Archives for February 2012

 

Dr. Nathan Bork sat in his home office scanning the files of patients that he was about to meet. The office had a comforting study atmosphere with soft leather chairs, fully stacked bookshelves and high ceilings that imparted the feeling of security without being claustrophobic. He puffed on his pipe as he examined the file of Marjorie Bombasco. When the doorbell rang, he glanced at his watch. Marjorie was, as usual, a little bit early. Dr. Bork ushered her into his office and offered her one of the soft leather chairs. “What do you think we should talk about this evening Marjorie?”

She furrowed the eye brows on her round face. “I tried to go to The Grand Union this week but I couldn’t make it. I used to go there every day with my Aunt Dottie, but now, even when I think about getting in the car and driving a few blocks, I start to feel one of my spells coming on.”

“How did it feel when it was just starting?”

“There’s a voice inside me that says ‘You can’t do this. What’s the matter with you?’ and then I feel myself starting to lose control.”

“Whose voice is it that says that to you, Marjorie?”

“I don’t know what you mean. It’s my voice, I think. Then the fear that something very awful is going to happen as soon as I leave the house starts to build up inside me. Then I look for some way to put the trip off.  This week I called my son Ronald and started a fight with him and then I told myself that I was much too nervous to try to do anything except go to work because of the state that he had worked me up into.”

“Why do you think that you called your son?”

“Because he used to be the one that helped me to get around and now he just stays away from me.  Doctor, I feel like I’m going crazy. I feel like one of these times, I’m going to start screaming or shaking and not be able to stop and that they’re going to have to come and take me away and lock me up someplace.”

“Do you feel that’s what will happen to you if you go out?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Some of the things that I’ve done when I’ve had these spells would certainly make people thing that I’m crazy and should be put away.”

“Marjorie, first of all, I want to assure you that you’re not going to go crazy or have to be put somewhere. What you are suffering from takes a heavy toll on you but you are very sane, my dear.” Dr. Bork smiled and the gray-bearded man’s expression seemed to smooth some of the lines that had creased in around her eyes and mouth. “Now let’s get back to this voice that tells you what you aren’t going to be able to do. Tonight, I’d like to concentrate on where you think that voice comes from.”

She looked baffled. “It comes from me.”

“Yes, of course it does, but do you think that it comes from you as a grown woman?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Let’s talk about who the first person that told you that you couldn’t do things was?”

“My grandmother,” said Marjorie. Her face seemed to take on a little girl’s look.

“Can you remember anything specifically that she told you that you weren’t supposed to do?”

“That’s a hard question. She raised me. There were lots of things.”

“Think of something that was really important to you that she told you not to do.”

“Ask about my father,” said Marjorie almost automatically.

Bork nodded. He had expected that response. “What else?”

“When I was small, she never wanted to let me go outside to play.” Marjorie’s face was interested and surprised at her own recollection now. “I remember her saying that I had to be careful that they didn’t come and get me.”

“Who was going to come and get you?”

“I don’t know, but I remember thinking that it also had something to do with my father.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really know but after they found out that I went to the prison, everyone was very angry at me.”

“Let’s talk a little about the day that you went to the prison.”

“OK.”

“How old were you?”

“I think I was fifteen, maybe younger.”

“What made you decide to go there?”

“I heard my grandmother and my aunts talking one day when they thought that I was out of the apartment. Really, I was out of the apartment but I used to hide under the kitchen window and listen to what they were saying.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to know things and somewhere along the line I figured out that they weren’t going to say anything when they thought that I could hear, so I used to sneak. This one day, I heard them talking about how Louis Fox and Charlie Dresden were going to be getting out of prison soon and that fourteen years had been a very long time but that they wanted to be careful. Then I went to the library and started looking through newspapers of fourteen years before and that’s when I first learned about my father.”

“What did you learn?”

“I learned that my father had gotten involved with some pretty ugly people. I remember thinking that they must have forced him to do the awful things that the papers said he might have been involved with.”

“What do you mean by might have been?”

“His name was never mentioned. The man that I thought was my father was always referred to as the third assailant.”

“What made you think that was your father?”

“A lot of things that I had put together from bits and pieces of conversations, but mostly it was just a feeling that I had.”

“So you went to the prison to see these two men?”

Marjorie smiled.  “When I think about it now, it seems like it must have been a different person. I played hooky school and took a bus down to Penn Station and got on the train that went to Rahway.” She stopped and shook her head. “It’s funny, the things that you remember. I remember what I was wearing. I had on black and white saddle shoes and a brown coat that must have been given to me by my Aunt Dottie. I remember the conductor asked me where I was going.” She paused and cleared her throat and met the doctor’s eyes. “My grandmother always taught me to speak up clearly when I had been asked a question. I remember the conductor saying something like ‘And where will you be going today, miss?’ and me speaking right up loud and clear and saying ‘Rahway State Prison please’. Then I remember feeling that I must have said something terribly wrong because everyone had turned around to look at me. I remember being very embarrassed because my dollar bill was very crumpled and it took the conductor a long time to straighten it out before he punched my ticket. It was uncomfortable, but I was just a kid so I sat there and waited for it to be over.”

“What do you remember about the prison?”

“I haven’t thought of that day in a very long time, but right now I feel like I remember everything. There was stone and metal everywhere and a strong smell that burned my throat.  I remember that the room they kept me waiting in had a very high ceiling with windows at the very top of the wall. I remember thinking that it must be part of the punishment to put the windows in a place that nobody could see out of them.”

Marjorie paused in her story and opened her purse. She took out a pack of cigarettes and Dr. Bork lit it for her.  She looked around at the book shelves and smoked for a few seconds. “Do you really think that going back over all of this old stuff will help me now?”

“Yes, I do Marjorie.”

“But it was so long ago and I never had any trouble travelling then.”

“Conditions like yours don’t usually start over night. They take a long time to be created and become so full blown. But I don’t want you lose your train of thought. What else do you remember about the day at the prison?”

“I remember this big Irish looking guard coming into the room and the echoes of his voice when he spoke. He told me that Charles Dresden said that he didn’t know who I was and that he didn’t want to see me, but that Louis Fox had agreed to speak to me.”

“Did you actually see Louis Fox?”

“Oh yes. I remember him sitting on a bench and looking at me without meeting my eyes. I remember thinking that everything was very clean and that it wasn’t dirty the way that I imagined a prison would be. He was a large man but his voice was no more than a whisper. He thanked me for calling him Mr. Fox and said that I was the first person in fourteen years who had called him that and that he appreciated it.”

“Was Mr. Fox able to tell you anything about your father?”

“At first he pretended to not know who Larry Fischer was but when I told him that I was Eileen’s daughter and that my mother had died six years ago, he said that he was sorry. He said that he had no idea what happened to Larry and that he didn’t know how he possibly could help me. I remember starting to cry and asking him to just tell me one thing that was true about my father. I told him that my aunts and grandmother had never been willing to mention my father’s name and that I didn’t even know what he looked like. He said that some things were better left alone and that I had no way of knowing if Larry Fischer, who he wasn’t even sure that he knew, was even my father. But I begged and carried on a little. I think that he felt sorry for me or that I made him nervous, because finally he said that he would be getting out in a few weeks and that he could call me when he got out. I told him that my grandmother and I didn’t have a phone and that she had taught me that telephones were for rich and important people that other people needed to talk to. Then he asked for my address and I got scared.”

“Why did you get scared, Marjorie? Was it because he was a prisoner?

“No that wasn’t it. I was frightened that he would come to my house and that my grandmother would find out what I had done and that I would be in big trouble. My Aunt Dottie was always telling me that I created big problems for my grandmother and that I was lucky that they hadn’t put me in an orphanage a long time ago. I guess that I was afraid that if Louis Fox ever showed up at the door that it would be the last straw. I told him that I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody where I lived.  I remember that he smiled when I said that and that he had missing teeth that made his smile look scary. Then he gave me the phone number where he was going to be living and told me to call him in two months.”

“What else do you remember about that day?”

“Not very much. I got caught for not going to school and told my grandmother that I had gone roller skating.  She called me a dirty little skunk. My grandmother didn’t curse, and made me go with her to church for every one of its prayer meetings for the next two weeks.”

“Did you ever see Louis Fox again?”

“I called the number that he gave me two months to the day later. He said that he had found out what happened to my father and that I should meet him at the Jewish cemetery on 4^th street that next Monday afternoon. I cut school again. It never occurred to me to be frightened to meet this man in a desolate place like a cemetery. When I think about things like that now, I must have been another person or something.”

 

“Perhaps you were just very naïve.”

“It was a cold day and I got there very early and had to wait for a long time. When I finally saw him coming down the street, I wasn’t even sure that it was the same man. He had on a suit and a hat and a very large, tan overcoat, and he was with this Jewish man who was all dressed in black and had a long beard and hair hanging down the sides of his face. Mr. Fox didn’t introduce me to the man and spoke to him in a language that I didn’t understand. We went into the cemetery. The stones were large, not like the way it is in Jewish cemeteries today. I remember that when we walked down the rows that some of the stones were taller than me. I remember having this feeling that I was in another kind of prison and that these men were kind of guards too. I thought that this was a prison that nobody ever got out of and I had this urge to turn around and run out of there and go back home to my grandmother. But I had come so far and felt so close to actually finding out something real about my father that I forced myself to keep walking.”

“Marjorie, is this the first time that you remember feeling that you had to run home in order to be safe?”

“I don’t know. I never really thought about it like that. All I remember was that it was so cold and that the wind was blowing through the spaces in the stones and that my hands were red and that the man in black was leading the way and that he walked slowly and it seemed like it was taking forever.”

 

“Then what happened?”

“We stopped in front of this stone and it wasn’t as big as some of the others. Mr. Fox handed the rabbi some money and the rabbi opened the book that he was carrying and began to read from it.”

“Was it a prayer book?”

“It must have been because he was singing and swaying back and forth and I remember wondering why neither of the men had taken off their hats if they were going to pray. I had never heard anyone making sounds like the man. Then while he was still doing it, Mr. Fox turned to me and said, ‘This is your father’s grave Marjorie. I couldn’t really find out too much about how he died because it was a long time ago, but I will tell you that he was a good man who just wound up getting some unlucky breaks.’ Then I looked at the stone. I stared at the name: Laurence Fischer, 1871-1930. It was like a siren went off in my head. I said, ‘This can’t be my father’s grave! Mr. Fox, I know it can’t be.’ He said, ‘This is your father’s grave, Marjorie.’ I cried and hollered, ‘This man was much older than my father would have been. My father was your age, Mr. Fox.’ He just insisted that this was Larry Fischer’s grave and maybe all that it proved was that I wasn’t Larry’s daughter. Then I got angry and said, ‘Why did you bring me here to do this to me? Is it because my father helped you to kill that man?’ His face was puffier than I remembered it being back at the prison. He stooped over and brought it down close to me and whispered in this fierce voice, ‘This is your father’s grave. Leave it alone. Go ahead and live your life. That’s all I can tell you.’ I looked up at the man in the black suit and he had his eyes closed and was making sounds and swaying back and forth like he didn’t know that either of us was there. I remember shouting, ‘Why can’t someone just tell me the truth?’ Then I was running and I ran all the way to the bus stop and when I got off the bus, I ran all the way back to our apartment on Gillette Place. I remember how good it felt to be home and how I didn’t care if I ever if I ever found out the truth as long as I could be home and feel safe.”

“Well Marjorie, I think we have both learned quite a bit tonight. I want to follow up on this next week.”

That was his signal that the session was over. Marjorie reached for her purse and took out her checkbook. “I feel so guilty about paying you so little for seeing me, Dr. Bork”

“That’s the one thing that we don’t ever have to talk about, Marjorie.”

Dr. Bork ushered her to the door and watched as she walked to her car. Her husband was waiting. When she got into the car, George didn’t ask anything about her appointment and Marjorie felt relieved to be on the way home.

