My mother’s new husband, youngest child of a judge, had one job his entire life: junior partner in his brother’s law firm. The open door, the Vacancy sign, the smile obsequious and eager, these were familiar to him. During his childhood his parents had a maid, took cruises, ate in French restaurants where the maitre d’ knew their names, sat them at the best tables. He’d attended prep school, a Jesuit seminary for boys. Sometime during the fall of his senior year the guidance counselor—we’ll call him Father Mark—summoned Tom into his office. Where, he asked, was he thinking about applying to college. Boston University, Tom said. He wanted to go to B.U. A fine institution, Father Mark replied, though not a Jesuit one. Your father and I have talked it over, and you’ll be attending Georgetown. One imagines Father Mark having this conversation again and again, throughout his career, with every graduating boy. At the end of the fall term, he made some calls. To Fathers Mike and Paul and James—admissions directors at various Jesuit schools, each of whom was told how many boys Father Mark would be sending him. No entrance exams, no admissions essays. After college came law school, after law school the partnership. A neatly plotted life, divergent in only one respect. He’d married, had a son, divorced. Nevertheless Tom remained an ardent Catholic, dismayed at the “permissiveness” of Vatican II, the masses in English, the focus on poverty.
They met through my father, who knew Tom from an insurance case he’d been assigned to investigate. The couples double-dated; during holidays, cookouts, birthday parties, Tom and his wife would stop by with their son, Ed, who was a year younger than Chipper. They were my parents’ friends, adults, the wallpaper of childhood. My parents were the first to get divorced.
After my mother’s divorce became final, after we moved to my grandparents’ house, Tom began to visit. Red roses appeared by the dozen, fresh ones each week. For my mother there were dinners in restaurants with wine lists and candles. For Chipper trips into the city with Tom and Ed to see the Islanders or Mets. We were a cobbled together family, uneasy with each other, but to outsiders we must have passed—parents, two young boys crashing bumper cars into each other, scarfing down hot dogs, and playing Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-A-Ling” on the diner jukebox, their older sister doing her best to ignore them all.
Unlike my father, Tom was steady, paid alimony and child support, kept appointments, indulged his son. My mother could be certain of him; certain, too, of her own appeal—taller, younger by nine years, a red-headed beauty with a sharp wit and an ability to get along, several steps up from the doughy first wife, who threatened to withhold visitation rights the few times Tom ran late returning their son to her home.
My mother and Tom were fixated on Watergate, though they interpreted it differently. For my mother it was all about hubris. She reveled in Nixon’s downfall, said They should get him on Cambodia, too. Tom, on the other hand, thought Nixon had gotten a “bad rap.” It was the media’s fault. Them and the liberals who wanted to take everyone’s money away and give it—plain out give it!—to the poor. A bunch of welfare cheats. People should pick themselves up by their bootstraps, that’s what they should do. And what, my mother would ask faux-sweetly, what of those people who did not have boots?
We did not have boots. Or, rather, they were borrowed boots, ill fitting. When we moved to Tom’s house, I got a new set of white enamel bedroom furniture, a stereo, a black and white TV. My brother, who’d been sleeping in the upstairs hallway, got his own room. There were vacations—to Nova Scotia, Lake Placid, to the lake house that belonged to Tom’s brother, any place with water and fish. Through Tom’s law firm we had box seats at Shea Stadium, ate in the clubhouse. Chipper saw Game Three of the 1973 World Series, attended the first game ever played at Giants’ Stadium, saw Team Russia vs. the NHL All Stars at Madison Square Garden, where he rooted for the Russians because he knew it would annoy Tom. Lucky, his friends told him. You’re so lucky.
As foreigners in someone else’s home, we were made to feel the difference. Chipper and I were not spoken to, but were issued commands. Clean Your Room! Stop That Racket. Pull Your Weight. Because I Said So. Straighten Up and Fly Right!
Anything could enrage him. A sponge left in the sink. Toothpaste squeezed from the middle of the tube. The teacup I once ate ice cream from, instead of using a bowl. TEACUPS ARE FOR TEA, GODDAMMIT! Sputtering, red-faced, barely taller than Chipper, who was still years away from confronting him. My mother looked on, amazed. What the hell, she asked, is your problem?
