They Call Me Baba Booey

by Gary Dell'Abate

  On the phone, her situation sounded bad. When I arrived at the hospital the next afternoon, it looked so much worse.

  She was in the ICU, connected to miles of tubes, a bandage around her head, her limbs immobilized. As soon as I walked in, I choked up. I said, “Hey, Mom.” It seemed like she recognized me, but she couldn’t speak. There was pressure on her brain. The doctors kept repeating the same phrases to describe her condition: “There was bleeding around her brain … she suffered a hematoma … she had a severe head injury.”

  “What does all this mean for her life?” I asked.

  “We don’t know,” they answered. “The brain is a tricky thing.”

  “When will she recover?”

  “We don’t know. The brain is a tricky thing.”

  “Will she ever walk again?”

  “We don’t know. The brain is a tricky thing.”

  They also didn’t know how tricky my mom’s brain was before the accident. I worried about how she would be rewired.

  After a couple of days she became more aware, but she was still struggling. When I asked her a question her answers were barely audible grunts. She had no memory of the accident.

  Anthony had flown in from Texas and he and I beat ourselves up after getting her full diagnosis. Just a few weeks earlier we had talked about making her quit driving but didn’t act on it, so we were feeling guilty. She had always told us, begged us actually, to keep her out of a nursing home. Now we were told she’d be in the hospital for three weeks and after that, she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself for some time. Or possibly ever again.

  Now we were facing the fact she wouldn’t be able to drive and would be living alone in Florida, potentially addled. She might not even be able to make a cup of coffee for herself. Anthony and I looked into the options for post-hospital care. The only acceptable one—other than one of us moving to Florida—was hiring around-the-clock nurses, for six thousand dollars a month.

  When my mom was released she still was far from herself. Anthony had a great word to describe her: pliant. My mother had never been pliant in her life. She had made reinforced steel look soft and flexible. But he was right. In the hospital we noticed that she had developed a very strange smile, fake and clownlike, plastered on her face. It would spread across her cheeks when we’d walk into the room.

  At one point, while helping her settle in at home, Anthony asked her if she was comfortable and she emptily replied, “Oh yes.” Her demeanor was sweet and light and accommodating. We assumed it was the painkillers and the lingering effects of the head injury. We tried to appreciate it—she was acting like the mom we had always wanted—because we knew it wouldn’t last. Eventually her senses would return.

  That first week, I knew the home health aide wasn’t going to work. My mom’s nurse was a three-hundred-pound Haitian woman who had been on the job for years. It seemed like she’d lost interest in taking care of people. She was supposed to be walking my mom around every day, but whenever I called all I heard in the background was Rachael Ray. I’d ask my mom if she had been out and she’d cheerily tell me no, as if she couldn’t be happier about it. It was all very strange and frustrating, especially trying to gauge what was happening from Connecticut.

  A couple of weeks later I got a call from someone at the company that managed the nurses. The representative began apologizing profusely. I didn’t understand why, and then she told me they were replacing my mom’s aide. Apparently there had been an argument. My mom had called the aide a bitch. The aide then threw something at my mom.

  I called my mom. “Did you call this woman a bitch?”

  “Yeah,” she said, as bright as sunshine.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. Then she started laughing.

  Part of me couldn’t have been happier. The outburst made me feel that she was on the road to recovery. But I also realized that twenty-four-hour care wasn’t going to work out. It was costing a fortune and, if my mom was getting her pepper back, I wouldn’t be able to manage it over the phone.

  I knew she needed to go into a home. If you’ve got more money than Warren Buffett there are plenty of options, but none of us did. We couldn’t find any places we liked near Austin, Texas, by Anthony, and only saw one place that was in the right price range near me, in Connecticut.

  It was a gut-wrenching decision. I knew in my heart that she needed to be closer to one of us. Neither Anthony nor I could monitor whether she was getting proper care if she was down there alone. But when I told her she’d be moving to a facility near me in Connecticut, part of me felt like I was breaking bad news to a child. “We are going to keep your house. It may be temporary,” I said. “Or it may be permanent. We are going to have to wait and see.” Two months earlier she had been completely independent, living alone, driving to do her errands, living a full and healthy life in a house of her choosing. Now she was being taken to a strange place where she’d live in one room, with a roommate—the exact scenario she had begged Anthony and me to avoid. We felt like we had no other choice.

  Yet when I told her, she didn’t resist, for which I was relieved. But I also thought she was acting strange. She had been out of the hospital a month and, except for the flare-up with the aide, her personality had vanished. There was no pepper, no anger, just placid acceptance. I called Anthony and said, “Man, what’s up with Mom? She’s still not herself. She’s being way too nice.”

  He had noticed it, too. While we liked it at first, the dramatic makeover was starting to freak us out. We weren’t used to her being pliant. I had spent my life managing difficulty and rage, waiting for the mercury to get to the tip of the thermometer and explode.

