that night, but the next day he left for New York, and that was that. As soon as he was gone, I took a knife and cut our foam mattress in half and stacked one piece on top of the other to make myself a single bed.

And so life went on. My hurt feelings and anger gradually faded away, and I settled back into living in Rio, getting together from time to time with my friends, and enjoying carioca life. I was happy to be alone again in my favorite city.

There are two expressions here that characterize the spirit of Rio de Janeiro natives to a T: _Fazer o que?_ and _dar um jeitinho._ The first of these might be loosely translated as "Whaddaya gonna do?" or "That's the way the cookie crumbles." Here in Rio, when something goes wrong--like the time we were without gas in my building for seven months while all the pipes were replaced--the words you heard most out of everyone's mouth were "fazer o que?" (pronounced fahZEH oo KEH). In other words, there's nothing I can do about it, so why complain? Of course this expression is usually followed by a stream of complaints anyway, such as "If we hadn't had such cheating, incompetent building managers for the past 40 years, this never would have happened! They would have taken care of the pipes and not let them go like that, but that's typical, nobody cares about the renters or even the people who own their apartments in this damn building"...and on and on. And on.

The second expression, "Dar um jeitinho" (pronounced more or less dah oohn zhayCHEEnyoo) is a little harder to explain, especially to Americans and Europeans, who don't have any "jeitinho," at least according to Brazilians. What is "jeitinho?" Well, it's a clever, smart Brazilian way of getting around things, working things out, even when it seems there's no way of working them out. Sometimes, in dealing with others, jeitinho can mean a slick kind of street diplomacy--"You have to use 'jeitinho' when you talk to him if you want things to go your way." When your water heater breaks down on a Sunday and you're lucky enough to run into the plumber sipping a cafezinho at the corner bar (except that he left his tools at home, miles away up in the North Zone--it's his day off, after all), he might say, "Posso dar um jeitinho," or "I'll see what I can do,"--which usually involves some pieces of greasy string and tape until he can come back the next day with his tools. When you've been on a trip to New York and arrive in the airport with boxes of electronic goodies and the customs officer is already adding up what you'll have to pay in duty, you can say, "Nao da pra dar um jeitinho?," or "Can't we work something out?"

I had plenty of occasions to use both of those expressions after Ivo left, because it seemed I was always either trying to find a way to figure out what to do next, or trying to get used to things the way they were. Ivo himself resolved one of those dilemmas for me when he called me from New York and said I couldn't stay in the apartment anymore because his sister's ex-husband wanted it.

At first I didn't want to leave the apartment. I had gotten used to living there, but the more I thought about it, I knew I'd be happier in my own place, with my own name on the rental contract. For some reason, it never even occurred to me that I couldn't satisfy one single requirement in Rio for renting an apartment. My old visa had expired, so I had no permanent visa, only a tourist one, no CPF (the equivalent of a Social Security number), no job, and no co-signer.

But I went looking for an apartment just the same. It was hard, because I wasn't feeling all that well, and pounding the pavements in the blistering Rio summer heat was a challenge I couldn't handle most days. After looking at a few places and checking out the rental forms, the cold reality hit me that no one would rent an apartment to me. I had visions of lining up with all the old ladies on Avenida Copacabana, begging for coins.

But I quickly put such grim thoughts out of my mind and silently trusted God to show me what to do. I hadn't been very assiduous with my prayers, but this time I knew I had run out of my own ideas as to what I should do, so I prayed for guidance. I wasn't afraid. The following Sunday I bought the newspaper to look at the apartment ads again, although it seemed like a futile exercise. However, to my great surprise and delight, there was an apartment for rent in the building where I used to live in Copacabana when Ivo and I first got married. The owner of that apartment hadn't asked for any documentation, and had accepted a deposit, so I thought maybe I'd get a break this time, too.

I called the rental office. The man who answered the phone, Jorge, remembered me from five years earlier.

"When do you want to see it?" he asked. "It's on the same floor where you used to live and has the same owner."

The same owner! Maybe she would accept a deposit again.

So I said, "Any time Jorge, just tell me and I'll meet you there."

