I admit I’ve lusted over Lucy’s ample figure. I’m just a man. Lucy, Immy, Sally … they're all the same. Carl Jung explained them as my anima. In "Two Essays in Analytical Psychology," he said, “The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air.”
If I had married someone instead of becoming a monk, this morning the woman and I might have shared our …. 16,425th breakfast together. I wonder what we could have possibly talked about on over sixteen thousand mornings. “Pass the butter” and “How about those Yankee’s” 16,000 times could sour a relationship, I’d think.
So how am I supposed to change my biology? As many of us monks have in the past, I deal with it. But not totally deny it. I lay awake some nights yearning for a woman to lie beside me. To talk to, share my thoughts and dreams and to tell my fears. To lay my head upon her … breast and listen to her heartbeat, to smell her sweetness. To feel so close to another human being, another soul. And to have planned a life together, to have raised children and to have sat on a Sunday afternoon after dinner on a wide porch in the soft sunshine and watched grandchildren playing on the grass. A woman to share my body on long walks in the woods and at night in the peace of our bedroom. To care for her in sickness and to hold her when she suffered pain or grief.
This is what I gave up to become a monk. I didn’t fully appreciate my sacrifice when I decided as a young man to enter a religious life. I didn’t know I was going against every cell in my body in remaining celibate. I knew I could live without the young woman I was involved with before entering the novitiate. Leaving her was in some ways a relief. But I didn’t know that life without any woman would eventually become a hell of loneliness.
When I go up on the roof and look out over the valley I feel close to something that’s feminine. I can’t say why. It may be the lush fruitfulness of a summer afternoon as the haze rises from the river that runs through the valley to nurse the trees and grasses. It may be the wind whispering to me, calling to me, wrapping its arms around me.
The one time I came close to joining the spirit on the horizon … stepping off into her arms … happened after a rainfall. A storm had thundered down the mountain and pounded the Chapter House with blasts of wind and a torrent of rain. When it ended and the stained glass window of St. Lucy lit up with rays of sunshine through her colored glass, I went up the roof ladder hoping to see a rainbow. I popped my head out the trap door and swung my eyes west toward the late afternoon sun. There on the horizon golden clouds blazed, pink and green against a pale blue sky. I made my way along the peak toward it, to the edge of the roof. It frightened me to suddenly feel something pull in my chest. A woman spirit seemed to be calling from over on the horizon, a place where we might live forever.
When I decided to consider myself retired, Sparky and I had a discussion.
“Monks don’t retire,” he said. “Do you want some time off to hitchhike to Alaska?” he joked.
“Sparky, I just don’t have the heart, the eyes or the memory to do the work,” “I’ll have a verse in my head and turn to verify it in another manuscript and by the time I open that book I’ve forgotten what the hell verse I was comparing.”
We had been sitting at a table after our breakfast of rice and beans. The other Brothers had left for their work. In the agony of my defeat at the hands of the aging process, I had risen from the table and begun to pace the floor.
“Sit down here, Jesse,” said Sparky. “You’re upset and you’re in no condition to tough anything out. Take some time off. Just hang around, do some cleaning. When you feel better we’ll discuss what you might do in the future.”
Then he leaned closer to me and said, “But hear me. I do NOT want you in that night chapel!”
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s not good for you,” he said.
“But what do you …”
“Discussion over,” he said. “You have your advice from your Abbot.” And with that he got up and left the breakfast room.
And so I decided to spend my days in the cellar. Harpo seemed pleased. He had not been able to climb all the way to the attic, but he could now get down one flight of stairs to see me in the cellar, except for the day he tumbled down them. There seemed no need of my old printing skills at the time, so I would think up humorous book marks, print them up and deliver a hundred or so to public libraries on my trips to the plumbing section of various hardware stores in Saugerties and Woodstock. I’m pleased to report that not all librarians are matronly old ladies. Some are quite striking.
Anyway, I missed my chapel in the attic, but a consolation was the Time machine in the cellar window, a view of the ever changing sky that sometimes held a gorgeous sunset of pastels where I someday hoped to go.
My new office is pleasant. With the little student desk now moved from Sparky’s old office to the Night Chapel, there is a palpable sense of power as I sit in the colorful light of St. Lucy’s window. I am anything but powerful, but I like the feel of it anyway. The pew, bought second hand from the new owner of a deserted Methodist church, together with the splash of greens and pinks and blues from St. Lucy’s window yields the aura of a cathedral in what is really the old overnight shithouse.
I have finally admitted to myself that I lied to Sparky years ago when I told him St. Lucy’s window was on sale. It was indeed so expensive that when I found it in the catalog and knew I would buy it I had to make considerable deletions to my original construction plan and budget. St. Lucy’s window is why there is only one pew and the altar is home made. No, no, it wasn’t her neck line that most attracted me. It was the colors … the pinks and blues and greens of a most glorious sunset.
