A Shoebox Full of Money

By Martin Kleinman

"Martin Kleinman weaves powerful stories in distinctly diverse New York accents and ring true to this New Yorker. I enjoyed, and will treasure, every one of them."

--Fernando Ferrer, former Borough President of The Bronx, and two-time New York City mayoral candida

• Language: English
• Publisher: Communications Strategies LLC
• Release date: Dec 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735749501

Martin Kleinman

Martin Kleinman, a New York-based storyteller, has captivated audiences in venues from KGB to Brooklyn's Union Hall. His vivid, visceral reading style brings his tales to life in true 'round-the-campfire tradition. "When Paris Beckons" is Martin Kleinman's third collection of short stories. His previous work includes "A Shoebox Full of Money" and "Home Front," which was hailed by best-selling authors Jennifer Cody Epstein and Marian Fontana.Born and raised in New York, Kleinman now resides in the northwest Bronx, on a hill overlooking the full length and breadth of the world's greatest, most seductive-and always-changing-metropolis. Please visit his blog at www.therealnewyorkers.com.

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1.

Once upon a time, there existed a New York City economy where a young person fresh out of college could, with a straight face, think in terms of building a career.

Imagine such optimism. The notion of career seems so trite now, more than forty years later—so immaterial, in this age of downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring. But in 1975 there we were, my wife and I, products of the public schools and one slim generation from the shtetl, in a one-bedroom Manhattan walk-up for under $300. Our individual salaries were less than $8,000 a year, but what does that matter, when you’re twenty-four and living in the Emerald City?

This was in the pre-High Line Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, the very year when the Daily News’ October 30 headline screamed Ford to City: Drop Dead! Back then, the unctuous blood of slaughtered beasts formed in great pools on the cobble-stoned streets of the Meat Packing District. The burned-out Key Food supermarket on Eighth Avenue—where teenaged cashiers with chipped nail polish once screamed to their manager, Melendez! We need quarters!—remained a shell of cinders for years, papered over with posters for the Queen of Latin Soul, La Lupe. The junkie in white patent leather shoes, whom we nicknamed Happy, giggled mindlessly all day long on the same corner where our other neighbors drank nips of Miller High Life and played dominoes on a folding card table in front of the Bright Luncheonette.

We loved it, though. In our military surplus snorkel coats and Li’l Abner work boots, we wandered the sketchy streets with impunity. We adored the brick wall in our living room, the blocked-flue fireplace and the tiny half-refrigerator and its counter mate, a slender Slattery stove shoehorned into our kitchen.

We respected our superintendent, Norman, a muscled ex-pug in a squared-off, white sailor’s cap. Whenever we had a stuffed drain, leaky faucet, or balky radiator, we’d knock on his basement door and ask for help. He would stare at us through uncertain, jaundiced eyes, hold his two snarling Dobermans by their gleaming choke collars with one hand and, with his other, slam the door in our face. Each time, we would wonder: did he understand what we said? Does he know what we need?

And each time, he’d arrive at our kitchen door within minutes with a heavy shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits knock. We’d open the door and he’d rasp, Ah come to fix da leak.

My wife and I worked hard and played hard and steadily inched up the ladder of life. Once in a while, our careers advanced in tandem but mostly when one career drifted, the other climbed higher.

The years passed and we ricocheted around the city. We bounced from mid-70s Chelsea to Jackson Heights and its early 80s Columbian cocaine cowboys to Park Slope in 1985, a time when our northern part of the nabe was redlined, still considered the big bad Bed-Stuy by insurance companies.

In 1987 our son was born, and we were ecstatic. I remember how I rocked him back to sleep at two in the morning, the crack city serenade of sirens drowning out his tape of gentle nursery tunes.

Over time, our neighborhood became quite popular, prompting the appearance of spray-painted signs over the area’s construction sites: No Mas Yuppies!!! After years of muggings, break-ins, and car thefts, crime was on the wane and, as a result, gentrification engulfed Park Slope like cultural kudzu.

2.

