The community center had some old records, and only a couple of days before, I’d heard “It All Begins and Ends with You,” sung by Mildred Bailey backed by the Red Norvo band. Without thinking to ask if my mom knew it, I ham-handed my way into it, and she sang along so beautifully that I sounded way better than I was. When I noticed that some of the gray-haired ladies had tears in their eyes, I understood for the first time why music matters so much, how it reminds us of who we are and where we came from, of all the good times and the sadness, too.
When we finished, everyone wanted to talk to us. I didn’t have much to say except “Thank you,” and they really had more interest in Mom than in me. They wanted to know where she performed. When she told them Slinky’s, many hadn’t heard of the place, and those who had heard of it looked disappointed for her.
While they gathered around my mom, I went looking for Miss Pearl, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I asked several people if they’d seen this tall woman in a pink suit and feathered hat, but no one remembered her.
From the center, my mother and I walked to the nearest park, which was her idea. It wasn’t much of a park, some trees and benches and a bronze statue of some former mayor or someone who would have been embarrassed to have his image in a park that had gone as crummy as that one, except that he was probably dead. There had been a plaque under the statue, telling who the bronze man had been, but vandals had cut it off the granite base. There were bare patches in the grass, and the trees weren’t properly trimmed, and the trash baskets overflowed. My mom remembered a vendor’s shack where you could buy newspapers and snacks and packets of little crackers to throw down for the pigeons, but it wasn’t there anymore, and what pigeons still hung around looked too red-eyed and kind of strange.
“What the heck,” she said. “Why not.”
“Why not what?”
“Why not make a day of it? Just you and me on a date.”
“What would we do?”
“Anything we want. Starting with a better park.”
We walked out to the main avenue, and we stood by the curb, looking for a taxi. She hailed a couple, and finally one stopped, and a man named Albert Solomon Gluck drove us to a better park, to Riverside Commons. In those days, there weren’t Plexiglas shields between the front and back seats, because no one yet imagined a time when drivers would be in danger from some of their passengers. Mr. Gluck entertained us with imitations of Jackie Gleason and Fred Flintstone and Ernest Borgnine, who were all big on TV back then, and he said he could do Lucille Ball, too, but he made her sound just like Ernest Borgnine, which really made me laugh. He wanted to be in show business, and one joke after another flew from him. I had my mom write down his name, so when he became famous, I would remember meeting him. Years later, I had reason to track him down, and though he didn’t become famous, I’ll never forget the first or the second time we met.
At Riverside Commons, he pulled to the curb and, before Mom could pay him, he said, “Wait, wait,” and got out of the taxi and came around to the rear curbside door and made a production out of opening it for us and presenting the park with a sweep of his hand, as if he had prepared it just for us. He was a portly man with bushy eyebrows and a rubbery face made for comedy, and everything about him suggested fun, except that I noticed his fingernails were bitten to the quick.
When we were on the sidewalk and Mom paid him, he took the fare but refused the tip. “Sometimes the quality of the passengers is the gratuity. But here’s something I want you and your boy to have.” From a pocket he took a pendant on a chain. When my mom tried to refuse it, he said, “If you don’t take it, I’m going to yell ‘Help, police’ until they come running, and I’ll make the most outrageous charges, and by the time we resolve the matter down at police headquarters, it’ll be too late to have your day in the park.”
Sylvia laughed, shook her head, and said, “But I can’t accept—”
“It was given to me by a passenger six months ago, and she told me she wanted me to give it to someone, and I asked who, and she said I would know when I met the person, but now it turns out to be two people, you and your boy. It’s luck on a chain. It’s good luck. And if you don’t take it, then it’s bad luck for me. Good luck for you, bad luck for me. What—you want to ruin my life? Were my jokes that terrible? Have a heart, lady, give me a break, take it, take it, before I scream for the city’s finest.”
There was no refusing him. After he drove away, we found a bench and sat there to examine the pendant. It had been fashioned from two pieces of Lucite glued together and shaped into a heart roughly the size of a silver dollar. Within the heart was a small white feather. It must have been glued there, but such an excellent job had been made of it that the feather looked fluffy, as though it would flutter inside the heart if you blew on the Lucite. A small silver eyehook, screwed into the top of the heart, received a silver chain.
“It must be really valuable,” I said.
“Well, sweetie, it’s not Tiffany. But it is pretty, isn’t it?”
“Why did he give it to you?”
“I don’t really know. He seemed to be a nice man.”
“I think he likes you,” I said.