Nothing the doctors tried seemed to work. And I know now they tried everything.
I was in ninth grade when I began to understand what my mom went through, what those visits to the hospital were all about. The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had just been released and my aunts and uncles were talking about it. They wondered how realistic the electroshock therapy scenes were, and then I heard one of them say, “I wonder if that’s what it was like for Ellen.”
What the fuck! Electroshock therapy! On my mom! Twice! I went to see the movie right after that conversation. In one scene, hospital workers grab Jack Nicholson and strap him down to a gurney with giant leather belts. They rub Vaseline on the side of his head and attach what look like a pair of headphones to his temples. When they flip the switch, he buckles and gyrates. I realized he would have flown across the room if he hadn’t been strapped in. My mom was half his size. If this grown man was shaking and convulsing, what must this have done to my mother’s body? Holy shit. I was seriously scared for my mother. I wasn’t surprised the treatment didn’t help her; I wondered if it made things worse. At this point Anthony and Steven were long gone from the house. They didn’t talk about my mom’s treatment when they were around and, even if they knew what was happening, there was no way they would discuss it with me. So I just tried to process everything as well as I could. It didn’t make me any less frustrated when she was struggling, but it did make me more sympathetic. Years later, when I saw Changeling with Angelina Jolie, I cried. The ECT scene in this movie was even more graphic. The orderlies took their time buckling her in. And the fact that the character was a woman—and a mother—going through it made it harder for me. If Cuckoo’s Nest was a discovery, Changeling was reality.
I guess I buried those memories for a long time—it all feels like it happened a hundred years ago—and I hadn’t really shared them with anyone, other than my shrink, as an adult. But one day at work early in 2010, I was hanging with Jason Kaplan and Jon Hein in an area we call the bullpen, which is just rows of cubicles. We were talking about our mothers and I said to Jason, “You can’t believe the shit that I went through.”
Jason said, “Yeah, I’ve heard you and Howard talk about it on the air. What is it about your mom that was so crazy?”
In a flip way, I told him the story about visiting my mom in the hospital the very first time—as if to say, look at what I went through and I am fine. Suddenly I got choked up and abruptly ended the story. I was embarrassed. I thought, Maybe I’m actually not fine about it.
Or maybe it’s just that I still can’t believe what my mom went through.
MOST MORNINGS WHEN I WAS A KID, I’d wake up, roll out of bed, walk into the kitchen, and find my mom sitting at our faux-oak table. She’d be smoking a cigarette, drinking some coffee, and watching the news on TV. Then she’d fix me breakfast. Cheerios and milk, my favorite. As long as I had that, I was happy. But by the time I was in fourth grade, my mother slept in more and more. By the time I was in junior high, she didn’t bother getting up at all. Part of it was the depression and part of it was that I was the third child and she decided I could take care of myself in the mornings. She’d make me my lunch the night before and leave it in the fridge. I never even thought it was strange until one morning, before school, a friend stopped by to walk with me. I was rummaging through the refrigerator looking for cream cheese and he said, “Where’s your mom?”
“Sleeping,” I said.
Then he asked, more curious than accusatory, “Why isn’t she making breakfast for you?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “She sleeps in.”
In my house, mornings were the quietest times of the day. Everyone, it seemed, found a reason to get out of there as quickly as possible. My dad was off to sell ice cream before sunrise. And my brothers, well, when we were all living under the same roof, I can’t remember many times we had breakfast together. They always left early and came home late, just before dinner. “It was traumatic living in a house like that,” Anthony said.
I couldn’t blame either of them for wanting to escape the chaos. Especially Anthony. Steven was a bit of a golden child, very smart and very quiet. But Anthony was trouble. For a long time—before and after my mom went into the hospital—she accused him of making her sick, yelling, “It’s your fault I am crazy, you’re making me crazy because you are so out of control!” She wasn’t wrong: Anthony kind of was out of control. In eighth grade he stayed out all night without calling home. When he was thirteen he used to hang with a buddy whose older brother was in a motorcycle gang called the Pagans. Anthony and his pal went to the gang’s parties and acted as mascots/waiters, bringing everyone beers until the sun came up. They thought they were the coolest kids in the world.
