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Florence is ninety-one. She is dying. Atlantic City is dying too. But both were once vibrantly alive.
This is a love story between friends who met in a yoga class. “When our l’affair du coeur started Florence was eighty-seven. I was fifty-one. She lived in the city. I lived in the suburbs. She’s a black Hebrew, I’m a WASP. We are completely alike . . . During that first car ride when we started talking about everything—we had hardly scratched the surface of politics, nature, travel, race, spirituality, Atlantic City history, love, sex—we became immediate best friends.” This is a love story carried on the wings of amazing songs. Atlantic City’s Kentucky Avenue was the music mecca of the 1950s, rivaling Harlem and New Orleans. All the black entertainers—mentioned in this book played in Atlantic City and Florence mingled with many of them. She also knew many celebrities, she even gave birth to one, James Avery. But her story is more interesting than his, and that’s saying something. |
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IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT the outfit, no? Especially for a hot date. Squinchy red shirt, one of those bubble shirts, with white jeans, broadcasting my uniqueness in subzero temperatures. Red leather ankle boots. Rhinestone earrings that I last and only wore on the Boardwalk float, singing those spirituals during the Armed Forces Parade this past July. I feel like Rihanna, they actually graze my shoulders.
I am beautiful. In my mind, maybe.
All this for lunch with my soon to be ninety-year-old friend. It’s the week before Christmas 2014. My son, after demanding I come home to give him the gas card and God forbid he say I look nice, says, “Where are you going?” after sizing up the black car coat-length mink I put on top. It’s a friend’s great aunt’s whose coat I got when she died. I get all those coats. I think the old ladies or middle-aged ladies whose ancient husbands are dragging them to Florida to be eternal snowbirds want those coats to have a good home. Have a closet full of every color of mink on a sepia-tinted rainbow. There exists a green one out there but the owner was buried in it. Never get to wear them. Do today.
Florence is worth it.
I make sure she’s going to wear her fur too. But it’s upstairs in the closet this winter and she’s not so good on the steps anymore. I offer to go get it and next thing I know, door inside closet door under the eaves, I find there is no doorknob, only the nub of it. I get on my knees and start prying it open with my fingers—we are going to be sisters in our furs today damn it!—and it will not open, it’s completely wedged into the frame at the top. I find a thin steak knife up there but it’s too flimsy to jimmy it open. She goes into the kitchen and hands me up a corkscrew first. I tramp down to the kitchen and root around the drawers and find a wooden spoon, all the while she’s muttering how it’s her house and how come there’s no doorknob on her closet door anymore? Her stepson and daughter-in-law live upstairs now.
I am not giving up. On the last pull, from the bottom, it pops open. Success. Her fur coat is hanging right beside a clothes bag with a beautiful two-piece cream-colored gown.
She tells me her fur used to be a full length one but she had it shortened. She and her brother Paul bought it at a drug auction, the annual shindig where the city auctions off the proceeds from all the drug raids, where she was looking at a bunch of them, didn’t really want this particular one but she was signaling him to sit down and the auctioneer yelled out “Sold!” before she heard Paul tell her to quit waving at him.
I had nothing to do with today’s lunch. I’m just along for the ride. We, Florence and I, will marvel about that afterward. How did we two get so lucky? Our friends from the gym have set this up, just to do it, though I told them it was her nonagenarian triumph later this month. Apparently President and Michelle Obama knew that too because they sent her a birthday congrats on fresh White House stationery. Thanking her for her contributions to the world. I run my finger over the embossed White House seal. Wow. Florence tells me later that her neighborhood friend made that happen, had her daughter in the Army put in a call.
Today we are celebrating Florence in the flesh.
Everybody wants a piece of Florence. Her inspiration, goodness, common sense, it all radiates outward. Yet you don’t know what you got til it’s gone. Florence hasn’t been at our gym for going on two years now, since before her double-valve replacement surgery. She is, though, a living legend that some of the veteran instructors and club members invoke ritually, doing our own kind of metaphysical grab of that strength and vitality and, oh yes, sassiness.
The gym people always ask me how she’s doing. I’m the only one who goes to her house. It’s like I’m the rope that ties together the tin cans at either end. I walk in this time and she sends me to the dungeon, her word for her little room in back.
“You’re family now.” She laughs. “I don’t know what to call you really.”
She goes back to the bathroom for the gazillionth time.
“I’m not even shutting the door.” She chuckles again.
I try to arrange her CDs like I’d promised, start putting the empty cases in one pile atop the radiator, the mismatched orphaned CDs in another pile. I really want to find that Marvin Gaye/Tammy Terrell one. Brook Benton’s Christmas CD is on top.
