Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [21]
Not only did Zeppo have the caustic wit of the Marx Brothers but he made fun of himself rather than of those around him. I think that may have been why he was always given the role of romantic lead while his brothers insulted him. Underpinning Zeppo’s charm was his promise that he could offer a better life for me and my son. That thought was compounded for me when I took Bob to court over Bobby’s nonexistent support payments only to discover that he’d skipped off to Europe.
The event that finally set me in motion toward Zeppo came when I returned to our apartment one morning and couldn’t find my son anywhere. Smelling smoke, I looked into the backyard and screamed. Bobby was tied with rope and sitting on a pyre of dried wood and desert brush. The tent I’d just bought him was wrapped around his legs. Some of the rougher neighborhood boys stood in a circle laughing as they set fire to the heap with matches. As soon as they saw me running toward them, they dashed off. I unfastened the ropes and pulled Bobby free as the flames began licking at his feet. Within minutes, the tent was ablaze. My heart pounding, I hugged my child to me and thanked God I’d arrived home in time. “I was being initiated into their club,” Bobby tried to explain, still coughing as I carried him inside.
“Pack up,” I told him. “We’re leaving!” I’d had it with Vegas. This was no place to bring up my son. There seemed little left to stay for anyway. Bob had fled, never to pay child support. Joe had cleaned out half of all I’d saved and was driving me crazy. He’d poured sugar into the gas tank of the car Zeppo had given me, ruining the engine. I was tired of our adrenaline-fueled existence in a city where reality blurred into fantasy as easily as day melted to night. As I explained to Bobby in no uncertain terms, we were leaving that afternoon. I had no idea where we’d end up, and Zeppo was the last person on my mind, but I knew we had to get out of town.
“Boots! I can’t find Boots!” Bobby cried, searching all over the apartment and then the backyard. Wearily, I stopped what I was doing and went looking with him. We hunted all over for that darn dog; we even drove around in the car, but he was nowhere to be found. Maybe he’d been scared off by the other boys when they’d tied Bobby or had taken off by himself as he sometimes did. Perhaps a neighbor had taken him in. I was too exhausted and upset to look anymore, so I promised Bobby we’d alert the animal welfare agencies the minute we reached California and come back for Boots once he was found.
“But, Mother, we can’t just abandon him!” Bobby cried, his eyes filling with tears.
“We have to!” I insisted. I wanted out of Vegas there and then. If I’d waited a day longer, I might have lost the courage to leave Joe, to walk away from my friends and the life I’d made for myself. “I’m sorry, Bobby, but we have to go—now!”
Oh, God, the tears. I broke my young son’s heart that day, as well as my own. Leaving poor Boots behind is a memory that haunts us both to this day. I had friends drive around looking for the scruffy little mutt for weeks, calling out his name. I must have telephoned the city’s dog pound and the Humane Society twenty times or more in the weeks and months that followed, but the answer was always the same: “We have no dog answering that description.” I never found out what happened to Boots. I only hope and pray that someone kind took care of him and gave him a happy life.
Having said good-bye to Vegas, Joe, and Zeppo, I headed back to Long Beach. Living with my parents was never going to work, so I found an apartment. To pay the rent, I tried to get work locally as a model, but I’d been out of the loop for so long that I didn’t know the right