On the occasion of her next weekly appointment, Marjorie arrived at Dr. Bork’s office carrying a rather large, thick folder. She placed it on the desk next to her chair and lit a cigarette.

“How was your week, Marjorie?”

Marjorie stared at the psychologist before she began to speak. Her eyes were dark. “I’m not quite sure how to answer you, Dr. Bork. Let’s just say that our last visit had quite an impact on me.”

“I was hoping that it might.”

“I’ve begun to search for my father again.”

Bork was unable to hide the look of surprise that splashed across his face. This was taking a direction that he hadn’t expected. “What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t sleep after leaving here last week. I couldn’t get those images of the cemetery and the prison out of my head. I couldn’t get away from the feeling that there must be some way to find out what happened to my father, so I’ve begun to check through old newspapers at the library.”

“And what were you able to find?”

“Quite a bit.  Some things that I knew and then forgot about, some things that I’m not sure that I ever wanted to know.”

“Why did you decide to restart this search?”

“Because whenever I start thinking about my father, I get this feeling that he might still be alive someplace and that he might not even know that I ever existed, or he might not just not be able to bring himself to find me after all this time.”

“Marjorie, asking about your father was just one way of going back to your childhood and trying to find some keys that will help you to make yourself. What happened back then really isn’t that important today.”

“Would you be able to say that if we were talking about your father, Dr. Bork?”

Bork looked down at his pen and his legal pad. “I don’t know how to answer you about that, but let’s try something else. Tonight let’s talk about the other members of your family.”

Marjorie stared at the folder. “I was really hoping that we could continue to talk about my father.”

Bork could hear the stress in her voice. Perhaps he could turn this obsessive feeling into a useful tool. Perhaps the obsession itself was a kind of key to some of the answers that they were seeking. “Let’s talk about your grandmother. What kind of a woman was she?”

Marjorie slid her palm across the top of the folder. “If I had to sum it up, I would say that she was broken-hearted.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know but as a child I can never remember her laughing and whenever she did smile there was a lot of sadness in her face. Maybe it was because she was sick. Maybe it was because we were so poor. Maybe it was because her children were such a disappointment to her or because her husband died when she was still a young woman. I don’t know. She never wanted to talk about her life.”

“Where was she born?”

“North Adams, Massachusetts. She was a Lowell. She graduated from Cheshire Academy. I’m sure that spending her life in furnished rooms and basement apartments was not what she dreamed of when she was young.”

“Do you think that she loved you?”

“I’m absolutely sure of it. Or at least I used to be. Who knows now, maybe she just felt sorry for me. She always said that we were poor people who would never get ahead in the world.”

“Did she ever hit you?”

“Not really. She’d tell my Aunt Dotty when I did something that was really wrong and my aunt would hit me.”

“Tell me about your aunt.”

“She’s not an easy person to sum up. I remember wishing and praying that she was my mother. I used to ask her all the time to tell me is she was really my mother.”

“What would she say?”

“She’d say that she wished that she was but that it just wasn’t true.” Marjorie shook her head and her bottom lip began to tremble. “She had style and charm, but she could be so cruel. I gave her a home and the best that I had to offer and what I can’t seem to forget or forgive her for is that she never told me the truth about my father, or my mother, or herself, or anything else.” Tears were running down Marjorie’s face now.

Dr. Bork handed her a box of tissues and said, “It will be fine if you wish to take a minute before we continue.”

“No, that’s OK. There’s nothing that a minute is going to change anymore. She knew everything and she probably created half of the lies that I have spent the rest of my life trying to unravel. Did I ever tell you that the name on my mother’s headstone and the name that I grew up with was an alias? Did you know that I was named after The Fischer Piano Company. Who knows if it was a name my father actually used? My mother was never married, and it was too much of an embarrassment to all of them to bury her or to raise me with our real names, so they just made something up. Of course I believed it until I was old enough to realize that there was something phony about it. I only wish that I had been smart enough to figure out that they had put together a complete package of lies and called it my past. It’s been difficult to find out a little at a time that everything that you’ve been told about yourself was a fiction created for the sakes of what other people would think.”

“Marjorie, tell me some of the things that they told you.”

Marjorie laughed bitterly. “None of what they told me was true. They told me that my father didn’t care about us and that’s why he left us. They told me that my mother had cancer of the throat. They told me that they were all good people who had lived good lives. It was all bullshit!” Marjorie startled herself by the use of the word. He face flushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to use that kind of language.”

“Maybe it’s time that you called it what it was, Marjorie. Maybe bullshit is the right word. At any rate, you never have to apologize for anything that you say in this office, and you never have to worry about what words you use to express yourself.”

“Thank you, Dr. Bork. My grandmother didn’t believe in cursing. I never heard her use the Lord’s name in vain. When she was really angry, she would call me a dirty little skunk.”

“What about your mother?”

“I don’t remember. I can’t remember how she spoke. She had these tubes in her throat and all I can remember was that horrible gurgling and gagging sounds that she used to make when she had to change them.”

“Had her voice box been removed?”

“I guess so. They told me that she’d gotten cancer. They used to tell me stories of how the peddlers would sell her rotten food because she wasn’t able to smell anything. And then to find out through the newspapers that it wasn’t cancer at all.” Marjorie began sobbing.

“How did your mother lose her voice?”

“She was beaten, ok? Someone beat her so badly that they crushed her larynx and it had to be removed.”

“I’m very sorry, Marjorie.”

“That’s not the half of it. She had an arrest record. She was involved with the murder of some bus driver in Belleville. She was finally beaten again and dumped in front of some doctor’s office and she bled to death on his floor. Who knows what she was. She certainly wasn’t very interested in being my mother. She died when I was nine years old, but I never lived with her. I can remember her taking me to the movies once in my life. We took apart a bracelet that was made of nickels and went to the movies. That’s it! Now I would like to stop talking about her, please!”

“Marjorie, I can only imagine how upsetting it must be for you to talk about all of this. If I knew of a less painful way to help you, I would certainly take it. But the real truth is that until you face who you really are, you are never going to be able to face the problems that you have.”

Marjorie had stopped sobbing but the tears were still coming from her eyes. “That sounds hopeless to me, Dr. Bork. Don’t you see that I’ll never really know who I am?”

“Marjorie, I’d like you to think about it and decide what you believe would be the most useful thing for us to work on during your next visit.”

Understanding the signal, Marjorie wrote out the check and left.

The next week Marjorie was again carrying her folder. She was elated when she came into his office. “I think that I finally may be starting to get someplace with my search.”

“How’s that?” said Dr. Bork.

“The Census Bureau has found a record that says that my father was actually alive. It’s the first time that I’ve seen anything in print that says that he existed.”

“Marjorie, I’m happy for you. I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I’d like to ask you something. Do you really think that finding out what happened to your father will change anything for you in your life today?”

Marjorie was startled by the question. “I think it will change everything. It will allow me to put it all to rest, don’t you see?”

“I’m not sure that I do see, Marjorie. How is it going to do that?”

“Once I know who I am everything will be better.”

“Don’t you think that you already know who you are?”

“That way, yes of course I do, but there are so many other questions and lies that I have to sort through.”

“They don’t really matter. I was hoping that you could come to that conclusion yourself, but I see now that you are insatiable when it comes to this. Is knowing about your father going to make things better with your son or your husband?”

“Who knows what it will do.”

“Let’s talk about your first husband tonight.”

“Harry Tuck? What is there to say about him?”

“You don’t mention him that frequently and yet every once in a while I get the feeling that he is still a big part of your life.”

“He is a big part of my life, but that’s because of my son.”

“Didn’t you once tell me that he used to drive you to work every day?”

“He did. Harry and I have known each other for most of our lives. If you can believe it, he comes from a past that is even more screwed up than mine. When we got married, he said that the past was only a place for things to be buried and not something that the living should worry about.”

“Did you agree with him?”

‘I was eighteen and in love. I agreed with everything that he said.”

“Is it possible that he was right?”

“It’s possible that he was right for himself, but I don’t think that what’s right for one person has to be right for everybody.”

“Isn’t it possible that your aunt and grandmother were just doing what they thought was right?”

“I suppose, but who was it right for? Not for me. Maybe it was right and convenient for them, but I don’t see that it did anything good for me.”

“Why do you think that your marriage to Harry didn’t work out?”

“We were kids. We really didn’t know anything about the world or have any business getting married. The reason that it didn’t work out was that he wouldn’t stop sleeping with one of my best friends. He slept with her while I was pregnant with Ronald and he slept with her after I gave him another chance. He had promised me that he wouldn’t do it again. It didn’t work out because he didn’t want to be my husband.”

“Did you want to be his wife?”

“At first, it was the only thing in the world that I did want. Looking back, I can see that we never had a chance with each other.”

“Then you don’t blame him for breaking trust with you?”

“I did, but things changed as I grew older. I began to see things from a different perspective.”

“Why don’t you think that you are able to do that where the rest of your past is concerned?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s because I just never found out what the truth was.”

“Why is the truth so important to you?”

“The truth is always important.”

“Haven’t you ever lied to protect someone?”

“Yes, but I never felt good about it.”

“But you did it anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible that your family thought that they were doing that for you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they saw how it haunted me.”

“Maybe they didn’t have any answers that would have taken your pain away, Marjorie.”

“I don’t think that they cared about my pain. I think that they were interested in their images of themselves and how they changed history to make those images comfortable.”

“Is that so bad?”

“For me it was.”

“Marjorie, I think that the only way that you’re ever going to be able to work through these problems and get on with your life is to realize that nothing terrible is going to happen to you if you let your past go. I think that you have to let the stuff about your family go and I think that you have to let go of the stuff about your son.”

There was a flash of anger and hurt in Marjorie’s face. She flinched like she was slapped by his words. She looked straight into his face. Her eyes were shining dark and determined and angry. “How can you say that to me? You of all people! How can you say that to me after everything that I’ve told you?”

“It’s because of what you’ve told me that I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no other way for you.”

“I can’t accept that, Dr. Bork.”

“Unfortunately, my dear, I don’t think that you have any other choice.”

Marjorie wrote out her check slowly. “I think that I’d like to take some time to sort things out. Perhaps it would be better if I didn’t come back for a while.”

“Of course that’s your decision, but I think that you’re making a mistake.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate everything that you’ve tried to do to help me. I just don’t think that I can follow your advice about this.”

“There’s no law that says that you have to follow my advice as a pre-requisite to getting therapy.”

“I just need time to sort through things, that’s all.”

“I really wish you well in your search, Marjorie.”

As he watched her walk to her car, he wondered if he would see her again. Her story was sad and pathetic but she was somehow intriguing and he wanted to help her to overcome the agoraphobia.

 

2

For the fifth consecutive day, Marjorie sat in The Newark Public Library scanning issues of the 1929 Newark Evening News. At first the librarianhad given her admonitions about tying up the microfilm machine for so many hours at a time, but Marjorie had seemed so in need of the task and so persistent that by the end of the fifth day, the librarian was making small talk with her and stopped questioning her about monopolizing the machine. Although Marjorie has made a large number of copies and had taken copious notes on other articles, it was clear that she was not a professional researcher or writer.

Her area of interest concerned the robbery and murder of a jeweler and local hero named Morris Gold. Morris had obtained notoriety by knocking down and managing to hold on to a man who had attempted to kill the Governor of New Jersey. After firing several errant shots at the Governor, the would-be assassin fled down Market Street waving his pistol in front of him. Morris had come out of his jewelry store to investigate the noise and, in a moment of courageous reflex, subdued the criminal by throwing his rather portly body in the fleeing man’s path. The man screamed and cursed and flailed and tried to kick Morris off, but the jeweler wouldn’t let go and soon the police caught up to the scene. Morris was a hero. The President of the United States even sent him a commendation for bravery.

