His mother says, “Oh, no, Earl, you don’t mean that,” and she reaches forward to hold him, but he backs fiercely away.
“No! I do mean it! If you let him back into our house, I’m leaving.”
“Earl. Where will you go? You’re just a boy.”
“So help me, Ma, don’t treat me like this. I can go lots of places, don’t worry. I can go to Boston, I can go to Florida, I can go to lots of places. All I got to do is hitchhike. I’m not a little kid anymore,” he says, and he draws himself up and looks down at her.
“You don’t hate your father.”
“Yes, Ma. Yes, I do. And you should hate him, too. After all he did to you.”
They are silent for a moment, facing each other, looking into each other’s pale blue eyes. He is her son, his face is her face, not his father’s. Earl and his mother have the same sad, downward-turning eyes, like teardrops, the same full red mouth, the same clear voice, and now, at this moment, they share the same agony, a life-bleeding pain that can be stanched only with a lie, a denial.
She says, “All right, then. I’ll tell Father LaCoy. I’ll tell him that I don’t want to talk to your father, it’s gone too far now. I’ll tell him that I’m going to get a divorce.” She opens her arms, and her son steps into them. Above her head, his eyes jammed shut, he holds on to his tiny mother and sobs, as if he’s learned that his father has died.
His mother says, “I don’t know when I’ll get the divorce, Earl. But I’ll do it. Things’ll work out. They have to. Right?” she asks, as if asking a baby who can’t understand her words.
He nods. “Yeah … things’ll work out,” he says.
They let go of one another and walk slowly on toward the church.
Dec. 12, 1953
Dear Jack Bailey,
Yes, it’s me again and this is my third letter asking you to make my mother Adele Painter into queen for a day. Things are much worse now than last time I wrote to you. I had to quit the hockey team so I could take an extra paper route in the afternoons because my mother’s job at Grover Cronin’s is minimum wage and can’t pay our bills. But that’s okay, it’s only junior high so it doesn’t matter like it would if I was in high school. So I don’t really mind.
My mother hasn’t had any of her spells lately, but she’s still really nervous and cries a lot and yells a lot at the kids over little things because she’s so worried about money and everything. We had to get winter coats and boots this year from the church, St. Joe’s, and my mom cried a lot about that. Now that Christmas is so close everything reminds her of how poor we are now, even her job which is wrapping gifts. She has to stand on her feet six days and three nights a week so her varicose veins are a lot worse than before, so when she comes home she usually has to go right to bed.
My brother George comes home now after school and takes care of Louise until I get through delivering papers and can come home and make supper for us, because my mother’s usually at work then. We don’t feel too sad because we’ve got each other and we all love each other but it is hard to feel happy a lot of the time, especially at Christmas.
My mother paid out over half of one week’s pay as a down payment to get a lawyer to help her get a divorce from my father and get the court to make him pay her some child support, but the lawyer said it might take two months for any money to come and the divorce can’t be done until next June. The lawyer also wrote a letter to my father to try and scare him into paying us some money but so far it hasn’t worked. So it seems like she spent that money on the lawyer for nothing.
Everything just seems to be getting worse. If my father came back the money problems would be over.
Well, I should close now. This being the third time I wrote in to nominate my mother for Queen for a Day and so far not getting any answer, I guess it’s safe to say you don’t think her story is sad enough to let her go on your show. That’s okay because there are hundreds of women in America whose stories are much sadder than my mom’s and they deserve the chance to win some prizes on your show and be named queen for a day. But my mom deserves that chance too, just as much as that lady with the amputated legs I saw and the lady whose daughter had that rare blood disease and her husband died last year. My mom needs recognition just as much as those other ladies need what they need. That’s why I keep writing to you like this. I think this will be my last letter though. I get the picture, as they say.
Sincerely,
Earl Painter
The Friday before Christmas, Earl, George, Louise, and their mother are sitting in the darkened living room, George sprawled on the floor, the others on the sofa, all of them eating popcorn from a bowl held in Louise’s lap and watching The Jackie Gleason Show, when the phone rings.
“You get it, George,” Earl says.
Reggie Van Gleason III swirls his cape and cane across the tiny screen in front of them, and the phone goes on ringing. “Get it yourself,” says George. “I always get it, and it’s never for me.”
“Answer the phone, Louise,” their mother says, and she suddenly laughs at one of Gleason’s moves, a characteristic high-pitched peal that cuts off abruptly, half a cackle that causes her sons, as usual, to look at each other and roll their eyes in shared embarrassment. She’s wearing her flannel bathrobe and slippers, smoking a cigarette, and drinking from a glass of beer poured from a quart bottle on the floor beside her.
Crossing in front of them, Louise cuts to the corner table by the window and picks up the phone. Her face, serious most of the time anyhow, suddenly goes dark, then brightens, wide-eyed. Earl watches her, and he knows who she is listening to. She nods, as if the person on the other end can see her, and then she says, “Yes, yes,” but no one, except Earl, pays any attention to her.
