An Invisible Thread (14 page)

He’d had a great day, and now he had to cross back into his world. For him, that was the toughest thing of all.

I always felt terrible saying good-bye to Maurice, because I knew what he had to go back to. I wrestled with the idea that showing Maurice this other existence, where children frolicked and food arrived on giant plates, was, possibly, a cruel thing to do. What was the point of giving him access to a better life, then just snatching it away? Was it helping him or hurting? I thought about it a lot, and I finally decided that as long as Maurice and I talked about it and acknowledged the hardship of jumping back and forth between two such drastically different lifestyles, then it would be okay to keep doing it. At least he was seeing there were alternatives to his home life; at least he could feel carefree and happy for one day.

Besides, Maurice told me later, he was never going to give up what he and I had, not in a million years.

“So what did you like best about my sister’s house?” I asked him on the car ride home.

“The big table,” he said right away.

“The table? The dining room table?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I liked that everyone just sat around and talked.”

Then he said, “Miss Laura, some day when I grow up, I’m gonna have a big table like that for me and my family. I want to sit around and talk just like they do.”

It was the first time I had heard him talk about his future. Then Maurice, tired from all the swinging and riding bikes, leaned his head against the window and fell asleep.

Now that Maurice had met my family, I felt good about asking him to spend Thanksgiving with us. Normally, we’d all gather at
Annette’s house, but I had something different in mind this year. I had just moved into the Symphony, and I knew the building had an outdoor running track on the tenth floor. The track overlooked Broadway, which meant the Thanksgiving Day parade of floats would pass right by us on its way down to Macy’s. I thought Maurice and the kids would get a real kick out of seeing the floats up close. Heck, I knew I’d get a kick out of it, too, so I invited everyone to spend Thanksgiving with me.

It wound up being a wonderful day. Annette and Bruce were there with the kids, and so were my younger sister, Nancy, and my brothers, Frank and Steve. We all hung out on the track while the turkey Nancy had helped me prepare roasted in the oven upstairs. And then, as we craned our necks to peer up Broadway, we saw them, the massive, magical, helium-filled floats. Slowly they worked their way down the avenue, swaying in the breeze, tugging hard at their strings. Seeing them from the ground is remarkable enough, but on the tenth floor the floats were at eye level. When they went by the Symphony, it felt like we could reach right out and touch them. One after another, these magnificent giants moved past us—big old Snoopy, Raggedy Ann, Popeye the Sailor, and a happily bobbing Kermit the Frog. Maurice and the kids were beside themselves, and, frankly, so was I; I hadn’t expected the floats to be this close. It was like something out of a beautiful dream—these iconic cartoon characters drifting by, bright and colorful, seeming almost to wave at us in the wind. When, finally, Superman flew past, I was yelling and cheering as loudly as any of the children. Except, maybe, for Maurice. To this day I can still remember his face as the floats went by. The only word I can use to describe it is
awe
.

Besides my sisters and brothers, I had also invited our father, Nunzie. In 1986 Nunzie was in his late sixties and he’d mellowed quite a bit, but he still held a certain power over us all. When Annette got married, some of the joy of her wedding was tempered by her fear of my father drinking too much and exploding. She had shielded Bruce from Nunzie when they were dating, but at her wedding she could only hope for the best. Luckily, he was in a cheery mood that day, but we all still held our breaths whenever Nunzie was around. We were grown-ups with our own lives and we were no longer under his thumb, but the anxiety, the trepidation, was just something none of us could ever shake.

On that day, Nunzie was on his best behavior. I watched him zip up his windbreaker against the cold air. What hair he had left had gone gray, and his stocky body was a little stooped—a frail version of his former roaring self. I watched him talk to Maurice. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell my father was being kind to him, pointing things out and putting a hand on his shoulder. Seeing them with each other—seeing these two strands of my life come together—was both strange and moving. I couldn’t help but think that the terror and uncertainty we faced as children because of my father was similar to the chaos that Maurice now had to endure. And if I couldn’t go back and change what had happened to us, perhaps I could do something to help save Maurice.

