I don’t hate my name. “Paul Salvatore Rothenberg” is… fine. My only problem with it is that it kind of throws you in two different directions. The “Paul” seems to be an entirely different person from the “Rothenberg”, and then you have a “Salvatore” in the middle, that almost works with both of them but doesn’t quite. I don’t hate my name but it could be better.
But then again, if I am to be the legacy of those who came before me, my name is perfect. It throws you in two different directions because my parents could not be any more different. I didn’t truly appreciate how crazy big an age gap they had between them – 18 years if you skipped the first chapter – until later in life. My dad was born in the late 1920’s, which made him old enough to comfortably have been my grandfather. He came of age as World War II was unfolding in Europe. My mom was a child of the 60’s, the perfect age for Woodstock, which she would have attended had her ride not fallen through.
My mom has five siblings and approximately 50 aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents in a big Italian family, the Culellas.
My dad had only a mom, a sister, a brother in law, and a family dog, who between them had more money than the aforementioned group combined.
The Rothenbergs lived in the Upper West Side. My grandpa, Irving, died in the 1970’s and my grandma Evelyn had lived there alone ever since. She was cold with our family, practically Victorian. At times vicious, too — quick to attack my mom and sister over their physical features. I was mostly spared, being a boy, but not entirely. She once told me I’m a “nasty little boy” when I tried to hurry her along on a phone call (I was in the middle of playing Power Rangers or something). It felt like getting donkey-kicked in the balls.
We’d often go visit her when I was younger. I didn’t appreciate the size of it at the time, but her apartment was, by NYC standards, ginormous. It had an open living space big enough to support three different sitting areas, and a nook by the windows – which housed a baby grand piano, which I dared not touch, lest I risk a talking-to. Her bathroom and kitchen felt so old to me at that age, both by the appliances and types of consumer goods. As a kid, all I could think about was how there was no TV, and the desserts had way less sugar than I was used to. All I could think about as an adult looking back is about how much money that apartment would cost to rent, and how great it would be to have a piano nook.
Grandma Evelyn lived to be 100 years old, thanks in part to her full-time paid caretaker. She was comfortable to the end, right up until she more-or-less ran out of money. Grandpa Irving had a nice garment business that left her several decades worth of rent-controlled upper-west-side living, à la The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, complete with the help. But by the time she was done, there was nothing left to inherit.
But most of the money on my dad’s side of the family was held by his younger sister – Aunt Judy – who married a real estate millionaire. I only remember visiting their Manhattan penthouse once, when I was very young. Our whole family was there, the four of us traveling together was something that happened a precious few times, for dinner. The dining room was massive and lined with oil paintings on the wall, reminding me of a museum. A real emblem of old money. But my only memory of the event, other than the trappings, was when I plopped down on a rocking chair, causing it to roll back and over the dog’s tail, prompting it to have a barking fit. I was terrified of the animal for the remainder of the night – I was not used to dogs – hiding in the bathroom before being coaxed back out for dinner.
Tragically, Aunt Judy died shortly after that. But her husband, Uncle Peter, stayed in our family’s lives even after remarrying. They’d even invite us out to their actual mansion in the Hamptons in the summer to spend the day once a year. I was absolutely floored by the place each time I’d visit. We’d pull up through a long gravel driveway to park in front of a garage that could easily house 10 cars. We’d go around the side of the house and the backyard where we’d be invited to make ourselves comfortable in the pool house, which was almost as big as our apartment in West Babylon. Their pool was beautiful – enmeshed in the surrounding nature, complete with a little waterfall feeding into it. I barely even recognized it as a pool, all the ones I saw to that point were above-ground. We’d eat lunch, prepared by their chef, and then my uncle would take me out on his boat on a big pond, which we accessed from further down in his backyard. “You see that house?” he’d ask, pointing to one of his neighbors. “Steven Spielberg’s.”