Our lives were flying high when, in the late 90s, I hit a career speed bump. My boss, the man who hired me, was forced out in a sharp-elbow political imbroglio, and I found myself without his protection. The office seas roiled and yet, against my better judgment, we took a wonderful two-week vacation to Scotland. At that time, my wife and I firmly believed that family vacations were inviolate.

The last leg of our journey was Portree, a hamlet on the mystical Isle of Skye, a verdant jewel closer to Reykjavik than Rome.

Upon returning to our homey hotel after an afternoon exploring the miniature mountain range of Faerie Glen, the plump proprietress handed us a pink While You Were Out message.

She said something in her heavy Scottish accent, but we’d had trouble understanding the locals ever since we drove north of York. We smiled politely, shrugged, and thanked her for the note.

Once inside our room, my wife’s face turned ashen. The note was from her boss. My wife was to call the office immediately. Her company had been acquired.

Don’t worry, her boss told her unconvincingly. Enjoy your vacation. We limped through the last days of our now-torpedoed holiday. The unthinkable was happening. Both of us faced a serious career hit at the very same time.

In fact, a bulky FedEx box blocked our front door upon arriving home after the flight back to JFK. I placed the package on the kitchen counter and vowed not to look at it until morning.

The very next day, a Saturday, my frantic wife got on the phone with her work friends while I opened the FedEx box. It contained memo after memo of things my new boss claimed had gone wrong on my accounts in the less than two weeks we had been away. I braced myself for an epic Monday morning confrontation. Meanwhile, my wife learned from her buddies that the layoffs at her company would commence immediately.

Our American Dream lifestyle was built upon the faulty foundation of a two-income household. If one of our careers faltered, it would be a serious hit. If both of us flamed out, it would prove disastrous, financially and emotionally.

I’m not proud of my behavior over the weeks that followed. Both of us hit the panic button and sniped at each other constantly. We were furious at our fate and flailing, talking but hardly hearing each other. As a result, and I hate to admit it, our anger escalated to screaming brawls with tears, recriminations, accusations, and shoving.

And then my recurring nightmares started. The first one was simply that, approaching a red light, my car would not stop. I’d repeatedly stab at the brake pedal, drive it down to the floorboard, but nothing happened. Every night, I’d crash into the vehicle in front of me and, boom, the car would go up in flames, and I’d wake up in a sweat.

But then there was the second nightmare: I’d pick up a pistol, aim it at my temple, pull the trigger and, improbably, miss—the bullet grazing the side of my head. I kept the dreams to myself until I admitted that suicide ideation was no joke.

I needed help. I put out the word to my friends: I wanted to see a shrink.

I had never been to therapy before. To me, this was an admission of failure, for in my world, shrinks were for pussies. "Whatever happened to Gary Cooper, the strong silent type—that was an American I remembered TV’s Tony Soprano saying to his therapist, Dr. Melfi. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do."

But, a friend of a friend did actually know someone. A woman shrink in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which—at the time—was largely working-class Hispanic. I spoke to her on the phone. She sounded caring, nice, with a soft and soothing voice. I decided to meet for a first session.

I drove my VW down to her office on Brooklyn’s Forty-Sixth Street and parked on the corner of Fifth Avenue, across from a shack attached to a dollar store, where two guys sold bootlegged movies, cassettes, and CDs. I was early for the appointment and remembered what my friends, all provincial puppies, told me about shrinks. That is, if you show up early, you looked overeager. If you showed up on time, you looked anal retentive. If you showed up late, you looked like you were avoidant.

I decided upon a mid-course solution. I’d show up a little bit late, but not a lot. To kill time, I looked through the assortment of tapes the corner vendor had for sale and found a great one by La Lupe, the Cuban salsera from the concert posters plastered throughout my old Chelsea neighborhood.

La Lupe’s voice, equal parts Piaf and Garland—and more poignant than either—propelled her to popularity. Yet she died broke, crippled and alone in her South Bronx apartment, discarded by lovers, by fans, and ultimately by even the record label that discovered her. Her cri de coeur, which caromed from Cat-5 hurricane to rum-soaked rasp, was that of a sorceress, alchemist, temptress, and the emotional acid of her songs required no fluency in Spanish.