Yes, I know where that comes from. You’re talking to a Jungian here. St. Lucy in her presence on glass takes the harsh daylight of reality and filters it into the gorgeous colors shed on my space. Yes, my space, Goddammit. I built it. With my mother’s money. It’s true I am a monk and own nothing. But I can possess this wonderful space, a room in the attic where no one ever comes. They used to, right after I built it, but not any more. It’s far from everywhere else in the monastery. Besides, you can still smell the offal after all these years. It’s in the wood. And everyone in the house knows this is my space. Or was until Sparky told me to stay away from here for my own good. That’s why I wound up in the cellar, you see. But now I’m the Abbot. I go where I want.
I haven’t seen Terd in a long time. After a few weeks of his coming to the monastery every day, he dropped back to 3 or 4 days each week. As his abbot, I probably should have said something to him, but frankly one of the reasons I wanted him to associate rather than immediately move back in with us was to give him the space to assure himself he really wanted to continue his vocation as a contemplative monk. I know he has expressed his desire to do so and I never doubted his sincerity. But I sensed he is drawn to a new route in his journey through life. That is something to celebrate, in all honesty, but sometimes the pilgrim has not yet realized or admitted it to himself.
I asked for Terd when I stopped at Eric’s yesterday. He’s the PC repair guy who rents Terd a room over his shop in the village of Saugerties.
“He’s gone,” said Eric, looking uncomfortable.
“I wondered,” I said. “We haven’t seen him up at Our Lady’s for a while.”
“Was he actually a monk?” asked Eric.
“Yes,” I said simply.
“He didn’t say where he was off to when he paid up and moved out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “He knows where we are.” I didn’t want Eric to think Terd was in any kind of trouble with us, so I said, “He’s a good man. He’s still searching. I’ll watch the mail and he’ll write to us.” This last statement was hopeful.
“Oh!” said Eric, “I forgot! Here … he left you an envelope, it’s in the back. Let me get it.”
I carried the letter in my pocket on my way back up to Main Street, where I sat down on the only bench in town, the bench no one ever sits on. No one in my memory, except Terd and I.
What a strange situation! A bench that someone must have thought was useful when they asked the town fathers to install it. Yes, it’s rather close to the curb, facing the street and a car can park directly in front of it. A teenager popped out of his mother’s car one day and banged the door against my knee. I imagined a councilman bringing the existence of the bench to the floor of the village overseers and asking, “What the hell is that stupid bench doing next to the curb on Main St.?”
Terd’s opinion was that it had been installed backward and was meant to sit facing the sidewalk. He was probably right.
“My Brother and Friend, Jesse,” Terd wrote. “I quit. I don’t know why and that’s the reason I didn’t speak to you about my leaving. For a man with an IQ of 176, I’m very confused.” This brought a smile to me. Terd also has a photographic memory. He was probably the person we would have wanted to take to a casino, not Izzy, but he never spoke of his genius to anyone but myself. “My friend Jack got me a job in a pizza shop in Red Hook and Devin is going to apprentice me as a tattoo artist as soon as the students come back to town and his business picks up. I’ll be careful to avoid HIV from the needles! I’ll live at Jack’s. Please let me work this out for myself and don’t call. I love all you guys. Terd.”
I was thankful Harpo spoke up for me, but he may have been too kind in my defense. The truth was I had let my ego stray not only into disobedience of my superiors … despite what I thought of them … but allowed myself to believe I could win at their game. It was like jumping into the ring with a welterweight after staying up late the night before reading a book on boxing.
I didn’t feel at fault for this situation in the way Headless accused me at supper (he later apologized), but I would do anything to avoid being the person who caused the dissolution of our monastery. Our Lady at West Saugerties would die, probably, but I didn’t want it to be my fault.
I had not wanted the job as abbot. After so many years of just letting things happen to me as a monk, I was not comfortable with responsibility. It’s easy for Harpo to declare that God will provide. If I were just a monk, I could say it and believe it. After all, I’ve always been taken care of, but as an ordinary monk I was constantly the recipient of his grace. As abbot, I’m a player. I have to decide and act. How do I trust in God and at the same time make choices and balance decisions? Who am I trusting, God or myself?
Why does my life have to get so complicated? I remember reading Merton years ago and every time he would lament his loss of solitude or peace he would wonder how that came about, and I would wonder why he couldn't see he had dug his own pit.