Doors, cupboards would slam. The E-Z Listening station cranked up. A Beefeater’s and tonic. And another, another. Yelling, Goddammit, who touched the thermostat? You think money grows on trees? Not every night, but often enough.
The thermostat, the dryer, hot water for the shower—all dangerous. Our jeans took longer than his polyester shirts to dry. When the half-hour timer went off, we were to hang them, still damp, over the shower rod, where they’d stiffen. Once when Chipper went over the half-hour limit, Tom presented him with the electric bill. My mother got her piggy bank, told us to get ours, too. We sat at the kitchen table, piling up change: pennies, nickels, dimes in columns. As we did this, we began to laugh, making a game of it, the absurdity too much, cheering when someone found a quarter, gasping with laughter, my mother’s eyes wet. Tom sat in his chair, rattled his paper, muttered, finally slammed his way to bed. But he took the money and later threw a circuit in the fuse box to disable the dryer until my mother threatened to publicly shame him by doing laundry at the coin-op.
She lost patience. Couldn’t we just go along with him? At least stay out of his way? We tried. Chipper made small talk about sports; I practiced avoidance. But we were teenagers. Chipper ate voraciously. I hogged the phone. We played our records loud, had poor table manners, forgot to turn out lights, rushed through chores. My mother placated, interceded. Some nights she lost her temper, matching him scream for scream, slam for slam. We hid in my room, knowing what was coming. Kids, get your coats! And we’d speed around town in my mother’s VW, no one talking, nowhere to go.
Cheapskate, she called him, the worst of names. People had an obligation to share; she’d learned that from her mother. Even when money was tightest, during my mother’s childhood, but especially once she had an income of her own, my grandmother was on the lookout for people with less. Widows she could invite home for the holidays, down-and-out families who needed a bag of groceries. She wasn’t religious, never went to church. But childhood poverty had taught my grandmother empathy for the poor. Through a colleague she’d learn of some struggling family and “adopt” them for Christmas, enlisting her own family members in the effort: money from her grown daughters, toys from her son, a check from her husband. A hundred, Jim, not fifty, we can afford it, don’t be a cheapskate!
Reluctantly, my grandfather went along. Poverty had taught him a different lesson altogether. Best to hoard, hard times could come again. Didn’t she know that? Besides, look around—they weren’t exactly living like kings. But no, she said. They had a home, a television, plenty to eat. Grown, healthy kids. A hundred dollars, what was that?
She loved to spend, but spent little on herself. Holidays she’d splurge, call Gold’s Delicatessen weeks ahead of time. Bernie, this is Mrs. McTigue. I have a big order; I hope you can handle it. Tubs of coleslaw, potato salad, platters of roast beef, smoked turkey, paté with chopped egg, mounds of Kaiser rolls and special, brown, “holiday mustard.” Papery slices of provolone and Swiss, pimento-stuffed olives, celery sticks with spreadable cheese. She mounded food until our paper plates sagged, too much food, all the food she’d gone without. She could give us, her grandchildren, things she’d been unable to give her daughters—trips to Dairy Queen, take out pizzas and lo mein. More than enough. Eat! Eat! The children in Africa. We heard about them, yes. Leftovers were sent to the “adopted” family, a post-Christmas meal. Who cared if she’d ordered too much? The important thing was to share.
My mother absorbed this lesson. She wrote checks to anti-poverty prog
rams, became foster parent to a Native American girl, made us donate something each Christmas to the church’s toy drive, an event Chipper and I agonized over because we knew if we selected anything too obviously neglected or worn, anything she knew we didn’t at least somewhat care for, she’d override us and make the choice herself. Feeling the loss was part of the point. Besides, she said, you know you’ll be getting more.
To my mother, Tom’s wealth was a moral handicap, something that blinded him to other people’s plights. She enjoyed that wealth—the trips to Florida, the dinners out—just as I liked having a TV and stereo. Yet his privilege pained her, the way it stunted him, the distinctions he made—who was worthy of largesse, who was not, how little it had to do with need.
Our own need had abated. Despite Tom’s theatrics over bills, there was money to spare. We had allowances, three dollars a week in addition to lunch money. I bought nail polish in garish colors: watermelon, hubcap, pond scum. Chipper bought baseball cards. We both bought albums. In exchange we were given chores. Chipper clipped metal rings from cases of tonic and 7UP bottles for recycling. He emptied the humidifier, trimmed rhododendrons, mowed the lawn. Winters he shoveled, falls he raked. He did this, as he did most things, cheerfully. It wasn’t his nature to complain.