After a moment, the child puts the receiver down gently and returns to the sofa. “It’s Daddy,” she announces. “He says he wants to talk to the boys.”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” George blurts, and stares straight ahead at the television.
Their mother blinks her eyes, opens and closes her mouth, looks from George to Louise to Earl and back to Louise again. “It’s Daddy?” she says. “On the telephone?”
“He says he wants to talk to the boys.”
Earl crosses his arms over his chest and shoves his body back into the sofa. Jackie Gleason dances delicately across the stage, a graceful fat man with a grin.
“Earl?” his mother asks, eyebrows raised.
“Nope.”
The woman stands up slowly and walks to the phone. She speaks to their father; all three children watch carefully. She nods, listening, now and then opening her mouth to say something, closing it when she’s interrupted. “Yes, yes,” she says. And, “Yes, they’re both here.” She listens again, then says, “Yes, I know, but I should tell you, Nelson, the children … the boys, they feel funny about talking to you. Maybe … maybe you could write a letter first or something. It’s sort of … hard for them. They feel very upset, you see, especially now, with the holidays and all. We’re all very upset, and worried. And with me losing my job and having to work down at Grover Cronin’s and all…” She nods, listens, her face expressionless. “Well, Lord knows, that would be very nice. It would have been very nice a long time ago, but no matter. We surely need it, Nelson.” She listens again, longer this time, her face gaining energy and focus as she listens. “Well, I’ll see, I’ll ask them again. Wait a minute,” she says, and puts her hand over the receiver and says, “Earl, your father wants to talk to you.” She smiles wanly.
Earl squirms in his seat, crosses and uncrosses his legs, looks away from his mother to the wall opposite. “I got nothin’ to say to him.”
“Yes, but… I think he wants to say some things to you, though. Can’t hurt to let him say them.”
Silently, the boy gets up from the couch and crosses the room to the phone. As she hands him the receiver, his mother smiles with a satisfaction that bewilders and instantly angers him.
“H’lo,” he sa
ys.
“H’lo, son. How’re ya doin’, boy?”
“Okay.”
“Attaboy. Been a while, eh?”
“Yeah. A while.”
“Well, I sure am sorry for that. You know, that it’s been such a while and all. But I been going through some hard times myself. Got laid off, didn’t work for most of the summer because of that damned strike. You read about that in the papers?”
“No.”
“How’s the paper route?”
“Okay.”
“Hey, son, look, I know it’s been tough, believe me, I know. It’s been tough for everyone. So I know what you’ve been going through. No kidding. But it’s gonna get better, things’re gonna get better now. And I want to try and make it up to you guys a little, what you had to go through this last six months or so. I want to make it up to you guys a little, you and Georgie and Louise. Your ma, too. If you’ll let me. Whaddaya say?”
“What?”
“Whaddaya say you let me try to make it up a little to you?”
“Sure. Why not? Try.”
“Hey. Listen, Earl, that’s quite an attitude you got there. We got to do something about that, eh? Some kind of attitude, son. I guess things’ve done a little changing around there since the old man left, eh? Eh?”
“What’d you expect? That everything’d stay the same?” Earl hears his voice rising and breaking into a yodel, and his eyes fill with tears.
“No, of course not. I understand, son. I understand. I know I’ve made some big mistakes this year, lately. Especially with you kids, in dealing with you kids. I didn’t do it right, the leaving and all. It’s hard, Earl, to do things like that right. I’ve learned a lot. But, hey, listen, everybody deserves a second chance. Right? Even your old man?”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
“Sure. Damn right,” he says, and then he adds that he’d like to come by tomorrow afternoon and see them, all of them, and leave off some Christmas presents. “You guys got your tree yet?”
Earl can manage only a tiny, cracked voice: “No, not yet.”
“Well, that’s good, real good. ’Cause I already got one in the back of the truck, a eight-footer I cut this afternoon myself. There’s lots of trees out in the woods here in Holderness. Not many people and lots of trees. Anyhow, I got me a eight-footer, Scotch pine. The best. Whaddaya think?”
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
His father rattles on, while Earl feels his chest tighten into a knot and tears spill over his cheeks. The man repeats several times that he’s really sorry about the way he’s handled things these last few months. But it’s been hard for him, too, and it’s hard for him even to say this, he’s never been much of a talker, but he knows he’s not been much of a father lately, either. That’s all over now, though, over and done with, he assures Earl; it’s all a part of the past. He’s going to be a different man now, a new man. He’s turned over a new leaf, he says. And Christmas seems like the perfect time for a new beginning, which is why he called them tonight and why he wants to come by tomorrow afternoon with presents and a tree and help set up and decorate the tree with them, just like in the old days. “Would you go for that? How’d that be, son?”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, sure, son. What?”
“Daddy, are you gonna try to get back together with Mom?” Earl looks straight at his mother as he says this, and though she pretends to be watching Jackie Gleason, she is listening to his every word. As is George, and probably even Louise.
