The summer between, p.3
The Summer Between, page 3
Curiously, following Andrew’s departure, Lia made frantic efforts to reconcile despite her dissatisfaction with their marriage. Letters, phone calls, appealing to his mother—nothing worked. Ultimately, citing abandonment, she had the marriage annulled. My father surrendered all parental rights.
Legally, he was finally erased. Our familial scale now tilted heavily maternal. Yearly, as far back as I could remember, I received a birthday card from Andrew’s sister, June, who lived on the outskirts of St. Paul. Apparently, my father and June maintained a love-hate relationship. A witness to Andrew’s manic bouts, she generally adored her brother who was five years her senior. June breathed the air of a different universe, surrounding herself with elephantine plushies, life-like dolls, and an army of dwarfish creatures. Though not slow of mind, she preferred the world of inanimate objects; my dad was perhaps her only friend.
Lia once said: “June never married, likely because she’s so damn peculiar. Stepping into her apartment was like being whipped into a spin of cotton candy. Pinstriped pale blue wallpaper, a ceiling she hand-painted with feathery clouds, glass shelves lined with hundreds of bulging doll eyes just staring at you. I was waiting for Bette Davis, you know, in the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, to burst into the room. Couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
At Lia and Andrew’s wedding, June walked into the reception carrying a huge stuffed penguin. Gram shrieked because June’s face was covered with makeup thick as a clown’s. “Crazy June!” she declared.
My father was very succinct about his sister’s eccentricity, explaining, “June is June. Let her be.”
At Christmastime, when I was six, I received a parcel wrapped in brown Kraft paper addressed in ballpoint. Scrawled in the upper left was the name Pollock and a St. Paul address. I was convinced the package was from my father, believing he’d moved back from Norway, belatedly declaring his love.
Tearing through the paper and lifting the lid of the box, I discovered a reddish-brown pair of cowboy boots two sizes too large. Did cowboys even exist in Norway? Buried inside was a photograph of my father wearing a swollen parka, seated on the hood of a compact car the color of green sea glass. A jagged row of snow-covered mountains rose behind him. With brown hair, hard-parted to the right, he was clean-shaven and orderly. Tied to a bootstrap was a Christmas tag decorated with a pair of Santa’s elves juggling pine cones. It was signed: Love, Aunt June. The shoebox was stamped: Wiggin’s Western Wear, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Later, I sketched a thank you card for Aunt June, using the crayons Gram planted in my Christmas stocking. Lia remarked, “Andy, maybe one day we’ll take a trip to visit your Aunt June. She’s a bit bonkers, but in a charming way. Your father loved—loves his sister as much as he loves you.” With that, Lia cried into her hands and ran from the room. Minutes later, she reappeared with false cheer written all over her face. She pointed to the drawing on the card and said, “That’s the two of us standing in front of a Christmas tree. It’s beautiful. Is that an elf next to you?”
“Yes, a big stuffed elf. Gram told me Crazy June loves dolls and fluffy animals.” Clutching my shoulder, Lia whispered, “Don’t call her Crazy June. She’s your aunt. Be respectful. But how clever you are.”
For unexplained reasons, the boots were the last gift Aunt June sent. Years later, while spring cleaning, I found the box at the bottom of my dusty closet.
I grew used to the idea of not knowing my father. Instead, we made it work, Lia and me. There weren’t many one-parent households among my classmates, but I could relate to the fresh crop of single-parent sitcoms on the airwaves: Julia, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, and Family Affair. Like those fictional characters, Lia and I learned as we went. The most peculiar part of a one-parent family was the cloud of sympathy from family and friends—handling me as if I were the victim of something far worse than an absent father. The sorriest part was competing against other boys—specifically in sports. There was no one to stand behind and correct my posture at bat on home plate or to toss a football with on cold autumn days. In his absence, I took to solo activities like running and swimming laps in the town pool.
Pop-pop Oscar came closest to bridging the father chasm. Many nights after dinner during the summer after I turned six, we’d walk hand-in-hand to Eddy’s, the local ice cream parlor. One evening, Pop-pop prompted, “Go ahead, ask the nice girl,” hoisting me up to the counter by my waist.
