9. Treasure Troves, Tupperware, and a Turn of Events…
Note: This is the ninth installment of the serial publication of my memoirs, “What’s Left Behind.” To read previous chapters, go to https://medium.com/whats-left-behind.
When I was little, I had a habit of rummaging through my mother’s closet — a chaotic shambles of hidden treasure, including a mountain of clothes I could fit into before I turned ten, an assortment of arts and crafts that rivaled Mrs. Quidbee’s art room, and stashes of coins that helped fortify my precious booty of Garbage Pail Kids.
One morning, I came across a tatty, leather handbag containing a wad of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I had only ever seen that much money when I played Monopoly.
But this money wasn’t pink, blue, or gold. It was green — the real stuff!
Later that day I was next door, playing with my friend Billie.
“You wanna see something cool?” I asked.
“What?”
“Come with me.”
My mother had gone to the store and no one was home. So I led Billie over to my house and into my parents’ bedroom.
“It’s in here,” I said, sliding the closet door open and kneeling inside. I dug under a pile of clothes, locating the handbag and pulling out the envelope of money.
“Oh, my gosh!” Billie gasped, taking the wad of bills and turning it over in her hand. “What’s it for?”
“I don’t know.”
In the next room, I heard the front door open. I threw the envelope back into the bag, shoved it under the pile of clothes, and Billie and I dashed across the hall into my room.
Back when my mother became pregnant with William, she dropped out of beauty school and never returned. This didn’t pose much of a problem as a stay-at-home mother with a husband who made a decent salary — until my father started leaving, taking all the money with him, and she found herself at a loss.
What my mother lacked in formal training and education, she made up for with resourcefulness, always scouting out unique ways to “make money at home,” taking up semi-lucrative opportunities like selling Avon, embroidering pillows, and stuffing envelopes for marketing companies.
On this particular day, she was selling Tupperware.
I sat on the sofa with my mother’s friend, looking through shopping bags full of assorted plastic containers.
“Carol, can I use your phone? I wanna see if Patrick is home yet.”
I felt the tension spike as my mother exited the room. While I knew Carol from their aerobics class, I never liked when my mother left me alone with someone else. To all appearances, I remained composed and indifferent; inside, my nerves were smoldering.
Then, not more than a minute or two after she disappeared into the kitchen, my mother returned — in a frenzy.
“Ash, let’s go,” she urged me, tossing the Tupperware back into the bags and bidding her friend a hasty goodbye.
Clueless and bemused, I followed my mother’s lead, scurrying out the door after her, trying not to drop anything.
Dusk had already settled in and by the time we reached home ten minutes later, it was nearly dark.
My mother and I made the turn off Main Street onto Seventh Avenue. Two police cars were parked in front of the house and from the corner, I could hear my father inside, yelling. I glanced up at my mother. Ostensibly, her demeanor was firm. Focused. But the illuminating cadence of red and blue emergency lights revealed something more: that ever-too-familiar tinge of enduring fear.
“Patrick, what happened?” my mother asked, walking through the front door, me in tow, my arms full of Tupperware.
“The money, Aileen. It’s gone!”
“What do you mean?”
“The $5,000!” my father lashed out. “It’s NOT THERE!”
The officers stood by in quiet oversight as my parents proceeded to quarrel.
Somehow, it came to light that I had shown Billie the money. Most likely, someone asked if I had seen it and, thinking nothing of it, offered up this tidbit of information willingly — at which point, my father, without hesitation, charged out of the front door and over to the Scanavino’s house. I ran after the officers, who were trailed closely by my mother, all of us in pursuit of my irate father.
“Daddy, she didn’t take your money!” I shouted, but he had already begun pounding on the neighbor’s door.
“Where’s your daughter?” My father barked when Mrs. Scanavino appeared. From behind him, I could see Billie standing at the top of the stairwell.
“W-what the hell d-d-do you want w-with m-m-my d-d-d-daughter?” she stammered, encumbered by an aphasic stutter she had developed after a recent stroke.
“Sir, calm down!” one of the officers said to my father.
“Don’t you fucking tell me to CALM DOWN!” he screamed, his voice breaking under the strain of its own amplitude. “That kid stole my money!”
