Week #25 of My Liquid Diet: The Gambler
Know when to walk away, and know when to run.
Time enough for countin’:
Beginning weight (July 14): 230 lbs.
Weight at Start of Week #2: 222
Weight at Start of Week #3: 218.4
Weight at Start of Week #4: 215.3
Weight at Start of Week #5: 215.1
Weight at Start of Week #6: 211.2
Weight at Start of Week #7: 208.1
Weight at Start of Week #8: 204.3
Weight at Start of Week #9: 201.9
Weight at Start of Week #10: 199
Weight at Start of Week #11: 196.8
Weight at Start of Week #12: 194.4
Weight at Start of Week #13: 193.5
Weight at Start of Week #14: 190.2
Weight at Start of Week #15: 185.6
Weight at Start of Week #16: 183.8
Weight at Start of Week #17: 182.3
Weight at Start of Week #18: 179.4
Weight at Start of Week #19: 177.6
Weight at Start of Week #20: 177.2
Weight at Start of Week #21: 173.5
Weight at Start of Week #22: 174.6
Weight at Start of Week #23: 173.7
Weight at Start of Week #24: 172.8
Weight at Start of Week #25: 171.2
Weight at Start of Week #26: 171.7
Total weight loss so far: 58.3 lbs.
Two weeks to go.
Alas, I have gotten a bit behind in my weekly reporting to you on my medically supervised weight-loss program — my apologies! I got swept up in last week’s mini-run of my show Citizen Brain in San Francisco … which went fabulously. Thanks to all who attended! (I’ll be performing it again this Friday, Jan. 19, at the Marin Shakespeare Company.) I gained a smidge of weight heading into Week #26 — half a pound — but I’ve learned that, at this last stage of the diet, extra poundage will come off only grudgingly, and fluctuations are occurring from day to day. Rest assured that I’m sticking to this dang regimen till the very end … which is coming soon! And as it happens, that little weight spike has put me in mind of one of the most memorable all-you-can-eat blowout meals I ever had.
My little brother Jacob would not — could not — stop singing Kenny Rogers’s hit song “The Gambler.”
It was the spring of 1980, and our family was struggling through the hardest times we’d ever known. The previous summer my father, Paul, had suffered a catastrophic stroke at the age of 55. After months in a coma, he had finally emerged as a shell of himself — profoundly compromised, both mentally and physically. The man who had animated our world with his passionate, operatic persona was now mostly inaccessible to us, and perhaps even to himself. This left my stepmother, Sue, and their three small children — Jacob (seven years old), Amy (four), and Sam (three) — in a precarious state: impoverished, stuck with my wheelchair-bound father at the top of a building with a crappy elevator, and living in a Washington Heights neighborhood that had reached the depths of the crack epidemic. In the meantime, I had returned to Princeton for my senior year — cosseted in Ivy League plushness while my little siblings often tried to sleep through a lullaby of not-too-distant bullets.
Sue called me one day, all excited: “Josh, I just got off the phone with your Grandma Kornbluth. You and Jacob should go down to Miami Beach and visit them during your spring break!”
To say that my father had been estranged from his parents, Fred and Julia Kornbluth, would be akin to saying that the maiden voyage of the Titanic hit a little snag. He despised them. Dad’s relationship with them had been strained since his childhood, but later — before I was born, when he was in his 20s — he broke away from them completely. His hatred for his parents was so absolute that when Fred was being treated for stomach cancer just a few blocks away, at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Dad wouldn’t consider going to see him there. Sue did sneak in a visit — but I abstained (even though I did want to see him), feeling that if my father found out, he would view it as a betrayal.
The only reason I’d had any contact with Grandma and Grandpa Kornbluth was that my mother, Bunny, had diligently remained in touch with her ex in-laws — who, it should be noted, were my only relatives with any wealth (by our family’s low standards, at least). For years, Grandma had owned a tony boutique called Grace Bear; as I’d learn on our Florida visit, everyone down there called her “Grace,” rather than Julia. A couple of times a year, when I was a little boy, Grandpa Fred would come in his air-conditioned Cadillac to pick me up from my mom’s and bring me to their apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. I loved the smell of the smoke from his cigar! As he took me through their building lobby, he always made sure to point out that they had a doorman; his pride in this sign of high economic status struck me as silly, since my Communist parents had raised me to love and respect the working class above all other classes. Didn’t Grandpa know that this bourgeois lifestyle was imminently going to be swept into the dustbin of history — and that this smiling doorman might soon become his snarling jailer?