So Jorge arranged to show the apartment to me and some other people the following day. I made sure I got there ahead of everyone. Jorge arrived and we waited for a few minutes for some other people to show up, but nobody did, so we took the elevator up to the ninth floor. The apartment was right around the corner from where I had lived before, at the end of the corridor. Jorge put the key in the lock and turned it. Nothing happened. He tried again.

"I don't know what the heck is wrong with this thing. I'm sure it's the right key. Oh well," he said, "fazer o que? We'll just have to come back tomorrow."

No! No! I was thinking...someone might show up and take my apartment!

So I said, "You know what, Jorge? We don't need to come back tomorrow. I'm going to rent this apartment sight unseen."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Listen," I said. "I know it's pretty much like the other one I lived in. How bad can it be?" I peeped through the keyhole and saw some really ugly, beat-up old linoleum on the floor. There's nothing that can't be fixed, I thought, and it sure is better than collecting spare change on Av. Copacabana and sleeping on a piece of cardboard.

Incredible as this may seem, and to me proof positive that God watches over us even when we're barely giving Him/Her the time of day, the rental office still owed me my deposit on the other apartment I'd lived in. I'd actually forgotten about it, and it had been collecting interest for five years. Jorge said they had been holding it for me, so I went downtown to the office, and on the very day I had to put down the deposit on the new apartment, I got the money back from the old one in almost exactly the amount I needed.

So that's how I moved back to my favorite spot in Copacabana. Several people in the building remembered me, and it was:

"Hey, good to have you back," as if it was the most normal thing in the world for me to turn up five years later. It really felt as if I'd come home.

I gradually got settled into my little apartment and tried to build a life for myself. I took what money I had and had the floors redone, with the landlady splitting the cost. By the time I got all my stuff in there and arranged, the place looked quite cute and homey. But my money was running out, and I wasn't quite sure how I was going to earn any. I tried teaching English classes at home, and then writing sheet music for composers and musicians on my computer, but these things didn't bring in enough for me to live on.

Time went by and any money I had saved was gone. Finally, although I hated to do it, I asked Madeleine to help me. She did, and it really saved my life. During that time, I kept looking for work. Since I still didn't have a permanent visa (although I had applied for one), that narrowed my options. Then I thought I might try translating, so I started to look for work on the internet. It was very slow going, but I had the money Mad was giving me, so I was able to work on getting clients and companies to hire me as a freelancer, and I had some time to improve my skills.

After a couple of years I had some solid connections with translation companies and a few private clients and I was able to get by financially, although it was still very tight. Then when I turned 62 I started getting Social Security payments from the US, so my situation improved. I'd been so used to going without--even without things I really needed--that it took me awhile to get back to feeling somewhat normal again. But I was starting to get a good feeling about my life and that I actually had a future in Rio by myself.

# CHAPTER 32: BRASS TACKS, CARIOCA-STYLE

While I was still living in the apartment on Av. Atlantica, a couple of months before I moved out, something significant happened. Since I'd left New York, I had tried not to think about Brass Tacks, because I really didn't see how I would ever be able to find the musicians, in particular the two euphonium players, in Rio de Janeiro. The only guys I had ever seen playing euphoniums in Rio were in street bands, and I was pretty sure they wouldn't know how to read music. So I had shelved the idea, or at least I thought I had.

One night I was lying on the mattress in my furnitureless living room, watching TV. As I channel surfed, I caught a glimpse of a medium-sized band playing a mix of samba and jazz on a program called "SESC Instrumental." I put the remote down and watched. These guys were playing mostly original music, and the band, Mantiqueira, was just about the same size as Brass Tacks. As I watched and listened, a little seed of hope started to sprout in my thought. I had no idea that there was any interest in Brazil for that kind of large instrumental ensemble, playing original tunes and arrangements, and I felt encouraged. The only large ensembles I'd heard of were more or less copies of American big bands and played stock arrangements. Obviously I had a lot to learn.

From that moment on, I started taking my Brass Tacks demo with me wherever I went. After seeing that program I knew there had to be a way--I had no idea how--but there just _had_ to be a way to find the right people to get my band going in Rio.

