Best Man Page 2

  * * *

  04

  Timothy

  My full name is Timothy O’Connor, and I knew at a very early age that I was different. I didn’t understand it, but somehow, I knew.

  I lived with my mother in a modest two-story frame house in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The home was just off MacArthur Boulevard on a quiet tree-lined street near the part of the city that was better known as Georgetown. There was relatively little traffic at most times of day, and almost everything a family might need was within walking distance. This included churches, a small supermarket, a movie theater, a small public library, the Potomac River, the C&O Canal, and a variety of recreational areas and parks with both natural and maintained landscapes.

  • • • • •

  When I think back to my childhood, there are many wonderful memories. What others may have encountered only on their television screens was a daily part of my life. What seems most vivid to me now is the freedom that existed for a young boy at that time.

  I suppose that my recollections are biased in favor of what was good, as I have heard many times that the human mind represses the remembrance of unpleasant events and images. If that is true, then it is all the better. My boyhood was filled with adventures and excitement, some of it real and much of it imagined, or at least invented as part of playing with other young boys and girls.

  Many of my fondest memories come from the long, warm days of summertime, when I had no school and could devote my free time to exploring what seemed to be a vast and uncharted world. Of course, I am describing here the real and physical exploits that I shared with my childhood friends. These experiences were quite different from the adventures that took place in my mind, solitary exploits that I shall not discuss until later.

  One Christmas, my mother gave me a bicycle. It was not one of those ten-speed racing bikes that became popular subsequently but a rugged one-speed bike with brakes that worked by stepping backward on the pedals. I think it was a Schwinn, and when I first got it, it was a little too big for me. But that was okay. I could reach the pedals, and I knew it would be perfect once I grew a little more.

  Depending on the specifics of how I was playing with my friends, the bicycle took on its own magical qualities. I might have been riding a horse or even a motorcycle. We practiced many daring feats with our bicycles, running beside them and jumping on, or even jumping off while riding fairly fast. That could have been because we were bank robbers escaping the scene of our latest heist or we were cowboys being shot from our horses by rustlers or some other villains.

  It was of considerable importance for some of these games that there were several grassy fields not far from my house. Diving from a bike onto a grassy surface was a very different story from crashing in a paved parking lot. One of the fields was the Palisades Park, and another was the Reservoir Field, located as one might expect to the side of the Georgetown Reservoir. There was the occasional skinned knee and more frequent instances of torn jeans, but due to skill, or at least good fortune, there were no broken bones.

  I find it difficult to recall many of these escapades in their chronological sequence, but that is of little consequence. I might have been eight years old or even twelve, but age had little to do with the triumphs of my boyhood. At that time in our lives, we were free from the constraints imposed by adult standards of age-appropriate behavior.

  If we went for an afternoon hike on a wooded trail through the woods of Glover Archbold Park, it mattered little if we got lost. The edge of the park was only a half mile from my house, and we always knew that walking uphill from the trail would take us out of the park and back into civilization. And, of course, I never went on such an adventure without my compass. From Glover Archbold, my house, or at the very least, my neighborhood, was to the west. Adults might have worried about being lost, but never we brave children.

  In light of the ills of modern society, you might wonder how our parents could ever have allowed us to roam so freely on these excursions. No adult supervision, no cellphones, no specified emergency procedures at all. The answer is quite straightforward. Those were very different times. Even today, my old neighborhood is a safe place to go for an afternoon or evening stroll, and it is a part of Washington, D.C., that has little of the turmoil and clamor that one associates with the nation’s capital. In my childhood, we resided in a calm and easygoing enclave that in turn rested inside a larger but still tranquil city.

  A typical summer day might begin with a phone call to one of the other boys of about my age who lived nearby. Usually, either Jimmy or Tommy. Collectively, the three of us were “the guys.”

  There might well have been a conversation that began with a request. “Mom, is it okay if I go meet up with the guys?” Although it was probably more frequently presented as a statement of intent. “Mom, I’m going to go over to Tommy’s,” or “I’m going to Jimmy’s house,” or “The guys are coming over and then we’re going to go play.”

  In fairness, there was always the perfunctory insistence on details. “Where are you going?” and “When will you be back?” If the plan was for an all-day expedition, I might be told to bring a sandwich. Otherwise, it was a more straightforward, “Don’t be late for dinner.”

  The most common activity on those summer days was baseball. People tend to view this as a game between two teams of nine players, along with ancillary figures like coaches and umpires. The modern era of Little League has established this as the norm even for small children, but when I was young, such numbers were unnecessary. Any number of participants above one was sufficient.

  If there were only two of us, we could play catch. One throws, the other catches, and then it goes the other way. It might sound boring to someone who never played the game, but I submit that such a person has never been an American boy in earlier decades. The excitement could be palpable.