When he was sixteen Anthony asked my parents if he could go to Woodstock. All his buddies were going. Naturally my parents said no. That day they left him to babysit me—Steven was old enough to be out doing his own thing during the summer—so there was no way Anthony could sneak out. At least that’s what they thought. It was early in the morning and, while he watched the Woodstock coverage on TV, Anthony got so riled up he said, “I’m going. Gary, go pack your bag.” I was eight years old. So I wrapped a bunch of toys in a rag and tied it around a stick, like a hobo. Anthony helped me. We walked out of the house and headed to Uniondale Park, where Anthony and his friends hung out a lot. The place was nothing special—some baseball fields, some tennis courts, and a lot of benches for the teenagers in town to sit at and figure out how to get into trouble.
I couldn’t believe it. I was going on an adventure with my older brother to this far-off land called Woodstock. It sounded interesting and fun and grown-up. And since Anthony was in charge and said we could go, I figured everything we were doing was allowed.
At the park Anthony saw some friends. A bunch of them were talking about heading up to the concert. Another group was already on their way. Now Anthony was really pissed. I could hear him going, “Harrumph.” He looked at me, said, “Let’s go,” and dragged me and my hobo sack through the park. At the opposite end of the park, beyond some trees bordering a grassy field, was the road that led to the Southern State Parkway. We were going to stick out our thumbs and hitchhike to Woodstock. Seemed like a good plan to me.
We stood on the side of the road for five minutes. Who knows what people thought when they drove by. A sixteen-year-old kid with hair that hung down to his shoulders and an eight-year-old boy holding a stick and handkerchief filled with toys. No one stopped to pick us up or ask us if we needed help. Eventually I heard my brother start harrumphing again. They were audible groans. “Fuck it,” he said. “I can’t do this.” He started to turn around and then stopped. This time he said, “Fuck this, I have to go to Woodstock.” Then he stopped again. Finally he mumbled, “I can’t do this. Dad will kill me.”
He grabbed me by the arm, walked us back through the trees, and led us to the bench where his buddies had been sitting. We stayed there the rest of the day.
I totally looked up to Anthony. He was older; he hung out with kids who smoked and looked cool. And when my mom made Anthony take me with him to Uniondale Park, which was often, none of them cared. I wasn’t a pain in the ass. They found me interesting, someone they could teach. One night Anthony had a party in our backyard—which was only slightly bigger than a pitcher’s mound. His buddies who were in a band provided the music. My parents mostly stayed inside but I had been excited about the party all day. So I wandered out and saw two of my brother’s friends sitting in a back corner, with their backs to the house. I walked over and asked, “What are you guys doing?”
They were smoking cigarettes and, without saying a word, one of them handed me his and said, “Here, try it.” I was eight or nine years old and I idolized these guys. I took a puff and practically hacked up a lung. But I was so excited to be doing what the big kids did, I ran into the house and told my mom, “Guess what? Guess what? I just tried a cigarette.”
T
hat was the end of the party. My dad sent everyone home and my mom sent me to my room, where I cried and kept asking, “What did I do wrong?”
Other than my mom, Anthony was at the center of most of the drama in my house. He was a teenager struggling with a lot of heavy personal shit in the late 1960s, an era that happened to be tailor-made for kids looking to rebel. Uniondale was just like any other town in America that was divided by the Vietnam War. There was a deli owned by a veteran with a sign in it that read, “America, love it or leave it.” Meanwhile, the teenagers were walking around with long hair and flashing peace signs. Anthony had a pair of purple bell-bottoms and a matching purple shirt that he loved to wear. Whenever he did, Steven called him “Antoinette.”
