Fairy Tale Interrupted Read online

  “If you don’t stop, I’ll really give you something to cry about,” she threatened.

  On another occasion, my mom had spent all day Saturday cleaning and had left my room in immaculate condition. Two days later, she came in to find the floor littered with clothes, the bed unmade, and books and papers scattered everywhere. She was silent, which was a lot scarier than her yelling, and then she began snatching T-shirts, jeans, and sweaters from the floor and tossing them into my doll’s crib. I watched as my mother pulled the crib over to the window, lifted the screen, and dumped the contents onto the front porch. For a moment, I thought I’d be next. But my mom walked out of the room without a glance in my direction. Racing downstairs, I grabbed a garbage bag and headed out to collect my stuff, humiliated, as a small group of neighbors who had already gathered to check out the action stared at me. The people on our block liked nothing better than a little domestic disturbance.

  The main source of frustration in our home revolved around us never having enough money. Between the two of them, my parents always seemed to have ten jobs. Secretarial work was Mom’s mainstay, but she also cleaned doctors’ offices and worked at a perfume factory in the Bronx where fragrances such as Charlie and Jontue were manufactured. Her winter coat reeked of those scents. My dad sometimes cleaned offices with her. He also worked in a liquor store during the day and as a bartender at night.

  Despite all the jobs, we never had two dimes to rub together. If the car broke down, we could either get a new transmission or pay the electric bill; if tuition was due, we could either pay for school or pay the phone bill; if the boiler broke when we were low on cash, we went without heat. Those trade-offs were the one constant in my childhood.

  My father, Anthony, worked every bit as hard as my mother; he saw himself as something of an entrepreneur, but his businesses were not successful. He opened a deli that went bust because his partner walked out; a pizza place that went bankrupt, leaving my parents buried under a fifty-thousand-dollar debt; and a candy shop on the corner, which also sold cigarettes and newspapers, that he had to shutter.

  My mother, the breadwinner for most of our lives, became extremely anxious in the face of money problems. The financial burden was all on her shoulders—she was responsible for the family and she knew it. When she felt trapped, she lashed out. And with a husband who wasn’t making enough to support four daughters, let alone reduce a mountain of debt, she always felt trapped.

  Despite feeling trapped, my mother was fearless. Once, even the Catholic Church made it onto my mom’s shit list. I was in the third grade at St. Dominic’s, the Catholic school attended by generations of my family for over sixty years. The school had implemented a new policy that if your family didn’t pay your tuition on time, you didn’t get your report card. Up until then, the shame of not getting that little yellow card had been reserved for kids who failed a class. And that had never been me. But after overhearing the screaming matches between my parents about tuition checks, I knew I was a candidate for embarrassment that term. So there I was in class, shitting my pants as Sister Mary Josephine slowly worked her way through the alphabet, calling kids up one by one to claim their report cards. I felt the hard-backed wooden chair pressing into my spine as she reached the R’s, then the S’s, before intoning in her liturgical voice all the names beginning with T. No Terenzio. As soon as the bell rang, I raced out of that room, past my concerned friends, and ran the three blocks to my house.

  When my mom got home from work later that night, the first thing she saw was my tear-streaked face.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I told her about the humiliating report-card incident.

  “How dare they? After I’ve put four kids through that school!” she screamed. “Your father’s whole family went there, too. They should be ashamed of themselves.” She lit a cigarette and blew smoke from her nostrils. “I’m going to let them know what I think of their Christian spirit.”

  My mother called the rectory the next morning and demanded to speak to the bishop, to whom she calmly explained the circumstances. “We’re having a hard time, Bishop, but you know you’ll get the money. I’ve put four kids through the school, and I hope you’ll make an exception.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Terenzio. This is the policy and it applies to everyone.”

  Wow. He clearly had no idea who he was dealing with: Marion Terenzio did not mess around. She told him exactly what she thought of his Christian spirit and slammed the phone down.

  That Sunday, we went to mass at St. Dominic’s, as always. When I was a kid, that little sand-colored brick church, with its spire, heavy stained-glass windows, and dark interior, had all the majesty of a real cathedral; it seemed like St. Patrick’s to me. Although, in truth, it was a small neighborhood church in a devout blue-collar outpost.

  The mass on that particular Sunday was dedicated to celebrating the arrival of our new bishop, the same man responsible for the new “no tuition, no grades” policy. Beforehand, the bishop stood in the church vestibule, decked out in his pink-and-gold habiliments and smiling benevolently. With my father and sisters and me in tow, my mother tried to blow past him without a word, but the bishop stopped her.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Terenzio,” he said, putting his ring out for her to kiss. With a crowd of congregants gathered behind her in the receiving line, my mother shot the clergyman a look of utter disdain.

  “Bishop,” she said evenly, “you can kiss my ass before I’ll kiss that ring.”