“May I have five pretzel logs, please?” I chirped to the pretty soda jerk.
Her glossy pink lipstick outlined a mouthful of braces. “You may,” she responded, placing the salty sticks in a brown paper bag. “You come here a lot, little man. What’s your name?”
“Andy Pollock,” I mumbled.
“Pleasure to meet you, Andy. I’m Dot.”
“Hello, Dot,” I replied, fidgeting.
Pop-pop teased, “Andy, I think Dot has a crush on you.”
With that, I scuttled out the door, raced down the block, and hid behind a bamboo fence, fearful of her alleged flirtation.
We celebrated my seventh birthday one day early on April 30, 1967. It was a Sunday morning, and I watched as Gram prepared parsley ricotta to stuff four dozen ravioli. My spirits were so high, the pounding rain failed to dampen them. Lia was home making cupcakes to bring to my third-grade classmates the following day, a tradition. At two o’clock, I stood inside the bay window of Gram’s sunporch, waiting for Pop-pop to return from an overnight fishing trip. The moment his Ford Fairlane pulled into view, I burst into the pelting rain. He opened the car door and cradled me in his arms.
“I sure missed you, birthday boy. Hurry, race to the porch. We’re getting soaked,” he said. Safely inside, I watched a puddle encircle my feet as Pop-pop fumbled out of his yellow slicker. He then dipped his hand into a pocket and twirled something behind his back, asking, “Ready?” Before I could respond, he revealed a gigantic wishbone.
“Andy, do you know what this is? It’s a slingshot, hand-carved by Indians native to Pennsylvania,” he said. “I didn’t have any paper to wrap it.”
“Wow, Pop-pop!” I cried. “Genuine Indians. Did you meet them?”
Scanning the hangtag fastened with red twine, he recited, “Lenape Native American Tribe. Delaware River Region. Andy, this slingshot was carved by a boy about your age from the branch of a tree, probably hard maple. Looks like nature’s pitchfork!”
The slingshot looked hand-carved, but I quickly theorized Pop-pop purchased it at a roadside stand.
“See this rawhide?” he said, pointing to a red rubber band. “This rawhide was wrapped, then knotted around grooves on each side of the Y.” Stretching the bands wide, he added, “This center leather pouch is where you put the rock. The stem’s carved so that you can get a good grip. I bet this slingshot is as much as a hundred fifty years old,” he fibbed.
“No way,” I returned, determining it was brand new.
“It’s meant as a hunting weapon, but you can shoot cans off the back fence. That’s what the Indians did. Every time they knocked off a can, they’d pray to God.”
“Pop-pop, there were tin cans a hundred-fifty years ago?”
“Well, for certain,” he replied.
As the myth gained speed, I caught a pungent whiff of Michelob riding his breath.
The following night, the moon was as colorless as I’d ever seen. Around nine p.m., Lia rushed me into her car for the short drive to Gram’s house.
“Pop-pop isn’t feeling well,” she explained.
When we arrived, we found Gram crying, flanked by two neighbors, another speaking to emergency dispatch.
“Honey, why don’t you go and watch TV? You shouldn’t be in here. Everything will be okay,” Lia insisted.
I turned the television on to muffle the commotion when the siren of an ambulance grew close. Just tall enough to see above the bay window’s ledge, I stood frozen, mesmerized by the flashing red light and the jerky moves of men in blue uniforms drawing the gurney from the vehicle. I watched, consumed by panic. During the opening theme song to The Lucy Show, Lia came into the living room and said, “Pop-pop took a heart attack. Let’s pray.”
I knew the situation was serious because we rarely prayed. I waited for someone to come running into the room yelling, “False alarm. Oscar is going to be fine.” But by the end of The Andy Griffith Show, we could hear Gram screaming, “Please God, no, no, no. He wasn’t ready.” Pop-pop’s heart had stopped beating.
The loss of my surrogate father crushed me. Instead of seeing him during visiting hours lying in the coffin or attending his funeral, I was kept away, watched over by a tenderhearted friend of Gram’s who lived up the street. The fatality tore up Gram, Lia, and Aunt Louisa so much that I’m not sure anyone understood the impact Pop-pop’s death had on me.
