person to drop a towel. At the Municipal Bath House, where families changed from street clothes into beach wear or bathing suits, only twelve thousand lockers were available. Some Coney Island residents, seizing a chance to make a dime, erected changing tents out of bedsheets and lured people to the sidewalks in front of their apartment buildings or bungalows. Families took to undressing in the open or under the boardwalk. It disgusted Lena to catch from her window flashes of naked bodies, skinny, fat, disintegrating. On side streets, people ate pungent fried foods from sloppy tubs brought from home. Lena hated the way Joey and his pals hung around beach gymnasts, loudmouthed oafs, barely dressed, flexing their muscles, standing on their heads or balancing awkwardly on the exposed torsos of their girlfriends. Food wrappers and paper cups amassed like sediment in the Railroad Avenue trench, and on windy afternoons they blew up into the street against your legs.
Lena was immensely relieved when Joey became old enough for kindergarten and sleepaway camp in the summers. Anything to keep him off the beach. She sent him once to Surprise Lake in Cold Spring, sixty miles north of New York City. Surprise Lake was a Jewish camp catering mostly to underprivileged families from Manhattanâs Lower East Side (in time, alumni from the camp would include Eddie Cantor, Walter Matthau, Neil Simon, Larry King, and Neil Diamond). Probably, Lena learned about the camp from Lee, who was more conscious than she was of the world beyond Coney Island. Lee filled out the paperwork, making sure Joey qualified for financial aid. Lena helped Joey pack his suitcase. Two weeks later, when he returned, she discovered that none of the clothes had been touched. He had used his toothbrush and comb but never once changed his shirt or pants. When Lena asked him why, he replied that no one had told him to unpack. Plus, heâd found it easier just to leave the bag alone.
In 1930, he entered first grade at Coney Islandâs PS 188. He was a bundle of anxiety. Family members had always told him he was handsome, and now he studied his face obsessively in the bathroom mirror to make sure none of his features had deteriorated overnight. He feared he was already going bald because his forehead was so much higher than his ears. He tried different parts in his hair, worried about his height. Mostly, he checked the mirror each morning just to make sure he was still Joey Heller.
He fantasized constantly. His imagination, along with his already well-developed reading skills, distinguished him from his classmates during his early school years. Teachers praised his writing and read it aloud in class. At one point, his cousin Nat Siegel gave him a prose translation of the Iliad : the first work of literature to make a âreal impressionâ on him, he said. âI read that and reread it almost without stop.â Afterward, he loved doing book reports. In one paper, he assumed the persona of Tom Sawyer. For another assignment, much later, he wrote from the point of view of the metal in the gun that killed Abraham Lincoln. It pleased him to get good grades, and to hear his works read aloud as models of excellent writing. Some of his classmates began to resent the favor he earned from teachers, and his nervous maladies worsened. Warts sprouted on his hands and arms, as many as seventeen during one stretch.
Like the amusement park rides, whose thrills paled quickly, the teachersâ praise came to be routine, and Joey grew restless in class. Many years later, Sylvia recalled an incident. âJoe brought home a note from his teacher, asking my mother to come to school and talk to her,â she said. âWe were all terrified. My mother didnât trust her English, so I went.⦠The teacher told me Joe never listened in class and always looked bored. She said she kept trying to catch him, but he always knew the answer. She admitted he was too bright for
Lena was immensely relieved when Joey became old enough for kindergarten and sleepaway camp in the summers. Anything to keep him off the beach. She sent him once to Surprise Lake in Cold Spring, sixty miles north of New York City. Surprise Lake was a Jewish camp catering mostly to underprivileged families from Manhattanâs Lower East Side (in time, alumni from the camp would include Eddie Cantor, Walter Matthau, Neil Simon, Larry King, and Neil Diamond). Probably, Lena learned about the camp from Lee, who was more conscious than she was of the world beyond Coney Island. Lee filled out the paperwork, making sure Joey qualified for financial aid. Lena helped Joey pack his suitcase. Two weeks later, when he returned, she discovered that none of the clothes had been touched. He had used his toothbrush and comb but never once changed his shirt or pants. When Lena asked him why, he replied that no one had told him to unpack. Plus, heâd found it easier just to leave the bag alone.
In 1930, he entered first grade at Coney Islandâs PS 188. He was a bundle of anxiety. Family members had always told him he was handsome, and now he studied his face obsessively in the bathroom mirror to make sure none of his features had deteriorated overnight. He feared he was already going bald because his forehead was so much higher than his ears. He tried different parts in his hair, worried about his height. Mostly, he checked the mirror each morning just to make sure he was still Joey Heller.
He fantasized constantly. His imagination, along with his already well-developed reading skills, distinguished him from his classmates during his early school years. Teachers praised his writing and read it aloud in class. At one point, his cousin Nat Siegel gave him a prose translation of the Iliad : the first work of literature to make a âreal impressionâ on him, he said. âI read that and reread it almost without stop.â Afterward, he loved doing book reports. In one paper, he assumed the persona of Tom Sawyer. For another assignment, much later, he wrote from the point of view of the metal in the gun that killed Abraham Lincoln. It pleased him to get good grades, and to hear his works read aloud as models of excellent writing. Some of his classmates began to resent the favor he earned from teachers, and his nervous maladies worsened. Warts sprouted on his hands and arms, as many as seventeen during one stretch.
Like the amusement park rides, whose thrills paled quickly, the teachersâ praise came to be routine, and Joey grew restless in class. Many years later, Sylvia recalled an incident. âJoe brought home a note from his teacher, asking my mother to come to school and talk to her,â she said. âWe were all terrified. My mother didnât trust her English, so I went.⦠The teacher told me Joe never listened in class and always looked bored. She said she kept trying to catch him, but he always knew the answer. She admitted he was too bright for
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