All Saints Church, Parish House and Rectory, Great Neck, N. Y.
Note: a reader asked me to fill in the time between this post and this post. Here is the first part.
I knew something was wrong the moment I approached the house early on a Sunday morning in June 1974, not long after completing the tenth grade, when I was sixteen. I had spent the previous night at my boyfriend’s house, deliberately defying my parents, and was coming home to get ready for work. My stepsister opened her upstairs bedroom window, said something about a family meeting and tossed a note down to me. I scanned the note, quickly assessing the situation. There had been a family meeting to discuss my behavior and it was decided that I had to go, to return to my mother’s house in Huntington, Long Island.
It wasn’t a complete surprise, as the previous year living with my father and his new family had not gone well. The home environment was a volatile one, with my father and stepmother often fighting about his love affair with the game of tennis, my behavior and a host of other issues, including his propensity to fabricate stories about his life and accomplishments. Family fights at dinner time were frequent and loud enough to earn their own title–Tiner Dinner Theater.
I complied with the expectations of my parents on the surface: walking the dog, washing dishes, keeping my room clean and doing other chores. Outside of the house I lived another life, cutting school with my best girlfriend to spend the day sailing her father’s yacht out of Port Washington harbor on the Long Island Sound, drinking with friends, snooping around the houses of babysitting clients after the kids were asleep to find loose change or the liquor cabinet. I forged my father’s signature on school absence notes and was, in general, a practiced liar. Despite the risky acting out, I cared about my studies and did well in school. I was determined to move forward with my life and be independent.
It just happened sooner than I expected, and with disturbing finality.
I think a couple girlfriends helped me pack. Not having much in the way of luggage, most of my things were packed into paper bags. I remember being yelled at to hurry and pack faster, but I was not angry. I was upset, mostly about having to leave my job as a waitress at the Friendly Ice Cream store (Friendly’s for short). I called my boss to tell him I couldn’t be there that day or ever again as I was having to move to Mom’s. Yes, now. One of my girlfriends drove me to Huntington and I remember thinking, this drive isn’t that long, about 25 minutes, and yet in the year I lived at my Dad’s my Mom had only visited me in Great Neck a couple times. Instead I would take a 1.5 hour train ride, first riding West from Great Neck to Jamaica to catch an East Bound train to Huntington, then taking a cab to my mother’s house or taking a bus to downtown and walking the rest of the way. Either way, our visits were short and did not mend our widening gulf of separation.
We arrived at my Mom’s before she got home from work and I didn’t have a house key; after unpacking the car, I hugged my girlfriend goodbye, and sat down among the bags on the front steps, waiting. I don’t remember how long I sat there before seeing her car pull into the driveway, or what thoughts were running through my head. She got out of the car and the first thing she said was, “You can’t stay here.”
The next few hours at my mother’s involved multiple phone calls and discussions before my girlfriend, the same one who drove me there, returned to pick me up and bring me home to her house. This was to be my lucky day after all. Her family discussed the situation and decided that they wanted to help. I could stay with them for the time being until other arrangements could be made. I immediately called my boss to tell him I would be there for the rest of my shifts that week. That summer was a blissful one of immersion in the life of my new, busy, happy Jewish family. We shopped for and ate kosher meals together, and I attended synagogue with them and helped with chores. This was my first close-up experience of a loving marriage.
In September, at the start of eleventh grade, my girlfriend’s parents started to look for other arrangements as they were not comfortable becoming legal guardians. I was not allowed to visit my Dad’s or Mother’s house, and don’t know whether either of them were involved in planning where I would go next. I think my Mom visited once that summer. My Dad was a regular customer at Friendly’s and so I saw him there, serving him coffee and danish most mornings. He would say, “Thank you, darling,” then continue reading the paper.
An Episcopal priest, the rector of the Great Neck All Saints parish pictured above, offered to have me come live in the rectory with his wife and their four active children. The refinished attic on the third floor of the rectory had a spacious bedroom with a light-filled bathroom at the end of the hall, and this became my new home. I lived there for about a year before obtaining legal emancipation and moving into my own apartment, a furnished room with a bathroom in the hall that I shared with an elderly man (who lived in the furnished room at the opposite end of the hall). I finished high school while working full time at Friendly’s, walking up the hill to catch the last two periods of classes and taking all of the remaining high school requirements via correspondence courses. I graduated in January 1976.
On the day I turned 17, I served my Dad his usual black coffee and danish at Friendly’s. He responded, “Thank you, darling.” I said, “Dad, it’s my birthday.” He apologized profusely, but that wasn’t really the point. As I saw it, my family had moved on with their lives. My independence, once won, was final.
