The Memory Tree Page 7
The Republicans and Democrats would both soon be holding conventions to nominate their candidates for President in the November election. I knew Nixon would win in a landslide, but my memory had failed me once again for the Democrats. I would have sworn it was McCarthy, but over the weekend, I read an article about Hubert Humphrey and remembered he would be the one running against Nixon. Oh, well.
There was something about rioting in Chicago during the Democratic convention, but I couldn’t remember details. I wondered whether I’d be in 1968 long enough to hear about it directly.
Even though Nixon would win the election and again in 1972, people didn’t like him. This was long before Watergate and everything else that caused him to resign the Presidency, but even now there was a sense that voting for him would be done while holding your nose.
As for other things, music was pretty easy to get caught up on. The Doors were big, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” topped the charts, and of course, The Beatles were everywhere. I just had to be careful not to talk about songs they hadn’t sung yet. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure which ones that included. Popular movies were The Graduate and Rosemary’s Baby.
What else? The sports section seemed to be
wall-to-wall baseball every day, but Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus got their fair share of coverage, too.
I was starting to feel like I could fit in.
“How’re you doing tonight, Jimmy,” I asked.
He looked at me and snickered. “Same as every other night, I guess.”
I walked over to his end of the bar, pretending to show an interest. Good buddies already. “You a baseball fan?” I asked.
At first he didn’t reply. He seemed beaten down about something. “I guess as much as the next guy.”
“Yankees?”
“Tigers.”
Good choice, I thought. You’ll be as happy as Little Sam in September. I never knew my father rooted for the Tigers. We had never talked about sports when I was young.
I said, “McLain’s having a great year.”
No answer. Just a ho-hum raise of the eyebrows.
The bar was more crowded than it had been on Friday night, which I thought was odd. Scott had brought in a small black and white TV, maybe a twelve-incher. He was grunting as he tried to hook it up behind the bar. I wondered if his suspenders would pop when he leaned over to plug the television in.
“What’s happening tonight?” I asked Jimmy, pointing at the TV. “Ball game?”
Dad laughed, obviously thinking I was a moron. “What fuckin’ planet are you from?” When I just stared back, he said, “It’s the lottery tonight.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t realized the lottery craze had started that early. “What’s the jackpot?”
“Jackpot, that’s a funny! Did you hear that, woman? Guy’s a laugh riot.”
Marie looked at me with a closed-mouth smile. Politeness won over sincerity. She took a drink before saying, “It’s the draft lottery, Sam.”
Draft lottery?
“Oh, right. Basketball, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Jesus H. Christ,” yelled Dad. He then started choking, and it was a couple of minutes before he could talk again. “You aren’t serious, are you? It’s the fuckin’ draft lottery. The fuckin’ army draft. See which useless son’s of bitches gets to go defend our country by gutting some Viet Cong.”
A few other guys started to crowd around the bar as Scott finished hooking the set up. I didn’t remember what the draft lottery was all about, but it looked like it was about to start. I waved for a couple more beers and took one of the seats between Mom and Dad. He glared at me. Fuck you, I thought.
Scott tuned the TV by fiddling with a pair of rabbit ears, and we heard military-style music. The bar fell silent as various dignitaries were introduced from the Selective Services branch of the Armed Forces. I didn’t want to stand out any more than I already did, so I didn’t ask what Selective Services was. I just listened.
I didn’t catch all their names or ranks, but the army guys seemed pretty impressive based on the number of medals swinging from their uniforms. The sound was terrible, tinny, and surrounded by cracking static. Nobody in the bar spoke a word. Even Scott watched, not serving drinks until somebody got impatient and lifted their glass in the air.
The ceremony started with a benediction performed by a Catholic priest. I was pretty bored by this, but the real action started soon after.
I gradually pieced together that this was a lottery to see which 19-year-olds would be drafted.
It worked like this: each day of the year was printed on a separate piece of paper. These pieces of paper, representing each potential draftee’s birthday, were placed in little blue plastic capsules. Then all 365 capsules (one for every day of the year) were placed inside a round metal drum, which had a crank and a door.
As we watched, the capsules were drawn randomly from the drum, one by one. The first date drawn was September 14. As a General solemnly read the date, a chill came over me, and I felt the awful fear that would have immediately run through every boy born on September 14, 1949. They were headed to fight in Vietnam.
I heard some nervous chuckles behind me, as soon as it became clear that nobody in the bar had sons or brothers affected.
Marty.
I don’t know how I missed the connection earlier. My brother, Marty, was drafted this year. It must have been by this lottery. I grasped at my fading memory to find his birthday: April 11.
The second capsule was already pulled. April (not eleven, please, God) 24.
Then December 30.
As the dates piled up, somehow the atmosphere seemed a little looser in the bar. The draft wasn’t hitting anybody there. As I turned to look, there must have been 30 men and a half dozen women glued to the tube.
