KooKooLand (50 page)

“Well, I can't say the same for myself,” Shirley said, and hung up.

“My mother's probably not coming to the wedding,” I wailed to my husband-to-be.

“I bet it'll work out. I bet she'll come around,” said James, since, being the opposite of Jimmy, he was an optimist.

“But who will walk you down the aisle?” asked one of my girlfriends, when I told her about disinviting Jimmy.

“Me,” I said. “I wouldn't put it past Jimmy to trip me on my way down the aisle.”

“Oh, he can't be that bad,” she said, laughing.

“Oh yes, he is. He really is.”

I didn't regret my decision, even though Jimmy had stopped talking to me. That was kind of a blessing, actually.

And James was right. Shirley did end up coming.

Maybe one of us should go, she told Jimmy. We don't want the neighbors talking. We want to keep our problems on a stone wall, don't we?

She had his number. He grudgingly agreed to let her go.

Shirley lost a lot of weight to fit into a sexy black dress that she hid from Jimmy.

Virginia dyed her hair a fiery red, and painted her nails to match.

When they showed up, I thought they both looked great.

The night before the wedding, Jimmy sucker punched me.

He called and wished me a beautiful day. I wasn't sure if he really meant it, or if he was just trying to rock my boat. Trying to make me feel guilty.

But I didn't feel guilty. I shed a few tears and thanked him for calling.

Then I hung up and forgot all about him.

The next day, I had the best day of my life.

Shirley and Virginia had the time of their lives too.

They were both crazy about KooKooLand.

“I'd move out here if I was younger and had the guts to leave your father,” Shirley sighed.

“I'd move if I didn't have a job, a husband, and a kid,” said Virginia.

They both vowed to come back again soon.

I made Shirley a photo album of the wedding so she'd have a reminder of a good time in her life. Something to keep her going whenever things got rough with Jimmy.

And in the months after the wedding, things got really rough.

I didn't know how rough at the time. Shirley hid it. I found out later. More than I wanted to know.

Jimmy was going off the rails.

He was drinking even more than usual. Drinking morning, noon, and night. He was gambling more too. He blew all their drug dough on the horses. He berated Shirley nonstop. Once, he caught her watching a Red Sox game
and went ballistic. He said she was drooling over those lard-ass players like an old whore.

He was determined to make Shirley pay for her good time in California. Every time he saw her looking at that photo album, he told her she was lording it over him. He felt like that goddamn photo album was proof of something he had suspected since the moment I was born: that she loved me more than him.

His jealousy festered like a boil. He became consumed with rage. Day after day he told Shirley she was stupid and worthless and ugly.

Finally, one August afternoon everything came to a head.

Jimmy had been boozing it up since breakfast. He cornered Shirley by the stove as she was making dinner. He told her flat out he wanted her dead. She saw the look in his eyes and grabbed for the closest weapon to defend herself—a hammer from the kitchen drawer. He wrenched the hammer away from her and began to smash the wall beside her head with it, threatening to smash her head in. She broke away from him and ran toward the bedroom. He threw the hammer at her. It landed on the floor in front of her and broke apart. A piece of it ricocheted into her ankle. She hobbled into the bedroom and locked herself in. He kicked the door down—he was still strong as an ox. He pushed her down on the bed, kneeled on top of her, and put his hands on her throat.

Shirley flailed underneath him, gasping for breath. His loveless eyes were deep, black pools trying to drown her.

She felt certain she was a goner.

But three things ended up saving her.

The mattress was old and saggy and didn't provide a stable surface for a sixty-eight-year-old drunk man.

All the booze that he had been consuming for most of the day finally kicked in.

And Shirley loved life—even if she was stuck sharing it with a murderous drunk—and wasn't ready for it to end.

She fought off her attacker, her husband of forty-five years.

She tattooed him with her fists like a boxer, until Jimmy lost his balance on that saggy mattress and fell over. She scrambled away from him and ran out of the room.

She did something she'd never done before. She called the cops down off that stone wall.

