by Jim Piersall
He was smiling broadly.
“Get in, son,” he said, jovially. “We’re going for a ride.”
“Where?”
“To see your mother.”
“Mom?”
I couldn’t say more. Without another word I got into the car, and Dad, after making sure the door was shut securely, walked around and climbed into the driver’s seat.
An hour later, we pulled into the grounds of what looked to me like an exclusive private school. It was a pleasant spring afternoon, and the wide expanses of grass were already a rich sea green. There was a sign leading into the driveway, but we were going too fast for me to read it. I didn’t know it then, but for the next ten years I would have plenty of chance to spell out the words. They read, “Norwich State Hospital.”
Mom seemed perfectly all right to me. She cried a little as she embraced me, then sat with us and talked for an hour or so. She asked me about school and baseball and church and Sister Margaret, and I told her everything I could. She and Dad talked quietly, except for one or two occasions when he raised his voice a little. Dad and Mom never could talk quietly together for any length of time.
“When will you be home?” I asked, just before we left.
“After I’ve had a good rest,” she replied. “It won’t be long. And Jim—”
“Yes?”
“Take good care of your father.”
“I will, Mom.”
She was home six months or so later, and our threads of life, on the surface, at least, seemed to pick up where they had been left off. But it wasn’t the same. Mom, usually so calm and steady, didn’t move around the house with the quiet dignity of the old days. Sometimes she worked fast as she did the household chores, as if she couldn’t wait to get them over with. She was nervous and fidgety, and she did things in quick, jerky movements. And when she talked, her voice rose occasionally, although she talked little. Every so often I caught her shuddering convulsively.
Then, a year later, disaster struck again. It was just before my ninth birthday, and I was coming home from school. As I approached the house, I could hear my parents arguing, my father’s booming voice raised in the anger that I dreaded, my mother’s querulous and shrill. As I turned from the street into the path that led to our entrance on the side, I nearly collided with my dad, who was rushing out. I stepped aside and he brushed past me without a word.
Mom was in the kitchen, sobbing hysterically. I tried to put my arm around her, but she shoved me aside.
“I’ve got to get away from here,” she kept repeating. “I can’t stand it.”
She said it louder and louder, while I stood by, frightened, worried and unable to do anything to quiet her down.
Then, suddenly, she stood up, crossed the room and headed down the steps. I jumped up and followed her, but she was on the path before I had reached the door. When I got outside, she was walking rapidly towards the street, where, as usual, trucks and buses were roaring back and forth, in and out of town. Before I knew it, Mom was stepping off the curb, and, to my horror, slowing up to a deliberate shuffle. Oblivious to the traffic, she looked neither to the right nor the left as she started to cross the street.
For a moment I froze where I stood. Miraculously, she didn’t get hit, although swearing, sweating drivers had to jam on brakes and swerve to one side or another to keep from running into her. She was more than halfway across before I realized what she was trying to do. I dashed madly after her, and, without bothering to look at the traffic myself, rushed up behind her and pushed her the rest of the way across. Then, after waiting for a break in the traffic, we crossed back to our own side together and went into the house.
We both cried for a long time. Then Mom, calm and lucid, said, “Jim, I’m going away again.”
“To—that place?”
“Yes. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back.”
My dad and I saw her at Norwich two Sundays later. She seemed normal and made it evident that she was glad to see us. After I kissed her, I said, “Mom, get well and come home soon. Dad’s not a very good cook and I’m not a very good bed maker.”
She smiled, and assured me that she’d be back sometime, but she didn’t say when. We stayed with her for a while, and then drove home in silence.
After I went to bed that night, I tossed restlessly back and forth, thinking of my mother and wondering why I couldn’t have her with me all the time, the way other kids had their mothers. The more I thought about it, the sorrier I felt for myself, and I finally broke into a fit of hysterical sobbing. I cried and cried until, at last, my father came in and said, “What’s the matter, son?”
I sat up in bed, pointing at him and screamed, “You know what the matter is. I don’t want my mom in that awful place any more. I can’t stand it. I want her home, where she belongs. If you’d stop hollering at her all the time, she’d be all right. You haven’t got any patience with her. You’re always yelling at her. If you didn’t then she wouldn’t have to go away.”
My father didn’t move. He looked down at me a long time, then said, quietly, “Son, you don’t understand her the way I do. And you don’t understand me, either.”
He came over and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Did I ever tell you about my own childhood?” he asked.
I had stopped crying, and, as I looked up at him, I realized that I had never heard him mention his own people. Not speaking, I simply shook my head.
“Well,” he said, “I guess you might say I never had any childhood. I certainly didn’t have any home life. I never knew either of my parents. My father left home and my mother died while I was still a baby. Can you imagine what that means, son?”
I could only shake my head again.
“It means that nobody—nobody”—his voice was harsh now—“gives a rap whether you live or you die. I love you. Your mom loves you. You have teachers who help you and friends who want to play with you. I had nobody, I tell you. Not one person!”