I was given lighter work. Vacuuming, dusting. I did these tasks on Saturday mornings while Tom slept so I could be back in my room before he woke up. I came down for dinner but would not speak. It wasn’t the chores I minded; it was everything else. I sat at the table and burned.
My mother indulged my moodiness. We colluded. I hated going to school in my brace. One day a week she let me stay home provided my grades did not suffer. She’d tell Tom I had a doctor’s appointment, study hall, the excuses varied, and that she’d drop me off on her way to work. I’d get up, dress, wait for him to leave.
On these hooky days, I mostly watched reruns. F Troop, I Love Lucy, Twilight Zone, Bewitched, the more fantastic the better. I’d lie on the couch, shoulder blades touching metal, close my eyes, and listen. Genies, time machines, talking mannequins, witch cotillions, there were lives in which anything could happen.
Whenever Tom took Chipper into the city for a game, my mother and I would get deli sandwiches. She’d pour me a small glass of wine, the sweet Almaden she and Tom drank at dinner. With no one to pound on the bathroom door, she’d let me out of the brace so I could take a long hot shower, water coursing down my itchy back.
Sometimes I was even excused from family outings. My mother’s new sister-in-law had a house on a lake. Hers was a large, boisterous clan; they sailed and swam and skated. I could not lie on my towel in the sun, go in the water, balance on skates. Because of this, I was granted the luxury of staying home. I’d sleep late, my family gone to eat hot dogs and swim. Alone, I blasted the air-conditioner and stereo, ate cereal from a teacup, watched television, did laundry, running the dryer on high for as long as I wanted. I went into Chipper’s room and my mother’s, looked at the things there: baseball books, pennants, bottles of perfume, tubes of lipstick in shades of rust and orange, Tom’s pile of Playboys on the floor by his side of the bed. I went through them. The women’s bodies—glossy, impossibly sculpted—made me feel slightly afraid. Was this what one was supposed to become? I wanted my family to come home and dreaded their return.
Orphans
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long ways from home . . .
I hated those lyrics, one of the songs we sang each Sunday at St. Pius Church. Folk Mass took place in the All Purpose Room, a brick box that during weekdays served as the school cafeteria and gym. A room dense with massed bodies, candle smoke, embedded smells of cabbage and sweat. Instead of depicting gospel scenes, the windows were threaded with chicken wire. We sat in rows of folding chairs facing the altar, and the lyrics we sang were printed not in the leather bound missals I associated with church but in mimeographed booklets, crookedly stapled. These, I recall, had crude line drawings—doves, lambs, headstones. Chipper and I were not Catholic, had never been confirmed, but when my parents divorced, the high Episcopal church we’d been attending, with its incense and pomp, its ladies in white gloves and veiled hats, became for my mother an unwelcoming place. No longer a role model, she was relieved of Sunday School duties. Perhaps you don’t care for your children’s spiritual development, Father Matthew wrote when she was recuperating from surgery to repair a slipped disc. Some Christians! she scoffed. Has anyone bothered to see if we’re okay? If maybe you kids need a ride? She crumpled up the letter.
In this new church, my aunt’s church, we wore jeans and sang songs to end the war. A girl in bell-bottoms shook a tambourine, a longhaired boy strummed guitar. From his altar, a large table used for lunch time with a cloth draped over it and a cross set on top of that, Father Mike led us through “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” At the time I was too young, ten or so, to be embarrassed by the treacly lyrics. The song, with its evocation of dead soldiers sprouting flowers from their graves, fit my budding pacifist sensibilities. I was a hippie wannabe, what I knew about hippies coming mostly from episodes of The Mod Squad. “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which we also sang, had lyrics as cryptic as the book titles in the adult library. I knew the lyrics by heart, sensed that the song was some sort of hippie anthem. But the motherless child song upset me. Instead of protest it offered up pitiful images of orphans. Singing it, I could see the Ghost of Christmas Present with that bone-raggedy boy, that jaundiced girl huddled beneath his robes: This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy . . . Children unloved and unloving, what had they to do with ending the war? I changed the lyrics to mimic a popular candy bar jingle: Sometimes I feel like a nut. Sometimes I don’t. I mouthed these new lyrics to Chipper; we whispered them. To him it was funny, a way to get through the most boring hour of the week. For me though the song was deeply disturbing.
