Lost In Yonkers

“I bet she’s lost again.”

Like Grandma, Bella is discussed before her first entrance. This comment introduces Bella as a person without direction, with the word “again” suggesting that she gets lost regularly. Bella is lost in both a literal and symbolic way. She is wandering through the streets because her intellectual disability limits her ability to navigate. On a broader scale, she is also lost in life, treated as a child by her mother and unable to achieve her goals.

“Did you know you could love somebody who died before you were born?”

Bella discusses her grief for her father, whom she never met. Because she never met her father, she has turned him into an idealized parent, in contrast with her abusive mother. Bella is desperate to believe that there may have been someone who loved her the way she longs to be loved, establishing her motivation for pursuing a relationship with Johnny.

“It was worth whatever it cost.”

Eddie defends his decision to spend all he could on his wife’s end-of-life care. Though she is gone and he is driven to desperation by his debt, he assures his boys that he would do the same again. His love for his wife and his desire to mitigate her suffering paint Eddie as a loving and sympathetic, if not always logical, figure.

“And the miracle happened…This country went to war.”

There is a bitter irony to this statement, in which Eddie finds a brief glimmer of hope in the midst of the suffering of World War II. The horrific state of the world provides an opportunity to improve his circumstances that he would not have otherwise—one of the more “positive” Effects of War. However, for Eddie, the opportunity to make money is tinged with the fear that he may be a war profiteer.

“No. I don’t like Jay…Yakob iss a name.”

Upon her first appearance on stage, Grandma exerts her authority by renaming Jay. She tells him that the German pronunciation of his name is better, suggesting a lasting connection to her heritage. Grandma demands that the world move to accommodate her wishes, right down to individual identity.

“I had six children once, I don’t need more again.”

Four of Grandma’s children appear in the play, while the remaining two are prominent in their absence. Through the course of the play, it becomes evident that their deaths are behind Grandma’s hardness, steeling her against emotion as a defense mechanism. She does not want to bring children into her life again for fear that she may develop affection for them, thereby risking devastation with their loss.

“When you wouldn’t pick me up and hug me as a child, I cried…When my brother and sister died, I cried…And I still haven’t stopped crying since Evelyn died.”

Eddie speaks to his mother without anger and blame. Instead, he traces a lineage of grief and trauma that echo from childhood into adulthood, developing the theme of Healing From Generational Trauma. As his own youth was shaped by the deaths of his siblings and his mother’s coldness, he fears that his wife’s death will have a detrimental effect on the lives of his children. This statement contrasts with the boys’ earlier note that Grandma did not cry at their mother’s funeral. Eddie tells his mother he cannot be like her, and he pleads with her to understand him.

“You don’t have to be old to be trusting.”

Under Bella’s questioning, Jay is somewhat defensive. He does not want to be treated like a child, so he asserts his maturity by suggesting he is a trusting person. However, this false association actually implies he lacks maturity.

“But he’s so handsome. And so polite. And quiet. I had to do all of the talking.”

Bella has spent so long with Grandma that she is not used to any form of affection. As a result, she is overwhelmed when Johnny shows her positive attention. Bella struggles to grasp the nuance of social interaction, leading to her falling in love with a man just for being nice to her.

“Yeah. Waitin’ for her to go to sleep. I wasn’t in no mood for long conversations.”

Grandma’s fearsome reputation is established by the ways in which she is discussed by other characters. The boys have already discussed Louie’s nefarious activities. Still, even Louie fears Grandma. He may dismiss the threat from his fellow gangsters, but he cannot deny his mother’s power.

“Sometimes bein’ on the up and up just gets you down and down.”

Louie and Eddie are brothers, but their approach to making money is vastly different. Louie is a criminal without compunction over breaking the law for personal gain. He has a large amount of money on hand, giving Bella thousands of dollars at the end of the play. In contrast, Eddie refuses to break the law to pay back his debt. This illustrates that the two brothers have reacted very differently to Grandma’s emotional abuse.

“We’re not taking that money.”

