593 Riverside Drive - 2. Chapter 2

Papa never wanted me to go to college, let alone law school, and Mama didn’t see much use for that kind of studying, either. They’d each only gone through eighth grade, when that’s all that was required, “And we’re doing fine,” they pointed out. Mama added that people could learn as much outside a classroom by all the things they saw and read.

“And did,” Papa added. “Like my going out west as an advance man.”

I knew they were right because Mama and Aunt Ella, and sometimes Papa, were always taking me places. The libraries and museums. Plays and operas and the moving pictures. Ferry rides and parks and zoos. Papa especially loved taking me to the circus. “I learned a lot here,” he reminded me. “I saw twenty-seven states and met all kinds of people.”

He’d done that for ten years, starting when he was fourteen. And even he admitted that he’d finished eighth grade just in time. “I probably would’ve quit otherwise. I was that bored.”

“Now where did I get that from?” I tried to joke, when we were just talking about my taking extra undergrad classes. My parents also should have been ready for my finishing college in three years since I graduated from high school at sixteen – I skipped my first year of junior high and my second of high school.

At that time, they’d been proud. “That’s our bright girl,” Papa said, though it made me feel like a performing dog. I didn’t even have to go to school in the summers and miss our vacations at the beach. I’d pack a suitcase full of books and read them and takes quizzes and tests and write reports. Then I’d take the finals for those classes in September. In making my argument for college, I’d also said, “Well, what do you expect me to do now? I’m only sixteen.”

Papa wanted me to be a stenographer. His youngest sister, Aunt Elsie, was, and Papa knew I was interested in the law. Our neighbor Lewis, who was the same age I was but wasn’t skipping grades, was the first one who told me about courts. His father was an ordinary lawyer then – we were probably ten – but by the time we reached high school, Mr. Pecora was Assistant District Attorney for New York.

“An assistant district attorney,” Lewis’s father corrected. “There are a group of us.” He’d taken Lewis to court to prove that, but only after Lewis promised to sit quietly and not ask questions. When Lewis told me how exciting it was, and how different from our ordinary art museums and opera trips – I asked if I could go, too.

Mr. Pecora replied, “I’ll have to speak with your parents.” But he seemed to like that Lewis and I were interested in what he insisted was, “Sometimes the most boring profession on earth. We sit for hours... and hours... listening to people go on... and on... and on.” He always snuck in an extra “on” to make us laugh. Still, to Lewis and me, it was the greatest thing we could imagine. “People’s lives can change,” we told each other. “It’s a free country.”

The first time we’d been allowed to go, we didn’t know to take a notebook and pencils. But when we were on what the judge called “recess” though only turned out to be lunch, we couldn’t stop talking about all the things we’d seen and wanted to ask about. Mr. Pecora couldn’t answer us because he’d put us at a side table in the restaurant and gone to eat with the important people. So Lewis and I wrote everything down on napkins, with pencils we borrowed from waiters, to ask Mr. Pecora later. After lunch, we switched to a legal pad we got in the courtroom – Lewis knew who to ask. We filled pages and pages, even the margins, passing the pencil and paper back and forth. To keep the sheets from rattling, we folded them in quarters, like little books. But they were nothing compared to the big law books we saw in Uncle Pic’s office. Those were what we really wanted to read.