IT ALL ADDED UP

In 1992, the morning rush hour commute from my stop in Brooklyn, to Mid-Town Manhattan took an average of an hour and a half.  On our bus, we worked as a team, to make sure that we sat together and amused each other on the way to our jobs.


At the last stop in Brooklyn, before we got onto the Prospect Expressway, we stopped a the 'check point,' where all the other busses came in.  Lots of passengers would transfer onto our bus, if we had available seats.


One of my 'bus buddies' noticed a behavioral pattern between two people and pointed it out to the rest of us.  The man would get off the Mill Basin bus, and wait for the woman to get off a bus that came in from the Canarsie line.  On the sidewalk, waiting to get onto our bus, they pretended to not know each other.  When they sat down at the seats right across from us, they got very cozy.


He was a greying, rather overweight man, with a mean face. His mis-placed ego was as large as he was.  Judging from his ultra-trendy clothes, he was obviously going through a serious mid-life crisis.


She was slender and much younger, with beautiful long, dark hair.  She never spoke much, but when she did, it was in the form of 'baby talk.'  That's what we named her, 'Little Miss Baby Talk.'


She always brought coffee and Danish from 'Dunkin' Donuts, for the both of them.  He provided the New York Times. During their breakfast, he did all the talking.  She hung onto every word, clapping her hands at everything he said, like a little baby girl.


He spoke very loud, as he went on and on about himself.  He bragged about his impressive career and his impressive life. Everyone listened, whether we wanted to or not.  When he showed her photographs from his family vacations, we craned our necks to see them.  We wanted to know if his wife was in any of them, and what she looked like.  She was in most of them.  Somehow, they managed to gloss over the fact that she existed.


Once breakfast was over, and we were well into a traffic jam inside the Battery Tunnel for the next 45 minutes, things would get even more interesting.


They would take the New York Times, and build a sort of 'tent' to hide from the rest of us.  Under their tent, they would make out all the way through the Battery Park and Wall Street areas.  By the time we weaved around and along the FDR, going north to Mid-Town, passing the Brooklyn Bridge, he would re-appear.  She, however, would be mysteriously missing!  


We looked around at her empty seat and asked each other where she went.  Finally, we decided that perhaps they had a basement in their little 'love nest,' and that's where she would go, unless she crawled through the floor and left the bus. Our group was amazed at his talent in making her 'disappear,' and so, we named him, 'The Magician.'


One day, 'Miss Baby Talk' was in the basement, and the 'Magician' was engrossed in the news article that he was pretending to read.  An old woman had just stepped onto the bus and payed her fare.  She was delighted to see what she thought was an empty seat, and she hurried down the aisle to claim it.  She sat down for a second, and sprang to her feet, very confused.  


'Miss Baby Talk' suddenly popped her head out of the newspapers and sat on the seat.  The 'Magician' was annoyed that the disappearing act was abruptly interrupted. The rest of us clapped our hands and cheered at the performance, yelling, "One plus one equals two, after all!"


At 'check point,' from then on, we saw them meeting to get onto a bus together.  They never bothered to ride our bus, ever again.

JEEPERS CREEPERS!

The first time I ever laid eyes on John Daly, was just before Christmas in 1989.  He was standing at the alter, waiting for my mother to march down the aisle and marry him.


I was sitting on a front row seat, next to my two brothers.  It was the first time the three of us sat together like that since our father's funeral, and the second time our mother got married since his death.  The deep level of sadness we were feeling, and the slow, droning organ music were the same on both occasions.  The flowers at the funeral were much more festive.


Looking up on the stage, trying to figure out who my next step-father was going to be, I saw John standing there, alone.  Hoping that my eyes were playing tricks on me, I shut my eyes tight for a few seconds, and said to myself, "Please, dear God, let him be the best man!"  I stared at him, thinking that maybe if I stared long enough, I could find something to like about him, but it didn't happen.


I leaned over and asked the person sitting next to me, "Is that him?"  and somebody nodded their head, 'yes.'  I said, "We've got a problem here."  I don't even remember who I said it to, but it doesn't matter.  No one ever disagreed with me on this one.


