The Story of Barrett (Part 5 ... continued)

Reunion

I lost my status as "The Grandson Who Was Going to Become a Priest" in early July when I received a letter from Holy Cross advising me that, after reviewing my records, it was decided by the faculty that I might not have a vocation to the priesthood after all. The letter went on to suggest that I pray for spiritual guidance and, if I wished, I could reapply to Holy Cross after I finished high school. I had been expecting the notification but had said nothing to Georgiana about my loss of faith and my several discussions with father Edgar. Although the shock to her world didn't compare with the recent loss of my grandfather, it was still large enough to measure on her personal Richter scale of disaster. Her Get-into-Heaven-Free Card had been revoked. Her bragging rights had been stolen from her by an ungrateful grandson. I had killed my poor grandfather with my constant "sassing" and now THIS. In a true spirit of Christian love and compassion, I calmly pointed out that Patrick had endured her nagging for a lot longer than he had tolerated my sassing and that SHE was probably the one responsible for his death. This sent her into her "I think I'm going to faint" routine and she protested in a weak voice that such a statement was terribly untrue and an incredibly cruel thing to say. I asked her to explain why her statement to me was less cruel and unfair than mine to her but the concept must have been too subtle for her and she didn't respond.

She only had half my attention anyway. Even though the letter wasn't a surprise, the knowledge that it was now official, I was no longer a seminarian, produced an odd, even contradictary mix of emotions in me. There was sadness, a sense of loss, a feeling of regret and uncertainty at the loss of my identity as a Passionist postulant, and an unexpected and almost overwhelming sense of exhilaration and freedom. I walked out of the kitchen and into my bedroom, closing and locking the door behind me. I spent the rest of the afternoon stretched out on my bed...thinking about and adjusting to my new world.

It had been years since anyone had attempted to physically discipline me (probably not since Melrose when I attacked my mother). Either my grandmother overcame her earlier fear that I would retaliate, or she had forgotten all about the incident. Whatever the reason, the old woman began repeatedly attempting to physically chastise her disrespectful grandson, usually with kitchen utensils though sometimes with other implements of destruction. She became angry when I interrupted her afternoon soap opera lineup and attempted to whip me with the television rabbit ears. I took them away from her, tied them in a knot and carried them outside to the trash. Another time she tried to beat me with a wooden spoon. I took it away from her, broke it in half and carried it to the trash. She tried again with a kitchen spatula that I took away from her, bent in half and carried out to the trash. An assortment of tablespoons, measuring cups and an egg beater were likewise smashed and trashed.

Clearly things couldn't continue this way. The poor woman was running out of kitchen utensils and TV reception was lousy.

One afternoon close to the end of July, I walked out on the front porch where my grandmother was sitting just as a white, 1960 Chevy Impala pulled to the curb and parked in front of the house. A short, chunky man got out, glanced in my direction and then walked up the sidewalk and climbed the porch steps.

"Richard," my grandmother said. "This is your father."

There was a moment of awkward silence as my father and I both tried to decide on an appropriate reaction to this announcement. We finally came to identical conclusions and shook hands solemnly. Georgiana, ever the expert at handling awkward situations, was quick to suggest an activity he and I could share. "He's a big reader," she said to the nervous stranger before turning to me. "Go get your books and show your father."

The primary concern of a father who hasn't seen his 15 year old son since the boy was 3 is naturally going to be the examination of any books the boy has recently purchased. I gave my grandmother a disgusted look and tried to think of something appropriate to say. While I wasn't as nervous as my father, I was at a loss for words. I hadn't yet learned the universal ice-breaker for opening conversations with interesting strangers (Do you come here often?) and had to use the more pushy and personal pick-up line, ("Live in the area?"). He told me he lived in East Longmeadow (about 25 miles from West Springfield) with his wife, Earline. Conversation stalled at that point and I gave up and went in the house to retrieve the box I had received the day before from the Science Fiction Book Club even though it seemed a bit silly. It was something to do.

Ed Barrett (I would later learn) with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, worked for the government as a "plans and programs and coordinator" for the Springfield Armory, a position analagous to the one I would one day hold on the civilian side within the aerospace industry. At 42 years of age, he was intelligent, conservative, authoritarian and just as lousy at dealing with awkward situations as his only son.

I got back to the porch and offered the box to Ed who made the only comment he could ("they're very nice") then fell silent. In desperation, I considered asking him again if he lived in the area but since he had already answered the question once, repeating it would only make me look stupid as well as tongue-tied. The silence was becoming embarrassing when Georgiana finally came to our rescue.

