For people like me rainy winter Sundays are often a blessing, giving me an excuse to hang around the house and watch pro football all day. And that's just about what the Sunday after the third confessional of my life turned out to be. The exception was the inordinate amount of time I spent thinking about my few minutes with Kathy and wondering what it would be like spending some real time with her. I knew Jim was right, I had to stay away but if there was such a thing as love at first sight I still felt as if I had experienced it. I tried, with moderate success to convince myself it wasn't love, just infatuation, that I would get over her simply by not seeing her. But it was difficult and it would stay difficult for the next few months until I did see her again.
The next day was an interview day; we had a dozen candidates coming in to fill three retail sales representative positions. The job itself didn't require much of anything, just the ability to perform a series of mundane tasks in three supermarkets a day. A little heavy lifting and even less selling. Shelf maintenance we called it, replacing tags, rotating some jars and packages, stocking the shelves with a few cases of product. Work that any moderately bright twelve-year-old could do. But we were always looking for people that could have a future with us; people who could some day manage other people or have real sales responsibility. The problem was our pay scale sucked. The whole food brokerage industry pays poorly and just for the reasons I outlined. It doesn't take any particular knowledge, intelligence or skill set to do the basic job. But if you were looking to hire people with advancement potential then the fact that we were starting them with nineteen thousand dollars a year and an inadequate car allowance while living in the New York metropolitan area all made it difficult for the people charged with finding them. There were plenty of experienced retail reps and plenty of middle aged moms looking to supplement their incomes but the prize, the man or woman that Jim would like and that Jack would okay, was a tough find. So when I found one that I knew fit the criteria I did my damndest to bring them aboard.
By lunchtime I had interviewed five of the candidates with no luck. Three couldn't put two sentences together, not a problem for doing the job but they'd never get past Jim, much less Jack. One I liked but he said he had to have twenty-eight thousand to start and a raise of three thousand after the first year. I told him, at that rate, he'd be making more than me in three years. And I was only exaggerating a bit. Another was a twenty-two year old black man, recently graduated from college, who had worked himself through by clerking in a supermarket. He was so perfect for the position I had to interview him even though Jack had recently told Jim that "Now that we have four coloreds" out of our forty guys, we wouldn't be hiring anymore unless we lost one.
Scully is really an all around prick, name something about anyone you don't like and I'll bet Scully has that trait. The saddest part of all was I would have recommended hiring the black guy and I know he would have gotten by both Jim and Jack if he were white. And I was the one who personally made the follow-up phone calls telling the candidates if they'd be getting a second interview or not. This young man, who had to know he was extremely qualified for the job, would forever think that Sean Murphy chose not to hire him, most likely for the color of his skin.
The afternoon of interviewing appeared to go much better than the morning. I spoke with a young woman with a college degree and experience with another food broker. And she was quite attractive, something I can't deny I find appealing. She told me of her unhappiness with her area of responsibility, Brooklyn and with the broker she was currently working for and would take any area we had "out on the Island." Her reference was to Nassau or Suffolk County. While the one hundred and twenty mile strip of land called Long Island on any map includes Brooklyn and Queens--which are part of New York City-- the remaining ninety miles encompassing Nassau and Suffolk are what people in these parts mean when they say Long Island. I had a territory for her and I was certain Jim and Jack would okay her hiring. As it turned out they did and she's with Scully Sales today, over a year later and doing very well.
The other candidate I liked turned out to be much more of a problem, in a manner of which I hadn't considered. His name was Robert Greenstein. He had completed three years of college and was continuing at night to attain his degree. He was currently working in a supermarket, so he had a good idea of what he would be doing for us. He was extremely well spoken, was dressed appropriately and acted very enthusiastically. As good a candidate as the woman I would be recommending. But at the end of the day when I reviewed the interviews with Jim he told me to forget about Greenstein. I asked him why, and he said, "Do us both a favor and just forget about him."
"Jim, I really don't understand. I know the old man hates Jews but it's never been an issue before in hiring retail people. what's changed?"
"He says we have enough. He told that to me the last time you hired a person with a Jewish sounding name. Claufeld, it was her. Jack said she must be a Jew with that name and we had more than our share. what's the sense Sean, there's no talking to him. If anything he's getting worse."
