The Longest Trip Home: A Memoir

  Better even than National Geographic.

  While my brother was memorizing the Eucharistic prayer, I was memorizing as many breasts as I could fix my eyes on. Once Tommy Cullen moved into the neighborhood, he joined me at the Altar of the Voluptuous Bosom. We both worshipped with the fervor of new converts and passed countless lazy afternoons discussing the relative merits of various boob sizes and shapes. We debated large and droopy versus small and pert. We became dis-cerning connoisseurs of the female nipple and areola. We noted the effects a swim in chilly water could have on them and the way they could glow iridescent in candlelight. Breasts became our

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  business. If ogling them was a sin—and I knew it surely was—it certainly did not feel like one. I conveniently purged it from my confession list along with all the others.

  Perhaps it was because Dad’s photo magazine collection was becoming a little too thumb worn, or because Michael was showing an interest in photography and beginning to read some of the articles, but one day Mom and Dad called the two of us into the kitchen. On the table were a few issues of Popular Photography, the covers duly removed.

  “This is a great magazine with a lot of informative articles about photography,” Dad began. “But sometimes it runs photos that we do not approve of. Photos of ladies without many clothes on.” I gazed up at him with the biggest doe eyes I could muster as if the thought of half-naked women had never occurred to me and, now that he had brought it up, was truly horrifying. “We would be very disappointed if we found out either of you were looking at them,” he said.

  “It’s natural for boys to be curious about the opposite sex,”

  Mom chimed in. “Do you have any questions? Is there anything you want to ask us?”

  I did have one burning question. I knew girls did not have penises like boys, but from there, things got murky. One boy at school had told me, quite knowingly, that they had miniature versions of wieners. Another that they had tunnels. A third said he had seen his sister and could swear on the Bible there was nothing there at all. I was ten years old and still anatomically clueless. I wanted an up close, personal view of female parts, but I wasn’t about to ask Mom for it.

  “Any questions at all?” Mom beckoned. Michael and I both shook our heads furiously no.

  “These doggone advertisers,” Dad lamented. “Why do they have to go and spoil a perfectly good magazine?”

  “We don’t want you to think there’s anything dirty about the human body,” Mom interjected. “There’s not. The human body is

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  beautiful. It’s God’s creation, and it is truly a thing of beauty.” I must have nodded my agreement with a bit too much enthusiasm because she quickly added: “But promise me you won’t ever look at those pictures.”

  “I promise,” Michael said, and from the way he said the words, I knew the young priest in training meant them.

  “I promise, too,” I repeated.

  Beneath the table, inside my PF Flyers, my toes remained firmly crossed.

  In the autumn after Detroit went up in flames, Tommy and I signed up to be altar boys. In both our houses, all the sons were expected to serve at Mass, no questions asked. It was not an elective like soccer or karate. My sister, on the other hand, was off the hook because girls weren’t allowed. At first I considered this terribly unfair, not because I was a budding feminist outraged that the Church would treat my sister and any other girl as somehow unworthy to grace the altar, but because she got a free pass and I didn’t. My outrage disappeared the instant I learned of one of the great secret perks of altar service: free booze. Tommy and I had heard the rumors, supported by credible eyewitness accounts, that altar boys got to sneak swigs of the leftover sacramental wine. Our parents were ecstatic at our decision to join the altar corps, and now, with the promise of daily morning cocktails, so were we.

  The rumors proved true. On our first Mass as servers, Tommy and I were paired with two older boys who knew the ropes. They helped us select our outfits from a closet in a room off the sanctuary. The altar-boy uniform consisted of two parts: a floor-length black cassock that buttoned down the front; and a short white linen gown of sorts, called a surplice, that slipped over the cassock and gave altar boys their classic black-and-white look. So dressed, we resembled miniature priests, although close up you

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  could see that the cassocks and surplices had a lot of miles on them. Most were covered in wax spills, and nearly every garment had at least one burn hole from a misadventure with a candle or incense ember.

  Tommy quickly located a cassock that fit him perfectly. For me, the job was more challenging. The cassocks that were the correct length were too tight around the middle. When I found one that buttoned comfortably around my stomach, it bunched around my feet and dragged on the floor, an accident waiting to happen.

  Finally I found one I could live with—a little tight at the waist but also just a few inches long at my feet. It would have to do.

  The older boys walked us through our duties, which began with lighting the altar candles. Then they led us into a small closet in the sacristy where Father donned his vestments. Inside were shelves lined with crystal cruets, a sink, and a refrigerator filled with jugs of altar wine. Our job was to fill one cruet with wine and a second with water—the essential ingredients for the priest to perform the miracle of transubstantiation. We placed both on the altar. At the appropriate time, the priest would motion for two of us to approach with the cruets. As he recited the Eucharistic prayers, he would reach over for the wine and pour some into his chalice, then for the water, which he would add to the wine in proportions that said a lot about the priest’s tolerance for an alcoholic drink first thing in the morning. A teetotaler priest would use mostly water with a splash of wine, but most would use nearly all wine with just a drop or two of water.