"Go in the house, Richard. Your father and I want to talk."

Under other circumstances I might have protested but I was happy to have an excuse to end what was evolving into a particularly difficult social interaction. I think I may have offered something clever and witty like, "Nice meeting you". Not to be outdone, Ed responded with a classic quote that I believe was taken verbatim from GONE WITH THE WIND, "Nice meeting you too". (I think those were the words he used though he might have said, "Frankly, Miss Scarlett, I don't give a damn". You have to remember the conversation took place a long time ago.) In any case, we shook hands again and I went in the house.

It wasn't long before I was summoned back to the porch. My father wanted to know if I would like to have dinner with him and his wife the following weekend which would "give us a chance to get to know one another". Motivated as much by curiousity as anything as anything else, I agreed and a date was set for the following Saturday while my grandmother looked on with a canary-eating grin. I was vaguely resentful that my grandmother thought I wouldn't see through her little scheme but I didn't say anything. Like many stupid people, Georgiana always assumed the people around her were as dumb as she was which meant no one ever took her very seriously.

It wasn't hard to see what was happening. I was about to be sloughed off again. That was fine with me. My father had frequently been described as a vicious monster by Margaret as well as by my grandmother but so had all of Margaret's other victims. Neither Margaret nor Georgiana had any credibility with me and Ed had seemed a decent enough guy even if he did act a bit ill-at-ease.

The following Saturday, around noontime, Ed and Earline picked me up in West Springfield and drove me to their home in East Longmeadow. Ed was visibly more relaxed, Earline was young, attractive and fairly bubbling with life. On first meeting, she was friendly and talkative and by the time we got to their house we were past the stranger phase and already talking like we'd known each other for years.

Ed, at that time, was 42 years old. Earline at 33 was 9 years younger. They had met while Ed was in the Navy and stationed in Arkansas and had married in 1951 right about the time of Billy and my foster family in Albuquerque. Earline never lost her deep south accent ("Y'all come back, y'ear") or that special brand of southern charm indigenous to the Confederate states. Despite having dropped out of school before the ninth grade, she was articulate and intelligent and, like me, an avid reader.

Once we arrived, I was given a tour of the spacious house they had built on a half acre of land in East Longmeadow. Bedroom, sewing room, livingroom, bath, kitchen and dining room on the main floor. Stairs to the attic and an unfinished room which would one day, briefly, become my bedroom and a partially finished basement with a game room complete with ping pong table. If my father thought the house would impress me he was absolutely right. By the time we finished the tour, I had already decided that there were worse things in life than being sloughed off by wicked witches and stupid grandmothers.

He waited several hours before bringing the subject up. I was in the kitchen, talking to Earline when he came in and asked if he could talk to me for a minute. I followed him out the back door and through the breezeway into the back yard.

"Earline and I have been talking about this," he said. "We wondered if you might like to move out here and live with us?"

I thought about it for a moment. "And if I say no," I finally asked?

"If you say no, no one is going to force you," he replied.

I had expected the question. I just hadn't expected it quite so soon. I paused for another moment and then answered him truthfully. "It really doesn't matter. I can live here; I can live somewhere else. I don't care."

It wasn't the answer he had hoped for but it was the best I could do. We walked back into the house together and a few minutes later we were sitting down to eat.

When Ed had bought the land for their house, he had also purchased the lot next door and built a smaller house for his parents to live in. We had finished dinner and Earline had cleared away the dishes when there was a soft knock on the back door. Earline went to answer it and a moment later ushered in an older couple and introduced them as my "other" grandparents.

It was an odd feeling. I was with four members of my immediate family (or three, anyway) and they were all complete strangers to me. Though we sat in the livingroom and talked for what seemed like hours, today I can't remember a thing we said. At the end of the evening, my father and Earline drove me back to West Springfield and the evening ended.

Georgiana was impatient to learn all the details. No sooner were Ed and Earline out the door then she said to me, "Did he talk to you?"

"Nope," I replied. "Never said a word all day. It was really weird. Why? Was he supposed to say something?"

She looked confused, uncertain whether I was being serious or not. "Didn't he ask you if you wanted to live with him?"

"I don't think ... wait a minute. You know, he may have said something about that. I don't remember for sure" ... and without another word of explanation I walked out of the room. I intended to be as open and forthcoming with her as she had been with me.

It was about a week later that Ed and Earline again picked me up, together with all my worldly possessions which easily fit into one suitcase and one cardboard box, and I left Margaret's side of the family for good.

