perched up on their knees together.
I raced down the steps and hid quietly next to an open window that looked out onto our front porch. I could now hear them as they spoke and began to understand what they were saying.
“He’s gone, he’s gone and he’s not coming back,” Mrs. Garrity said. “He left a note that said that he was leaving home, and that he is never coming back.”
“Did he say why he was leaving or where he was going?” my mom asked.
“No, it just said that he was leaving and that he loved us very much,” Mrs. Garrity answered. “The note was sitting on the kitchen table when we came down for breakfast.”
“I am sure he will change his mind and be back home very soon,” my mom said as she tried to comfort Mrs. Garrity. “You know how these young boys are.”
“She’s right,” my dad agreed, putting his arm on Mr. Garrity’s shoulder.
“There is no way that Johnny will be able to stay out in the world alone at the age of fourteen, and he will surely be back home in day or two at the most,” my dad said.
I am sure my parents both believed what they were saying, but I knew better. I had watched as Johnny had detached himself from all the parts of his life and slowly drifted away. He had really been all alone the past year, and where he was going now would probably be no different. As I sat next to the windowsill listening to them, I felt a sick feeling rising in my stomach. I knew that wherever Johnny was and wherever he was going, I would probably never see him again. A cold shiver cut right through my body and I wrapped my arms around myself as I would to keep warm on a cold December day. A single tear rolled down my cheek and reached the corner of my mouth. I could taste the salt as I put my head in my hands and began to cry silently.
Over the next few days, I watched as people came to the Garrity house in hopes of giving comfort to Mrs. Garrity. The police came and stayed for almost an hour before they left. Johnny’s Uncle Eddie came, as did many of his other relatives. They brought food, since Mrs. Garrity seemed unable to function normally. She seemed to stop worrying about household chores, and was barely able to get dressed in the morning.
I did not see her leave the house at all in the first few days, and each time I looked inside her house and caught a glimpse of her, she would be wearing the same old nightgown.
From what I could tell, it was as if her life had come to a sudden halt, and was now frozen in time. She did not seem to have the energy or desire to do anything. As days turned to weeks, the visitors to the Garritys slowed down to a trickle. It was hard to keep telling Mrs. Garrity that he would be home soon, when no one seemed to believe that was going to be the case.
I sometimes thought about Johnny being out there all alone. I wondered why he would do this to his family, and if I somehow had anything to do with his running away. I knew about the anger that raged inside of him, but I was never able to do anything to help him deal with it. Maybe I was the only one who saw it and I should have done something. Every time I saw Mrs. Garrity, I felt guilty that I had not done anything to help him. I knew him better than anyone else did, and I should have been the one to help him slay his inner demons.
As the summer of 1924 ended, everyone seemed to accept the fact that Johnny was gone for good. The school year started, and even though his name was still in the roll book, there would only be an empty seat where he should have been. I sometimes looked behind me as I walked to school in the morning, halfway expecting to see him running up behind me, but he was never there. My lifelong best friend was gone, maybe gone forever.
40
Even though Mrs. Garrity was never the same after Johnny left home, she eventually did start to function again. It took six months, but I started to see her outside the house occasionally. She would go to the grocery store and hang her laundry out on the clothesline in the back alley. However, she clearly was not the same. She never smiled and seldom spoke. She seemed as though she was still alive, but all of the zest for life had been sucked from her body. The same seemed true of Annie and all her brothers and sisters. The whole Garrity family had changed and the change had been dramatic.
By the end of 1925, Mr. Garrity seemed to disappear completely. I did not see him very often anyway, and he was around the house less and less after Johnny left. I always thought that Mrs. Garrity had somehow blamed him for Johnny running away, so his disappearance did not really surprise me very much. I got the feeling that Mrs. Garrity was happier when he wasn’t there anyway.