“Sir, if you don’t relax, we’re gonna take you in. Do you want that?”
My father rounded on the policeman with an expression I knew too well — an expression routinely followed by an onslaught of brutality typically directed at my mother. This time he could only respond with a bristling silence.
“Now, get back to your house,” the officer demanded, “until we can figure out what’s going on.”
I followed my parents across the Scanavino’s front lawn back to our own yard, while the officers stayed behind to investigate my father’s claim — although there wasn’t much to investigate, considering Billie was seven years old and my father was a stark-raving lunatic.
Just as we arrived, a familiar car pulled into the driveway. Out stepped my Uncle Liam.
As a child, I always had a particular fondness for my father’s brother. I can’t be sure why, but I remember always wanting to be near him, always feeling content and comfortable in his presence, and feeling disappointment if he wasn’t present at family gatherings when I expected him to be.
It was rare that my uncle Liam ever came to our house, and so when he happened to come over at a time when I felt especially frightened, I immediately gravitated to his side.
“What’s going on, Pat?” Liam asked.
My father told his brother about the money, although his explanation was brief, almost perfunctory, and his rant redirected, instead, toward my mother. I sat on the sofa, nestled close to Liam, as my father presented a bitter diatribe on my mother’s disgraceful role as a housewife.
“You wanna see what she has in the refrigerator?”
“Pat, that’s not necessary,” Liam contested.
“No. Come! I wanna show you what I come home to.”
Despite Liam’s objection, my father persisted, pulling him into the kitchen where the dishes were piled high in the sink, spilling onto the counter. He opened the refrigerator to reveal nothing but a bottle of Heinz ketchup, a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi, and a package of Kraft American cheese.
“This is what I have to eat when I get home: ketchup and cheese!” He slammed the refrigerator door, and I heard the bottle of soda thump around inside. “And look at all these dishes! How the fuck can you have dirty dishes if you never cook?”
I remained affixed to my uncle’s side as my father continued his tirade, increasingly incensed and disorganized.
Somewhere along the way, the policeman had gone, and the $5,000 that started everything was all but forgotten.
By the time the money went missing, my father had essentially gone, as well. He no longer came home to get his things — or even just say hi — and once my mother came home with a man named Eric, I never again saw my father inside the house.
My mother never explained who Eric was. But it didn’t really need explaining. There’s something intuitive about your mother bringing home another man; you just know who they are. And any doubts that may have remained were answered once Eric moved in.
Eric was tall and slim, with a thick mustache and shaggy brown hair forever tucked beneath a worn-out baseball cap. He worked in the seafood department at Shop Rite, and we used to tease him because his last name was Fonda and he drove a Honda.
Eric was the most affable, fun-loving person I had known as a child. Always ready for a game of Sorry! or UNO, he taught me how to play backgammon and crazy eights — as well as darts and billiards on those nights my mother couldn’t find a babysitter and had no choice but to take me with them to the bars.
Eric’s parents lived in a luxurious house in Cold Spring Harbor with a huge in-ground swimming pool, where Eric helped me conquer my mother’s fear of water and taught me how to swim — an essential considering Eric had a small red powerboat and took us out on the water, regularly.
With Eric, I got to do things I don’t remember ever doing with my father — like taking piggyback rides, playing hide-and-go-seek, and going to the beach and to drive-in movies. Trips to Bennigan’s were the norm, where I ordered my favorite taco bowl that was bigger than my head while Eric made a beeline for the salad bar, piling a mountain of shrimp on his plate, and Colin inevitably got scolded for rivaling him with an equally large plateful of jalapeños, from which he never succeeded in eating more than two peppers.
Most memorably, my mother reclaimed a certain joy she hadn’t had since I was in kindergarten. No longer so depressed, she also worked more, and between herself and Eric, we enjoyed all those things we lacked when my father was gone — like electricity, water, heat…and food! But most importantly, for the first time I could remember, there was no more fighting.
It was — in the course of my own memories — the most stable our home had ever been.
Continue on to Chapter 10: Sandboxes, Flea Bombs, and False Hope…
