This and the last portion are the longest.
Age 40
During the last 15 years, I was running a major car theft ring out of Utah. Fourteen chop shops in three states. Forty-five men that worked for me. I was still working on staying off drugs, and life was moving along just fine. I ran the business with no bones made about what I wanted and how I wanted it done.
In 1978, I met a woman in California, that gave me back the rest of my life. Before her, and since my mother, I never fell in love or wanted to love anyone. Love had no business in my business, or my life.
Nancy changed all that. Nancy. Vibrant, wild, witty, wonderful, a free spirit. Nancy also had terminal cancer. She died before the summer of that year was over. In her dying, she gave me back a life I never wanted to exist but found out through her just how important it was to be more than just someone to yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, I still ran the theft ring, still did what I had to do, but my demeanor had softened.
Softened too much. I was arrested. The business was impounded by the Feds and I did thirty months. Inside though, I had plenty of time to think. I made my choice to get a new life, new friends and be the person my mother had wanted me to become … a regular stand up guy.
I also made up my mind I would somehow make amends with my father. I had to.
**********
During and after prison, I was taking college courses, met a writer named Stephen King, which was the highlight of my education and my life then.
By the time I was off parole, I graduated and went back home. I didn’t have any plans for what I would do with the degree, but at least I could always say I have one.
I called my mother and told her I was coming back from Australia. Don’t look surprised. She never knew about what I really did or where I really was. I set things up with a friend to send the letters for my mother to him and he rerouted them from Australia back to the states. Before I went to prison, I would always call her once a week from an office phone with a direct outside line. When you have money, you can get practically anything. For the right price, the guards turned their head the other way for twenty minutes.
When I came home, she laid right into me.
“I have been so worried about you. No phone calls, no letters, no nothing. I thought you were dead!”
“Mom, I sent you letters every week from Perth. What do you mean you didn’t get them?”
My first thought was the guy doing the rerouting, wasn’t doing it, and just pocketing the money I had wired to him.
“Every day, your father would get the mail. He always said there was nothing from you.”
“Mom, don’t you see? I do, now. He kept or trashed the letters. He did this.”
She was quiet for awhile and started crying. “You’re right. I know you’re right. You wouldn’t just disappear like that on me.”
“Mom, why does he hate me so much? What did I ever do to him?”
“You were born. When we were married, he said he didn’t want kids. He hated how he grew up, hated his father for being strict. Hated everything about how he grew up, even his own brothers and sister. All of them but Arnold, and now that he’s dead, he hasn’t kept in any contact with his family at all.”
“How did he die, Mom?”
“He was found in Wilmington in an alley. He fell and hit his head and died. The family said he was drunk.”
Another thing I noticed about my mother is that she walked slower and her speech sometimes slurred. I was worried about her. Life with my father was slowly killing her.
**********
I tried while there to get my father to talk with me but he avoided me at every turn. It was like trying to walk through a wall.
I got a decent enough job. Worked like a regular person, but I have to be honest here … making eight bucks an hour verse five grand a day is a major step down. Still, I knew what I was doing and several times forced myself to get over it and eventually I did.
Work. Home. Work. Home. It was all I did. On my days off, I would help my mother in the yard with her flowers and rose bushes. It seemed she was just slowing down a little more each day. I pretty much cooked for us, cleaned around the house so she would have less to do. I tried once to get her to see a doctor. That conversation didn’t last long.
“When I know it’s time, then I will, but not until then.”
You just can never win with her, so I quit trying. Still, I was worried.
**********
Then came the one night that just set me off. I had been back home, doing well enough almost a year. This one night, the phone rang and I answered it.
“Bob? Gloria, honey.”
“Sorry, but this is his son, Bill.”
“Son? Oh my goodness. He never said he had a son.”
“Well, I’m his alright. What can I help you with?”
She hung up.
Less than thirty seconds later, my father stormed into the kitchen as I was hanging up the wall phone and said, “Don’t you ever answer the phone here again.”
I looked hard at him.
“You ignore me, pretend I don’t exist, and now your running around behind mom’s back? What the hell kind of man are you?”
I found out quick enough.
From behind him, his right arm came around with a loaded thirty-eight.
“I’m telling you for the last fucking time, boy, don’t answer the phone again. Keep your mouth shut about this to her.”
His eyes were cold and spittle ran from his cheeks, but I knew if I said another word, he would have pulled the trigger that night.
**********
Once again, I said my goodbyes to my mother, telling her I was offered a high paying job in Omaha, and that once I was settled in I would call her. I just couldn’t live under the roof of near insanity any longer, no matter how much I cared for my mother.
**********
New friends, a new place, another start.
It was good for me though. I actually enjoyed the work I was doing and the people I met. Life was rolling along good for me.
Then came Barbara, and life seemed to get better.
We dated for a year before I asked her to marry me and she accepted. Life was fine for almost a year. Then in late 1987, life halted like screeching tires.
I came home early from work by about three hours, walked in the door, and there she was, in the bedroom, naked as I have always remembered her for the many times we made love together … but this was a moment I had not seen before. Barbara, John, our next door neighbor, Jim from a few doors down and another guy I didn’t know at all. I so wanted to walk in there and kill them all. All the anger raged in me, bits and pieces of the old me surfaced but I forced myself not to do anything, and when I say forced, that’s exactly what I mean.
I turned around, unnoticed, got back into my car, drove off toward a city park, parked the car and just stared through the windshield. Three hours I sat there deciding on what to do.
**********
I walked back in the house, went right to the bedroom and started packing a suitcase, two of them. She heard me come in for she was first in the kitchen preparing dinner. When she came to the bedroom door, she asked what I was doing.
“What does it look like? I’m packing … leaving you.”
“What! Why? What happened? Did I do something wrong?”
I laughed.
“Wrong? You did everything so wrong, but the fucking you gave earlier today in our bed looked right to me.”
That floored her. Then she started crying. She started making excuses. Then she started saying I wasn’t man enough for her. The list went on and on.
I filed for divorce on Monday as this happened on a Friday and in five months it was over. One good thing came from this marriage … we had no kids.
What is rather odd about this though, I let my mother believe we were still married all those years. I knew and remembered how she hated divorce, and I wasn’t about to let her know any different.
**********
The next two years went by pretty fast for me. Dug deeper into my job, spent less time going out. I was fairly established with my own home, financially well off and lived a good quiet life. It was starting to look good once again.