Be that as it may, it was a really nice building!
I remember the sight of Grandma waiting for me in their apartment doorway: a tiny woman with graying hair and a beaming, gap-toothed smile. She’d hug me tightly, saying something like, “Look at those bites on your arm! No wonder the mosquitos love you — they know you’re so sweet!” How surreal to see this version of my father’s face on a woman he so frequently scorned. And how gratifying to be embraced by her — gratifying, but also confusing: What was so terrible about these two people? Why was my dear father, who loved virtually all of humanity, so devoted to nurturing his antipathy toward them? And by accepting their warmth — not to mention their delicious, pulpy, fresh-squeezed orange juice (a novelty for me, who’d only known orange juice from a carton!) — was I in some sense letting him down?
Once, when I was over at Grandma and Grandpa Kornbluth’s, they were watching some religious leader on their fancy color TV. I said, totally matter-of-factly, “But there is no God!”
Grandma Julia burst into tears. Grandpa Fred quickly guided me into the kitchen. Sitting with me at the table — I remember how the wall was completely covered by mirrors, and how this made the room feel enormous — he told me, “Never, ever say that, Joshy! Look what it just did to your Grandma!” I shrugged and told him I was sorry. But I was thinking about something my dad would say: “They only went to temple because, if not, what would the neighbors think?” He gave the same reason for why they had their children — Paul and his younger sister, my sweet, gap-toothed Aunt Isabel (“Izzy”).
Another time I was visiting, they were playing Fiddler on the Roof on the record player. At the start of the song “Sunrise, Sunset,” the lyrics go:
Is this the little girl I carried
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they?
This time, when Grandma started sobbing, I felt I understood: Their little boy had grown up to be a man who had nothing to do with them. They’d preserved his bedroom, which I stayed in on my overnight visits, as if he were still a child in the 1920s and early ’30s (he was born in ’24) — that little single bed with its colorful comforter; childhood knick-knacks on the shelves; his Latin prize from school. No indication of the Young Communist League member he’d become in his teens, of the streetwise Bronx kid who fomented revolution. Amid the procession of family photos adorning the grand piano in the living room — including the most distant of cousins — the only one of Paul as an adult (well, a teen) was of him in his Army uniform after he’d volunteered to fight in World War II. The father I knew, adored, and sought to emulate was, for all intents and purposes, as dead to them as they were to him.
When Sue called me that day in 1980, I hadn’t seen my paternal grandparents for over a decade. The animus between them and their son had somehow infected their connection to me as well. Adding to Dad’s disdain for them was the fact that they hadn’t made any attempt to meet their three grandchildren from his second marriage.
“If I ever heard that a grandchild of mine had been born,” he said indignantly, “you couldn’t keep me from seeing them! I’d climb up the side of the hospital to their room, if I had to!”
There was such … complexity in Dad’s disbelief that his parents — whom he refused to see — would not try to connect with his children! Along with the outrage, I thought I could detect sorrow in his voice.
And now his voice had been largely stilled: Among other impediments, the stroke had left him with aphasia, so that his words, when they came, tended to be garbled and halting.
But oh, how his second-born son, young Jacob, was singing!
For Christmas Sue had splurged on a little record player for him, and his very first record (I can’t remember if it was a single or a track on an LP) had Kenny Rogers singing “The Gambler.”
And now, on Day 5 of our upcoming trip to see Grandma and Grandpa Kornbluth, a TV movie adaptation of “The Gambler” — starring Kenny Rogers himself — was going to premiere on the CBS network. Jacob was beside himself with excitement! I promised him that, no matter what, we would watch it when it aired.
As Jacob and I sat next to each other on the plane down to Miami Beach, my little brother, with an expression of the deepest seriousness and concentration, quietly sang the entire chorus of “The Gambler” to himself:
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done
Our flight attendant — the term then was “stewardess” — couldn’t get enough of this adorable kid.
After repeating that chorus a few times, he sang it once again — adding the echoing backup vocals:
You've got to know when to hold 'em
(when to hold 'em)
Know when to fold 'em
(when to fold 'em)
This went on for the entire flight — and then continued during the cab ride to our grandparents’ building.