It wasn’t long after the incident that Morris had his first affair. She wasn’t an especially pretty woman, but she loved cheap jewelry and did things in the back room that Morris would never have dreamed asking his wife to do. It was more of a regular visit than a romance. The two of them never went anywhere together and there were never any promises made by either one that suggested that things could be more than they were.It continued for about a year. There were only two misunderstandings between them. Morris didn’t know that his mistress was also involved with a young man and she didn’t realize how cheap the trinkets that he gave her actually were.

Eileen’s life was not a particularly good one and times were not easy in 1929 Newark. When her brother found out that his younger sister was getting a reputation, he began to slap her around, and when her mother told her that her brother was right to try to beat the devil out of her, she decided to leave home. She took the secret box of gifts that Morris had given to her to a pawnshop with intentions of getting enough money to set up an apartment and convincing her boyfriend Larry that, even though he was Jewish and she was not, they could make a life together.

The pawnbroker only used his jewel glass on the first couple of pieces. Then he began to toss her treasures around in the box with a look of growing disdain. When he offered her fifteen dollars for everything, she was outraged. With a cold and angry pride, she told the charlatan that she had no intention of being cheated by him and that there was no shortage of honest pawn brokers in the city. After the next shop, she realized what Morris had done.

When Eileen and Morris had their confrontation, it was less about passion and betrayal and more about economics. After making sure that his shop was empty, she spoke with a loud and angry entrance. She screamed at Morris chanting the prices that she had been offered for her box of jewelry and banging the box on the counter to emphasize the insult of each offer.

Morris said, “Why are you trying to sell my gifts to you?”

“I need the money because men like you are lousy bastards,” hollered Eileen.

Morris looked out the door and window of his store front. He was nervous and sweating.

“Perhaps it is better if you don’t come back here anymore,” he said regretfully.

“And suppose I tell your cow of a wife what has been happening?”

Morris smiled ruefully. “She’d never believe you.”

Holding up her box and crying, Eileen said, “What about these?”

“My wife has never seen this junk and wouldn’t recognize it,” said Morris. “I’m a family man who spends all my evenings at home. I am very well thought of in this community. My wife has no reason to suspect anything about me.”

Eileen saw that she was defeated. She blubbered that she would go into the back room and do anything that he wanted her to do if he would give her enough money to rent an apartment and get started. Morris said that he didn’t think so. Eileen continued to cry. Morris told her that he was sorry for her troubles and that she was a good kid. Then he asked her to leave.

Eileen went to look for Larry. It was going to be a tricky thing because there was no way that she could tell him what she had been doing with Morris, but she wanted somebody to hurt the two timing jeweler and make him pay for what he had taken from her.

Larry and Eileen had a strange relationship. He was a first generation immigrant whose parents hardly spoke any English. Larry had been able to fool them and the rest of the family into thinking that he was going to school when the truth was that he was hanging around with the street gangs and getting a useful education. There were plenty of possibilities for a guy like himself and Larry knew that it would only be a matter of time until he caught the right person’s eye. He dressed sharply and forced himself to speak English without the slightest trace of an accent.

The problem with Eileen was that she wasn’t Jewish. That meant that neither one of their families would want anything to do with the other. Larry saw the situation as a cloud with a silver lining. It was true that they couldn’t get married, but it was also true that it gave him a great argument for talking her into doing whatever he wanted her to do.

Eileen was an exciting girl. Her older sisters were wild and one of them had gone to jail, while the other was involved in the rackets in a big time way. Larry was sure that Eileen knew the score of what went on between them. He knew that she was sweet for him and that if he worked things right, that in the end she would be able to help him get where he wanted to go.

The story that Eileen told Larry was a complete work of imagination. She told him that her mother had gone to the jeweler with the last of their family heirlooms and that Morris had stolen them and replaced them with junk. She told him that Morris was denying that he had ever seen an expensive cameo that had been a wedding gift for her mother and father. She told him that the only way that she was going to be able to get what she deserved for her mother was for Larry to go to the jewelry store and shame Morris in front of his wife.

Larry immediately identified the situation as the break that he had been looking for.  If he did this favor for Eileen’s family, word would get around that he was someone to be taken seriously. It wasn’t that easy for a nineteen year old kid to be taken seriously. But there was one point that needed clarification.  “Does your sister Dorothy know about what happened?” said Larry.

Eileen hadn’t expected this kind of question. She thought fast. “My mother doesn’t approve of the way that my sisters are living. She doesn’t want them to know how bad things have gotten for us and she is ashamed to tell them now.” The look on Larry’s face told her that he really didn’t buy her explanation. She began to panic. She could see the whole plan starting to fall apart. She started to cry. “Larry, I wasn’t telling you the whole truth.  I took the cameo without telling my mother anything. I wanted to set up an apartment so that you and I could be together without anybody having the right to say anything about it. I was going to get a job and keep the apartment going.”

Larry smiled. That made more sense and he liked the idea of having an apartment where he could stop in and see Eileen whenever he wanted to be with her. He told her that a couple of his friends and him were going to pay Morris a visit at his house and that they were going to come back with at least two hundred dollars for her. He said that he would have to pay the guys twenty-five dollars each to make it worth their time, but that one hundred and fifty dollars would be more than enough to set up an apartment.

Larry decided to case the jewelry shop and get an opportunity to eyeball Morris before deciding what to do. He went in on the pretext of needing a new watch. Morris Gold was bigger than Larry imagined him to be and older too. The sign on the shop store said that it would close at 7pm. As far as Larry could tell, there was only a lock on the front door, no alarm.  That told Larry that there must be a safe in the back that Morris used to store the good stuff. Larry knew that Morris Gold’s jewelry shop was famous for diamond brooches and gold bands, the kind of items that would only be brought out for certain customers. Larry also knew about Morris’ recent notoriety and how it had improved his business. The more he thought about it, the more that he became convinced that he wanted to take the jeweler for everything that he had.

He watched Morris close up his shop and followed him as he made his way down Market Street.  Larry noticed the number of people with whom Morris exchanged greetings. The right way to do it was to get into the store and clean out the old bastard’s safe.

That night he explained the new plan to Eileen. She said that she didn’t care if they robbed his whole store and that she had seen the safe in the back room and that during the day it was left open.

“How’d you see that?” asked Larry.

“He said that he wanted to show me where the cameo was going to be kept so that I wouldn’t worry. I didn’t realize until we got back there that he was just he was just looking for an excuse to put his hands on me.”

‘You let that fat slob touch you?” Larry’s voice was angry and dark.

“I didn’t let him,” said Eileen. “He just did it, that was all. I made believe that I didn’t feel his hand and then he took it away.”

“I need to teach him a lesson for you, Eileen.”

            “Larry this ain’t about that. Just get the money and get the hell out of there without a hitch.’

That night they got a room at the Military Park Hotel. Larry was becoming more and more impressed by Eileen and she knew that after not going home all night that she had stepped over a line that she couldn’t cross again.

Louis and Charlie were two guys that Larry trusted more than other people that he knew. They were also two guys who had guns and were reliable. It didn’t take long to work out the details of the plan. Charlie and Larry were still living at home, but Louis had his own place. They could bring Eileen over to Louis’ room and then beat it back there by different routes after the job was finished.

Splitting a bottle of whiskey, the four of them sat around a small table while they waited for it to be time to go. Larry saw the way that his two friends looked at Eileen. If only she’d been Jewish. He thought for an instant, but then decided that this was no time for that kind of stuff. This was his plan, his woman, his gang and it was going to his night.

At first, the job went smoothly. They walked in on Morris while he still had the safe open. Larry smacked him in his fat gut with the butt of his gun. Then he brought his gun up to the jeweler’s mouth and told him that he would love to shoot him through his chins. Louis and Charlie cleaned out the safe and the register. They were almost frightened by the fortune that they found. There was more in cash and in merchandise than the three of them put together had seen in their lives. Morris seemed too frightened to move.

If it hadn’t been for his act of heroism, he probably would have remained that way, but his eye caught the letter of commendation from the president that Morris had framed and hung on the wall.  His mind recalled the accolades that had been heaped upon him about his bravery and courage. The instinct gripped him once again, and he tried to make a move to grab Larry’s gun, but Morris moved too slowly and Larry was too nervous. The shot splattered the jeweler’s brain.

The three men watched Morris Gold’s body slide down the wall and stared for a shocked instant at the smear of blood. Then they panicked. Forgetting the plan and holding the bags of cash and jewelry in plain sight, they ran down the street together. Larry, terrified by the feel of the hot gun, threw the weapon into an alley. Somehow the men made it back to the room where Eileen was waiting, but it was no good. People had seen them. Within a few minutes, they split up the take and abandoned the apartment.

Later that night, Larry and Eileen stole a car and headed for Massachusetts. Louis and Charlie were arrested within a couple of days. They were tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Several months later, Eileen reappeared. She was pregnant. Larry was never seen again, although the newspapers did refer to an unidentified man who had actually committed the murder of Morris Gold.

Marjorie was tired and the library was about to close. What a way to learn about your parents, she thought.  In reality, she wasn’t even sure of how much of the newspaper stories were accurate. Her aunts and grandmother had resisted telling her anything for years. What was not in the newspaper stories, she had filled in with her imagination.

They had told her that he mother died of cancer and now she had a death certificate from the State which said that wasn’t true. They had told her that her mother loved her very much, but Marjorie had no recollection of those expressions of love. Every memory of her mother was accompanied by a shadowy parade of surly men that were always around her and always telling her to hurry up. Her family told her that Larry died when she was a baby, but why should she believe that any more than the rest of lies?

Over the years, Marjorie had constructed a fantasy about her father and she kept the belief that he was alive somewhere deep in her heart. The need to find him was an irregular but persistent passion that she had felt forever.

Up Market Street, passed the block that used to contain Morris Gold’s jewelry store and down what used to be called High Street was the Hall of Records. When Marjorie got around to telling the librarian that she was interested in documents surrounding a trial, the librarian told her about the archives in the Hall. It was there, for the first time, that she actually saw his name in print.

When she saw it in the clear flowing penmanship that was used to record proceedings in 1930, her hands began to shake. She looked at the paper for a long time and then held it to her face and began to cry. It was the first official document, other than the census, that supported the existence of the man.  The newspapers had never named the unidentified gunman but there was the name, Larry Bernstein, alias Larry Fischer, alias Larry Borenstein, alias Larry Green suspected of murder and never apprehended. Now she was sure. Why else would they have all lied to her if there had been nothing to hide?

Things began popping into her memory with small explosions. This was why there had been no trace of the Fischers. This was way there was no record of the death of Larry Fischer. This was why the grave was a phony. She hadn’t been named after a piano company. It had been a fake name that he sometimes used. She wondered if they had done that so that he would be able to find her one day. This also explained why there was no burial receipt for the body. She had spent all of this time searching with the wrong name.

That evening Marjorie poured over her collection of dated Newark phone books, looking under the name Bernstein. There had been pages and pages of them. When her husband came home from work and found that she had again become oblivious to time and food, he told her that he couldn’t take her spending all of her time doing this anymore. He told her that nothing in the present seemed to exist for her and that half the time he thought that it was 1930 in his house. He screamed that he had gone through this search with her on many other occasions and that she always came up empty and more depressed than she had been when she started. Finally, with his face red and his arms waving, he said, “How is it that you can travel down to Newark and crawl around the floors in the Hall of Records without any help but you can’t seem to get yourself to the Grand Union to buy my dinner?”

George’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Marjorie felt too close to something to be distracted by George or anything else now. She looked up from the phone books. “I guess it’s because this is more important to me than your dinner is. I don’t expect you to understand and I think that we both know where you’d really like to be and what you’d like to be doing.”

George threw up his hands and walked towards the door. He called back over his shoulder that he would be back after he’d gotten himself something to eat. That night he told his girlfriend that he’d decided to leave his wife for good.

There were thirty-seven names under Bernstein in Marjorie’s most recent Newark phone directory. She started with those close to her old neighborhood and then worked her way out.  She continued to make calls the next morning.