  For example, there were times when I would tell Jimmy, “Throw this one high. Make it a little over my head.”

  And then I would jump high to catch the ball, while I narrated the action like a television announcer, “… and Minnie Miñoso goes back to the wall! He jumps! And he grabs it! He just robbed Mickey Mantle of a home run! What a play!”

  In all of this, it wouldn’t have mattered that the ball had never been batted. This was a boy’s game, a fantasy, played the way boys played it. Nor did it make the slightest difference that Miñoso was a dark-skinned man from Cuba who bore no resemblance whatsoever to me. It was much more important that he was a star who had played for a year with the Washington Senators. And that he had just taken away a home run — at least in our vivid imaginations — from the player on the New York Yankees who was considered by many to be the best hitter in the major leagues. Who could ask for more on a warm summer day?

  If there were more than two of us, someone would bring a ball, and someone else would bring a bat. These were precious items that were treated with reverence. If Jimmy brought his baseball on a given day, I would leave mine at home so I could bring it the next time. We never knew when something might happen to the one ball we did have on a particular day. We could retrieve the ball from almost any calamity, usually an errant throw that went over a fence.

  As a result, we learned how to climb over, under, or around nearly any fence we encountered, although this sometimes meant that one of us would be yelled at or even chased by a security officer on one of the various government installations in our part of the city. But more than one ball was lost when it landed in a wooded area with heavy brush. We wouldn’t give up easily, but after a half hour, even the most dedicated participant would lose his enthusiasm. In that event, the ball would be declared lost.

  * * *

  05

  Mother

  My earliest years were idyllic. Many psychologists argue that our first memories go back only to the age of three or four, but I can recall some specific events from age one or two with great clarity.

  My mother doted on me. Especially wh
en I was very young. Consequently, my story, the story of Timothy, can be appreciated fully only by understanding the story of my mother.

  • • • • •

  Single mothers were uncommon when I was a child. And certainly, they were not respectable the way they are now. There were exceptions of course, and my mother was one such example. How could one criticize a woman who had lost her husband because he was serving his country? A man, who if not a recognized war hero, at the least was someone who had gone to Korea at the behest of his country.

  My mother, Mary O’Connor, herself a lifelong inhabitant of the District of Columbia, gave birth to me at the Columbia Hospital for Women in the West End neighborhood of the city. Two days later, she brought her new baby boy back to the small home she had purchased the previous year.

  Mary O’Connor grew up without a father. He had perished in the Bataan Death March, and she had seen the telegram. She told me all about it.

  It had been springtime, and it was her ninth birthday. She said the party had been grand, with schoolmates and friends from church playing games and eating a cake her mother had baked. She remembered being dizzy when they spun her around blindfolded, but somehow, she managed to pin the tail on the donkey. She blew out all nine candles with a single breath, and everyone clapped and cheered and laughed.

  Then that the doorbell rang. She remembered how one of the grownups looked out the window and turned to her mother with an expression of concern.

  “It’s the Western Union man.”

  The children didn’t know what that meant, and they continued their games, happily and noisily for the next minute or so. But then she saw her mother close the door with a yellow envelope in her hand. She was holding it at arm’s length, as though it were a snake or a rat, something that could bite. Something to be feared.

  With several of the other grown-up women close by her side, my grandmother tore open the envelope and looked at the enclosed message. She said nothing, but her head fell forward, and her entire body wilted as she collapsed into the arms of the other women.

  The children, one by one, began to notice. The silence wasn’t immediate but developed over half a minute, the sounds of delight fading into the darkness that would envelop my grandmother for the rest of her life. My mother ran to her and clung to her, desperately seeking the euphoria and sense of well-being that had pervaded their home only moments before.

  But it was not to be. Years later, it would have been diagnosed as severe depression, and it might have been treated successfully with drugs or therapy. But those options were not available at the time, and my mother soon found that she had switched roles with her mother. When she came home from school, she often cooked their dinner, and on weekends, she cleaned the house. Her mother was not an invalid, but she was often incapacitated. My mother became an adult before she was a teenager.

  Her mother’s health declined steadily over the years, and she was diagnosed with cancer when my mother was in high school and died within the year.

  My mother was a bright child, and it was the only reason that she wasn’t sent away to a home. Friends from church, and also the priests, helped her get through that last year of high school. There was some money from the government because her father had been killed in the war. She wasn’t sure how much money, but it was enough to sustain her. Financial support from the government and emotional support from the church. It was a pattern that would remain with her for the rest of her life.

  When she graduated from high school, someone from church helped her fill out several job applications, and my mother soon found herself working as a secretary for the federal government. It had always been a source of confusion that she couldn’t tell people exactly who she worked for. Her job application had been submitted to the Pentagon, and she had been interviewed at the Old Naval Observatory site, across the street from what was then the new home of the State Department.