When we were young, we slipped into roles that spared us from the worst of my father’s madness. Annette was the perfect daughter, never doing anything to disappoint our parents. Nancy was the quiet one, overshadowed by her older sisters and happy to stay in the
background. And then there was me, the rebel, the wisecracker—I think what protected me was my personality, which everyone said I got from my dad. Perhaps I was the most like him and that’s why he didn’t pick on me quite as much.

That left Frankie and my mother, and they became my father’s primary targets. Frankie was the one who was most visibly affected by my father’s rages, and from a very early age we all started worrying about him. We watched him get quieter and lose some of his exuberance. The more he was pummeled, physically and mentally, the more he seemed to withdraw into himself. As he got older he stood up to my father and yelled back at him, and they’d have terrible screaming matches—endless fights about nothing. But the constant pressure of my father’s rages surely wore him down and, I think, slowly and tragically destroyed some part of him.

Still, there was nothing he could do, nothing any of us could do. Our only respite was the day or two after the rages, when my father would be extra nice to make up for his outburst. Those slender silver linings were, in fact, quite wonderful—they gave us glimpses of how great a father he could be when he was sober. We were drawn to him on those days, desperate to siphon as much love and affection as we could, but after another day or two, we’d start to brace ourselves for the next eruption. If he was nice for too long, that only made us more apprehensive. We knew that after one storm passed, another one was never far behind, and so we lived in a state of constant fear, constant tension. Only in our most hopeful moments would we dream of some potent, earth-shaking event that might fundamentally change him—some magic bolt of lightning to shock us all into a new kind of life.

We thought such a bolt may have struck when my father decided to switch careers from bartending to building. He had built the house we lived in, and it was reasonable for him to think he could make a go of construction. So he sold our house in Huntington Station for $22,000 and moved us into a much smaller ranch house he bought for $16,000 in the nearby town of Commack. With the extra money, he started a construction company with his friend Richie. He didn’t quite give up bartending—he was still working nights in a bar at the Commack Bowling Alley—but the rest of the time he was busy building homes. We all prayed he’d be successful and maybe stop drinking altogether, and then, miraculously, we could maybe be a normal family.

Unfortunately the building business was short-lived. He and Richie put up four or five houses and plenty of cash came in, but my father was a terrible businessman, and money slipped through his fingers like grease. He was talented and a relentlessly hard worker and, by all rights, should have achieved the kind of success he craved, but he was too restless to stick with any one thing for too long. In time, he always found a way to sabotage himself. I remember a big blowout he had with Richie; Dad came home drunk and dug out the blueprints for all of the homes they had built as well as for some future projects. He put them in a pile in the backyard and set them on fire, burning them to ashes. Richie was furious when he found out and disbanded their partnership. My father tried to keep the business going on his own, but after a while it went under—and with it, it seemed, any chance we had of a new, more peaceful life.

But then, miraculously, another lightning bolt seemed to strike. Five years after the birth of her last child, my mother was suddenly
pregnant again. I was astonished and delighted, and I couldn’t wait to have a new brother or sister. Beyond this excitement, I allowed myself to think that the prospect of having another child and the reality of having a pregnant wife might just deter my father from drinking too much and erupting into his destructive rages. Maybe this would be the thing that tamped down his demons once and for all.

And, for a while, he did seem to be on better behavior—until a cold, snowy night in February when my mother was six months pregnant. Our family took the half-hour drive to Hicksville to spend a day with my mother’s sister, Rose, her husband, Ray, and their four young children. After dinner my father and Ray announced they were going to a local bar to knock a couple back. They promised they’d return in just a short while. A pang of dread shot through me when I heard them say this. After an hour, I looked out the window and noticed the flurries that had started earlier had turned into a steady snow. The streets were solid white. I could tell my mother was getting nervous too, but none of us said a word about it.

