Czar Nicholas, the Toad, and Duck Soup: A Memoir of Marriage, Mime, and Moving On

By Elisabeth Amaral

The mid-1960s through the mid-1970s was a heady, turbulent time. There was a lot going on back then, and author Elisabeth Amaral was in the middle of it all: the fights for womens rights, racial equality, a music revolution, be-ins, love-ins, riots in the streets, the rage against the Vietnam War, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was an amazing time to be young.
In Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup, Amaral shares her recollections of those times. She narrates a coming-of-age story about herself and her husband as they embarked on an improbable journey of self-discovery. They gave up their jobs, moved with their infant son from New York City to Boston, unexpectedly started a childrens boutique, and soon opened a popular restaurant in Harvard Square.
With sincerity and humor, Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup offers a personal and revealing account that reaches out to those who find themselves striving to make a relationship work that, by its very nature, may be doomed. But this story is also one of friendshipand of finding the courage to move on.

Praise for Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup
In her intimate and humorous memoir, Liz Amaral reveals the challenges of a young family establishing a home in Cambridge amid the tumult of the late 1960s. You will discover the disconcerting truth about her marriage and the painful path she takes to find herself again. A true adventure of the heart.
Kathrin Seitz, writer, producer, and coach

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491749791

Elisabeth Amaral

Elisabeth Amaral has designed jewelry, co-owned both a childrens boutique and a restaurant, and sold real estate in New York City. She is the author of Elodie at the Corner Market and When Any Kind of Love Will Do. Elisabeth lives with her husband in Manhattan. Visit her online at www.elisabethamaral.com.

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Copyright © 2014 Elisabeth Amaral.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4980-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4979-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014918973

iUniverse rev. date: 10/22/14

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. You Want to WHAT?

Chapter 2. He Wants to WHAT?

Chapter 3. Trying to Graduate

Chapter 4. Meeting Orlando

Chapter 5. Proposal

Chapter 6. Wedding Day

Chapter 7. Married

Chapter 8. Feast of San Gennaro

Chapter 9. The Apartment over the 2nd Avenue Deli

Chapter 10. Mime

Chapter 11. Beacon Hill

Chapter 12. Unwelcome Breakfast

Chapter 13. Storybook Walk

Chapter 14. Earring Workshop

Chapter 15. Czar Nicholas

Chapter 16. The Toad

Chapter 17. Czar Nicholas and the Toad

Chapter 18. My First Buying Trip

Chapter 19. The McAlpin Hotel

Chapter 20. Bouquet of Buntings

Chapter 21. Czar Nicholas and the Toad Materialize

Chapter 22. The Toad Says Good-bye

Chapter 23. Magical Mystery Salesman

Chapter 24. Linnaean Street

Chapter 25. From Montessori to Army Blankets

Chapter 26. What is the Answer?