And so have I. I sometimes think we get what we deserve. And if I'm going to put complication in my life I'll have to accept the consequences. In taking on the duties of Abbot, I have let go my own personal cloister. I have lived more of an external than internal life, going into the village, speaking on the phone, dealing with the administration of others rather than cultivating my soul. And running a safe house, for God’s sake!
At times an abbot must live with a foot in each world, but I do not know if I can. I don’t know if I will learn to do it, but I may be simply not capable. I’m not even sure I want to continue the interior life, to be brutally honest. I may now prefer the action of an uncloistered life. I may want to only call myself a monk.
Ever since I became an Abbot I’ve been proud of my command, if I may call it that. Proud of my ability to lead. Through all the troubles I’ve felt alive to life and satisfied when each little problem is solved. Brother Jesse, the monk who before let everything happen around him and to him, became a player and had to take charge. But it seems I have not been able to bring God along with me in my trip from lassitude to action.
No surprise, God is not my co-pilot. He owns the airline.
Here’s the problem. In my own heart, I haven't really embraced the contemplative life in a long time. I've been unwilling to pay the price of it ... the humdrum, boredom, sameness. I've wanted a normal life and instead of just going out and getting it like any other person .... find a job, keep an apartment, pay the bills ... I've tried to cop a secular life while finagling to keep the benefits of a religious life. I've tried to be two beings at once, like a hermaphrodite. But a hermaphrodite doesn't easily bear fruit. And my life as a monk hasn't born fruit in a long time.
The meeting of the Brothers took place that night after supper. Before I could call everyone to order and name the topic, a discussion started on whether we should continue in the “the business.” Julio was present, but remained quiet. Harpo spoke against “our project” in his stentorian tones. Cat was for it, but it seemed to me he was simply helping Julio, who he had befriended.
When everyone had their say, I spoke.
“Look, I don’t like this arrangement with Uncle Sam either. I am not sure how we will manage financially in the future and I’m not sure we’ll take … uh, guests of this sort. We have a real problem of survival here and I need your prayers. I’m the one saddled with the responsibility of making the decision. I won’t make it without carefully weighing all of your opinions.”
“But I have to tell you of a telephone call I made this afternoon,” I continued. I detailed my conversation of two hours before with St. Anne. When I finished, there was a stunned silence in the room. Finally, Headless spoke up.
“Jesse, I can’t believe you’ve brought us to this point with our Order!” he said. “You’ve managed to get us to where we’ll be thrown out!”
“Wait a minute …” interjected Bouncer.
“I can’t believe this,” said Cat.
“Gentlemen!” boomed Harpo as he rose to his feet. The room settled down and the eldest brother continued.
“We have been dealing for a long time with Fermoy and their demands for money,” he said. “It is unfair to blame Jesse for the problem, especially as he continues an old battle for our protection. You may remember that the man sent from Ireland to do Saint Anne’s bidding and close us down … Agnes … had no stomach for the task assigned to him. He quite simply got up and left. It is not Jesse who will be at fault if we leave the order of the Ardent Brothers. It is the Ardent Brothers who will be responsible. Our “superiors” in Ireland may be our brothers on the strength of our vows, but they are also a group of fools who cannot or will not learn to manage money. They have in the past decade closed three Chapter Houses throughout the world and we are to be next for the benefit of their cash position. They will prevail, in my estimation. It is time for us to take a sober look at our position and make plans to care for ourselves. We must become independent to do so. I say we should pack up and leave!”
“And go where?” asked Bouncer.
“God will provide,” answered Harpo and he sat down.
For a while everything seemed to be going along smoothly at the monastery, except for a bit of discord among us Brothers over whether we should be what one could call a safe house. Given the truckload of food, which we could eat immediately or when the rice and beans ran out, we did not have an immediate need for the entire amount of money paid to us by Alfred, so I felt duty bound to offer half of it to Fermoy to help with their debts. But I would do so on my terms.
“M&M,” I said into the phone, “this is Abbot Jessica in America calling. Will you please put Brother Saint Anne on the line?”
“He’s busy at the moment,” replied M&M. His voice didn’t sound very warm.
“I hope he’s not too busy to accept a lot of money that I’m about to send him,” I said.
There was the sound of M&M jumping up and Saint Anne’s voice could be heard almost immediately on the phone.’
“Jessica, you sold the monastery!” Saint Anne boomed.
“No,” I replied. “But we have come into some money and I want to send you $5,000.”
“How much did you receive and from where?” he asked.
I had anticipated his question and had given it some thought. Although my initial reaction would have been to tell him it was none of his business, he was in fact my superior and I had to tell him.
“A guest was so thrilled with his stay here, he gave us $10,000. I need half for our operations here and I’m sending you the other half.”