The doorman, Armando, greeted us warmly: “Ah, the grandsons! Your Grandma Grace has been talking of nothing else for weeks!”
Similarly, a woman in the elevator — so wizened by the sun that she seemed tanned to the point of leatherness — couldn’t stop telling us how delighted our grandparents would be to see us, how wonderful a person Grandma Grace was, what a joyous visit this would be — especially as Grandma and Grandpa would be meeting their darling grandson Jacob for the very first time!
And then we got to the door of their condo and rang the buzzer. After a short pause, the door opened — and there was that face again, so like Dad’s but softer and older, and now under a halo of blue-tinged white hair.
But she wasn’t smiling this time.
"We saw you from our window,” Grandma said. “Why did you take a taxi? You could’ve taken the bus!”
She was furious!
Behind her, Grandpa — almost completely incapacitated, by this point — was in a black recliner. He pulled the stub of a cigar out of his mouth and barked, “Your father is a very stupid man!”
Our trip went downhill from there.
Right away, food was a problem — the lack of it, its quality, and how it was served.
Grandma was very keen to tell us that they had their own cook, Maria — but that, because we’d arrived so late, Maria had already gone for the day. But she’d left some spaghetti for us — which Grandma retrieved from the fridge and then served to us, cold, in small bowls. She also provided a bottle of Heinz ketchup.
“This,” Grandma announced, “is how gourmets eat spaghetti!”
We smiled and forced it down. Jacob and I were starving after our long trip, but we didn’t have the fortitude to ask for seconds.
I took the opportunity to tell Grandma and Grandpa that in a few days it would be of the utmost importance that we watch The Gambler on their TV — explaining how much Jacob was looking forward to seeing it.
Grandma assured me that this would be fine.
Grandpa’s comment was, “Your father is a very stupid man.”
That’s pretty much all Grandpa would say to us during our entire stay. He said it over and over.
I was hoping that this trip would go at least some of the way toward healing the deep rifts that had opened between the different generations of Kornbluths. Admittedly, it also hadn’t escaped my notice that if money was going to come to our broke-ass branch from elsewhere in the family tree, it would have to be from Fred and Julia — er, Grace.
Much, much later, I’d learn from a trove of correspondence between my father and his mother when he was in his mid-20s — as I’ve begun to write about in this space, and will go into more in future posts — that Julia/Grace had feared that the only thing keeping Paul in contact with them was their money. I am sure — from that same correspondence — that this was untrue. In fact, Paul did truly love his parents at that time; and he still harbored a hope (futile, sadly) that they’d take pride in the man he was becoming, even if they disapproved of him going into civil-rights work and public-school teaching, rather than into business with a family friend, as they’d urged him to do.
The next morning, Grandma snapped at Jacob because he hadn’t made his bed or turned off the light in the guest room before coming out for breakfast. Then she yelled at him for spilling a single cornflake on the white tablecloth when he was pouring cereal into his bowl. I told Grandma that I wanted to go roller-skating with Jacob sometime, as Sue had given each of us a pair of roller skates — along with slipping me a couple of hundred bucks in cash (money that she definitely couldn’t spare!) so that we could “have some fun” in Miami Beach.
Grandma said, “I thought you came here to see us!”
Grandpa said, “Your father is a very stupid man!”
This is when it fully dawned on me that, no matter what, I had to protect my little brother. He was already reeling from his father’s sudden transformation from powerful paterfamilias to near-total invalid, along with his family’s slide into something close to destitution. I had to make sure he knew that I knew that Dad was — still! — a gloriously wonderful human being, a father to be proud of. And that Jacob himself was a beautiful, marvelously creative and loving young person (he still is all of those things, by the way … if not quite as young) — one deserving of infinitely more blessings than the world had been bestowing on him lately.
One thing was for damn sure: In three days, Jacob was going to watch the world premiere of the TV movie The Gambler, starring Kenny Rogers, on CBS. I’d make sure of that, come hell or high water.
That afternoon, we went down to the condo building’s pool with Grandma — only she didn’t want us to go in the water, just sit with her poolside: “You could drown!” This was quite a drag, as Jacob loved to swim.
Pointing out that a lifeguard was on duty, I told Grandma that we’d just take a quick dip.
She was so disgusted by this that she turned away from me as she remarked, “You’ll both get sunburns! But don’t listen to me!”