Chapter 27. Anything I Want

Chapter 28. El Yunque, Part I

Chapter 29. El Yunque, Part II

Chapter 30. Dead End

Chapter 31. Mount Auburn Hospital

Chapter 32. Lexington

Chapter 33. School Daze

Chapter 34. Alice the Cheese Lady

Chapter 35. Opening Duck Soup

Chapter 36. Duck Soup Soups

Chapter 37. The Rest of the Menu

Chapter 38. Alice’s Recipes

Chapter 39. Orlando’s New Job

Chapter 40. Hard Knocks Everywhere

Chapter 41. Houseguests, and What One Left Behind

Chapter 42. Paddy-Wagon Incident

Chapter 43. Going to the Dogs

Chapter 44. Winter Break

Chapter 45. The Bowling Alley in Central Square

Chapter 46. Imagining Israel

Chapter 47. Chopin Meets Eeyore

Chapter 48. Eulogy for a Turtle

Chapter 49. Story Time

Chapter 50. Birthday Blues and the Yoga Retreat

Chapter 51. Orlando Moves Out

Chapter 52. A Con Artist Visits Czar Nicholas and the Toad

Chapter 53. The Lease Runs Out

Chapter 54. A Guy and His Dogs on the Provincetown Ferry

Chapter 55. Wedding #2

Chapter 56. Sonny, Royal Puppy

Chapter 57. Closing Duck Soup

Chapter 58. Beth O’Sullivan Recalls Duck Soup

Chapter 59. Leaving Cambridge

Chapter 60. I Was a Soccer Mom

Chapter 61. Dutch Colonial with Sun Room and Sump Pump

Chapter 62. The Beginning of the End

Chapter 63. Montclair

Chapter 64. Mohonk

Chapter 65. More Big Changes

Chapter 66. Chelsea

Acknowledgments

Contents

1. Me, pregnant at work, spring 1966

2. Margaret, winter 1966

3. Orlando, about 1966

4. Hilda (Abuela) and me, when I was eight months pregnant, somewhere

5. Left: Orlando and me. Right: Our wedding cake

6. My father and me at my wedding, March 27, 1966

7. Orlando and me in our Second Avenue bathroom before the ceiling fell down

8. My mother and Nicholas in South Orange

9. Nicholas and me in South Orange

10. Orlando and Nicholas in South Orange

11. Nicholas in a 1967 Be-In at Central Park

12. Me with the kosher butcher on East Tenth Street off Second Avenue

13. Nicholas, Grove Street, Boston

14. Nicholas and me

15. Czar Nicholas earrings

16. Advertisement for the Cambridge store

17. My parents in South Orange

18. Me, Mady, Mom, and Natalie

19. Left: My nephew, Gabe, in Finnish rainwear. Right: Nicholas in sailor pajamas

20. Nicholas with Elodie Pong in a Czar Nicholas Peruvian poncho, around 1969 or 1970

21. Papier-mâché Czar Nicholas

22. Nick and Chris

23. Teapots by Dianne, at www.curiousobjects.com

24. Nicholas and Abuela, wearing army-blanket coats

25. Dianne and Chris, Cambridge, 1968

26. Chris in Superman cape, Nick in Batman cape, made by Dianne, Cambridge, 1969

27. Sign for the Lexington store

28. Shaula, Nick’s cousin Desi, Nick

29. Alice Macsorley

30. Sign from Duck Soup, Boylston Street, Cambridge, 1970

31. Natalie, ten years old

32. My parents

33. Mom and me

34. Nick and me

35. Mady and Natalie

36. Nick, my mother, and the catch of the day

37. Linnaean Street apartment with piano

38. Painting by Gini Holmes

39. Orlando and me in the garden at his new house

40. Sonny and me

41. David Hammond in front of Duck Soup, 1973

42. Nicholas at Père Lachaise Cemetery

43. My grandfathers’ Brooklyn factory, 1940s

44. Nicholas on Iztaccihuatl

45. Antique handbag collection

46. Me at our wedding, Chelsea, 1987

For my son, Nicholas

and in loving memory of my parents,

who gave and taught so much

Preface

S EVERAL YEARS AGO I BECAME a grandmother, a cause for great joy—but it also led to shadow-driven thoughts about my mortality. Some of these thoughts prompted the backward glances that comprise this book. Many of us have stories to tell. This is mine, and the timing says now —do it while I can. I no longer take anything for granted, but years ago and for many years I surely did.

This story describes my life during a heady time, the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s. There was a hell of a lot going on back then, and I was (actively and not) in the middle of it all: the fights for women’s rights, racial equality, a music revolution, be-ins, love-ins, riots in the streets, the rage against the Vietnam War, and let’s not forget the sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was an amazing time to be young.

As an addition to my memories, I asked a few individuals close to the events to provide their own. I have interwoven those responses with my narrative.

In my recollections I’ve changed a few names, and the passage of time may have resulted in a few memory slips—even stumbles. This doesn’t concern me, but if you, the reader, catch an inconsistency as to what happened when, where, or with whom, then you were there, and I say to you, Hi!

New York City

1965–1967

1.

You Want to WHAT?

P EOPLE MOVE ALL THE TIME, for many reasons. When Orlando first discussed moving from the city, the reason was mime. You think that’s hard to believe? You should have seen me, way back in 1967, smack in the middle of the Summer of Love. We were walking down Second Avenue with our son, Nicholas, ten months old. He was already walking, but that day I was carrying him in a pale-blue fringed sling that sat on my right hip. It was a beautiful day, and I didn’t have a care in the world. We passed ‘our’ elderly Ukrainian woman sitting on a wooden folding chair, a faded babushka covering much of her gray hair. This was her spot, outside a tiny storefront between East Sixth and Seventh Streets, and whenever she saw us walk by with Nicholas she would smile her almost toothless smile and wave us over. That day he was sound asleep, yet she silently clasped her hands in joy, her sweet, wrinkled face beaming. " Bubala ," she whispered and then looked at us with large, heavily lidded pale-blue eyes. What stories she must have . The strong sun accentuated the many long, thick white hairs on her chin, and I felt a responsibility to find tweezers and pluck them out, the way I might need someone to do for me one day.