“I’m afraid I have to ask you for the entire $10,000, Abbot Jessica,” said Saint Anne. "I just got off the phone with our banker and he specified ten thousand as the minimum he would take this week if we expect to keep our campus here in Fermoy.”
I resisted the temptation to congratulate Saint Anne for being a better liar than myself. He knew what I was thinking about his banker story and he knew I wouldn’t challenge him. But he couldn’t possibly believe that the first paying guest we ever had at Our Lady’s had been so thrilled with the rice and beans that he gave us ten thousand dollars!
“Once again,” I continued, “I am sorry to be insubordinate, but $5,000 is all you’re getting, so please tell me how you’d like me to send it.”
A silence ensued and I could almost hear Saint Anne thinking. Finally, he pulled out the gun.
“Jesse,” he said with fake warmth, “I have not threatened a Brother in many years, but if you are unwilling to send the full ten thousand, I am afraid I will have to begin proceedings to discharge Our Lady’s at West Saugerties from the Order.”
“Rome has to approve,” I interjected.
“And that Congregation has never refused a lawful proceeding by this Order,” he said.
“$5,000 or nothing,” I said.
“I hope you realize that when you are discharged from the Order your work as scholar assistants will be tainted, even calling into question the scholarly works published by Universities around the world. Your work, though largely menial, will no longer be requested by most of the antiquities men and women. Plus, our lawyers will begin the necessary steps to have all of you evicted. You will lose the monastery you are trying to save, Jesse.”
“St. Anne, I do not wish to disobey you, but I am responsible for the men here under my care.”
“I will take care of all you,” he said, “I am the Provincial.”
I could stand his bullshit no longer.
“St. Anne,” I said. “I think you would throw us all out of an airplane to save fuel if you had the chance.”
There was a moment of silence at Saint Anne’s end of the line. Finally he spoke in a voice that sounded as if someone else had come on the phone.
“I am an attorney as well as the Provincial In Charge of this Order,” said Saint Anne, and I could hear the heat building in his voice. He was getting pissed off. “I am licensed to practice law in Ireland and also in the United States. And so let me speak to you as an attorney, David.”
To be called by my given name produced the shock it was meant to.
“If you do not send the full $10,000, I will ensure that a local court places an order against you personally and your local district attorney will bring criminal charges against you for the mishandling of funds received in care of the Order of the Holy Varlet!”
This was serious. I had no doubt he could do it. There were rumors of a similar money argument years ago between Fermoy and a monk who at the time was assigned to the U.S as a solitary in Massachusetts. The man spent time in jail in Boston.
But I was finished with this game. I wasn’t trying to cheat anyone or steal their money. I wanted to remain a contemplative monk, and although my admiration for the Ardent Brothers of the Holy Varlet had dwindled down to practically nothingness, I wanted to honor my vows and remain in the fold. I wanted to die a monk. Still, I wouldn’t give in to his bullying. My answer would be clear and I would have liked to have given it at that moment: “You can take your Order and shove it!” However, I could not speak for my brothers and I had to go to them for their answer.
In the semi darkness of the living room, lit only by the street light from outside, I stepped up to the clock, opened the little door and stopped the pendulum. I moved the hands ahead to 4 a.m. so it would look like the clock had given up the ghost in the middle of the night. I felt like a burglar in our own living room. Carefully closing up the clock, I turned to go back to bed. My father sat across the room looking at me.
"It was keeping Micky awake," I said.
"Me, too," said my father.
"You did a nice job fixing the clock," I told him.
“It’s not perfect,” he said, “but I gave it my best.”
“It’s better than I could have done,” I said.
”I'm sorry that I didn't let you help me," he said. “I really got wrapped up in it. It felt like something I had to do.”
I wondered if calling Ben the night we brought home the clock parts had also been something my father felt he had to do.
“Why did you apologize to Ben?” I asked.
“Because I was wrong,” he said. “I stomped out of a man’s house without having an honest conversation about why I was angry with him. And I should have had it long ago.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said he knew he had a big mouth and it was a problem. He told me no one else visits them any more.”
“Will we?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Aunt Mary is the only relative Grandma has left.”
Grandma died the next year and after the funeral we lost track of Cousin Ben and Aunt Mary. But they stopped by the restaurant when we celebrated my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary a decade later. I was lucky enough to be home on leave from Africa. I recognized Ben as soon as he stepped through the door. He hadn’t aged that much in ten years and he remembered me by name. He surprised me, saying he often recalled our conversations with pleasure and always thought we were a lot alike. I didn’t get upset. He may have been right. When I asked if he still fixed clocks, he smiled and looked away while saying, “only my own.”
