Recalling Afternoons In Utopia

Rogers Coffee Shop stands next to Rite Aid, which replaced the Utopia Theater.

By Lois Silverstein

Saturday afternoon at the movies stopped when Telly got married. One o’clock, after lunch, after “Let’s Pretend,” she’d call, “Hurry up. You don’t want to miss the cartoon, do you?” and I’d grab my Teddy Bear jacket and run after my sister-goddess down to Union Turnpike, hooking onto her oval hand, nails like cherry jelly beans, smooth as satin.

On the corner she held me tight, though nothing like the vise my mother locked me in, forcing me to hang on until every car and bus in sight passed; Union Turnpike ran all the way to the subway, to the city, but it wasn’t Times Square; what was my mother thinking? By the time I was 8, 188th Street had a light, and it was easier all around. Then, we had stores too – Bohacks, Hartman’s Five & Dime, the Tailor’s, the Shoemakers’ the Bakery, Zadok’s Luncheonette. Whatever we wanted, we could get, without a car. Especially the movies. The Utopia.

No palace like the Hillside, stars twinkling in the ceiling, or the Paramount, where Frank Sinatra crooned on the stage, or Radio City, where Rockettes turned nuns for the Easter Show. The Utopia stood squat, a 1940s rectangle with small marquee, two sets of large, double glass doors opening onto a mauve and purple striped lobby, ticket booth tucked at the back; it proffered escape royale. Along with all the neighborhood kids, Telly and I spent Saturday afternoons there, Telly aiding in my mother’s mission just to get some time alone. For what? Neither of us knew or asked. Just go, she ordered, and the 14-year-old, the 15-year-old, the 16, even, tailed by the chatterbox kid who stuck to her like glue, marched down the street where fathers were washing cars or mowing the lawns, free from their weekday worries now that they’d left Kings Highway and Pelham Parkway.

Not that my sister Telly didn’t relish Fred Astaire and Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman herself. The 35 cents that got her in, the 25 that got me, gave her a glimpse into life as she was planning to live it: Claudette Colbert and Jennifer Jones declaring true love, Clark Gable evincing honor and power and Judy Garland, pure love of home, clicking her red shoes just to get back there.

Passion exploded left and right, on almost every screen, especially in “Bitter Rice,” when the tall, dark man in the hat knocked the big breasted woman in a black dress down, onto the rice fields, her screams blacked out along with the screen, no one explaining why. What happened what happened? I called out nervously, Telly silencing me with a “Nothing happened, now, be quiet, be quiet,” figuring I must have turned my head away at the critical time. To be sure, she poured me another batch of chocolate Goobers from the blue and white box. And if Mommy asks, tell her about the other movie, Esther Williams swimming and singing in the big green pool.

Mr. Raisler ran the movies. A short, bright, dark-eyed man, he slipped the little, pink cardboard ticket into my hand, and sometimes even ducked out the side door to hoist me squealing into the air. How I loved being singled out like that, feted, especially after lunch at the corner Deli, where I ate almost nothing, and which made Telly threaten that I didn’t at least try, she wouldn’t take me across the street and inside. “Salami?” Telly offered. “Too salty!” I’d say. “Corned beef?” I’d reply, “too slimy!” Turkey I’d taste, but never finish even though it cost 75 cents, without potato salad, or pickles, which in that Deli came in jars. Thank god no stink.

The matron beamed at us down the aisle, Telly first, me scurrying after, afraid I’d get left in the dark otherwise, and then following her to the Smoking section after Matron deposited us in the middle section. Anything I’d endure, so long as I wouldn’t be left, Telly forgetting about me. When the guys behind them gave her a cigarette or ran a hand over her chestnut brown hair, I would huddle under my Teddy Bear coat, my eyes glued to the screen. Only later would I whisper, “Who are they? What do they want?” Telly’s usual no-response taught me, starting then, not to ask, and to fix, instead on the Pathe News and FDR seated under a blanket.

Before the main feature, I’d beg for candy and with a dime, run back to the candy machine dragon that spat out Good and Plenty sharp as teeth, and Dots like buttons; usually, I’d dart into the bathroom, too, Telly insisting I could manage alone, though it frightened me, that cavernous lounge shrieking with purple lights, turning me three, four, five deep in its mirrored walls, the smoked swans cascading in and under my arms.

Sometimes I’d have to wait for some woman to pull the heavy door open so I could even get in; then, I’d have to hold my breath too since the perfume and lipstick and Joquer Wave Set and pee made me just about throw up. Once, I wet my pants, not able to hold my breath long enough to empty my child-bladder.

Week after week there we sat as Deborah Kerr donned a wimple somewhere in high and terrible mountains; Jennifer Jones relived blood on a knife in a black and white house, Bette Grable and June De Haver cavorted in contrasting black and white costumes. “Sisters, Telly, look.” Once, a man had acid thrown into his face and hid in sewers until the time came when he was going to exact revenge. I tried to put my head down on Telly’s lap I was so terrified, but the arm of the seat got in the way. “Stop it, would you? Don’t be a scaredy cat.” She was no better than my mother then.

Still, walking through the double doors beyond the world of shadows, I’d croon. I wish we could live here. To have a family of long red-haired sisters and straw-hatted brothers who pulled dimes from my ears and mothers smiling in up-sweep hair dos, and grandmothers who made jam and sang songs on the back porch. To have fathers who laid down the law but loved you to pieces. Who always knew what to do and did it. To have love that lasted forever and a woman laughing with bananas and cherries on her head – “She looks like Aunt Flor!” – and boys tap dancing along fences with yellow umbrellas and little girls with braids and freckles on tiny noses saying smart things and a yellow curly-haired smiling man who never talked but played the harp and squeezed a horn dancing around.

It’d be forever at The Utopia. With Olivia de Haviland going crazy from something we couldn’t see and two weeks later smiling in a big hat and an off-the-shoulder dress at a Southern barbecue. A forever that lasted even when we came home, in the dark, sometimes holding hands, and finding Mommy in the kitchen laying out the lox and thick seeded rye bread, and Daddy dozing in the chair while Telly dressed for her date, some tall, dark stranger, maybe Gregory Peck or John Garfield ringing the bell.

I’d race down the stairs in my pajamas – “Will you please go up?” Telly would insist, and I’d stare out the front window and watch them drive off in his convertible car.

Not to worry. Next week we’d have The Utopia again, its rows of maroon seats lit at each end, A, B, C – all the way to Z, and then AA, BB, CC, left, middle and right, the big divider in front of the seats, and the big screen, Margie, with Jeanne Crain, my favorite from “State Fair,” along with Vivian Blaine, looking just like Mommy with her red hair and the man in the rice field in his hat and Telly, somewhere in a car far, far away, Daddy always smiling.

The Utopia, my secret garden, my Shangri-La.