Dear Father, Dear Son

by Larry Elder

  It was a great trip. We even took in a Dodgers-Giants game at Candlestick Park and listened to the ballgames on the radio. Mom corrected legendary Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully’s grammar.

  “Back, back, and wa-a-ay back. To the wall! A home run for Willie McCovey. And if it weren’t for the wind, there’s no telling where that ball would have went.”

  “Would have gone!” Mom said, shaking her head.

  Dorothy kept up a continuous comedy monologue. After walking around Yosemite, we sat down at a rest area. A bald man with skinny white legs and wearing a massive pair of Bermuda shorts sat down nearby—luckily, just out of earshot.

  “Look at that man,” Dorothy said. “Look at that ugly man. Good Lord, that is one ugly man. Ain’t no reason for anybody to be that ugly.”

  “Dorothy!” Mom said. We were howling.

  “Now just be honest, Vi, ain’t no reason for anybody to be that ugly.” Even Mom started laughing.

  When Mom and Dorothy weren’t talking politics, they talked about men—as in how useless they thought they were and that they “just took up space.”

  “Dorothy,” I once asked, “why haven’t you gotten married?”

  “Honey, if you could take the best qualities from all my sisters’ husbands, and put them in one man, you’d still come up short.”

  Dad would overhear them talking, and their voices would die down when he walked by them. He assumed that he was likely the topic of conversation. Dad could only imagine the digs Dorothy must have made at him, given the harsh things he’d heard her say about other men.

  Dorothy helped me pack for law school. She waited for Mom to leave the room.

  “I know your mother says all sorts of bad things about your father. But you should know this: He was always there.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He worked and he came home. He was dependable. Kept his word. He kept up his end of the bargain, no matter what your mother says. He was always there.”

  “Dorothy said that?” Dad said, shocked.

  “She sure did.”

  “I had no idea she felt like that.”

  “That’s what she said, ‘He was always there.’”

  “‘He was always there.’ She said that?”

  “You guys make quite a pair—you and Mom.” I added, “She is one tough hombre.”

  17

  “SHE’S SOMETHING”

  I got a paper route delivering the Herald Examiner on my black Schwinn bicycle. George was the man in charge of all the delivery boys. He was balding on top with thick white hair on the sides and reeked of cigar smoke from the stogies he was never without.

  “You’re late, Elder,” he barked, no matter what time you came in. After the first time he said it, you realized it was his way of saying hello. “What is this world coming to?”

  “Be glad I’m here,” I said. “Let’s see you try and deliver them.”

  “Hey Hal, a lady complained that you hit her dog with the paper. What is this world coming to? You’re fired.” Everybody got fired at least once a month.

  George always complained about “what this world is coming to.” I delivered during the murder spree of Richard Speck, the serial killer who raped and butchered eight Chicago student nurses. Each day brought new revelations.

  “Oh, Sweet Jesus,” George threw up his hands. “Don’t put me on the jury. I’ll tell you what they should do to this bastard. Cut off one body part each day. Then give him a trial. Coleman, you’re late! Yeah, one body part for every nurse he killed. What is this world coming to?”

  George stacked the number of newspapers each boy needed for his route. We picked each paper up, one at a time, folded it, and put it in a machine that had a mechanical arm with string attached to it. When the paper touched the arm, it came down and then up, leaving the paper neatly folded in half with a tight string bow around it. Once you got the hang of it, the whole thing took about a second. You had to be careful not to get your finger caught under the arm. It wouldn’t rip off a finger, but it could gouge and tear into one. Then you scooped up the papers and put them in a canvas bag, which fit over your bike handlebars.

  “It was a good job,” said Dad, “except when it came to gettin’ paid.”

  My first route had thirty houses, and I did so well I soon got a bigger one, this time with almost fifty houses. We had to knock on the door to collect from each customer every month. Most paid on time, and you were paid a percentage of your expected collections. But if someone was late or you got completely stiffed, it came out of the paperboy’s end.

  “Mom always thought that was unfair, and she wondered whether it was the Herald Examiner’s policy or George’s,” I told Dad.

  Every month, no matter how successful I was in collecting on time and from almost every customer on my route, George always said I was short.

  “Elder, you owe me three dollars.”

  “But George—”

  “It’s right here.”

  “But I was really careful—-”

  “No you weren’t.” He punched a bunch of keys on his adding machine, looked at the tape and chomped down on his cigar. “Hu-umm, yup, you’re three dollars light.”

  George did this every month to every kid.

  “So I told Mom.”

  “Uh-oh,” Dad laughed.

  She asked me how much I kept and how much George got, and then she went over my account records for every month I worked.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  While she drove there, she asked me to tell her about George, what I knew about him, and what he was like. When Mom and I got to his office, the place was jammed with kids and the sound of two dozen mechanical arms going up and down. Everything went quiet, like the Tombstone saloon just before a gunfight. The kids stared at Mom standing in the door with her arms on her hips, and me pointing my arm toward George. He looked up and saw her stomping right toward him.