“Hello, I’m very sorry to bother you but I’m trying to locate a Mr. Larry Bernstein. I haven’t seen him for many, many years but it is very important that I speak to him. Do you have anyone in your family with that name? He would be about seventy-five years old by now, I think.”

On the two occasions when she had gotten affirmative replies, her heart began to thump with incredibly wild anticipation, but something had always come along as a disqualifier. She ended each of those conversations with her mouth trembling and by being able to choke out, “No that couldn’t be him. Thank you very much.”

After she called the last name, she felt very alone. George had been right. This had only lead to another dead end. She got up from the telephone and wandered through the rooms trying to determine what she should do next. The following day, she drove back to the Newark Library.

When she and George had left Newark, they had declared that except for visits to family and some of the really good meat stores and bakeries there was no reason for them to return to the city. And yet she had been driving its streets every day for weeks.

The librarian smiled when she saw Marjorie. The woman had become such a fixture at the microfilm machine that she had missed seeing her there in the last few days. The librarian looked down at her watch. There really wasn’t enough time left in the day to start the lengthy kind of work that Marjorie did, but she would assist as much as she could. “Did you have any luck with the Hall of Records?”

Marjorie smiled sadly. “I don’t seem to have very much luck at all.”

The librarian glanced at her watch for Marjorie’s benefit and said, “Is there something that I can get for you? We are going to be closing shortly.”

Without really thinking, Marjorie blurted, “Do you know anything about the Jewish Community of Newark?”

“What is it that you’re interested in? That kind of information would probably be located in the New Jersey Historical section.”

“I don’t think that’s the kind of thing that I need,” said Marjorie.

The tone of defeat in her voice touched the librarian who had watched her struggle to learn how to use the machine and then sit for hours in a neck stiffening position, scanning through issue after issue of forgotten newspapers. “The only thing that I know is that when they left, they left without a trace.”

“When they left?” Marjorie picked up her head for the first time.

“Well, you know how it is with this city. Most of the good people pulled out a long time ago.”

Marjorie’s face brightened. She thanked the librarian for all her kindness and shook her hand. Then she hurried back to her car. When they left. That was it! Her father’s family had left the city. Probably they hadn’t gone too far! She hadn’t gone too far. They could be in West Orange, Verona or Livingston. When she got home, Marjorie went straight for her suburban Essex phone book. There were three pages dedicated to the name Bernstein. She began to make the calls.

When George came home and found his wife still sitting at the table with the open phone book, he had to try to stop her. “Marjorie, I know how much this means to you, but don’t you see what you are doing? You’re closing yourself off from everything around you. It’s almost as if you were the person that disappeared.”

Marjorie felt punched in the stomach by the last sentence. “I’m doing what I think I have to do, George.” Then she began to dial the next number, but she saw that her hands were shaking. Then she heard the voice in her head that always preceded one of her spells. What do you think that you’re doing? Something very bad is going to happen and it’s all going to be your fault because you won’t give up on this foolishness! Marjorie put the phone down. She felt like she was going to pass out. There was tightness in her throat. She began to gasp for air. Her mind was out of control. Had she already done the thing that was going to cause awful things to happen? She lit a cigarette and took a Librium. She needed to calm down. She peered out of the kitchen into the room that George had retreated off to.  It seemed very far away and dangerous. She was sure that she couldn’t make herself go that far. “My God, what’s happening to me?” she said. She was actually afraid to leave the kitchen and go into her own living room. She was afraid to get up from the table. She was afraid to speak. She was afraid to breathe.

When Dr. Bork’s answered his phone, he could barely make out Marjorie’s voice whispering on the other end of the line. “Doctor Bork, something very bad is happening to me and I need to see you. Could I please come over?”

Bork heard the distress. He had almost expected that something like this would happen sooner or later. “Can you come over right now?”

“Yes,” said Marjorie. “Thank you so much.”

She put down the phone and looked back into the living room. It was still so very far away. The door was on the other side of the room and beyond the door was nothing that she knew. She got up slowly and moved from the back of the chair to the counter. Her legs felt very heavy. She moved to the doorway. She was beginning to sweat. “George,” she called. There was no answer. Then she heard the shower running from the upstairs bathroom. He was getting ready to go out, she thought. She moved back to the phone and dialed her son’s number. There was no answer. She was crying when she put the phone down. He was never there when she needed him anymore. Then she had an idea. If she called a cab she would be able to go. She would know what was waiting for her outside of the door. She could picture the cab in her mind as she made her way back through the living room. She had gone to Dr. Bork’s office by cab before. Yes, she could do that.

3

 

“Marjorie, it’s good to see you again.” Dr. Bork extended his hand and guided the patient into his foyer.

“Dr. Bork, I’m terribly sorry to be bothering you like this. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Why don’t we just go into my office and talk about it,” said Bork.

When Marjorie looked around, she saw that the office still gave her a secure feeling.  Her breathing had returned to its normal rate and she no longer felt like she was going to feint.

“How have you been doing, Marjorie?”

She recounted the story of her search and then she told him about her argument with George and the effect that it had on her. When she was finished, she was sitting stiffly, waiting to hear what he would have to say. She expected him to admonish her for going overboard, but he didn’t say anything. He filled his pipe and lit it with a long, wooden match.  “Doctor, do you think that I’m having a breakdown?”

Dr. Bork tipped back in his chair and smiled. “What I think you are having is a breakthrough, Marjorie.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I’ve heard is not the story of a woman who is unable to go to the Grand Union. I’ve been listening to the amazing story of a persistent survivor who had let her determination and instincts lead her towards what she thought was right in face of overwhelming odds.”

“But Dr. Bork, I wasn’t even able to walk into my parlor tonight.”

“You got yourself here when you needed to though, didn’t you?”

“I took a cab.”

“But you did what was necessary for you to get what you needed for yourself. Don’t you see that is one of the truly important things that happened to you tonight? Your son wasn’t there to help you. Your husband wasn’t there for you. Your aunt is no longer alive, but you were still able to get yourself here.”

“But what happened to me?”

“I can’t tell you for sure, but I can tell you what I think is going on. I think that George inadvertently enunciated one of your deepest subconscious fears, the fear that somehow you would disappear too.” Marjorie felt another jolt inside of her, even at the re-mention of the words. Bork noticed her body stiffen and saw that her face looked panicked. “I think that it was still difficult for you to hear me say those words. The truth is, however, that you’re here because you want to be here. Look at your past, Marjorie. Your grandmother was always afraid to let you do anything because of what she’d seen happen to her own children. She was determined to make sure that you weren’t lost to her as well. What she did in order to accomplish that was to try to scare you to death about the outside world. She didn’t do it as an act of meanness. It was out of fear. Your aunts went along with her, probably out of guilt that they felt about what they’d done with their own lives. This search that you say has haunted you has probably given you the strength to attempt things that you would have otherwise never tried to do. Don’t you realize how incredible it is that a young girl would have the gumption to go to a prison and then later to meet with a convicted murderer? Your story about the last few weeks in the library is simply amazing. Of course the librarian wanted to help you! You are someone who is worthy of being helped.”

The medicine of praise was having a tremendously restorative effect on Bork’s patient. “Do you think that I’ll ever find out what happened to my father?”

“I don’t know, Marjorie, but I’m sure that somewhere along the way you will discover an appreciation of yourself.”

“I feel like I’m at a dead end.”

“You’ve felt that way before.”

“I seem to keep going back to old newspapers.”

“Perhaps you should try a more contemporary approach.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Perhaps the person who could help you is still out there to be found.”

Then Marjorie understood what Bork was talking about.

 

One year later, in the Sunday edition of the Star-Ledger, the following letter appeared in the editorial section under the subhead, Search Runs Into Stone Wall:

Dear Editor,

I have been trying to obtain a death certificate for my father for the last several years now to no avail. These are the reasons.

I started going and writing to all the department of health offices for each county in New Jersey to ask to search through their records. Each name that I have researched has cost me four dollars. At the time of my father’s presumed death (July 3, 1930) he used aliases, so it has therefore cost me several hundred dollars and I still have not found a death certificate. I have contacted the Department of Vital Statistics in Trenton on several occasions, and the state registrar refuses me admission to check the records for July 1930.  He claims that all such records are closed to the public. I have explained to him that the reason that I wish to be allowed to look myself is that I am more likely to recognize the alias.

Also,  in the last year,  I have been in contact with The United States Department of Justice. The Census Bureau, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, The United States Department of Defense, The Department of Health and Human Services, The Letter Forwarding Service of the Bureau of Data Processing, The United States Department of Commerce, The United States House of Representatives, The Social Security Administration, The United States Army, and The United States Navy. Additionally, I have searched the death records for the states of New York and Pennsylvania.

I would ask at this time that someone come forward and attempt to be of assistance to me. I am not willing to give up the search to discover the fate of my father, but if there is anyone who can give me information relating to the life or death of Larry Bernstein of Newark, New Jersey, please contact the editor of this paper and he can put you in touch with me.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Bombasco

Bloomfield, New Jersey

When the Family Location and Legal Services agent contacted Marjorie some three days later, she was genuinely surprised.  The letter to the editor had been her final idea. Tracing the family name through the synagogue records for the temple which had been located in Marjorie’s old neighborhood, the representative found the Bernstein family living two towns away from Marjorie.

On a cool April evening, Marjorie had her first conversation with a member of her father’s family. The woman’s name was Stephanie Weiss. After being contacted by her rabbi, Mrs. Weiss agreed to speak with Marjorie.

“Mrs. Weiss, do you know what happened to my father?”

“Mrs. Bombasco, I agreed to speak with you at the urging of Rabbi Feldman, but I must tell you that I have no reason to believe that my uncle Larry was ever married or ever had a child.”

“How old is your uncle now?” said Marjorie, holding her breath.

“Well, if he were still alive, he would be in his seventies, I would imagine.”

“What happened to him?”

“Something very bad, I think. We were never allowed to talk about him as children. I think he did something very wrong. Anyway, I know that my father and my grandfather arranged for him to go back to Poland right around 1931, or so.”

“Then what happened?” said Marjorie.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “You know what happened in Poland, don’t you?”

Then Marjorie began to tell the story of her life and her search. The woman was astonished. “I do remember some talk of Larry being involved with a gentile girl, but I never heard her name mentioned. I do have a brother who might know more about it than I do. He was older, you know?”

“Would you mind giving me his number?”

“I don’t think that I should do that, but I would be willing to call him and to tell him about you. I’ll get back to you in a short while.”

That night Marjorie waited for the return phone call but it never came. She waited by the phone through the next day and the next. Then she called Stephanie Weiss back. The woman seemed very frightened. “My brother was very upset with me when I called him. He has refused to have anything to do with this. What happened was all so very long ago, my dear, and I just don’t know how I can help you. Those were very bad times that everyone would just like to forget.”

Marjorie pleaded but the woman excused herself and hung up. Was this another lie? What was there to do now?

One week later, Marjorie’s old friend the librarian smiled when she saw her standing at her desk with a request form. Marjorie retuned the smile and asked, “Could you please direct me to a section that would contain information about the Holocaust?”

The Good Life

 

1

Sitting by the front windows and counting automobiles, the boy was glad that it was Sunday. There wasn’t as much work and there were more cars than on other days. His straight mouth and blue eyes showed concentration but not any emotion. Harry was waiting for a green pick-up truck that had dropped him off there at some hazy point in his past. He knew that he hadn’t always been at the orphanage, but he couldn’t remember how long it had been since his father had told him to be good and wait until he could come back for him. The truth was that he hadn’t learned to keep track of time very well.

        “Harry, you gonna’ play ball?” It was Roger. Harry didn’t mind Roger because he knew that he could kick the shit out of him any time that he needed to.

       “How many guys you got?” He wouldn’t have bothered to ask but it was Sunday and the car count could go over a hundred.

           “Seven on a side with you.”

