Other Lives Unknown

 

 

 

This is quite personal but so what, it happened decades ago and some of you know the story anyways.

**

At an annual Fourth of July party a friend has, I met an old childhood neighborhood playmate, Scott, who I hadn’t seen in decades. We recognized each other but were equally shocked at how the other grew so old.

“You’re totally white!” said Scott.

“And you got FAT” I retorted.

We played “catch up” as people who haven’t seen each other in a long time do and then it became, “Whatever happened to So ‘n’ So?.” I wasn’t all that surprised to hear that Julia, a girl a couple of years older than me who lived down the street, was now a lesbian living in New Hampshire with her partner and working for the US Mail. It explained why she managed to beat all the boys up in our neighborhood when we were kids then. I can remember a few times when she threw me to the ground, knocking the air out of me and then responded to my complaining that she was “just playin’.” Just playin’? Or avenging? Who knows.

During our July 4^th conversation, Scott mentioned that he, way back then, “had never seen the inside of my house, ever.”

The first thought that ran through my head was “...Oh...that! Well, you were never going to see inside! No one was.” When I thought that, I knew I displayed that personal reflection on my face, I could feel it and he must’ve read it.

This takes explaining.

I knew my Mom was different from the other Moms in my neighborhood. Also, I knew our actual home was as too. I had been inside other’s homes and saw how organized and kept most were, how peopled those homes were, how open and usually inviting. The Moms I met were all sorts of various types, fish wives with a penchant for swearing, others were prim and proper and one was a child of the 60s kinda Mom who openly smoked pot. Other Moms were just complete screaming, yelling bitches and a few others seemed normal.

My Mom and home fell outside the usual parameters and I learned it from comparison. I then realized that, early on, that if I was to maintain any positive image and street cred, I was going to hide all the “different-ness” my home embodied by barring visitation by anyone. Why confirm what everyone sort of suspected anyways?

For whatever reason, my Mom suffered with major depression a good half of her life which sometimes slipped into batshit crazy psychosis. That meant dragging her off to various psychiatric hospitals a few times in the 70s. When stabilized and not loony, she did as little as possible around the house as depression wholly saps your energy and motivation. So I was quite accustomed to clutter, piles of undone laundry and carpets that needed vacuuming five months ago. When you’re born into that, that something is normal as you aren’t aware of any other way until you start traveling your own neighborhood.

What did she do all day? Sit at the kitchen table, drinking Lipton tea, smoking two packs of Newports a day and listening to WPRO AM radio talk shows. She did however get breakfast, lunch and dinner ready (most times) and the laundry when my Dad bitched about not having any clean Oxford shirts to wear to the bank.

I have wondered, just what my Dad thought of this situation. He was married to a women who became persistently ill and he, bound by the “in sickness and health” marriage dictum he could not break. Personally, if it were me, I’d feel robbed.

**

Funerals are big events. At my Dad’s, I met people I had only heard about and then met people I never knew who were related to me. It was a surreal event at the wake as so many came up to me, his work colleagues and other relatives on both sides I rarely saw who then had to explain who they were to me. At 13, I was pretty standoffish to total strangers who wanted to effuse their “Sorry about your loss” and obliged hugs on me. The whole time I was thinking, “Who the FUCK are you!?” as they wrapped their unfamiliar arms around me. That action just repelled me as I didn’t hug intruders who I have never met. But I had to be nice, stand there and fake my thankfulness for their offerings. “Thank you...yes..thank you..(Get AWAY from me! Who the hell are YOU? NO! Don’t hug...shit they’re hugging...better hug back..UGH!) I must’ve said that to myself 30 times that night.

One of the intruders was an Aunt Edna, who came from my Mom’s side and never knew existed.

A year later, this aunt Edna invited us to her home which was not more than a mile away. I had to be told she was at the funeral but I never remembered. You meet someone once and in certain situations, you can forget them forever as you’re pretty sure you’ll never see them again.