Then two hours had passed. It was dark out, and the snow was still coming down. I looked out the window and searched desperately for his headlights, but all I saw was white. My aunt, sensing our anxiety, suggested we spend the night, but we all knew my father would never, ever go for that. Nor, if he had been drinking, would he allow my mother to drive. The more he drank, the more contemptuous he became of her. Not in a million years would he ever trust her to drive.

Finally, my father and Ray barreled through the door. It was obvious they’d both had too much to drink, and it was clear to us, if
not to my aunt and uncle, that my father’s mood had turned pitch-black. I was in a state of near panic, and I could see my mother was, too. Not only was my father primed to explode at the slightest provocation, but now we had a blinding snowstorm to worry about as well. My aunt had a big pot of black coffee ready, and my father drank a cup. But when she suggested we stay the night, he brushed her off and told us to get our coats. My mother didn’t even bother to ask if she could drive; she knew better than that.

We marched to the car like condemned prisoners, slowly and quietly. My mother sat in front, and Annette, Nancy, Frankie, and I squeezed in back. We huddled together and discreetly held hands. I prayed under my breath that nothing bad would happen. My father eased the car into the snowy street and onto a two-lane road. I was afraid to even breathe, for fear the sound would set him off.

We drove in absolute silence. The tension in the car was nearly unbearable. The snow was heavy, and we couldn’t see out the front windshield more than a few feet. The only good news was that the blizzard was keeping most drivers off the road, so we saw very few cars. But then, suddenly, and for no reason I could figure, my father accelerated the car. We lurched forward, churning snow under the tires. We went from thirty miles per hour to about fifty. The car weaved from side to side as it glided over the dense snow. My mother looked at my father in horror and begged him to stop. Just when it seemed he might lose control of the car, he hit the brakes, and we swerved wildly, nearly spinning out before straightening and slowing to a crawl. We drove at normal speed for a mile or so before my father stepped on the gas again.

My father was toying with us.

The car swerved again, and my father hit the brakes. We almost spun out, but once again we straightened at the last minute. Once again, my mother begged my father to stop. In the back, all of us were crying—quietly. My father hit the gas again, recklessly challenging the snow, ignoring my mother’s pleadings. I was sure we were going to crash at any moment. Then my mother, scared to death, screamed for my father to stop. We all joined in, imploring him to please, please slow down. He didn’t even turn his head. Finally, my mother raised her voice as high as she could and
demanded
my father pull the car over.

“For God’s sake, stop this car—
STOP THE CAR
!!”

My father sped up even more.

Just then, two big headlights appeared around a corner, coming right at us. A bus was rounding a bend in the road. I’m sure my father saw it coming, but for some reason he didn’t slow down or turn out of the way. He just kept plowing forward. The bus driver blasted his horn and, at the last second, swerved away from us. The deafening sound of his horn mixed with our screams and cries as he barreled past; I don’t think he missed us by more than a foot. It took this near collision to unnerve my father, and, finally, he slammed on the brakes and stopped our car. Decades later, when I think about how close we came to colliding with the bus—and about what would have happened to us if it had hit us—I shudder.

When we came to a halt, it was my mother who exploded. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her angrier. She rarely stood up to my father—she knew if she did, it would only inflame him more. But here, on the road, in a blizzard, she had to take a stand. She was not going to let this drunken maniac kill her children.

She got out of the car and went around the front and yanked open the driver’s-side door.

“Get out of the car!” she screamed at my father. “
GET OUT!!
”

My father didn’t move.

“Nunzie, I am not letting you drive this car,” she said. “Now for God’s sake, get out and let me drive.”

In the back, we pleaded with our father to please, please get out. Finally, he did. But instead of going around and getting into the passenger seat, he started walking away. My mother slipped behind the wheel and yelled for him to get in. He wouldn’t hear it; he just kept walking. I knew that in his drunken state, he was too stubborn to let her drive him home. He would rather walk in a blizzard. We were at least twenty minutes away from our house by car. My father, drunk and wobbly, would never make it that far.