Anthony saw himself as a revolutionary, but he wasn’t quite old enough to spend his life traveling around the country protesting. Instead he went into the city and hung out at the offices of the Youth International Party, where he met radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He picked up literature on how to organize rallies and stage sit-ins at his school. At one of them he led a group of two hundred students who refused to move from the lobby. The teachers didn’t call the cops—they called the parents. When my mom came down and heard Anthony had been the ringleader her mouth curled up and she said, “I knew it.” Then she dragged her oldest son out of the lobby by his very long hair. “It was a scene, all the way around,” Anthony said.
The war was a big deal in our house. Every night we watched footage on the news during dinner. It also pitted Anthony directly against my war hero dad.
My father was always so calm and stable, a straight line through a storm. The only time he seemed to lose his cool was when he and Anthony fought about Vietnam. Even though I had no idea what the war was about, I couldn’t believe how passionately the two argued. Their relationship was so black-and-white. My brother was a lefty like Meathead from All in the Family—as liberal as liberal can be. My father was no Archie Bunker, but he was a conservative, decorated World War II veteran. He really did believe that the president of the United States knew what was best for us. He was actually crushed by Watergate because he just didn’t think the men who ran the country were capable of doing anything wrong.
Anthony’s rebellions seemed like a slap in the face, not just to my father, but to all the men he fought with. By the time Anthony was a senior in high school he and my dad were fighting constantly. It came to a head the Easter Sunday before he graduated. I remember it so clearly because, as usual, the blowup came at the worst possible moment—for me.
My favorite TV program as a kid was Wonderama, a legendary show that aired on Sunday mornings for twenty years. It was hosted by Bob McAllister and for more than three hours it featured kids participating in games in the studio, along with cartoons and Three Stooges segments. The show was filmed in New York and it was my dream to be in the studio audience, but the waiting list for tickets was three years long. One day, miraculously, we were able to get tickets through a family friend. Even better, the show taped on Tuesdays so I would have to miss school.
Leading up to the big day I practiced the Wonderama theme song day and night. I thought about what it was going to be like to see Bob McAllister in person. I wondered if I would get to play my favorite game on the show, Snake-in-a-Can. I was ten years old; this was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me.
My mom, my friend Gary Bennett, and I left for the city early in the morning. As we waited on line to get in, Bob McAllister walked right by us and waved. A bona fide celeb! When we finally got inside I was amazed at how small the studio was, but when we all sang the theme song I couldn’t believe my ears and eyes. The singing was actually piped in over the loudspeakers and Bob was lip-synching!
Watching from home I always thought the stage must be huge because each segment appeared to be filmed in different parts of the studio. I was wrong about that, too. There was only one stage. It took ten hours to shoot a three-hour show because they had to strike each set before putting up another one. We spent most of our time in the audience waiting.
But I did get picked to be in a game. Since it was the Easter show there was a bit where they had piles of chocolate Easter eggs with all kinds of toppings, from hot sauce to whipped cream, set up on tables. My job was to walk around the audience, take orders, and then bring everyone their eggs. I wore an apron, but it was easy. Everyone got his or her eggs, and I got to be on TV. When I was done they gave me a Spirograph, which was even better.
My mom made the show, too. In one segment kids made Easter bonnets out of paper hats and she was chosen as a model along with a handful of other moms. The hats were so gaudy and looked exactly like something someone would wear at a baby shower: full of ribbons and piled high with glued-together scraps of paper from a crafts table. Even though my mom was one of a half-dozen women on the stage, she posed like she was a star, camping it up with the great big smile I saw in every picture she took. It was fun to see her so happy. They shot so many close-ups of her she was actually recognized by a hot dog vendor in the city after the show aired.
By the time we left the studio it was eight o’clock at night and I had a goodie bag filled with a bagel, Hostess cupcakes, a T-shirt, and my beloved Spirograph. It was the greatest day of my life. I couldn’t wait to see the show.
The show aired on Sunday. This was before VCRs and DVRs, so the only way to see it—the only way to find out if I had made it on TV—was by watching it when it aired.
