As promised, here’s more about Josie, our friend and upstairs neighbor on Highland Avenue.
Josie and her husband Martin moved into the apartment upstairs from us after our landlords Fred and Evelyn bought a house “out west” in Morris County and moved. They kept the Highland Avenue house and were still our landlords, nice ones and good people. Mimi and Paul (me), Josie and Martin became friends.
Josie was 100% third-generation Italian, skinny and fierce; Martin 100% fresh-off-the-boat Irish. He drove a delivery truck for the Rheingold brewery in Orange. The two would often fight, shouting and saying terrible things to each other. One fight ended with Martin’s clothes, plus his suitcase as an afterthought, tossed from a second floor window into the back yard. By the next day the storm would have passed. Mimi and I didn’t grow up in shouting families, and we agreed that if we ever said some of those things to each other, our marriage would be over.
Mimi was a good cook, especially of Italian food, including the best tomato sauce gravy in the world, and a rich, delicious lasagna. I forget where her lasagna recipe originally came from, but it was authentic. One day she decided to make one, and she and Josie went down to Celentano’s latticini cheese and meat store at the end of the block. Celentano’s foods were authentic too, and became a national brand. At the store, aromatic clusters of imported cheese, salami and prosciutto (“pro-zhoot!”) hung from the ceiling. Through the low cellar windows, you could see their trademark round-not-square ravioli being made and packed, 12 to a box.
When it was Mimi’s turn to order, she gave herself away as a Medigan, a respectable white American who unfortunately is not Italian, by pronouncing aloud the final ‘a’ in mozzarella.
Where I grew up, to be referred to as a Medigan was almost an honor, similar to being addressed as yourname-san by a Japanese acquaintance. If you’re not Italian and you’re not a Medigan either, you don’t count for much around the neighborhood.
Italian food clerks and waiters just smile when you pronounce Italian words the wrong way; they’ve heard it all. They know what you mean, and never correct you. The clerk asked “salted or unsalted?”, and Mimi said “I don’t know… whatever they sell in the supermarket, I guess.” Josie was horrified to hear Mimi admit to buying mozzarella in a supermarket, and told her later “I have never been so embarrassed.”
Early on, Josie teased me about being “old”, five years older than she was. On her 25th birthday I got even, saying “Wow, a quarter of a century!”. That ended the teasing.
They had a baby they named Colin, and Josie relied a lot on Mimi’s past experience taking care of her own. For convenience, Josie bathed Colin in the kitchen sink. That probably sounds strange now, but Josie kept her kitchen, including her sink, spotless. Colin didn’t like being bathed, but he didn’t cry. A passive baby, he showed his displeasure by rocking and banging his head softly against the sink, eventually developing a callus on his forehead. One day he switched speeds, and banged his head so hard that he surprised himself. He cried for a while, but didn’t do that anymore.
Josie once locked herself out of the apartment, leaving year-old Colin alone. She came downstairs in a panic, asking me to please get the door open. There was no question of waiting for a locksmith. I told her I didn’t know what to do except break it open, which turned out to be not as easy as it looks on television. Before each run I took at the door, Josie hollered “Don’t be scared, honey, it’s going to be all right!” When the lock finally broke out, Colin was just sitting on the floor, taking it all in.
Josie was a neat-freak, and kept her apartment scrupulously clean. As he got older, Colin accumulated lots of toys, but was only allowed to play with one at a time, and had to put that one away before he could play with another. We thought that was mean, and told Josie so. She said she just couldn’t stand a mess. I think she was almost sick when she came downstairs one Christmas and saw how our kids’ Hot Wheels track had taken over the living room.
When we went on a two-week vacation, we asked her to collect our mail. When we got back, she was angry because we got too much mail to fit in the kitchen drawer she had assigned to it, shouting “Why do you need so many goddamn magazines?”
One day Josie and Mimi wanted to go shopping. Mimi didn’t drive yet, and asked me if it would be okay for Josie to drive our car, since Martin had theirs. I didn’t have a good reason to say no, so I said sure. I wasn’t watching at first, but then I heard our Pontiac’s engine revving fast but under strain, making a sound something like rrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr, over and over. I went to the window, and with each rrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr the car sort of leaned forward, but didn’t move. When I park, I always set the parking brake, just like I learned to do when I was 17, even on a level street like Highland Avenue. I went out on the porch and between rrrrrrrr’s shouted to Josie TAKE! THE BRAKE OFF!
She did, but because she had been jamming the gas pedal all the way to the floor with no effect, she jammed it all the way down again. The car peeled out with a screech, leaving a cloud of rubber smoke and a long streak on the cobblestones. It was everyone’s lucky day that there were no cars parked ahead of her to run into. Grudging kudos to Josie, who did not lose control. After swerving and recovering, she slowed to a reasonable speed and headed toward downtown.
When they got back, Josie started to ask why I had the parking brake on, but before she could finish I said SHUT UP and told her she was a stupid, stupid, person and could have killed my wife, no seat belts then. I feel bad now about saying that, but I was still upset. Both women had a cry, and the subject was never again mentioned. I think the near-crash led to Mimi taking an extra year to get her driver’s license.
When I learned to drive, what we now call the ‘parking brake’ was the ’emergency brake’. Car manufacturers probably stopped calling it that because their lawyers worried drivers might expect an emergency brake to be useful in an emergency, which usually they were not, and file lawsuits.
We generally didn’t lock the door between the building’s shared front hallway and our apartment. I never went upstairs uninvited, but Mimi and Josie circulated freely. The apartments were what they call railroad rooms, with the living room in front and the bathroom at the back, where you could see straight through the rooms from one end to the other. One day Mimi was out with the kids when I came home from work and took a shower. After I dried off, I started toward the front of the house to get clean underwear, only to see Josie stopped dead in the front room. She was screaming curses at me for being naked. I kept walking, reminding her that “I live here.” She turned and ran back upstairs. Martin and I had a laugh the next day when he told me “My wife says you’re a fine figure of a man.” I’m sure she didn’t say that at all.