  As we filled the cruets in the closet under the older boys’ direction, we got our first hint of the rewards to come. “We’re lucky this morning, boys,” one of the veteran servers said. “We’ve got Father Donohue. Two-Drop Donohue. He barely touches the wine.” Tommy and I looked at each other, trying to figure out what Father Donohue’s altar-wine habits had to do with us. Then the other boy said with a wink, “The less for Father, the more for us.”

  My first Mass as an altar boy was uneventful. The older boys

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  handled the important duties, and Tommy and I mostly concentrated on trying to look solemn. I genuflected a lot, mumbled through the prayers I never quite memorized, and got to ring a brass bell when Father raised the communion wafer toward heaven, and again when he lifted his chalice of wine. There was an art to bell ringing, and somehow I made both events sound like five-alarm fires.

  Our mentors were right. Father Donohue placed barely a drop of wine in his chalice. After communion, he wrapped up the service with the words “The Mass is over. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” and we formed a procession down the center aisle.

  One of the older boys led the way, carrying a large crucifix. The next followed with the Bible. Then came Tommy and me, immediately in front of Father, each brandishing a large beeswax candle on a floor-length brass holder. This was a challenging maneuver.

  The candles on their stands resembled flaming javelins and were nearly as tall as we were. The tip of each candle was fitted with a brass ring that created a reservoir, preventing the hot liquid wax from running down the sides. The trick was to make it down the aisle without spilling any of the pooled wax. Tommy and I gripped our candles with sweaty palms and crept down the aisle as if we were wired with explosives. Both of us made it without incident, and I said a little prayer of thanksgiving for not having tripped on my too-long gown.

  Back in the sacristy behind the altar, Father hung up his vestments and departed for the rectory, leaving us boys to finish up.

  We b
lew out the candles, straightened the linens, and returned the pair of cruets to the closet where they were to be emptied, rinsed, and dried. One of the older boys immediately uncorked the wine cruet and took a swig, then handed it to his friend, who took another swig. “Here’s to Two-Drop Donohue,” he toasted as he handed the cruet to me. I held it in my hands, knowing this had to be a major-league mortal sin, chugging the same holy wine Father turned into the blood of Christ.

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  “Go ahead,” one of the boys said. “They don’t care. Honest.”

  Who was I to argue? We were just emptying the cruets as instructed, weren’t we? And to waste was a sin. I placed the cruet to my lips and poured in a mouthful. It was sticky and sweet and musky. When I swallowed, I felt an unpleasant burn, followed by an odd, comforting warmth that spread through my body. I handed the cruet to Tommy as I stifled a cough. We went one more round, and then the cruet was empty. I dutifully rinsed and dried it and replaced it on the shelf, my feet and fingertips tingling. As I hung my cassock and surplice up, I noticed that my eye-hand coordination was just slightly off.

  Outside the church, my parents waited, their faces beaming.

  They had sat in the front pew for their youngest son’s debut as an altar boy. “We’re very proud of you, son,” Dad said. “You’re doing the Lord’s work.”

  I smiled glassily and turned my head to divert my breath from him.

  “Just next time,” he counseled, “go a little easier on the bells.”

  Chapter 7

  o

  Besides being zealous Catholics, my parents were fa-

  mously frugal. They never did manage to shake the

  imprint of growing up hand to mouth during the Depression, and even though they now lived in a spacious new house in a desirable subdivision on a lake, they carried with them the habits they grew up with. Mom cut paper napkins in half. She made her cup of tea in the morning and set the tea bag by the stove to dry for another use. Dad hung paper towels over the edge of the sink to dry for a second and sometimes third use. He had it down to an art form: the first use would involve a task that required a fresh towel, such as wiping a dish; the next use would be less critical, such as cleaning up a spill on the floor; from there the multitask-ing towel would move to the garage where Dad would use it to check the oil dipstick on the car.

  His desire to find maximum utility applied to all things. He used oversize junk-mail envelopes to organize his important papers, each meticulously labeled in his draftsman’s hand. After washing the car, he would shout through the house, “I’ve got a

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  nice bucket of sudsy water down here! Anyone need some good sudsy water? Perfectly good still!” As far as I know, Dad never got a single taker for his slightly used soapy water, but that didn’t discourage him from going through the same ritual the next time.

  “Who needs soapy water? Got a nice clean bucket down here!”

  Neither of them could bring themselves to throw anything out. If a lamp or appliance broke, Dad would store it away in the basement as a potential source of parts for a future repair. In the kitchen, we had what surely remains the world’s largest collection of washed-out mayonnaise jars and margarine tubs. My mother came home one day, immensely pleased with herself for scoring an unbelievable price on a set of nesting dessert bowls.

