The weekend after the Christmas party was very strange. The night of the party I slept great, got up early Saturday morning, high on life, grabbed my pre-run banana and Gatorade combo and took off. The weather was dry, not too cold and I felt like I could run all day. My usual run is down my block, down Wantagh Ave and into Wantagh Park. In case you haven't figured it out I'd been living in the town of Wantagh, on the south shore of Nassau County, fifteen minutes from Scully sales.
I usually go for about thirty, thirty-five minutes but it was approaching an hour when I got back to my three and a half rooms in the basement of the Liebmans' on the corner of Jackson Avenue and Spruce Street. I do most of my thinking and all of my best thinking when I run and I had a lot to think about that morning. But whereas thinking for me generally means deciding on this or that or planning something, this time I kept seeing Kathy, kept reliving the few minutes we spent together, kept imagining how it would be to spend some serious time with her. I was beyond focused, looking back I'm sure now I was obsessing. But it was still early enough in our relationship (though I'm not sure I can call what we had early on a relationship, at least as that word is usually understood) that I enjoyed the time I spent thinking about her, about US. Strange as it may sound, I don't remember spending any of those minutes considering the down side of messing around with the daughter of an ogre of an owner who expressly forbid any of his employees to go near her. It was a beautiful morning and a beautiful run and I hadn't begun to look at the dark side. Hell, I couldn't have considered the dark side if I had wanted to, I had no idea what darkness she would eventually bring me.
Back at my little place I showered and got ready to have my ritual Saturday lunch at Jim's. He and his wife Maureen had invited me over the Saturday after Jim hired me, May fourth, nineteen eighty-nine. They have no children and I think Maureen liked having a young guy around to feed and impart her wisdom on. As opposed to the wisdom Jim was forever imparting to me, Maureen's was of a nature that tried to make me think about my life, where I was going, what I really wanted to do. All that. Jim's, at least to that point in our relationship, generally was to help me do my job, keep my job and allow him to move me ahead in my job. And in all that Jim had been quite successful, at least until Kathy came into OUR lives.
"Morning Sean, you look bright and cheery today, I've got your ice tea ready. I've got roast beef, homemade macaroni salad and sliced tomatoes. Jimmy's in the shower, here's the Newsday, keep yourself busy until he comes down." I often wondered how it could happen that I grew up with four different foster families, none of them worth a damn, and now that I'm a thirty-five year old man I've got two women, Maureen and Dottie Liebman, my landlord, treating me like a son. A son they actually gave a shit about. Maureen said I should just be happy with the present, the hell with the past. she's right but forgetting an entire childhood isn't so easy. I'm trying, mind you, but it's tough.
"Hey Sean, how you doin' this TERRIFIC morning after?" Jim's look was a little unusual for him and the pace of his words was off, different from what I'd grown accustomed to. I seem to remember the accent was on the word terrific.
"Good morning boss, how are YOU this morning? Didn't have too much Chardonnay last night, did you?"
"No, I had just the right amount of everything last night. The right amount of food, liquor, cigars and women. One woman, the right woman." At that point Maureen called us into the dining room but I knew right then that Jim had somehow known or at least had surmised that I had spent some time with Kathy Scully and that he was going to--as Jim liked to say-- rip me a new asshole.
I'm within a few minutes of the Pennsylvania line. It's a helluva wide state. Each time I've driven through it I'd feel like the backseat 'Are we there yet?' kid. But I'm trying to be a different me, the laid-back, newly-mellow me. I'm under no deadline, the odds on me finding Cindy Barth will be no worse in forty-eight hours than they'll be in thirty-six. Hell, I really don't know what I'd do if I found her. She's most likely married with kids, with a real life, not at all like mine. Even if she isn't, even if she's lonely and unhappy, shit, the last time I saw her was the night I told her I'd found out that after I'd drop her off at her house, a guy named Miles was picking her up and they were screwing their brains out in his trailer. How's that for a dream girl?
Anyway, after lunch Jim he asked me if I'd like to go 'run some errands' with him. He said it loud enough, obviously loud enough, for Maureen to hear. I said sure, but I thought, oh boy, here we go.
Jim drives a twelve-year old classic, dark-blue Mercedes convertible. It was a fine day but it was December so the top was up. When we got in he put a Frank Sinatra CD on and we listened to old Blue Eyes for a while. He was quiet and I was just waiting for the ax to fall. We listened to all of 'Just One of Those Things and part of "I've Got the World On a String" before he turned the music down low. We were riding through the North Shore town of Huntington, just south of where Jim's neat house is located; a coastal town called Halsite. Upper middle class, it could have been a New England village. Not Old Westbury, to be sure, but really nice. Like Jim and Maureen. He turned to look at me for a moment, looked back at the road and spoke.
"Got anything you want to share with me Sean?"
I'd never lied to Jim; I haven't till this day. But I wasn't in the mood to volunteer. I still wasn't one hundred percent sure what he was going to say.
"I don't know, what do you have in mind?" I remember thinking, weak, very weak.
"Look, I'm not stupid. I happened to be looking at you standing at the window last night when Scully's daughter came over to you. I watched the two of you speak for a couple of minutes, real friendly like. She leaves, a few minutes later you leave. Ten, fifteen minutes later she comes back, a few minutes later you show up. Something happened, I just don't know what. I KNOW you're not gonna bullshit me."
"I'm not." I proceeded to tell him exactly what happened, every detail. This was as close as I had come to a confession since mother number three forced me to be confirmed in St. Raymond's Roman Catholic Church, the highlight of which was me not swallowing the wafer.
