Twelve

When I was a young girl, my dad managed Pearl Bailey, the musical performer and movie actress. Although I said this with pride, I had no idea what it meant. He was her attorney, for sure, but he was also her personal manager, her mentor, her guide and her friend. He spent a great deal of time propelling her forward in her career, and even in telling her how to live. She later wrote a book in which she thanked him for his influence on her life. I remember her as a large part of my childhood, even after I left for college.

After she got really famous, Pearl married a white man, drummer Louis Bellson, in 1952. I remember that my father told them the marriage was fine with him (he was very socially liberal), but he told them not to have children, because he knew that mixed race children were ostracized even in the New York City of my childhood. Another client of his, Billy Daniels, a very light-skinned Afro-American who could "pass" for white, married a white woman. Billy and Martha Daniels had two children, both darker than either parent. My father used them as examples to Pearl and Louis, who put off childraising and opted for a large boxer dog, Mr. Rogers, instead.

The Daniels children, in the mean time, had to be sent off to school in Switzerland.

In 1954, Pearl Bailey starred in an ill-fated (154 performances) Broadway production called "House of Flowers," which was about two rival whorehouses in Trinidad. The music was by Harold Arlen, and the lyrics were by Truman Capote. It was produced by Arnold Saint Subber and directed by Peter Brook. Although I had no idea how important they were, I met them all.

I took dancing lessons on Saturday mornings at the Jules Stone studio in Washington Heights. After my dancing lesson, my dad often took me down to the Alvin Theatre where Pearl was rehearsing. I got to watch them put the production together, see them fight, and breathe in the weird scents of a Broadway theatre, and I had a chance to show off my mediocre tap dancing to the cast. I did it gladly, because it was one of the few times I was able to make my father proud.

No, let's go further with that. Tap dancing was one of the few ways I could even get my father's attention. He was an absentee father, as they all were, but he was worse, because he had such a strange occupation.

In the morning, he and my mother never got up to see my brother and me off to school. That's because my father's business required them to go out almost every night to a play or a night club to watch my father's clients. My mother, I'm sure, didn't have to go, but she chose to go. As she always told us -- and as he also told us -- when you grow up and go away, we will have each other. So I have to take care of him. That was their theory of parenting. Not only was I in a competition with my mother for my father's attention, but according to their rules, I had already lost simply by virtue of being the child.

In addition, my parents began going to Las Vegas and Hollywood for long periods of time as my dad's clients got more famous and decided to make movies. Going to either of those places (I still dislike them both) involved taking a train across the country for three days, which meant you didn't zip across the country for a weekend, or even a week. My parents were absent for a month at a time, leaving me with a housekeeper, Dilcy.

So you can imagine how much I looked forward to going with my dad to the rehearsals.

But it's amazing how much I didn't understand. During that year, my father talked a lot about pansies and fruits. He was very disdainful of them, and made fun of them and their fights. I got the feeling he didn't admire them. Only after I got to college and began to hang out with people who studied Broadway and were artists themselves did I realize that Truman Capote and Saint Subber were both gay, and perhaps were even lovers during the production of "House of Flowers." I'm sure they didn't "come out," and that even in the legitimate theatre they were looked down upon as "fairies." That was another one of my father's terms for them.

I was always attracted to gay men, because they were intelligent and sensitive. Only I never knew they were gay. Two high school classmates of mine, both friends and confidants, committed suicide after college, neither having the courage to admit their preferences. By that time, Truman Capote was "out," because it was the Sixties and anything was acceptable. All that came too late for Jerry and Stuart, two poetic, sensitive people in a harsh world.

But what did I know? I was twelve.