Free Daughter of the King by Sandra Lansky

missed. I wasn’t stealing. Mommy gave me anything I asked for. I was just playing banker. This was my way of learning math. Then I took my American Flyer wagon and went to the newsstand on 81st Street, where I stocked up on comics. I had seen my Daddy tip the doormen, so I imitated him and gave the doorman a dollar to keep his mouth shut that I had gone out all by myself, which was supposedly a no-no. I was like a little gangster girl.
    Maybe I was my father’s daughter after all. But then I had no idea what my father was all about. All I knew was that I was his pet, that after dinner, he’d hold me in his arms in his paneled library, door closed, and read to me wearing his silk Sulka robe over his silk Sulka pajamas and smelling like Benson and Hedges and English lavender. For some crazy reason, he liked to read to me from Thomas Paine, the Revolutionary War writer, Common Sense and the Rights of Man . He said that Thomas Paine was his favorite writer and these were brilliant ideas, ideas that made America free.
    Paine said unforgettable things like “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” and “these are the times that try men’s souls” and “the duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government,”things that would hit close to home for Daddy years later when the government was dead set to ruin our lives. Some things kind of spoke to me, or us: “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” But it was all very heavy stuff, hardly bedtime stories.
    Obviously these were way over the head of a six-year-old, or even a twenty-six year-old. I think Daddy was reading them for himself and just taking me along for the ride. Whatever, I didn’t care. The ride was enough; if I wanted to read, I had my comic books. I just loved Daddy’s strong, quiet voice, which, like Mommy’s, had no trace of a New York accent. I loved being in his arms. Too bad Daddy was gone most of the time, and tortured by them or not, I felt very sad and abandoned when my brothers would leave, too. Until I started school, I didn’t have anyone else.
    But then I began making friends, though not exactly the ones my mother assumed I would connect with in my fancy school. One day when one of the maids had taken me to play in Central Park, I met a girl my own age named Terry Healy, who was a brilliant roller skater. She lived on 82nd Street across from the back of the Beresford. I brought her home to play, and she was amazed at our apartment. When I went to her house, I understood why. She lived on the second floor of a big, twenty-unit old brownstone where her father was the superintendent. We liked to hang out with him when he was fixing the boilers and the pipes. It was like an adventure movie, and I loved it, even when we saw a big rat.
    For all her aspirations to glamour and culture, Mommy was anything but snobbish about my friendship with an Irish Catholic janitor’s daughter. She was delighted I had such a nice companion. She just didn’t want me running around outside by myself. Maybe it was her Lindbergh kidnapping fear. Not that I paid much attention to her. I would sneak out of the apartment and cross 82nd Street by myself to go play at Terry’s. The Healys took me to mass with them. I liked it almost as much as Radio City. One day a yellow cab almost hit merunning across 82nd Street. It had to screech on its brakes. And who was in the cab? Mommy. She threw a fit and confined me to my room.
    In 1943, Mommy decided to turn me into a fancy horsewoman. To add to all my other lessons, she began taking me for riding lessons at the Aldrich Stables between 66th and 67th Streets on Central Park West. Mommy herself had liked to ride, but she lost her passion for it after a horse threw her down in Hot Springs. She tried to brainwash me into the sport by getting me kids’ horse books, like My Friend Flicka , and dragging me to see National Velvet at least three times.
    The books and movies