When Louie offers the boys money for their assistance evading his pursuers, they are faced with a choice between the morals they were raised with and those of Uncle Louie. Jay believes that accepting Louie’s money would mean rejecting their father. By refusing the money, the boys validate their father’s morals.

“I remember when I was a boy, if I got sick, my mother used to give me the worst tasting German mustard soup.”

Grandma’s difficult life has been passed down to her children, creating generational cycles of trauma that lock the characters into their pain. By feeding the soup to Arty, Grandma is bringing her pain to the next generation. The bitter soup represents the pain and suffering endured by Grandma and passed down to Eddie, who remembers it in a letter to his sons. In turn, Arty is also forced to eat the soup when he gets sick.

“Take it out on Hitler, not on me.”

The boys are tacitly aware that Grandma directs the pain and frustration she feels for her youth and her homeland at everyone else in her life. Arty recognizes that Germany’s descent into fascism and genocide reminds Grandma of her painful childhood, causing her to abuse Arty. He recognizes that Grandma’s abuse is informed by more than just a desire to be cruel.

“She coulda had an operation but she used the money she saved to get to this country with her husband and six kids.”

This statement shows a new side of Grandma, who sacrificed her own well-being for the safety of her family. Neil Simon complicates Grandma’s character, indicating that beneath her hard shell is a fiercely loving mother. Her limp becomes a symbol of her love as well as her pain.

“Lousy soup but it works.”

Louie’s admission is another indicator that Grandma is not cruel for cruelty’s own sake. There is a logic to her actions. Louie may not like his mother, but he does respect her.

“I think it’s because she used to sleep with her head inside the pillow.”

Each of Grandma’s children shows their trauma in a different way. Louie explains that Gert talked in her sleep as a child, for which Grandma beat her. Gert’s fear of her mother was so great that she smothered herself every night to avoid angering her, leading to long-term breathing problems. Each stilted breath and stuttered sentence is a testament to the fear instilled in a little girl by her mother.

“You’re a bully.”

Jay’s accusation against Uncle Louie marks a turning point in their relationship. Before, he admired his uncle’s notoriety, but now he sees Louie’s behavior is just another reaction to Grandma’s abusive parenting. While their father has turned away from Grandma’s abusive practices, however, Louie continues them. The boys no longer admire their uncle. They pity him.

“I pictured everybody sitting.”

As she prepares to tell her family about Johnny, Bella is nervous. She has rehearsed the scene in her head many times in an effort toward control over the situation. She becomes nervous when the reality doesn’t match her imagination and wants to fix it. This suggests that Bella has so little control that she feels a need to change whatever she can to satisfy her anxieties.

“My babies will be happier than we were because I’ll teach them to be happy.”

Bella shocks her mother into silence with this statement, marking a turning point in Bella’s arc. She states the truth of her and her siblings’ unhappy childhood and vows to do better. In so doing, she takes a large step toward independence and agency.

“But I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for this whole family…Even Grandma…”

As the boys spend more time with their family, the more they develop an increasingly nuanced understanding of the complex family dynamics. By the time they leave, they understand that Grandma’s behaviors are the product of her own suffering and pain, which she has passed down to her children.

“Only God didn’t make them that way. You did.”

In this moment, Bella rebuts Grandma’s assertion that Bella shouldn’t strive for a family because God made her incapable of taking care of one. Bella alludes to the family rumor that her intellectual disability is the result of a beating. In so doing, she lays the fault for the Kurnitz children’s dysfunctions at their mother’s feet. It is ironic that, though her family discounts Bella’s intelligence, she is the only one with the insight and courage to speak the truth to Grandma.

“We have to learn how to deal with that somehow, you and me…And it can never be the same anymore.”

Bella shows her maturity and healing when she returns to her mother’s house. Rather than letting things go back to the way they were before, she shows agency by suggesting that her mother will need to change her behavior if she doesn’t want to be alone. Rather than cut ties or continue to be abused, she shows determination to change the future, gaining her mother’s respect.