  I braced myself for the explosion the day she moved into the home. But when I picked her up at the airport—I had paid an aide to help her fly up from Florida—she was thrilled to see me. At the home a team of people met us at the door and greeted her as if she were an arriving dignitary. Complaints were kept to a minimum.

  I installed Sirius in her room and showed her how to find the Sinatra station. The old cabinet from our house with the built-in record player fit snugly against the wall. She lined the shelves with pictures of me, Anthony, my dad, and Steven. Pictures of her grandkids and drawings they had made for her were scattered on top of her dresser. During our visits she smiled, the same empty smile I first noticed right after the accident. All she did during the day was watch TV, despite the efforts of the staff to get her out. The home organized field trips to the beach nearby and to baseball games. For entertainment, an organist visited the home and played songs from around the world—a Mexican hat dance one minute, “Volaré” the next. Some days the staff invited a guy named Nick the Balloonatic to come in and make crazy hats out of balloons. I’d walk into the lobby and see all these people in wheelchairs with wacky balloon hats on their head. It reminded me of a five-year-old’s birthday party.

  I had actually been worried that my mom would think the social life at the home was beneath her. But she just didn’t participate in any of it. It’s not that she had lost her will—she was happy, laughing and reminiscing during our visits—she just seemed to have lost interest.

  Anthony and I started calling her robomom. She was no longer recovering; she had changed. A couple of months after she moved into the home, we sold her house in Florida. We knew she wasn’t moving back.

  The difference in her personality was never more obvious to me than the Memorial Day after she had moved into the home. Mary, the kids, and I had gone to a parade in town in the morning. Afterward I went to visit my mom. She asked me what I had done that morning and I told her, “We went to the parade.”

  A look crossed her face; a darkness filled her eyes that I recognized from when I was younger. “I like going to parades.”

  “I know, Mom,” I said. “But we were running late and I just decided it would be easier if I came to see you this afternoon.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

&nbs
p; That was it. Before, in another, more chaotic life, the answer would have been a full-throated “I like parades, too! And I am stuck in here all day by myself and you take your family to the goddamn parade and leave me here!” It would have been an afternoon of guilt and bitterness. Now, it was all just okay.

  I’ll ask her now if she remembers beating our neighbor with shrubs or throwing Chuck Taylors at a sales clerk and she’ll wave me off with a smile and say, “Oh yeah, that,” as though it was a one-time incident, not the moments that shaped me.

  It’s times like these when I think, I miss my mom. And there’s the rub. I spent my entire life praying for the mom I have today. The one who doesn’t cause any drama, the one who smiles and says okay to everything I do.

  But I don’t want her.

  The accident knocked the crazy out of her, but it also knocked out the good. She’s missing the fire and spunk and wit and sarcasm that made her so great, if also volatile. I actually miss the theatrics. I miss hearing her use swear words so creatively that Richard Pryor would blush. I miss the challenge of negotiating her moods. That’s why, whenever I kiss her goodbye and walk out the door of her building, I thank God I grew up the way I did.

  Otherwise you’d be calling someone else Baba Booey.

  No, this is not Bettie Page. It’s my mom! Ellen Cotroneo, circa 1946.

  Papa Booey, Sal Dell’Abate, from his army days.

  My mom and dad on their way to a PTA meeting.

  My parents’ wedding photo, 1951.

  My personal life was at a nine when this photo was taken.

  On the roof of the Empire State Building just before my mom had a meltdown.

  High school yearbook photo. I may have been a little influenced by Saturday Night Fever.

  Steven, Dad, Anthony, and me. Mom made sure our shirts were just as tacky as the tree.

  Me with Pacino and Scorsese during the filming of Serpico. Oh, wait, that’s me, my brother Tony, and my dad.

  On my way to greatness at Adelphi.

  I was severely towel-snapped right after this photo was taken.

  In tenth-grade history class. That was the cutest girl in the school sitting behind me. I’m sure she was impressed!

  With Mom and Dad after I won an award from the custodians … a $50 savings bond. I went through a phase where I thought if I didn’t smile, no one would notice my teeth.

  The closest I’ve ever come to having abs!

  I promise, my brother was the gay one. What the fuck was I thinking?

  Me, Steve, Vinnie, and Frank—my guys—trying to look tough.

  Read the shirt. I was such a guido. This was the last time I ever wore a Yankee hat. (photo credit i.1)

  Camping with the boys in 1980. Alcohol, cigarettes, crappy haircuts, crossed arms, and cheesy mustaches. See what happens when you leave five guys in the woods with no girls? (photo credit i.1a)

  One of our “guys” vacations. I can’t even comment on how odd this photo looks.

  My girlfriend Nancy and me with Phil Collins and Genesis. Nancy was the recipient of my infamous “I Want You Back” video, which, unfortunately, has lasted longer than Genesis’s career.

  I had the look to be in Hall and Oates … just not the talent.

  Me and Robin Quivers during one of our shows. (photo credit i.2)

  Me and my brother Steven.

  Gilbert Gottfried, Stuttering John, me, Sting, and Jackie. John hired me to book celebrities for his music video.

