Our New York

Lily Herzan

My mother was born on the west side of Manhattan and raised on the east, at 812 Park Avenue with Jerry, her favorite doorman, a nanny, her parents, and two birds named Alex and Alex. I was born in a different kind of New York, on the east side – and raised on the west. It's difficult for me to imagine my mother with her short gray hair and warm brown eyes living among the bleach blonde plastic surgeried Barbies who prance down Park today. But her New York was a different world from mine, a world of cigarettes, old money and beluga caviar.

My mother and I are strikingly similar; I just like to pretend that we aren't. I pretend that I'll stay mad at her if she won't let me sleep at someone's house at the last minute, or if she doesn't want me alone on the subway at night. But I know why she does it -- because I'm just as neurotic and worried as she is.

My mother will tell people she was really raised by an Irish sitter named Betty Reilly. Betty had a round face, light brown curls that were hair sprayed stiff, and a petite figure. She had different dresses for each day of the week, smelled like Mentos, and prayed her rosary every night. She lived in the apartment with my mother and taught her, as much as she could, not to put her elbows on the table, or to sit like a truck-driver. Betty was with my mother on those long nights that Douglas and Lily weren't.

I had two Irish babysitters: Betty, who raised my mother, and Sarah, who came to us when I was two weeks old. Sarah had a sharp face with kind pale eyes and feather thin blonde fair that she was constantly trying to thicken and curl. She used to pick up my thick curls and sigh. “One day if you're not careful Lily. I'm just going to steal your curls straight from your head.” Sarah wore a different colored blouse and ironed slacks every day. She took care of me on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Betty came on Tuesday and Thursday.

My mother says that Douglas and Lily were out most nights to some party or opening or dinner. They were society people who mingled, remembered names, and laughed a little too loud for it to be believable at parties. Grandfather wrote for Time magazine, ironically, the religion section. He never really was religious until he converted to Catholicism to marry his fifth wife, KK, after he divorced my Oma, Lily. He was sarcastic and smooth and carried a flask full of vodka in his jacket pocket. Every so often, he would stay home for dinner and make his special spaghetti sauce loaded with garlic. The smell would lead my mother to the kitchen, where she would try to steal some away from him. But every time, Grandfather would see her sneak in, and he'd spit in the bowl several times to make sure it was all his, and not my mother's. He was the best father he could be to her because she was right there alone in front of him for twenty years. He was the one who would say, “This too shall pass, Al.” He would chat with her friends, and make sure that everyone was laughing. That wasn't the Grandfather I knew. I knew him when his hair was gray, and he couldn't hear anymore. He had two yappy dogs, a yappy wife, and he gave me a new teddy bear on each visit.

Everybody I meet tells me that my Oma was beautiful. “Your Grandmother was real in a world of high faluting nobodies,” they'd say. She wore Halston before his clothes were fashionable, sequin headdresses, and she wasn't afraid of color. When she was in a hurry to be somewhere, she never ran. Instead, she took long deep lunges, racing forward to catch a taxi before anyone else beat her to it, and she did it all with a cigarette in hand and an air of elegance. There were a lot of things that made Lily nervous: bikes, yelling, small children. She was aware of her neuroses, and avoided them as much as she could. That's why my mom had Betty.

Lily didn't know how to hug. She was a master of the bisou-bisou double cheek kiss that she gave her acquaintances. She was also a fan of the air hug, where she just barely touched the arms of the other person. My mother taught Lily to really hug, like she did for me when I was three and I decided I didn't want to touch or hug anyone ever again.

When I was younger, my parents would go out a lot. Or it felt like a lot to me. Each time they did, I asked how late it was going to be. I liked the nights that they told me 9 or 10. When they left, Sarah would try to calm me down and get me ready for bed. I made her read me stories over and over, willing myself to stay awake until my ears perked up at the sound of the front door opening, and I knew they were home safe.

I was always anxious – mostly about my parents when they went out. My imagination went wild. I always pictured a scene like in Cinderella. Suddenly my parents would be gone, and I was going to wear rags and live in some scary person's attic. When I was eleven or twelve, I couldn't do sleepovers because I got too nervous. I would start to hyperventilate and convince myself that my parents had been in horrible accidents, and I would have to leave for home in the middle of the night.

Every March, Douglas and Lily would entertain friends at a villa in Cadaqués, Spain. My mom hated Spain. She was the only child, surrounded by adults drinking and laughing on boat trips and cocktail nights. All she wanted was to be back in New York with Betty. What she got was a slew of nannies who didn't speak English. Douglas and Lily thought my mother would learn Spanish, but she didn't.

My mother and I are both New Yorkers, born and bred. Her New York was the one I always secretly wished I was a part of. I wanted in on the „70's parties where people talked about art and stood out if they were dressed head to toe in black. She didn't want to be a part of that world. She complains about going out and dragging herself into a pair of heels and maybe a dress. If it's something really fancy, then she'll put on lipstick and ask me to come in and help her choose her jewelry. I used to help my mom get ready for the big parties. I'd sit on the floor next to her closet, and point for her to wear my favorite dress. It was a beaded pink shift dress that looked like it belonged to someone from the 1920s with a cigarette dangling from one hand and a champagne glass in the other. Each time she would shake her head. “Not tonight, Lil. This isn't the right kind of party for that.” Then she'd reach in her closet and pull out something black, or white, or red – her go to colors. I used to beg my mom to let me go with her to MoMa openings. Sometimes, she'd let me go for the cocktails, and I'd leave when they headed to dinner. I'd do my best to brush out my hair, and clip back my frizzed bangs. Then I'd see if I could get away with wobbling around in heels, and I'd practice my no-teeth smile so my braces wouldn't show. When I actually got there, it was never any fun. My mom would mingle with a glass of seltzer in her hand and talk about things that I didn't get to be a part of, even if I wanted to.