Later, back up in their condo, I tried asking her about the earlier generations of Kornbluths. I knew practically nothing about my ancestry on that side of the family!
“I’m not interested in the past!” she said — and, indeed, would say no more on the subject.
Grandpa said — well, you know what he said.
Over the next few days, Grandma said little to Jacob or me, other than to criticize us constantly for pretty much anything we did or didn’t do. It was clear that she was deeply unhappy with us. She felt that we didn’t really want to be with her and Grandpa. Which wasn’t totally true: I did want to connect with them, to truly feel our familial bonds; and I knew that Jacob longed for that as well. Maybe I could even be our family’s superhero of healing, and somehow manage to bring about a rapprochement between my stricken father and his elderly parents.
Every evening, I would call my stepmother, Sue, speaking to her in whispers so as not to be overheard. I’d tell her we were having a rocky visit.
She’d cheerfully counsel me to stay the course. It was so important to Jacob to connect with his extended family at this time, she pointed out. And for him and me to have this time together. I told her that it was blowing me away how bitter my grandparents were — that no matter how charming I tried to be with them, and how delightful little Jacob was, it didn’t seem to be making them any happier.
Looking back, I realize that in focusing on my grandparents’ pain, and on the difficult aspects of how they treated Jacob and me on this trip, I was also trying to distract myself from the thing that was tearing at my soul: my tremendous guilt, and shame, for not spending more time with my father. After he’d gone home from the hospital (the same one where he’d refused to visit his own father), I’d raced back to college — and stayed there, even on most weekends, leaving Sue to care for him and their three children. The truth is, I hated being with him now. Hated that he showed little interest when I tried reading the Village Voice to him, my throat getting weirdly sore and dry. Hated that he didn’t seem to know my name, or to register that I was someone precious and delightful to him. Hated that he kept calling out to his daughter by his sister’s name: “Isabel! Isabel!” Hated that this formerly public-facing man had become so inward, his brow frequently furrowed as if trying to remember what his life had been like before. Hated that Sue now sometimes chided him as if he were a small child. Hated that he sometimes acted like a small child. Hated that the thing I’d always thought was rock-solid — the bond between Dad and me — had turned out to be provisional. Flimsy. God’s little joke.
But I could still be a hero to my little brother.
“Let’s go roller-skating!” I said.
Jacob’s face lit up.
“You’re not going to spend any time with us?” Grandma complained.
“We’ll be back in an hour,” I told her.
As we put on our skates, Jacob started singing happily to himself:
You've got to know when to hold 'em
(when to hold 'em)
Know when to fold 'em
(when to fold 'em)
On the way down in the elevator, we ran into Leather Woman again.
“Enjoying your visit with your grandma and grandpa?” she asked.
I tried to phrase my answer diplomatically. “Sometimes I feel like they’re a little disappointed in me,” I said.
“Oh, no — they are thrilled that you two are here! Grace was just telling me so earlier!”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Armando, the doorman, smiled as we rolled past him out to the sun-drenched sidewalk. We had a blast roller-skating into and out of the condos and hotels all along that beachfront strip. I remember that inside the Eden Roc Hotel’s bar there was a video game that Jacob and I could play. Using some of the cash that Sue had given me, I got us both virgin piña coladas to drink, making sure to ask the bartender to add tiny paper umbrellas and that greatest of all delicacies: maraschino cherries.
Even Grandma’s white-hot resentment and Grandpa’s usual scorn couldn’t dampen our spirits when we returned. We ate our cold hot dogs, wrapped in “buns” of Wonder Bread slices and each with a pre-applied narrow line of ketchup, in silence.
Before we went to bed, I reminded Grandma that the next day The Gambler would be airing on CBS at 8 p.m. She made a grunting sound. Grandpa was dozing in his recliner, so I didn’t have to hear his opinion of my father’s intelligence.
At about 6 p.m. the following evening, after another awful day of mostly silences, Grandma and Grandpa were watching TV together.
“So in a couple of hours,” I said, as perkily as I could contrive to sound, “Jacob will finally get to watch The Gambler movie!”
“You know,” Grandma said, “I saw in TV Guide that there’s going to be a Sammy Davis Jr. special on at 8 o’clock.”
I instantly began to freak out.
“Grandma,” I said, “you know that we have to watch The Gambler! I’ve been telling you that since we got here!”
