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Orange
The day The Gates were freed
from their plastic wrappers I was out of town, but on Sunday afternoon
I decided to walk through the park with my camera. All in all, I
was bored. I stayed out there over an hour, the light was beginning
to fade, but then it hit me: those flaps of material blowing in
the wind weren't saffron at all, they were exactly the color of
the orange café curtains I'd chosen to adorn my bedroom with,
age 15.
My room was pink - soft, delicate, little-girl pink. I despised
it, almost as much as I detested my high school classmates who set
their hair every night and wore knee socks that never slid down
their calves. My parents absolutely refused to repaint the walls,
but I bought orange curtains and hideous lamps with gold bases and
bright orange shades.
I left home thirty-five years ago, but now all of a sudden these
curtains are hanging over me. Everywhere I look, there are memories.
Thoughts come in bits and pieces, fragments in no particular order.
There's no sense trying to make any of this logical. It wasn't logical
when I was a teenager, and it isn't now.
‡
 My
father said he'd seen prettier rats. And it's true, Peanut was skinny
and not nearly as playful as his brother. He looked as if he needed
me. I'd just turned 15, and he was a birthday present. On our way
home, we stopped in a crowded discount store and set the 8-week-old
dachshund on a counter while we tried on collar after collar. He
was so good, not moving throughout the ordeal. We finally selected
an orange collar, with little bells.
‡
Orange: the fruit
1. Every summer we rented our house and moved to
a cheap apartment in Atlantic City proper (this was how my parents
paid off the mortgage). One clear memory is of the kids up the street
playing with oranges, tossing them up toward the trees then catching
them. My parents just laughed at my wanting an orange to play with.
I had plenty of balls, they said.
2. Lucky Bill's hamburger stand was on the Boardwalk,
right across from the Million Dollar Pier. Most summer Saturday
nights, my parents would take me on the rides, then stop to let
me get a hamburger. Or two. Or three. I never ate the buns. My mother
couldn't make hamburgers anywhere near as good as Lucky Bill's,
so this was the only place I'd eat one. And I always washed them
down with fresh-squeezed orange juice.
3. Florida. Probably thirty years later. It's the
first time I'm visiting my future in-laws, and I'm immediately drawn
to the orange tree in their back yard. That first night, they leave
a small bottle of Frangelica (my current drink of choice) in our
hotel room. They also give me a quart of fresh-squeezed orange juice
to take back with me. The next day I return the empty juice bottle,
all rinsed out and ready to be refilled. The Frangelica remains
unopened.
‡
 I
start to say I own nothing orange. Then I remember a peach bed jacket
- sheer nylon, embroidered, way overpriced, made new from antique
materials. I seldom wear it, though. My husband bought it for me
just as I was about to go in the hospital for a hysterectomy. I
was desperate for something that would make me feel feminine.
‡
Those Gates are also the precise color of the lifejackets
we had to wear in day camp when we took rowboats out on the lake.
They always made me so hot I could barely breathe. Even the kids
who could swim had to wear these jackets, so I never felt as if
I'd been singled out, as I did in so many other happy-camper activities.
‡
In my faux-orange room I had two cheap prints over
the bed, those sad children with their huge eyes, bought for a few
dollars in Woolworth's. I chose them because they reminded me of
two Hummel-like prints my grandmother owned. They were probably
shades of brown with orange highlights, but they blended well with
the orange lamps and the curtains.
‡
 These
days, at least, I want my life to be saved.
‡
I'm fairly certain I owned an orange parka once,
as a child. But I can't pinpoint the memory. I could have been six,
or thirteen. And there are no photos. I never looked good in photos,
and eventually my father stopped taking them.
‡
There's a hat I bought at a craft fair years ago
- a daring, multi-colored hat that covers my ears and fastens under
my chin. It's reversible, and the other side, the side I seldom
wear, is black and gold tending toward orange. Unfortunately, the
elastic's fraying, and there's only the button on the side I usually
wear which makes it difficult to maneuver.
When I bought this hat I told myself this is a big
step, choosing vibrant colors, sure to get me noticed. Prior to
this I'd worn a man's Totes rain hat, grey tweed, and too large
for me. I felt safe and hidden inside it.
‡
Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin ravioli. Butternut squash soup.
Pumpkin bread. Mashed sweet potatoes. Baked sweet potatoes. Sweet
potato salad. Acorn squash. Candied yams. Baked yams. Carrot-ginger
soup. Over the past few years I've become obsessed with orange foods.
‡
I bought a farmhouse in upstate New York over twenty
years ago and set about redecorating one room at a time. The kitchen
was the final room to be completed. For the floor, I used red patterned
ceramic tiles I found in a Brooklyn warehouse. I chose red slate
(native to the region) for counter tops. For the two ceiling lights
I selected large orange glass globes.
No, I would have bought those light fixtures when
I had the house rewired, right after I moved in. Years before I
let red floors and counters back into my life. I bought those globes
around the same time I painted the two upstairs bedrooms - one pink,
one blue.
‡
 In
New York City, the school crossing guards wear orange vests over
their coats. But at least that's one thing I didn't have to cope
with growing up. In our suburb, in the 50s, there were no school
crossing guards, there were Safeties: the Guides, who lined up children
in the schoolyard and guided them into the classrooms, and the Patrol,
who stood on the street corners around the school, stepping out
into the street and looking both ways before permitting the younger
kids to cross. I was on Patrol in fifth grade (the school only went
up to fifth grade), but two kids told the teacher I never looked
both ways, so I was asked to resign. In eighth grade, at a different
school, I was a Guide. That was the one year I had a lot of friends.
‡
Will the orange of the hat clash with the red lining
of my jacket? It probably will, until I find a velour scarf that's
red, blue, and orange striped. $10, on the street in Soho. The first
day I wear it a woman compliments me on matching the Gates so well.
‡
Bobby's Girl, my first novel, focuses on
the teenage angst those orange curtains tried to keep private. For
the cover, an artist from one of the local colleges drew a Modigliani-type
long-necked woman of indeterminate age, her hair in a unisex bob,
wearing a vest made up of old Bandstand photos. I adored it. And
friends gave me the original art to hang in our living room. I look
up now and see she has orange hair. Bright orange.
‡
I originally thought 16 photos for the 16 days the
gates were up, but I was at my most depressed and suicidal at 16,
so doubled the number, until I became a person again.
‡
The sled stands alone. 
I never had a sled as a child, there wasn't even
snow enough to build a decent snowman. But the orange plastic sleds
that kids today use have been catching my eye. I must have taken
30 or 40 photos of them — being carried, at the top of hills,
at the bottom of hills. None of the photos captured what I'd hoped
for. On the last day of the Gates project, I came across a sled
seemingly abandoned. There were kids playing in other parts of the
field, but no one laid claim to this.
I immediately think of an earlier photo - a little
boy on a scooter glares full face into the camera. The background
is just grass and fences, with a single orange gate on the other
side of the photo, paralleling him. These two photos pair in my
mind. An empty sled, a single gate.
I rename the sled photo "zsled"
to make sure it's the last image in the slideshow. It sums up Orange
for me, and heightens the fact that that color is behind me now.
The child stands alone, off in the distance.
Note: the slideshow that originally
accompanied this memoir has been shelved for posterity. Those photos,
and others, can be accessed through the Gates
Memory project.
Once you're at the main page, do a People Search for my name.
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