His voice was rising, but this time I wasn’t frightened. I simply sat and stared at him.
“They put me in a foster home. The State of Connecticut paid for my keep. The people I lived with covered the law. They clothed me and fed me and provided me with a bed to sleep in. But they didn’t give me the one thing I needed more than anything—affection. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I knew that other kids had it. But other kids lived with their own parents, who loved them. I lived with strangers.
“I couldn’t stand it, not loving anyone, not having anyone to love me. One day—I was younger than you are now—I ran away. I scrounged and scrambled for a living, moving from place to place, existing from day to day, hungering for something that wasn’t for me.
“I had to fight to live,” he said, his eyes glowing in the semidarkness. “It was a dog-eat-dog existence. The older I got, the more I realized that if I wanted anything done for myself, I’d have to do it myself or it wouldn’t get done. And if I wanted anything, I’d have to demand it—in as loud a voice as possible.”
He stopped a minute and took a deep breath.
“I don’t mean to yell at people—you, your mom, anyone. I just can’t help myself. You can’t blame me. I had to do it for so many years—”
Then he turned and walked out, gently closing my bedroom door behind him.
When I saw Sister Margaret at school the next day, I asked her, “Why does my mother have to keep going to the hospital all the time?”
“Because she has to rest.”
“I know, Sister. But why does she have to rest?”
“She tires easily, Jimmy. And she has to work hard.”
I looked at Sister for a long moment. Her face was composed, her eyes clear and calm, her lips parted in a half-smile as she gazed back at me. She seemed so strong and solid and dependable that I was sure she would have a satisfactory answer for anything I asked her.
“Sister,” I said slowly, “why does God punish my mom? Why does He make her keep going to that p
lace? Why does He let her get so nervous and upset and unhappy? She’s a good lady, Sister. She’s charitable. She goes to church. She obeys all the laws. She works hard. She always does her best. Sister, what has my mom done wrong that these awful things have to happen to her?”
“She’s done nothing wrong, Jimmy. And God isn’t punishing her. Everyone has a cross to bear. Hers is this sickness. She has a fear she can’t express, and it has made her sick.”
I was barely nine years old. I felt that I was neither old enough nor smart enough to understand.
It was two years now since my mom first got sick. During that time, I had never known a moment when I didn’t worry about her. When she was away, I worried how long she’d be gone. When she was home, I worried how long it would be before she would have to go away again. Each day she was with us, I left the house with the gnawing fear that she might not be there when I got back. I was afraid to go to school, and afraid to walk into the house after I got out.
Even at nine, I was a bundle of nerves. The constant apprehension about Mom was only the beginning. I worried about everything. I worried about school and about my playmates liking me and about what we were going to have for dinner and about how my dad would be feeling when I got home. Each June I worried about getting promoted and each September I worried about my new teacher.
The older I got, the more I worried. When I was in the sixth grade, I made the Sacred Heart baseball team. I was the youngest boy on the club, but I was the best fielder in school, and Bobby Ray, the coach, put me in center field. I couldn’t wait to play every day, and if something came up to prevent our practicing or having a game, I was bitterly disappointed. One day, we couldn’t practice because we didn’t have a ball.
“We won’t let this happen again,” said Bobby. “From now on, each boy will contribute a dime and that will give us enough to buy a ball.”
The kids went home for money, and we chipped in enough for a ball. But after that, I took it upon myself to make sure we had one. I was the one who always collected the money and bought the ball because I was afraid nobody else would do it, and then we wouldn’t be able to play. I was always worried about not being able to have a game. If the weather was threatening when I got up in the morning, I fretted all through school, worrying about rain. If a sudden storm came up while we were playing, I huddled in a corner and prayed that it would stop.
I got to be a long-distance worrier as well as a short-term worrier. I worried just as much about what might happen in ten years as I did about what might happen in two hours. Outside of the everlasting worry about my mom, my biggest concern was whether or not I’d ever be big enough or good enough to play major-league baseball. My father had put the idea in my head, but it became the one burning ambition of my life. I was just as anxious to make it as he was to see me do it.
His praise meant more than anything else to me. The first time he ever saw me play in a game, I rushed over to him after it was over and said, a little breathlessly, “Dad, did I do all right?”
“I think you did fine, son,” he answered in his gruff voice. “You made mistakes, but you’ll always make mistakes. Even big leaguers do that. Nobody ever plays the game perfectly.”
That was enough for me. My dad was satisfied that I had done all right. As we walked home together, I was proud and happy. His standards were strict, and I had measured up to them. Nothing was more important to me than that.
BACK WHEN I WAS about seven, the milkman on our route had said to me one morning, “How would you like to give me a hand delivering milk? I’ll pay you thirty cents a day. All you have to do is work an hour and a half every morning before school.”
I asked my father that evening if it would be all right.
“We get along,” he said. “You don’t have to work. You’re too young. Besides, I want you free to play baseball.”
“Please, Dad,” I said. “It will only be in the morning. I’ll give you the money and you can save it for me.”