But it wasn’t meant to be.
Minutes before the show I turned on our big RCA in the living room. That’s when my dad and Anthony chose to get into a crazy, knock-down, drag-out argument about Anthony joining the army after he graduated. My dad was demanding it; Anthony was defiant. I turned the volume up but they only yelled louder. I moved closer, my nose inches from the screen, and I still couldn’t hear. Soon my mom was crying and wailing, too.
“Well, if you don’t like it here then you can move out!” my dad yelled.
“Fuck you, maybe I will, because you can’t talk to me like that!” Anthony screamed.
Oh no he didn’t! My mom dropped F-bombs all the time, but no one in my house ever said the word back to my parents. Even for someone as used to cursing as I was—I heard it so often, to me it sounded like white noise—this was impossible to ignore. The greatness of watching myself on TV and the entire Wonderama experience would have to wait.
Anthony moving out? The idea seemed impossible. He hadn’t graduated from high school. He didn’t have a job. Where was he going to go? But none of these minor inconveniences stopped him. After that last exchange, my father was so stunned he didn’t have time to react. Anthony stomped into his room, grabbed his sleeping bag, threw some clothes out of his window onto the front lawn, and left. He was gone. It was devastating on two levels: I didn’t get to see myself on TV, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see my brother again.
I never did get to watch the show. Years later, while shooting Private Parts, I met an extra who was friends with Bob McAllister’s daughter, who kept a tape of every show. Of course, she never labeled them. Four different times Bob McAllister’s daughter looked through her stack of tapes but she couldn’t find my episode. I did, however, get a chance to speak with McAllister. In 1994, four years before he died, he called in to the Stern show to say he thought it was okay for the government to control what kids could listen to. Howard hung up on him.
For weeks after Anthony left, I had no idea where he was living. No one in my house spoke to me about it. I don’t even know if my parents knew where he was. Then one day at school a kid who always used to shake me down, Alan Franklin, stopped me in the hallway. He lived in the slums in Uniondale. “Hey,” he said, “your brother is living next door to me. Gimme a quarter.”
Soon after that my brother came by the house to see me. He still wanted nothing to do with my parents, but I was just his little brother, I didn’t do anything wrong. One day he picked me up and brought me to his new place,
right next to Alan’s. There were twelve white guys who looked like hippies in the middle of this run-down, black neighborhood. Everyone in the living room was wearing a dashiki and smoking something. One of them had a water bed and I remember thinking, This isn’t a house where a mother lives. Which is exactly why my brother moved in.
Eventually he tried to make peace with my parents. A week before he graduated he went to see them. Everyone apologized. He wanted them in the crowd when he received his diploma. But as he walked across the stage that night, he couldn’t resist making a personal statement against authority. When the principal offered him a handshake, my brother blew past him. I didn’t even notice it, but my parents did. Anthony was going out with friends after the ceremony and when my parents and I got into our car I could tell everyone was mad—the silence was thick with tension—so I asked what was going on. My mom said to me, “Did you see that Anthony wouldn’t shake his principal’s hand?” They were mortified.
It was a couple of months before they all spoke to one another again.
For all of Anthony’s outward rebellion, Steven was the one my mom worried about most. “It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to look out for,” she used to say.
Everyone always said that Anthony and I were my mother’s kids, while Steven was my father’s. He was thinner than we were and, although he had dark hair, he had fairer skin. He was also so much more chill. The arguing we did in the house wasn’t his scene at all. But he had a wicked sense of humor that tickled my mom and helped him get away with stuff. One year he got her a T-shirt that read, NOT A WELL WOMAN. If Anthony or I had given her that shirt she would have blown her top. But because Steven did it, she thought it was hysterical.
Until Anthony moved out, Steven and I shared a room. We had our Brady Bunch moments, like when we’d split the room in half with tape. Only he’d always get the side with the door and I’d have to give him a special pass if I wanted to get out and use the bathroom.
They Call Me Baba Booey Page 4
