Chapter 22
In the days that preceded our trip to Woodstock, Beth conducted the Charles Berlitz crash course in driving. We would head out after supper, first Harold behind the wheel, then me. Beth didn’t actually teach us anything because she mostly slept the entire time we were out. The heat wave was still in full force. Harold and I didn’t talk much when I was behind the wheel because it took every ounce of energy I had just to drive the car. Afterwards I was exhausted, so much so that on most evenings I left those two and went straight to my room where I lay on top of my bed, stared up at the ceiling and waited—for what, I didn’t know for sure. I just had this eerie feeling that something big was going to happen, something bigger than the trip to Woodstock.
After our lessons Beth met up with Miles, which I didn’t understand but that was her business so I kept my mouth shut. Joe Senior got Harold a part-time job working with him at the bakery so he was spending most afternoons in the company of my father, which seemed to suit both of them just fine. Harold really liked Joe even though he knew all about his dark side, a part of Joe he never actually saw first hand, just heard about in whispers between his mother and mine on the nights we fled to their house to escape Joe’s rage, or through the terror in Danny’s and my eyes as we sat huddled together on their couch praying that Joe would leave us alone. But Joe and Harold got along really well despite Harold’s lack of athletic ability and nerd-like propensity. Joe was his substitute father. In many ways he was a better father to Harold than he was to Dan and me, not that they did anything spectacular together but there was this strange bond between them and no matter what Joe did to me or Ma or Dan, Harold never said anything bad about Joe. The fact was he just didn’t say anything.
Beth was still seeing Dr. James. I didn’t think it was doing any good because she was still pretty nutty. I feared she had other problems too because she was losing weight despite her marathon cookie gorging and steady diet of junk food. We started seeing more and more of Beth’s mother too, while her father was completely absent, vanished from the scene. Beth said he was in Minneapolis on business, which seemed to make Beth and her mother real happy that he wasn’t around. I was glad too because there was something about him that really gave me the creeps. Secretly I hoped he would never return.
Ma, Mrs. K. and Mrs. Luoto had formed this friendship that grew over blueberry muffins and black Finnish coffee, brewed with eggshells. Most of the time the three of them gathered around the Luoto dining room table, where they talked about the kinds of things mothers discussed: children, husbands, gardens, food, television programs, gossip about movie stars, all the usual things that make up our daily lives. They were the experts at the little life, the daily round, the ebb and flow of the domestic scene. I think my mother and Mrs. K. were the first real friends Mrs. Luoto had, their companionship brought her to life, an authentic woman was blossoming, a woman I was growing to admire and love as much as I did her daughter. As for my own mother, she too was transforming. She laughed more, looked younger, if that was possible, but mostly it was just something about the way she carried herself— more confidently—as though she had finally given herself permission to be on the earth. Ma had spent her whole life either looking down at the ground in embarrassment and shame or over her shoulder like there was someone out there chasing her, a relentless phantom boogeyman that she could never escape. Joe was less and less a part of our daily lives. We saw him at dinner and then right afterwards he’d head out to his vegetable garden and start weeding or watering. He was still out there when I got home from my driving lesson. I could hear the water from the hose running until dark. Somewhere around ten o’clock I would hear it shut off, the screen door slam and the sound of my father making his nightly snack in the kitchen. He’d turn the television on until after the news was over and then there was silence. Although I was exhausted I couldn’t sleep so Joe’s evening routine became part of mine. I lay on top of my bed and listened. I listened as he talked over the back fence to a new neighbor from the next street over. I listened as he moaned because his back hurt when he bent over too long. I listened as he cursed at the cats for doing their business between the rows of potatoes and carrots. I listened as he coughed and hacked up gobs of mucus and then spat over the fence into the back alley. I listened as he whistled Italian songs that I had heard all my life but never knew the words or their names. I listened as he sat on the stump where my escape tree used to be and smoked his Players, exhaling the smoke in rhythmic breaths that were in sync with my own. I listened as he spent evenings by himself. I wondered when it happened that Joe got so alone. Had things always been like this or was it the effects of the summer? Listening to my father’s lonely life haunted me, left me with this unbearable sadness that wouldn’t let me sleep. There were times when I hated Joe, hated him more than any human being I had ever known, hated him with a coldness that frightened me. But I loved him too. It was like there were two Joes: the one that came out when he drank too much wine, the dark mean ugly Joe who terrorized Ma and scared the life out of me and Dan, the one I wanted to kill, the one whose death I plotted as Danny and I crouched over the heat vent in my bedroom to watch as he stood over my mother screaming about his job, his damn boss, his bastard of a father, his poor helpless mother who died before her time, his younger brother who got killed by a train, his bitch of an older sister who wouldn’t give him the time of day, the guy he tried to pick a fight with in the bar and the bartender who finally threw him out on his ear. This Joe I hated. Then there was the other Joe, the one who made us laugh, who entertained us with his jokes and stories, who took us to ballgames, who taught us how to throw a fastball, who kissed Dan on the top of her head, who was kind to Harold and his mother, who would give anyone the shirt off his back, who brought home surprise treats, Persian buns smothered in white and strawberry icing, who would wrap his arms around Ma as she stood at the sink doing dishes, who would go to ‘meet the teacher night’ by himself because Ma was too shy and those meetings made her nervous, who bragged about my good grades, which weren’t that great, but listening to Joe you’d think I was Einstein, who took me and Dan for ice cream cones at the Merla Mae and the family out for drives on Sunday afternoons, to nowhere in particular, which was the way we liked it. That was the Joe of my heart, my dad, the only father I ever really wanted.