There were three major reasons why my new life in East Longmeadow didn't work out. I was one reason. My father and Earline were the other two. The moral is: a relationship between three good people (or two if you don't want to count me) can sometimes fail despite the best intentions of all the parties involved ... providing said parties are quirky enough.

To say I was less than a well-adjusted teenager is to grossly understate the obvious. I was an agnostic with an undeserved reputation as a devout Catholic and former seminarian. I was a closet homosexual who no longer feared Hell but was terrified of the consequences of disclosure (homosexuality was in those days still regarded as a mental illness requiring treatment and, as far as I knew, perhaps even commitment to a mental institution). On top of this, I suffered all the mood swings and angst of a normal post-pubescent teenager combined with a profound dislike and mistrust of authority that wasn't going to endear me to my old-school, authoritarian father. My world then, and for a lot of years after, was divided into Us's and Thems. There was only one Us and that was me (though Jesse would have been an Us if I had thought of him). Everyone else was a Them and not worthy of any serious concern.

Ed was an old-school, authoritarian. House rules were to be obeyed without question. He was to be obeyed without question as was Earline. I would go to Cathedral High School because he had gone to Cathedral High School. I was going to play football because he had played football. I would eventually go to St. Michael's College because he had gone to St. Michaels.

Unfortunately, I was well beyond obeying anyone or any rule "without question". By the time I was fifteen, I was hard-wired to question authority regardless of the circumstances, a trait that has endured to the present day.

Ed had his own ideas about "being a real man". A week after arriving in in East Longmeadow I went to the dentist for the first time. Ed patiently explained to me that a "real man" could tolerate pain and a "real man" would refuse novocain for something as minor as filling a cavity. He said it was up to me and that he wasn't forbidding me to ask for a pain killer. I could do what I wanted. I was to think of it as a test.

The dentist filled two cavities and, at my request, didn't use any anesthetic. When Ed picked me up after the appointment, I made it emphatically clear that his idea of manliness and my own were completely different and that any future dental work I had done was going to involve a pain-killer. He made no comment.

He was disappointed that I had no interest in my high school football games (or any other football games for that matter). It was bad enough that I didn't want to play. It was unthinkable that I had zero interest in watching my school team play. This was one more area where I flatly refused to conform to his idea of normal adolescent behavior.

I'm sure that my father loved his son and had great expectations for him. The problem was, the son he loved wasn't the son he had. During the twelve years we had been out of touch with each other, he had built a mental image of what I would be like and I was nothing like the image he had created.

My father is not now, nor do I think he ever was, a violent man. The beating he had inflicted on my mother was, if anything, proof of the almost super-human restraint and self-control he was capable of, given that she survived the episode. During the nine months I lived with my father and stepmother I never faced or feared any physical abuse.

One wintery evening around nine PM with the snow falling and the temperature outside in the high teens, Ed and I were sitting in the warmth of the living room talking casually about the competitiveness that can exist between fathers and sons. My father was making the point that this kind of competition was normal in all families and that the day would probably come when I would want to "physically" challenge him.

"When that time comes," he said, "you just say the word and we'll go out back and I'll let you try to take me."

"What do you mean, 'when that time come'," I asked? "I can take you now."

"You're kidding aren't you?" He was clearly surprised.

"Absolutely not. Let's go out back and I'll prove it." My grin was a challange.

"You're sure," he looked disbelieving?

"Let's go," I repeated and stood up.

"Okay," he said. Together we walked to the back door. We were both in shirtsleeves and slacks. I opened the back door and got hit by a blast of frigid air that was howling through the breezeway. "After you", I said, stepping aside to let him go first.

He stepped out into the storm and I closed the door behind him, locked it then went into my bedroom and went to bed.

His pounding on the door finally awoke Earline who had already gone to bed and she got up to let him in.

To his credit, he saw the humor of the situation and the question of who could take whom was never discussed again.

Earline had a few personal quirks of her own. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family herself, she was ill-suited to to the job of mothering a troubled teenager although, at least in the beginning, she gave it her best shot. Unlike my father, Earline was, by nature, warm and demonstrative while I still had a problem with physical displays of affection. One evening, just before bedtime, we passed each other in the hallway and she reached out and gave me a quick and unexpected hug. I returned the hug and then, as she released me, I tried to explain that I wasn't used to hugging and physical contact with people made me uncomfortable. She said all the right things and seemed to understand but I could tell she was hurt. From that day on, she was always careful to avoid any physical demonstration of affection that she believed would make me uncomfortable. I think her job became easier as time went by and what she saw as my rejection of her began to kill any feelings of warmth or closeness she might have felt for her husband's son.