February 14.
October 18.
But luck ran out on the fourteenth pull. The General (or whatever he was) casually opened the capsule and read in a firm voice, “April 11.”
I didn’t know what to do. I stared at the date, now flashing on the screen, knowing how things turned out. Marty never came back from his time in Vietnam.
I felt numb and moved away from the barstool. I had seen enough. Nobody really noticed me leaving.
As I left, though, I looked back at my mom. She hadn’t reacted when the date came up, so nobody else in the bar knew her son’s number just came up. I could see a small tear in her eye and maybe a small shudder ran through her. Other than that, she continued to drink and smoke, not having said a word. She stared resolutely forward and didn’t even glance over at my father.
But I did.
I had expected some reaction, not necessarily tears, but some indication he would be worried or sorry
or -- something.
Instead, I saw a smile crawl across his face.
I was totally disgusted with him. Here his son was going to go away to war and be killed in action, and I knew what he was thinking: one less mouth to feed while the little prick was in the army.
Chapter 16
By the time I got back to my apartment, I was feeling even more depressed than when I left the bar. Well, maybe “depressed” is too strong a word. It was more like a sadness had swept through me, sadness for my older brother and sadness for the state my family was in. I kept repeating the same question to myself over and over again: How could my father be such an asshole?
I was restless and angry on top of the sadness, a messy cocktail of emotions being whipped up in my mind.
Earlier, I had picked up a case of beer, and I cracked one open as I paced in small circles around my room. After a few minutes of this pointlessness, I stopped in front of the bookcase.
Mrs. Williamson had left her daughter’s room pretty much as it was when the daughter lived there. The furniture was certainly livable, a worn brown rug with white trim providing warmth from the concrete floor. Earlier, I described a few other things, such as the television and the bedroom furniture.
I was a bit surprised to see a whole section of poetry, with a clear love for the works of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I recited from a deeply buried memory, “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.”
You’re a romantic, my friend. I smiled at the thought of a connection to this long lost girl/woman.
But, the real treasure was an oversized volume, beautifully bound in brown leather. I wondered what it might be and opened it carefully. It turned out to be a hand-written book, and the title surprised the hell out of me:
The Remembrance Diary
Of My Lost Daughter, Julie.
Written With Love By Her Mother, Claire Williamson
“Remembrance Diary,” I said, feeling its power rolling around on my tongue. I had no idea what that was, but it didn’t take long to find out.
The first piece of the puzzle quickly dropped into place. Claire was the name of Mrs. Williamson’s missing daughter. Julie was her daughter. There was a small black and white photo, three generations, pasted onto the front cover of the diary.
Flipping through the book, I could see 366 entries (Claire had even included February 29). For each date, she had written a memory of herself with Julie. They covered many different years, so the entry for January 2 had nothing to do with what had been written for January 1. It was a set of memories, beautifully documented, showing sketches and fragments of Julie’s life, and as a
by-product, Claire’s life, too.
The book felt heavy in my hands. Memories and secrets were hidden here, and I was an unwanted Peeping Tom. There was no way Mrs. Williamson knew this was here; she wouldn’t have left this for strangers to find.
I turned back to the photo on the cover. It was yellowed with age. There was no date. Mrs. Williamson looked pretty much the same as she did now, maybe slightly younger, but that was hard to judge. She might’ve been born looking old.
Claire looked to be about thirty, dark shoulder-length hair, but not black. She had a broad smile directed at the camera, a directness shining through, capturing me with its intensity. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn at her most elegant. I imagined her as being tall with a commanding presence. Graceful. I know much of this was purely my imagination and couldn’t really have been gleaned from one photo, but I felt it nonetheless.
Julie was a child, maybe ten or twelve. A furrowed brow matched an unpleasant little frown she carried. “You’re an unhappy little thing, aren’t you?” I asked her.
I rubbed my fingers over the photo. I never had a picture of me with my parents, and I felt an irrational pang of jealousy at this family unit.
I flipped the book randomly to July 22.
In 1959, you were out in the playground at the back of the schoolhouse. You were only four years old but you already seemed to have the run of the neighborhood, and your instincts ensured you never got lost.
There was a field of bright yellow daisies in a neighbor’s yard, and you snuck through a hole in the fence and picked a big handful. I watched you from the kitchen and wondered if I was going to get a call from the neighbor, but that never happened. If they were watching, they probably liked that somebody wanted to enjoy the daisies before they wilted.
You brought the flowers back to me and said they were bits of sunshine you wanted me to have. I felt so lucky that day, knowing my little girl loved me. You looked up at me with eyes as big as saucers, and I kissed you on your forehead and held you for what seemed like an hour.