I was being forced to go visit. My first thoughts? “Oh, Christ, visit a supposed relative I know nothing about? Who I only met for 80 seconds a year ago...What...the WHOLE day we have to be there? What can we possibly have in common? What are we going to talk about?”

So we go and I remember the day, August 11^th 1977. Why? Because on Edna’s kitchen table was the latest news.

Yes, that long ago.

My Mom and Edna fell into conversation quickly and it moved onto people and events in the past I knew nothing about so I wandered off through her house. It was a smaller bungalow type and each room was nicely appointed, clean, ordered and inviting. Not pretentious nor a hovel for the poor. I started to like this house quickly.

This may seem odd but I swear I see homes, houses and think I can “feel” a certain vibe about them. Usually white trash homes I knew of and see today at times tell me ugly stories of who lives there. I guess it came from knowing some kids back then who I knew lived in perilous families that had abuse (both physical and sexual), drinking, unemployment, nightly arguing parents and God Knows What Else. Those homes eventually show their inner lives on the outside with uncut lawns, peeling paint, general shabbiness and the occasional cop car parked out front.

The vibe I got from Edna’s house was the total opposite. It was healthy, vibrant and welcoming.

As the day wore on, Edna and I began talking. She was good at warming me up quickly to lower my guard about her. She understood and didn’t rush at me with falseness of a hostess at a cocktail party. She was open and real. Her sincerity was what I quickly cued in on. She was quite different from most of the fucked up adults I knew in my neighborhood or school. She struck me as one of the very few people who were balanced.

Later into the afternoon, a feeling, a thought occurred in the back of my head.

“I want to live here.,,please adopt me!” This thought surprised me as it came out of nowhere and with great firmness.

I recognized this house as a good place to be. I was certain of it. I damn well knew what the lousy ones looked like and it’s not a huge effort to see what the opposite looks like and know it for certain.

Certainty. I’ve known some homes in my childhood neighborhood that oozed normalcy, health and stability, but my inner smoke detector told me otherwise. The outward appearance of these homes were a show for others to see. The sad fact was that some of these “normal” homes I knew of held some ugly secrets within that were buried...purposely and deeply buried to last past Judgment Day. Some of those secrets in those homes I never knew about till I was 40.

Shit. I was right about my estimation of some of those parents, homes and such. It goes far in explaining why some childhood friends were the way they were and how their lives eventually evolved.

But not Edna’s house. I gathered no indication of abnormality at all.

The day’s visit was over around 9PM. I had enjoyed my time there and realized it wasn’t the torture I thought it was going to be. Driving home, I mentioned to my Mom that Edna was “cool” and she agreed.

A year later, being 14 and summertime again, I found myself doing what I did a lot of, tool around on my ten speed, trying to find ways to entertain myself on a hot humid day. There was no one around to hang with so I just went off on my own, exploring and hopefully find something that would engage me, to kill the school/summer vacation boredom.

I found myself riding south along York Ave, then by the hospital and finally, in front of Edna’s house. I had not planned that. I just sort of did it. I wasn’t aware of any subconscious motivation at that age yet.

I sat there on my bike in front of her home, noticing her car wasn’t and was there for a good 15 minues, looking and remembering...and still wanting. It was a fantasy and I knew it then. The whole idea just wasn’t legally nor practically possible. I knew that much at 14. I wasn’t going to emancipate myself from my own home to Edna’s.

I never saw her again. As my Mom’s sickness cycled in and out, the outs had her further retreat into our home, blowing off the entire world and with that, any more visits to Edna.

When she was “bad,” I became a psychiatric nurse, check writer, bill payer, food cooker, clothing washer. The benefit that occurred was I had no parental supervision at all and did whatever the hell I wanted. I and others roamed Pawtucket at 2PM on our bikes, looking for shit to entertain us. I however was smarter than your average bear and never allowed myself to be in the back of cop car at 14. I do admit, it was a fun then at times as our mouse pack of a gang tried to emulate what our older siblings were doing in the late 70s.

Still, I wonder how I and a few others, would have done had we all been adopted by an Edna.