I hadn't taken the wafer since the day of my first Holy Communion and I didn't like it then. So when the priest gave it to me I kept in on the roof of my mouth-- it really gravitated to that spot without me trying-- and coughed in into my hand when I got back to my pew. By that afternoon I had decided that act alone would cause me to spend hundreds of years in purgatory. Within a few days I had forgotten about my decided fate and didn't think of it again until the Church a while back seemed to change their collective mind about the whole purgatory thing. So now we're all in an all or nothing at all mode. Must put a lot more pressure on the Big Guy.
When I was through baring my soul I sneaked a peek at Jim who was driving expressionlessly. I looked back out the passenger side window and read a sign that announced 'Danger-- road slippery when wet'. Rather appropriate, I thought.
He didn't say anything for about a minute. And a minute is a long time in the situation we were in. Finally, he took a deep breath and spoke, "There's a Dunkin' Donuts shop, let's get a cup of coffee."
Christ, I thought, why the hell can't he just give me my lecture in the car, why does he have to drag it out? As soon as we got inside and sat down at a little table--all the tables at Dunkin' Donuts are little-- I knew why.
"The reason I brought you in here was for your protection and mine." He was speaking in a forced whisper, obviously controlling his anger as best he could. "If we were alone in the car I would be screaming at you and that wouldn't be good for either of us." He paused. "What the fuck is the matter with you Sean? Seriously, can you explain why the fuck you would go NEAR that girl, much less get a blowjob IN HER father's SHED? WITH HER FATHER A HUNDRED YARDS AWAY?" He was having considerable less success keeping his voice down.
"She's gorgeous and I lost my mind. I don't know, what do you want me to say?"
More under control now, "I want you to say you will never ever go near her again. If she calls you'll hang up, if she comes to your door you won't open it. that's what I want you to say."
"Ok, you're right. I'll do exactly that. Let me buy you cup of coffee. How 'bout a donut?"
When you treat someone as a son, when you love him like a son, it's easy for the son to make you laugh even in a truly tense moment. Jim was laughing, at least a little. Shaking his head and laughing. We had squishy, sticky, fat laden, very delicious jelly donuts with our coffee and spent nearly an hour talking about work. We didn't speak about Kathy anymore that day and wouldn't for several months.
Jim and I spent the rest of that Saturday watching one sport I'm not much of a fan of, college football. But I'm super fan when it comes to baseball, pro and college hoops and pro football. When you bounce around from family to family and school to school you look for something to hang on to. As a kid I wasn't much of an athlete but I learned to follow and eventually love New York sports teams. All of them. Wherever I lived there was always TV. There were always newspapers; my guys were always there with me. And in families number two and three the men of the house were big sports fans. Believe me when I say it's a damn good thing for a foster kid to have something in common with the guy paying the bills and wielding the strap, in fact the best childhood memories I have are of watching games on TV with Mr. Caputo and Mr. Braun. In fact, I actually almost WENT to a Yankee game with Mr. Braun. I was eleven years old, it was the middle of July and we were driving in to the stadium and it started to pour. He loved the Yankees so even though the radio was saying it was going to keep raining all day and even though our seats were not under an overhang he never considered turning back. We drove from Shirley, Long Island, close to two hours to find a 'Rained out' sign. Now tell me, what are the odds on a rainout in July? For the only damn game I ever almost went to.
On the way home from the Lohans' later that afternoon I decided I'd give Janice a call as soon as I got back to my empty apartment. I hated to be alone on Saturday nights but I've never found it in me to plan ahead. I've spent my life waiting for people to call me, to ask me to do things. And when you're pretty much a loner like I am that's a tough equation. But I knew, all things considered, that if I stayed home it would be an especially bad Saturday night and I made the call. I got her, she had a date--so much for the thirty-five year blues-- but we talked for a while. Small talk until I mentioned to her that I met Kathy Scully for the first time --that's ALL I told her about that-- and that Kathy told me she knew her sister, Carrie.
"What'd you think of her Sean?"
"Really good looking but we only spoke for a moment or two. Seemed like a nice person. What do you know about her?"
"Well, I know that Carrie once told me she'd heard from more than one person that Kathy was really strange. That she never dated anyone on campus even though she was constantly being asked out and that she would sometimes say really bizarre things about sex. Carrie couldn't quite figure out if she was kidding or not."
"What kind of bizarre things?"
"I asked Carrie that and she said, you know little remarks about where she'd like to do this guy or that guy."
"Did you say WHAT she'd like to do or WHERE she'd like to do?"
"Where, where she'd like to do these guys. My sister said she felt a little 'wierded out' by that stuff.
"But did Carrie say where any of the 'wheres' were?"
"The one that she told me about was being on line for food in the cafeteria, she'd have a skirt on and the guy would come up behind her and just screw her for few seconds. Carrie said Kathy laughed after she said it but the part that 'wierded' her out was that it was an odd laugh. She had trouble describing it but she said if I had heard it I would have understood. Hey, who knows, some people just have a different sense of humor."
We spoke for another few minutes before I wished her luck with her date. She was all pumped up for it, she said she'd met him at a sales seminar and she was very impressed that he looked to be around our age, said he'd never been married, had his own house and went to church every Sunday. I reminded her she hadn't gone to church in years and had made fun of me when I mused about going back myself.
"People change Sean, I could change." She hesitated and I started to say something but she interrupted me, " But not you, you won't be changing anytime soon, we both know that."
From what she knew about me and from the way I was around her, the way I carried myself, the way I bullshitted her and so many other people, she was right to say that. And as had happened so many other times when we spoke I wanted to tell her what a fraud I was, how lonely and unhappy I really was.
"Hey kiddo, we are what we are, you know? Have a good time tonight and take care of yourself."
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Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden