Fire Island Vacation 1971

In the early 70's my parents were in group therapy on the upper east side of Manhattan with a psychiatrist named Dr. "Murray" Jonas. They met a few interesting characters there some of whom later became their friends. Jane K, and Buddy+George. Buddy was an art director for GLAMOUR magazine and his husband George lived across the street in another apartment house. 

Jane's husband Joe was the famous Broadway show producer of the show APPLAUSE. They had a Manhattan apartment we visited a few times. In their big park ave apartment they had a raised up stage with curtains and a green tile floor with a microphone for auditions. I remember my sister getting up and singing a song into the mic.

Jane had a limo take us to a B'way show and then out for hamburgers at the most famous hamburger join in Manhattan. I remember there were sculpted big brown cow heads on the walls and the burgers were so fat I couldn't finish mine.

Jane had an adopted daughter Janna close to my age and her much younger cousin named Tiffany. 

One summer we were invited to stay with Joe and Jane for a week and we took the ferry out to Fire Island. We all vacationed together in this house full of mirrors and windows overlooking the ocean. 

They had two black pugs and a gray weather-worn walkway with multilevel porches that circled the house. 

Joe was a gourmet cook. Sunday Morning he made  us all brunch. Us kids fed our omelettes to the pugs. They gobbled them up and vomited yellow circles around the house on all of the porches. We were busted.

I remember  at bedtime seeing Jane sitting up in her bed wearing big pink hard-plastic curlers. How will she sleep, I wondered. 

Jane's sister Monica was Tiffany's mom. Jane and Monica were lookers. They had perfect tan slender bodies, blonde hair and dark red nail polish. They both smoked cigarettes and laughed a lot and drank martini's and wore bikini's to the Fire Island market next to the boardwalk.

In the middle of the night I was awakened by yelling and banging, crashing of furniture.

Joe was smashing bar stools against the walls and yelling in a drunken rage. Jane and my mother ran out of the house. Someone called the police.

I was traumatized.

I found out later when I heard my mother and Jane telling the cop what happened (I remember him taking notes on a black leather bound note pad) that Jane and my mother, Sonia had run down the beach in the dark pursued by a screaming drunk Joe threatening to kill them both. Running in deep sand is hard to do, I remember my mother saying and laughing. They were so scared they weren't thinking straight. They said they finally switched to running closer to the water's edge where it was easier to escape.

Nobody cared about us kids. Nobody spoke to us and told us everything would be okay. They were all hyped up on the drama and kept telling their other friends what happened. We did go home, taking the ferry back later that day.

I still have vacation phobia.

Then months later Jane, Janna, and her cousin Tiffany came to stay with us to escape Joe once again. Janna and Tiffany slept in my bedroom. That night I slept walked from the stress and I put on my blue bikini and emptied my dresser of my other two bathing suits and I stashed them in my bed. In the morning I found myself wearing a bathing suit bottom under my nightgown and discovered the other bathing suits in my bed. Then I remembered sleepwalking. 

The next day while I was at school, a limo showed up at home. The driver came out with a bouquet of a dozen red roses and a box of live lobsters for Jane with a note from Joe.

While entertaining, and they were always entertaining, my mother joked about how she and my step father would be shot by Joe's Mafia thugs in their beds, just like in the movie the Godfather. She laughed it off.

I went to school and broke down crying to my 7th grade social studies teacher Mr. O'Rourke. I told him the story.