Palisades Park (11 page)

“I got the job!” Frannie announced. “It’s all pretty simple. I keep the ladies’ locker rooms tidy, I hand them towels and bathing suits when they need them, take the used ones to the laundry…”

At sixteen years old, Frances was Minette’s opposite in many ways: petite and dark-haired where Minette was tall and blonde, polite and sweetly timid where Minette was blunt and no-nonsense. But in one way they were similar: they were both absolutely gorgeous with apparently a minimum of effort, which depressed Adele more than she could say.

“Congratulations, hon,” Minette said, giving her a hug. “You’ll be the best locker girl Palisades has ever seen. Frannie, you remember Adele, Frank Worth’s daughter—they lived on Cumbermeade too?”

“Oh, sure,” Frannie said, “your dad directed movies. Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you too, Frannie.”

“I’ll take you home, sis,” Minette offered. “Adele—see you on the midway. Don’t be a stranger.”

“Sure,” Adele called after, more than a bit wistfully. “See you.”

*   *   *

Once their concession stand was clean and shiny enough to pass muster with the Rosenthals, Eddie and Adele turned their attention to their product. Following instructions given them by their predecessor, they used an automatic peeler to peel enough potatoes for a test batch, then a stainless steel cutter that cut one or two potatoes at a time into large size pieces (so they retained more moisture). The cut fries were then stored in large containers filled with water and five ounces of Heinz malt vinegar. Eddie filled the cooking vats with Mazola corn oil, heated one to medium temperature and one to high, and lowered a basket of fries into the medium-hot oil for two minutes—“blanching” them, cooking them most of the way through. After draining, the fries were immersed in the high-temperature vat—“flash-frying” them for a minute and ten seconds until they turned golden brown. Eddie sprinkled them with salt, scooped them into one of the white paper cones, and topped them off with malt vinegar.

His first bite took him back to 1922. But he felt even more transported on opening day, when the smell of the fries mingled with the smell of waffles and the nearby Carousel fired up its lilting calliope music. Crowds began making their way up the midways, the air filled with ballies from concessionaires—and two of the best were located near the Stopkas. Curly Clifford—Italian, handsome, black wavy hair—was a magnet for the ladies, who flocked to his canary stand as he strummed his ukulele and sang:

Canary Isle where birds are singing

A little while, and I’ll be bringing

A song of love, to my lady fair (music will fill the air)

You’ll hear my song, I’ll see your smile

Then I’ll belong in Canary Isle …

Few were the women visitors who, having heard this sung as if only to them, could resist spinning the wheel to win one of Curly’s warblers.

His fiercest competition came from the stand next door: Helen’s Radio Shop, run by longtime concessionaire Helen Cuny—as always dressed impeccably, with only a slight accent betraying her Viennese origins. With an amused glance at Curly she addressed the tip:

“Oh, ladies, don’t listen to this one’s promises of a fairyland romance! He’s a charmer, but how many charming men have you met that you can trust? Fill your own air with music with one of these fine, dependable radios by Emerson—yes, that’s right, Emerson—available here exclusively at Helen’s Radio Shop! Step up, take a chance, win a brand-new radio!”

Eddie’s grind was more simple: “Saratoga French fries, best in the world, only one thin dime!” His bally didn’t need to be complex—the mouth-watering smell of the fries traveling down the midway did most of the selling. Very quickly there were long lines at the stand and within an hour they had sold out of their first batch of fries, sending Adele to the kitchen, peeling and chopping as fast as she could. She and Eddie alternated working the kitchen and working the bally, but even when she was at the front counter she was working harder than she ever had before—she did the grind, scooped up a cone full of fries for the customer, rang up the sale and made change, with barely a moment to catch a breath before the next customer had to be served.

At the end of the day the profits could almost make her forget all the hot, sweaty work that went into it. But as cool, rainy days at the start of the season grew hotter, so did the atmosphere inside the stand—the steam and the sizzling oil raising the temperature by a good ten to twenty degrees. On a day when the mercury outside topped ninety, in the back of the stand it climbed into triple digits and the oily steam made it feel like two hundred percent humidity. The first investment they made with their profits was the purchase of a large floor fan, which offered some relief.

At the end of the day they each also smelled like a giant walking French fry, a fact that was regularly noted by their children.

