ABSTRACT
My parents couldn’t possibly have lived up to my lofty dreams. They were in a hurry to reestablish our former lifestyle. That was why, on my first morning in New York, my mother left for her job at a dressmaker’s, and my father took us to meet our uncle, Felix, at the offices of the International Marble and Granite Company on Columbus Circle. As we ambled down Broadway, he pointed to the architectural feats and gargoyles on some of the tallest buildings I had ever beheld, and especially to their occasional marble façades.