I felt a bit like a voyeur reading the book and I reluctantly closed it and placed it back on the shelf. It was a hard thing to do, since I knew that somewhere buried in the book might be clues as to what happened to Claire. Somehow, I knew in my bones it was going to be important to me to find out.
Chapter 17
How can I describe Uncle Bob? Let me start by writing what I remember from that time, so long ago. I never knew if he was truly an Uncle, meaning a brother of my mother or father. These things weren’t discussed in my family, and I never understood why.
I’d asked once, “How is Uncle Bob related to us?”
My parents looked at each other, exchanging secrets with their glances. They didn’t answer, and after several seconds I got impatient. “Mom?”
I’d waited to ask until late morning, when they were both still somewhat sober. Drinking but not yet drunk.
She smiled, and since she almost never smiled at me in any circumstances, I knew the answer she gave would be intended only to shut my big fat mouth.
“Just think of him as your uncle, Sammy,” she finally said.
My father then quickly changed the topic. “What’s that band you listen to? The one that’s got that movie song?”
“Do you mean ‘Mrs. Robinson’? From The Graduate?”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s the one.”
“Simon and Garfunkel. They’ve got lots of good songs.”
“Are they niggers?” Looking back now, I’m amazed at the language my father used. He wasn’t afraid to call people niggers, wops, kikes, spics, whatever. Krauts and Japs were the worst people in his opinion, because of the war. The odd part is it wasn’t even particularly unusual to use language like that. Lots of people did when they didn’t think strangers were listening.
“No, they’re not niggers,” I answered, the word as comfortable on my tongue as on his.
“Fucking spics then.” That seemed to settle it in his mind. He picked up another drink and stared, daring me to contradict him.
I gave up and walked upstairs to my bedroom, the middle lyrics to “Mrs. Robinson” gently wandering through my mind. It was cheerful music filled with sad lyrics. Big secrets were being hidden. I hadn’t seen the movie and didn’t know what the secrets were, but in our lives, Uncle Bob would remain a deeply buried secret for much of my life.
My parents went to their graves without revealing anything about Bob’s history, where he came from, why he did the things he did, and why they allowed him to. In “Mrs. Robinson,” the secrets were hidden, most of all from the kids.
But, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was an adult, and I was damned well determined to find some answers. Part of the answer came that night, after reading the little bit of Claire Williamson’s Remembrance Diary.
Reading the diary had taken my anger about the Draft Lottery and dispersed it. I was calm again, maybe more calm than I really deserved. I grabbed another bottle of beer and went outside again. There were a few high clouds illuminated by the faint traces of the sunset, but otherwise the night was dark.
No matter how dark it was, though, I knew the shape of the man leaving the house next door.
And I knew I was too late to help Little Sam.
Still, I remained calm. Getting mad wouldn’t help anybody, and I wouldn’t get the answers I needed. I knew my parents were still down at the bar, with the Draft Lottery still underway. That meant things had progressed enough that Bob had free access to the house in their absence. Things had gone a long way.
The first time . . .
The first time didn’t seem as terrible as all the others.
I was asleep in my room, at the back of the second floor. It was late at night, after midnight for sure, and there was laughter coming up from downstairs, my fath
er’s laughter. I had been introduced to Uncle Bob earlier that night but didn’t think much of it. Just another of my parents’ loser friends.
I woke up feeling him on me. His hand was on my penis, massaging me into an erection -- back then I would have called it a boner. I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended to still be asleep. What is he doing? I was too scared and embarrassed to do anything. He reeked of beer and pepperoni. I knew it was him from the disjointed wheezing that came with every breath.
I remember squeezing my eyes shut, wanting him to go away, but a part of me feeling pretty good and wanting him to stay.
I was very naïve and uninformed. Nobody had ever talked to me about sex back then. Not my parents, certainly not the teachers at school, and if my friends knew more than I did, they weren’t sharing.
The feel of his hand stroking me was an unbelievable sensation. He held onto my testicles and kept moving his hand faster and faster.
I had never heard of an orgasm before, and I had no idea what was happening to me. It felt like I had lost all control of my body. I thought maybe I had peed, and a cloud of shame descended on me, a huge weight smothering me. Uncle Bob snickered and left. I found myself covered in a sticky mess and I had no idea what had happened.
Earlier in this journal, I wrote that 1968 was the summer I learned to masturbate. This was the sorry way I learned.
As the summer passed, he visited me again. And again. And again. I couldn’t do or say anything. I was a prisoner of my shame and his desires.
He changed his routine gradually with each nocturnal visit, becoming bolder and bolder. He started to put his mouth on me, and then he would do himself, spraying my stomach with his hot semen. Eventually, he would force his cock into my mouth, causing me to gag and choke. I couldn’t pretend to be asleep any longer.
And not long after the entire nightmare started, he decided what he really wanted was anal sex. During these times, I felt like he was ripping me apart, gutting me like a trout.