Palisades Park (56 page)

They both laughed. Then after a moment, Toni worked up the nerve to ask something she had wondered about these past few years:

“Bunty? Do you ever … regret not getting married? I mean, you obviously love kids—didn’t you ever want any of your own?”

Bunty thought a moment and said, “Yeah, sure, sometimes I regret it. But I had so many sweethearts at the pool, I just couldn’t bring myself to pick one and hurt the feelings of the rest. And if I had, I’d have had to get a regular job, pay a mortgage—and then I couldn’t come down here and swim the river every day. I’ve got plenty of kids, Toni—all of you are my kids, and I couldn’t ask for better ones. Look how beautiful it is out here today. Look at the friends I have. I’ve got everything a man could want.”

The smile on his face was genuine—he chose this life, and he loved it. And if he was truly happy, that was all that mattered to Toni.

*   *   *

The highlight of Dawn’s eighth birthday party in August was a performance by “The Magical Adele,” who started out her routine by showing Dawn and her friends a square bag made of felt, turning it inside out to demonstrate that it was empty, then zipping it shut. “You see, this is no ordinary bag,” Adele explained. “It produces eggs, as many as you can eat. Like so.” She unzipped it, reached into the seemingly empty bag, and took out a hard-boiled egg, which she then passed around to the children.

“Wow!” a boy said. “How many are in there?”

“Let’s find out,” Adele said with a smile, then reached in and took out a second egg, which she handed to the boy. Then a third egg, and a fourth, and a fifth. There were gasps of delight from the kids as they examined them, then Adele said, “But since none of you are hungry after all that birthday cake, we’ll put the eggs back in the bag and make them disappear until someone—probably me—needs to make an omelet. All right?”

She took back the eggs, placed them in the bag, then zipped it, spoke a magical incantation, then unzipped it and held it upside down.

It was empty.

More gasps of awe and delight from the kids.

“But really, it’s not such a good idea to make omelets out of disappearing eggs,” she noted, “because when the omelet reaches your stomach, it disappears again—and you’re still hungry!”

They all laughed at that.

She went on to make a series of coins, taken from the pockets of the children themselves, disappear from the palm of her hand, then reappear. And when they came back, there were now
two
coins for each child.

“This is called getting a return on your investment,” she quipped.

Toni watched from the doorway, impressed not so much by the magic tricks—she knew that the coins had been “palmed” and that the eggs actually disappeared into secret pockets in the bag—as by Adele’s patter, the way she kept the kids entertained and misdirected their attention when necessary. She had only seen her mother perform her act once, at the Steel Pier in ’58, and she had been good then too.

At the end, when Adele literally produced a rabbit out of her hat, the kids applauded enthusiastically and the bunny was passed among them to be fondled. Toni saw the bright smile on her mother’s face and knew exactly what she was feeling: the satisfaction of having performed the routine well, the pleasure of approbation, the quiet pride that you could do something few people could. She had told herself a thousand times that these were the same reasons her mother had abandoned them, that she had been driven by childhood dreams even as Toni had … but despite this, she still couldn’t manage to open her heart to her.

Later, after Dawn’s guests had left and it was just family, Adele spent an hour playing dolls with Dawn as they chatted about hairstyles and dresses and shoes. Toni watched this too, and felt a twinge of guilt and sorrow that she hadn’t been the kind of daughter her mother had so desperately wanted. But at least she had given her a granddaughter whose face would light up when Adele gave her the latest doll, or a new comb for her hair. She was happy that she could do that, at least, for her mother. It hadn’t all been Adele’s fault; Toni had been just as stubborn, resisting her help, rejecting everything she held dear. She’d been a brat at times—she could admit that to herself, if not to Adele.

Go on, Toni told herself. After she’s done with Dawn, talk shop with her, compare war stories, life on the road. Maybe now you
are
the kind of daughter she can be proud of. Her mother had said as much, but Toni never quite believed it. She was too afraid it would turn out to be a lie.

Like all the other lies.

Anger at those lies held her back, and kept her heart closed.

She turned away and left Adele and Dawn to play their girlish games and laugh their girlish laughter. As a child Toni would have mocked them. As an adult she longed to join them. But she knew it was too late for that.