On this particular tape was one of her most powerful songs, Puro Teatro. La Lupe, deceived by the very one she trusted, wrenchingly succumbs to her anger—at both her lover and herself. In a searing acceptance of her condition, she calls out: Lo tuyo es puro teatro That is to say, Your whole bag is ‘theater’—pure BS.

It made for quite a nontraditional pre-shrink session selection. I paid the two dollars for the tape and quickly walked down the hill, checking building numbers all the way from Fifth and Fourth Avenues.

I couldn’t find the shrink’s address. I had written it down and double-checked it, so I figured—extending the logic of my friends—that I was subconsciously avoiding this meeting. I walked up and down the street twice, and now I was truly, officially late. And that was going to mean something, for sure, when I eventually did arrive.

Slowly, I walked back up the hill yet again and finally found it, a handsome brownstone. The house number was missing, and her name was barely legible, scratched onto a tiny little brass plate near the gate of her ground-floor entryway. I laughed to think that maybe it was she who was in avoidance.

There was no buzzer, only an antique nautical bell and clapper that hung in the entryway. I certainly wasn’t going to clang on that for, in my mind, I was certain that the noise would send an alarm, near and far, that the good doctor had another nut at the door.

Instead, I reached through the wrought-iron gate, tapped on the glass door insert, and discreetly whispered, Hello? Hello?

Nothing.

Hello? Hello? I shuffled my feet on the gravelly stone entryway, an attempt to make my presence known.

Finally, I heard movement from inside her ground floor office, muffled voices. A door opened. Out walked a tall young woman, crying, a Kleenex pressed to her nose.

Behind her was a kindly looking, middle-aged woman with a Mona Lisa smile. She motioned for me to enter. The top of her head barely reached the middle of my chest. She was the world’s littlest shrink.

Please come in she said in that soft voice I heard on the phone.

3.

I looked around the room cautiously, like a dog sniffing out new territory. Hers was a tasteful, wood-paneled space. Paintings and posters from Italy lined the Tuscan-treated walls. A threadbare, red Persian carpet adorned the worn hardwood floor. As for seating, there was a Morris chair, a rolled arm leather couch, and a plump club chair. Wondering where to sit, I recalled the sage advice of my provincial friends: if you sit close to the therapist, it is perceived as too in-your-face. If you sit too far away, it means you’re defensive. I opted for a mid-distanced choice, the club chair, and settled in.

She said nothing. I said nothing.

She gave me the Mona Lisa smile again.

I looked down at my hands. And I thought, this could go on forever and I’m paying, so I might as well start.

It turned out to be as easy as shoveling powdery snow. And it was a relief to unburden myself. It was never a matter of finding things to talk about. Rather, it was a more a matter of how fast I could excavate the rot in my soul.

Every week I drove to Sunset Park, bought a cassette tape, and poured my poisoned heart out to the World’s Littlest Shrink. One week, I told her a story I’d forgotten. We were discussing my parents when a long-buried memory sprung to mind. It was as if a lead-lined, Kryptonite-proof jack-in-the-box suddenly opened.

Startled, I stopped talking.

Go on the World’s Littlest Shrink said.

"I am four years old and on a family vacation in a small hotel in an upstate mountain village. I am tucked into bed by my parents. My infant sister is asleep in her crib.

I awaken, in the middle of the night, to see our hotel room ablaze.

‘Mom? Dad?’ I warble. Nothing. A bolt of fear grips my stomach. I scream: ‘MOM? DAD?’ They are not here. The baby and I are alone, left to fend for ourselves, as flames lick lacey drapes, as acrid smoke billows, as we choke.

I look about the room. The baby cries. I see that the fire burns brightest by the light fixture above the dresser. Its incandescent bulb ignites a tattered towel. Groggy, I throw off the bed covers, get up, open the door, and leave. I wander down the hallway in cowboy-print pajamas and find the curved, carpeted stairway to the hotel lobby below. There, a man approaches.

‘Little boy,’ he says, bemused. ‘What’s the matter?’

I rub my burning eyes with grubby four-year-old fists. I cough. I don’t understand what the man says.