At some point in the middle of the night I would give in to sleep, not drift off peacefully but surrender, no longer able to fight this demon that kept me listening and waiting. I hadn’t been to Hobo Creek at night since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. The night before we were leaving on our little odyssey to up-state New York, long after Joe went through his evening ritual and had gone to bed, I snuck downstairs, the steps moaning beneath me as I tiptoed my way to the front door. I hopped on my bike and headed toward the creek, not pedaling at top speed like I usually did but leisurely like I was out for an after dinner ride taking in the sights of the neighborhood. The air was still warm, but it was beginning to smell like fall. The leaves were already growing brittle as they slapped one another like angry siblings, almost as if they knew that the end was near. I shuddered at the thought of going back to school, to people who knew nothing about the events of this summer.
Harold and Beth were excited about our road trip to Woodstock but I was a reluctant and skeptical participant, more along for the ride than anything else. I was having a hard time fully embracing this hippie thing. I was happier viewing them from a distance. Were they enchanting flower children who sang songs of love and peace or merely “pot smoking drop-out losers” like Joe said? The few encounters at Josh’s and one love-in at the park hadn’t left me very enlightened. I still couldn’t figure out what they were all about. I mean Josh and his friends were fun, underneath the hair and patchouli oil they were just kids trying to figure out life just like me. But we were going to Woodstock. Beth said there would be thousands of hippies there, a hundred times more than at Waverly Park, all of them smoking pot, making out, doing weird freaky stuff, grooving to the music and not just any music. We weren’t talking The Snails or The Sharks. We were talking Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan. This was way out of Harold’s and my league—way beyond anything we could ever imagine. Beth was practically from New York so this was elementary to her, besides she was a player no matter where she was.
I rode up to the path leading into the park and changed my mind. Instead of going in I kept riding. I headed down Oliver Road towards Joe’s work and the neighborhood he and Ma grew up in. What was left of their families was gone. Ma’s parents both died when she was a child leaving her an orphan by the time she was ten. Her grandmother, who died long before I was born, raised her. Joe’s mother died the year before he met Ma and his old man was gone now too. I never knew my grandfather and can’t say I was sorry about that. And I could count on one hand the number of times one of Ma’s three sisters came to visit. They were strangers to me. There were cousins too but I never knew them either. Ma never talked about any of them. Occasionally she reminisced about her childhood, the time she spent with her grandmother and three sisters on Secord Street and how she walked for miles in the dead of winter to get her grandmother a spool of embroidery thread because she was the only person who called her “dear” and how she got a small bottle of Evening in Paris perfume from her grandmother for Christmas one year and nothing else because they were so poor. “That was a good year,” she said fondly. She loved her grandmother dearly, but her sisters never did approve of Joe and when she married him, what little relationship they had faded. Whenever they came over for one of their visits Joe would take off in the car and not return until they were gone, and then he’d be reeking of rum and coke and cigarette smoke.
Ma said a lot had changed in that part of town since she was a girl but I couldn’t see how that was possible. It was the oldest part of the city, close to downtown with tree-lined streets and houses that were practically sitting on top of the sidewalk. Some of the houses had been face-lifted with aluminum siding, insul-brick or stucco but other than that they still looked like they were ready for bulldozing. Maybe it was the new cement sidewalks that made Ma think things had changed so much or maybe it was the absence of her grandmother who had been as much of a fixture on that street as the houses themselves.
