I Said Yes to Everything: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

autobiography many years ago. At the end of the book, a habitual drunk, but now a decidedly sober actor, he stands in front of his bathroom mirror on the boat he lived on. He examines the broken veins on his nose, the bags under his eyes, the folds on his neck, with triumph. He has managed to wreck his own beauty and free himself from its expectations. Many years later I bought an initialed belt buckle at an auction that once was worn around his waist. I wanted an object to remember him by. To remember Carrie by.
    •   •   •
    T here was a very sick child who lived more than halfway up 148th Street in a brownstone with a big bay window. Her anxious, sweet-faced parents said she had a hole in her heart. They dressed in brownish dark colors and spoke in European accents. I always looked in the bay window when I passed their house. Sometimes they would hold up their frail blond-haired child and wave.
    One day I was invited to a birthday party. Not on 148th Street, but another street on the other side of Broadway. I didn’t know any of the children there. I was nine. Why was I invited? They were in a circle playing spin the bottle. When the bottle pointed at you, you left the circle, went into a closet with the boy who spun it, your lips pressed his, then you went back to the circle. It was strange, thrilling, but matter-of-fact. I don’t remember a birthday cake at all.
    Afterward, Lenny Black asked if he could walk me home. Tanned,dark-eyed, silky black hair. I was wearing the only dress I looked good in. Pale green silk, and saddle shoes. I kept looking at my saddle shoes, shyly walking beside him down the 148th Street hill, across the street from my building. It was spring. “Will you be my heartthrob?” he asked. There was a buzz in my ears as my heart sped, and my breath momentarily stopped. I kept looking at my saddle shoes, and in a conversational tone said, “Yes.”
    The week that followed was the most extraordinary in my life. Lenny Black came to 148th Street every afternoon. He brought leadership and adventure into the lives of all the girls on the block. When we played ring-a-levio, he always chose me to be on his team. I asked him to come with me to the back porch of my grandmother’s brownstone. Fremo and my mother were lying in deck chairs. They shielded their eyes with their hands as they looked up at him. I was proud.
    My status on the block shot up. I was no longer Lyova. I was Lenny’s girl. The star of the block. When we played hide-and-go-seek, he pushed me to hide with him, not from him. We crowded together in alleyways, warm breath intermingling, warm arms and knees touching. We skated down unknown streets, climbed dangerous ladders, ran across tarred rooftops. It was thrilling. The games we girls played before Lenny—“What would you wear if you were a princess?” “Emerald crown, matching satin dress, golden shoes”—all gone. He was the gangster. I was his moll. We were all his molls.
    One night my mother told me the little girl with the hole in her heart had died. “Tomorrow you’ll get dressed, go up the hill, and pay your respects to her parents. It’s very sad.” The next morning, despite my begging and pleading, my mother insisted I wear the new wine-and-white-checked suit she’d just purchased from De Pinna’s. The pleated skirt was up to my thighs; the jacket didn’t close over my nine-year-old belly. The kneesocks emphasized my pudgy knees.
    As I stepped out of my building on the 148th Street side, there wasLenny, leaning against a car. I saw his eyes take me in. In an instant I knew it was over.
    I crossed to the car and leaned against it, trying to hide everything he just saw. “I’m going up the hill to visit the little dead girl, want to come?”
    “Nah!” He left the car and stood opposite me, unabashedly taking in the belly and the thighs, the whole thing. “Nah!” he said again, and put his hands in his pockets. I watched him turn the corner to Riverside