‘Little boy,’ he repeats. ‘Why are you crying?’

‘My room is on fire,’ I say, now blubbering.

‘WHAT?’ the man says, no longer smiling. ‘Is there anyone else in your room?’

‘My sister,’ I say. ‘She’s sleeping.’

‘How old is she?’ he asks.

‘She’s a baby.’ I smear tears from my eyes and cough again.

‘Hey, c’mon, c’mere!’ he yells, as he signals to the staff for help. Then, to me, he says, his hands upon my shoulders: ‘Remember: big boys don’t cry.’

I suppose the fire was extinguished. But I have no idea who put it out, or how. My sister was safe, our room was changed. I told the World’s Littlest Shrink that I surmised my parents had left us alone, as they’d done many a time while on vacation, and gone out to the hotel’s club for an evening’s entertainment, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Before they left, they placed a towel upon the fixture, to better shade the light and help us fall asleep."

So, they did that frequently? my therapist asked me.

Yep, all the time.

Did you ever ask them about it? she asked me.

Nope.

The World’s Littlest Shrink sat there, mouth open, pen poised mid-air. She said not a word.

The seasons changed, the years passed, and my wife and I got our careers got back on track, more or less. Our career trajectories had certainly flattened, though, as a new generation of go-getters flitted into my city. Brooklyn, once a low-cost alternative to Manhattan, was now expensive. But we pushed on. All the while I continued with therapy and kept on shoveling.

Eventually, I decided to tell my tiny therapist that I was fine and didn’t need to come any longer. I had several nifty rationalizations at the ready, but the reality—which I never expressed to my shrink—was that my opinion of our work together had, over time, reset to its default Gary Cooper position.

Are you sure? she said. We have a lot of work to ...

I’m sure, I said, smiling, It’s time for me to move on.

She smiled and suggested we go forward to put a bow on things for another few weeks. To this, I agreed.

That weekend at the U.S. Open tennis finals, Hewitt clobbered Sampras. The next Tuesday, I had a morning like any other morning. I walked my boxer in Prospect Park. I went home, fed and brushed the dog, took a shower, had some coffee, prepared for work. Sirens screamed down Flatbush Avenue, nonstop, just like those horrific crackabyebaby nights back in the mid-eighties. I figured that there was a big fire in downtown Brooklyn, maybe around DeKalb Avenue. I remember thinking that hopefully it wasn’t Junior’s; they had the best cheesecake around.

The telephone rang. It was my wife, already at work.

Put on CNN right now! she screamed. It’s Bin Laden, I just know it.

My wife and I had followed news reports involving al Qaeda since 1993, when two gentlemen loaded their 1,300-pound, nitrate-hydrogen, gas-enhanced device, stuffed with cyanide, into a rented Ryder van, drove into lower Manhattan, entered the parking garage directly below the World Trade Center’s North Tower, and blew their bomb, killing six and injuring more than one thousand.

We shuddered seven years later when the USS Cole was attacked by al Qaeda suicide bombers while in port in Aden, Yemen, for refueling. Seventeen sailors were killed that day.

Here it was, less than one year after the Cole.

Oh, what now? I thought. I reached for the remote in the bedroom and buttoned my shirt with the other hand. There, against the cloudless Colorado-blue sky, the North Tower was once again on fire.

A plane, my wife screamed into the phone. I thought, What kind of asshole flies into a building as big as the World Trade Center? I stood transfixed, half dressed, staring at the television and hearing my wife cry over the phone, until the unthinkable happened for the second time that morning.

I ran to pick up my son. There in the lobby of his school, he and his pre-teen friends trembled, cried, hugged, knowing some dads were done.

He came running to me as I entered and wrapped his hands around me in a big bear hug. Where’s mom? he asked.

She’s fine, I said. She’ll be home soon. In fact, she made it back only after an arduous walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Dad, let’s go. Please? Now? he said, relieved both his parents were safe.

As we approached our apartment building, my son and I met Eddie, our superintendent. Let’s go up to the Penthouse, Eddie said. "We can see what’s happening and the penthouse bitch is