*   *   *

Toni had a three-day engagement at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City the last week of August, before the annual Miss America Pageant took over the town. She and Arlan drove down on a Tuesday and had the equipment set up the next day. She knew she would have to call her mother at some point, but for now she put it off to take in one of the pier’s most famous attractions. The diving horse act conceived by Ella Carver’s adopted father continued to this day, as a horse named Shiloh dove headfirst into a huge tank of water, a young woman astride him. Toni marveled at their virtuosity but couldn’t help feeling sorry for the horse—Toni had freely chosen her career, these animals had had no say in their dangerous profession.

Other than the horses the mid-week attractions at the Pier were “Skip Sigel’s Steel Pier Jazz Dancers,” a troupe of twelve young women dancing to jazzed-up melodies like “Who’s Sorry Now?”, and a young singer named Barbara Ann Mack, who had parlayed appearances on an Albany, New York, television show called
The Teenage Barn
into a twenty-four-day gig here.

At Toni’s performances the next day, she offered the afternoon crowd the backward somersault with a half twist and the evening crowd got the topper, the cutaway double somersault, piked. After the last show she decided to walk across the boards to Abe’s Oyster House—an Atlantic City tradition—for a nice hot bowl of chowder. But as she stepped up to the old two-story brick building to look at the menu posted in the window, her attention was caught by one of the waitresses inside, serving a table about twenty feet away from Toni. The woman was laying down a plate of steamed clams and another bearing a whole Maine lobster. As she did, her wavy blonde hair fell into her eyes, and with her hands occupied, she blew the hair out of her vision.

Toni felt a chill colder than the wind off the ocean.

It was Adele.

Toni stared a long moment, hoping that she was mistaken, but—no. It was her. It was her mother.

And it wasn’t even the off-season yet.

Toni quickly turned away before Adele could see her, and began hurrying down Atlantic Avenue. She walked all the way to Maine Avenue, losing herself in Hackney’s Restaurant, whose vast dining room, it was said, could accommodate three thousand guests. There weren’t anywhere near that many tonight, but there were enough to make her feel safe in a crowd.

Once again she had looked through a window and seen something she wished she hadn’t—but this time, instead of reacting with fear and anger, she felt only shock and sadness. A terrible, piercing sadness that could not be warmed or blunted by the hot coffee or clam chowder she held in her hands. And for the first time in almost twenty years, her eyes filled with tears for her mother—not for her mother’s abandonment of her, but for her mother herself, and the heartbreak that she was surely feeling.

24

Palisades, New Jersey, 1966

G
LADYS
S
HELLEY, IN ADDITION
to being Mrs. Irving Rosenthal, was a talented, successful composer of popular songs and Broadway show tunes who had made several attempts over the years to compose a theme song for her husband’s beloved park. All, sadly, were of fleeting posterity: few visitors ever left Palisades humming “Sunnin’ in the Summer Sun,” “Amusement Park Waltz,” or “Color It Palisades Amusement Park.”

And then came Freddy Cannon’s “Palisades Park.” Whether inspired creatively or competitively, Miss Shelley, asked in 1965 to write a jingle for the park to be played on local radio stations, finally struck gold:

Palisades has the rides,

Palisades has the fun,

Come on over …

The melody, like that of “Palisades Park,” was bouncy, fun, and highly contagious: this one you
did
hum (or sing) after hearing singer Steve Clayton’s breezy delivery. All summer, every summer, it ran on radio and TV in the New York metropolitan area, and for local children growing up at that time—Baby Boomers—it would forever become part of the soundtrack of their childhoods.

Palisades from coast to coast

Where a dime buys the most

Palisades Amusement Park

Swings all day and after dark!

If “Palisades Park” was the song that made Palisades famous around the world, “Come On Over” was the hometown anthem that would be fondly recalled, even in adulthood, by millions of children who grew up in New York and New Jersey:

Ride the coaster, get cool,

In the waves of the pool

You’ll have fun, so—come on over!

Meanwhile, another literary achievement was celebrated at Eddie’s Polynesia on the Palisades, when an elated Jack Stopka rushed in one day carrying an envelope and a magazine and announced: “I sold a story!”