“Well—all right. I’ll put it aside for your school clothes.”
That was my first job. I got up at six-fifteen in the morning and met the milkman in front of the house half an hour later. I worked until quarter past eight, delivering milk in the neighborhood, then went to school. The thirty cents I got every day looked like a lot of money to me. I gave it to my dad at night, and he put it away for me.
Later in the year, I had a chance to get a Saturday job delivering groceries for a market down the street. When I asked my dad about it, he said, “You can take it, but be sure to tell them you can work all day only during the winter. Come spring, you’re going to play baseball in the afternoon.”
“Can I work mornings in the spring?”
“That’s all right. But not afternoons.”
I worked in the market for several years. When I was about ten, Jimmy Phelan, manager of the meat department, said, “Jimmy, we’re going to need help around Thanksgiving time. How would you like to learn to clean turkeys? I’ll give you a nickel for every one you do.”
In the two days before Thanksgiving, I dressed one hundred turkeys and made five dollars. The only trouble was, the paring knife was sharp and not easy to handle. It slipped every so often, and I gave myself some nasty cuts. But I didn’t dare let my father see them, so I used to put on a little gauze and adhesive tape and tell him they were scratches. Fortunately, although some of the cuts were deep, none was very long. I still carry scars on my hands from them.
Dad was always warning me about being careful of hand or arm injuries.
“You have a good, strong throwing arm,” he said. “You can’t afford to have anything happen to it. In baseball, you need good arms as well as good legs. And be careful of your fingers. You can’t have anything happen to them, or it might affect your hitting. Remember, son, you grip a bat with all ten fingers. If anything’s wrong with one of them, it can ruin you.”
Every job I ever had was determined by whether or not it would take time away from baseball. There was a gas station across the street from us, and behind it was a big empty lot where some of the older boys played ball afternoons. I used to go over there all the time to play with them. One day I was offered a job pumping gas a couple of hours Saturday evenings. I was about ten years old then. I worked there Saturday nights for years because it didn’t interfere with baseball. The only Saturdays I missed were when I played basketball in high school and we had Saturday night games. I get lonesome for the gas station whenever I think of Waterbury. It’s now run by a couple of young war veterans, Howie Gilland and Charley Martone. I still go over and help them pump gas for an hour or two whenever I go to Waterbury.
My dad let me take over a paper route when I was in the fifth grade. I paid eleven dollars to the boy who had it before me. It included deliveries in my immediate neighborhood and the rights to sell papers in front of the Sacred Heart Church on Sundays. Since I made good money and there was no time taken away from baseball, it was an ideal job.
On weekday mornings I didn’t have to work as long as I had for the milkman and I made much more money. By eight o’clock I was all through. My Sunday-morning schedule was busy, but worthwhile. I used to get up at quarter of five and go across the street to a little variety store, where my papers were left for me. I’d count them out, leave them there, go to five-thirty Mass, come out at six, pick up my papers, make my deliveries between Masses and be back in front of the church by seven o’clock. I’d be sold out by ten. I could make twelve dollars a Sunday and still have most of the day free for baseball. I sold papers until I started playing high-school basketball. After those Saturday-night games, I couldn’t get up early Sundays. I sold the daily route for fifteen dollars and got twenty-five for the Sunday route and the church location.
Basketball was the only game other than baseball that my father would let me play. It was the big winter sport around Waterbury, so it served as a good outlet while I was waiting for the baseball season to roll around. My closest friend, Bernie Sherwil
l, a short, dark-haired boy, was a fine basketball player and he wanted me to go out for the high-school team with him. My father gave me permission, and basketball became the secondary sports love of my life.
I decided to go to Leavenworth High, a public school, instead of to a parochial high school. The reason was that it would give me more time for baseball, since the high-school kids got out earlier than the parochial-school kids. The switch from Sacred Heart to Leavenworth was my idea, and my father enthusiastically endorsed it.
Bernie is still the best friend I have. Outside of a few neighbors and family friends he was the only boy my age who knew about my mother. When I realized that she suffered from mental illness, I was careful to hide it from most people, but I told Bernie all about it. I was in the eighth grade by this time, and I was desperately anxious for Bernie to understand me. At that point, I needed a lot of understanding.
I couldn’t stay still longer than a few minutes at a time. I didn’t know how to pace myself. I had to be on the go all the time. It was impossible for me to read a book because that meant being in one place too long. I couldn’t sit through a movie. I was unable to concentrate on anything except when I was actually playing baseball or basketball. I had to have constant action, and my worst hours came when I had nothing to do. I was a perpetual-motion machine, always wound up like a spring and never able to uncoil completely. No matter what I did or how exhausted I became doing it, I had to keep going. I might run dry physically, but my nerves kept pushing me to do more. I drew on every ounce of my reserve every day. All of my blood, my guts, my flesh and my physical and mental capacities were poured indiscriminately into everything. I couldn’t stop the mad merry-go-round of activity. Worse, I couldn’t figure out what it was that kept driving me.
