Riding Fury Home Read online

  I looked over at Dad. He was belting out “Silent Night” along with the rest, word for word: Christ the savior is born; Chri-ist the savior is born.

  THE FOLLOWING SPRING, AS a present for my eighth birthday, Dad brought a puppy home from work. Dad’s coworker had a scientist wife who worked at a drug company where they used dogs in experiments. She’d rescued one puppy from a lab litter for Dad.

  “What should we name him?” Dad asked as he handed me the ball of short brown, black, and white fur. I hugged him to my chest and smelled his puppy breath. With no hesitation, I said, “Happy.” I was naming him after my favorite stuffed animal, the battered tan dog.

  Happy was a foxhound. As he grew, his hunting instincts emerged; he loved to root around, nose close to the earth. Often, he would dig up moles from our backyard, legs frantically pawing the earth, dirt flying. Once he caught it, Happy would hold the mole gently in his teeth and then flip it in the air, breaking its neck. I felt sorry for those little moles, blind to the sun, flying into the light, and sometimes yelled at Happy to quit that, but I must admit, it was a sight to see.

  The following summer, when Happy was one, Dad and I were swimming in the river. We waded in from our next-door neighbors’ yard because they had a sandbar that made getting in easier. I was near the shore when I heard Happy’s deep low growl, and I scrambled out of the river. His warning sound made my bones quiver, but the brambles along the river edge were too thick and I couldn’t see him. I was wearing only my wet bathing suit, leaving my exposed legs too vulnerable to go plunging through the blackberry thorns. Then I heard another sound—the snarls of some strange, unseen animal—followed by a yelp that sent my breast pounding: Happy’s cry of pain. What animal had he cornered? “Happy, here boy, COME HERE!” I called desperately.

  I looked up to see the Reformed Church minister approaching. It was his yard, two over from ours, where Happy was engaged in battle. The minister wasn’t wearing his black suit with the white collar today, just an ordinary shirt and work pants.

  “Reverend Reverend (I wasn’t sure what you called a minister, but it was the closest I could think of). My dog’s fighting some animal . . . can you see?” The minister pushed his way partly into the undergrowth, disappeared for a couple minutes, and then reappeared from the bushes. “Your dog’s cornered a coon. Nothing to be done. They fight to the death, you know.”

  The world was spinning, trees and sky, and then I steadied myself with hate, glaring at the minister. You coward, I thought, you’re not even going to try to help! I wheeled then, running to the riverbank to Dad. He hadn’t heard Happy’s bark when I had taken off to see what that sound was. I hadn’t stopped to explain.

  I yelled to him about Happy’s being in a fight with a raccoon. He treaded water and yelled back, “Run to the Jansens’ and ask them for their hunting rifle. Tell them to put the safety on and bring it to me.”

  My hummingbird heart thrummed as I ran, dripping river water. Breathless, my tale spilled out to Mrs. Jansen. The small, blond woman bent her face close to mine, then yelled for her husband Malcolm. He was her opposite, a tall giant who strode into the kitchen on his long legs. “We can’t give a rifle to an eight-year-old girl!” she said, frowning toward him, not looking at me.

  “Please, please, it’s for my dad, I’ll be careful, I’ll be real careful,” I pleaded. My Happy, don’t let him die.

  “Jenny, go get her the gun from the cabinet,” Malcolm commanded. “I’ll put the safety on. Abe won’t let her get hurt.”

  The rifle was almost as long as me. I held it cradled in both arms, hefting the weight that could be my dog’s savior. When I got to the brambles, I careened to a halt. Dad was waiting, holding Happy by the collar. “It’s okay,” he said. Happy looked fine; only a few drops of blood splattered on one side of his face, red against his white muzzle, and I couldn’t tell if they were his or the coon’s.

  I gave Dad the rifle, sank to my knees next to Happy, my face against his neck, inhaling his sweet dog odor. “You bad dog,” I cried, muffled, into his coat. I squeezed him tighter. “You bad, bad dog.”