*** Douglas worked, and Lily slept in, so my mom went to school alone every morning. Much to her embarrassment, a black limousine picked her up in the lobby, and took her to the red front door of Spence, on 91st, between 5th and Madison. Every afternoon, Betty would stand outside the red door and wait to walk my mother home.

Every morning, my mom took me to school on her favorite mode of transportation: a bike. The click, click, click of the bicycle chain was the telltale signal that Mom was home. Sacred Heart was just across Central Park on 91st and 5th – we could see the top of the roof from our living room window. Down the street was the red door of Spence that my mother had walked through every morning for twelve years. Our bike was a tandem, and I'd sit in the back with my feet sitting loosely on the pedals, letting my mom do all the work. Biking was her thing, and it never relaxed me the way it did for her. The older I got, the more self conscious I became. My legs were too awkwardly long for the backseat, and my thick long hair formed a triangle under the helmet. I learned to hate the bike. People used to stare, and wave. Also we rode through the park around the Great Lawn. In the afternoon, it would be packed with private school teens, smoking cigarettes and laughing in uniform kilts and ties. I would keep my head down and pretend no one could see my seat in the back. I asked if I could start taking the bus with my other West Side friends, and eventually my mom gave in.

I was in fourth grade when I first took a taxi home by myself, and seventh grade when I was allowed alone on the subway. “When I was a kid, I never went on the subway,” my mom would tell me. “We walked or took cabs – there just wasn't anywhere in the city that the subway could take me that I wanted to go.” Today, the subway takes me almost anywhere I want to go.

Once, my mom showed me her senior yearbook. Under the bold ALEXANDRA AUCHINCLOSS at the top, was a picture of a face covered by a camera lens, with big bushy hair spouting out from the edges. I could just see the tips of her round glasses over the top of the camera. “I was a total nerd!” she told me. “And that's why I never had a date until college.”

She spent her summer before college “hosteling” around Europe with her best friend Sophia. Their original plan was to hostel, but Lily was a nervous mother, and gave them extra money, just in case. They stayed in 2 star hotels and drank Orzo at French bars.

My mother knew that she wanted to go to Connecticut College from the beginning, and her half siblings used to poke fun at her, chanting “ED to CC!” The June before college, Mom begged Oma to rent a normal car, instead of their usual black town car, complete with chauffeur. But by the time moving day came around, Lily had forgotten about the rental. In a last minute scramble, Lily did what she knew best, and called a car company. Douglas sat in the front of the black limo with his silver flask in hand. Next to him was the chauffeur in a full cap and suit, with Lily crying in the backseat and my mother sitting next to her, mortified. Mom made sure they stopped at a Howard Johnson's on the way, and she begged Lily to have the driver change out of his uniform. As they rolled into campus, eager students surrounded the car. “Welcome to CC Mr. Auchincloss!!!” they yelled enthusiastically into the driver window. The driver looked around, bemused. “Me? I'm not Mr. Auchincloss. I'm just the chauffeur.” My mom buried her face in her hands as Douglas took another swig.

My mom studied history at Conn, and then decided to study social work at Columbia. She moved back to New York, to 6 West 77th Street, with a doorman named Owen and a cat named Harry. She was pretty sure that Harry the cat was going to be her closest true love until she got a phone call one day. “Hi, this is Paul Herzan. I'm calling at the suggestion of Ken Butler. He said that he thought we might enjoy meeting one another. I hope you don't find this too forward, or really weird, but I look forward to speaking with you.” He left his number and hung up. She didn't call for a month, or at least that's what it felt like to my dad.

My mom tells me that she fell head over heels in love. The kind of relationship that is only real in the world of cartoons, not in New York. My parents were dating for three months before my mom gave up Harry and got engaged, which seems slightly insane. The wedding was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and Lily of course, planned every detail, from the dress to the cake, flawlessly.

I was born eight years later, on the east side of Manhattan. I was raised on the west on 90th Street, with a family of ten doormen, and a crazed dog named Rosie.

My parents always knew what my name was going to be, whether I was a girl or a boy. If I were a boy, I would have been named Francis, after my father's father. But instead, my namesake was my glamorous Oma, who knew me for little over a year. She was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was in utero – her years of social smoking turned to chain addiction had taken their toll. In that year, my mom spent the most time with Oma. “I used to tell her how I just had the best baby,” Mom would slip into her storytelling voice. “And she used to tell me „NO, I had the best baby.'” Then my mom would pause for dramatic effect. “And then she'd say, „no – you're right. You did have the best baby.'” When Oma died, I don't know how my mother reacted. “Your Oma loved me more than anyone, except maybe you,” she would tell me.

I don't remember ever really fighting with my mom. We had tried to before. My mother's voice would start to rise and screech. Her nose would scrunch and her lips would purse comically as she yelled, “LILY!” The fight was over at that point, because I wouldn't be able to stop my nervous giggles. “Ok, ok I'm sorry!” My mom would storm out of my room, and later she'd come back and apologize for yelling. “You know – you're lucky,” she would tell me. “How would you have liked being stuck with someone else's mother?”

My mom still complains when she gets home from a long meeting and has to go to a late party. She still bikes everywhere around the city that she can, or walks instead of taking a cab. The New York she grew up in with black Lincoln cars and older people she can't talk to doesn't exist anymore. Now it's filled with subways and her people. Ones that I'm not so keen on talking to, the same way that she used to be. But her New York is my New York.