That first Christmas, my father and stepmother showered me with gifts. Among other things, I got a ten-speed bicycle (in those days we called them "English Bikes") as well as a new watch, a number of books (The plays of Eugene O'Neil, A Damon Runton Collection, etc.) and clothes. The problems hadn't yet started or, if they had, I wasn't aware of them. For a brief time, all three of us had every reason to believe we would be a normal, happy family. My father was a bit of an autocrat and Earline had difficulty with my habit of demanding reasons rather than obeying every command or request without question but these were similar to the problems every family faces (especially families with teenagers) and we might have survived them ... if Earline and I hadn't been almost equally insecure.

Before I came on the scene, my father and Earline had each survived personal disasters. My father had dealt with the Wicked Witch of the West and been seperated from his son for twelve years. Earline had survived poverty in Arkansas as well as an abusive stepfather. Their marriage in 1951 had been the beginning of a new, happier life for both of them.

Enter Dick Barrett.

Earline had tried to be affectionate and caring and I had, in her eyes, rejected her attempts. I wasn't as respectful and obedient to her or my father as she felt a "good" child was supposed to be. I was inconsiderate and seemed to go out of my way to make her life more difficult. Both she and Ed worked full time jobs, Ed as a planner at the Springfield Armory and Earline as a supervisor with the phone company. When I got home from school in the afternoon I might fix a snack and leave food and dirty dishes lying out on the table. I had a habit of changing out of the dress shirt and tie I wore to school into a fresh, newly pressed shirt each afternoon which doubled the load of ironing she would have to do over the weekend. Little things I would do began to irritate her, whether it was playing the radio too loud or arguing with my father about weekend chores. When Ed equivocated it only compounded her anxiety. I think in some ways she saw me as a wedge that was beginning to come between her and my father.

I was changing Earline's life and it didn't seem to be for the better

I WAS inconsiderate which, by definition, means that I was unaware of the extra burden I was placing on my stepmother. The problems would have been easy to work out had either one of us been mature enough to discuss them with the other. I didn't bring them up because I was unaware I was creating a problem. She didn't bring them up because I had already rejected her and she had a different approach to problem solving.

Earline was a master of the "I'm Very Angry With You And I'm Not Going To Speak To You Until You Figure Out Why" game. Sometimes I'd know what her grievance was; other times I would have no idea. Either way, my usual response was to play a game of my own called "I Can Ignore You as Long As You Can Ignore Me. With both of us behaving like ten-year-olds it's easy to understand why the problems escalated.

When the silent treatment proved ineffective, either she or my father, or more likely, the two of them together, concluded that some form of punishment was called for. All the gifts I had received for Christmas began disappearing, one at a time. One day the bicycle wasn't in the garage any more. A week later, one of the books I had been given was no longer in my room. The next week another one would disappear. Eventually the watch vanished.

When I brought home a report card from school that showed me doing "C" work in all my subjects, my father was furious. He made the decision that I would, from then on, spend one hour a day doing homework for each subject I was taking (this would be 5 hours of homework each night). I felt it was unfair but for several weeks I did make an effort to comply.

Eventually, I decided enough was enough. I stopped coming home after school until just before the ritual 10:00 PM bedtime. I would arrive home and be ignored by both Ed and Earline as I walked directly from the back door to my bedroom.

At that point, the house in East Longmeadow was no longer a home. It was a house where I went to sleep and occasionally to eat. One day when Earline and I were alone in the house together, I walked up to her and without any preamble asked, "Would you be happier if I just took off?"

"Yes I would," she said.

"Are you going to call the police to come after me?"

"Just go." she said. "We're not going to call the police"

I walked out the door without looking back.

Two days later the police picked me up and I was returned to the house on Pease Road. So much for Earline's promise.

It couldn't have been more than a few weeks later on Memorial Day, 1961 when my father and I got into an argument about whether or not I was going to mow the lawn. He said I was and I insisted I wasn't. He said that if I was going to live under his roof, I was going to do what he said. I told him I would be just as happy not living under his roof. He assured me that he had no problem if I wanted to leave. I pointed out that the last time I had made an attempt to do just that he had called the police on me. He assured me he wouldn't make that mistake a second time. I took him at his word and walked out.

He never called the police and my life with the Barrett side of my family effectively ended that day. I was sixteen.

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