  “Now, Dad, you know how she walks when she’s mad.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  Before Mom even got to George’s desk, he mashed out the cigar, reached into the drawer, pulled out a stack of bills and started counting bills off into a pile.

  “Never said anything to Mom, just started counting. She scooped up the money and said, ‘Don’t you try that again. What is this world coming to?’”

  I came home twenty-three dollars richer.

  Dad laughed, leaned back, and clapped his hands.

  “Wait, there’s a little more to this.”

  I told Dad that when she and I laughed about this years later, Mom regretted how she handled it.

  “Why?” Dad said. “She handled it just fine.”

  “Not what she thought. She said, ‘I wish I had that to do all over again. That man was cheating all you kids. I should have gotten everybody’s money straight.’”

  “She’s somethin’,” Dad said.

  “Well, she didn’t pull out a gun like you did on the ice man.”

  “Whatever works.”

  “Did you know Mom is why Dennis joined the Army?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dennis was just bopping around. He dropped out of high school, started doing drugs, got clean, then started up again. She tried everything. She helped him find jobs, but he wouldn’t keep them. She paid for a school extension course, but he stopped going after a short time.

  “Mom was desperate. I don’t know how, but she finally convinced him to go into the Army,” I told Dad. “Maybe Dennis agreed because he thought they wouldn’t take him.”

  Dennis applied, passed his mental and physical tests, and it looked like a go. But there was a problem. The local recruiter refused to sign the necessary papers.

  “Dennis told Mom that the recruiter wouldn’t sign.”

  This was during the Vietnam War. If they put a mirror under your nose, and you could fog it up just a little, you were in—especially if you wanted in. But this recruiter refused, and Dennis couldn
’t explain why. Mom got the recruiter’s name, went to his office, and begged him.

  “Why won’t you sign this?” she said, pointing to the papers she’d laid on his desk.

  “He’s too light. Doesn’t weigh enough for his height.”

  “How light?”

  “Two pounds.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Ma’am, regulations are regulations.”

  He barely looked at her. When he wasn’t running his hand back and forth over his crew cut, he straightened his desk and looked at his watch.

  “He acted like I was some kind of gnat on his ass,” she told me later.

  They went back and forth. Under her grilling, he admitted that he did have the authority to waive the weight shortfall and admit Dennis.

  “But I just don’t like his attitude,” he said.

  “Is that it?” Mom said. “You could sign for him, but you just won’t?”

  “That’s right,” the recruiter said. “He has to go through me, and I say no.”

  Mom couldn’t remember when she was that angry. In front of Dennis was the possibility that he might learn some discipline, get some direction, and maybe even make a career out of the Army.

  “That recruiter liked lording over me,” Mom told me. “And I wasn’t having it.”

  She got up and closed his door.

  “Here’s how this is going to go.” She picked up Dennis’s papers and put them in front of the recruiter.

  “You’re going to sign these right now.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Oh, yes, you will. If you don’t, this is what I’m going to do.”

  Mom grabbed the collar on her blouse.

  “I’m going to rip off this top. And I’m going to run out of your office screaming at the top of my lungs that you tried to rape me.”

  “You’ll do no such thing! I’ll deny it! And nobody’s going to believe you!”

  “Most won’t. But enough of them will.”

  She pointed to the other offices through the glass panels and to the people walking around.

  “If you’re the asshole I think you are, I bet you’ve made some enemies. And they won’t care whether it’s true or not, they’ll put in your record that you were accused of rape—and there’ll be an investigation. Doesn’t matter how it turns out.”

  “You, you—”

  “And your enemies will use it against you. It’s your word against mine. My son is headed for jail or the cemetery if he doesn’t turn his life around. Now I know you don’t give a shit. But that’s my son. And I do give a shit. And this is his shot. And I’ll be damned if I let you get in my way.”

  “You won’t do that!”

  “Try me!”

  “Don’t tell me,” Dad said.

  He signed the papers.

  “Now get out!” he said.

  “And don’t you try anything,” Mom said, “or I’ll be back.”

  Dennis didn’t make a career out of the Army, but he served and was honorably discharged.

  “Did she think about this whole plan ahead of time?” Dad asked.

  “That’s what I asked her,” I said. “She told me she improvised.”

  “She’s a pistol,” he said.

  “I have a saying about Mom.”

  “What?”

  “If she’d gone into politics, she would have been president. She had gone into crime, she would have been Charlie Manson.”

  “My goodness.”

  She wasn’t big on giving compliments, and even worse at accepting them.

  “Mom, that’s a beautiful blouse.”

  “Oh, this old thing.”

  Or, “Mom, did you make that? It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah, but I made a mistake here and here.”