  After she was hired, she reported to work every day to an office in one of the Quonset huts on the National Mall. Her paperwork stated that she worked for NAVSEA, the acronym for Naval Sea Systems Command. But none of the letters she typed, nor any of the paperwork she handled, ever mentioned the Navy. It was impossible to explain, and it was always easiest to follow the advice they gave her at the beginning. When someone asked, she just told them she worked for the government.

  • • • • •

  As I assured you earlier, I shall now write a few words about my earliest encounters with secrets. I could tell you many stories, but one or two will suffice.

  It began when I was about four, although at that time I did not understand it. Mostly, I recall the noise. It usually happened at night, when I was trying to sleep. I would hear sounds from the house next door. People talking, laughing, or arguing.

  Sometimes I would slide out of my bed and creep silently to the window. I remember that I was unable to make out what they were saying, or laughing about, or yelling about, and I realize now that I probably would not have understood their interactions anyway.

  On a few occasions, I was able to see shadowy figures against the window shades or curtains. I couldn’t see who the people were, but it didn’t matter. I knew that Mr. and Mrs. Buranski lived there because that’s what my mother had told me. So, I decided that it must have been the Buranskis talking, or joking, or fighting. Once or twice, I knew for certain it was them, because they had left the shade up and I could see them.

  Those were among the most exciting times for me. Especially when the Buranskis were arguing, and they thought they were protected by being alone in the privacy of their house. Yet I could see them, and sometimes even hear small bits of their conversations. Somehow, I understood the concept of privacy and the invasion of their privacy, even at such a tender age. It made me feel special, as though I had some special power that others lacked. They weren’t the happy couple that my mother had described. I knew their secret.

  I couldn’t talk about it. Not to my mother, and there wasn’t anyone else. So, I talked to myself, and I kept my own secrets. That was how I was different.

  • • • • •

  At times, I think it was my isolation that made me so different. My mother and I were the only two people in much of my existence, and we were always together. It was because she loved me. As I loved her.

  If she went grocery shopping, I would walk with her, even when I was quite little. I remember one instance of toddling along behind her, unable to keep up and complaining. And I recall my mother’s harsh response to the effect that I needed to learn how to do things for myself. That someday she might not be there. To be fair, the neighborhood supermarket was only a few blocks from our house, so this wasn’t an intolerable distance for a child to walk. And to be fair, I can also think back to times when she pushed me in a stroller, but those memories are somewhat vague. They must have been from a very young age. My point is, that it would not be reasonable to criticize my mother for making me walk. She was only preparing me, helping me to grow up.

  While I think back on my early years and say we were inseparable, my mother often did things by herself. Grown-up things. Things from which I was excluded. There were long baths, occasional telephone calls that she informed me were private, and certainly, those times when I was restricted to my bedroom.

  Spending time in my room was not necessarily indicative of punishment, although such circumstances were not unknown. After all, I was a little boy, and I would go through stages or rebellion. More commonly, these periods in my room were nap times, bedtime at night, or just play time. And play time in my room was not onerous. It was my opportunity to be alone and to indulge in my life of secrets.

  As I write this, I realize there were many other times that we were separated. I know my mother worked, so there must have been someone to look after me when she was away from home. This is in the time before I started school. Once I went to school, there were after-school programs and friends whose houses I could visit until my mother returned home at th
e end of the day. I refer here to the several years before that. From my infancy until about the age of five or six.

  There must have been someone else. One person, or several. Someone to care for me while my mother was at work. It strikes me as quite odd that I cannot remember such a person. I’ve just finished telling you what a remarkable memory I have, and how it extended back to when I was barely more than an infant. Yet this one person, or perhaps more than one person, escapes me completely. And not just the name. I cannot call to mind even the faintest image of a face or any other physical feature or even an action that would correspond to a caregiver. Unfortunately, there is no one left to ask. The identity of this person will likely remain forever unknown. One more piece missing from the puzzle of my secrets.

  • • • • •

  I discovered the crawl space at a very early age. Probably, I was no longer a toddler, but I have no way to be sure exactly when it was. I had noticed the small door at the back of my closet, and I asked my mother. Her response was both matter of fact and dismissive.

  “That’s just a place for storing old things, Timothy. I never even open that door because it’s so dusty and dirty back there.”

  I was a bit young at that time, but I didn’t forget the discovery. Nor my mother’s response. What could be more of an invitation to a curious boy? I conclude, therefore, that I was five or six when I next returned to that door. I recall that my mother was downstairs, where she had just started making dinner. Consequently, I had about a half hour to myself, although this was probably before I knew how to keep time. I made certain I would hear when she called me for dinner.