Eddie had not seen him looking so animated, so excited, since before he joined the Army. Lehua asked, “What story, Jack?”

“It was one I wrote for my shrink, about taking my first hill in Korea,” Jack said, almost breathless. “I called it ‘The First Day Up,’ but the publisher is retitling it ‘My First Day in Hell,’ which I guess is punchier.”

“My God, Jack, that’s fantastic!” Eddie said, coming out from behind the bar. “Who’s publishing it?”

“
Argosy
magazine. Here, this is last month’s issue.” He handed his father a copy of the former pulp, which now billed itself as “The No. 1 Men’s Service Magazine” and featured stories like “Hitler’s Solid Gold Pistol” and “Vietnam: Air Cavalry’s Bloody Debut.”

“It’s not
The Saturday Evening Post,
” Jack admitted, “but it’s not
Man’s Illustrated
either, which is where I probably would’ve sent it next.”

“Congratulations, Jack,” Lehua said, giving him a hug. “That’s quite an accomplishment.”

“Hell yes! Congratulations, Jack.” Without thinking, Eddie outstretched a hand. For the first time in years, Jack didn’t flinch from it, and his grip was surprisingly steady.

He proudly displayed the acceptance letter and a check, admitting a little sheepishly, “They only paid me thirty-five bucks for it. But it’s a start.”

“You’re damn right it is. Being a published author—that’s as good as being a movie star in my book. I couldn’t be prouder of you, son.”

“Too bad Sis isn’t here,” Jack said. “I’ll have to call and tell her.”

*   *   *

At that moment, Jack’s sister was sitting in the shade of a palm tree outside Ella Carver’s trailer, which now shared space with her tank and tower on a lot in Dania, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. In August of 1966 Ella would turn seventy-three, and she looked the archetypal grandmother: a nest of snow-white hair framing a tanned, weathered face, her eyes still keen and lively behind white horn-rimmed spectacles. “My eyes are the reason I stopped daytime diving,” she explained to Toni as she sat knitting a scarf for her granddaughter. “The glare of the sun on the water practically blinded me. Now I only do night dives. That’s just common sense.”

Toni, fresh from a series of Southern engagements in May and June, just smiled. “Where are you performing these days?”

“Wherever I can. Not as many carnivals around these days, so I do a lot of drive-in theaters—fire diving in between showings of
Darby’s Rangers
and
The Yellow Mountain.
Also shopping centers and supermarkets.”

“I saw how you stumped the panel on
What’s My Line?
”

She laughed. “Like I told you once, it’s all about expectations. Nice little white-haired grandma, who’s gonna think she does what I do for a living? Yeah, that show was a hoot.”

“So no plans to retire?”

“And do what? Sit and knit? If I stopped diving, I’d die. I wouldn’t be happy settled down in one place for too long. We old-time entertainers … we just live in a world alone, by ourselves.”

Toni thought of Bunty and was supremely grateful for her family.

Ella said, “I hear you wowed ’em at the Jacksonville Fair.”

“Yeah, I started with a backward double somersault, then in the evenings I did a cutaway double somersault, piked. The usual routine.”

“You know,” Ella said slowly, “there’s a feature you should consider adding to your act. Ever thought about doing a fire dive?”

Toni started at the word
fire.
“But—that’s your specialty.”

“Oh, hell, I didn’t invent it, Bee Kyle was doing it before me. And Billy Outten does a male human torch act. But I won’t be around forever and there ought to be
some
woman I can pass the torch on to, so to speak.”

“Ella, I’m flattered, but … fire
scares
me, you know that—”

“All the more reason to do it,” Ella insisted. “You can’t live your whole life afraid of something that happened twenty years ago. Back in ’53 I was adjusting some guy wires when the wind blew a high-tension wire against them, sending seven thousand volts through my body. Knocked me cold. But you don’t see me cringing from light sockets, now do you?”

Toni couldn’t help but laugh. It was true, every time she overcame her fears she had come out stronger in the end.

“I suppose I could … try it once,” she allowed.

“That’s the spirit. C’mon, I’ll get you outfitted right now.”