"Wait, wait a minute, I don't know where to begin. First of all how the hell does he think he knows how many Jewish workers we have? And I don't even know if Beth Claufeld is Jewish. Christ, I can't believe the words coming out of my mouth. But really, where the hell did he come up with a number? Does he have a number? This is fuckin' sick."
"Now you're asking me to attach logic to Jack Scully. He obviously looks around and decides that he sees some people that he thinks look Jewish or hears some names that might be Jewish and he figures he's got enough. How the hell am I supposed to quantify shit like that for you? You think I haven't argued this crap with him over the years? it's his company and we either do what he says or we quit. Let me tell you this, and if it sounds like a rationalization it is; if I quit it'll be worse. Believe me, in no time you'd have no Blacks, Jews or Hispanics left in the company and damn few women. that's where we are, kid. We take it or leave it"
So again I took it and I had two difficult phone calls to make and my hatred for Jack Scully, as deep as it had been, grew again that day.
Over the next few months I can't say that a day went by without me thinking of Kathy Scully. The way she looked, the way she sounded, the few moments we had alone together all stayed clear and actually improved with time. Absence indeed was making my heart grow fonder. During that period I went out on exactly one date. It was with a girl I met in a local pub I sometimes hung out at and she and I hit it off real well along around midnight plus. I drove her home and we made a date for the next-- Saturday-- night. I picked her up for a movie and "a bite to eat," but before we got to the movie it was obvious we both had too much to drink the night before, before we had decided we'd like to see each other again that is. She feigned a headache after the movie; I feigned my concern and a promise to call her.
I love to run. It clears my mind in a way nothing else does. I run five or six days a week, almost always the same route. I run west down Jackson Avenue, south down Wantagh Avenue and into Wantagh Park. The park is one of the many that line the south shore of Long Island, some say too many when you consider the property taxes people pay around here. That may well be true but I've never owned a home so I get the wonderful benefit of the parks without a slice of the pain.
On a perfect April Sunday, just about four months from my little thing with Kathy Scully, I was in the park and approaching the halfway mark in my run. That mark happens to be the Wantagh Yacht Club at the south end of the park, a dock with dozens and dozens of mid-sized pleasure boats. On that morning there was a fair amount of activity, fifteen or twenty busy looking people seemingly committed to a labor of love, labor that they'd been looking forward to all week. That fulfillment of anticipation must have rubbed off on me because it caused me to finally make up my mind to do something I had had been mulling over in my mind, literally for years.
I had spent my entire childhood in foster homes. From the time I was dropped off -- abandoned is such a harsh word -- in a little church on the east end of Long Island, at the estimated age of two and a half years, to that day in 1981 when I left for my abbreviated stay at Dakota Wesleyan U, I bounced from home to home. The years between being found and my earliest recollections, around the age of five, were apparently spent with several different families. At that time in my young life, I was still very desirable, and I almost certainly was considered for adoption by a number of homes. The process was then and is now for a family considering adoption to take the child into their home for a few months before making a final decision. For whatever reasons I didn't make the cut at any of them. That kind of information is not, for obvious reasons anything that a social service worker told me but it's clear to me that it must have happened.
In the investigating I've done into the way things worked in general in the late sixties and early seventies I'm sure that families interested in adoption continued to "check me out," surreptitiously to be sure, during my stays with foster families. Again, none of them found me to their liking, and of course the older you get, the less likely it is any family would make the commitment toward adoption.
My memories of the four families I spent time with are for the most part pretty bad. In some there were foster mothers who were kind, in some there were foster fathers who were kind and in some there were foster and even family children who were kind. But there were always a few members of the group that were anything but kind and in a number of cases downright mean. So I never found myself in a situation that made me feel good. Forget secure; forget the word of the nineties, comfortable, I was just looking to feel good. I'm sure it was at least partially my own fault, as time went on I know I became more than a handful for those people who took me in, but no matter how long I stayed in any home I never felt like anything but the interloper. Even in the one family I stayed with that had only foster children, as the last one in I still felt like the outsider. It was a condition that I noticed somewhere around the age of seven or eight and it's a feeling that's with me to this day.