A month or so after I saw the TV show, a Japanese friend, Yasu, whom I'd met in the samba groups in New York, came from New York to visit me. He invited me to go to a CD release show of the Brazilian saxophonist Paulo Moura. He said we'd be getting a ride with Pascoal Mireilles, a well-known drummer and composer, and an acquaintance of Yasu's. I grabbed my Brass Tacks demo and stuck it in my pocket. Practically the minute we got into Pascoal's car, I shoved my demo in his face, while Yasu rolled his eyes. Pascoal took the tape with an air of indifference, and spent the rest of the afternoon ignoring me. I figured he probably thought I was Yasu's girlfriend, most likely an amateur singer doing bossa nova in bad gringo Portuguese, but I didn't care. I was hell-bent on getting my band together.

After Yasu went back to the states, time went on and I forgot about the demo I'd given Pascoal. I was looking for other opportunities to spread it around. Then one night, an American pianist I'd met at the Paulo Moura show called to invite me to a Musicians' Union performance at a club in Ipanema.

We walked in, and the first thing I saw was Pascoal on stage, playing the drums with one hand and waving like mad at me with the other, a big grin on his face. I thought, "Aha! He listened to the tape!" He ran over to me on the break and said breathlessly, "We have to put your band into Mistura Fina." Mistura Fina was Rio's top jazz club at the time. I said, "I don't have a band."

"No problem. I know some guys."

"Yeah, but what about the two euphoniums?"

"No problem, I know some euphonium players."

"Who can read?" I asked.

"Sure," said Pascoal, still smiling and putting his arm around me.

"OK, we're on," I said, smiling back at him and trying not to show how absolutely giddy I felt.

So Pascoal called a bunch of guys and set up a rehearsal in his tiny studio in Botafogo, not too far from where I was living in Copacabana. There was no room for bass or drums, so we just rehearsed the horns. Sure enough, he found two guys who played euphonium. One was a tubist from the symphony orchestra who doubled on euphonium, and the other played in the firemen's band.

The musicians were all very nice, good players, and good readers. But my music was a little weird for them, so the first rehearsal was kind of touch and go. Also, I wasn't really familiar with a lot of the musical terms in Portuguese, so I was floundering as well. But we managed to get through several arrangements on that first day.

Meanwhile, Pascoal had already called a friend of his to book us into Mistura Fina. We had two dates set up and very little time to prepare. I felt like things were moving way too fast, especially since I had planned to make a trip to New York, and there would be practically no rehearsal time when I got back. But I was so excited about the possibility of having a Rio version of Brass Tacks that I just went along with whatever Pascoal said.

I made my trip to New York, and when I got back Pascoal called a second rehearsal. This time some of the guys were different. I was getting worried about the Mistura Fina dates and secretly wished that we could change them to a later time. My wish was granted in an unexpected (and unpleasant) way when I went to Pascoal's friend Geraldinho's apartment to sign the contract. He was on the phone with the club owner, and asked me for my visa number. I told him I didn't have my visa yet. No one had mentioned anything about visas until this moment.

"What?!" Geraldinho practically shouted. "You can't play at Mistura Fina without a permanent visa or a work visa."

I asked him what it would involve for me to get a work visa. He called a lawyer and put me on the phone with him. The lawyer said it would cost at least R$1200, which I didn't have, of course.

Through all of this, Geraldinho was glaring at me accusingly. I felt like a criminal. My eyes watered up. I told him I was sorry, then I left.

But I was secretly happy, because in my heart I knew what Pascoal had done wasn't wise, even though I was happy that he was so enthusiastic about my work. To debut my band under such conditions--one or two rehearsals with a bunch of musicians who didn't know my music--would have been a huge mistake.

After the Mistura Fina gig fell through, Pascoal and Geraldinho lined up three nights for us at a jazz club called Giraldia Jazz Up. By this time I had actually gotten a band together and we'd had some rehearsals, so we sounded fairly good on opening night. By the third night we were sounding much better, and played to a fair-sized, enthusiastic audience. I was deliriously happy. I went into the bathroom, smiled at myself in the mirror and said:

"I was born for this."

After this debut, we had a weekly gig for a short time in another club. Pascoal had other commitments and couldn't play with us any more, so I replaced him with a drummer he'd sent in to sub for two nights. I was very happy with this new drummer, Kleberson. He played impeccably on the first night without a rehearsal, and by the second night he didn't even need to look at the charts.