We continued our walk. I love living here. It’s perfect, I said, feeling happy and right with my world.

It’s dirty, Orlando said, and then he turned to me. Elisabeth …

Uh oh, I thought and kept walking.

I think we should move up to Boston for a while.

Yeah, right, I said.

Just for a few months, he said. So I can study with those mimes I worked with last year.

I stopped and stared at him before responding. The realization that he was serious stunned me. Leave the East Village? So you can practice mime? That’s crazy.

It’s not, he said. It’s a great opportunity. And we’ll have fun. We always do. Besides, it’s getting edgy around here. The vibes are changing. Let’s do it for Nicholas, for three months. If we don’t like it, we can always come back.

For Nicholas? As if Boston could possibly be better for a baby than the melting pot we lived in. I’d have to be nuts to leave, because nothing could be better than living on the corner of East Tenth Street and Second Avenue. Well, maybe an apartment in Paris or a houseboat in Sausalito but not much else. Certainly not Boston. What Orlando was asking me to leave was a two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment over the 2nd Avenue Deli that cost us one hundred thirty-five dollars a month. He was asking me to leave the deli with the best chicken soup in the city; Kiev and Veselka, two local restaurants that sustained us with their pierogi; Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Restaurant (I still have the cookbook); Veniero’s Pastry Shop; and Pete’s Spice and Everything Nice. And what would I get in exchange? Scrod, baked beans, and freezing winters. Not a chance!

How can you even think of asking me to leave all this? I spread my free arm wide, encompassing the overflowing garbage cans on the sidewalks, the tenements, the uninspiring Mom-and-Pop stores, head shops, St. Mark’s Place, and Gem Spa, home of the best egg creams in the city. We were kids with a baby, living in the throbbing heart of the East-Coast counterculture, surrounded by artists, writers, poets, hippies, Ukrainians, Puerto Ricans, and Hell’s Angels. Life could not get richer than this!

"All what, Elisabeth? The creepy guy who keeps following you and Nicky into our lobby saying ‘Ay, mami’? The bullet hole in our bedroom window? The filth? It’s changing down here. The whole mood is changing. It’s getting ugly."

He was right. The vibe was changing, from love and peace to something else, and I couldn’t wait to see what that something else was going to be. I wanted to be part of it. At the same time, I wanted to be reasonable.

Okay. Three months, I said. I’ll give Boston three months, but that’s all. Not a day more. We can leave in November, after my birthday. I started walking again.

That’s months away, he said.

That’s the deal, I said.

2.

He Wants to WHAT?

Y OU’RE LEAVING SECOND AVENUE? MY mother asked. Even over the phone she sounded both incredulous and disappointed. She loved her weekly visits into the city from South Orange, New Jersey. She drove in and we took walks, pushing Nicholas in the elegant navy-blue pram she had bought for him. A pram, in a neighborhood of tenements.

On our walks, my mother often found an opportunity to speak Yiddish, either with the pickle man or with the discount bra and girdle store owner down on Orchard Street, or with the server while seated at the counter in tiny, always crowded B&H Dairy on Second Avenue. She invariably ordered borscht, while I preferred mushroom-barley soup, but she always urged me to taste hers. The color, Lizzie! It’s gorgeous.

For a dress, Mom.

I was trying to untangle the twisted phone cord as I continued our conversation. We’re only going for a few months, I said, so Orlando can study mime. In Boston. My elegant, eloquent mother gasped.

What? she said. You’re leaving New York so he can study pantomime? Karel! She called out to my father. Lizzie’s moving to Boston so Orlando can do mime.

There was a pause, and then I heard my father’s voice in the background. Mime? Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing. And I smiled as I pictured him, sitting in his chair in the den, a history or adventure book open on his lap.

3.

Trying to Graduate

O RLANDO AND I MET TWO years earlier, in July 1965, after I barely graduated from New York University. I was an indifferent student, spending more time in Washington Square Park than in class, and two courses in particular gave me trouble. I had to pass them to graduate and couldn’t wrap my head around either Statistical Analysis of Something or Introduction to Math, which I had already failed once. I plotted to seduce my handsome, married math teacher sometime during the last week of school in hopes that he would give me a passing grade, but the days sped by, and I was unable to summon the nerve to approach him.

