Anthony Newley was hot in the 1960s, in London’s West End, New York’s Broadway and the Clum’s Cape Cod in Massapequa Park. My mother and father didn’t see the show on Broadway. Money was tight, and tickets to shows were gifts or splurges for milestone birthdays and anniversaries. But Newley was all over the television, belting out tunes from Stop The World — I Want to Get Off and The Roar of the Grease Paint, The Smell of The Crowd. My mother, who was working in the record department at a local discount department store, bought both of the cast albums. They jumped to the top of her playlist and rarely made their way to the stack of albums — 78- and 33-rpms — taking up a lot of space in our linen closet. Good thing we didn’t have too many towels and did have a stereo with a spindle on which to stack records.
When Tony Bennett recorded the song Who Can I Turn To (When You Turn Away) from Greasepaint and in 1964 released an album by the same name, my mom bought it. Of course, Bennett’s recording nudged out the two cast recordings (he was after all Italian American) and in a few days everyone in our house, including fifteen-year-old me and my five-year-old sister, Laura, were word perfect on the lyrics and delivered them with the appropriate drama.
Most five-year-old kids sing nursery songs about teapots and spiders. Sure my sister Laura, had those in her repertoire, but like my mother, father, brother and me, she could sing a mean version of most Sinatra, Bennett and show tunes. A child prodigy? For fifteen-year-old, lovesick most of the time, me, Who Can I Turn To (When You Turn Away) was, in addition to all the Beatles and other rock-n-roll I listened to, my anthem to sing when the world, I believed, could have treated me better.
Laura was my sidekick, and like most daughters washing and drying dishes after dinner fell to us girls. I hated drying, and she was too little to wash, so I’d pull over a kitchen chair, stand her on it and give her a dish towel. And, of course, we’d sing while we washed and dried. Didn’t everyone?
Who knows what had happened to me on one school day, but that night, I wanted to wash-dry-and-sing Who Can I Turn To (When You Turn Away). However, I didn’t want to do our usual lukewarm version of the song. I needed to pack every miserable feeling I was having into the line “When you turn away.” Laura and I sang the song one time, then a second, then a third, and I must have finally hit that line right because Laura, apparently moved by the need for me to know that I wasn’t alone, belted out “ME!”, flung her five-year-old arms wide, dish and dish towel in her hand, and the dinner plate she was holding crashed to the floor.
Ooops. My parents came running into the kitchen, assuming we must have fallen and cracked open our heads. We wondered whether to run or own up to the truth. We stood our ground — Laura still on her chair. We smiled, kind of, at my parents. I was crying, not from remorse, not because of the damage done or fear we were going to get into trouble. I was crying because Laura, my little sister, wanted to sing the song right, the way I wanted to sing it. She wanted me to know she was there for me, listening, and I wasn’t alone.