Ben’s pile of parts, assembled by my father into a noisy clock, ticked away on the mantel for over thirty years. It sold at a garage sale when my parents moved to a senior apartment. After my father died, I was sorry we let it go.
So last week in the flea market I wished I had no vows to prevent me from taking the clock home and putting it on a mantel. It would serve as a reminder of the man who overcame the ordinary troubles of life to become a wonderfully ordinary father to me. He never became perfect. Neither did I.
As I grew to manhood, he allowed me more control over my own destiny and seldom gave advice without my asking for it. When I struggled to accept my burdens and find my gifts as a young man, he stood back armed only with hope and let me search out my own paths, allowing me to cope with life at the speed of my own heartbeat. He waited on the path for me. He may still, for in addition to the sound of my own clock, I sometimes hear another softly ticking up ahead.
The three of us moved into the dining room where Ben had set an old cardboard box on the large ornate oak table, richly polished to a high sheen. In the box was the clock for my father, or rather the pieces of a clock. To me, all the little gears and wheels and springs looked like someone had disassembled a set of automobile brakes and thrown the parts into a container. I could almost sense my father’s back stiffen. He looked at Ben.
“Is everything in there?” Dad asked, with only slight sarcasm edging his voice.
“Yes, sir,” Ben replied. “But before you restore it, you’ll need some lessons in clock repair.”
“Uh huh,” said Dad. My father worked on newspaper presses and was quite mechanically inclined. What he didn’t know about clocks he could certainly figure out.
“Sort of like an apprenticeship, Ed,” said Ben.
“All in one afternoon?” said Dad. I could hear the anger building in his voice. I don’t know how Ben used the word “apprentice” in his line of work, but in my father’s it meant the lowest of low, a real dummy. If the light had been better in the dining room, Ben might have noticed my father’s neck turning red.
“Oh, more than an afternoon!” said Ben. “You can come here Sunday afternoons and work with me in the basement for a couple of months. I’ll start you off cleaning a lot of old pieces I’ve been meaning to get to.” Ben chuckled to dull the barb of the arrow as he shot it.
“Even an Irishman,” he said, “should be able to handle that, Ed.”
I remember looking over to my father for his reaction and I saw him flinch. Years later he would tell me the relatively mild insult had struck him hard, reminding him of taunts of a different nature he’d suffered from his father. I’ve always thought his soul brought him to a place that afternoon he had been avoiding. There in the box lay a clock in pieces, appropriately enough, ready to be put back together. Even the dark oak table in front of us may have been reminiscent of the rich and beautiful desks Dad stood before when he swore his allegiances to the powerful, those to whom he would nod his head and curry favor in order to have the kind of life he wanted. His bargain with them … for that’s how he viewed it, made so long ago when he was young and poor … no longer stroked his pride.
My father would eventually adjust his bargains to match his values, and he learned to grant more authority to himself than he accepted from others. But on that afternoon in Herkimer, he was just beginning that leg of the journey. As he tried to make sense of his emotions, the awful gnawing in his gut was literally making him sick. For the first time in years he would not be agreeable. He would not submit. Not to this little Protestant prick across the table from him who wouldn’t know decent manners from a stick up his ass.
Out in the kitchen, the women busied themselves with lunch, their laughing voices carrying through the door to the three of us as we stood around the table. I watched Dad raise his eyes from the box of parts and let his gaze wander over to the window and then through the glass into the distance, as if he was looking somewhere for strength. Or counting to ten. Quickly, he brought his eyes back and looked down again at the box. His mouth twisted into a hard line and he looked like he was about to explode. I began to fear he would pick up the little man and throw him through the window.
Not even a tone-deaf blowhard like Ben could miss the minor chord now vibrating throughout the dining room. The chatter of the women dribbled to a stop as our silence blared out into the kitchen, and in a moment the entire house was as quiet as a tomb, except for the grandfather clock ticking in the hall.
“Ed …?” I heard my mother call. She did not get an answer.
“Well, Ed,” Ben finally began. “Perhaps we ….
“I thank you for the clock, Ben.” said my father. “But I’m afraid we have
to get back home sooner than we planned.”
“Oh, now” said Ben, “there’s no need to ….”
“I’m not feeling well,” said Dad. “We’re leaving.”
We were in the driveway and loading ourselves into the car less than a minute later. I said nothing at first. I was surprised my mother or grandmother offered no comments. Women often try to fix what is not ready to be fixed.
Dad carried the box of parts to the car. He got in the passenger side, a signal for me to drive, and sat staring straight ahead, the box planted on his lap.
Ben fluttered around outside the car like a small bird, offering one comment or another to each of us as I started the engine. Dad avoided eye contact with him, but nodded his head when Ben said he hoped my father would feel better soon. Dad appeared as agreeable as a muzzled bull. Anger welled up inside me and I wanted to tell Ben off.
