Arbitrary Stupid Goal Read online

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  Table of Contents

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For my mom & the Wolfawitzes

  A SYMPHONY

  The imaginary horizontal lines that circle the earth make sense. Our equator is 0°, the North and South Poles are 90°. Latitude’s order is airtight with clear and elegant motives. The earth has a top and a bottom. Longitude is another story. There isn’t a left and right to earth. Any line could have been called 0°. But Greenwich got first dibs on the prime meridian and as a result the world set clocks and ships by a British resort town that lies outside London.

  It was an arbitrary choice that became the basis for precision. My father knew a family named Wolfawitz who wanted to go on vacation but didn’t know where.

  It hit them. Take a two-week road trip driving to as many towns, parks, and counties as they could that contained their last name: Wolfpoint, Wolfville, Wolf Lake, etc.

  They read up and found things to do on the way to these Wolf spots: a hotel in a railroad car, an Alpine slide, a pretzel factory, etc.

  The Wolfawitzes ended up seeing more than they planned. Lots of unexpected things popped up along the route.

  When they came back from the vacation, they felt really good. It was easily the best vacation of their lives, and they wondered why.

  My father says it was because the Wolfawitzes stopped trying to accomplish anything. They just put a carrot in front of them and decided the carrot wasn’t that important but chasing it was.

  The story of the Wolfawitzes’ vacation was told hundreds of times to hundreds of customers in the small restaurant that my mom and dad ran in Greenwich Village. Each time it was told, my dad would conclude that the vacation changed the Wolfawitzes’ whole life, and this was how they were going to live from now on—chasing a very, very small carrot.

  The relation that the name Wolfawitz has to Wolfpoint is about the same as Greenwich, England, has to Greenwich Village.

  The “Greenwich” of Greenwich Village came from a Dutch village on Long Island called Greenwijck (aka Pine District).

  A man named Yellis Mandeville lived on Long Island near Greenwijck. In 1670, Yellis moved to Manhattan, bought a plot of land, and gave it a familiar name.

  Copying your old neighbor is an unimaginative way to name a place. I feel this, but I also come from a family that nicknamed their family store “The Store.”

  The “Village” part came from the fact that in 1670, New York hadn’t spread past the lowest tip of Manhattan. Above what is now the seaport and stock exchange were farms, meadows, swamps, woods, and a stream full of trout.

  Me or my twin sister on The Store’s stoop

  The stream full of trout was called Minetta Brook. It was actually called a lot of things, but Minetta is what stuck. The stream wound across downtown Manhattan from what became Gramercy through the future Washington Square Park and dumped out in the Hudson.

  Beginning in the 1640s, some freed slaves of the Dutch settled along the Minetta and set up farms and homes.

  When yellow fever swept through the crowded tip of Manhattan, people escaped to the village of Greenwijck and the clean waters of the Minetta.

  Most of this factual history comes from The Village, by John Strausbaugh.

  My father says Indians settled Manhattan thanks to antibodies that were found in the Minetta, and that the river is the true source of life where we know it.

  This was not mentioned by Strausbaugh. No one calls it the river of life besides my dad.

  Well, I call it the river of life, but only in my head.

  I am pretty sure my brothers and sisters believe it as well.

  = Minetta Brook’s original course

  Eventually, as Greenwijck became Greenwich and New York grew, the Village became part of the city. A city that paved over Minetta Brook in 1820. Some streets were shaped and named by it.

  The street called Minetta Lane became a subdistrict of the Village known as Little Africa and continued to be settled by freed slaves, now from American owners rather than Dutch. The district had a progressive school and churches, though it was full of poverty, murder, and diseases.

  Little Africa was also home to bars known as black-and-tans. Black-and-tans were one of the only spots in the city where white and black people mixed. They were debauched places, with drugs and gambling. Interracial coupling was on the PG side of the place, but they were a heaven for a certain type of person.

  As the Village grew, its early acceptance of all people and proclivities continued. Blacks could screw whites, whites could screw blacks, men could screw men, musicians could play whatever noise they liked. Things the rest of the country found odd or disgraceful were welcomed with open arms in the Village. It became a symphony of oddities, and acted as a magnet for the country’s fringe people.

  But that wasn’t what drew my dad.

  He answered an ad from a Jewish newspaper that he found in the bathroom of his father’s paper factory.

  * * *

  DOWNTOWN — Fully furnished, custom designed, apt for rent. Laverne Properties: WAtkins 4 - 0481

  * * *

  My dad went to see the apartment, which happened to be on Christopher Street.

  He loved it.

  And was about to sign on the dotted line when he realized how much money it cost.

  There was a signing fee, furniture charge every month, rent, and a “rug tax.”

  He backed out.

  Mr. Laverne was not happy. As my dad was leaving, he saw a sign in the building next door.