  Or, “Mom your hair looks great.”

  “What? I barely combed it, and the ends need cutting.”

  One day when it happened, I said, “Mom, when someone gives you a compliment, I want you to try something.”

  “What?” she said.

  “Try ‘Thank you.’”

  “After that,” Dad asked, “did she get any better?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “I don’t know what it’s like to be married to her, but she’s helluva mother.”

  Mom made me feel like I could spit lightening and make bullets bounce off my chest. She sat me down on the front porch when I was about six years old. She had an illustrated book of all the presidents from George Washington to then-President Dwight Eisenhower. We talked about their achievements and disappointments.

  “Larry,” she said tapping the book, “if you work hard enough and want it bad enough, someday you can be in this book.”

  “She’s right,” Dad said.

  “All I know is that I thought if she believed it, it must be true.”

  “It is.”

  And no one could make you feel worse.

  “I was goofing off instead of studying for the Ohio bar exam,” I told Dad.

  I spent very little time on it, never went to the bar review classes, and assumed anyone getting through a good law school could handle this test. After all, an 80 or 90 percent passing margin? How hard could it be?

  About a week before the exam, a friend brought over a practice test he’d gotten from his bar review course.

  “I took the practice exam myself. I flunked it big time. It was much harder than I thought. And I only had a week to learn what bar review courses cover in four months.”

  I already had a job at a major law firm, and they damn well expect you to pass the bar. Your career is damaged before it starts if you flunk.

  “What did you do?”

  “I studied my ass off, but deep down I knew it was way too late.”

  I called Mom, told her what happened, and prepared her for my imminent failure.

  “Mom,” I said, “I’m so sorry I let you down.”

  She said nothing for a long time. “No, Larry, you let yourself down.”

  “Ouch,” Dad said. “What happened?

  “I passed. But I never pulled a stunt like that again. You remember when I came home to take the California bar exam?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s one of the toughest bar exams in the country with a high failure rate. I took a long vacation from work, flew out to California, closed the bedroom door, and studied for three weeks. Do you remember what you said?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a three-day exam. I came home after the first day and told Mom that it wasn’t hard. ‘If that’s all it is,’ I said, ‘I’ll breeze through.’ Then I noticed you sitting there, and I thought you were going to jump on me for being arrogant. So I said, ‘But I guess I better not get over-confidant.’ Do you remember what you said?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do. You said, ‘If you don’t believe in yourself, who will?’ I was shocked. I thought, ‘He’s actually encouraging me.’”

  “I’ve always encouraged you—or tried to.”

  I thought I’d leave that alone—for now.

  It was 8:10.

  18

  “NOT AS TOUGH AS YOU THINK”

  Doris, a nineteen-year-old college student from Tennessee, moved in and lived with us for a few years. Her mother grew up in Huntsville and was a childhood friend of my mother’s. The friend asked Mom if she could help Doris when she came to L.A. for college. Mom offered to let her stay with us until she graduated.

  We picked her up from the airport. What would she be like? How would she look?

  “I’m Doris. You must be Mrs. Elder.”

  “Call me Vi.” Mom said. Mom liked her right away.

  Doris glowed—beautiful, sophisticated, and smart. She couldn’t wait to discover and conquer Los Angeles, quite a contrast from her Tennessee hometown. Our house had a different energy from the moment she walked in.

  “I hope that girl doesn’t get hurt,” I once heard Mom say to Dorothy. />
  “Better watch out for that girl,” Dorothy said, “and maybe she’ll get through.”

  Doris sang all the time—when she was doing laundry, shopping, playing gin rummy, or brushing her hair. She sounded as good as the singers whose records she danced to. She danced well, and taught us the latest steps—or at least tried to.

  We’d watch her try on and discard dress after dress until she found the one that worked. I could never predict the one she’d settle on. Then she’d carefully pick out the earrings.

  “This one or this one?”

  “That one,” I’d say.

  “No, too flashy.”

  “How about this one?”

  “No. Don’t like that one. Yeah, I’m going to go with this one.”

  She never agreed with any of my choices, but at least she asked.

  She sang Shirley Bassey’s “You Put A Spell On Me” while she put on lipstick and misted her wrists with perfume.

  She was riveting. We’d listen to her speak with friends on the phone. The way she laughed, smelled, and acted created a whole new world in this nearly all-male household. And Mom liked having her companionship.

  Nobody complained when Mom moved Kirk back into the bedroom with Dennis and me. So once again we triple-bunked. We loved having a “sister.” When we had girl trouble, she’d give advice.

  A date would show up, and sit nervously in the living room as he waited for her to make an entrance. I’d talk with them, and try to guess whether they would be granted a second date. I liked many of them, but never saw any of them again. One date and out.

  “If that’s Richard, don’t tell him I’m here,” she’d say.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Just, you know. Didn’t work.”

  “Why didn’t it?”