  Chapter 10. Sweetie

  JUST AS I STARTED third grade, the old woman next door, recently widowed, moved out of her big house. When a huge moving van stopped on our street, I stood in our driveway, watching the commotion. A wood-paneled station wagon pulled up behind the moving van; a mom, a dad, and five kids piled out—two girls close to my age and three big teenage boys.

  I retreated down our driveway, too shy to meet them. But the next day, when I heard the sound of girls yelling and giggling, I made myself go out and stand by the fence bordering our yards. The sisters stopped their game of tag and came over to the fence to invite me to play with them.

  Sharon, eight like me, and Kim, a year older, became my best friends. Dad didn’t have to worry anymore about what family I would be staying with after school; I was right next door at the O’Briens’ every day when he got home from work.

  After school, Kim, Sharon, and I played horses in their backyard. We would drag out three chopped-off sawhorses that their dad stored in the small barn on their property. We faced the low sawhorses, snorting and pawing the ground with our feet, neighing like wild mares and stallions. One by one, we cantered and leapt over the sawhorses. “Naaaaaay,” we bellowed after each triumphant leap, tossing our heads back.

  On Sundays, Dad and I visited Mom. She’d been moved to the county mental hospital after the insurance ran out. Now, all pretext of a country club setting was completely absent. There was a Plexiglas window in the front nurses’ station where visitors were required to hand over any bags to be searched. Then we were buzzed through the locked door. Dad and I walked down a long hall reeking of disinfectant to the ward’s common room, which was thick with cigarette smoke. All I remember of my mother on those visits were her eyes: dull and glassy, with drooping eyelids. I never spoke to Kim and Sharon about my visits to the mental hospital, and by some unspoken agreement they never asked about my absent mother.

  THAT WINTER, KIM GOT the most incredible birthday present: an actual horse. Sweetie was a chestnut quarter horse, so ancient that her spine was deeply swayback. She was stabled in their barn. After school, the three of us cleaned the stable and gave Sweetie fresh hay, feed, and water, currying her while she docilely chomped her oats. I loved the pungent horse smell as I brushed her, leaning my face close to her warm, brown coat.

  Sweetie was so old that Kim’s parents said only Kim was allowed to ride her, for fear that if we all took turns, we might give the poor horse a heart attack. Sharon and I would watch mournfully as Kim astride Sweetie disappeared slowly down the path to the river, and then we would go off and play our pretend horse game.

  THE NEXT SUMMER, BETWEEN third and fourth grade, Kim, Sharon, and I got the idea of putting on a circus, inspired by the swaybacked Sweetie, who was to be our star attraction. We recruited Barbie, a girl who lived two houses down. Barbie’s backyard had the perfect circus setting: a large, flat meadow. Barbie also had a hand-me-down drum majorette costume with a yellow and maroon pleated miniskirt and a tall hat with a grand yellow plume. That outfit earned her the honor of being the ringmaster.

  Kim, Sharon, Barbie, and I practiced in Barbie’s meadow. We enlisted Cheryl Ann, Barbie’s younger sister, to be our percussionist; her job was to beat on a bongo drum with a stick. We made tickets on colored construction paper and walked door-to-door through town, selling them to other kids and a few parents.

  The day of the circus we were all in a frenzy, barely able to contain ourselves. “Hurry up! Hurry up!” we yelled to each other as we ran back and forth from the shed to the adjacent meadow, setting up folding chairs in a circle. In Barbie’s kitchen, we made two pitchers of Minute Maid frozen lemonade and cooked four pans of Jiffy Pop over her mom’s stovetop. The kitchen was thick with the smell of burnt popcorn kernels. Barbie’s younger brother, Bob Junior, would be selling our refreshments at a wobbly folding table just outside the circle of c
hairs.

  We each tore home to put on our costumes. I was playing Weary Willie, the sad clown, a hobo in tattered clothing with a forlorn face. I’d seen the famous Emmett Kelly play him at Ringling Brothers Circus one time. Now, I raced in our front door and down the hall into the living room.

  Dad had told me Mom would be coming home on a weekend pass, and when I got there, Mom was sitting on the couch.

  “Honey, go get your outfit on, and then I’ll put on your clown face,” Mom said.

