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didn’t hold all happy endings. Mom was a first-generation immigrant who traveled all the way from Sweden, via England, when she was only eighteen years old, determined to reinvent her life. She left her entire family behind—a younger sister, a baby brother, her mother, grandparents,cousins, aunts, and uncles—to escape not poverty, but her father. I couldn’t imagine hating my parents enough to run thousands of miles away, and Mom didn’t give me much to go on. She put me off with a tight-lipped, vehement sideways shake of her head whenever I ventured toward the subject of her father, but I heard enough bitterness about her not being the pretty one—that was her sister, Evy—but the smart, thick-lensed-glasses–wearing, disappointing one, to give me a hint.
    I didn’t find out until years later that my
Morfar
(maternal grandfather) was a heavy drinker and an abusive drunk, and by then I also knew the wallop that parental disappointment, regardless of its legitimacy, delivers to the hapless children who don’t live up to expectations.
    When she first arrived in this country, Mom worked as a masseuse, a waitress, and a nanny. She moved up to secretary in an office when she and Dad were first married, then quit when she got pregnant because the doctor told her she would lose the baby if she walked up stairs. Her office was on the fourth floor of a brownstone in Queens, and the elevator was reserved for the executives. One day, many years later, she confided to me, “I didn’t tell my boss I shouldn’t use the stairs. I didn’t tell your father about the elevator. I wanted him to take care of his family, earn the money. He had to do his job.”
    From then on, she and Dad divided their duties along traditional lines. Mom took care of all things household and kid-related. Not much for warmth, with a record short on kisses and hugs, she conveyed her love by honing her family management skills. She was in charge of it all, from laundry, dusting, and vacuuming to hosting parties and serving the nightly dinners she concocted.
    Meanwhile, following his graduation from Yale and a one-semester fling with law school, my dad landed a job in the investment business. To me, my father’s world was a box of mystery, filled with taking care of clients, hiring secretaries, traveling to visit companies, reading boring paperbacks called prospectuses, and buying things called stocks. Occasionally we four kids accompanied him to check out the companies he invested in. Denny’s and Dunkin’ Donuts were my favorites because Dad never skimped on product testing.
    But when we behaved badly, he morphed into the bad guy who wielded the belt and strapped us bare-assed or knocked our heads togetherto thrust us back on course. I learned the importance of staying in line and keeping him happy, whether that meant whispering on Sunday mornings to let him sleep undisturbed or doing what he told me to avoid an argument.
    By the time I was eleven, Mom had relocated us to our fourth—and most lavish—apartment, edging us out of Queens’ Forest Hills neighborhood where I lived as a baby into progressively larger abodes, landing us on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 81st Street on the topmost floor, in what I assumed would be our family’s permanent home. A toddler when we moved from Queens to Manhattan, I didn’t register my parents’ march up the wealth scale. Moving to the Upper East Side, right off tony Park Avenue, didn’t mean anything to me. The next move didn’t mean much more, but of course my father was successfully making his way, building a base of clients and figuring out how to negotiate the stock market, buying long, selling short. With the last move, once Mom was done with her remodeling, the evidence of his financial success beamed from every room of our new apartment.
    By then, Mom had mastered running our family, ruling with a sure hand