We Live in Arleta
WE LIVE IN ARLETA
BEANIE ROSEN
Zamboni-ing their way one zip code at a time.
1961
Beanie Rosen was born in New York City in 1961. Her given name was Bertha Rosenswag, but like everything else about her, it was Zambonied. That was her word. She’d invented it when she was ten years old while watching a Zamboni machine polishing ice until it was smooth and perfect.
That’s my life , she thought upon reflection many years later, ice smoothed over, like a smokescreen. Or Botox.
Perfectly suited for Hollywood.
They were, after all, image makers, but first they remade their own.
Or their mothers did.
The Zamboni was a technique that Beanie had acquired from her mother, Miriam, who Zambonied the truth until it fit her reality.
That was how she survived disappointment.
Miriam Cantor married Harry Rosenswag, Beanie’s father, in 1957. He came from a well-to-do family, and Miriam had assumed that Harry, in due time, would get his share. But when Harry’s father passed in 1959 and left the bulk of his estate to Harry’s two older brothers, Miriam was enraged.
“They owe you,” she roared.
“We’re fine,” he responded.
“You’re weak,” she screamed.
“You’re cruel,” he said.
They were both right.
They fought. A lot. Mostly about money.
Miriam wanted Harry to take a stand, but instead he took a job, an insurance salesman out west in California, where they covered their tracks with revisionist history and Zambonied their names. Now the Rosenswags were the Rosens, and their daughter Bertha became Bernice, and Bernice became Beanie, and Miriam never looked back.
Or so she claimed. In truth, Miriam always looked back. And worse, she kept score.
They had moved to Pacoima, a suburb forty-five minutes outside of Los Angeles, where affordable housing was available for ex-GIs and their families. Beanie’s father thought they had arrived. Her mother thought they had stalled. But Beanie thought it was paradise. There were orange groves and lemon groves and big fields called empty lots. Baby palm trees were planted alongside baby boomers, both trying to take root in unfamiliar ground, claiming it as their own.
It was nice, but it wasn’t Arleta.
Arleta was an upscale neighborhood a few miles closer to Ventura Boulevard, Ventura being the great divide: the line between what Miriam had and what Miriam wanted. And if you lived south of the Boulevard in the Hills, well, Jesus, you were someone. Beanie would often hear her mother whisper, “They live in Sherman Oaks.” There was something reverential about Sherman Oaks or Encino. Houses had pools and central air and cool tile floors with housekeepers on their knees polishing them.
The housekeepers lived in Pacoima.
“If anyone asks,” her mother said as she was taking Beanie to her Brownie meeting, “we live in Arleta.”
“No, we don’t,” Beanie protested.
“Yes, we do, Beanie.” End of discussion.
And so, by decree, she learned not only that wherever she was wasn’t good enough, but that image was more important than truth.
“She knows we don’t live there, right? I mean, she knows it’s a lie?” Beanie asked her father.
“ She lives there,” he said softly.
For Miriam Rosenswag, it was less a lie and more a vision, making Arleta one step closer to her truth.