Some Thoughts

 

 

 

There was an old TV commercial in the mid 90s about the Dodge Caravan minivan. It showed a Mom busily zipping around town picking up the kids from school, dropping them off at different sports events, her going to the market after, then back for the kids and her finally crashing into bed later that night saying to the effect, “My Caravan enables me to have the "good life.”

I sat there and thought, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Being perpetually harried and occupied for every minute of every day is not the good life. I don’t care how time efficient you are, chasing minutia against the clock and then telling yourself this is a “life well lived” is to me, a real exertion of mental gymnastics. People are guilty of this and I too at times. However though, if you get a hint, a small thought in the back of your head that you really may not like the situation you’re in, but to avoid that truth you then portray it in loftier, more positive BS? It can make your life, situation, seem tolerable and perhaps...noble.

I once overheard a 4 year J&W chef/manager at Seekonk’s Andrea restaurant say to himself, after the problem of two wedding receptions occurring in the same room, at the same time (a booking fuck up) that “This is not a problem, but an opportunity.”

No dude, this is a problem...and someone dumped the fuck up on you. You get to eat it and then get reamed out of you don’t fix this successfully in 8 hours. If you manage to pull it off, you will get verbal praise, which costs Andrea’s bottom line nothing. Now problem solve for them for several years and you may, may get a promotion. “Opportunity?” Well, if you use that to carry and motivate yourself through a difficult time, perhaps it’s OK, but if you totally believe it, turn it into a religion, a CAUSE, I begin to wonder about your grasp of reality. I guess little lies to yourself, forced perspectives you may take in order to get through a problem may work, if it’s the only answer and action that you have at the moment, but for how long and how many times do you use this and then it becomes a way of life?

**

For all the faults my Dad had, and he had many, he also had some great advice. You learn, in time, that your parents were human too and they couldn’t get everything right. You learn this, you can call yourself an adult finally.

In the summer of ‘75, Dad was told that he had been elected CEO of First Federal Savings & Trust, a small chain of banks headquartered in Providence. He’d take the position January 1^st 1976. Was he happy? Not in the way you would think, he was more relieved when he heard the news.

On a car ride in his 14 foot Impala one Saturday, we were talking about the new change and he says to me, “There’s nothing wrong with hard work, devotion and stick to it-iv-ness. But don’t become a “company man’ where you live exclusively for them and not your own life. Yeah, you have to find a balance in all that.” Hindsight, 20/20 vision comes too late huh?

When I asked him was it worth it, those past decades of knocking himself out for the bank, he said, “Well, now I no longer have too...I will direct policy instead which oddly enough, is far easier than what I used to do.”

Some seconds go by...

“Was it worth it…” he finally says and trails off. He wasn’t so sure himself as he was still working that question in his own head still.

A few minutes go by and he then says to me, “Remember all the way financial products work? How I taught you? USE them! Make your money work for you! Work smarter, not harder!”

I read between the lines in that last statement, he wasn’t all together happy of the effort he put in that finally brought him to the pinnacle of success. It was hard won and I suspected he was battle weary from it all at 45. He had “made it,” succeeded, but that lasted just one year and none of us knew at the time that it would be so short.

How did he enjoy his new success? He ate it. His favorite thing to do was to eat out and boy, did we ever for a year. On Friday’s we’d try different restaurants and he’d stuff himself and down two Manhattan cocktails along with it, or six.  At Archie’s in Pawtucket once, he and I sat in the same boothside with my Mom on the other. I had a plate of scallops and he a delmonico steak. Out of nowhere, he turns and stabs his fork into my plate and spears up three to four scallops and eats them, without asking. “Richard!” my Mom protests, “You raised in a barn? You NEVER do that at a table!”

“I paid for it” he retorts.

“I don’t care! Where are your manners!” Mom bitched.

He then slices ¼ of his steak off and plops that in my plate as restitution. That didn’t assuage me at all as that piggish behavior left a bad taste in my mouth. His new money and position enabled him to be a glutton and he ballooned in that last year.