Ma and Joe met in this neighborhood when she was working part time at Porky’s Restaurant as a cook’s assistant. Joe came in to deliver some bread one morning and it was “love at first sight,” at least that’s Ma’s story. Joe never talked about things like that. I found it hard to imagine my parents being young and in love. They were only in their forties but I remember how old that sounded back then. Anyone over thirty was ancient history and on the slippery slope to death. Some days, Joe was even beginning to carry himself like an old man, all hunched over and shuffling his feet. I rode past Joe’s work; the place was dark except for one dim light over the door. In another hour or two the bread making would begin and Joe would be getting up. The streets were deserted except for the occasional car that would slow down and ease by me, the driver straining his neck to see who the insane person was riding around on a bike in the middle of the night. It was me. I was the insane one. I headed up Algoma, followed the road as it wound its way past the L.P.H. where I considered the possibility of checking myself in for a rest. Joe was always telling me how much I “needed my head examined.” Maybe he was right. The whole summer seemed insane and was only getting crazier. In another couple of hours Beth, Harold and I were taking the ultimate road trip, which was crazy enough but the fact that we were taking this trip with our parents’ blessing was mind blowing. I swear Beth had everyone brain washed.
At Boulevard Lake I leaned my bike next to the concession booth and walked down to the water. I tested it, first with my toe, then my feet; the next thing I knew I was up to my neck. I thought about walking across the lake under water. Or the possibility of walking on top just like Jesus. I thought about drowning, about going to sleep, just drifting away, letting myself go wherever my body wanted to go, setting it free. Across the lake I could hear other people as crazy as me playing in the water, the après-bar skinny dippers, harmless drunks who gathered like dolphins, giggling and squealing themselves sober. I floated on my back for what felt like hours; completely lost deep inside myself like a caterpillar in a cocoon. It was as though the water was gone, the air, the people across the lake, all sound and smell. Gone.
I didn’t hear him enter the water and make his way toward me. I didn’t hear him whisper my name as he approached. It wasn’t until he was standing right beside me that I realized I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t home in bed sleeping. I wasn’t dreaming. I was in a lake with a man standing fully clothed and chest deep next to me. Realizing where I was and what was going on I rolled over on my stomach and moved away from the intruder, not exactly swimming, kind of jogging through the water to escape. My feet sunk into the murky bottom; the water was up to my nose when he touched my shoulder. It was like one of my nightmares where I’m trying to run away from Joe when he’s all drunk but I can’t really move, no matter how hard I try my legs wouldn’t go. I’m paralyzed by fear and drowning, unable to breathe.
“Jo-Jo. It’s me,” he said softly. “Robert.”
“Robert?” I looked at him but couldn’t connect the dots. I was too confused and frightened to comprehend what he was saying. “Yes,” he said. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to startle you. I saw you out here swimming. I called to you but you couldn’t hear me.” “What are you doing here?” I asked realizing who he was. Instinctively I clutched my chest to protect my screaming heart from tearing through my skin and latching itself onto Robert’s sleeve.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said ducking his head under the water. He still had his glasses on. “Isn’t it kind of late to be taking a swim? By yourself no less.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said wanting to reach up and pull his glasses off and kiss him smack on the lips. “I do weird things like this Robert. What’s your excuse?”
“I do weird things like this too. I was just taking one last ride around the city. I always liked this place at night. I leave tomorrow.” “For Woodstock?”
“T.O. To see my old lady, finish my masters I guess,” he said. “Josh and his entourage left yesterday though. You know him. He wouldn’t miss a trip like this man. I can practically smell the pot from here.”
“I think you’re smelling the people across the lake,” I teased. He laughed out loud. I still wanted to pull his glasses off. “We’re going. Beth, Harold and me I mean. Tomorrow. Or today I guess. In a few hours. What time is it?”
“Don’t know. Never carry a watch but I figure it’s gotta be close to three,” he said touching my face. “You’re shivering. Why don’t we get out of the water?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I turned and started to wade back to shore when Robert took my hand. We sat on a patch of grass under a tree. He put his arm around me and for a while we both just sat there silently and shivering from the cold or nerves. “I’m going to think about you when I leave,” he said softly. “What are you going to think?” I asked.
“That you’re a nice sweet girl with a yearning heart,” he replied as he gave me a little squeeze.
“Wow! A yearning heart,” I joked. “That’s a first. Come to think of it so is the nice sweet girl part. I’ve never thought of myself as nice or sweet. Or anything candy-coated like that. Nor has anyone else that knows me. Trust me. I’m not the type.” “You are Jo-Jo,” he whispered as he turned my head toward him and kissed me very gently, barely touching, on the lips, cheeks and forehead. He stroked my hair and back. “Nice and sweet and beautiful,” he whispered in my ear, which made my whole body yearn, never my heart. Yearn for things I didn’t think possible, bad things I wasn’t supposed to even think about doing with a man I barely knew and who I would never see again. I kissed him back and put my arms around his neck. I was trembling so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack, which would have been okay because I was so happy at that moment I really didn’t care what happened to me.