             Harry’s expression cracked into a grin that moved his ears back. It was a good number. It was afternoon and probably no one else was coming there that day. Who cared that he wrote down the numbers for the week and then added them up and threw out the paper when there were seven totals of cars to be added.

          As soon as they hit the door, Harry started to run. The speed, the wind, and the side blur of immobile things moving passed him got him excited.

               In Father Bishop’s office there were no lights on and the drapes were drawn. Harry was waiting. He sat in the straight chair that was meant to remind him why he was there. Harry looked at the leather chairs and couch and tried to squint up an image of his father coming back for him, but he knew that he wasn’t allowed out of the punishment chair.

Father Bishop opened the door with an unconscious quietness. His face registered placid annoyance at the sight of Harry. “So you’re the ungrateful piece of trash that hits other boys on Sunday?”

Harry knew that he was under scrutiny and that anything he did would be the wrong thing. He kept his eyes on the floor. The shiny black shoes were standing next to him. The priest grabbed his left ear and pulled Harry to his feet. “Are you pretending not to hear me?”

Harry grimaced but did not cry out. “No father.”

The hand let go of his ear, would up and smacked against the side of his head. “You know the rules against fighting, Harold?”

“Is there anything that you want to tell me before you are punished for what you did?”

“I’m sorry,” Harry hesitated and raised his head until he was looking straight at the priest, “that I didn’t get to finish the fight.”

The priest rocked back on his heels and reached for his strap. “This time you’ll lower your pants in order to help you with your penance, Harold.”

               Harry was too sore to be comfortable, but the tears that he hadn’t been able to stuff back were dried on his face and arms. Roger stuck his head down from the overhead bunk. The dark haired boy was more curious than concerned. “He strapped your ass until you bled, didn’t he?”

“Did he get Jack too?

    “Right after he was done with you.”

“Did you grab anything from supper?”

“Couldn’t get away with anything but some bread,” said Roger.

“Bread’s alright.”

“You’d do it for me. Why did Jack start with you Harry?”

“I’ll get him back,” said Harry.

 

2

               The orphanage had one room that was set aside to teach the boys to read, write and do arithmetic. The rest of their education was confined to religion and manual labor. Harry was never really happy at the sight of Father Bishop, but he knew how the priest worked his system. Boys who had broken the rules were separated from the rest and given time to think about what they had done. Then they were strapped and sent back. There were no favorites in the home. The squealers were strapped just as hard as the boys who had broken the rules. Harry didn’t know if it was cruel, but it seemed fair.

 

He wasn’t unusually frightened when Father Bishop came to the school room to get him. He had been strapped again yesterday for getting even with Jack. The welts on his rear were still sore but he could move okay and he wasn’t letting on that anything was bothering him. Complaining about the after effects of being strapped just got you strapped again.

“I want you to come with me, Harold.”

They were going to the priest’s office, but Bishop stopped him outside the door and gave him an inspection. “Tuck in your shirt properly and comb your hair.” The priest watched as Harry smoothed his shirt around the waist of his pants. The priest’s eyes waited while the boy finger combed his thin, blonde hair.

Harry tried to hide his excitement at the sight of William Brandt, but seeing his father overwhelmed him, and unknowingly, the boy’s mouth dropped open. Brandt was a large man with a barrel chest and the tell-tale redness of hard drinking on his face.

“I come to get ya, Harry.”

Father Bishop ushered Harry into one of the leather chairs and then sat down behind his desk. “You left Harry with us about two and a half years ago, Mr. Brandt. We think that you’ll find him a different boy than he was then. He’s had the chicken pox and several fevers that have gone on for weeks and just run their course. He still doesn’t eat very well and seems to have a mean streak in him. We’ve attempted to address that behavior with a moderate amount of success. Harold has grown to expect to be sternly corrected when he misbehaves. We suggest that you continue that practice so that the work that we’ve started here won’t be lost. The Lord has taught us that children profit from the strap.”

“I hope that he hasn’t been too much trouble to ya father, but you can be sure that the Mrs. and me won’t go against anything that you done.”

“We’re here for more than the convenience of the needy, Mr. Brandt. Please require that Harold continue to go to church regularly. It is the small price that we ask in exchange for our services and of course whatever donation that you’ve decided upon for the time that he spent here.”

Brandt looked over at his youngest son. “Ain’t really got much I can give you right now Father, but as soon as money comes in, we’ll be sending something along.

The first thing that surprised Harry was that there was no green pick-up truck parked in front of the orphanage. The second surprise was that his father lived close enough for the two of them to walk to his new home.

The man watched his son walking alongside of him. The boy was tall for eight years old and Brandt saw traces of his old wife in Harry’s face. The insight caused an uncomfortable emotion and made him feel like he had to say something. He didn’t like to feel that he had to speak to his children.

“I’m married. When you talk to her, you’ll call her Mrs. Brandt. There are other children from the Mrs. and from me that have been there for a while now.

“Is that where Tommy is?”

“I ain’t answering questions, Harry. I’m just telling you what you need to know. Brandt waited and saw that the priest was right. The boy put his head down and Brandt knew that there wouldn’t be any more questions about the past. The past wasn’t there and so there was nothing to talk about.

3

               Robert Tuck was working out of a vacant lot down the street from the Brandt apartment. Its debris made it a magnet for neighborhood kids. Harry discovered the lot on the first day of his new freedom. It was late spring and the rest of the kids still has a couple of weeks of school left before vacation. Harry was happier than he could ever remember being. All of the local events were new to him and he set out to learn the area with the curiosity of an explorer.

When Harry first met Robert Tuck, he was stripping car seats. Harry watched the man cut the seats open with a knife and separate the horsehair, the springs and the seat coverings. The man was strong and deliberate in his motions. Harry stood behind a stack of junk, fascinated by the way the man opened the seats up and yanked out their guts. Finally, he showed himself. Abruptly, Tuck jerked his head in the boy’s direction.

“What are you doing there, boy?”

“Just watchin.”

“Mind your own business.”

Harry was buoyed by his release from captivity and blurted out a sentence. “Didn’t mean anything, Mister. I just liked watchin’ the way that you did that.”

Tuck snorted and looked around himself with disgust. “Why ain’t you in school or out playin’ ball?”

“School’s over. Don’t know anybody to play ball with.” Harry stuck his hands in the pockets and began to walk away.

“Come over here. I’ll show you what I do.”

Before the words were even out of him, Tuck saw the boy whirl around and start back to where he was working.

“What do you do with all this stuff?”

“You sell it. You sell it for scrap and it gets used again. You break things apart so that they can be used for something else.” When Tuck eyed the boy, Harry put his head down and stared at the man’s split and muddy boots. “Now look here.” Tuck lifted a car seat. “Two cuts across the back and then two cuts across the seat.”

Tuck showed the boy the entire process several times. Harry was hypnotized by the sound of the knife and the new look of things that came out of beat up car seats. Robert Tuck talked to him on and off and Harry just shook his head yes or no. He didn’t want to spoil things by asking any more questions.

4

               Harry disliked the Mrs. son Don from the day that he was brought to the Brandt apartment and given a cot to sleep on in the room where Don had his bed. When Harry looked at the bureau and asked which drawer he could use, Don smirked and said, “They’re all full. Besides, you ain’t got no stuff.”

Harry showed Don his cloth bag and told him that he did have stuff. The ten year old continued to taunt him. “I don’t want your smelly stuff touching anything that’s mine.”

When Harry shoved the boy back and saw how easily he fell, it was his turn to smirk. He advanced like a shark and lifted Don by a handful of his frightened hair. “I’m taking a drawer for my stuff. If you say anything about it, I’ll bust you in the face.”

Don wailed, “He’s killing me in here.”

Mrs. Brandt had been against bringing Harry back to her house from the start. When she heard her boy’s cries, she hurried into the room and saw him sprawled on the floor. Harry was standing over him with his fists in balls and the tip of his shoe was discharging an efficient kick into her son’s stomach. “William!” she shrieked. She waddled to her son and helped him up. He was bent over and holding his stomach with both hands while tears dripped down his face. Mrs. Brandt shielded her son from Harry and waited for her husband.

William Brandt did not like to be disturbed while he was sitting on the porch. The tone of her voice told him that he had to go inside and that news didn’t make him happy.

“He’s already made a mess of this room and he kicked Donald in the face,” said the woman whose sweaty hair was stuck to the sides of her face.

“I didn’t kick him in the face, Pop, I didn’t,” shouted Harry.

Brandt glared at his son for a moment and then swung hard. The blow knocked Harry to the wall and then a big hand pinned him there. Harry smelled something strange on his father’s breath. “You’ll do what the Mrs. says or you’ll get a beatin’ Harry. This is the only time that I’m going to say it.”

 

5

               They brought Harry back to the orphanage before the end of the summer. Harry could tell that it was coming and so before he left, he knocked out three of Don’s teeth and punched one of his eyes closed for a week.

Father Bishop didn’t exactly welcome him back with open arms, but he did talk to him in his office where he allowed Harry to sit in one of the leather chairs. “You’ve decided to send yourself back here, Harold. That doesn’t say much for your ability to use the education that we have given you in a proper way.  Do you know that every boy in here would have wanted the great opportunity that you just threw away?” Harry didn’t answer. He didn’t look up. “I do know that you are here now and you are here for good. Struggling against our ways, Harold, would be a sinful and stupid way of behaving. Dinner is over for the evening. You’ll find the others at evening prayers. I suggest that you join them.”

The thing that Harry missed the least about life in the orphanage was the prayers, but he walked to the chapel relieved that he knew what was waiting for him.

It was the next morning on his way across the yard when he saw Robert Tuck. Over the summer the two had become daily companions and Tuck had used Harry to help him increase his output. Tuck was driving a grey pick-up truck with a green door. “Harry,” he called up and jerked his head in way that indicated he wanted to talk to him.

When Harry got to the truck he said, “I ain’t supposed to talk to anyone without Father Bishop’s say-so.

“Harry, I hate to see you locked up in a place like this. I’m moving on and I’ll take you with me but you got to come now.”

Harry wanted to go. It was instinctive and he wasn’t stopping to think about it. Don had been right about one thing; he didn’t have any stuff. Harry climbed the short fence easily and jumped into the truck. They left New Jersey and headed for Connecticut.

 

6

               Putnam was Southern New England farm country about six hours and a world outside of Newark. It was dark long before they got there because Tuck took a circuitous route that by passed all of the larger roads. The insects startled Harry, smudging the windshield and filling the headlight beams.  Not wanting to ask questions, Harry stayed quiet and imagined himself winning a baseball game with a clutch catch followed by a big hit. He was unaware of Robert Tuck’s eyes on him as the man wondered how he was going to tell his sister.

“Harry, I want the people on the farm to treat you like one of their own. You call me Pop and tell anybody who asks you that your name is Harry Tuck.”

“Yes, Sir.” Harry felt something quiver inside him, but he stuffed it back down and it went away.

                 Vernon and Adelia ran a dairy farm. They had no children of their own, so they provided a foster home for state wards in order to get the few dollars a month that the state provided. Adelia worked the kids like farm hands and treated them in a way that would never let them forget their place.

At meals, the family drank milk and the state kids got water. When they visited her sister in East Haddam, the state kids put in a double duty of chores and worked both places.  There were two kinds of food on Adelia’s table, family food and what she gave to the state kids. But she never hit them unnecessarily. She gave them medicine when they were sick and they loved her. At first Harry expected to be treated like one of the state kids. After the second meal of milk, vegetables, meat and bread, he saw that he was like one of the family.

Except for piling the manure up with old straw, Harry liked work on the farm. Each morning, he would get up about four-thirty and watch Vernon milk the cows. The farmer sat on a three legged stool, puffing his corn cob pipe and looking like somebody out of a Norman Rockwell picture. “Farming is hard work, Harry but the dirt’s cleaner out here and it’s peaceful.”

“The noises at night keep me awake,” said Harry.

“Haven’t heard any noises.”