Running back toward my place that morning, before I got back out of the park I had decided I would immediately begin to make preparations to go back and visit those four families and show them how I had turned out. When the idea had first popped into my head some years before I had believed that I wanted to see how the people who had cared for me were. What kind of lives they were living, did they still have foster kids, how had their natural born children turned out? But I soon came to realize I wanted them to see ME, a full-grown man with a good job and a few bucks in his pocket. I wanted to thank the few, the very few that had tried to give me some attention, even some love. I wanted to look the mean ones in the eye. I didn't know what I'd say to them; maybe I wanted to hear what they'd say to me. But mostly I wanted to feel good around them.
For some reason my natural mother, and I can only assume it was my mother, left me sleeping on a pew in St. John's Roman Catholic Church in Wading River, Long Island on September twentieth, nineteen sixty-six. A nun whose name I didn't know until recently brought me to her room. She contacted the social services department in Hauppauge, about thirty miles away, and they came and got me later that same day. A social service worker once told me that in the few hours I spent there the Monsignor of the church, Father Murphy thought I was a cute kid and asked the social services people, when they came for me, if they could temporarily give me his name, Sean Murphy. They said they would, at least until they figured out my real name. Whoever it was that dropped me off made a clean break. No note, no attempt at contact. Whatever her problems were I was apparently making them worse. I have no hard feelings about her -- she must have been terribly sad that day, and has probably spent every day of her life a little sad about what she did. Just not sad enough to want to try and see me. So while I've got an olive complexion, brown eyes and brown hair I am and will forever be Sean Murphy.
I was first told the story of my entry into the care system by a social worker who visited me while I was with the first family I remember, Mr. and Mrs. Horning, a middle-aged couple who apparently tried to always have a couple of foster children in their home. They lived in the town of Riverhead, one town away from Wading River and the church I was found in. He was a janitor in an elementary school there and I guess they figured they could make more with two foster kids than by Mrs. Horning working. Or she didn't like leaving the house, I don't know. It certainly wasn't because she liked children.
My earliest memories of her were the spankings I would get for just about any infraction of her many rules. From eat everything on your plate, to keep your room VERY neat and clean, to picking the weeds from their lawn. All those things kids hate to do would get you smacked around if you didn't do them. I remember her watching television a lot and I remember she was a rather small woman that didn't smile very much.
When I got there they were already caring for a boy named Billy and he was chubby and funny and he got in more trouble than I did. I must have been about seven the day he just disappeared. I remember asking where he went but it's not clear in my mind what they said though I do remember I spent the next several months alone. I remember that because it was snowing the day he disappeared and it was very hot when the Hornings got another child. Her name was Sarah, she was younger than I was, I'm not sure how old, perhaps four or five and she never spoke. I think I lived in the same house with her for close to a year and she never spoke to me. I really don't remember her speaking to anyone.
I have a clear recollection of a dinner when Sarah wouldn't eat her vegetables. Mrs. Horning threatened her, Mr. Horning, nearly as quiet as Sarah, threatened her and she just sat there. Mrs. Horning went so far as take out the strap, I don't know where it was kept but it would appear out of thin air and just the sight of it would make me cry. She told Sarah if she didn't finish those vegetable she would get that strap. Sarah sat stone silent. Even when they got her up from the table and gave her several whacks on her bottom she never cried, never made a sound. I watched from the den as Mrs. Horning sat Sarah back down and told her she would be sitting at that table until she finished those "goddamn vegetables.' I remember Mrs. Horning said goddamn a lot, I still remember that word very clearly from that night.
The next morning, when I came down to breakfast, Sarah was still sitting at the table, with the same plate of vegetables in front of her. I guess she slept there, I don't know for certain, I never asked Mrs. Horning and Sarah never spoke to me. When I left for school Sarah was still at the table but I don't remember anything else about it so I guess that during the day Mrs. Horning must have gotten disgusted, maybe gave her a few extra whacks and let her get up. Not long after that, perhaps three or four months later a woman came and took me away in a car. Mr. Horning wasn't home and I remember Mrs. Horning kissing me on the cheek. It was the only time I remember being kissed by her and looking back I guess she felt she needed to do that for the benefit of the social service worker.
I still don't know why I had the urge to see Mrs. Horning but I did. I remember thinking she might be dead, that maybe both the Hornings were dead. That maybe I wouldn't be able to locate them. I remember I thought that would be good, that it would be better than finding them.
I actually was in the process of calling telephone information
when I decided I'd begin my quest by first going out to the
church where somebody dropped me off.
Questions? Comments? Please send e-mail to jbearden@ieee.org
Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden