Chapter 14 #2
The week before Christmas the extra check finally arrived.
When I peered through mailbox 218’s tiny glass window, I was thrilled by the white envelope printed with the return address of 1414 DuPont Building, 169 E.
Flagler Street, Miami. My excited fingers spun the combination dial lock, and I tucked the check in my coat pocket, running all the way home.
That afternoon Mom took us to Asheville to celebrate at the Tunnel Road Shopping Center, recently renamed the Innsbruck Mall.
I was enthralled with the indoor shops and their big glass entrances.
I loved the splashing fountain where coins were tossed, mostly pennies and nickels.
Had no one been around, I would have waded in for them.
There was very little my family could afford at the mall.
I remember a jewelry store, a hobby shop, an Appliance Mart, a Fabric Barn, and a Hickory Farms with free samples that we’d indulge in as much as decency allowed.
Mom adored the sausages, the handcrafted cheeses, the fancy mustards, and crackers.
We’d roam the aisles tasting whatever we could without appearing piggish.
Mom prided herself on not being a mooch, as she called it.
She always bought something in the end, usually a summer sausage and block of smoked cheese that I loved.
We’d shave thin slices, making the delicacies last as long as possible.
I’m sure we would have stopped in Hickory Farms when we visited the mall in December 1965.
No doubt, Mom bought a few treats, feeling flush with her extra check.
Walt Disney’s That Darn Cat had just hit the mall’s Terrace Theater, and we ducked in to see it.
I was intrigued by a cat solving a bank robbery, wishing I had thought of it for one of my stories.
Afterward, we ate dinner at Shoney’s restaurant, where I indulged in a Big Boy burger and onion rings.
We shared a hot fudge cake and slice of strawberry pie, my brothers stabbing in their forks for the biggest bites.
Not long after this, a bad snowstorm hit, and the schools closed. Mom’s car got stuck on her way home from the grocery store, and she had to walk the rest of the way carrying bags. When she got home, she called our minister’s wife, Dorothy Thielman, and talked bizarrely.
“I drove back from the store and there was blood all over the road,” Mom reported.
When she was unstable her paranoia bloomed, and the atmosphere inside our house got increasingly chaotic that holiday season.
What Dad had set into motion during his visit in August was about to crescendo, and I wonder if that was his intention.
She used to swear that he wanted her to commit suicide, and maybe he did.
It would have saved him a lot of money, if nothing else.
Despite it all, she harbored a secret belief that he’d come back.
He’d been wildly in love with her once. How could that have changed?
She believed he’d suffered a bout of mental illness, and that’s why he left.
He would get well and return to his senses.
She talked about him constantly, telling stories, the good and the awful.
By the age of nine, I was her unwilling confidante as we’d take walks or run errands.
She’d regale me with morbid accounts about growing up in Chicago, and her traumas.
The only thing she didn’t mention was her time in the orphanage.
I don’t recall her offering a single memory about those four years.
The rest of her life, it was a verboten subject, and that doesn’t bode well for what went on while she was there.
But she didn’t hesitate to tell me about men she’d been with, calling them by name, detailing where they went on dates right down to the meals she ate, her descriptions sensuous and cinematic.
But mostly she obsessed about Dad, graphically describing their sex life and when they stopped having one.
Without intending to, that’s how she taught me the facts of life and then some.
I didn’t mind sharing my titillating insights with other kids in school and was quite skilled in drawing “dirty pictures” to illustrate my precocious carnal knowledge.
I was doing this a lot in Mrs. Skidmore’s class, passing my lusty sketches back and forth to the boy sitting behind me, Joey Cort.
Yes, I’m talking about the same Mad magazine Joey who likely stole my pencil in Mrs. Hickey’s class.
In the fourth grade he was my boyfriend of sorts and lewd accomplice until we got caught. Better put, I did eventually. Mrs. Skidmore intercepted some of my rather shocking artwork, taking me aside one day for a private conversation.
“This is awkward to bring up,” she started in, showing me the evidence. “Why are you drawing dirty pictures, Patsy?”
“I guess I thought it was funny.”
“Well, it’s not. Was it your idea or Joey’s?”
She showed me several of his attempts, the stick figures lacking the anatomical details present in my fine art.
“I did it first,” I confessed. “And then he did. But he’s not very good at drawing.”
“Where did you get the idea?”
“Things I’ve heard.” I wasn’t going to rat on my mother.
“Well, you’re not to do it anymore.” Mrs. Skidmore was firm but kind. “Or talk about such things with the other kids. When you’re older, you’ll understand. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My behavior was the obvious sequelae to Mom filling my mind with provocative images that I shouldn’t have entertained at such a young age.
Especially when it involved my parents. This, added to my encounter with the patrolman in Miami, had awakened my sexuality.
I was intrigued by males and females alike, curious about them physically and prone to crushes.
No doubt, my mother had grown up similarly.
She was passing on to me what had been her early experience when at the mercy of anyone inappropriate.
I now realize our walks were her therapy as she detailed foreplay, what happened in bed, her abortions.
She treated me like a best friend or mental health professional, seemingly unaware that I was her daughter and a child.