The cops came and arrested Jimmy, but not before he told them to go fuck themselves a whole bunch of times.

When the cops questioned Shirley, she told them the truth: It wasn't the first time Jimmy had attacked her.

Jimmy was put in jail for the night and then granted bail the next day. The bail conditions stipulated he couldn't go near Shirley, drink, or possess a firearm.

He left jail, promptly got plastered, and returned to the apartment, where he still had a few firearms squirreled away.

By now, Shirley had had enough time to assess her situation and she regretted calling the cops. She'd never lived alone in her entire life. She didn't drive. She'd never written a check or paid a bill. She didn't have a single friend she could call her own. She ate what Jimmy told her to eat. She wore what Jimmy told her to wear.

I'll die without him, she told herself.

He knew what he was doing all those years. He'd set her up.

When Jimmy stormed in the front door, Shirley didn't know whether to hide from him or hug him.

She tried to apologize, to smooth things over.

Jimmy was still mad as hell. He got out a suitcase and pretended to pack. He told her she wouldn't last two weeks without him. He told her it would get around that she was living there all alone. He told her one of the junkies they sold OxyContin to would break in and beat her skull in.

She begged him not to go.

The phone rang and Jimmy answered—hell, it was his goddamn phone.

A woman from the police department was checking up on Shirley. When the woman found out Jimmy was there, she hung up and sent a cruiser over to the apartment. One of the cops who arrived had handcuffed Jimmy the day before. He knew Jimmy wouldn't go without a fight, so he already had his handcuffs out.

This time, Shirley told the cops to beat it.

“Can't two people fight in peace?” she pleaded.

But it didn't matter what Shirley said or what she thought she wanted. The cops told Jimmy he was under arrest for violating his bail conditions.

“Go fuck yourself!” Jimmy yelled, and ran down the hall and into the bedroom. The cops took off after him. When they got to the doorway, Jimmy had already dropped to his knees and was reaching under that saggy mattress for his loaded pistol. The cops tackled Jimmy before he could get his hands on the gun. They struggled to handcuff him, Jimmy fighting all the way.

Outside, before they got him in the car, Jimmy told the cops if he could've gotten to that piece, he would've shot them both through the head.

Jimmy was rebooked into the Valley Street jail.

He was now facing two felony charges—resisting arrest and pulling a gun on a police officer. He was looking at a possible four years in prison.

When Shirley called to tell me what had happened, she left out a lot of the details. Most of those I learned down the road when I read the police report and when Shirley was a little more forthcoming.

Still, it sounded pretty terrible. I flew home to see her. She looked like a different person than the one who had come out to California. All the happiness had been wrung out of her like a dishrag.

She wasn't supposed to be in touch with Jimmy, but he was getting messages to her through his brothers, his friends, and sometimes Virginia, who he could still manipulate pretty good when he wanted to.

“He's sorry, he really is,” said Virginia. “He can't stop crying.”

“I don't give a damn how he feels. I want him locked up.”

He called me on my cell phone, crying.

“I'm a palooka, but I love her,” he said.

It sounded like a line from a boxing movie. But whether he was feeding me a line or he really meant it didn't matter.

“I don't want you anywhere near her,” I said.

“You've never been on my side,” he sobbed.

I hung up.

I told Shirley this was finally her chance and she should take it.

“Let them put him in prison and you'll be safe,” I told her.

“I won't be safe,” she cried. “I'll get my skull beat in. Those hopheads will all know he's not here to protect me.”

“Then
move
. Just leave. Come out to California with me.”

“I'm too scared to move. I'm not like you. You're the brave one in this family.”

“Nothing could be as scary as living with him all these years.”

“Your father's not all bad.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But he's bad enough.”

“I can't do it. I can't move out to KooKooLand.”

I shook my head, resigned.

I returned to California, alone.

Before I left, Virginia and I made a plan. She'd spend some nights with Shirley. We'd both call her every day. I bought dowels to put in the windows so they couldn't be jimmied from the outside. I bought a phone with an answering machine so she could screen her calls. We did what we could.