The inground pool wasn’t the only thing that was foreign to me. It was the whole way of being. Their behavior – even just sitting there and having lunch – was unlike my mom’s, unlike anyone I’d see or talk to back in the suburbs. They were proper: formal, but with an easy way about them, like they were following some manual I’ve never read or heard of but had mastered it so thoroughly they never gave it any thought. There was a correct way to do everything, even for children. I was woefully unprepared for such expectations. In one of my most vivid memories, I greeted my uncle with a handshake the way I’d always given handshakes: what you might call a “dead fish”. This wouldn’t fly, not here. “Is that how you shake hands?” he asked, before turning to my mother. “What are you teaching him?” He looked me squarely in the eye. “Firm, two pumps. That’s how you shake someone’s hand. Now let’s try it again.” I practically shat myself. After recovering, I vowed to never shake a hand any differently from that moment on.
The lesson left a mark, but one afternoon a year would never be enough for a full education – nor was I particularly interested in one. Their house was big, but I didn’t realize then how much actual money was required to acquire such digs. Nothing there seemed particularly ostentatious – everything was appointed in this understated beachy vibe that, to my untrained eye, could have just as easily been near Great South Bay in good ol’ West Babylon. So to me this was all just an alternative way to be, not anything superior by any measurement. Bigger spaces but fewer people. Nicer pools but gross iced tea. Cool to visit, but with all the expectations on ‘how to be’, I was anxious to leave as soon as I got there.
Visiting with my mom’s family was entirely a different matter. Being the first baby born to any of my mom’s siblings in 10 years – miracle child, remember? – I could do no wrong with them. I would come in and talk all about whatever I was into that season like it was the new religious text, and they would just humor me. What’s that, Paul, you want to tell us in explicit detail about your most recent attempt to beat Super Mario Brothers? Great! You feel the need to recap the entire plot of the movie Aladin? Have at it! Oh, you want to talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, again? Hang on, just let us top off your chocolate milk. I didn’t deserve them.
My Aunt Marian and her family lived three houses down from us. I would go over to their house, and, with my younger cousin Meighan, put on plays about GI Joe or Ghost Busters, act out Home Alone scenarios, play bean bag hockey in the hallway for hours on end. We’d have their undivided attention. For some reason entirely undeserved, they went out of their way with me. They would take me on their family vacations to Virginia Beach as if I were their own kid. My uncle even paid me $1 an hour to come along with him and in his glassworks business, even though I was far too young to be of any use fixing windshields.
The patriarch of the family was Grandpa Sal. He was a mailman, and a World War II veteran of the European theater who saw enough action to get himself a bronze star – something my family was quite proud of, but he almost never spoke about it. He was a calm and dignified elder — a benevolent, but not-entirely-there regent, keeping the family intact less with words and deeds, but with sheer presence. My grandma, Theresa, was outright revered by my family, but she died when I was about a year old. When we moved out from Canarsie, we moved into the apartment on the second floor of their house.
Events with the Culellas would unfold much differently from time with the Rothenbergs. Instead of oil paintings there would be a TV blaring whatever occasion-appropriate parade or holiday movie or football game of the day. Instead of rules about silverware and when to eat what, there was a buffet with boundless delicious Italian or Chinese food with desserts – full sugar – right around the corner. There were games, jokes, animated stories being told among the adults who pounded coffee or booze or both while the kids played games around the outside. Christmas Eve would end in the exchange of gifts and promises of Santa, but only if we were good. Independence Day with sparklers, a grand fireworks display and just one more dip into the above-ground pool.
As I got older and my world opened up, I started to see the virtues of living the unsweetened iced tea lifestyle, and I found I had less and less in common with the Culellas. An understated-luxury mansion out east seemed less like “just another way to do it” and more like a dream, if an out-of-reach one. By the time I was nearing college I started feeling just as out-of-place with my mom’s side of the family as I did as a kid offering up weak handshakes and being chastised for not using a coaster with my dad’s.
Despite how it might seem, I don’t identify with one over the other – at least not fully. I’ve always tried to maintain a foot in both camps, even if that means I never fully belonged in either. I’m not comfortable with high society or with the kind of middle-class environment I grew up in on Long Island. That’s been my thing, I guess, perpetually thrown in two different directions, just like my name would suggest. A little high-brow, a little low-brow; neither fully either, nor a complete whole of anything in particular. Just a hacked-together existence, always doing the best he can while apologizing to all the dogs whose tails he’s rolled over along the way.