Marv often seemed to be admitting to his flaws (which is a rhetorical habit I have copied much of my adult life), but that didn’t mean he was sorry. Even at my current age, I don’t think I can entirely fathom what his perspective may have been on his actions – in short, how he slept with himself. His code of gallantry included infidelity in stupefying proportions; his tenderness rarely kept company with mercy.

For a time, when we were very little, Marv would occasionally tuck us in, and in the dark, play us a story on his guitar. Cinderella is the one I remember best: the hypnotic sound of his voice as he sprinkled her magical dress with sparkles, the hollow tap of the guitar as the mice tried to escape the fairy godmothers’ wand, and said, “Shit!” when they found themselves footman. It seemed so real.

I honestly don’t know where he reached in himself, this grown kid whose childhood was, as far as I know, a string of truancy and poverty and feral self-sufficiency, to find the ingredients to cast this spell on his four year old, middle class daughters. But I do think he was searching for enchantment, and that it wasn’t just us who wanted to find the glass slipper.

Three people in this world remember the 402 Club, an exclusive establishment, staffed by Marv Berkman, serving corned beef hash and welsh rarebit ala Campbell’s to famished grade school patrons, one Wednesday per week or by special appointment.  Breakfast was also served: Lipton’s Cup-a-Soup and hot Nestle’s Quik made with half coffee;  burned bacon sandwiches (for Pammy); or cinnamon toast.

The floorplan is unchanged, although the room adjacent the kitchen is now called a bedroom, instead of a dining room, as it was known by earlier inhabitants, so you can rent it for 10 times what my parents paid in 1970, and to this end the lovely archway opening has been reduced to a mere doorway.  The alleged “closet” off the kitchen was our breakfast nook and, for a while, Barb’s studio.  I see they moved the kitchen sink; very drole.

Rice candy and almond cookies,
hot flowery tea and whole fish
staring back, wreathed in green onions.
“That doesn’t gross you out, does it?”
“No, Daddy.”

How they petted us, drew us close into their
chest high realm of files and torches,
these men with fingernails like opals,
translucent pink cabachons
embedded in thick, furry hands
which could cleave the Earth’s most precious
heart
or turn Her deepest buried veins to raw liquid;
Who gave us not rubies or gold but
smooth polished cheeks sweet with shaving cream and
tobacco to delight in as if we were
royalty.

photo by me, 1984-ish, developed in some bathroom somewhere.

Chicago belonged to Marv, absolutely.  Roaming it at night, on foot and by car, was his legacy to me.  It is with some shame I confess I can’t be sure any more whether this Art Deco el station is on Milwaukee or Western Avenue – though I know it is north of North Avenue and south of Fullerton.  Beginning with my first camera in high school, Marv fuelled my obsession with the fading, vainglorious facades of deteriorating buildings by driving me whenever I wanted to take pictures of them, which was often.  What he made of his odd teenage daughter, while he waited as I jumped out of the car to record views of name plates, tiled entry ways, crumbling ornamental plaster, he kept to himself, but I think he had his reasons for indulging me.  By the time I got my license, I could navigate the Northside with confidence, by streets and landmarks, from Evanston to Old Town, and Lakeshore Drive to California Ave.

He never wanted us to feel afraid, or lost.  Well, Pop, I never did.