“Them sounds like clickers. I hear ‘em every night.”

“Crickets, Harry. You sure enough are from the city. It just don’t seem natural somehow.”

               Harry could watch for hours at a time without pestering. By the end of the month there, he had learned to ride on the farm horse and how to milk a cow. Proudly, he would carry the fresh pail to the vat, careful not to spill any.

Robert Tuck hated farm work. Every morning he would go off in his truck after morning chores and after breakfast and come back with a haul before lunchtime. In the afternoons, he and Harry would sort through the junk. Mostly, Tuck was collecting old bicycles and discarded car seats that he would take from wrecks wherever he could find them. Harry had become proficient at stripping the seats and the money that Tuck got from the scrap paid for the few working bicycle parts that he couldn’t manufacture. Eventually he had a collection of twenty working bicycles.

“Adelia, the boy and me are going to be moving on soon.”

“Thomas, are you going to that danged city again?”

“Adelia, you can’t call me Thomas anymore.”

“It’s the name that god knows you by. If you stayed away from that city, it would be a name that you could live with.”

“We both know that isn’t so. This ain’t my place either.”

“Vernon has never said a word. What kind of place is it where a man has to make up who he is so that the authorities can’t find him?”

“There’s plenty of men like me in Newark.”

“What about the boy? Don’t you think that somebody is looking for him?”

“No body’s looking for Harry. He’s a help.”

 

7

               Robert Tuck, alias Thomas Rondeau, alias Eddie Tuck, alias Joe Branning left the farm in late September. They didn’t go straight back to the city. Tuck needed more of a stake to execute his plan and so they lived on the road. They stole most of their food from farms and slept on the side of the road behind billboards or clumps of trees. They rarely bathed and had no change of clothes. Harry was happy enough. Every day he practiced throwing stones, but Tuck wouldn’t let him ride any of the bicycles that he kept in the bed of the truck oiled under a canvas covering.

“We’re saving the bicycles for the customers, Harry. A man can make a good living renting bicycles in the city.”

“That’s great, Pop.”

The problem that Tuck saw coming was the change in the seasons. It was getting colder, but Tuck knew that the fifty dollars that he had managed to stash away wouldn’t be enough. He was going to have to go back sooner than he liked.

Harry never complained. He worked hard, kept his mouth shut, learned how to help get the food and wash himself and his clothes in the stream water. He did notice that they were moving into areas where he saw more people than he had before, but he didn’t think anything about it or ask any questions.

“This guy’s bumper is locked onto the other man’s bumperette. Get a grip on the top one Harry and we’ll bounce of them together.”

Harry wrapped his fingers around the top bumper and stood on the bottom one. Tuck started the three count that he used when they worked together, while the two drivers tried to disengage their cars. The two of them bounced and the metal scraped and bounced with them. Then there was a snap and a scream. Harry was dazed. His arm was shaking and he was very pale. When he looked down at the bloody mass of his right hand, he could only see four fingers. The middle finger was dangling underneath his palm, held on by flesh and skin and one unsevered tendon. “Pop, it’s broken.” Harry tried to grab for the finger with his left hand but the pain shocked him like electricity and he had to let go.

“Harry, it’s pretty bad. We got to get you to the hospital.”

“Don’t want no hospital, Pop. It’ll get better by itself.”

“We got no choice here Harry.”

Harry was trying to stuff back tears but it wasn’t working. He put his head down and stared at his dirty boots while the man put his arm on the boy’s shoulder and wrapped the hand in a grimy towel.

    The hospital doctor saw the need for immediate surgery. The knuckle was crushed and there was a good chance that the finger would have to come off.

Robert Tuck stood nervously by the front desk answering questions.

“Harry Tuck is his name.”

“How old is he?”

“About twelve,” guessed Tuck.

“Are you his father?”

“Yes.”

“How did it happen?”

“He was trying to unhook these two cars that got stuck together.”

“Have a seat, Mr. Tuck. The doctor will be with you when he can. We’re very busy.”

Tuck thought about walking out the door. He thought about what Adelia would have said to him, but he sat down and waited. He always felt uneasy around people like this. They had rules that they never told you about until it was too late.

After the operation that managed to save the finger, Harry developed osteomyelitis. The bone infection kept him in the hospital for two months.  Then he came down with Rheumatic Fever and was moved to the hospital for contagious diseases. It was summer again before he got out.

Tuck took a furnished room and spent the winter splitting cars with an acetylene torch. He would visit Harry every month. By the next summer, the ten year old boy who now thought that he was thirteen found that Tuck had opened the bicycle rental and repair shop.

Harry was brought to his first diner that summer.  He loved it immediately. Harry and Robert Tuck sat at the counter on swivel stools and read the menu board. Harry couldn’t believe that he got to choose what he wanted to eat. He watched the meat sizzling on the grill and smelled the steaming soup. He stared at the stacks of clean plates, glittering knives and forks and spoons like they were sacred instruments. He spun around on the chair and watched the other patrons and heard pieces of conversations. His eyes got wide when the cash register opened and then the most magical thing happened; from all around him there was music as someone used the juke box. Harry’s smile moved his ears back as he bit into his burger.

They went to the diner twice a day. Tuck struck a deal with the owner and paid his tab once a week. Harry was allowed to go on his own and have a Blue Plate any day that Robert wasn’t around.

George Lafer owned the Washington Diner and slowly he got to know Harry. One day he said, “How old are you, kid?”

“Thirteen.”

“Would you like to make some money?”

Harry smiled his most winning smile. “Sure, what do you need done?”

“I need a dishwasher that I can trust to show up here every morning and after supper. I’ll pay you one dollar a day.”

“When can I start?”

“Right now,” said Lafer.

 

8

                 The Chestnut Street Luncheonette had a counter, eight booths, a jukebox and a grill. When Harry got back from service, he started eating meals and spending some of his free time there. He was one of the lucky guys. One of the first to get out when the war was finished, one of the few who never really left the country, and one of the first to get a job after he was out. He stocked and repaired jukeboxes for Emerson Music, lived out of a sleeping room and had his own radio. He bought himself nifty looking clothes and jewelry and discovered that people liked him, including girls.

Harry had learned to create a past for himself that he liked. He heard war stories from other Vets and he made them his stories. What was the past but a collection of made up things anyway? If he could use a story or two to his advantage what was the harm? The good news was that it filled in those spaces that he didn’t want to remember. He began to believe the stories that he told about himself. He had been in England. He had gotten into a fight with some British Commandos after commenting on their short pants. The army had been alright, even though he had hated it and tried every way that he knew to get out.

Hanging at the luncheonette was an acquired skill that Harry had learned well. He knew just how long to let his coffee last before it was conspicuous. He knew how to lean against the jukebox and feed it slugs that would allow him to play five songs at a time. The overall trick was that he knew how to stay there for hours without getting in anybody’s way or looking lost or out of place.

Harry checked the crease of his gray slacks. In the men’s room mirror he smoothed his hair and inspected the way that his powder blue shirt lay underneath his dark blue sweater. He grabbed some toilet paper and buffed a smudge or two from his shoes. He tugged up the blue socks that were already in place, adjusted his watch band and ring and headed back to the counter.

                 One for My Baby was playing on the jukebox. Harry sat on Marjorie’s side of the counter and read the menu board.

“What can I get for you today, Harry?”

“What do you think is good?”

“It’s all pretty good. You know what you like.”

“Well what would you order if you were going to eat?”

“I eat at home with my grandmother. She doesn’t like me to take meals out.”

Marjorie stared at his face as he concentrated on the menu board. She thought, what’s he reading? It’s the same menu as yesterday and he was in here yesterday and the day before that.

“Give me the franks and beans, Margie, when you get the chance.”

“Didn’t you see anything that you really liked?”

“Yeah, the franks and beans.”

“That’s what you get when you don’t see something that really interests you.” She smiled full into his face and her green eyes danced for him. When she turned around to get his coffee, he was attracted to the big bow that held her apron shut in the back. It made her look like the gift boxes that he saw in the department store windows.

“What song would you like to hear, Margie?”

“I like Dream.”

“The Pied Pipers, that’s a good tune.” Harry swung smoothly around in the chair and walked over to the jukebox as she watched him. He dropped one of his five song slugs into the slot and punched up Sentimental Journey, The More I See You, My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time, Candy, and Dream. The Les Brown Orchestra filled the place with its smooth introduction and Harry began tapping his foot.

“This is a nice song,” said Margie. She smiled at him and he grinned back.

“Your song should be coming up next,” he said.

The band sounded sweet but powerful and Marjorie looked at Harry thinking that he was like that too. She placed a napkin and silverware in front of the stool that he had been using.

Harry checked his watch against the luncheonette clock and came over to his seat. “Have you seen any movies lately?”

Marjorie thought and scrunched her eyebrows together.  “Not too many. I did see Gaslight a while ago.

“I saw that.”

“What a picture!”

“It was OK.”

“I loved it,” said Marjorie. She wanted Harry to give the movie more of an endorsement.

“I was thinking about going to see Anchors Aweigh.” He sneaked a peek to her to see if she was picking up on his drift. She seemed oblivious to it.

“What’s that about?”

“I don’t know yet, a War picture, I think.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like to go and see it with me?”

Marjorie’s smile faded. “I don’t think that I could, tonight.”

“I mean some other time.”

“Maybe, when I’m not working.”

When Harry finally got around to asking for a specific date, Marjorie said yes. He had talked with her about music and movies and a lot of other things by then. She knew that he didn’t like Bing Crosby because he thought that Bing was a phony. He liked the Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey Orchestras and he loved Les Brown and Glen Miller. He told her that he had wanted to be a musician when he was a kid.

“Why don’t you give it a try? You’re still young.”

Harry held up his right hand and was able to wiggle his badly disfigured middle finger a little. “I wouldn’t be able to do much with this.”

“What happened to it?” said Marjorie. She looked at the finger curiously. It wasn’t like any that she’d ever seen before and it gave him a look of experience.

“I got it caught on a car bumper. They almost took it off.”

“Wow,” said Marjorie. “Does it still bother you?”

“Not much.”

“I got hit in the head with a rock when I was five years old. I still have a bump there.” Marjorie ran her fingers into the back of her hair until she found the bump and tried to press it back into her skull.

The big hit at The Paramount Theater was The Lost Weekend staring Ray Milland. Marjorie was impressed but Harry was quiet after the movie.

“That was some picture,” said Marjorie.

“It was OK.”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“It was a little, depressing.”

“But it had a good story to tell and it was really good acting.”

“I suppose,” said Harry.

When I’ll be Seeing You came on the green pick-up’s radio, Harry turned up the volume and said, “I think about you when I hear this song.”

She listened to the song for a moment and then said, “Let’s play a game. We can take turn naming the pictures and the stars.”

“I don’t pay attention to actors names that much.”

“Just try. I’ll show you. If I said Gaslight  you could say Charles Boyer or Ingrid Bergman. You see?”

“Double Indemnity,” said Harry.

“Barbara Stanwyck.  My turn.” She smiled her eyes shining. “Mildred Pierce.”

“Who’s that?” laughed Harry.

“It’s a movie. Come on.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Joan Crawford.”

“What about Keys to the Kingdom?”said Harry.

“I think you got me,” said Margie, thrilled to have been gotten, “Wait.”

“Gregory Peck,” said Harry.

“I said to wait.”

They parked in front of her rooming house and then he kissed her. He pulled away before she had the chance to kiss him back.

“I had fun tonight, Harry.”

“I want to see you again.”

“Yes, but I don’t know when I can.” She put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed it lightly and then was gone.

He could feel the place where she touched him for a long time.

Harry also went out with other girls, mostly ones that he met at other luncheonettes. Some of them drank in the front seat of his truck with him and then they would open their blouses. Some of them told him how good looking he was and wanted to watch him play softball. But Marjorie, who never told him what she thought of his looks, who never gave him more than a good-night kiss and was never interested in seeing him play ball, was the one who made him laugh. He liked to talk with her.