  Just when you thought my teeth couldn’t get any bigger. Booey on Broadway! (photo credit i.3)

  Jackie, Fred, and me dancing on the bar to “Hands Up” at my wedding, 1992.

  My first pitch went great in 2004. I shouldn’t have pressed my luck five years later.

  They get the best seats and the best pieces of chicken, but I get the best kids in the world!

  The greatest family a man could ask for.

  Still together after all these years. (photo credit i.4)

  Doing karaoke at one of our Vegas shows in 2004. Train was the backing band. I was so drunk I almost fell off the stage. (photo credit i.5)

  On the set in Vegas. These are my guys, my radio family.

  REJECTED BOOK TITLES

  Monkey Boy:

  The Tale of a Horse-Toothed Creature from the Jungle

  Ass Camping:

  How to Make It Last for Eighty Years

  How to Do Everything Wrong and Still Succeed in Business

  Hello, Hello

  Too Fat to Pitch

  The Tooth, the Whole Tooth, and Nothing but the Tooth

  Lord of the Chimps

  Mein Caps

  Dark Side of the Tooth

  Green Teeth and Ham

  War and Teeth

  Memoirs of a Dumb Fuck

  The Connecticut Ape:

  How an Italian from Long Island Erased His Past to Become a WASP

  A Farewell to Teeth

  How Green Were My Choppers

  The Apes of Wrath

  BABA BOOEY’S DESERT ISLAND DISCS

  Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

  Aja, Steely Dan

  London Calling, Clash

  Hotel California, Eagles

  Thriller, Michael Jackson

  Marshall Mathers Show, Eminem

  Revolver, Beatles

  Rubber Soul, Beatles

  Live at the Fillmore, Allman Brothers Band

  Sinatra’s Greatest Hits, Frank Sinatra

  Led Zeppelin IV, Led Zeppelin

  BABA BOOEY’S

  MUST-HAVE JUKEBOX SONGS

  “Suspicious Minds,” Elvis Presley

  “My Way,” Frank Sinatra

  “Mack the Knife,” Bobby Darin

  “Be My Baby,” Ronettes

  “Only the Lonely,” Roy Orbison

  “Don’t Stop Believing,” Journey

  “I Shot the Sheriff,” Eric Clapton

  “Alone Again (Naturally),” Gilbert O’Sullivan

  “Rock and Roll Heaven,” Righteous Brothers

  “Radar Love,” Golden Earring

  STUMP THE BOOEY:

  THE HOME VERSION

  He helped write “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” before scoring his own Top 10 hit. Name the artist and the song.

  Ray Parker, Jr., had a huge hit with the song “Ghostbusters” from the blockbuster movie of the same name. He was sued by one of the bigger artists of the ’80s, who claimed the song was a case of copyright infringement. Name the rocker and the song.

  Everyone knows the name of the first video ever broadcast on MTV. It was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. What was the second video played?

  One of the biggest hits of the ’80s features backing vocals from the New Jersey Mass Choir, Dreamgirls star Jennifer Holliday, and the Thompson Twins. Name the song and the band.

  Roy Orbison had a resurgence in popularity in the ’80s as a member of the Traveling Wilburys, along with Tom Petty, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lynne. Sadly, Orbison died soon after the release of the first Wilburys album. How is the late Orbison represented in the video for “End of the Line”?

  Tom Tom Club featured half of one of the defining art rock bands of the ’80s. Name the two members and the band they came from.

  This song was originally written by David Foster for the Canadian athlete Rick Hansen, who at the time was going around the world in his wheelchair to raise awareness for spinal cord injuries. His journey was called the “Man in Motion Tour.” It was also the title track to one of the defining movies of the ’80s. What was the hit single and who performed it?

  He had four hits with three different bands. The first was with a one-hit-wonder band in the ’70s. The next was with an English New Wave band in the early ’80s. The last two were as the lead singer of a band founded by the guitarist for one of the ’80s’ biggest bands. Name the singer, the bands, and the four songs.

  Guitarist David Howell Evans is better known by what name?

  Th
is ’80s New Wave band’s debut album is based almost exclusively on the writings of Primal Scream author and psychologist Arthur Janov. Name the band, the debut album, and the two members of the group.

  This performer was sitting around his house late one night watching a slasher movie when he decided to write a goof song about a homicidal killer. A few weeks later he heard about a movie that needed some songs for the soundtrack. He asked his wife to send three songs. She sent the three songs, but accidentally sent the song about the homicidal killer as well. It became one of the biggest hits of the ’80s and a defining moment in the film. Name the song, the artist, and the movie.

  The director of the Talking Heads videos “Once in a Lifetime” and “Crosseyed and Painless” had a one-hit wonder all to herself in the ’80s. Name the artist and her hit. Hint: She also choreographed the videos.

  This ’80s heavy metal hair band featured a Hollywood legend in their videos. He was the uncle of the band’s manager. He was also rumored to have the biggest schlong in Hollywood. Name the band, the legend, and the video.