  Then I saw why they were such a bargain: each was emblazoned with the Delta Airlines logo. “See,” Mom said proudly, “they don’t quite nestle. The airline wouldn’t take them.” For years, I ate my ice cream while dreaming of flying Delta to far-off places.

  Instead of replacing our broken toaster, Dad figured out all it needed was a sturdy piece of masking tape to hold down the lever.

  When the bread was fully toasted, the unit would make a horrible grating sound and begin vibrating frantically across the counter as it strained against the tape to pop up. That was our clue to leap for the toaster and rip off the tape before smoke started pouring out. More times than not, we were too late, but Dad always had the same response, even as he scraped the carbon off the toast’s surface: “I like it on the dark side.” We kept that old toaster for years, and the only maintenance it required was a new piece of tape every month or two.

  One of the more visible signs of my parents’ frugality was our lawn mower. In Harbor Hills, the yards were large and required a substantial machine to keep them manicured. Most of the wealthier neighbors with lake frontage hired lawn services; the rest of us cut our own grass. The first thing nearly every home owner did upon moving to Harbor Hills was to purchase a gleam-ing new riding mower with a padded seat. Dad would not even

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  consider such an extravagance; instead he found a used walk-behind mower that was already an antique. By the time I was in grade school, the Gravely had taken on the rusty sheen of a museum piece with its old-fashioned round mowing deck, jutting oak handgrips, and faded red paint. The muffler was barely functioning, and the engine’s roar drowned out all other sounds within a hundred yards. Occasionally it would backfire with the velocity of a shotgun, and I could watch the neighbors flinch as if taking sniper fire. The Gravely looked and sounded like it belonged in a scene from The Grapes of Wrath, before the Okies leave the Dust Bowl for California. But Dad pronounced it “perfectly adequate for our needs” and scoffed at the modern riding mowers, which he pointed out no man could ride without resembling a circus clown.

  Besides, he claimed to enjoy the workout he got trotting along behind the Gravely as it roared across our acre of grass in a cloud of blue smoke. For all its faded glory, it ran reliably, and Dad, an adept engine tinkerer, ensured that it stayed that way, repacking bearings and rebuilding the carburetor as needed.

  Grass-cutting was a weekly father-son event. As Dad cut with the Gravely, my older brother Tim trimmed with a push mower, and Mike and I coiled hoses, picked up sticks, and raked clippings. More than my brothers, I gravitated toward yard work, and I tagged along with Dad as he completed various chores, whether it was planting marigolds or fertilizing the rhododen-drons or trimming the hedges, something he did using a complex system of stakes and strings to assure symmetrical perfection.

  I was his helper, his tool fetcher, his grunt laborer, and I loved being out there with him.

  If Mom was the family talker and storyteller, Dad was the listener. He was introspective bordering on taciturn and not much for aimless chitchat. But there was something about physical labor that brought out his talkative side. Working side by side, our hands in the dirt, he would freely share tips and techniques with me, always looking for opportunities to teach a little lesson,

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  the lessons I imagine his father had taught him. At the workbench, it might be the importance of sanding with the grain or measuring twice before making a cut. In the garden, he would point out the complex social structure of an ant colony and the nifty way nature turned old grass clippings and leaves into rich plant food. It was on one of these work excursions that Dad finally worked up his courage to deliver my one and only sex-education lesson.

  We were finished mowing and had just planted petunias around the oak tree. He directed me to drag a hose over to water them, but when the hose proved too short, he asked me to bring another length from the garage. Then it was time to connect the two hoses.

  “John, hand me the female end, will you?” Dad said.

  I stared dumbfounded at the two ends of the hose. I had no idea what he was talking about. “The what?” I asked.

  “The female end,” he said, a hint of exasperation in his voice, as if to add: You’re not going to make me explain how male and female parts go together, are you?

  I picked up both ends and stared at them. By this stage of my life—age twelve—I had moved on from the tiny boob shots of Popular Photography to the flawless women of Playboy, compliments of Marty Wolkoff, a classmate who lived one neighborhood ove
r and whose father subscribed. I even got brief glimpses during a Boy Scout campout of Pat Wendell’s big brother’s “library,” which was a worn leather satchel containing a well-thumbed collection of pornography showing men in a fully aroused state and women positioned as if posing for a gynecologists’ convention. Thanks to these visual aids, I finally had a clear concept of male and female anatomy (though I was still unclear how exactly they went together). But looking at the ends of the garden hose, I could see no correlation whatsoever to anything I had seen in those magazines. I stood there gripping the hose ends with a look on my face

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  that I suppose was not unlike the look my dog Shaun might have struck if given the task of figuring out an algebraic equation.

  “Here,” my father said with a weary sigh, grabbing each hose end away from me. “This is the male end,” and he held up the end with the brass threads showing. “And this is the female.” He jammed the male into the female and began twisting the threads together. “The male screws into the female like this,” he said, then paused before adding: “Just like in nature.”