Chapter One Adrianne Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us. --Miss Prism from Oscar Wilde''s The Importance of Being Earnest I was born addicted to heroin. But my story doesn''t start there. It starts with my earliest memories of my family. Long Island flows through my parents'' veins. It shows in their manner, their clothes--so chic in all of their disco-era glory--the way they wear their hair, and most particularly in the way they speak. It''s tawlk not talk, mothuh not mother, cawfee never coffee, and Lawn Guyland rather than Long Island. Their conversations are staccato-like, respectful, and playful.
Often, Dad interrupts Mom to correct a mixed metaphor or improper idiom. Ady Maidy--their nickname for me--I know you promise you''re gonna waulk and feed a dawg if we get one, but I''ll tell ya, it''s the truth of puddin'' . You mean proof, Dad says. Wha? Proof, proof is in the puddin''. What''d I say? You said, ''Truth of puddin''.'' Oh for goodness sake . you know what I meant . Our home is filled with love and laughter and the play of three kids: my older brothers Harry and Jeffrey, and me.
We''re Jewish, but not really religious. Mom or Dad tuck me in each night before bed with a story and often Mom sings, Ah baby, you''re my Ady Maidy, I love you so . They check under the bed and in the closet for scary things before turning off the light and leaving the door cracked just a bit. Saturday mornings I wake up early and jump into bed with them. Oof, Ady Maidy, Dad says as I land on him, I''m gonna find your tickle spot. My four-year-old body falls apart giggling. Come give ya mothuh a hug, Ady Maidy. I wiggle from Dad to slip into Mom''s arms.
Mom gets up and makes breakfast while Dad runs out to the Honey Bun, our favorite bakery. He always makes sure to get me a jelly donut. After breakfast and yard work, Dad often takes me to Times Square Store, a long-gone, Lawn Guyland department store. Ady Maidy, where we goin''? Toys? Yes ma''am. Get what ya want, as long as it''s reasonable. He loved to spoil me rotten. Mom and Dad enjoyed theater. On some Saturday nights, even when I was a little girl, we would go into Manhattan to see a show.
My first was Annie, but we also saw Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, and others. I loved them, especially hearing the songs that permeated our home sung for us in a beautiful theater. But most Saturday nights Mom and Dad would go out while Grandma watched me. I would squish into the couch and play rummy with her until it was time for The Lawrence Welk Show. To bed Ady Maidy, she''d say, but I''d beg her to let me stay up just a little bit later so I could watch the bubbles. She would say okay and I''d curl into her lap to watch. When the bubbles were over, she''d put me to bed. I loved our home.
It was a split-level that from the outside looked like the house in The Brady Bunch. However, the inside was something different. The first thing you''d see when you walked through the door was a large stained-glass mirror that hung on the wall between the entryway and the kitchen, which was straight ahead. In front of the wall was a little ornamental rock garden with a few imitation plants and a gilded Greek statue of a woman playing a lyre. To the left, a short hallway brought you to the living room. To the right were stairs going up to the bedrooms. My brother Jeffrey, eleven years older than me, had a reel-to-reel tape player. I could hear it playing through the wall between our rooms: Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis .
I fell asleep listening to it. Mom said that my first word was Beatles. Most of my friends thought we were rich, but we weren''t. It just seemed that way. We lived on a corner lot and the front yard looked professionally landscaped, but that was just my dad. He was good at things like that and always had his hands busy on all kinds of projects. He had a train set in the basement that he tinkered with for hours. He''d let me sit on his lap and tap the little electric lever to make the trains go.
One time he built a model of a historic sailboat that took him forever to finish. He put it on a ledge on the wall in our living room, but it broke when Harry threw a pillow and hit it. That was the only time I saw my dad spank anybody. In our front yard there used to be a huge weeping willow. During the summer I could play under it, almost hidden by its long, languid branches. Late one summer a hurricane ravaged it, leaving it a toppled mess. Mom cried, but I couldn''t understand why. Because it was part of our family, she said.
She was a sensitive woman with the heart of an artist, even if she seemed like a Lawn Guyland housewife on the outside. When she wasn''t cleaning or tending to me or Harry, she was knitting, crocheting, or painting. My favorite of her paintings hung on a wall in our living room. It''s a turn-of-the-century scene of an older woman needlepointing a delicate, white length of fabric as a girl watches. The light is soft, the colors muted. The woman sits upright as the girl, in a clean white dress, white knee socks and black Mary Janes, leans toward her. Both gaze tenderly at the small, framed circle of fabric in the woman''s hands. When Mom read or knitted she sat serenely in a sofa under that painting.
When I saw her, I would totter to her and she''d put her knitting or book down as I climbed into her lap. Looking up at the painting, the gentleness of the moment, I always wanted to be the little girl. Is that me? I''d ask. Of course Ady Maidy. Who else could it be? A few years later, I would hide behind that sofa to avoid something horrible. In my longest-held memories events unfold in images, like photo slides falling from a carousel into a projector. It''s mid-July of 1967. The light of summer is diffuse and particularly bright, the sky a deep azure blue.
I''m playing beneath the willow; the weather is warm, but the shade is cool. Ady Maidy, come in and have some lunch. I''m almost five and kindergarten starts in the fall. Mom sits across from me and rests her clasped hands on the Formica tabletop. Her eyes are soft, but the corners of her lips are drawn together. ©2017 John Lipscomb and Adrianne Lugo. All rights reserved. Reprinted from The Painting and the Piano: An Improbable Story of Survival and Love .
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