Each year another one of the Garrity children would graduate from high school and moved out of the house. This had started even before Johnny had run away. Mrs. Garrity worked very hard to be able to keep the house and support her family after Mr. Garrity left. I know her brother, Uncle Eddie, was over their house often and I assumed he was helping her with the money she needed to pay the bills.
Annie graduated high school in June of 1928, the year after Babe Ruth had smashed sixty home runs, breaking all the records. She was the last of the Garrity children to finish school, Johnny would have been next.
I saw Annie on the steps of her house the morning of her graduation. She was wearing a beautiful blue dress, and her hair was long and straight. It curled up at the edges just at the point where it met her dress. She looked as beautiful as at any time I ever remembered.
“Congratulations, Annie,” I said. “I guess now you’re gonna move out of the house too.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said, “I’m really in no hurry to be on my own.”
“If I leave, then my mom will be all alone in the house and I don’t think that she would be able to handle that.”
“I’ll be glad to have you stay right here in the neighborhood with us,” I said. “I sure would miss you if you weren’t here”
“That’s very nice of you to say,” she said with a smile. “I would miss you too.”
There was nothing that helped make my day more, than seeing a smile from Annie, and the thought of her actually missing me sent my spirits soaring.
I guess she was right, if she did leave, her mother would be all alone in the house. Annie did stay at home, right up until the day she got married in June of 1931.
My family was invited to the wedding and I watched it with mixed emotions. I loved Annie and certainly was glad to see her so happy, but a part of me always had hoped that I would be the one standing next to her when it happened.
At the celebration after the ceremony, I watched as my parents went over to congratulate Mrs. Garrity.
“You must be very proud,” my mother said.
“This was the day I have been looking forward to,” she replied. “I worked so hard to keep the house just so my kids would have a roof over their heads. I did everything I could to hold it together for them and get them to the point that they could make it on their own.”
“Well you did a great job,” my dad said.
“Thanks, and thanks for all the help you two gave us,” Mrs. Garrity said. “Someday I will pay you back for all the money you lent us and for all your kindness.”
“You don’t need to pay us back,” my dad said. “That’s what friends do, they help each other out.”
I did not know what Mrs. Garrity was talking about. I never once heard my parents say anything about helping her financially; after all, we were not really in great fiscal shape ourselves.
“I’m going to put the house up for sale in the next few weeks,” Mrs. Garrity said. “As soon as it sells I will pay you back every cent. I must insist, and would never feel right again if you give me a hard time about paying you back.”
Mrs. Garrity sold the house and moved out of Kensington few months later. She moved into a small one-bedroom apartment on the 4400 hundred block of Frankford Ave. It was on top of a small toy store and had the Frankford train loudly rumbling past her window all day and all night. My mom took me there to visit her once; it was not a great place to live.
“Well it’s small, but it’s seems comfortable,” my mothe
r said.
“It’s fine now that’s it just me,” Mrs. Garrity said. “Without the kids I really didn’t need a house. It would be more trouble to keep it up and I’m not looking to do more housework.”
The wallpaper was peeling of the walls, and the wood was rotting all around the apartment. It looked as though the place had not seen any cleaning or repairs done in quite a few years. I could not help but feel sorry for Mrs. Garrity, having to live in a place like this.
Just then the Frankford train roared by. The whole apartment shook, and I could hear the plates in Mrs. Garrity’s cabinet rattle from the vibration caused by the train.
“Does that happen often?” my mother asked.
“Just a few times an hour, you get used to it,” Mrs. Garrity replied.
As we left, I could tell that my mother felt sorry for Mrs. Garrity too, but there wasn’t anything she could do to help her.
I graduated high school in 1929. Just as I was about to start looking for a job, the great stock market crash of 1929 happened. The economy went down the drain and it was very hard for people to get any type of work. Luckily, both my parents were able to keep working, and money did not seem to be a problem for us.
I remember a conversation I had with my mom the day after graduation.
“I know I can get some job, even if I don’t make a lot of money,” I said.
“We don’t want you to get a job,” she said. “We
Me, Johnny, and The Babe Page 31