By this time Adele had gotten wise to the fact that her daughter was climbing like a monkey up the Palisades, and after yet another torn dress, Adele decided Antoinette needed some distraction. Ever since the “dinosaur hunt” at the Edgewater shoreline, she knew the children needed to learn how to swim—what better place to do it than in the Palisades pool? Marie would bring them to the park and watch over them, but Adele could keep half an eye on their progress from across the midway and visit them on her breaks.

The pool opened an hour and a half earlier than the rest of the park, so one morning Adele went over in search of someone to give her children swimming lessons. A breeze off the river carried a salt spray from the waterfalls, the memory of which still brought a small smile to Adele’s face. She was looking for the manager, Phil Smith, but the first person she encountered was Fran Dobson, who was standing near the bathing pavilion where she worked, staring dreamily into the distance.

Adele came up beside her and saw that Frannie was watching one of the lifeguards as he walked away from his station and toward a ten-foot-high diving board, one of several on that side of the pool. He was in his mid-twenties and heart-stoppingly handsome, with wavy dark-blond hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, muscular arms and legs; Frannie was eyeing him as if he were a Porterhouse steak. Before he started climbing the ladder he stripped off his white tank top emblazoned with the word
LIFEGUARD
, revealing an expansive chest that almost made Adele’s knees buckle.

“Oh my Lord in Heaven,” she said softly.

“Amen to that, sister,” Fran agreed.

The lifeguard started climbing the ladder to the diving board.

“Who
is
he?” Adele asked.

Fran sighed. “Gus Lesnevich. He’s a prizefighter. From Cliffside.”

“Well he nearly floored
me,
” Adele said.

“You’re a married woman.”

“I can dream, can’t I?”

“Don’t waste your time,” Fran said airily. “I plan on marrying him someday.”

Adele had to smile. “You may be a little young for him.”

“I can wait.”

“Yes, but can he?”

Fran gave her a sweet-sour look and said, “Party pooper.”

Gus Lesnevich, standing at the rear of the diving board, took several quick steps forward, sprang off the tip of the board, then executed a flawless backward somersault, cleaving the water like a knife.

Fran said, “He’s not just a boxer, he’s a really good diver too.”

Lesnevich’s gorgeous blond head broke the surface and Adele said, “I imagine he’s good at quite a lot of things.”

“Zip your lip or I’m telling Eddie.”

With a backward glance at the soaking-wet Lesnevich returning to his lifeguard station, Adele strolled over to the Casino Bar, where Phil Smith was chatting with Harry Shepherd, the bar manager. “Phil,” she said, “do any of your lifeguards give swimming lessons?”

“Sure, they’re all certified by the Red Cross.”

“Um, what about this Lesnevich guy?” Adele asked, feeling a twinge of guilt, but not so much that she didn’t ask.

Phil just shook his head. “Naw, he’s too busy training. He’s got a fight coming up in two weeks. You want Bunty.”

“Who?”

“He’s a swim coach at the Hackensack Y. Trained some professional athletes, too.” Phil went to the bar entrance and pointed to another one of the bronzed lifeguards overseeing the pool like minor Greek deities.

“That’s the man you want. Bunty Hill.”

5

H
IS NAME MAY HAVE
sounded like a battle in the Revolutionary War, but even compared to Gus Lesnevich, Bunty Hill was hardly chopped liver: six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and ruggedly handsome, with crystal blue eyes that crinkled in the corners when he laughed. In his mid-thirties, he confirmed that he was indeed a professional swim coach for the Hackensack YMCA as well as the Women’s Swimming Association of New York. He was happy to teach Adele’s children to swim, and wouldn’t brook any suggestion of payment: “Nah,” he said, “I do it for all the kids here. Bring ’em over tomorrow morning and I’ll have ’em swimming like guppies by afternoon.”

He had a soft, soothing voice, carefully modulated from years of coaching swimmers indoors, where loud echoing voices could be a jarring distraction. Adele was tempted to ask for lessons herself, but her kids knew she could swim and would likely rat her out. Besides, she reminded herself, as good as Bunty looked in swimming trunks, Eddie looked even better.