  “Room for rent.”

  It was a shithole.

  But the place was a straight rental with no signing fee or rug tax. And that is how my dad moved to the Village.

  WIDE WORLD

  My family still owns a restaurant and we still call it “The Store,” but it is not “The Store” in my heart.

  The one in my heart has a Dutch door and a tiled stoop, surrounded by the sound of roll-down gates with locks and pegs being thrown in a bucket. I am small and dirty with hair my mom calls “the rat’s nest.”

  My twin sister, Minda, has an identical “nest.” We step barefoot on tables and take naps in vinyl booths. Charlie, Danny, and Zack, my three brothers, spin on stools and crawl on the floor. Two ceiling fans whirl above covered in dust clumps held together by grease.

  And Willoughby stands by the door. He looks cool, even with roast beef hanging from his mouth.

  The Store is on the corner of Morton and Bedford Streets in Greenwich Village. And it is still a village.

  Everyone knows who we are. Teachers let us say “shit” in class and show up an hour late. “It’s not Zack’s fault,” the real teacher advises the substitute teacher. “He is a Shopsin.”

  We drag cups across the plastic levers of our family soda fountain and make murder cocktails that contain every flavor.

  Customers bring our parents candy and toys from all over the world. The customers are matter-of-fact the best people in New Y
ork. New York is matter-of-fact the best place on earth.

  Barely 8, my brother Charlie had the day off from school. He told my mom that he wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History. She gave him ten dollars and explained how to take the train to 81st Street.

  Charlie crossed the avenue and made his way to the subway.

  At the West 4th Street station he paid his token and went to the uptown platform.

  But he caught the A train and it didn’t stop at 81st.

  It didn’t stop at 86th or 96th or 103rd.

  Charlie got off the train and found a payphone on the platform. It cost a dime.

  “Hey, Mom, I’m in Harlem. I’m on 125th Street,” Charlie said.

  My mom didn’t freak out. She told him to go to the downtown side and catch the local C train.

  And that is what Charlie did.

  At the museum he saw dinosaurs, ran the ramps of the carpeted gem room, ate lunch at the cafeteria, and bought a ruler in the gift shop.

  And then he took the train home.

  Home was The Store. My mom was not waiting on a nervous edge for Charlie. She was waiting on tables.

  When me and my twin sister were older, maybe 11, we would cover shifts for my mom; say, if she needed to go for a parent-teacher meeting. This was always because she had five kids.

  Minda was much better at waitressing than me, but we got to split the tips evenly. The tips were huge. We had passbook checking accounts and credit cards.

  Whenever my mom was pregnant she’d rub her belly and sing that The Store was about to get a new dishwasher.

  On TV I saw kids complain to their parents about doing the dishes and I’d think: fuck, they’re only washing one cover, two at most. My brother Danny never complained and he worked whole shifts, whole summers.

  He never complained even though I cleared tables like a thoughtless prick, throwing half-full glasses in the bus tray, filling it with a mix of soda and beer.

  He did spray me.

  None of us thought of working at The Store as a chore.

  My dad was the cook. Customers came to talk to him and my mom as much as to eat. It was a forum of philosophy and hot sauce.

  Then there was Willoughby, Willy, whose mystery is the reason for this book.

  On Mother’s Day Willy would poke his head in The Store’s double door, a hanger wrapped around his neck. This was his way of celebrating the holiday.

  Tic-tac-toe was a quarter a game. Me and Minda were allowed to go into my mom’s tip cup for it. Sometimes Willy would let me win, but usually we tied. We played it every day until he taught me craps.

  Willy taught my father to curse. If you ever met my dad you know what an achievement that is.

  My dad

  Albert was a communist, a sailor, and a superintendent. He and my dad were friends and would hang out at a diner on Sheridan Square called Riker’s. They’d do the crossword puzzle and eat pastries. This was before The Store and before my mom.

  My dad was lost.

  Albert suggested he become a super because you didn’t have to do much and you got free rent.

  So my dad became the live-in super of 38 Morton Street.

  In New York at the time, if you had more than five units in a building you needed a live-in super. There was a loophole. You could hire a super that lived within five hundred feet of the building, known as a traveling super. So my dad picked up two more buildings—one on Seventh Avenue and another on Morton Street.

  Willy hung around Riker’s, too, but at that point, Dad didn’t really know him.

  It was hard to really know Willy.

  He was black, but his skin was silver-white. As a graphic designer now, I can see it as a 10% tint of black. He had a deep voice made for singing without a microphone, and always wore a newsboy cap. He was a senior citizen by the time I was born.

  When my oldest brother, Charlie, was little, Willy dubbed him “The Reverend Chuckie Joe” and tried forever to turn him into a boy televangelist.