  She then marched us to the front of the church, where she prayed before God and the bishop without a shred of guilt or remorse.

  My report card was waiting for me at school on Monday morning.

  Twenty years later, on the heels of my own holier-than-thou battle with John, I decided to follow my mom’s example and ignore him. John may have won my office, and I may have had to put up with him at work, but that didn’t mean I had to like him or even acknowledge his existence.

  It took a while for the guy who got whatever he wanted to take a hint. Every day, he would walk or Rollerblade past my office, greeting me with a cheerful “Good morning.” And every day, I refused to respond or even make eye contact with him. I’d hear him coming, and just before he popped his head in to say hello, I would quickly pick up the receiver and pretend to be on the phone, thinking, Fuck you. Have fun in your new office, buddy.

  I know it seems immature to be that rude to any coworker, let alone to John Kennedy, but it was a matter of pride. When I feel slighted, I don’t back down. As it turned out, John was the same way—although his approach was very different. He said his chipper hellos each morning, seemingly oblivious to my ignoring him. John couldn’t relax his perfect manners: they had been instilled in him at a very early age, just as my tough exterior had been. So the standoff went on for weeks.

  During that time, John settled in to PR/NY, though none of us had any idea what he was doing there. He brought in an intern, a daughter of a family friend, to answer his phone and open his mail. She clearly had a crush on him and decided to bond with Sam, as if that unstable dog might be the way to John’s heart. One day she was lying on the floor with Sam—yes, rolling around the office floor with a scary dog that snapped from time to time—and he bit her face. She refused to go to the hospital. Blood, rabies, whatever, Sam was John’s dog, so it was all fine and good, just a scratch, nothing to worry about. . . . People were insane around John.

  He was making me insane, too, and not just because he stole my office. The fact that we still didn’t know what he was doing there began to worry me. After several months of his being there, it was obvious he couldn’t be working on a charity event. And he couldn’t just be renting office space—the place was nice but not that nice. Plus, Michael was distracted from the agency’s day-to-day work—he didn’t give my press releases the attention he once had or ask about the status of an account. Most worrisome was that no proposals were going out to potential new clients.

  About
a month after John ousted me from my office, I heard him coming down the hallway toward my new digs. Every single morning, I thought. The guy just wouldn’t let up.

  “Good morning, Rose.”

  Hearing him say my name startled me. He’d never said it before, so I looked up. When I did, he was standing in the doorway giving me the finger. I couldn’t help it: I burst out laughing. He finally got me.

  The next day, I didn’t get a “Good morning” when he came into work.

  “What’s up, loser?” he said.

  “You’re the loser,” I replied.

  “Well, you’re stupid.”

  “Not as stupid as you.”

  He’s kind of funny, I thought.

  By the summer of 1994, it wasn’t just our little group at PR/NY that wanted to know what John was up to. The press was also beginning to wonder. A year had passed since he left the DA’s office, and as far as they knew, he wasn’t up to much. The media looked for drama: Was he striking out on his own, or headed for a breakdown? People magazine pounced on the theme with the sensational cover line: “Is he a man with a plan, or a dreamboat adrift?”

  I grabbed the magazine, which I had seen on the newsstand on my way into work, and busted it out in our morning sparring session.

  “Morning, dreamboat,” I said when he walked into the office.

  “Why don’t you take that fright wig off? It’s not Halloween,” he retorted.

  “Sorry we can’t all be as handsome as you.”

  “Shut up, Rosie.”

  No one called me Rosie except my family. But somehow, I didn’t mind John saying it; he was already starting to feel like the older brother I never had.

  Our jokes had become a routine, a ritual we both enjoyed, like coffee from the cart or starting with Page Six when reading the papers. John could take it as well as he could give it, which was totally unexpected. And his jokes never felt personal. In fact, they were corny. I loved that our banter had stemmed from John standing up to me after I iced him out. He was as straightforward as I was and had no problem calling people out when necessary. His giving me the finger was just the first of many times I would see him challenge someone.

  We were direct with everything, not just humor. When John first came into PR/NY after his mother, who by all accounts had been his emotional rock, passed away in May of that year, I didn’t know what to say. I wondered if I should say anything at all. It’s hard to know how to respond to the tragedy of an office mate. But he looked so somber, I couldn’t pretend nothing had happened.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” John replied.

  “Sorry about your mom.”

  “Thank you, Rosie,” he said, then gave me a hug, which I wasn’t expecting.

  “They say you don’t really become an adult until both your parents are gone,” he told me later.

  John always seemed like an adult to me. We often talked about current events, and I’d ask what he thought had really happened behind the biggest story of the day. I liked his even take on the world and his way of putting any story into a balanced perspective. When President Richard Nixon died, I rolled my eyes while telling him that Nixon was my dad’s man (Reagan was his other).

  “Nixon was a brilliant man,” John said.