When the little man danced around to my side of the car, I looked up at him and spoke with contempt written across my face.
“You know what, Ben?” I snarled.
An iron clamp seized my right elbow and squeezed so hard I almost fainted.
“Uh,” I said through clenched teeth, “thank you and good bye.” My father let go and I slumped back in my seat. Under his breath Dad said with a fury, “Don’t ever speak for me!”
I put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway a bit too fast, scraping the bumper on the pavement when we hit the street.
No one uttered a word as we drove up Route 5 toward home. Near Ilion, my father asked me to pull over near a railroad siding.
I expected him to heave the box of parts out the window and tell me to drive on. But instead, he got out, placed the box on the seat and walked 30 feet or so into the grass. He knelt down and threw up.
Small womanly nurturing sounds came from the back seat, but neither my mother nor grandmother got out to attend my father. That told me they understood what was going on. I can’t say I did, not then, not fully. I turned to the back seat and said, “Gee, he really was sick!” No one answered.
In a few moments Dad returned and told me to drive on. Two or three miles went by without a word being said by anyone. Finally, I could take it no longer.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked.
“Yes,” was all he said.
“Maybe I can help you with the clock,” I said. “I mean clean the parts or something while you figure out how they go together.”
“Don’t worry about it, “ he said curtly. The brusque manner hurt. While I thought nothing of dismissing him when I wanted to, I didn’t like his dismissal of me.
The more I thought about Ben, the angrier I got. Why couldn’t we just put Grandma on the bus once in a while and ship her off to Herkimer? Why did I have to watch my father demean himself when we went to visit Ben?
“You should have told him off,” I said.
My father’s hand shot out sideways and almost ripped the shirt off my chest. I slammed on the brakes and pulled the car to the side of the road, cries from my mother and grandmother coming from the back seat.
Dad threw open his door and pulled me by the front of my shirt right across the seat and out on to the side of the road. Hot tears came to my eyes as I prepared to lose our first real fist fight. He spun me around and threw me up against the side of the car. His face was a mask of anger. I shouted into it, “You should have told him off, goddamn it.!”
“Who are you to tell me what to do?” he shouted back, his spit spraying into my face.
I took a breath, choked and took another. “I don’t know,” I said. I looked down at the ground. “I don’t know who I am.”
His face relaxed and he straightened up. Then he grabbed me and hugged me, for the first time since I had been a little boy. A bear hug.
“I don’t know, either,” he said.
That night my father telephoned Ben and apologized, something I thought was totally unnecessary. But at sixteen I knew nothing about apologies.
Over the next week, Dad worked on the clock at his tiny workbench in the cellar after supper each night, while the rest of us sat in the living room and watched television. He had the mechanism together and working in no time. He sanded the wooden case and gave it three coats of varnish. When the last coat was absolutely dry, he brought the clock upstairs and placed it on the mantel in the living room. He wound the clock, set the hands to the correct time and gave the pendulum a tiny shove. The clock went tick, tock. It seemed rather loud.
When Micky and I settled in our beds for the night, the ticking noise drifted down the hall to our bedroom. Micky wondered if Dad should have put more oil in the clock.
“It’s not a Chevy,” I told him.
“I can’t sleep,” Micky moaned from across the room. “Go tell Dad to stop the clock.”
“You go tell him,” I said. “And mention that a telescope would have been a lot quieter.”
But after a few minutes I got up and headed down the hall.
When we pulled into Ben’s driveway the next day, he was waiting for us on his front porch. The little man scampered down the steps and began talking before we were out of the car. He was still talking later when we were leaving … sooner than we’d planned, as it turned out.
Ben was a round chatty little fellow, an uppity know-it-all who to me was more than just annoying. On every visit to his home, Dad would dissolve in front of my eyes from a strong and decent man into a fawning subordinate who appeared overly anxious to please. I suppose reasonable people would say my father was just being sociable. But at sixteen years of age I observed Dad with a magnifying glass, searching more for his warts than his strengths, ready to pounce on his every fault. And the way I saw it, Dad was too agreeable with Ben, even when the little man was insulting.
It’s true that Ben and my father were from different worlds, and I suppose that put Dad at a disadvantage. Ben was from a Protestant family of substance. My father came from a poor Irish Catholic tribe. Growing up, he had slept with four brothers carefully arranged on a double bed and a cot in the living room of a decrepit old rented house, dreading his father coming home and falling down drunk in the doorway in the early morning hours. His mother sent the five boys and their two sisters out looking for the old man on payday, hoping to find him before the money was spent on alcohol. Home life was synonymous with hunger and violence, with broken furniture and sometimes broken bones. As a teenager, my father watched his mother die at a young age from poverty, coughing up blood and staining the kitchen table cloth that was all he had to clean her face.