The organ music changed to the sickening one-note chord that signaled us to stand up and face the back of the church, to behold the blushing bride.


Wearing a long, beige, lace dress, and holding a bouquet of flowers, she stepped in time to, "Here Comes The Bride." The smile on her face was scary.  It wasn't a smile that reflected happiness.  It was more a 'performance' smile.  As she came closer and closer to the alter, the personae she adopted during her last husband, morphed into her concept of what she thought her next husband wanted her to be.  She was trying on that person, as she marched down the aisle, on her way to her new life, as Mrs. John Daly.


After the wedding, I politely introduced myself to my new step-father, and my two revolting step-sisters.


Months later, my mother gave me much more information than I'd ever ask for, by telling me what happened on their wedding night.  She said that they did not have sex at all.  He stayed in the bathroom half the night, throwing up, because he was so nervous.  I thought that it should've been the other way around.  She should've been the one throwing up at the thought of having sex with him.  In any case, it was an omen.


From the moment he said, "I do," John managed to ruin every family gathering that I ever attended.  Christmas, birthdays, funerals, you name it.  He put his own unique spin on making us understand that our family, as we knew it, was officially dead.  He ran the show, and it was guaranteed that we would only be miserable.  When it came time to leave, we left angry.


My brothers named him, "The Commander," because he made it his business to control every move we made.  It always took me at least two weeks to recover emotionally, from all the 'divide and conquer' tactics that he put us through, and got away with.


Geraldine's three kids wanted to keep a semblance of what once was our family, but it was too much for us to ask.  She completely ignored the fact that we were so profoundly unhappy.  After a while, I decided that it was time to start protecting myself from this abuse.  The last event I allowed myself to suffer through, was Christmas 1996.


Sometimes, Geraldine called me discreetly, from the guest room of their home.  I always recognized her voice, but I never knew who I was going to be talking to.  The conversations were never anything to do with who we really were, or what was really going on. That wasn't allowed.  It was always the superficially pleasant, one-sided mother-daughter chat.  She had this need to keep things wrapped up in a nice, neat little package, in order to live with herself.  Every word that came out of her mouth was a form of manipulation.  In between her false concerns, we'd go over how she'd re-invented herself, and how the rest of us were expected to play along.  She always ended the call with an insinuation that we had a close relationship, and she was a devoted mother.  It felt like anything but love.


Shortly after the call ended, and we hung up, the phone would ring, again.  When I picked up the phone and said, 'hello,' the person on the other end would listen for a few seconds, for the second 'hello,' and then hung up on me.  It didn't take long to notice the pattern.  It wasn't a stalker.  It was the heavy hand of John Daly hitting the 'redial' button to find out who she was on the phone with.


He probably didn't recognize my voice at first, because I'd be crying my eyes out by then.  I cried every time I talked to those people.  The truth of why I cried was too much of a burden for them to be bothered with.  To stop being a burden, I stopped talking to those people.  When I stopped talking to those people, I stopped crying.

JESUS AS MATCHMAKER

Grandma Mary used to say, "I believe in romance, and I know I'll love, again.  Jesus is going to send the right man to me, when I'm ready."  And so, this match made in Heaven came to pass.


According to Grandma, she was working in her strawberry patch on a warm, sunny day, when she heard a truck pulling up in the gravel.  She said, "I wasn't expecting company, and couldn't imagine who it 'twas.  When I saw Floyd coming towards me, I asked him what in the world he was doing there. He said, 'Mary, I've got something to tell you.  I was in church, praying to the Lord for a new wife.  I heard the voice of Jesus tell me to come over here and ask you to marry me.'"  How could she argue with that?  She took his word for it and married him right away.


Grandma and Floyd assured their collective offspring that they weren't going to change their wills.  They just got married because they were in love.  With their inheritances protected, Geraldine and her two sisters gushed over their concept that Grandma owned half of Eaton, Ohio, and Floyd owned the other half.  Together, they had a 'family dynasty.'


When Chuck found out how Grandma got married so quickly, he called Geraldine to inquire if the old guy 'knocked her up,' and if they had a 'shotgun wedding!'