“I don’t know what to call you either, Florence. I’m a little concerned about that.” I laugh back.
“You’re like my best friend,” she says, more than once during the afternoon.
Talk about being validated. Oh how we need each other.
I have come to Florence’s house early, we talk about all kinds of crazy stuff, I should’ve been recording that too. I’m a little slow on the uptake. We bitch about how religion just wants our money, she started going back to church but they want to charge her for the holidays, actually gave her a list, and I tell her about the new church I went to this past Sunday and how the African pastor was in my face about joining. I just wanted to relax. A couple of cars go by, one the Senior Transportation bus.
“Is that for us?”
“No, not yet.”
A silver limo goes by in the wrong direction. I raise my eyebrows.
“Don’t be tellin me no limo’s comin to get us.” She chuckles, and keeps on talking.
I stop her.
“Florence. That’s our ride.”
“No shit,” she says. Grins from ear to ear.
Donna’s friend Sam, the limo driver, opens the door. We in our furs, Florence and me, scoot right in, after I run back and get her cane and make sure she’s got her yellow Tweety Bird house key. I wouldn’t be here without her and she wouldn’t be here without me.
The world is a crazy place.
There is champagne! Three enormous couches! We take selfies. Fill our glasses. Tell limo stories. She has a ton. So . . . much . . . fun. An interesting, odd group of women that just happened to fall together. We think it’s Jan Baker, the yoga guru, that did this. We all knew her. She inspired Florence. I want some of her juice. Antoinette was her boss but missed the signs. Donna knew what her deal was, she has a video somewhere of her teaching.
We toast Jan!
Who is long dead.
What ripple effects we leave.
I am beautiful. In my mind, maybe.
All this for lunch with my soon to be ninety-year-old friend. It’s the week before Christmas 2014. My son, after demanding I come home to give him the gas card and God forbid he say I look nice, says, “Where are you going?” after sizing up the black car coat-length mink I put on top. It’s a friend’s great aunt’s whose coat I got when she died. I get all those coats. I think the old ladies or middle-aged ladies whose ancient husbands are dragging them to Florida to be eternal snowbirds want those coats to have a good home. Have a closet full of every color of mink on a sepia-tinted rainbow. There exists a green one out there but the owner was buried in it. Never get to wear them. Do today.
Florence is worth it.
I make sure she’s going to wear her fur too. But it’s upstairs in the closet this winter and she’s not so good on the steps anymore. I offer to go get it and next thing I know, door inside closet door under the eaves, I find there is no doorknob, only the nub of it. I get on my knees and start prying it open with my fingers—we are going to be sisters in our furs today damn it!—and it will not open, it’s completely wedged into the frame at the top. I find a thin steak knife up there but it’s too flimsy to jimmy it open. She goes into the kitchen and hands me up a corkscrew first. I tramp down to the kitchen and root around the drawers and find a wooden spoon, all the while she’s muttering how it’s her house and how come there’s no doorknob on her closet door anymore? Her stepson and daughter-in-law live upstairs now.
I am not giving up. On the last pull, from the bottom, it pops open. Success. Her fur coat is hanging right beside a clothes bag with a beautiful two-piece cream-colored gown.
She tells me her fur used to be a full length one but she had it shortened. She and her brother Paul bought it at a drug auction, the annual shindig where the city auctions off the proceeds from all the drug raids, where she was looking at a bunch of them, didn’t really want this particular one but she was signaling him to sit down and the auctioneer yelled out “Sold!” before she heard Paul tell her to quit waving at him.
I had nothing to do with today’s lunch. I’m just along for the ride. We, Florence and I, will marvel about that afterward. How did we two get so lucky? Our friends from the gym have set this up, just to do it, though I told them it was her nonagenarian triumph later this month. Apparently President and Michelle Obama knew that too because they sent her a birthday congrats on fresh White House stationery. Thanking her for her contributions to the world. I run my finger over the embossed White House seal. Wow. Florence tells me later that her neighborhood friend made that happen, had her daughter in the Army put in a call.
Today we are celebrating Florence in the flesh.
Everybody wants a piece of Florence. Her inspiration, goodness, common sense, it all radiates outward. Yet you don’t know what you got til it’s gone. Florence hasn’t been at our gym for going on two years now, since before her double-valve replacement surgery. She is, though, a living legend that some of the veteran instructors and club members invoke ritually, doing our own kind of metaphysical grab of that strength and vitality and, oh yes, sassiness.