When she found out about one of the other girls, she told him that she didn’t want to go out with him anymore.  She made him say that he was sorry and promise not to do it anymore. Then she made him wait for a month before she would go out with him again.

One night after they had seen A Double Life and were talking about how good an actor Ronald Coleman was, Harry simply said, “Let’s get married, Margie.”

Dinah Shore was singing Doing what Comes Naturally on the radio and Margie said, “OK, if my grandmother says that it’s alright.”

Harry liked Marjorie’s grandmother and he knew that she had raised Margie and so he responded quickly, “She could live with us.” Harry joined their church and became a Presbyterian and they were married.

On their wedding night, Margie said, “Harry, promise me that you won’t laugh at me if I tell you a secret?”

“I won’t laugh.”

“I don’t know anything about sex. I mean I know where you put it but that’s all that I know.”

Harry smiled and promised that he would show her.

“Did you learn from the other girls that were you seeing while you were dating me?”

“No,” said Harry, wondering if she would know the truth. “It’s just something that guys learn in the service.”

They left for Putnam, Connecticut the morning after they were married. Margie wasn’t sure that she wanted to go. “Wouldn’t you like to just stay around the neighborhood and fix up the apartment?”

“I want you to meet these people. They’ve been very good to me.”

Marjorie grew more nervous after they drove out of Newark. They tried playing the movie game but Harry kept naming war pictures like A Wing and a Prayer and None Shall Escape. Margie said that she didn’t want to play anymore and turned on the radio. When she heard Doris Day singing Laughing on the Outside, Crying on the Inside she began to sob. “I don’t think that I can keep going, Harry. Maybe we should turn around and go some other time.”

“You know what Margie? Bob Tuck’s not my real father.”

Her eyes widened. “Who is?”

“His name is William Brandt.”

“Where is he?”

“Who knows?”

“Didn’t you ever try to find him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He left me at an orphanage and Tuck got me out and kept me with him.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Harry, I told you about my mother dying and about not ever knowing my father.”

“It’s easier for you to talk about some things than it is for me. My real father walked away and left me.”

“So did mine.”

At that moment, he was sure that he loved her and that getting married had been the right thing to do. At the same time, Marjorie was sure that she had made a terrible mistake and wanted more than anything to see her grandmother.

 

9

            Their life together was happy and silly. When they came back from Connecticut and the people that Marjorie secretly hated, they settled in with Marjorie’s grandmother in a two room apartment.

“How much do you think that you’ll need for food?” said Harry.

“I don’t know. Give me five dollars.”

“After buying their dinner, Margie went out and treated her friends to sodas and bought herself a pair of shoes. The next day she said, “I need more money for groceries, Harry.”

He gave her five dollars each day until his money was almost gone and then hollered, “Jesus Christ! Where the hell is all the money going?”

Margie got scared and told him about treating her friends. She promised not to do it anymore and the next morning Harry left her another five dollars. They loved to window shop and teased each other about the vast numbers of things that they wished they were able to buy.

Harry had his first affair after Margie got pregnant. Her name was Ethel and he met her in the choir of Marjorie’s church.  When Marjorie found out about it, she told Harry that he had to leave but Harry told her that nothing had really happened and that he had learned his lesson. After that, he told Ethel that they had to be more careful.

At the South Broad Street Distributing Company, Harry worked every other night and every other weekend in addition to his regular job at Emerson Music.  Juke boxes and pin balls were his specialty. He taught himself how to read the meters and use the scopes. That, along with his mechanical ability, made him a natural for the job. In addition to installing new machines, which every place seemed to want to have, troubleshooting problems and replacing old records, Harry did collections.

Sam Walman was the owner of South Broad Distributing and soon Harry was working just for him, full time. He liked Harry’s determination. It didn’t matter how long it took him to fix a machine, he never gave up. Harry would get a call when the other guys couldn’t figure out a problem and he never said no. Harry had been working for Sam about a year when he asked for his first raise.

“I don’t see how I can do anything for you right now,” Sam said. “You and Margie are doing OK aren’t you?”

“There’s going to be a baby. I want her to stop working so she doesn’t lose this one.”

“With what I figure you take home, you should be OK.”

“What do you mean by what I take home?” said Harry.

Sam smiled at Harry. His round bald head was shining. He moved it up and down. “Come on Harry. We all know that some of the collection money never makes it back here. It’s expected.”

Harry stared at Sam for a long moment and then he looked down at his shoes and decided not to press the issue.  He emptied one of the Dutch Masters Cigar boxes that he used as a tool separator in the trunk of his black Mercury and placed the box on the top shelf of their bedroom closet.

“He told me to steal, Margie.”

“He didn’t really say that, did he?”

“What he said was that he expected that I clipped a few dollars each week. I’ve got making up to do.”

The cigar box filled up quickly and was soon one of two boxes and then one of three. Marjorie was getting nervous. “Grandma says that they are going to put us in jail, Harry.”

“Move the boxes and tell her that I stopped doing it. Use as much of the money as you want to get ready for the baby.”

Harry was rarely at home. On the nights that he didn’t work, he played softball, or went bowling, or shot pool, or played cards. He set up a different cigar box for the money that he won doing those things. Marjorie objected to being left home all the time, but her grandmother told her that some men were just like that and that he treated her well. After she got pregnant, her grandmother told her that it was disgraceful for her to go out when she was in a family way, except when she absolutely had to be seen in public. Aside from attending Tuesday night prayer meetings and Thursday night preparatory services, Margie thought about having her baby and went to church on Sundays.

When she heard another rumor about Harry and Ethel, she went to see her pastor.  “I don’t know what to do, Reverend Fritag

. I’m going to have a baby next month. I’m afraid.”

“If you act with faith, Margie, nothing can really go wrong. Remember that the Lord takes care of His own.”

“That didn’t help me last time,” protested Marjorie. She shut her eyes and remembered how the nuns  wouldn’t help her, how she bled for so long, how they kept trying to keep a five month old fetus inside of her, how she almost died. She nodded and decided that it was because they were Catholics. “I don’t think that’s going to stop Harry from doing what he’s doing. Ethel and I have been going to Sunday school here together since we were children. Why won’t you help me?”

Fritag was a young minister who was serving in a congregation that belonged to his father. He had seen her coming to church with her grandmother since he was a boy. He knew the stories about their family and could see the lines of truth that were creased into Mrs. Daniels’ face. It wasn’t that Harry was a bad man. Fritag knew him from the neighborhood and recently from the church. Harry was just pure street. “I just don’t think that Ethel has that much to do with it Marjorie. I think that’s the kind of man that Harry is. You’ve got to give him as much freedom as he wants.”

“And what about me?”

“You’ll have your child and your grandmother and your church. Most of all, it’s the only way that you are going to have your husband.

10

                      The Newark Summer Softball League started its games at six-thirty in the evening. Sometimes seven games would start at once. It gave Harry an hour to eat and change his clothes. When a game and a work-night came into conflict, he’d trade the weeknight for a weekend night so that he could play. He loved to play third base.

Marjorie went into labor at the beginning of a heat wave in the middle of June. Harry was batting fourth on a team with the guys from Emerson Music. He got the news that she had been taken to the hospital in the fourth inning. Harry already had two hits that night, a screamer into left field and a seeing eye ground ball. He had a dazed look on his face and was thinking about the score and how long it would take to play the last three innings. He thought about who was up next and how to protect the line in the late innings and then he realized that all the time he had been taking his spikes off and getting his stuff into his car.

“What’s wrong, Harry?”

Harry grinned and started the 1947 Mercury. “I guess my wife is really having a baby,” he said and drove away.

11

                        Mina Daniels held Ronald Harold Tuck on her lap and rocked him. She silently thanked God for allowing her to see her great-grandson. She knew that things would be better for him than they had been for Marjorie. She had done all that she could do to see to that. She had made terrible mistakes with her children. They had run wild and she hadn’t been strong enough to stop them. But she has raised Marjorie up right and now God had given her a sign of his approval and blessed her with this baby boy. Ronald Tuck’s arrival seemed to make everyone’s life better. Harry and Marjorie were happy again and she had something to make her forget her troubles and look forward to in the mornings. He was the first in the family to be born without trouble since his grandmother, God rest her soul.

“Gram, I need to get the baby dressed. Harry and I are taking him out.”

“He’s asleep.”

“Just let me have him and I’ll dress him in that nice blue outfit that Aunt Dottie sent over for him.”

“Where are you taking this baby?” Mina was frowning and rocking faster.

“Harry wants to take him over to see Pop.”

“Why can’t that man come over here like every other decent person?”

“Pop’s strange, Gram. You know that.”

“Well, you’re not taking him out today. It’s too hot.”

“Gram, don’t start. Harry will hit the ceiling.”

“You’re a dirty little skunk, Marjorie. I knew that you and Harry were going to pull something like this.”

“What are you talking about, Gram?”

“Taking a little baby out in the heat! Who ever heard of it?”

Harry was whistling when he opened the door. He saw that Marjorie was dressed. “Are we all set?”

“Gram doesn’t want us to take him.”

Harry was a little confused but the look on Marjorie’s face told him the story.  “Gram, nothing is going to happen to him,” he said to her softly.

“Harry Tuck! What do you know about babies?”

Harry reached out and plucked Ronald from her lap. “I know that this one is my son,” he said smiling.

The bicycle shop was more of an empty lot with a shed on it. Robert Tuck was sitting in the shade on a crate.

“Here we are, Pop.”

The old man smiled and put down his knife and stood up. “Let’s have a look.”

Marjorie felt a rush of panic at the thought of the grizzled man with the uncombed hair and the dirty hands wanting to hold her son, but then Harry took the baby and brought him close to Robert Tuck. “Do you want to hold him, Pop?”

Tuck sprang back from a jolt of his own sense of panic. “Don’t know anything about babies, Harry.”

Harry brought the baby up close to Tuck, who smiled but seemed uncomfortable even standing that close to Ronald. He fished into his pocket and then handed Margie a folded up envelope that he had been saving. “Get him something nice, Margie.”

Margie smiled. “Thank you Pop, I sure will.”

“Harry, I’m gonna move on out of here. I got a guy who wants to buy the bikes and I’m thinking that it’s time for me to move up to Adelia’s”

“You need any help, Pop”

“I’m fine. Don’t have much to bring. You know I like to travel light.”

The old man smiled at Harry and Harry looked a little uncomfortable. He stared over at Marjorie and Ronald. “Pop, we probably shouldn’t keep the baby out in the heat for very long.”

12

                      Judge Silver sat down in his chair and asked the bailiff to read the next case on the docket. Then he addressed the litigants and their lawyers. “This is a custody hearing to determine who is fit to raise the infant, Ronald Harold Tuck. I want you to know that my decision is final and will be enforced by the full power of the laws of The State of New Jersey. Now I know that the two of you have just gone through a rather unpleasant divorce hearing, but that’s not the issue here today. Gentleman, are you ready to proceed?”

Marjorie’s lawyer and Harry’s lawyer said that they were ready. Since technically Harry was the one trying to win custody of his son, his lawyer spoke first.

“Your Honor, we maintain that Harold Tuck has demonstrated his ability to be the custodial parent for his son. The boy has been living with his father since he was born and is used to the care that his father provides. The simple truth is that Marjorie Tuck abandoned her son when she moved out of their apartment on Gillette Place. Furthermore, she has shown a disregard for her son’s safety by taking him from a park without notice or word to his father. Marjorie Tuck has been seen in the company of a variety of men since the time when she left her husband. Her ability to provide a secure environment for Ronald is questionable at best. Your Honor, my client is a hardworking man. He has been employed as a mechanic by the same company for three years. He was honorably discharged from the Army. He has roots in the community and not even his ex-wife would argue about the love that he has shown for his son.  We know that you will agree that he is the better of the two choices.”

The judge nodded and turned towards Marjorie’s lawyer.

