In those early years, Lord & Taylor outfitted every grand occasion, and I hated every minute of it. It wasn’t that I hated the clothes, because in truth, I felt instant adoration. The problem was that I never had a say in my wardrobe. When I was seven, my two shopping superiors ooohed and ahhhed over my first formal dress, a pale blue taffeta ruffley number for my brother David’s bar mitzvah. I was strongly against this classic little-girl look and tried to get my way the best way I knew how—by throwing my sixty-pound body to the floor and banging my legs and fists on the ground while shrieking the most deafening high-C shrill imaginable. Seven- and eight-year-old trendsetters in 1977, like myself, favored flowered granny dresses. The particular one I wanted was, in a word, magnificent. Covered in tiny chocolate-and-cream-colored daisies, the dress was fitted with an empire waist and short puffy sleeves. To me, this dress screamed up-to-the-minute, bohemian, “now.” The pathetic pale blue abhorrence bawled juvenile, dimestore, Shirley Temple.
“Adena, get up off of that floor right now before I really give you something to scream about,” Esther threatened under her breath.
“Come on, Deanie,” my mother said, trying to sympathize, “is it really worth all of this?”
“I AM NOT WEARING THAT!” I screamed through my tears.
The purchasing patronizers took a time-out huddle.
“She wants to wear that one,” Arlene said, throwing her hands up. “I don’t really care anymore. She wins.”
“She’s going to look ridiculous,” Esther countered.
“If she wears that dress, do you really think she’s going to ruin the whole night?”
“Yes, yes she will,” Esther said, bending down and grabbing one of my arms, as it was in mid-slam. “That’s enough with you,” she said, pulling me up to my feet.
“Now, look,” Esther said, seething as she pinned my arms to my sides, “your mother and I are both wearing blue. You either look like the big ladies, or you look like a bum off the street. I’m going to give you ten seconds to decide.”
“BUM OFF THE STREET!” I shouted back in her face.
“WE’RE TAKING THE BLUE ONE!” Esther shouted back.
The fight was over. I was defeated. Esther was bigger than me, stronger than me, her coral ring was digging into my elbow and, truth be told, the thought of wearing the same colors as the big ladies sounded like a really cute idea.
Any lady who lunched always lunched in the Lord & Taylor restaurant, the Birdcage, which in my opinion did not provide an adequate children’s menu. Their peanut-butter-and-jelly left nothing to the imagination, except to wonder what cheap company made the runny preserves. I was forced to eat Saltine crackers and drink Shasta soda. Even the décor of the place was uninspiring. Sure, as one might expect, there were birdcages located all around the Birdcage Restaurant. From wire cages to bamboo to plastic, the cages lined the joint. My whole conundrum over the place was simple: Wouldn’t anyone in their right mind, especially a seven-year-old, expect there to be actual birds in cages at a place called the Birdcage? There didn’t even have to be real birds; they could have had fake birds. But no, the birdcages in the Birdcage held potted ferns.
“It’s not about any of that,” Esther would explain. “Lunching is to
see and be seen.”
And there was plenty of that to keep the place jumping. The problem wasn’t getting a table at the Birdcage; the problem was getting the two seers and
be-seeners
to sit down. “Esther!” Aunt Molly Spain, a friend of my grandmother‘s, would shout out, waving her arm back and forth, and there went Esther. “Arlene, over here!” Aunt Gail Sernoff would call from across the room. Arlene and her Corrèze boots would scurry over to talk to her for at least five minutes, and after that, to Aunt Judy Savitt at the table next to that, and then to Aunt Sissie Lipton, and then Aunt Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky, and so on ... and why did I have to call them “Aunt” if they weren’t related to us anyway?
“Because they’re more than friends; they’re family that you got to pick,” my mother told me, “and you treat them so for that reason.”
“How are you?” I’d watch my mother’s mouth as she spoke to the Aunts. “You lost weight,” Esther would say, complimenting Aunt Ruth Goldman and Aunt Evelyn Sidewater at the next table.
Twenty minutes later, my scenester foremothers would finally take a seat. That’s when the news would come to them. There was a cackle of enjoyment watching Esther’s jaw drop in the same swift motion every time news came around concerning the latest “D,” which was Arlene and Esther’s catchphrase referring to the latest divorce, death, or indictment.
“She turned around for two seconds to go to the refrigerator to get him some margarine and by the time she turned around again he was stone dead, slumped right over the table.”
“No!” Arlene had gasped, clutching her chest.
“Yes!” the woman with the lipstick bleeding onto her teeth reported. “Coronary, just like that.”
“You have to savor every day,” Esther had concluded, bringing her jaw back to its normal position and pinching me under the table until I stopped laughing.
There were, however, good and bad points in going to the Saks Fifth Avenue in Bala Cynwyd, where Arlene got her hair done on Saturday mornings. If you got to the beauty parlor early enough, they had a big plate of soft pretzels next to the coffee. The coiffed ladies would say, “I’ll just take a half of one,” and then I’d watch them go back for the other half and another half and another half. Some women scooped up a bunch and stuffed them into their purses; that’s why you had to get there early.
Saks Fifth Avenue also had a grand staircase leading from the first floor to the second. If one’s mother, let’s say, was trying on lip liner and was too busy to notice, one might have been able to break away, climb the stairs, hoist oneself onto the broad pine lacquered banister, and slide down to one’s heart’s content. If, however, in mid-slide, in your eighth year of life, you suddenly realized you had developed a serious case of vertigo, the experience was nut as pleasing.
“Just climb back over!” Arlene had imeusitively shouted as she went back to testing lip liners. I was, after all, her third and last child. By the time I came around, with two rambunctious older brothers ahead of me, nothing fazed her anymore.
“It’s too far, I’m gonna fall!” I screamed, looking down some twenty-five feet below me.
“Wait two seconds and I’ll come and get you,” she shouted back as she looked at herselt in the mirror, comparing shades.
Bonwit Teller on Chestnut Street had the best jewelry sale bin. the game would be to see how many bracelets and necklaces I could get on my body before Arlene noticed. “I can’t take you anywhere !” she’d shriek. “Now, take those off!”
Strawbridge & Clothier had a Snoopy Barn, and my Snoopy doll needed a new pilot’s jacket so he could face the Red Baron. Arlene felt instead that I needed new undershirts. My mother had insisted she was in too much of a hurry to get into a dressing room, but to this day I’m sure it wouldn’t have been such a time-consuming ordeal to walk the two feet into privacy. Instead she insisted, “Oh, come on, no one is even looking” as she took my shirt off in the middle of the children’s section and shamed me by exposing my eight-year-old nipples to almost all of the other kids from Belmont Hills Elementary who were shopping with their mothers that day, especially . and most regrettably Robby Weinberg, my third-grade crush.
The worst, though, the most wretched and evil of all the department stores in the Philadelphia area that I hated above all, was the John Wanamaker’s in Wynnewood. While I disliked the store for its gray walls and lack of pertness in the children’s section, it was to become the birthplace of a fear that still affects me to this day
My mother needed some new pantyhose on our way home from school one day, so she dragged my brother Michael and me into the store with her. By the time my mother got really into the collection of panty hose as she was wont to do, my brother and I eyed our savior from boredom ... the escalator.
Here was the plan for the big race: Climb the escalators two floors up to the housewares section, do one lap around the Le Creuset pots, touch the blue pot, and head back down to the ground floor. The finish line would be the mannequin of the lady torso wearing the shaper bra. Touch that, and you would be the winner. Since Michael was three years older than me, I would have the advantage. Michael would be climing up the downstairs escalator (the wrong direction) and I would take the upstairs escalator. We would, of course, switch on the way down so that I would again have the advantage.
The 1977 First Annual John Wanamaker escalator competition was on. Michael and I charged up both escalators, and even with my advantage, Michael took the early lead.
“Come on!” Michael shouted to me, slowing down and trying to make the race more even. Michael has always loved competition.
With all the strength I had in my eight-year-old body, before the escalator stair had time to compact under the rubber track, I surged forth. It was then that tragedy struck.
Leaping forward to get off the escalator to the second floor, I was suddenly shot back. The hem of my right bell-bottom jeans leg had lodged itself inside the rubber track, locking me in place and getting even tighter as the escalator continued to roll.