During my first summer in the brace, my mother decided to have her tubes tied. A routine procedure, she assured us, nothing to worry about, women did it all the time. She’d be home from the hospital in a couple of days.
I was not reassured. The last time my mother was hospitalized, for a slipped disc, our lives had been disrupted. My grandparents came to stay with us in their former home. Because of my grandfather’s Parkinson’s disease and, more to the point, my grandmother’s “nerves,” Chipper and I were forbidden to go outside. You’ll fight, my grandmother said. Throw rocks at each other, fall out of trees and break your arms, get bit by a dog. Your grandfather’s sick; I can’t be running to the hospital all the time.
She ordered Chinese food, pizzas, took us to Dairy Queen. Manic from sugar and MSG, cooped up indoors, we fought. You kids! You kids! my grandmother wailed. You make me so nervous!
Rising from his La-Z-Boy, my grandfather would teeter on his way to the bathroom, grab at furniture, his feet shuffling wildly. He’d get stuck in doorways, something about the transition between rooms short-circuiting his already damaged nervous system. I knew he would fall but when he did, pitching forward, landing on his hands, the impact—his body hitting the floor, glassware rattling in the drain board, the needle skudding over vinyl, my grandmother’s shriek, and the awful silence from the rest of us—made me want to hide.
My grandfather was dead weight, helpless. It took all of my grandmother’s strength to help raise him. Jim for Chrissakes stay in your chair, she yelled. Everybody . . . you make me so GOD DAMNED NERVOUS!
My father’s mother was called in. She took us on long drives, let us play shuffleboard at the seniors’ home where she lived in a one-room efficiency. On my birthday we went to an Italian restaurant with my father, whom she’d persuaded to come along. He gave me a crushed velvet floppy hat and a string of love beads that I wore every day until they became unstrung.
That night I cried myself to sleep. It was my birthday, my tenth birthday, and I wanted my mother. I hadn’t spoken to her since she’d le
ft. Each time the phone rang, I was convinced it was the hospital calling with bad news. People told me she was doing fine. How was I to know? And if she wasn’t, if they were lying? What then?
Nearly four years later, my mother was again in the hospital. I wanted to think myself stoic this time, able to cope. I was not the girl who wept at imagined funeral scenes, the girl afraid of the ringing phone. In truth I was even more anxious than before.
This time we stayed with Tom. Now was his chance to get back at us for all the times my mother had intervened. He could disable the dryer, make us wear wet clothes, take cold showers, scrub floors, haul trash; he could refuse to feed us, withhold our allowances, take away my stereo. None of this seemed to me farfetched, but in fact he left us more or less alone. Unable to cook, he brought home Big Macs and boxes of Kentucky Fried Chicken. These were treats, but I could not enjoy them. Most of my plate went into the trash. Tom ate later, by himself, sandwiches or scrambled eggs. He might ask Chipper how his day had been or whether we’d done our chores but that was the extent of our interaction with him. We could shower or not, eat or not, wear clean clothes or dirty. So long as we kept quiet and stayed out of his way it didn’t matter.
After dinner we went to my room. We played our music low. She’ll be all right, won’t she? Chipper would ask, and I kept saying yes, but secretly I had my doubts. With my mother gone, what was our connection to this man, this house? She’ll be fine, I said, because the alternative was unthinkable, although I never stopped thinking it.
The day after my mother’s surgery, Tom drove us to the hospital for a visit. Pale, perspiring, my mother lay on her back. It hurts, she moaned. It hurts so much. She looked at us briefly then shut her eyes. Her lips were chapped white, her bangs soaked. A bag hung from a metal pole, dripping fluid into a tube taped to the back of her hand. I tried not to look. A nurse came in, told us visiting hours were ending. We’d been there less than an hour. I knew we’d been brought to say goodbye. I’d read Dickens, knew what happened to orphans. Sure, there were no workhouses any more (were there?) but children without parents were still in for a rough time. I ran down the list of potential caretakers.
All the Difference Page 5