There was no one to sneak me sips of beer at Yankees games or to cuddle as we giggled through reruns of McHale’s Navy. Pop-pop was gone. We never got to knock tin cans off the backyard fence, but I kept the slingshot under my pillow for a long time.
Over the years, other part-time dads attempted to fill the void. They included a distant uncle and the family butcher, but I had little interest in playing along. A neighboring father and his twin boys picked me up before dawn one morning to fish a smelly lake an hour north of Maple Ridge. Worms as bait, tangled lines, ham sandwiches squished between plastic wrap—I hated the entire nonsense. When I finally did hook a sunfish, watching it flap to a slow death in a wicker basket seemed criminal.
“This is torture,” I announced as the father looked puzzled and his twins rolled their eyes. Pop-pop would have laughed at my comment and patted me on the back, accepting that I favored pursuits that didn’t involve murder.
The unorthodox arrangement of our family created more stumbling blocks for Lia than for me. Switching between the roles of nurturing mother, dutiful father, and rambunctious sibling, her hands were full.
To counter the responsibilities that bogged her down, she employed silly humor. Saturday mornings, typically reserved for house cleaning, became an opportunity to shock each other with bizarre costumes. I’d enter the kitchen to find Lia mopping the floor in fluffy slippers, a chenille robe, pink curlers, and a cigarette dangling from her lips. Another time, I borrowed Gram’s purple housecoat, put on garish sunglasses I bought at the drugstore, and mimicked Elton John.
Not only did we dress up, but we also sang whatever music was spinning on the record player at the top of our lungs. We’d typically begin with the song “Aquarius” from the Broadway musical Hair. I can’t imagine a father would tolerate such antics.
As a single mother who didn’t answer to a husband, Lia eyed success as a career woman. With subscriptions to Ms. and Playgirl, Lia saw herself in the style of Mary Tyler Moore’s character Mary Richards. She aimed to be the liberated archetype Helen Reddy sang about in “I Am Woman.” Trailblazers.
As a parent, Lia erred toward leniency: If anything I asked made a lick of sense, she’d approve. I guess she wanted to share the liberation she enjoyed. As director of marketing for Procter Life Insurance, she joined the fraction of women able to inch their way up in the male-dominated culture. As needed, she’d detonate her secret weapon: skirts at just the right length to accentuate her endless gams. As a boy, I cringed at the catcalls hollered when she walked past less-mannered dudes.
“Why can’t Lia find a husband?” Gram’s girlfriends would gripe over penny poker.
During the winter of 1968, when I attended third grade at John F. Kennedy Elementary School, Lia discovered a hard lump in her left breast. After a biopsy of the cyst, her oncologist advised removing the entire breast to prevent the cancer from spreading. As she prepared to go to the hospital, she told friends and neighbors that she was undergoing the removal of her appendix. People accepted the white lie. Only Gram and Aunt Louisa knew the truth.
Days later, when she entered the hospital, I was by her bedside. Lia confided in me that the doctors would have to remove “the slightest bit of cancer.” I was aware that cancer signified something dreadful and bawled at the news.
The day after surgery, I brought a giant metal canister of Tootsie Roll candies to the hospital. When I opened her door, Lia was flat in the bed, weak and attached to beeping doodads. I began to cry all over again.
“Don’t cry, honey,” she soothed me. “All gone.”
During recovery, Lia’s fiery disposition was downright troubling. Whenever the pain medication wore off, she’d moan until a fresh dose brought relief, setting her to sleep for hours. Lia frittered wearily around the house most days as she recuperated away from work for the entire month of March and a good chunk of April. When she needed supervision, Gram took the day shift while watching Days of Our Lives followed by General Hospital—all the while making unsuccessful attempts to cheer up her daughter. Some days they’d bicker like two cats in a clothes basket before resolving with hugs and then dishing over whichever soap character was in crisis.
Every other day or two, Aunt Louisa would return from whichever layover city she was in to relieve Gram. Goldie once asked Lia if Louisa was two tacos short of a combo platter, and we burst into laughter. Louisa’s freewheeling lifestyle often caused friction between the sisters, but during the cancer, they got on like peas and carrots.
