Brightwater Court Brooklyn Memories

Aunt Irene was a chain smoker with a silver engraved cigarette case. She had a slender body covered in freckles. She painted her long nails red and she was always tanned. She and my mother's younger brother Uncle Ron lived in a rent-controlled Brighton Beach apartment on the top floor of 711 Brightwater Court. They had twin beds like Lucy and Ricky and every other sitcom of that era. You could sit on the end of the bed and see Sheepshead bay. In the summer there was always a cool breeze and the sound of balls bouncing at the next door racquetball club.

I used to visit my grandparents when they lived in that very apartment. The Art Deco lobby still looked and smelled the same, along with the elevator and painted gray basement where the washer and dryer lived.

After Hurricane Sandy the roof leaked and my Aunt kept a beige Tupperware bowl between her thighs while she slept to catch the leaks. She bought cases of canned sugar free Pepsi there was a forklifts load stockpiled in their dining room.

I experienced my first Passover Seder when my grandparents lived there at age 6 and I remember my one huge matzoh ball the size of a softball. A dinosaur egg in my shallow bowl of chicken soup.

I stayed up all night reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I stayed in the den at age 12. I could hear voices and radios on the boardwalk below. The den wallpaper was a pattern of woodgrain. My Grandma said, it looked like boards. There was a fake Renoir of a zaftig girl with red hair printed on cardboard with imprinted brush strokes.

My grandfather played miniature golf in the living room on the green carpet using a brown Bakelite machine that shot the ball out. He had a stash of Penthouse in the end table with the National Geographic Magazines "I'm a lifetime member" he said. and Playboy magazines my sister and I peeked at when we were left alone in the apartment. 

There was a hidden chocolate drawer in the living room dresser and plastic covered couch that stuck to our thighs when we sat on it. There were always a couple of loose cigarettes in a tiny ceramic vase,  with a sugar bowl in the tea tray in front of the couch.

Grandma's best friend Sue took diet pills and was tan with a smoker's voice. She and her husband and Willie lived in the building on the 4th floor. To me they were Fred and Ethel from the I Love Lucy show.

We watched Sonny and Cher and Laugh-In on the big gaudy white wooden TV console. 

Grandma bought us knishes from the knish man who walked the beach with hot knishes in a metal box shoulder bag. They were gigantic but flat held in the box like library books wrapped in wax paper.

I thought my step father was Cuban like Ricky Ricardo because he had the same haircut and temper. He had a scar on the back of his neck I could see when he drove the car. I now realize it must've been from (from the severe acne he had as a teen). When we asked about the scar he told us it was where a bullet passed through him when he opened his mouth.

Grandma lathered herself with baby oil and stretched out on a yellow beach chair draped in a beach towel. She kept a black transistor radio the size of a deck of cards near her ear to listen to "beautiful music". I loved the sound of voices and waves and the occasional airplane flying overhead with a ribbon of advertising. We had a cooler packed with grapes and cantaloupe and honeydew.

Grandma took me to the butcher shop on Coney Island Avenue under the above ground subway. There was sawdust on the floor and the smell of blood and cedar. We went to the Chinese restaurant and sat in the red vinyl booths. They ate there every single night.

Their fridge was packed with food and cupboards filled with saltines and graham crackers. I asked my mother why? Because Grandpa lived through the depression and there was no food when he was a little boy. 

Grandma drank her tea black out of peach iridescent Fire-King glass mugs with Sweet 'N Low. She wore a pink and white chenille house dress at home after she swam in the ocean.

 

My grandparents took me to see a double feature, Patton and The Sting. I was 10. My face rarely left my grandmother's lap. I still hate movies and movie theaters. But I love to swim every day just like my grandma did, swimming in the ocean before work.