  I was shocked he didn’t jump on the bandwagon and shit all over the disgraced president. Intelligent people see both sides of an issue, and John saw value in even the most flawed people, accepting that everyone makes mistakes.

  It wasn’t long after the “dreamboat adrift” cover line that Michael called me into his office again. I racked my brain for mistakes I’d made. There hadn’t been much work to mess up; maybe that was the problem. When I got inside, Will was also in Michael’s office, perched on a windowsill.

  “Sit down,” Michael said from behind his desk.

  Oh, Jesus, I’m getting fired.

  “We’re selling PR/NY. Will’s going to find something else, and I’m—” Michael broke off for a second. “I’m going into business with John.”

  I knew it. I fucking knew it. Michael was jumping ship.

  “Can’t you take me with you?”

  “It’s not a PR thing, Rose. And everything is still up in the air. But don’t worry. I’ve found you a new job.”

  “I don’t want a new job. I want to stay here.”

  Michael had made me feel as though I was indispensable. He even said in one of my reviews, “You are the prize of my pen.” I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to take me with him.

  “There is no ‘here’ anymore,” he said. “I sold the business to another PR firm; all the accounts and you are part of the deal. You’re going to work for them.”

  “What if I don’t like it there?”

  “Give the new firm a chance. Just go meet them.” He handed me a slip of paper with a midtown address, and I arranged to be interviewed that afternoon. But as I made my way uptown to my potential new employer’s office, I was furious at Michael for springing this on me at the last minute and still not telling me the whole truth. What was his business with John, and why couldn’t he take me with him? In the elevator on my way up to the impromptu interview, I tried to tell myself that perhaps this was for the best. My new job might be even cooler than PR/NY. I had to keep an open mind.

  But as soon as the doors opened, I knew there was nothing cool about the place. The reception area was set up like a tiki bar, with wood paneling and colored Christmas lights, in a sad attempt at being “fun” and “hip.” I was going from a chic minimalist office to a Las Vegas lounge.

  The receptionist sent me in to meet one of the executives, who had a typically drab office with slivers of window that looked out on the misery of midtown workers scrambling to grab lunch and get back to the office with enough time to actually eat it. When the woman stood up and extended her hand, a pungent, stale aroma wafted my way—she smelled like booze.

  “Michael told me you’re great with clients and really good at booking media.”

  Yeah, I thought, a prize he was looking to give away.

  “I need you to write a press release so I can see your work,” she said, slurring her words.

  “Right now?” I asked. I was pretty nervous. I already knew I didn’t want to work for this lady, but I needed a job. Without saying another word, she got up from her desk and wobbled away to make room for me to use her computer. I sat down in her chair and waited in silence for a few awkward moments. Had she passed out behind me?

  “Well, what’s it about?” I asked.

  “What?” she said.

  “The press release you want me to write.”

  “Oh, right . . . God is announcing the end of the world, and you have to write a press release.”

  She had to be kidding.

  “Who is your client?” I asked.

  “God.”

  I stared at the screen with my wrists resting on the keyboard, fingers poised to type, having no idea what to write. There is no way I’m doing this, I thought as I stared at the blinking cursor. I got up and looked right at her. “Well, if God is your client, then you don’t need me, or a press release,” I said, grabbing my purse and running out of her office.

  I ran through the tiki-lounge waiting area to the elevators and repeatedly pressed the down button, hoping she wouldn’t follow me. Nobody was in the elevator, and when the doors closed, I leaned against the wall and began sobbing. I was hysterical. Everything good about my life was slipping away. The job I had been lucky to get and worked so hard to keep was over. I wouldn’t be hanging with people like Michael and John, or even Liz and Tricia, anymore. I would probably lose my apartment and have to move back in with Frank and his mom or, even worse, back home.

  I cried all the way from midtown to 26th Street. Somewhere along the way, one of my contacts fell out of my eye, so by the time I got back to PR/NY, I was puffy, crying, and half-blind. I went straight into my office and slammed the door shut.

  Moments later, Michael banged on th
e door and said, “Rose, come on, open up.” But I wouldn’t. I yelled through the door, “Forget it. I can’t believe you’re ditching me like this.”

  From the other side of the door, I heard John ask, “What’s going on?” Then there was a low murmur as John and Michael talked about me. I heard one pair of footsteps retreating and gathered that John had returned to his office—which I still thought to be my office.

  “Rosie, calm down.”

  It was John.

  “I think we might be able to figure something out,” he said. I worried he was going to give me a pity talk, but I opened the door anyway. Instead, he sat on the edge of my desk and looked me straight in the eyes. “Why don’t you work for me?”

  The fact that I really didn’t want to leave moved John. I would come to understand that he prized loyalty above all. Plus, he liked my sense of humor; I made him laugh, and he wanted me to stick around. . . . Doing what, I had no idea.