Things went sour when the two 'love birds' went to Florida for the winter. Grandma went down there to enjoy herself, but it never happened.  She was too busy cooking and cleaning for the constant company Floyd invited over.  He and his guests had to be talking and eating, all day, every day.  She didn't know them, and she didn't like them.  It didn't matter to Floyd, as long as he was the center of attention.  


She went along with his obnoxious behavior  until she just couldn't take it any more.  They returned to Ohio, much sooner than planned.  She said that she had to get back home, and away from him, before she died from exhaustion.  


My younger brother, Jeff, got the scoop on a more intimate level.  She answered a lot of unasked questions, when she told him that Floyd was always 'wearing her out in bed.' She complained that she was always tired, and her 'crotch was constantly irritated from having so much sex.'  I told him, "That's her way of bragging that she gets laid more than you do!"


Grandma had a bottle of prescribed pills, and doctor's orders to get bed rest.  While she was trying to recover from him, Floyd complained to her that she slept too much.  He said that if he knew that she was going to be so sick all the time, he wouldn't have married her, and he was getting bored.


One afternoon, she was knocked out from her pills, when Floyd packed up his belongings and moved back to his old house.  Grandma woke up and caught him going through her jewelry box.  He was taking back the engagement ring, and wedding ring that he bought her.


When she realized what was happening, she got out of her bed, to see what else that he took with him.  He took everything, even the toilet paper.  So much for 'Jesus as Matchmaker.'

JESUS CHRIST!

Although it was an unpopular thing to do, I actually liked my father.  No one else noticed that fact, but him.  He guarded that little secret well.  Liking him in that house was simply not allowed, even after he died.  If and when I defended his memory when Geraldine spoke badly of him, (which was always the case), it was perceived that I'd betrayed her.

In my father's lifetime, I couldn't count on one hand the things he's done that were ever good enough to meet up to Geraldine's standards.  It would be easier for me to name the times she spoke of how great her life would be, if he would just drop dead.


Well, her fantasy came true.  At the age of 54, he did just that.  The official cause of his death was conjestive heart failure.  In my professional opinion, I'd say, that the man died of sheer boredom.  Living alone with her would kill anyone.


On the night that he died, they were in the living room, watching "Magnum P.I.," the TV series with Tom Selleck.  Within the last fifteen minutes of the show, she went to the bathroom during a commercial.  On her way there, she said something to irritate my father.  She commented on how 'good looking' Tom Selleck was.  


Sitting on the couch, he made a sarcastic remark in retaliation to hers, took his last breath, and croaked.


A few years after my father left the planet, I got an unexpected call from Geraldine.  With a very excited tone in her voice, she said that she'd called to tell me that she'd just got married.  I said, "I didn't even know that you had a boyfriend.  How did this happen?"


She said, "Well, I met him in church.  I looked up, and there he was!  I prayed about it, and the Lord told me that I was supposed to marry him!  Ten days later, we just went off and got married!"


I said, "The Lord, huh?  Okay.  What's his name?"  I could feel her blush on the other end of the phone as she giggled.  With the voice of a small child, she said, "Beeeyil."


I said, "Bill?  Did you say that his name is Bill?  So, what's your last name, now?"  She said, "Snively," with another giggle.


I said, "Snively?  You mean, like 'Snidely Whiplash' on the Rockey and Bullwinkle cartoons?"  She just giggled.


I said, "Anything else I should know?"  She said, "He has four kids. Two boys and two girls, so that means you have four new sisters and brothers!  He has a daughter named, Kathy, too!  Just like you!"  I said, "Well, that's an excellent selling point."


She said, "He's standing right here, and he wants to meet you.  I'm going to hand him the phone, right now!  Here he is, now -- MEET Y'ER DADDY!"

UNCLE JIM

On December 22, 1966, we were celebrating my Grandma's birthday at my Aunt Frankie's house.  Aunt Margie, my Grandma's step-daughter, was around the same age as Aunt Frankie, and living in the same house.