  I nodded, and bolted up the stairs. Dad had given me an old shirt and pants of his, and had helped me cut the sleeves and legs shorter; then we’d shredded the remaining arms and legs in strips to make a tramp costume. I tucked in the shirt and clipped red suspenders onto the oversize pants to hold them up.

  Downstairs, Mom took me into our tiny half-bathroom. She set her lit cigarette in an ashtray balanced on the corner of the sink. Smoke spiraled up in a gray wisp. While I sat on the toilet, she leaned in close. Her hands shook, but she got my frown on okay. I leapt up to stare in the mirror and pop on my red clown nose. Around this mother who’d become a stranger, I stayed withdrawn. “Thanks, Mom,” I mumbled as I raced from the house.

  BARBIE STOOD POISED in the center of the ring in her drum majorette outfit, her baton raised. “Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you the Greatest Show on Earth! And for our first act we bring you, straight from Barnum and Bailey Circus: Weary Willie!”

  I stepped into the ring, and for a moment just looked around. Every seat was filled, and there were even some parents standing behind their kid’s chairs. The squirming kids with their hands deep in bags of popcorn got still and stared in my direction. The hush of the audience’s attention hit me like an electric charge. I marched to the center, where a bucket waited. I jammed my foot into the plastic bucket, then tried to walk, dragging it along. Giggles erupted around me. I tried to shake the bucket off, tripped, rolled around on the ground, and staggered up with it still on my foot, throwing my hands in the air. From all sides came loud ha ha has! Elated, I plunged into a double somersault, then limped off, bucket still attached.

  After several other acts came our finale: Kim riding Sweetie bareback. Flutophone blast, drum-banging hailed our pièce de ré-sistance: Kim hoisted herself to kneel on Sweetie’s bare back, arms raised triumphantly, while Sweetie walked once around the ring, our spectators clapping and whistling.

  All the performers gathered in the center of the ring, grabbed hands, and took our bows. As the audience rose and began milling around, Kim and Sharon and I kept laughing and banging each other on our backs. We had done it!

  DURING THE WINTER holiday came terrible news: Mr. O’Brien, Kim and Sharon’s dad, was taking a new job in California. It was a mythic place as far away from New Jersey as Oz, and I would lose my friends to the land of Hollywood and orange groves. Kim’s parents told her some other horrible news: She couldn’t bring Sweetie. They sold Sweetie to another family, along with her gear and the horse trailer. Sharon and I stood on either side of a sobbing Kim, crying ourselves, as we watched Sweetie get loaded into the trailer and hauled away.

  Just before Valentine’s Day, the moving van pulled up outside their house. Kim and Sharon and I had given each other our Valentine’s cards the week before. We stood next to their car, hugging each other and crying, when Mr. O’Brien yelled, “Let’s get going!”

  I watched the O’Briens pile into their station wagon and head for the sun.

  Chapter 11. Mom Returns

  THE MOTHER WHO CAME home after more than two years away was terribly altered from the mother I had known, although I could barely remember that mother. I was in the middle of fourth grade when she returned. Her body was a different shape: The slender, petite mom was now fat and puffy from drugs. She was sent home with a pharmacy-load of pills: barbiturates, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills. I learned words like “Miltown,” “Librium,” “Doriden.” She staggered around the house, eyelids drooping, slurring her words when she did speak, but more often silently puffing on a cigarette.

  My father knew it was time to put her to bed in the evenings after she’d taken her sleeping pills when she could no longer coordinate bringing the cigarette to her mouth, hitting her cheek or chin with the unlit end.

  Some nights I could hear them arguing in their bedroom while lying in the dark in my bedroom. Dad would be pleading, “Come on, Glor, put out the cigarette. You gotta go to sleep now.” I could tell he was trying to be nice, but he sounded mad.

  “Not yet, Abe, pleeease, jus’ one more cigarette,” Mom cajoled.

  “Jesus Christ, Gloria!” Now he really was mad.

  “Jus’ one more pu . . . ” Mom’s voice dropped off as she nodded off.

  ONE DAY, I CAME HOME from school to find Mom sitting at the dining table; all her cameras and lenses lay on the table. She had a strange, lost expression, staring at the cameras like she couldn’t quite see them.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She looked up, as if startled out of a daydream. “I’m waiting for the man from the photography shop in Somerville. He’s coming to buy my cameras.”

