The Adams Institute was a popular punch line in Frankford. Misbehave, and your parents would say, “You’re going to drive me straight to Adams if you don’t knock that off.” Or, “Where we going on vacation, Mom?” “To Adams, if you don’t stop goofing around.” Adams was the loony bin. It was the most beautiful piece of land in Frankford, spread across ten gorgeous acres on the fringes of Northwood. But nobody wanted to end up there.
Meghan laughed politely.
“How many years did Mickey’s grandfather work there?”
Oooh, kapowie. Anne hadn’t seen that one coming. She was very practiced at smacking away my questions. She had since I was a kid. But the two-on-one assault had left her flummoxed.
“Oh, gee. I think he retired a few years ago? We really don’t talk too much. You know your grandpop, Mickey.”
I took a slug of Johnny Walker Black for courage.
“How long before Grandpop found out Billy Derace was there?”
You should have seen the death stare on Anne’s face then. My God. Blue eyes like dagger icicles.
“Billy who?”
“Mom. The guy who killed dad.”
“Excuse me.”
My mom pushed her chair back, wiped her mouth with a white napkin, placed it on the table, then left the room.
Meghan and I exchanged glances. I took another gulp of Whiplash’s good scotch, which burned my throat as I followed my mom into the kitchen.
My mother’s palms were pressed to the edges of the countertop. I didn’t know if she was trying to keep her balance or keep the counter from resisting the earth’s gravity and floating into the air.
“Mom?”
She looked up. Tears were running down her cheeks. I had the strangest sense of déjà vu. Wasn’t I just here—my mother looking at me and crying? Like, thirty-seven years ago?
My mom wiped her face dry.
“You don’t understand. For years I’ve been waiting for the call that your grandfather’s murdered someone over at Adams.”
“Not just someone. Billy Derace. Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth? You said it was a bar fight. But this guy just attacked Dad out of nowhere. I read the news clips.”
“When would you have liked to know? When you were nine years old? Or maybe when you turned sixteen? Twenty-one, just in time for you to go out drinking?”
“Any of those times would have been better than you lying to me.”
“I never lied to you. You assumed things.”
This was true. I had filled in the gaps. But only because I’d never heard the full story, and had little else to go on. My mother was masterful at shutting down awkward conversations or ignoring them completely.
I tried a different way at it.
“I found a bunch of newspaper clippings that Grandpop kept—all about Dad’s murder. I think he saved every newspaper article, and even got a copy of the police report.”
“Well, that’s a surprise. Your father hated your grandfather and always assumed the feeling was mutual. Who knew he gave a shit.”
It was always that. Your grandfather. Your side of the family. Your gene pool, not mine.
“Why did he hate Grandpop?”
“It’s a long story, and we have a guest.”
Now it was “we.” Now I was part of the family again. Our weird dysfunctional family of two.
“Okay, now here’s what I don’t get. You don’t like him. That much is obvious. You never speak to him, you barely seem to tolerate his existence, and yet you’re always bugging me to visit him. You put me in his friggin’ apartment, Mom. Why would you push me toward somebody you hate? Somebody you tell me my own father hated?”
“Because he doesn’t have anybody else.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“And because someday he might wake up. And the doctors say if he does wake up, he’s going to need some help. I can’t do it, not with work. You’re his grandson.”
Then I understood what my mom had wanted all along. A way to ease her conscience. A way to take care of everything. Me. And my grandpop.
That is: me taking care of my grandpop. Because she sure as hell didn’t want to deal with him.
We didn’t say anything for a short while. I knew Meghan could hear every word of this. My mother’s house, as spacious as it may be by Northwood standards, wasn’t a Main Line McMansion.
“Why did Dad hate Grandpop? Was it because of the divorce?”
“I should have never brought that up.”
“Come on, what’s the difference now? Dad’s gone, and Grandpop is not in a position to care.”
“I wish you’d just forget about it.”
“No, I’m not going to forget about it. This is bullshit. Can you for once, please, just tell me something about my family so I don’t have to keep on inventing details?”
Oh, the look my mother gave me. A withering, icy-blue stare that instantly reduced me to a child.
“I didn’t find this out until after you were born, but apparently your grandfather used to beat up your grandmother.”
My skin went cold as I imagined my grandmother—my sweet grandmother who had nothing but kind words and cookies for me growing up—being struck.
Mom saw she had me. She kept going.
“Your father said he really didn’t remember it until after you were born. But when he became a parent, I guess it all came flooding back. He was depressed all the time, and spent most family holidays avoiding your grandpop Henry—only talking to him when he had to. And that’s the way their relationship stayed until your father died. Now can we finish dinner?”
In 1917 a Philadelphia developer named Gustav Weber went to Los Angeles on his honeymoon. He fell so deeply and promptly in love with the Spanish mission-style architecture that he decided to re-create a piece of Southern California on the East Coast. Upon his return, Weber bought a triangle of land on the outskirts of Philadelphia, divided it up into blocks with street names like Los Angeles Avenue and San Gabriel Road, and then built the homes of his dream: stucco bungalows with red-tiled roofs.
Weber, however, didn’t take into account the harsh East Coast winters that killed the plants and froze the occupants of the uninsulated homes. By the time the Great Depression hit, Weber was bankrupt.
But Hollywood never died.
My grandmom had lived there—at 603 Los Angeles Avenue, near San Diego Avenue—ever since I can remember. While her ex hopped around various apartments in Frankford over the years, Ellie Wadcheck—she never went back to her maiden name—stayed put. I used to waste away many summer afternoons in the postage stamp–sized yard behind her house. Especially in the years after my father died, and my mom needed someone to watch me.
I didn’t think anything was weird about Hollywood, PA, until I went to college, and discovered that my friends thought I was full of crap.
Meghan didn’t believe me either—at first.
“She lives where?”
“Hollywood. It’s a neighborhood in Abington.”
“How have I never heard of this?”
“Oh oh oh, you’re a rich girl, and you’ve gone too far…”
“Shut up.”
We stopped at the Hollywood Tavern. I didn’t have a chance to finish my Johnnie Walker Black at my mother’s, and I needed another drink. Meghan decided she could use one, too. Maybe something that didn’t come from a box.
The place was a former show home for the Weber development that was later fitted with a brick addition that stuck out like a cancerous growth on the face of the mission-style pad. Inside, the bar was designed for serious drinking and sports watching. I ordered a Yuengling; Meghan had a white wine.
“My God, you weren’t full of crap. This place looks like it was scraped out of the Hollywood Hills, flung across the country and it landed here.”