“Am I gonna try to get back together with your mom, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well … that’s a hard one, boy. You asked me a hard one.” He is silent for a few seconds, and Earl can hear him sipping from a glass and then taking a deep draw from his cigarette. “I’ll tell you, boy. The truth is, she doesn’t want me back. You oughta know that by now. I left because she wanted me to leave, son. I did some wrong things, sure, lots of ’em, but I did not want to leave you guys. No, right from the beginning, this thing’s been your mom’s show. Not mine.”
“Daddy, that’s a lie.”
“No, son. No. We fought a lot, your mom and me, like married people always do. But I didn’t want to leave her and you kids. She told me to. And now, look at this—she’s the one bringing these divorce charges and all, not me. You oughta see the things she’s charging me with.”
“What about … what about her having to protect herself? You know what I mean. I don’t want to go into any details, but you know what I mean. And what about your girlfriend?” he sneers.
His father is silent for a moment. Then he says, “You sure have got yourself an attitude since I been gone. Listen, kid, there’s lots you don’t know anything about, that nobody knows anything about, and there’s lots more that you shouldn’t know anything about. You might not believe this, Earl, but you’re still a kid. You’re a long ways from being a man. So don’t go butting into where you’re not wanted and getting into things between your mom and me that you can’t understand anyhow. Just butt out. You hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Lemme speak to your brother.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Earl says, and he looks away from George’s face and down at his own feet.
“Put your mother on, Earl.”
“None of us wants to talk to you.”
“Earl!” his mother cries. “Let me have the phone,” she says, and she rises from the couch, her hand reaching toward him.
Earl places the receiver in its cradle. Then he stands there, looking into his mother’s blue eyes, and she looks into his.
She says, “He won’t call back.”
Earl says, “I know.”
The Visit
In late April of a recent year, I drove from my home in New York City across New Jersey to deliver a lecture at East Stroudsburg University, which is located in Pennsylvania at the southern end of the Pocono Mountains, not far from the Delaware Water Gap. I arrived a few hours earlier than my hosts expected me, so that, once there, I was free to drive twenty miles farther north to the small town of Tobyhanna, where my mother and father lived with me and my brother and sister for a single year, 1952, when I was twelve, my brother ten, my sister six.
For the five of us, the year we lived in Tobyhanna was the most crucial year of our shared life. It defined us: we were that family; we have remained that family. The following summer, my mother and father got divorced, and from then on, although we were the same, everything else was different. Not better, just different.
Looking back, I see that both my parents were careening out of control with rage, frustration, and fear. For years, my father had been plotting ways to leave my mother, whose dependency and hysteria had imprisoned him then, as later they would me. For her part, my mother had been just as busy trying to keep him from leaving, which only made him feel more trapped today than yesterday. He was thirty-eight; his life was skidding past. And he thought that he was somehow better than she, a more important person in the overall scheme of things than she, and he acted accordingly. This made my mother wild.
My father was a plumber, and he had been hired by a New England contractor as superintendent of all the plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning installation in an enormous Army shipping and storage depot being built in Tobyhanna. It was one of the first big postwar military bases commissioned by the Eisenhower administration. My father was the company’s man sent down from Hartford to run its largest out-of-state job, an extraordinary position for a young journeyman pipe fitter with no more than a high school education, a man whose biggest job up to then had been adding a wing to the Veterans’ Hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire. But he was bright, and he worked hard, and he was very good-looking, and lucky. People liked him, especially men, and women flirted with him.
He was a heavy drinker, though, starting at it earlier every day. And with each additional long night’s stay at the bar in Tobyhanna, he turned increasingly nasty and sometimes violent.
The job he held was, in fact, way over his head, and he was terrified—not of being fired, but of being found out, and not so much by other people, as by himself.
I drove my car into Tobyhanna, a poor, bedraggled batch of houses and garages and trailers strung along a winding two-lane road abandoned long ago for the Stroudsburg-Scranton highway, and saw at once the bar where my father used to spend his evenings after work and as much of his weekends as he could steal from the house in the woods where he had established his nervous wife and three children. It was a small, depressing, impoverished town, despite the presence of the Army depot—or perhaps because of it.
I drew my car up to the bar on the main street, shut off the motor, and went inside. It was dark, dirty, and damp, smelled of old beer, sweat, and pickled, hard-boiled eggs, with a jukebox in the back, a U-shaped linoleum-covered bar that ran the length of the room, and several dim, flickering neon beer signs in the window.
I ordered a beer from the middle-aged woman behind the bar, whose exact, round, dun-colored double—her twin, I thought, or surely her sister—sat on a stool on the other side of the bar. She sat next to a man with a tracheotomy who was talking to her in a harsh, electronic moan.
A second man was perched on a stool a ways down from me—a scrawny fellow in his mid-fifties whose arms were covered with badly drawn tattoos. His head was wobbling on his neck above a bottle of beer, and he seemed not to notice when I sat down.