I let out a shrill cry of agony, calling for my brother, who at this point was more than halfway up the down escalator to the third floor.
I could see Michael from the top of the up escalator streaming down to my aid (and, just in case it was a trick on my part, getting to the housewares section and touching the blue Le Creuset pot before coming to my rescue).
By this point, a small crowd had gathered. A security guard tried to stop the escalator to no avail as I screamed on. Michael pulled at my pants to no benefit. My only hope was a superhero of the supreme kind and, luckily, she had finally finished picking out the pantyhose she needed.
“OH FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!” I heard from the crowd, “WHAT HAVE YOU GOTTEN YOURSELVES INTO NOW?”
I cried out in response to that familiar voice and called, “Mommy, Mommy!” As I saw her cross face appear through the crowd, she threw down her John Wanamaker bags, pushed my brother aside, and positioned her arms under my shoulders, yanking me so hard that the bell-bottom jeans slid halfway down to my knees. Then she shook me from side to side until the jeans fell off altogether, leaving me pantsless. Luckily, Robby Weinberg was nowhere in sight. I threw my arms around my mother as the crowd cheered. Just then, the security guard was able to stop the escalator, so she yanked the pants from the conveyor belt, fully intact. Then she looked at my brother and me and shouted, “A MOMENT’ S PEACE, THAT’S ALL I’M ASKING! ONE MOMENT!”
For the next few weeks, every time we went to a department store, my mother would stop me before we walked in and say “Now, look, I need one thing in here. The whole process should take no more than ten minutes; we’ll be in and out. If we make it in less, you get ice cream; if you start to cause trouble, I’m going to feed you to the escalator!” I had no choice but to accept the offer.
Without my usual modus operandi to make up for my boredom I began to help my mother pick out clothes and makeup and jewelry. Slowly, I started to enjoy it. She liked it when I told her I hated a particular eye shadow she was trying on, or when I told her she looked like a princess in a sequined Albert Nipon strapless dress. Pretty soon, asking my opinion about clothes was no longer her way of keeping my interest so I wouldn’t get into trouble—mine was an opinion that counted. This way of life continues to this day. It was also where an endless bond began.
In the early eighties, while shopping in Bloomingdale’s during a day trip to Manhattan, walking over those black-and-white-checked tiles, following my mother back and forth and back and forth, I came across a pair of incredibly cool Fiorucci electric sky blue jeans. They were soooo Debbie Harry and I was sure if my mom just tried them on, she’d see they’d be soooo Arlene Halpern. My ten-year-old begging pursued throughout the various departments. “I just want to see what they look like,” I nagged, and as my pleading began to grind on her nerves, she grabbed the pants from me and threw them over her other tweed and turtleneck possibilities.
Once inside the dressing room, Arlene, who had always gone for Anne Klein classic suit looks rather than Fiorucci trends, grabbed her first item, an Ellen Tracy camel colored skirt that went with a white brocaded top. My anxiousness couldn’t take it anymore.
“No, try these first,” I said, handing her the jeans.
Begrudgingly, Arlene put her first leg into the pants. It was already clear that they fit like they were made for her. Visions of my mother picking me up from school in front of all the kids in her Fiorucci electric sky blue jeans danced in my head. Everyone would be so jealous that my mom was obviously the chic mom. She watched herself as closely as I did in the mirror as she slipped her other leg into the pants Maybe she’d even give up the forest green Oldsmobile and get a Datsun 280ZX or a Porsche like Aunt Gail Sernoff had. My mother held in her stomach as she buttoned and zipped up the jeans. There she was: Arlene Rudney Halpern, the with-it, most modish dressed mom in the entire Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia. With those pants, she wouldn’t even care anymore when my brothers and I begged for Cheez Doodles and SpaghettiOs She would be too busy fending off those talent scouts who wanted her to come out to Hollywood and be in a movie with Burt Reynolds or, dare I even dream, be the fourth of Charlie’s Angels.
“You know what,” she mumbled to herself within the confines of our minute dressing room, “after three kids,” she continued, turning to catch a glimpse of her butt, “I could still wear a pair of pants like these.”
“YOU HAVE TO GET THEM!” I screamed, causing a woman a few doors down to let out a
“Shhhh,”
as if we were in a library or something.