When that gig ended, I took a long break and started to make plans for my next move, which would be to record our first CD, "My Joy."

When my stepfather George died, he'd left some money for me, Bertie and his daughter Molly. I used my money to record Brass Tacks. I set up some rehearsal and recording dates in January and February of 2002. We did the actual recording at Studio Verde, a pleasant, airy studio surrounded by lush greenery, to record "My Joy."

I was so happy to be back in my element, in a recording studio surrounded by guys I love, playing the music I love. I was a little nervous about recording the band in separate sections, because the only other experience I'd had recording Brass Tacks was the demo I'd made in New York years ago, which was live in the studio with everyone playing together. But this time we had to lay down the rhythm tracks first, then record the horns, then the solos, then the percussion, and finally the piano.

Jesse Sadoc, an excellent and knowledgeable young trumpet player, came to my rescue. He'd had tons of experience with studio and on-stage work, and really took control during the recording of "My Joy," to the point where I listed him as "co-producer" on the CD jacket, even though I didn't have any extra money to pay him for that job, and I don't think he would have taken it if I had.

The first day of the recording, the bassist and drummer came in to lay down the rhythm section tracks. That day and the next, some of the horn players came in just to play as a guide, but not record. When Jesse came in, he spotted all the errors, and helped the guys stay on time. During the sessions with the horns, he kept track of every little mistake, helped the guys with phrasing (which was tricky for the ones who weren't jazz players), and a multitude of other things. The members of the band, me included, played the percussion parts ourselves. I was rather proud of the cuica solo I played, and Florindo, one of the trombonists, did a great imitation of a bird whistle at the end of the first piece, an homage to vocalist Djavan called _Passarinho do Mato_ (Little Bird of the Jungle).

The recording was challenging, and problems with timing and tuning seemed to happen every day. The guys who weren't used to improvising did the best they could on the solos, though, and the result was better than any of us expected. For me, it was the first time ever that I really heard my charts played close to the way I thought they should sound, and I was happy. It was a start.

After the long process of recording "My Joy," mixing it, having it mastered, having the art work done and sending it off to have copies made, I finally had a bunch of boxes sitting in my hallway, full of CDs. The next and obvious question was: what now?

My first thought was to do a CD release show as soon as possible, and then make a trip to New York to do some promotion there, but I realized that once I started dedicating myself to promoting the band in Rio, I wouldn't want to interrupt that to make a trip north. So with this in mind, I made the foolhardy decision to spend the month of January 2003 in New York and see what I could do to promote the CD in the USA, and sell some copies through mail order.

The trip was depressing. I had no concept of how unused to the cold I had become, living in Rio de Janeiro. It was a very cold winter, and sheer torture for me, even though it was nice to see Madeleine, and Hilary was there for a visit, too. I stayed in Mad's office, putting CDs into bubble-lined envelopes and making occasional knee-rattling trips to the post office. I sent out a lot of freebies to my old journalism colleagues and made a few sales, too, but somehow it all just didn't seem worth the trouble. Time dragged by, and finally I got on the plane back to Rio.

Even when I got home, it didn't look as though I'd be able to do the CD release show any time soon. For one thing, I didn't have enough money to pay a publicist, and for another, Carnival was coming up and everyone would be too busy to rehearse. So I cooled my heels and tried to drum up more translation work so I could set aside some cash for the show. It had been a year since we'd made the recording, and I was anxious to rehearse and play with the guys again. I kept in touch with them during all this time, of course, and made sure they all got copies of the CD for themselves and to give or sell to friends. By this time, just about every brass player in Rio and quite a few outside of Rio knew who I was.

Finally I was able to set a date for the show. I chose Modern Sound as the venue--a classy, sadly now defunct record store in Copacabana with a jazz bistro in the rear. My bass player and drummer were already playing there every Monday evening, and since I had gone there a number of times to sit in with them, I felt at home at Modern Sound. I talked to the owners, and we set a date: May 27, 2003.