Six months later, follow-up tests concluded that the ductal carcinoma was undetectable. Sweeping the good news aside, Lia clamored, “Andy, they butchered me.”
Without pause, I responded, “Cancer lost, we won.”
Time after time, over the years, I’d clumsily assure her that no one would ever know they erased her breast. To combat her sadness, I concocted an artillery of distractions: (1) Without warning, I’d spin the album She’s a Lady by her favorite heartthrob, Tom Jones, at deafening volume. (2) I’d plop into her lap a towering stack of get-well cards I made from construction paper and Elmer’s glue. (3) I’d beg her to play board games, like Trouble, Scrabble, and Monopoly. Although the ploys worked for a while, later I’d find Lia on the sofa, curled into a ball under her favorite purple patchwork blanket, with blankness in her eyes.
I wasn’t aware at the time that Lia’s mastectomy strained her romantic life. Lia pushed away men because she feared their reaction to her scar. When she was dressed, no one knew her left breast had been removed. But in private, even with the lights out, she didn’t want her secret known.
Once in a blue moon, she’d accept an invitation to dinner by Tom, Dick, or Harry. At the end of each date, when I asked how the evening went, she’d cough up a barrage of excuses: “Andy, his teeth were yellow, wretched,” or “That one, nothing but a low-class playboy!” or “Can you believe he asked me to split the check?”
Over time, her reviews seemed little more than excuses. But one night I overheard her say to her friend Ruth, “Another wasted night! They all expect to fuck me on the first date.”
By that point, I was a teenager. Hearing Lia utter the curse wasn’t upsetting, seeing as she was a liberated woman, but I wondered: Why wouldn’t a single female with a subscription to Ms. and Playgirl want to fuck?
In traditional families, nudity was taboo and carried shame. In our laid-back household, seeing each other au naturel induced nothing worse than a good laugh. If by chance we saw each other naked, one of us would screech something comical before running in the opposite direction. Only once did I see Lia’s bush. She was hoisting up a pair of pantyhose, spread-eagle on the edge of her bed, when I strolled in. Catching a panoramic view of her snatch, I squealed in mock-horror. Lia calmly stood, turned around, and finished dressing.
“Coast is clear,” she said, resuming conversation, confident that this chance viewing wouldn’t require a lifetime of therapy.
One evening later that same summer, the bathroom door was cracked an inch to allow the shower steam to escape. In passing, I saw Lia, dressed only in an aqua towel wrapped around her head. She stood blankly before the sink. In the mirror, I saw the reflection of her concave scar. Sensing my presence, she flinched, using the tail of the towel to cover her surviving breast. Breaking the silence, Lia whispered flatly, “It’s okay, honey. You can look.” So I poked my head in further.
“Lousy, isn’t it? They cut the whole thing out.”
Mesmerized, I saw that the void’s contour took on a lopsided geometry directly above her heart. She strummed her fingertips over the incision’s seam, a full shade lighter than her olive skin. Grinning, she muttered, “Now you’ve seen it—no more mystery.”
The delicacy of the moment made my mother the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
Chapter 5
In Maple Ridge, we called New York City “the city.” Occasionally we called it New York. Even Manhattan. Greenwich Village was always “the Village.” Less than twenty miles from Manhattan, there were three options for travel to and from the city—car, train, or commuter bus. Sometime during the autumn of my senior year, I started cutting classes a few days a month. I reasoned that I’d discover more trekking into the city than suffering through humanities, French lit, or God forbid, rhythmic gymnastics.
There was something naughty about riding to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, an intersection of marquees that garishly promoted—day or night—one skanky porn flick after the other. Hookers and their tricks were darting in and out of dark alleys. Jacked cars blasted ghetto music. Smokers and winos stood propped against anything steady.
The frenetic scene captured my curiosity. Although I’d moved beyond my childhood obsession with cowboys, watching the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid further uncorked my attraction to rugged outcasts. The week Midnight Cowboy screened at the retro cinema one town over from Maple, I brought Elena. The moment Joe Buck, the brawny hustler from Texas appeared on screen, my dick got hard.
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” Elena scolded in the darkness. “Stop twitching!”