He was also planning to sell this house in Pawtucket to move to a neighborhood in Lincoln where snobby uppity types lived and turned up their noses at anyone who didn’t come from money. He had “arrived” and needed a house that stated that fact.

A year after he was installed as CEO at the bank he was dead. Double bronchial “walking pneumonia” as they called it then, It was the same thing that killed Jim Henson of the Muppets.

Though now, from my talking to Dr’s and the fact my brother had full blown cystic fibrosis and the fact they both died nearly the same age, the Dr’s suspect my Dad may have been just un-diagnosed with CF. There weren’t many great tests for that in the 30s or 40s then so it may have slipped by and the disease can show in strange ways till it finally ramps up and gets you in the last year. Oddly enough, my brother was diagnosed rather very late at 25 when back then they could nail the diagnosis when you were an infant. How he managed to slip through the cracks for so long, neither he nor his doctors at the time could figure out. In one way, it didn’t matter as there was no cure for this, only management till the inevitable came.

So one year of “fun” Dad had with the position, money and dreams.

I took Dad’s knowledge of finance and used his advice, rather cautiously but it yielded some decent results. I also knew that if I didn’t love something well enough, I would never put the 101% effort into it because it “wasn’t worth it” to me. However, IF I did love something...I would. I would pick and choose what I thought was important to me and not some other’s belief on how to live life. Knocking myself out for the supposed sake of it, all the time, with everything, wasn’t gonna happen, and I wasn’t about to race around town in a minvan and then tell myself this is a “full life” because even though I can BS myself rather artfully, this was too much self deception. I can’t lie to myself that badly. If I believe something sucks, it’s real hard for me to convince myself otherwise. When the evidence stares into my face...what other conclusion can I reach?

Rotten Stuff I Did as a Kid That I Now Can Admit Too

 

 

“For a kid with some decent goodwill, you got some sense of retribution!” said a young adult about me when I told him how I flattened my Dad’s rear tire when I was 7 because I felt mistreated by him. Long story short, I felt oppressed by him one Saturday (I felt I was unfairly grounded and really took offense to his pulling rank on me as he did, “I’m the Dad and what I say GOES!”). God, even at that age I bristled at the idea of anyone lording raw, irrational power over me just because they could. So, to even things up I then placed two inch common nail snug against his right rear tire. When he would back up out of the driveway, it would drive itself right into the tire. My Mom and I didn’t hear from him for hours after as he was at some gas station in Providence getting it fixed.

**

When your a kid, you don’t face the enemy (adults) directly as that would be suicide. You do what the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, you go asymmetrical. You fight on your terms only and only if time, the situation and everything else is in your favor. Add to that, you had better be like the Mafia, consulting an attorney on what NOT to do so the state has no evidence to prosecute you when you commit the crime. In short, pre-plan accordingly to get away with it.

I can’t confirm it but in 1974, my parent’s marriage got a bit rocky over the fact my Dad, having been promoted to VP at First Federal Savings & Loan, was also given his own personal secretary, Kathy. Kathy, I remember was a 20 Something, Mary Tyler Moore sort-of look alike. My Dad was in his 40’s, probably bored of being married for the past 20 years and perhaps strayed. I can’t prove anything. I sometimes over heard sort of hushed arguments from my parents over “Kathy.” Mostly my Mom wondering just why my Dad was spending soo much time with her at various business meetings around Providence.

Kathy also called our house enough times speaking to my Dad but from what I heard, it was boring banking talk. But at other times he told my Mom he had to “go to the bank” to attend to some problem after hours which prompted my Mom asking, “Is Kathy going to be there?” My Dad spending quite a bit of time with a younger unmarried women sure got my Mom thinking. 

Now I don’t know why I was irate at my Dad that particular week but probably it was more of the same, him acting like a jerk to me or God Knows What. But it was enough to my wanting a bit of payback. While my Dad was out of the house one night but Mom wasn’t, the phone rang. I answered it and it was near-alzheimered grandmother, Hilda, my Dad’s mom asking if “Richard” was home. I said “No” and hung up.