The family joke was, that a guy from their church, named Jim, was dating both of them, so my two brothers and I were instructed to refer to him as 'Uncle Jim.'  He was bound to marry one of them, eventually.

I was twelve years old, and the oldest girl of the cousins, so it was assumed that I was in charge of babysitting all the other kids, the way it was in all family gatherings, no matter what the occasion.

We were always expected to play in the basement, which was fine with me.  I liked playing songs on the electric organ.  The only sheet music available was in a book of church hymns.  The song I played best was, "Near The Cross."  I knew that Grandma would be very pleased.

Uncle Jim appeared behind me, watching me play the organ.  My cousin, Donnie complained that I always play the same songs.  He said, "I'm tired of doing the same old things all the time.  Why don't we do something different?"  I was open to suggestion.  The next game became something that Uncle Jim decided.

He said, "Let's tickle Kathy," and proceeded to tickle my future breasts.  I thought that maybe he was aiming for my arm pits and just missed.  One should always give a person the benefit of a doubt.  In any case, it was annoying.


The next thing I knew, my feet left the floor.  He lifted me up and put me on his lap, while sitting in a big chair, piled with winter coats.  In the brief seconds of sitting on his lap, I felt this rather large lump.  Apparently, what was hidden underneath those cheap, tacky madras pants, was what I thought to be a wart, or a tumor.  It was some deformity that needed to be removed.  I jumped off his lap and stood up quickly.  He asked me what was wrong.  I said, "Oh, nothing," with the same politeness I practiced when Mrs. Taylor came over to gossip about the neighbors.  I pretended not to ever notice the long black hairs, dangling from the big black mole on her chin as she was talking.  Such was the same with Jim.  One musn't be impolite.  I excused myself and ran upstairs to the bathroom.

The door was locked, the water was running, and I was staring at myself in the mirror.  I asked myself, "What just happened?  I started washing my face and hands, combed my pigtails and bangs, and adjusted the white ribbons tied around each pigtail, that matched my white tailored blouse and socks.  My saddle oxfords were perfectly polished.  Still, there had to be a reason for what just happened, whatever that was.  I did something to cause it, and examined myself in the mirror, for any clues.


Voices from the outside were asking what I was doing in the bathroom for so long.  The kids were calling me to come back downstairs and play with them, and Uncle Jim.  My older brother, Chuck, yelled through the door, "Hey Kath!  If you're in there counting your pimples, don't worry!  I counted them on the way here.  You have about eighty-seven, so you can come out now!"  I could hear my mother's voice, as she was telling in the room how prissy and self-conscious I had become, and that I spend too much time in the mirror.  Other people were asking each other what I could possibly be doing in there.  I had to think fast, so I opened the door, and came out as if nothing was wrong.

Everyone in the living room was staring at me, except my father.  He was sitting alone on the couch, reading the paper that he brought with him.  I hurried over to the empty seat and sat next to him, not to move for the rest of the night.  The kids were begging me to come back downstairs and play with them.  They said that they were tired of waiting for me.  I told them to go ahead, and go downstairs.  I had to talk to my dad about something.

Jim was sitting in a chair directly across from us.  Without looking up from the 'Sports' section, my father said, "Bet you're tired of putting up with those brats, right?"  I said, "They're going to cut the cake, soon.  I just want to wait here, until they do."  He said, "Well, I'm going to have a talk with your mother about making her sisters leave you alone.  It's not fair how they always expect you to watch their brats.  It can't be any fun."


I looked over at Jim.  He stared at me, grinning, with a facial expression, saying that we shared a dirty little secret.  I looked away, ashamed for a moment.  Then, I decided that I did nothing wrong.  I had to do something to scare him away, and had my own secret to convey back to him.  I leaned over to my father, and began to whisper things in his ear, glancing at Jim, as if I were talking about him.


Jim sprang up from his chair and went into the kitchen, where the women were.  I heard both Frankie and Margie asking him why he had to leave so soon, saying that, 'coffee was brewing, and we'd be having cake in just a few minutes.'  The back door swung open, and Jim left.