“Your Honor, the only way that Harry Tuck has been able to create any kind of suitable environment for this child has been with the assistance of Mrs. Mina Daniels, who is my client’s grandmother. For the last six months, she has stayed on at the apartment for the sole purpose of providing care for the infant Ronald.  She had lived in the hope that Harry and Marjorie could resolve their differences. The recent divorce decree has put an end to that hope and Mrs. Daniels has informed me that she intends to take up residence with her grand-daughter at 780 Broadway. A child’s natural place is with his mother, unless she has proven herself to be unfit. The only person here who has proved himself unfit is Harold Tuck. He is an adulterer, Your Honor. He was raised in an orphanage and has no idea of what family life should be like. We ask that you consider what this baby’s life could possibly be like without the care of his mother and great-grandmother.”

Judge Silver nodded again. “Well, what about it, Mr. Tuck? How could you provide a suitable environment for a young child?”

Harry looked up at the judge with surprise. It was one of the first times that anyone had asked him much of anything since this whole mess had started. “I’d hire someone to come in and stay with him while I was working.”

The judge leaned forward. “Do you think that anyone that you could hire could care for him with the love and concern of a mother and a great-grandmother?”

“I love him, Your Honor. He’s my son. I’d always make sure that he was taken care of.”

“I see.” The Judge turned his head towards Marjorie. “Mrs. Tuck?”

Marjorie met his eyes with hers and stood up. “Yes,Your Honor?”

“How do you intend to provide for the care of your son?”

“Your Honor, I was taking care of my grandmother long before I ever heard of Harry Tuck. I’m glad that he loves his son. If he has shown the same respect for me when we were together, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Harry wasn’t letting that one go by. “I do love you, Margie! Haven’t I been begging you to come back for months?”

Judge Silver tapped his gavel firmly. “Mr. Tuck, be quiet. You were given a chance to speak. Mrs. Tuck, I told you at the start that the issues between you and your ex-husband have already been resolved. Now how is it that you intend to support your son?”

“I work as a PBX operator, Your Honor.”

“And how long have you held this job?”

“Only two months, but I’ve always worked and I always will. I don’t know…” here she felt things slipping away from her and began to sob, “… what I would do if you took him away from me.”

“The court is inclined to agree with you, Mrs. Tuck.” The judge turned his head back towards Harry, “Mr. Tuck do you have any other evidence to support the claim that she is an unfit mother?”

Harry hated the sound of the words. Maybe he and Margie couldn’t get along, but nobody had the right to stand up in public and say that either one of them was unfit. “No, Judge, I’d just do a better job with him.”

“The Court does not agree with you, Mr. Tuck. We have found that except under extraordinary circumstances, children have more of a chance to thrive with their mothers.”

The words bit into Harry. He stared down at the wooden chair leg and his polished shoes and knew what would come next.

“Accordingly, we grant custody of the infant, Ronald Tuck, to his mother. We order support payments in the amount of fifteen dollars a week.”

“I want to give twenty,” said Harry. He saw Marjorie look at him with her huge green eyes. The look was sad. Then he saw her turn her head back towards the judge.

“Do we have anything else?” said Judge Silver.

“No, Your Honor,” said the lawyers.

13

                          Ronald Tuck sat in the front seat of a locked car. He was hunched against the passenger side door. He was watching the entrance to the Clover Leaf Lounge and counting the cars that passed by the place. His Dad was inside fixing a machine. If the neighborhood wasn’t too bad, Harry would bring his son into the place to watch him work. The Clover Leaf Lounge wasn’t a good stop for Ronald.

The place had three pieces of equipment: a juke box, pool table, and a bowling machine. It was the bowling machine that was causing Harry trouble. He had been telling Sam for a month that they needed to bring the piece in and recondition it, but as long as it was making two hundred dollars a week, it wasn’t moving. This was Harry’s second time there this week.  The work area in back of the machine was poorly lit and hard to get at. Harry had to climb over the alley portion of the machine each time he needed to get around to the back panel. If he had a partner with him, he could just pull the piece away from the wall, but Harry always worked alone on weekends.

Harry could feel the tension every time he stepped into the all Black club. Newark was changing. Almost three quarters of his stops were in Puerto Rican or Black spots. He could feel eyes on him when he did collections. He had started to carry a gun with his other tools in the trunk of his car.

“Hey man, how come you can step on the machine every time you come in here and we ain’t allowed to step on the machine?”

Harry could smell the alcohol breath before he pulled his head out of the back panel. “What’d you say?”

“I said, how come you can step on the machine and I can’t step on the machine?” The man was bending over the alley, trying to get a look at what Harry was doing back there.

“Because I’m trying to fix the damn thing.” Harry stared out at the black face with the woolen cap pulled down over the eyebrows. It was eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning and this guy was already staggering. Harry figured that the guy was still on a binge from the night before. With disgust, he thought to himself that the guy probably hadn’t finished drinking his way through his entire paycheck yet but that he would at some point over the weekend.

The drunk weaved over to the bartender and repeated his question. The bartender said that he didn’t know and walked over to where the man had been sitting at the bar. There was still some beer in the glass but his shot glass was empty. There was still some money on the bar. The rule at the Clover Leaf Lounge was to serve ‘em until they were broke and then get rid of them. The man wandered up and down the bar incessantly asking his question. Finally he came back to Harry. “Hey Mister?”

Harry pulled his head out of the back panel again. “How come you can step on the machine and I can’t step on the machine?”

Harry brought himself further out from the miles of wire and relays. His ears had gotten red. “How about this?  If you step on the machine, I’m gonna break your ass.”

Heads turned from the bar. The bartender reached underneath to get a grip n his baseball bat. Somebody laughed in a gravelly voice and one of the customers let out a soft whistle.

The man spun back towards the bar.  “Did you hear what this white motherfucker said to me? Did everyone hear what this white motherfucker said?” Heads nodded and then turned back away from the drunk. Harry planted his feet and waited. Suddenly the drunk lunged and made a grab for him. Harry swung his aluminum flashlight hard and caught him full on the side of the head. There was a cracking sound. The drunk went down on the spot and his cap rolled onto the floor. A small pool of blood began to gather by his ear. Harry closed the back of the machine up and locked it. Two guys came over from the bar and lifted the mumbling man up and carried him to a table in the back. He was mumbling something about how someone had come up in back of him and hit him with a baseball bat.

“I’ll come back in the morning and finish up the machine before you open up.”

“What am I supposed to do about tonight? Saturday night is our busiest time.”

“That’s your problem now,” said Harry. “You should have gotten this guy outta here as soon as he started with me.” Harry knew that he was on firm ground. Sam had told them what to do if they were bothered. Harry wished that Ronald wasn’t waiting outside in the car in a neighborhood like this. “Put up a sign so nobody loses any money on it.”

Ronald’s count had gone over a hundred more than twice by the time Harry got back to the car.

When the boy saw his father’s face, his heart began beating faster. Now they could talk again. “How’d it go Dad?”

“These people are animals. They’re drunk at eleven o’clock in the morning.

“Maybe it’s not their fault, Dad.”

“Don’t tell me that,” said Harry with an anger that jolted the boy’s head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.

The car was quiet for a long time while Harry tried to compose himself and Ron wondered about what he had done wrong.

Harry was feeling better by the time that he parked the car in front of the shop. “Let’s get some lunch,” he said. He saw his son smile and nod but felt a twinge of guilt for hollering at him. He told himself that the boy had to learn the truth about the way that the world was.

When they were at the shop, they had lunch at the Lincoln Pharmacy. They sat at the counter and looked through the sports page together.

“You see that, Dad,” said Ron pointing excitedly. “Mantle’s batting .320.”

“He stinks,” said Harry laughing.

“How can you say that? He’s the best player in baseball.”

“In a pig’s eye. He just gets headlines because he’s in New York and he’s a Yankee.”

“I don’t understand why you hate the Yankees do much.”

“Because they buy good players from teams that aren’t as rich as they are.”

Ron launched into a long defense of his team. He pointed out that Mantle had never played for another team.

Harry sipped his coffee and grinned. He might have his mother’s face, but he’s got a mind like mine, thought Harry.

“Dad, do you know what Mom says?” Harry stopped grinning. “She says that you used to like the Yankees until you couldn’t get anybody to bet against them.”

Two of the guys from the shop who were sitting at the counter with them began to laugh. Ron looked at them and then quickly back to his father, hoping that he hadn’t said anything that would make him mad again. When he saw that Harry was laughing too, he relaxed.

“Your mother’s right,” said Harry. “But they stink anyway.”

Ron grinned broadly and began to explain all over again about why they were a good team, but Harry told him to finish his chopped liver sandwich. Ron didn’t understand why the men laughed at that comment too.

After lunch, they were back out on the road. Ron was used to the routine. He held the flashlight while Harry worked on the jukebox in the nameless Puerto Rican luncheonette where the pungent smells made him dizzy. Then they worked on a pool table at The Brothers Lounge where Ron always wondered who the Brothers were and Harry disgustedly pulled debris out of one of the pockets into which it had been shoved.

“Do we have time for a game, Dad?”

“Rack ‘em up,” said Harry.

“What kind of a spot are you gonna give me?”

“What do you want to play for?” said Harry.

“Fifty cents.”

“I’ll give you the break and your first miss,” said Harry.

Ron was tense. This was his chance to show his father that he had learned how to play the game. He was better than all of his friends, but this was different. Harry watched the determination on Ron’s face as he drew the cue back and struck the ball as hard as he could.

Ron had the low balls based on the one that he sank off the break. Harry watched his son trying to read the table and saw that the boy hadn’t really learned the game’s strategy. Maybe that was better. If he didn’t have a good taste of it in his mouth from early on, maybe he would leave it alone. But then Ron sank a couple of shots and Harry saw that the kid had a stroke that revealed several hours of practice. He beat his son two games straight and took the boy’s dollar.

Back in the car, Harry said, “Was that all the money that you had?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you bet it?”

“I wanted to see you play your best game, Dad.”

“Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, Ron.”

“It was worth it. You beat me fair.”

“You shouldn’t gamble what you can’t afford to lose.”

Ron knew that his father wouldn’t give him back the money. When Ron wanted to bet, his father never returned what he lost. It was dark when Harry dropped the boy off in front of the large apartment building. “I’ve got two more calls. Tell your mother that I couldn’t stop and give this to her.” He handed Ron a check for twenty dollars.

“Am I going to see you next weekend?”

“I don’t know. Probably on Sunday. I’ll call.

Harry waited until he saw that the boy was inside and then drove off. He had two more stops and an hour and a half before he could call in for the last time. If there were no emergencies, he would be done with the fourteen hour day that was a part of his week on three nights. He could put one of the stops off but it was probably better to get them both done and call in when he was done.

 14

                       It was a bright July day in the summer of 1969.  Harry had long since remarried and had two more children. He had buried Robert Tuck and named his younger son after him. He had even seen William Brandt one last time. That had been particularly unpleasant but turned out rewarding because the old bastard had finally put him in touch with one of his brothers. Now his children would have a real uncle and a real aunt and cousins that came from his side of the family.

Harry had joined The Glen Ridge country Club and played golf there every weekend. His friends owned businesses and were large company executives. Harry successfully hustled them for the cost of his membership plus a bit each year. He owned stock that he learned about through tips that he picked up at the club and was now about to buy a shore house. Between what he made on the golf course and the ever growing pile of cigar boxes that no one else knew about now and what he made hustling cards in the locker room there was always extra money.

He sat outside the clubhouse with the rest of the foursome that had just finished the round and were having drinks. Two of the wives and some of their unattached friends joined the group. Harry had been a member of the club for five years and had just been asked to join the exclusive membership committee. Harry noticed that the woman on his right was wearing rings on her toes.

“Let’s face it,” she said with an expansive sweep of her arm, “life’s been pretty good to all of us.”

Harry smiled to himself and sipped his drink.