“Ronnie!” my Mom asks from the other room, “Who was that?”

 

Damn I could be quick on my feet at times. I nonchalantly lied and replied, “Kathy,” knowing it would perk my Mom’s attention real quick.

“KATHY? What did she want?” which prompted my Mom to come into the kitchen where I was.

“If Dad was home, something about the bank and a restaurant or something..it was hard to tell, she was whispering to me.”

“Whispering?” says Mom.

“Yeah..” I say.

Mom goes back to the living room to stew.

Lying in my bed that night, I could hear a real row going on in the cellar where they “discussed” matters so my brother and I wouldn’t hear. Well, I heard fine that night. I lay there knowing Dad was being ripped up and down by Mom with him badly explaining all this time he was spending with Kathy “professionally.” Mom never did ask too much about that call that night as all it did was open that can of worms that was open anyways.

“Got you back you son-of-a-bitch.” I thought as I lay there under the covers.

I was nine years old when I did that. Do I sound like Damien to you?

There was talk of divorce between them that year but as far as I know, nothing came of it. I suspect my Dad being elected CEO of the bank less than a year later may have changed my Mom’s mind. Legally, she was the “#1 Wife” and any other #2 had no claims whatsoever on his future earnings or insurance policies.

**

The other problem with being a kid and having neighbors is that they rat you out to your parents. The neighbors to my immediate south, the Walmsleys, took a real interest in me and the other kids on the street, looking to see if we were getting into trouble, and if so, report it directly to our parents. This became a hindrance to our having “fun.”

That summer, by brother had shown me how a siphon works. He had a clear plastic tube and placed it in a pail of water on the steps with the tube leading down, sucked on it and like magic, the water flowed, I was amazed by this. I had never seen one. So for a good few days I’m in the backyard siphoning buckets of water. When your 10 this stuff is what keeps you entertained. Simple things for simple minds!

One July in ‘75 I overheard Mr. Walmsley telling my Dad they were spending a few days on the Cape and would be leaving the upcoming Saturday morning. I don’t know how these thoughts came to me but the little Viet Cong in me started thinking quickly.

One: They were not going to be home this weekend.

Two: They have an above ground pool in the backyard.

Three: Siphons should work on that as it’s just a larger bucket of water. There is a way to empty the pool w/o slashing the liner.

So, late Saturday night when they had left that morning, I hopped the fence into their backyard. I crept to the far side and whipped the tube into their pool and pulled a long suck on it. Yecch! Chlorinated water! I then placed the tube gently against the side of the pool and lo and behold, it was running.

I hop the fence to my yard, go inside and go to bed.

The next morning I had forgotten I had done it. By late afternoon, the thought hit me and I snuck into their backyard and the whole lawn was squishy with water. I looked into the pool and ¾ of it was gone!

I quickly took the tube out and began fretting that I had “gone too far” and that the soaked backyard was not what I wanted. I snuck back hoping the next few days the July sun would dry it all out before they came home.

It did.

The day they came back I just acted like any other 10 yr old kid, riding my bike, playing with the others kids when I noticed my Dad and Mr. Walmsly talking over the fence. I can’t resist, I have to hear this! So I go back there like an uninterested kid and listen in.

“Richard, I don’t get it...the liner isn’t torn at all! I checked it out all morning and as I refill it, there is NO leaking!”

“Well” my Dad says, “I can’t explain it, but I never had a pool like yours so I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

I’m eating this up and I blurt out, “Maybe the summer sun evaporated it!”

My Dad shoots that idea down saying that three days of sunlight wouldn’t air out 500 gallons of water. It was then Mr. Walmsley shot me a look, a suspicious one, that I just had to of something to do with it. But what? He never trusted me or any of the other kids on the block for that matter. I believe my standing there with a mile-wide shit eating grin on my face probably made Mr. Walmsley think twice about me. 

Much later that summer I told a few closer friends about it. “Ahh fuck him! He tells everyone what we do even when we don’t do it!”

Moral support from the neighborhood!