The family was called into the kitchen to sing 'Happy Birthday to Grandma,' in front of a flaming cake.  Frankie and Margie were still pouting because Jim left.  Grandma said, " I was talking to Jim the other day.  I don't think I've ever met anyone who loves the Lord as much as he does.  He's determined to marry a good Christian woman.  If anyone can make it to Heaven, it'll be Jim!  Whoever marries him will be sitting up there right next to him, so you girls better get with it!  One of you better marry him!"


Fast forward to June, 1973, Stuttgart, Germany.  I'm alone with my mother, telling her this story.  I commented that, 'I often wondered what would've happened that night, if I actually told anyone about it.  Would they have believed me?'  She said, "Oh, my Lord!  Could you just see your dad?  He would've wiped the floor with that man.  He would've embarrassed me to death in front of everybody!  What would Mother think?  Frankie cooked and cleaned for days getting everything ready for that party, and you would've just ruined it!  They would never forgive you for the rest of your life if you did that!  It's a good thing you kept your mouth shut!"     

THE DART

In my family, 'put-down' humor was all the rage, and my older brother, Chuck, was the king.  I was usually the target and brunt end of his jokes.  Therefore, according to everyone else, he was hysterically funny.

This day was slightly different.  In the summer of 1968, Chuck was 16 years old, I was 14, and Jeff was 8.  The three of us were sitting in the living room watching television.  Chuck went off in one of his wise-cracking spells.  This time, instead of it being directed towards me, our younger brother, Jeff, was the one getting razzed.  I laughed for two reasons:  
1.)  I wasn't the one getting picked on, for once, and 
2.)  He was outrageous!

The boys had a dart board in the bedroom they shared.  Jeff went down the hall to their room.  He came back holding some darts, and saying that one of us were going to get it.  Standing at the edge of the hallway, next to the television, he had such a hateful, creepy look in his eyes.  I was sitting in the chair closest to the television, next to the front picture window.  Chuck was sitting on the couch back near the kitchen door.

Jeff's threat didn't even faze Chuck.  It only made him carry on more with his crazy nonsense.  At this point, what Chuck was doing wasn't funny.  It was beyond funny, and I couldn't stop laughing!

In a split-second, the dart was thrown in my direction.  I screamed and managed to scoot my body to the left of the chair in just enough time to dodge it.  Chuck let out a gasp of shock.  We were both shocked.  Jeff stood there, very still.  He was rather satisfied with what he'd just done ... a very powerful, sadistic little bastard.  No fear.  No apology.

Our mother ran from her bedroom at the other end of the hallway to where Jeff was standing.  We were staring at the dart that was stuck in the wooden part of the lower right side of the chair, where my knee was resting, just a few seconds before.  I studied Mom's face to see what her reaction would be to such a violent act, committed by her favorite child.

She started slapping and punching Jeff.  The words that came out of her mouth were, "You put a hole in my new chair!  We haven't even had this furniture for two weeks, and you had to ruin it!"  Jeff was flinching and holding his hands up to his face to protect himself from her punches.  He whimpered, "I didn't mean to hurt the chair!"

I looked over my right shoulder to Chuck, sitting on the couch with his mouth hanging open in disbelief.  He said, "Hey!  What about Kath?"  It sounded like Chuck was laughing because what was going on seemed like one of his sick jokes.  He wasn't laughing because he thought it was funny.  It was a laugh of disgust.  Hearing that strange sound validated what I was feeling, but I stayed quiet.  I didn't know how to react.

I tried to pull the dart out of the wood, but it was stuck in the wood too deep to be pulled out easily.  I gently wiggled it to loosen it enough to get it out of the chair.  Mom said, "Stop doing that!  Don't make the hole any worse than it already is!"

Chuck pointed out that the dart could have gone through my leg.  He said, "If the dart went into the wood that deep, just think what would've happened to her!"  I was the only person in the room listening to him, but I didn't respond.

Mom carefully removed the dart, and ran her finger over the hole to assess the damage of the wood.  She said, "I'll put a little wood filler in the hole, and sand it.  I can stain it to match the wood enough so that it wouldn't be so noticeable, I guess.  But I shouldn't have to!  My new things should stay new!  You kids are old enough to know how to behave!"