Money was short, but I lucked out on a rehearsal space when I found out that my new trumpet player was a policeman. He arranged for us to rehearse at the Military Police headquarters. Some of the guys thought the atmosphere was creepy, but hey, it was free. Later on we found a similar arrangement at the downtown firehouse.

Rehearsals were touch and go because there were always conflicts--someone had a gig or a recording session, or they got sick or their car broke down. Or it would be raining heavily on rehearsal night, and since cariocas are notorious for hating to go out in the rain, only a handful of the bravest would show up. But in spite of it all, I was able to rehearse the band in bits and pieces so that we felt ready to do a decent show.

On the night of May 27th, Modern Sound was packed to standing room only, and the crowd was delirious, shouting for more and applauding like mad after every number. We sold quite a few CDs afterwards, and people were waiting in line for me to autograph them. I was in heaven. Me and my Brass Tacks.

After the show at Modern Sound I wasn't sure what to do next with the band. Naively, I thought the CD itself would naturally lead to other things--gigs, shows, tours, more recordings--but it didn't, in spite of all my efforts sending out press kits, making contacts, and so on. I felt like my wheels were spinning, and I didn't know what to do. It never even occurred to me to pray about it. I had gotten so caught up in my activities that Christian Science had taken a back seat yet again.

So I tried to figure things out on my own, and I finally came to the conclusion that I didn't know the Rio de Janeiro music scene well enough to get anything going, nor did I have the time, financial resources, or even the desire to get to know it by going around to clubs, talking to people, seeing other bands play, etc. I also believed that even if I did have the time and resources, there's something slightly tacky about trying to sell yourself. I decided to try to find someone who would manage the band.

I actually did find someone rather quickly, and at first it seemed that it was just what I needed to get Brass Tacks moving in the right direction. I had some radio interviews, and this guy booked us into a nice lounge in the upscale Leblon neighborhood.

After a few more gigs around Rio, he booked a short tour for us to play at several cultural centers in Sao Paulo. Even though I got to play and be interviewed on SESC Instrumental, the program where I'd seen the band Mantiqueira that had originally inspired me to put Brass Tacks together in Brazil, that's when things started to go awry. The guys in the band complained about the low pay and felt that the money had been mismanaged. Two members quit the band when the tour was over.

When we got back to Rio I replaced the two musicians, but things didn't improve. We played to a few practically empty theaters, and there didn't seem to be any plan any more about how to develop the band.

Finally I knew I had to fire the manager. I did, but then I was left in limbo. I had started feeling physically unwell again, and I knew it was at least partially because of all the problems with the band. Everything was going wrong. It just seemed so unfair to me at the time, that the thing I loved the most hadn't worked out the way I'd hoped.

I didn't know it at the time, but this was the beginning of my gradual withdrawal from society and my entering into what I could describe as my "wilderness" or "soul searching" experience. I was feeling more and more out of sync with the way I'd been living for a very long time, and I needed to make a radical change. I started thinking seriously about Christian Science again.

# CHAPTER 33: WAKING UP

My solitude has become an art...

A delicate, graceful thing

Like a flower,

With a sweet and agreeable scent...

A precious, lustrous thing

Like a pearl,

Smooth to the touch,

White as the snow...

A cozy thing,

Like a down comforter,

Soft, warm, enveloping.

My solitude has become a friend...

A friend that the world doesn't know,

Always here, always faithful,

An ear that always hears me,

A mouth that always says good things,

Pretty, happy, simple things...

Arms that always hold me,

Eyes that always look at me

With love and kindness...

My solitude has become a religion...

The calm presence of God,

A spirit of goodness and harmony

A light inside me and everyone,

A world without limits,

With no pain, no separation,

A life full of love and affection,

And freedom.

I stretch out my arms and fly,

Beyond the heavens,

In my solitude.

Because of my disappointment about what had happened with Brass Tacks, I tried to turn to Christian Science with my whole heart to change the direction of my life and find healing. In spite of my good intentions, however, I was still too restless to stop trying to figure everything out on my own and simply turn to God for guidance. I was so used to analyzing the pros and cons of every situation and getting by on my wits. In fact, this was what caused the problem with Brass Tacks--instead of turning to God about how to proceed with the band, I immediately turned to human help.