“He's really sorry,” Virginia repeated to me. “He's calling me every day. Maybe he deserves a second chance.”

“He's had a million second chances. I don't think one more's going to make a difference.”

“I can't abandon him like you,” she burst out sobbing. “He didn't abandon
me
when my own mother didn't want me. I owe him something.”

“He told you that, didn't he?”

“Yes, but it's true.”

I hugged her and that was all I could do.

After I was gone, Virginia threw herself into caring for Jimmy and Shirley. She helped Jimmy move into an apartment near hers, cooked him Greek egg lemon soup, and did his laundry. She drove Shirley to the supermarket and to doctor appointments and did her laundry too on days when Shirley was too sad to do it herself.

Shirley took all of the money she had hidden away to pay for the best lawyer she could get for Jimmy.

The lawyer got Jimmy's friends to write letters on his behalf. Everyone attested to what an all-around great guy he was. Shirley wrote a statement saying Jimmy was a wonderful, loving husband who had made one terrible mistake. Jimmy went to AA and made a good show of sobering up.

Finally, Jimmy appeared in a trial before a judge. I stayed away, but Shirley and Jimmy gave me a full report later.

Jimmy was wearing a suit and tie and shiny new shoes. He'd had a haircut and a shave and there was no deer blood under his fingernails. He'd been sober for several weeks and his eyes were clear and contrite.

As Jimmy would say, he looked like John Q. Public.

The prosecutor didn't buy this new and improved Jimmy. He said the real Jimmy was a ticking time bomb. He compared him to a mass murderer named Carl Drega who had just terrorized New England. He wanted Jimmy locked up so he couldn't terrorize Shirley or anyone else in New England.

Jimmy was a ball of rage inside.

I'll show you a frickin' time bomb, he wanted to scream. Just let me out of this frickin' monkey suit and I'll show you, you punk.

But he just stood there, quietly remorseful.

The judge bought Jimmy's baloney, like people often did.

For the two felonies, including attempting to pull a gun on a police officer, Jimmy was given a one-year prison sentence, deferred—meaning he didn't even
have to serve one day behind bars. He was also given two years' probation.

In a separate decision, for the hammer assault and attempted strangulation of Shirley, Jimmy paid a fine of about two hundred dollars.

I called home to find out what had happened and he picked up the phone.

My heart sank.

I learned Jimmy, like his old buddy Hank, had beaten the rap.

Jimmy thought otherwise. He thought he'd gotten railroaded. Totally frickin' railroaded. Big Brother had taken away his guns. He couldn't own a firearm for seven frickin' years.

“Those bastards might as well have cut off my arms,” he said. “They cut off my goddamn prick.”

He vowed that when he got his hands on a weapon again, the cop who fingered him twice, that smart-ass with the handcuffs, was a goner. So was the loudmouth prosecutor.

Two shots, right to the noggin.

Bang bang.

A
few months after Jimmy tried to kill Shirley, I began to look for Susan again. Maybe I was just looking for my next screenplay. Or maybe I was procrastinating about the screenplay I should've been writing. Or maybe I just felt she'd understand better than anyone what I'd been going through.

It was the beginning of 1998 and I hadn't been in touch with her for several years. I had no idea where she was or if she was even alive. But if she was, I was determined to find her.

I thought the most logical place to start looking for her, her most likely residence, was the women's prison. I called and tried to find out if she was incarcerated there. The pleasant woman who answered the phone turned unpleasant when I mentioned Susan's name. She put me on hold forever. When she finally came back, she said Susan wasn't in their system and hung up.

I tried a few more times, pretending to be other friends or relatives looking for Susan, but each time I got the same response. She wasn't there and nobody knew where she was.

I quickly discovered that Susan wasn't too popular with the folks in the criminal justice system. For one thing, she was a criminal, and a repeat offender at that. But, a bigger deal, I suspected, was that she had shown up the prison authorities with her lawsuit. They were supposed to be the good guys and she'd made them look bad.