My focus was on Chuck.  His disgust made me realize that he cared about me.  From then on, his jokes toward me didn't seem so cruel.  I knew that whatever silly stuff he said or did whenever he joked around with me was just that -- silly jokes!

We never told our father about it when he came home from work that night.  It was one of those things we never spoke of again ... until April 2002.  Chuck and his wife, Cathy were staying in a hotel in Times Square on a business trip, and I went there to spend the day with them.

We were talking about things we had to live through when we were kids.  One of us started out with, "I was just thinking about this the other day.  Do you remember the time when ... and started telling Cathy the story of how Jeff threw a dart at me and how our mother slapped him for putting a hole in the chair.  Yes, it was real.  It was not just my imagination.

IN SEARCH OF MARILYN MONROE

Summertime, 1962, my Dad was sitting on the living room floor, in front of the TV, with the usual bottle of Miller High Life, big ashtray, and pack of Winston cigarettes.  He was committing the sacred act of routing for the Cincinnati Reds.

I asked him if I could call Marilyn Monroe and talk to her.  He told me to get the phone book, and he'd show me how to find her number.  I came back from the kitchen with it, and sat down on the floor next to him, knowing not to speak until the next commercial, as to not interrupt the game.

During the commercial, he opened the phone book and demonstrated how to go about it, by finding himself.  He said, "When you look up a person, you start with the last name."  He showed me how to leaf through the pages until we found the letter 'S,' and then we found the listing column with all the people named 'Spencer.'  His right index finger guided us to his name.  "See here?  'Spencer.'  Now, you look for the first name.  Start at the letter 'A,' and keep looking until you find my name.  Here it is, 'Charles.'  Now go accross.  See our address?  '7787 Dubois Road, Carlisle.'  Now follow the dots all the way to the right of the page, and there's our number.  '746-6680.'  See?  Do you understand?"  I nodded my head with excitement, because I knew at that moment that I had the power to find anyone!

He said, "Now -- show me how you'd find Marilyn Monroe.  I turned the pages until I found the letter 'M,' looked for the listings for 'Monroe,' and guided my left index finger down the column, looking for 'Marilyn.'  It wasn't there, but there were several 'Monroes' listed.

"Well, I guess you're going to have to call all of these numbers until you find her," he said.  We went to the kitchen and began to set up my project for the afternoon.  I climbed into my brother's high-chair, so that I could reach the rotary dial on the wall phone by the table.  With the phone book spread open, he handed me a pencil.  I was to start with the first person on the page named 'Monroe,' and if it was the wrong number, I was to cross off the name, and go to the next one.

He reminded me to be very polite and always say 'please, and thank you.'  That way, if I called the wrong number, they wouldn't mind that I'd disturbed them.

I dialed the first person named Monroe.  The thought of actually speaking to Marilyn, made my fingers shake nervously, and I could hardly dial the number!  Listening to the ringing signal, I inhaled and held my breath, getting ready to speak.  From that split second between the person picking up the phone and saying, "Hello," I thought that I was going to faint!  The voice was of an older woman.  I began my search by saying, "Hello, is this the Monroe residence?"  "Yes it is," she said.  With my most proper voice, I asked, "May I speak to Marilyn, please?"  She laughed and said, "No, little girl.  Marilyn doesn't live here.  You've got the wrong number."  I thanked her, said 'good-bye,' hung up the phone.  After crossing off the number in the phone book,  I would dial the next number, and get the same results.

Each time I hung up the phone, I'd yell, "She wasn't there, Daddy!"  He would yell back, "Well try the next one, honey."

From the high-chair at the kitchen table, I could see my dad sitting on the couch, through the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room.  Although he was watching the game, he would giggle every time I asked for Marilyn.  The person on the other end of the phone would laugh, too.  I failed to see the humor in it.

During the commercials, he came into the kitchen to throw away an empty beer bottle and get another cold one out of the refrigerator.  He would say, "Did you find her, yet?"  Then he would look at the column in the phone book to see how many names were marked off, and tell me what a good job I was doing.