At the end of 2005 I felt I needed a change of environment, so I moved from Copacabana to Santa Teresa, Rio's quaint hillside artist community. I rented a house, thinking that I would find peace and harmony in that semi-bucolic setting, but that's not the way things turned out. My slightly creepy landlord lived right in front of my house, and there was no privacy. The roof leaked and he said he had no intention of fixing it. There were very few stores nearby and it was hard to get around on public transportation. I couldn't get broadband internet.

So after only five months in Santa Teresa, I decided to move back to Copacabana. I felt like I was running around in circles. But I found a wonderful old apartment in Copacabana, in a festive yellow and white building that looked like a wedding cake, quite close to the beach. It was set back from noisy Av. Copacabana, so it was fairly quiet, and was also next to a park filled with trees that had fragrant-smelling leaves and flowers. It was quite large, with two bedrooms, one that I used as my office, and best of all, it had a veranda with windows and a little open "crow's nest" overlooking the park. There were birds chirping in the morning, and I filled the veranda with plants and hung a beautiful blue hammock to swing in.

I settled in and gradually fixed the place up. I called a Christian Science practitioner for help, and I rarely went outdoors. As time went by, I went out less and less. This would have been the perfect opportunity for me to buckle down and pray and study and do some serious spiritual self-examination, but I was still looking for something, some change, some move, some _thing_ --that would make things better. I felt I had to _do_ something. Suddenly the idea came to me that I should move back to the USA.

This seemed so radical, since I loved living in Rio, but once I let the momentum of this plan take over my reasoning, I unthinkingly moved forward with it. I found a friend to take over my apartment and buy its contents, and off I went. I stayed for a short while with Madeleine in the Bronx, then at a rest-and-study room at a Christian Science care facility, then with my sister and her husband in Connecticut, and then finally rented a tiny apartment on Beacon Hill in Boston, where I settled in for eight months. But--not surprisingly--I didn't find the peace of mind or sense of purpose I was looking for.

When fall came and it started getting cold, I suddenly began to feel desperate. "What's going to become of me?" I thought. I knew I couldn't spend an entire winter in that cramped, cold, dark apartment in Boston. I finally realized that my precipitous move to the US had been a mistake, and that I had to get myself back to Rio. So even though I was still not in good health, I managed to organize things step by step, sell or give away most of my stuff, and narrow down all my life's possessions to whatever would fit into one large suitcase and a carry-on.

When I arrived at the Tom Jobim International Airport in Rio de Janeiro, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The flight had been very long and tiring, but just as I was wondering how I would make it all the way through baggage and customs, I saw a sweet man with an angelic smile standing outside the plane with a wheelchair. He fairly raced me through baggage and customs, and the officer didn't even make me open my bag. I was out of there in less than five minutes. A good friend met me at the airport and we took a cab into the city. It was cool and rainy in Rio, even though it was late spring. This was the middle of November, 2008.

I stayed in temporary apartments for a period of six months, and then, to my amazement, I found a regular rental in the same building I'd lived in twice before. Even though I'd been away for a year and didn't have all the right documents to rent an apartment, the rental agent gave it to me because of the way the doorman, who hadn't seen me in four years, greeted me when I entered the building...it was big hugs all around and a real homecoming.

I settled in to my little place and finally got down to serious work with my books, prayers, and living what I was learning the best I could. After a while, I stopped going out altogether and my apartment became my retreat and refuge. It was exactly what I needed, and thanks to being able to buy everything on the internet, I could take care of my own needs. I didn't even miss being outdoors, and in any case I had a large picture window with a lateral view of the ocean where I could stick my head out and take a look when I felt like it. I knew the ocean--and the world, for that matter--wasn't going anywhere, and I had important, life-altering business to take care of.

I was happy being by myself, and it was so freeing to finally stop flailing around and take a good look at my own thinking instead. I settled back into my translation work, started working on this book again and began to write a blog. I also wrote some sacred music--something I'd never done before--and was quite happy when it was played and sung in several Christian Science churches.

