4. Food Stamps, Kerosene, and Pipe Dreams…

Note: This is the fourth installment of the serial publication of my memoirs, “What’s Left Behind.” To read previous chapters, go to https://medium.com/whats-left-behind.

“Hello, Aileen,” Nick, the deli-man, said to my mother, then looked to me. “Hey, kiddo.”

I offered my customary sheepish smile as my mother began placing her order.

“Can I get a pound of tuna salad? Ash, go get the bread and soda.”

“I’m sorry, Aileen. I can’t,” Nick said solemnly.

My mother, fully unequipped for his response, stood speechless.

“I’m sorry,” Nick continued. “But I can’t have you charge anything until your tab is cleared up. It’s too high.”

“How much is it?”

“Almost $400.”

My mother was silent. I remember the expression of fear on her face, the shock. I watched tears well up in her eyes.

Ever since my father started disappearing, the man who owned the delicatessen around the corner let us have food almost daily, holding a tab for her until my father came back and paid it off. Typically, this supplied us with tuna salad, cold cuts, egg sandwiches, and coffee and cigarettes for her. Nothing extravagant, and almost always the same thing every day.

“Please, Nick,” my mother pleaded. “I’m sure Patrick will be back in a few days, and he’ll pay it then. I have no food for the kids.”

“I’m really sorry. I can’t.”

As we walked back home, I snatched glimpses of my mother’s face. I shared her silent suffering, wondering if she was scared like me, thinking I should say something to make her feel better.

But what?

There was nothing to say.

For the rest of that afternoon, my mother sat quietly at the dining room table, making phone calls and crying.

“Okay, thank you,” I heard her say into the telephone. “I’ll be over in a few minutes. Aisling,” she added, hanging up the phone and rising from her chair, “get dressed.”

I wanted to know where we were going, but I had learned that when my mother was sad, there was no use asking questions because I wouldn’t get an answer anyway.

The sun had already set as we made our way down County Road to the Church of St. Francis. Dead of winter, the streets were cold and quiet.

Inside, the church was warm, dimly lit by gothic lanterns and flickering candles — an aesthetic bestowing omnipotent solace and hope that still captivates me today. I ran my hand along the wooden pews as we walked toward the chapel entrance at the front of the church. My mother went inside as I stood by the altar, poring over the stoic countenance of Jesus hanging above me; it was the first time I had seen Him since I learned He wasn’t actually sleeping up there. There was more to it, something I didn’t quite understand, and I stood searching His face for answers.

Minutes later my mother returned, her arms embracing a large cardboard box.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Food.”

Back home, I opened the box and, sure enough, it was filled with food — packages of pasta, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and Quaker oatmeal; cans of Spaghetti-O’s, tuna fish, and Campbell’s soup. My heart gave a little leap with the distinct feeling that in the course of that cold, long winter, Christmas had just come twice.

That was the same winter my mother applied for food stamps. Then we were able to buy real food: milk and juice, eggs, cheese, bacon and chicken…even London broil! But there was only one grocery store in the area that accepted them: The Associated Supermarket on the furthest outskirts of town. I remember walking the distance with my mother, then piling into a taxi back home, where she usually cooked my favorite dinner of meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Unfortunately, having good food was irrelevant when there was no gas to cook it or electricity to keep it refrigerated, and neither St. Francis nor food stamps could help pay utilities. Cable TV quickly became an automatic luxury and the telephone an amenity we could do without; the electricity, heat, and water were regularly turned off and back on, and, typically, paying for one came at the expense of another.

The worst, by far, was not having heat in the winter — which also meant no hot water. To warm the bathwater, we added pots of boiled water heated on the stovetop; most of the day, the oven was left on at max temperature with the door wide open to take the chill out of the air — until the gas bill got so high the stove became inoperable, as well.

Eventually, it didn’t matter whether my parents could pay the oil bill because the furnace had fallen into such disrepair the oilman advised them to stop using it at once. Despite his warning, that oil burner was worked until its last breath. I still remember how you could see the fire burning through a hole that had rotted through the structure — a source of unadulterated terror once I had watched Nightmare on Elm Street.

Together with the oven, we had a kerosene heater that helped us through the winters. It was cream-colored with metal caging around its center, and there was a small window in front where you could watch the fire burning, kind of like a low-budget fireplace. I would walk with my mother through the snow to the Getty gas station to fill the little red tank with kerosene, then return home where she, Colin, and I would all pile onto the Castro-Convertible sofa bed — situated as close to the kerosene heater as was safely possible — and tuck the blankets in all around us to keep warm. My most vivid memory of that kerosene heater, however, was the night I found my teddy bear sitting on top of it; Colin, wanting to see how long it would take for him to catch fire, had charred his entire backside leaving it forever black and crispy.

Eventually, in order to make ends meet, my mother started working. In hindsight, I recognize how difficult this must have been. For one thing, I don’t think my mother had ever worked a day in her life — and she had no formal training in anything other than her incomplete beauty school education that fell through the cracks when she got pregnant with William. But also, and perhaps more significantly, my mother was mortally afraid of anything new or different.

The jobs were always small — like cleaning houses or doing inventory of the greeting cards at Cheap John’s — and it never seemed long before she moved on from one job to another. Yet, to her credit she confronted her fears and did what she had to to care for her children.

The whole time my father was gone, he was a mere five miles away, sleeping in a cozy bed with his girlfriend, Karen, in a house lavished with hot water, electricity, and plenty of food.

I know my mother couldn’t believe he was working. That was just plain stupid. But my mother needed my father. Her self-esteem was so depleted, her fear of being alone so debilitating, there was almost nothing she wouldn’t tolerate. And though I understand this now, the confusion I experienced as a child was overwhelming — my ambivalence toward my father, particularly so. I knew he was responsible for much of our suffering, yet I longed each day for his returns home because, with them, came all the luxuries of good food and hot water.

Whenever my father did come home, I couldn’t help believing that everything would get better. I was sure that my parents would be together again — this time things would be different, this time my father would stay. Once again we would have family outings to my grandparents’ house and spend summer days with Aunt Gayle and my cousins. I bubbled with excitement over all of the things my father promised, all of the renovations he was going to do to make our home a wonderful place to live. I had always dreamed of living in a beautiful house and I knew from the photo album of my father’s many construction projects that, if anyone could make that happen, it was him.

So, time and again, I swallowed my father’s words, hook, line, and sinker; like my mother, I turned a blind eye on the past and believed things would be different. But in the end it seemed that having my father transform our dilapidated house into a magnificent home was the more rational of my expectations. Having him actually be a part of my life was nothing more than a pipe dream.

Continue on to Chapter 5: Mothers and Daughters and Castles in the Sky…