Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [15]
Stanley Kaufman’s career in costume jewelry had obviously also enlarged, though not without struggle and frayed nerves and ongoing dreams of escape and hopeless irritability attendant. He would eventually call this house—sturdily spread, tri-leveled, prefab-sided, with attached two-car garage, on enormous lot—“the best investment of my life.” His job responsibilities were by now more than commensurate with his talents—besides fully engaging his bright business acumen, he was even designing KARU product lines of earrings and pendants and such. Still, however, working with his father and his father’s partner gave him much tsouris, much doubt. “The truth is, I had just bought the house and things were terrible downtown. You’ve got to understand—at no time in all the years I was with my father did I ever have any feeling of security. I had to be a very, very conservative person because I could be out of a job at any moment. These two men were at it almost every day of the week—‘We’re gonna break up this goddamned business!’ I’d not only hear it at the office, I used to drive home with my father maybe three days out of five and it was always a rehash. I thought, Forget it! It was awful. Nothing pleasant about it at all. So the commitment of the new house came with the headache of Can I sustain this?”
Chaos at work required perfect o-r-d-e-r at home—order unimaginable, thus unachievable, in a household where three young children grew and cavorted. And so, too, the rages enlarged. Janice took/accepted the brunt. Stanley, the otherwise good and loving husband and father, would have to vent and rant for years to come. (Was there no aspect of his world that he could control?! How he tried-picking out furniture and decor for the house, selecting clothes for Janice and the kids, shopping for groceries, designating basic tasks for all—but damned if the results ever turned out exactly as he wished.) His frustrations and furies were to be a Grassfield Road continuum. His wife heaved her sweet deep sighs and patiently understood—she once wrote a poem and handed it to him and left the room—
“I’m wishy washy, dull as can be;
No one asked you to marry me.
But you liked those traits and gave me a boost;
For that I let you Rule the Roost….
If I choose something that I like to wear,
You say, “No. Wear this.” As if you care.
But other times, I don’t know why,
You’re so indifferent, you make me cry.
Now try to be nice—let’s not fight,
Tell me, which dress should I wear tonight?”
The children, however, could not abide the storms. They witnessed their father carping at their mother, wishing she could stop him, knowing that she wouldn’t. “For the most part,” Michael remembered, “she just took it. Here was this fragile little woman—I was amazed that she didn’t cry when he yelled at her. She hardly ever did. Sometimes she would even start it by asking him a stupid question. She drew it out. Carol, Andy, and I would look at each other and go, ‘Why is she doing it?’ We’d see it coming and think, ‘Watch out! Let’s head for our rooms!’ But they somehow were able to have a sense of humor about it. I think he once had a T-shirt made up for her that said, DON’T YELL AT ME! And she had one made for him that said, I’M NOT YELLING!”
Carol turned from infant to teen with the cacophony ever resounding, wincing at it always. “I saw her as a doormat, a victim,” she recalled. “He’d bark, ‘You left the lights on!’ ‘Burnt steak again!’ ‘Where’d you get this meat from?!’ I’d be sitting there with knots in my stomach. It was almost like having an alcoholic father, in terms of not wanting your friends to see what was happening—and sometimes they did. I remember seething inside and thinking, ‘Just tell him to shut