After some time, I started to yearn for more time for my creative projects, and so I took a leap of faith and set my translation work aside. Best of all, I was finally able to stand up to the mental resistance that had kept me from doing my music work for so long. Instead of just giving in to it and staying in my comfort zone, I disciplined myself to work at the keyboard nearly every day. Almost immediately I felt a surge of new inspiration, as I began to fill up my hours working not only on my music, but my writing as well. This in itself had a profound healing effect. I even started thinking about Brass Tacks again, and about recording a second CD.

Before long, I began to get a more lively sense that God really was Love, was real and present in my life, and was universal intelligence, orchestrating everything perfectly. I started thinking of myself and others more spiritually, and I finally learned that didn't have to depend on myself and my wits any more. I put myself on a path of simply learning more about this super Love and trusting it, and this gradually led me back into normal activities and a growing sense of well-being. And it continues to be an ongoing adventure.
EPILOGUE

_It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are._

_- E.E. Cummings_

As I write this, I have learned that the house I grew up in was torn down, along with the barn. The entire property had been handed over to the Newtown Forestry Department shortly before my mother died, and George continued to live in the house until he died. In my mind, I could see the wrecking ball swinging out and then crashing into the side of the house, reducing to rubble the room where Bertie and I had slept, played, fought and laughed as children and teenagers, the living room where we had spent long, often tedious hours watching TV with Ma, the cozy peach-colored downstairs kitchen, the focus of raucous family get-togethers where so many holiday meals were prepared, Pop's old study, the dining-room where Bertie and I had suffered through so many unpleasant meals while Ma and Pop sat in constrained silence staring down at their plates--all reduced to chunks of cement, tangled wires, splinters of wood, and ashes. And life goes on...

Looking back, I can see now that the muddles I often seemed to find myself in were like a voice crying out in the night looking for answers, but I wasn't listening. I had the key to the answers in my hand when I first encountered Christian Science, but I wasn't ready for its disarming simplicity.

But even though I wasn't ready to abandon my human "pushing, pulling, wishing and wanting," as my Christian Science teacher used to say, the ever-benevolent divine Law was always with me, keeping me from my own undoing and taking care of everything--on my behalf. Then the day finally came when I was willing to accept the consequences of my actions, but not get stuck there. I was also able to forgive myself and others. That's when I was ready to move on.

A couple of years after I came back to Rio, my sister Bertie died. She passed on sweetly, holding on to the teddy bear she'd had since she was born, and because I was more at peace myself, instead of grieving I could see her moving into greener pastures.

As for my daughters, we have had some wonderful times together, although I know it wasn't always easy for them, growing up with a mother who was a "seeker." In March of 2012, to the whole family's delight, Hilary had a baby boy. She named him Robert Townley, after my father and a family name from my mother's side. I became a grandma to a sweet little guy with strawberry blond hair.

So, as I finish this book, like the ladies who bought cloth in the 19th century, I'm looking forward to getting down to brass tacks--the essentials of living my life as it was meant to be lived.

But this isn't the end of the story--just another beginning. It's hard to bring it to a close, because I know the sequel is just around the corner, but bring it to a close I must, until next time.

THE END
APPENDIX

My Brass Tacks CD, "My Joy" can be bought as a digital download at a number of popular online stores, including CD Baby. Just search for "Amy Duncan and Brass Tacks." A collection of piano trio demos I recorded in the 1980s entitled "The Amy Duncan Trio--The 80s Demos" can also be found on the same venues.

To see the photographs that go along with the story, click here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amy-pix/

My Facebook pages:

https://www.facebook.com/amy.duncan.50

https://www.facebook.com/AmyDuncansAutobiography

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Duncan-and-Brass-Tacks/139066459475093

My blog:

http://finallygettingdowntobrasstacks.wordpress.com/

Selected articles from The Christian Science Monitor:

Samba: Soul of Carnival - http://www.csmonitor.com/1990/1025/zsamba.html

Carnival! - http://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0402/02121.html

Miles Trumpets With Style - http://www.csmonitor.com/1986/1010/rmiles.html

A Major Brazilian Star reaches out to the US - Singer/composer Djavan - http://www.csmonitor.com/1988/0831/lvan.html

Brazilian Singer Djavan Takes a Closer Look at His Roots - http://www.csmonitor.com/1990/1130/ldjav.html
Amy Duncan is an American musician and writer

who has been living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for over a decade.