She turned to look at me.
“That Sammy Davis Jr.,” she said. “He is such a talent!”
I looked over at my little brother. He seemed to be confused. What was happening?
“You — you CAN’T!” I yelled.
“I can do whatever I want,” Grandma said. “I deserve it, after all I’ve been through. If you hate being with us so much, you can always leave!”
“I will!” I said.
“So go!” she screamed.
My head was spinning. Jacob was crying.
I ran over to the phone and called Sue.
As soon as she picked up, I said, “They won’t let him watch The Gambler — and it’s on in just over an hour!”
“Leave!” Sue said.
I threw our things into our suitcases.
“I’m sorry this didn’t work out,” I said to Grandma.
She was staring at me with an expression of the utmost hurt.
“You,” Grandpa said to me, “are a very stupid man!”
As Jacob and I rushed out through the building’s lobby, Leather Woman was just entering.
“Leaving already?” she asked. “I thought you still had a few more days!”
“We just couldn’t take it anymore!” I said.
For the first time during our visit, she switched off the bland smile with which she’d always greeted us. It was a startling transformation, like an actress suddenly going out of character.
“Well, I’m not surprised in the least,” she said. “Your Grandma Grace is a fucking bitch!”
Armando, the doorman, asked Jacob why he was crying.
“They wouldn’t let us watch The Gambler!” Jacob told him.
“Armando,” I said, “my brother has so been looking forward to watching this TV movie at 8 o’clock, and Grandma just said she wouldn’t let us. So we’re leaving!”
“Where are you going?” Leather Woman asked.
“I don’t know!” I confessed. “Hopefully somewhere nearby that has a TV!”
I looked up at the clock over the doorman’s station. It was just past 7.
“My cousin Julio!” Armando said. “He has a taxicab.”
He picked up the phone and was soon speaking urgently to his cousin. Somewhere in that rapid stream of Spanish words I heard him say “Moulin Rouge.” It also sounded like he said some disparaging things about “Fred” and “Grace” — and I don’t think he was referring to Astaire and Kelly.
A short time later, Julio picked us up in his cab. It turned out that the Moulin Rouge Motel was only about five minutes away. As he dropped us off, he refused to accept any payment from me.
We went up to the reception desk with our luggage. Thank goodness they had a room! I paid them with some of the cash that Sue had given me. With most of the rest of it I ordered a huge amount of take-out food from the motel’s restaurant.
As Jacob and I hurried over to the elevator, I had a sudden panicky thought. I shouted back at the hotel receptionist, “Our room does have a TV, doesn’t it?”
“Of course!” he said, looking at me quizzically. What motel room didn’t have a TV?
About 20 minutes later Jacob and I were sprawled on an enormous bed, opening up carton after carton of take-out food — I remember it as being Chinese, but I could be wrong about that. What I’m sure of is that there was a lot of it! Oh, how we ate! Oh, how we washed it all down with huge bottles of Coca-Cola! Oh, how happy we were! So, so happy!!
I realized that it was almost 8 p.m.!
I ran over to the TV and turned it on, then had to fiddle around a bit to figure out what channel CBS was on.
Finally I found it.
Soon the soothing voice of Kenny Rogers could be heard crooning those now-familiar lyrics:
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done
I sat there on the edge of the bed, letting the song wash over me. I had done it! Gotten us to safety! And to Kenny Rogers!
I turned around to see how Jacob was feeling about finally getting to watch The Gambler TV movie.
He was fast asleep.
I went over and shook him gently.
“Jacob!” I said. “The Gambler is on.”
Without opening his eyes, he smiled. Then he rolled over onto his side. He was out for the night.
I surveyed all the opened food cartons and plastic bottles that surrounded us — on the bed, on the night table, on the floor.
Then — with the television still on — I lay down next to him.
Somehow, I knew that he’d never regret missing out on watching The Gambler.
I love you, Jacob, I thought. My heart could barely contain my joy.
I was holding my breath through most of this, and didn’t realize until the end, while Jacob was sweetly sleeping, that I could now release it. Oh, the mystery of family! The last pronouncement by the leather lady is hilarious, after all the wonderful things she had told you prior about your grandparents!
Baron and I have heard over the years parts of this story from you and/or Jake, but to read it all in its entirety was incredibly moving. And we are more determined than ever to be loving grandparents!