On the final day I gathered my courage, waited until all the other students left, and approached his desk. Thank you for the course, I said, flustered by his deep-blue eyes, his thick dark hair that I wanted to run my fingers through. I had such a crush on him, and I forced myself to act naturally, to stop staring at his strong, square, almost-handsome face. I’m wondering if you could do me a favor. I need someone to help me move a few things from an apartment, and it has to be today.

Where’s the apartment? he asked. And what has to be moved? He barely looked at me as he continued to pack books and papers into a worn leather briefcase.

Midtown, I said. I was referring to my father’s business apartment, and aside from the few pots and pans in the kitchen and sheets and towels in the linen closet, the cupboards were bare. There was nothing to pack. Winter coats, I blurted out. Lots of them, and they’re heavy.

Really? he asked absently.

Really, I said. So many coats. I’m donating them to poor people. I could use your help.

He finally looked at me. You have to move winter coats. On an eighty-degree day.

Yes, I said. And I have no one else to help me. I felt like slinking under his desk in shame for my dishonesty. I felt like gliding into his arms. He reluctantly agreed, and I hoped that once we arrived at the apartment he wouldn’t think to look in the closets. We took a cab to the white brick postwar building off Second Avenue in the low forties. I paid the driver, and we entered the bland lobby, riding the elevator in awkward silence. At the door to the apartment I was so nervous that I fumbled with the single key, dropping it twice.

As we entered the living room, he noticed a flute sitting in an open case on a side table. Yours? he asked. I shook my head. I had no idea to whom it belonged, but when he casually picked it up and began to play a familiar Mozart piece, I practically swooned. After a short time, he stopped. That’s all I remember, he said, and he placed the flute back in its case. Then he walked over to me and led me by the hand to the bedroom. I was nervous, but I was ready—for him, for love, for graduation. For the rest of my life.

We sat on the edge of the bed and held hands, my heart thumping. Our knees touched, and after a while we kissed. It was a sweet kiss, much better than how I imagined kissing a math teacher would be, and then it became different. Deeper. I felt desire. Confusion. I’d never been this kind of close with a mature man before, an experienced man with a wife and children, a Brooklyn Heights apartment, and a summer rental on the Jersey shore that he’d mentioned in class earlier that week. He pulled me closer to him, his arm around my waist. I was about to have a dream come true and also, hopefully, pass Math. My thumping heart felt as though it would burst from my chest as I turned toward him, and as I did, my legs rubbed against each other. With horror I realized how stubbly they were, and I knew I couldn’t go through with my seduction. How could I, with hairy legs? I wrenched myself away and stood up. I’m sorry, I said. I’m truly sorry. I started to cry. I was sorry—also disappointed and embarrassed. My back was to him, and soon I felt him standing behind me, close. So close.

It’s all right, he said and turned me gently so that I faced him. He tilted my tear-stained face up so that I was looking at him. I felt completely shattered but also relieved, because I had been incredibly close to being an adulteress, and that is not at all how I had been raised. He kissed the top of my head, my moist eyes, my lips. Then he picked up his briefcase in the living room and left, closing the front door gently behind him. I knew I would never see him again. I wallowed in self-pity until it became boring; then I stood and smoothed my yellow-and-navy drip-dry skirt and blouse before I left. I spent the rest of the day at the Bleecker Street Cinema and watched Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II.

4.

Meeting Orlando

I RECEIVED A D+ IN Math, a C-minus in Statistical Analysis of Something. My diploma arrived by mail, because I hadn’t felt like attending graduation. In early July, I began my new job as a caseworker for the New York City Department of Welfare. I was assigned to an office on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and became instant friends with Orlando Del Valle and Margaret Clay. Orlando had already been working there for two years. He sat in Row 17, seat 3, so he was 17-3. I was 14-2, and Margaret was 14-1.

The three of us spent much of our time together, in and out of work. During the week we often had lunch together. Orlando drove us in his turquoise VW Bug either to Mambi’s, a Dominican restaurant in Washington Heights, or to his mother’s apartment in the East Bronx. There we helped ourselves to rice and beans, garlic chicken, plantains, octopus salad that filled large pots either on the stove or in the refrigerator. Orlando assured us she wouldn’t mind, and when I finally met Hilda I knew it was true.