We shifted our bodies so we were lying next to each other with our heads resting on the base of the tree. Robert took his blue leather bike jacket off and wrapped it over my shoulders. He held me close to his chest with my head tucked under his chin as he continued to stroke my hair and back under the jacket. He smelled good, like the lake and the sand and sweat and different from me. I wanted to stay there with him forever. It was one of those moments where I wished I could stop time for eternity; so we could just be like that, lie there together in complete bliss. I could hear his heart beating inside his chest peacefully like he was sleeping or meditating. I lifted up his tee shirt and touched his chest with the tips of my fingers. He was practically hairless except for a bit between his nipples. He let out a soft moan as my hand explored his chest. When I moved my hand farther south towards his belt he took it and brought it to his lips and kissed my fingers. “Not tonight Jo-Jo,” he whispered between kisses. “You don’t want your first time to be with me. You’ll regret it for sure.” I pulled my hand away quickly as if I had just touched fire and sat up.
“God. I’m sorry,” I said. “I feel so embarrassed. Is it that transparent? I mean how could you tell I’d never been with anyone?” “Because you’re good and sweet and your heart yearns but not for me,” he answered.
He was right of course. This wasn’t how I wanted my first time to be. I wasn’t sure how I wanted it but I knew it wasn’t with a guy I would never see again who was practically married to someone else. I started to cry and shake uncontrollably. Robert took me in his arms again and held me until I cried myself quiet. I was exhausted, too exhausted to climb back on my bike and ride home so when Robert took me by the hand and led me back to his motorcycle, I didn’t protest, nor did I care that I was abandoning my bike forever.
He killed the engine of his motorcycle a few blocks from my house and coasted quietly down the hill. We hugged one last time. He kissed me on the forehead and that was that for Robert. Gone. I didn’t even know his last name.
I crawled into bed and was sleeping soundly when Ma tapped on my bedroom door. The sun was just beginning to break open the sky. The days were growing shorter. I moaned, rolled over and pulled the covers over my head.
“Hey sleepy head. Beth and Harold are downstairs waiting for you. This is the big day,”Ma said, sounding just like Mrs. Cleaver. “What time is it?” I asked rolling over.
“Six-thirty. Beth said you were supposed to leave over an hour ago. I guess everyone slept in. Anyway, get up. I’ve got coffee and muffins for you. Everyone’s waiting Jo.”
Ma sounded so excited you would have thought she was the one taking the trip.
“I’m so tired Ma,” I moaned. “Just let me sleep for another five minutes.”
“Five minutes won’t do you any good. You can sleep in the car. Now get up Jo. Your friends are waiting. You’ve got a big trip ahead of you.”
“Ah jeez Ma. Give me a break,” I said, pulling back the covers off my bed and throwing my legs over the side. “I need a bath. I stink.” I had sand in my hair and lake grit between my toes, my head was pounding and a bitter taste clung to the inside of my mouth. What a great way to start our trip.
While I showered, everyone gathered in our kitchen to drink coffee, eat muffins and say good-bye including Beth’s mother and Mrs. K. Dan’s wheel chair was wedged into a corner. It had become such a part of her, almost like another member of our family that it was going to be strange when her casts came off in a few weeks. She’d gotten real good at getting around in the thing too, a real Ironside. Beth and Harold were anxious to get on the road so by the time I made it downstairs with my knapsack slung over my shoulder they were already standing by the back door ready to leave. Ma handed me a muffin and a traveling mug full of coffee. The farewell committee moved outside. Ma took pictures of the three of us with our gear in front of Sally. Beth took pictures of Ma taking pictures. We piled into the car with me riding solo in the back as usual. I stretched out my legs and put my knapsack under my head like a pillow. Beth turned on the radio. Dack the Mack’s voice came on reporting the seven o’clock news. A fire claimed the life of an old man in Nipigon, a couple of teenagers were struck by a train while crossing the tracks at Wild Goose Park, both were in critical condition but expected to survive, the city had put a restriction on the use of water after our thirtieth day without significant rain, gardens and lawns could only be watered twice a week, violators would be fined, forest fires were raging out of control along the trans Canada just past Dryden, British troops were positioned in Londonderry. All-in-all it was a good day for a road trip. I rolled over on my side and fell back to sleep.