The next morning, Toni and Jack were only too happy to be taken to the Palisades pool for the day. With Adele working her stand across the midway and Marie settled comfortably beneath the shade of a beach umbrella, Bunty told the youngsters, “You midgets ready to learn to swim?”

“Yeah!” Toni said.

“Sure,” Jack agreed, following his established policy of concurring with anything his big sister said.

Bunty waded in with them into the shallow end. “Okay, first thing I want you to do is to bend down, cup your hands like this, scoop up a big handful of water, then take a gulp and gargle. You know what gargling is?”

Toni and Jack shook their heads.

“You keep the water in your throat and kinda blow bubbles with it. Here, watch me.” Bunty sucked up some pool water, tipped his head back, and gargled with the salt water as if it were mouthwash—then spit it out over the side of the pool. “See? Easy as pissing in a jar. Your turn.”

“Do we get to spit, too?” Jack asked eagerly.

“You bet. Live it up.”

Toni and Jack obligingly scooped up water, took in a mouthful, tipped their heads back, and did their best to gargle. But they quickly gagged at the highly saline water, swallowing half of it, coughing out the rest.

“Ugh!” Jack cried out. “It’s
salty.
”

“Yep,” Bunty said, “and that’s good. You know why? ’Cause the more salt there is in the water, the more buoyant a swimmer is—it makes you float better. Every time I go for a swim in the Hudson, I gargle a mouthful of it first, to see how buoyant the water is that day.”

“You swim in the river?” Toni asked.

“Every day. And on my birthday I swim across it—from Hazard’s Dock in Fort Lee to the little red lighthouse on the New York side.”

“Wow,” Toni said. “All by yourself?”

“Sure. So can you, someday. But first you’ve gotta learn how the human body floats in water, and how you won’t sink to the bottom, even if you’re afraid you will.”

“I’m not afraid,” Toni told him.

“Sweetie, I can tell
you’re
not afraid of anything. I was thinking more about your brother here.”

“I’m not afraid either,” Jack insisted.

“Great, we’re all fearless fleagles. So let’s start with floating.” He had them curl up with their legs tucked to their chests—“Like a couple of cooked shrimp,” he said, which made them giggle—then slowly straighten out until they were floating on their backs, the water pillowing their heads. “Good, now take a breath. Relax. You can’t swim well if your muscles are all tensed up.” He had them raise their hands above their heads to raise their center of gravity. “Keep your hips up, that’s it—there ya go, you’re floating.”

Toni and Jack were grinning as they bobbed on the surface like untethered balloons. “Don’t get cocky,” Bunty cautioned, “so far all you’re doing is a great imitation of a piece of driftwood. Kick your feet, just a little—it’s called a flutter kick. Keep your knees bent and give a little kick.” The kicks propelled them backward. Once they were comfortable moving through the water, he added a backstroke to the lesson: “One arm should always be in the water while the other is out. Elbows bent, one arm reaching down to your waist as the other comes up above your head—yeah, there you go, you got it.”

When they had mastered a simple backstroke, Bunty had them flip over and moved on to the American crawl, or freestyle stroke. As with most kids learning to swim, their arms and legs were all over the place, and he had to show them how to keep their limbs extended in a straight but relaxed line from the rest of their bodies. Jack had a tendency to splay his fingers, and Bunty admonished, “That ain’t gonna get you far,
kemosabe.
If you want to get any traction on the water, you’ve got to keep your hands loosely cupped—otherwise you’re trying to row a boat without an oar.”

After an hour of lessons they took a lemonade break at Bunty’s lifeguard station, where he kept a stack of newspapers he read on breaks, and sometimes a book from the Everyman’s Library. Bunty was a popular guy at the pool, especially among the ladies, with whom he flirted outrageously—and most of whom flirted right back.

“Is Bunty your real name?” Toni asked him.

“Nah, that’s just a nickname I picked up in school. I was a great bunter in softball, soon everybody stopped calling me John and started calling me Bunty.”

“So your name is John Hill?” Jack said.

“No, it’s Hubschman. Hill was my mother’s maiden name, I took it when I was doing a comic diving act with a friend named Dale. Hill and Dale, get it?” They stared blankly at that. “Besides, let’s face it—if
your
name was John Hubschman, wouldn’t you want to change it to Bunty Hill?”