The gym people always ask me how she’s doing. I’m the only one who goes to her house. It’s like I’m the rope that ties together the tin cans at either end. I walk in this time and she sends me to the dungeon, her word for her little room in back.
“You’re family now.” She laughs. “I don’t know what to call you really.”
She goes back to the bathroom for the gazillionth time.
“I’m not even shutting the door.” She chuckles again.
I try to arrange her CDs like I’d promised, start putting the empty cases in one pile atop the radiator, the mismatched orphaned CDs in another pile. I really want to find that Marvin Gaye/Tammy Terrell one. Brook Benton’s Christmas CD is on top.
“I don’t know what to call you either, Florence. I’m a little concerned about that.” I laugh back.
“You’re like my best friend,” she says, more than once during the afternoon.
Talk about being validated. Oh how we need each other.
I have come to Florence’s house early, we talk about all kinds of crazy stuff, I should’ve been recording that too. I’m a little slow on the uptake. We bitch about how religion just wants our money, she started going back to church but they want to charge her for the holidays, actually gave her a list, and I tell her about the new church I went to this past Sunday and how the African pastor was in my face about joining. I just wanted to relax. A couple of cars go by, one the Senior Transportation bus.
“Is that for us?”
“No, not yet.”
A silver limo goes by in the wrong direction. I raise my eyebrows.
“Don’t be tellin me no limo’s comin to get us.” She chuckles, and keeps on talking.
I stop her.
“Florence. That’s our ride.”
“No shit,” she says. Grins from ear to ear.
Donna’s friend Sam, the limo driver, opens the door. We in our furs, Florence and me, scoot right in, after I run back and get her cane and make sure she’s got her yellow Tweety Bird house key. I wouldn’t be here without her and she wouldn’t be here without me.
The world is a crazy place.
There is champagne! Three enormous couches! We take selfies. Fill our glasses. Tell limo stories. She has a ton. So . . . much . . . fun. An interesting, odd group of women that just happened to fall together. We think it’s Jan Baker, the yoga guru, that did this. We all knew her. She inspired Florence. I want some of her juice. Antoinette was her boss but missed the signs. Donna knew what her deal was, she has a video somewhere of her teaching.
We toast Jan!
Who is long dead.
What ripple effects we leave.
Book Clubs & Reading Groups Discussion Guide
| Love I Found You Reading Guide |
From the author
Florence Avery’s remarkable life journey. The fact that her life was far more interesting than that of her celebrity son. Atlantic City’s remarkable black musical heritage that lives mostly in people’s memories; Kentucky Avenue is now devoid of nearly all musical culture. The eerie similarities between her life and my own, we who were such very different people.
Florence Avery’s remarkable life journey. The fact that her life was far more interesting than that of her celebrity son. Atlantic City’s remarkable black musical heritage that lives mostly in people’s memories; Kentucky Avenue is now devoid of nearly all musical culture. The eerie similarities between her life and my own, we who were such very different people.
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Discussion Questions
1. Florence and Ann live in very different worlds, separated by age, race, class and environment, yet they still became dear friends. Do you have any friends who are different than you—in age, race, class or environment? Has that created any awkward situations? 2. Florence and Ann met by chance in a yoga class. When was the last time you did something for the first time, like befriend a stranger? How difficult is that to do? Why? 3. Music is the thread that ties this memoir together. Discuss how important music is to you. Florence remembers music constantly playing in her house. Who do you share your musical tastes with? Were your music preferences influenced by anyone else? 4. Atlantic City’s Northside, with its Kentucky Avenue music, is a character in this book. Did you know about this black experience before reading this book? Do you remember the name of the only music club currently left on Kentucky Avenue? What are your thoughts about why the Kentucky Avenue music scene died? 5. Florence calls herself spiritual but not religious. What is the difference between the two? Describe the difference between worship services given by the black Hebrew faith of Florence and the black Baptist services that Ann attended. What type of spiritual and/or religious experiences have you had? 6. The two women share many secrets, as close girlfriends do. They talk about abortions, sex, abuse and lovers. Does it surprise you that older women like to talk about these topics? Who do you share your secrets with? Do you judge other people when they tell you something surprising about themselves? 7. Florence and Ann both have transformative experiences, Florence with her life history and Ann while writing this memoir. The book weaves both tales together. Why do you think the book is structured this way? 8. This memoir is about love. List the many things that the two women fell in love with in this book. (Hint: It’s not just men.) 9. Many of the musicians noted in the chapter end notes changed their names. List one man and one woman who did so. 10. Name 10 of the black musicians noted in the chapter end notes. Who is the only white musician listed? Why do you think he was chosen? |
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