Cousin Ben started out in his family’s successful insurance business right after college and was promoted to president of the agency within five years. He later inherited the firm and spent his days collecting the premiums from old customers and friends. He led a fairly comfortable life.
Although there was certainly nothing special about Ben, to my father he represented what can be called authority, that class of people who pulled the strings in society, who had the money and the power and who rated high in my father’s universe because they were the people who could get you a job or a loan or a promotion. If they noticed you at work or in the fraternal clubs or churches of that era, and if they wanted to help your cause, you were sure to be as agreeable as possible in return, to acclaim them publicly and to somehow pay obeisance when it was possible to do so. You were never listed as a friend, nor were you considered a servant. You were simply one of the grateful members of the choir that sang their praises and assuaged their egos.
At sixteen Dad left home and found menial work as the Great Depression spread across the country. He saved and proudly bought himself tools and workman’s clothing and then found better jobs. He thrust aside his self doubt, accepting without question the advice of employers, churchmen and older friends who helped him to reach his goals. He often sought the authority of others and sometimes their protection. It was good business, and may have substituted for the total lack of structure provided by his family. But as he listened to their advice and counsel, the ticking of his own clock became weaker.
On that Sunday afternoon, Ben got my hackles up right away when he complained about one of his business clients coming from “a long line of dumb Irish ancestors.” We were seated in the small sun room in the back of Ben’s house and I looked over at my father. He was watching me. His eyes told me nothing, but I knew he would prefer me to not react. He was probably thinking about a few weeks before when I told Ben that Martin Luther, practically Ben’s patron saint, was a lush and a whoremonger after Ben referred to the leader of my father’s church as “that Nazi Pope of yours.” I could not have cared less if Pius the Twelfth played Pinochle with Hitler. I was upset that my father didn’t defend his faith. And that he would allow Ben to speak to us in that manner.
Dad wasn’t timid, but he was a gentleman. At the time it didn’t occur to me that had my father answered Ben in kind, our social relationship would have ended and Grandma would lose the opportunity to visit the only other family she had. I think Ben probably knew that; it was part of his calculus for keeping the upper hand.
It must time to go a little over the top and I know just the woman who can take us.
“Cousin Ben,” said my mother “has a wonderful hobby … fixing clocks. You’re handy, Ed, and Ben said he has an old clock and parts to get you started.”
“I was planning to buy a telescope,” Dad answered.
“They’re pretty expensive,” said my mother.
The use of that phrase always ended any buying discussion.
Cousin Ben lived twenty miles down the river in the small city of Herkimer and he was far from being a likeable character. Ben was somehow related to my grandmother, who lived with us, and Dad considered it time off from his upcoming stay in Purgatory when he took Grandma down to visit with Ben’s wife, who we called Aunt Mary. The rest of us in the family often went along if we were trying to work off future time in Purgatory for one sin or another. As teenage boys, we were always behind in our accounts.
The next Sunday afternoon we piled into the old Ford and set out for Herkimer … Mom and Dad, Grandma, my little brother Micky and myself. Older brother Bert had months before gone off to join the Navy, providing some relief to both he and my father from their stormy relationship. As we pulled out on James Street I managed to roll our right rear tire over the curbstone. When the wheel slammed back down on the road, Grandma’s head hit the ceiling of the car and Mom almost ate her cigarette. Eleven year old Micky made the most of it, of course, gleefully bouncing all over the back seat and yelling “Mayday, Mayday!” I could hear my father’s grunt of disapproval.
“Do you know how much tires cost?” he asked.
“I’ll pay for any damages,” I said, much too flippantly.
“You don’t have any money,” said Dad witheringly, like a tire losing air.
At sixteen I chafed against my father’s control and there wasn’t much he could say or do I wouldn’t argue with. My smart mouth led to many confrontations and when his mood darkened he became more autocratic, heating the space between us to a high emotional level. As his depression deepened that summer, our egos were constantly banging up against each other. He had exploded and walloped me for my insolence a month before. Dad seldom hit me, and that would be the last time he tried. I turned on him and put up my fists. Although he could have wiped the floor with me he backed off, rather than have a knock-down fist fight with his son. He turned and walked away, as he had done with my older brother Bert the previous year. I might have felt victorious, but instead I felt defeated. Alone and angry, the small victory of defending myself turned sour and I came away with an odd smoldering hate for him that only a son recognizes and only a son gets over.
The night before our drive to Herkimer, Micky and I lay in our beds casually pitching brotherly insults back and forth in our shared bedroom. After a lull when we had run out of crudities, Micky said, “Why don’t we hear from Bert much anymore?”