  I wanted to ask why, but just then there was the crunching sound of a car coming down our gravel driveway. Mom got up.

  Before she married Dad, my mother had had two careers: one as a laboratory chemist, the other as a portrait photographer. During the week, she worked in a research laboratory. On the weekends, she worked in her photography studio and darkroom in the basement of her parents’ home. After she married Dad, she stopped doing much photography. There were almost no photos of me or Dad.

  When Mom was away, I used to look through the cardboard box of her black-and-white photographs stashed in our back room. I was especially intrigued by the ones of Uncle Marvin, the brother Mom had been so close to. In his black turtleneck and beret, he looked like a beatnik artist. I stared at the photos, as if I could learn something of Mom that way.

  Mom led the man to the table. I watched him pick up the cameras and lenses and the flash attachments, the wide-angle and telephoto lenses, and examine them one by one. “Nice,” he said under his breath, as if he were alone and talking to himself, “Very nice.” Then louder, “Mrs. Wilson, I’ll give you seventy-five bucks for the lot.”

  Mom didn’t argue, just stood there silently while he counted out the money into her hand.

  TOWARD THE END OF fourth grade, I began to brag at school that my family was spending the next year in England. My father had been awarded a research grant to work abroad for a year. The plan was for us all to move to London. I was wild with excitement, imagining that Mom and Dad and I would live in an exotic foreign country with Big Ben and people who talked with funny accents, where everything would be different, including us.

  But then Mom began to get worse. She was weak from an increased dosage of pills and stumbling around the house. She began to say she didn’t want to go. Mom’s psychiatrist called Dad and said he doubted Mom could cope with such change. It was decided: Mom and I would stay in Millstone; Dad would go alone to England. Dad hired a neighbor woman, an elderly widow, to come live with us, to cook and be a companion to Mom.

  At the beginning of the summer, Mom and I saw Dad off. He was traveling on the Queen Elizabeth, the largest ocean liner in the world. We took the train into New York City, and a taxi to the harbor. At the dock, the gigantic ship loomed with its rows and rows of windows, smoke already rising from its two red smokestacks tipped with black. We went on board with Dad for the hour they let the friends of travelers visit. We wandered the huge ship, along its teak decks, into ballrooms with elaborate wood trim and gilt chandeliers as if on a family outing, as if I wasn’t about to lose a father, the one parent who had taken care of me for as long as I could remember.

  The deep bass warning whistle blew—all visitors ashore. I was numb as Dad hugged me goodbye. Mom took my hand and we walked down the gangplank. We stood on the pier, looking up, and waving. My hand fluttered in the air, as if detached from my body
. The tugboats pushed the great ship into the New York harbor until the people on deck became tiny figures.

  I kept waving. Bye, Dad, bye.

  Chapter 12. Alone with Mom

  MRS. KELLER, THE WIDOW Dad had hired to live with Mom and me, never showed up. Her adult children talked her out of it. “What if something happens?” they asked. “You’d be held responsible. It’s not worth it.”

  It took two weeks for that news to cross the Atlantic Ocean and reach my father. He left his laboratory at Imperial College and made his way to the Thames, where he sat on a stone barricade, weeping. Then, he paced the London streets. What to do? Years later, in my thirties, I confronted him: “How could you have left me there, alone with Mom?” Dad answered, “I was desperate. I was drowning. I would have thrown my own mother to the dogs.”

  My father left me with a mother I barely knew. During the year he was gone, I formed an intense, fierce attachment with her.

  Each night, after my mother took her sleeping pills, she resisted sleep. Even as the medication dragged her under, some fear in her battled against tumbling into her dreams. She sat up in bed, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips as her head began to nod. I sounded just like Dad: “Come on, Mom, put it out!” I’d plead. “Jusss one more puff,” she slurred. When I switched off her bedroom light, the burning orange orb of her Tareyton glowed in the dark room. I’d go back, grab the cigarette, and smash it in the ashtray. Sometimes I’d swipe her pack of Tareytons out of reach. “Goddamnit, Mom, no more!”