  “But, Willy, I’m Jewish,” Charlie would say.

  That’s better, you a sinner but you seen the light, Willy would reply.

  The weekly deposits for The Store were made by Willy. He’d set off with a wad of twenties wrapped in a rubber band and a deposit slip. If there were more twenties than the amount on the slip, Willy got to keep the money.

  My mom and dad would mess up now and then. Willy would come back from the bank singing and buy me and my twin sister scratch-off Lotto tickets to celebrate.

  My parents put the extra twenties in on purpose.

  Mom had no problems with us seeing movies rated PG-13, R, even NC-17. But the skinny dude who worked at the Waverly Theater gave not a shit about what Mom thought, rule is a rule: an adult must accompany you if a movie has a rating above PG. All the movies my brothers wanted to see were above PG.

  Willy would take them to see whatever film they wanted. It didn’t feel like he was doing them a favor. It felt like a friend, even if they were seeing Airborne, a movie whose action sequences involved teenagers rollerblading through Cincinnati.

  When it snowed, me and my siblings helped shovel and salt the sidewalk. Not just The Store’s sidewalk, but also the sidewalks of the buildings that Willy took care of.

  It was Morton Street. That was how my dad and Willy got close. They were both live-in supers.

  Very early in my dad’s relationship with Willy, they were walking down Morton Street. A man stopped them. “Do you know Willoughby?” the man asked.

  Nope, never heard of him, Willy answered.

  Time spent with Willy was a lesson. My dad doesn’t really know who made the first move in their friendship, but it is safe to assume it wasn’t Willy.

  World Wide Photo was an image bank and photo-assignment agency. In the 1960s, Willy was looking them up in the phone book. He swapped the name by mistake, searching for Wide World Photo. There was no listing. So he called up the Yellow Pages, bought Wide World Photo, and put his number and address next to it.

  In the background of his life, he fielded calls for Wide World. Image requests would come in, he’d turn around and call World Wide, buying the image at a lower rate. He kept popular images on hand.

  Willy was, in a way, an artist. He would rather steal ten cents than earn ten dollars.

  I found an old stack of photos of the Pope once when I was dropping lunch off at Willy’s apartment. It was strange and kind of scared me, because normally I would find photos of tits and ass. I asked my dad, and that’s when he told me about Wide World.

  Wide World would get calls for photo assignments, too. Assignments to photograph people like Nelson Rockefeller or Cardinal Spellman. My dad would go as Willy’s assistant. They’d make fake press passes and have a good time. Willy was a decent photographer. He kept a darkroom in his apartment and had a friend with a stat camera.

  My husband, Jason, is a photographer. Some of our first dates were photo jobs where I tagged along as his assistant.

  Ever since, I have thought about the Wide World Photo assignments as my dad and Willoughby going out on first dates.

  “Ha’yah, mule,” Jason would say as I lugged the Profoto pack and light stands. The equipment weighed fifty pounds.

  Often I’d get out of balance and crouch so the floor held the burden. Jason would shift the straps and secretly kiss my neck.

  This was on the way to shoot things like an animatronic gorilla, the world’s largest algae library, a magic trick distributor, the inside of a wind turbine, and the undefeated cookie champions of the Iowa state fair.

  Photograph by Jason

  I don’t know how long Willy’s scam went on, but I know how it ended. An accounting agency sent a check meant for World Wide worth $21,000 to Wide World’s address, and Willy cashed it. World Wide found out.

  Caught, Willy said he would give the money back and then sell them Wide World’s Yellow Pages listing.

  World Wide said Willy would give the money AND listing back. So he gave both bac
k, and that was that.

  Willy was in more than one way an artist. He used to sing at nightclubs.

  I wish I could say more, but my dad never went to see Willy sing. That was a separate life. Their life was Morton Street.

  A neighborhood guy named Roscoe gave my dad an old safe. The kind you drop on someone in a silent comedy. We still have this safe. Me and my twin sister’s first passports are kept in it.

  Roscoe had the safe for fifty years but didn’t know the combination.

  Willy had a friend that was a safecracker.

  The safecracker comes. He sees the safe and right off says the last number of this kind is always 17, then zippy-dippy he opens the safe faster than my dad can open it to this day.

  Willy had an assortment of friends like that. People who could get you guns. People who could get you drugs. He liked running with dangerous people but had a theory he lived by:

  Don’t sit next to people like that. Someone might come to shoot them, miss, and get you instead.

  The main perk of being a super is not paying rent.

  Willy lived in an illegal apartment in the basement of his building.

  It wasn’t a free ride. Willy worked. He swept the halls, took care of boilers and rats. He was mechanically gifted, with a full set of tools and a never-ending list of requests.

  If there was a plumbing problem Willy knew when it was an easy fix and when it was time to call Garboli’s.