“He’s busy saving the South Pacific for IBM and Xerox,” I said, having just read something about it in Time Magazine.
“The last time he called, Dad didn’t talk to him,” said Micky.
“Dad’s been a little funny lately,” was the only response that came to me.
“Why do you think Dad gets upset all the time and yells?” asked Micky
“He’s dealing with a lot of things, I guess,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Micky. “especially you.”
Micky struck too close to home. I had begun to realize I was a major source of my father’s worries. My arrogance and slipshod attitude were affecting my school work and relationships. I failed classes and had recently been fired from an after school job for mouthing off to the man who hired me, a friend of Dad’s. But although my culpability was slowly dawning on me, my gut reaction was self serving and swift. I immediately became enraged at the kid.
I leapt out of bed and flew across the room, caught my little brother up by his tshirt and slugged him in the shoulder. I slugged him again … somewhere … as he tried to wriggle away from me up against the wall. And then Micky did something he’d never attempted before. He turned on me and punched me in the face.
Astonished, I straightened up, wondering what to do. He was still small enough to pick up and throw across the room. I stood there in my t-shirt and boxer shorts and suddenly saw me as my father, losing control of those around me. My rage turned to fear. I did not want to be like my father. I wanted to be perfect.
“What the hell are you talking about, you little jerk!” I all but shouted.
“You’re the jerk,” hissed Micky. “You’re always arguing with Dad and causing trouble around here!”
“I’m a man and he won’t admit it,” I shouted in his face.
“No you’re not,” he laughed. “You’re an asshole!”
I was astonished my normally adoring little brother would say such a thing to me. This was the kid who laughed at all my jokes, thought all the girls I liked were pretty and told me I was a genius when I brought home report cards that indicated otherwise. I was deflated. I walked back across the room and sat down heavily on my bed.
Harpo knows me well, both my strengths and my weaknesses. And he knows how I felt about my Dad. That's why he used my father to cause me to wonder if I had taken us down the wrong path. Was that unfair of him? No, I don't think so. It's what a brother would do. And what I should do is "man up" and admit I was wrong. If I was. I'll think about it.
My father was a real man. Confused, depressed, wrong-headed at times, but with a solid dedication to bringing up his sons in the religion of his ancestors. He believed he would stand in front of God some day and answer for how well he accomplished that goal. Any of his sons leaving the Church, as my older brother did eventually, would wreak dire consequences on Dad's eternal life, or so he thought.
My father loved us, cared about us and cried with us through our tragedies. He waited patiently for us when we lost our direction. He was strong and he was weak. To me he was what he should have been, just Dad.
On reaching mid-life I was surprised to be afflicted by that same crisis that hit my father during my teenage years. I imagined living the life of a monk would protect me from mid life crisis, but in my forties I remember sitting here in the woods and drearily plodding through my daily routine. There is indeed evidence of the malady's universal existence. I've read that someone did a cross cultural study of human mood in subjects aged five to eighty-five. The curve of contentment swept down in a “U” around age 46 for everyone, whether the person lived in a skyscraper in New York City or a mud hut in the Congo, whether their entire possessions fit in a goat skin bag or they needed temporary storage lockers in addition to all the closets in their home.
My vow of poverty has alleviated any attachment to lots of junk, I believe, and I've come to view the Rule more as a relief than a burden. But one afternoon in a flea market looking for used kitchen utensils, something caught my eye. I really wanted it and if not for my vow I would have taken it home and treasured it.
There, high on the pile of stuff was an old pendulum shelf clock with a large white face of Roman numerals mounted behind a small glass door, just like the one my father rebuilt fifty years ago and placed on the mantel in our living room. That was shortly after his doctor told him to lighten up and get a hobby. What he really needed was Prozac, but it wasn’t available yet. In time the drug would diminish more melancholy among the Irish than bales of four leaf clover. Or barrels of Jameson’s.
I don’t know where I got this concept. I probably made it up, but I always thought that deep inside each of us sits a ticking clock. Really smart people like Jung or Aquinas had other names and a different vision for what they called the psyche or soul. But I picture a clock ticking away, urging us to find goodness, identity and our real self. The ticking reminds us we have only so much time. The sound is not always loud. It is often weak, as if the clock had gone on ahead and is waiting patiently for us somewhere farther up the trail.
My father’s clock banged loudly as he reached his middle years. His friends called it mid life crisis. Jung might have said Dad’s psyche was fighting myths and individuating. I don’t know what Aquinas would have said. He was a strange guy. But I think Dad’s clock was ticking away with impatience. And it didn’t plan to let him alone until it got his attention.
