Our momentary relief was quickly eclipsed as mysterious figures continued to wander in and out of the funeral home. We were acutely aware that my father’s secrets hung heavily about us and our lack of knowledge regarding his shadow life was both a blessing and a curse. We guessed that trouble was forthcoming but had no clue as to what form it would take. Pushing aside our anxiety for the future, we concentrated on seeing Big Al through his final rite of passage. After two days of viewing and much unease, my father’s body was sent for cremation. The expected troubles began before his ashes had cooled.
The Terrifying Legacy of Addiction
Three days after my father took his last breath, “creditors” began harassing his grieving and bankrupt widow. The phone again became a source of anxiety, a sinister tool used by those who claimed the right to any funds my father had left behind. Menacing disembodied voices invaded the family apartment and store, demanding payment and threatening bodily harm. At first, my mother tried to hide the source of her distress from Vanessa and me, but within days, we too had received threats.
Desperate for peace of mind, Bonnie began to comb through the family finances, hoping to find a hidden nest egg that had not fallen victim to my father’s dark passengers. Her search was fruitless; Big Al’s addictions had consumed everything. He had left his family with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Every asset was gone. Her back against the wall, my mother placed a call to a longtime “friend” of my father’s whose long reach extended throughout the seedy underworld. Explaining the dire situation in which she found herself, my mother was relieved when he pledged his support and protection. The menacing calls ended abruptly afterward, but the unknown still loomed heavily around us.
As with so many other traumatic family events, the Abraham women found themselves with little time to absorb the enormity of Big Al’s passing. The threats and the unknown variables of my father’s shadow life interrupted the natural flow of grief. Contemplation is all but impossible when you are preoccupied with looking over your shoulder, awaiting the next threat.
Within weeks of our father’s passing, Bonnie contributed to our general disorientation by announcing that she intended to close the family store and move off the Avenue. Like her daughters, my mother was in limbo and desperate to escape the past. Although I was not surprised with her decision, her desire for a quick departure was a bit disconcerting. Even though the threatening phone calls had stopped, my once brave and snarling mother clearly feared for her life. Vanessa and I were concerned with her hasty decision but understood all too well her desire to flee the scene of so many painful memories. At forty-eight, my widowed mother wanted a fresh start. Still, we did not understand her need for such a speedy departure.
Years later, Vanessa and I found out the source of Bonnie’s urgency. A few days before she had reached out to my father’s powerful “friend,” she had faced her own mortality. Unknown masked thugs had kicked in the door to her apartment and held her at gunpoint while demanding she make good on one of my father’s debts. These well-informed thugs knew that she had received envelopes full of cash at her husband’s funeral. They threatened to blow her brains out, Luca Brasi-style, if she refused to turn over the money. Faced with certain death, my mother complied, handing over the more than $20,000 she had hidden in the freezer.
Not wanting to add to her daughters’ worries, she had kept the monstrous event secret. She claimed that she had used the money to pay off legitimate debts. Thinking that the source of the calls had been satisfied with the frozen money she had been compelled to relinquish, my mother breathed a sigh of relief. Her fear returned full force the next morning when she was roused from her troubled sleep by the ringing of the phone. The same sinister voice again demanded money. After several repeat performances, Bonnie, fearful of another sudden attack on herself or her daughters, swallowed her pride and reached out for help.
Robbed of the money that might have provided her a new start and afraid of the unknown, my mother began to liquidate the store’s inventory. Facing her husband’s enormous illegitimate debts, she forfeited her right to pursue the collection of the thousands of dollars in outstanding debts owed to my father. She understood that those debtors could not be relied upon to make good on the money they owed. After all, illegitimate debts are impossible to prove, and without persuasion all but impossible to collect. Desperate to escape the fear-charged atmosphere that was my father’s legacy, my mother concentrated on the most urgent matter—her escape from the Avenue. By August, she had closed the store and moved into the home of her eldest daughter.
After more than thirty years of hard work in the family store, Bonnie faced an uncertain future with not a penny to her name. My father’s demons had greedily consumed everything, leaving her emotionally and financially bankrupt. Her husband’s sudden death, the ensuing spectacle of his funeral, and the feel of a steel barrel at her temple had broken her spirit. She would never recover. The magnificent, defiant, brave, humorous, and reckless mother of my youth all but vanished. Her anger remained.
A Life without Big Al
Although reeling from my father’s death, I found myself unable to grieve. Trained almost from birth to keep secrets, swallow my emotions, and to ignore the pain of the past, I was left without the tools necessary to navigate the turmoil and grief I now faced. I felt as if I were drowning. My father, the center of my world for nineteen years, was gone. I simply did not know how to conceive a world without him. For all the angst-filled, colorful, and dangerous years we spent together, he was my rock—the one person I could always rely upon. Without him, I was alone, a solitary walking wounded.
I had moments of undeniable pain but turned away from them, fearful that they would consume me if unleashed. I had survived all my previous traumas by finding the humor in them and by diving into a pile of books. I now found myself unable to read. No matter the subject, my mind could not escape into another’s adventures. Laughter, my companion for so long, suddenly seemed too dangerous, too closely related to the tears of grief I feared would never stop if I gave in to them. Ill equipped to face the pain of my father’s death and truly engage the emotional traumas of my youth, I turned to work and alcohol for comfort.
Work occupied my troubled mind and kept me from floundering in a black hole of grief. I spent my days engaged in righting the wrongs of others and dreading quiet evenings at home. Having once craved a contemplative life, I now found myself afraid of the grief and ghosts that too often inhabited my solitary hours. I sought escape by embracing a serious persona at work and a reckless one during my personal hours. I dove into the party scene, attending the myriad of rallies, dinners, and cocktail parties that the political arena provided. Afterwards, I would pop into a neighborhood bar and partake in extended drinking to ensure that my sleep would be deep and dreamless. Alcohol, my mother’s dark passenger, became the instrument through which I could drown my pain.
Through the fog of perpetual hangovers and unexpressed sorrow, I also jumped into an active dating scene. Up to this point, I had all but avoided this aspect of youth. In the year between graduating high school and my father’s death, I had put my social life on hold and only occasionally dated a trusted friend. I had my eye on a future that included saving enough money to put myself through night school and had little time for romance.
My world now upside down, I embraced outside distraction with the hopes of keeping an emotional collapse at bay. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that I would choose emotionally dysfunctional and even abusive relationships. A calamity waiting to happen, I shunned the good guys and recklessly ran with the bad boys. I avoided “normalcy” at all costs. Folly finds masochistic comfort in its own company.
After a few years of emotionally charged work, a series of dysfunctional relationships, and too much exposure to the seedier side of politics, I found myself partially awakening from my self-inflicted alcohol haze. Although horrified with the direction my life was taking, I could not yet find the strength to s
top the insanity. I feared a future that would perpetuate the cycle of addiction and self-destruction that had shaped the lives of my parents. Overwhelmed and emotionally fatigued with the life I was living, I did the unthinkable. I quit my job. I walked away from the job I loved, not so much because it added to my misery but because I wanted to break free from the life I had so unexpectedly and recklessly created for myself. Drastic action was necessary.
Disillusioned with the atmosphere my career provided, I recognized that my father’s assessment of the political arena was spot on. After three years of immersing myself in the political world, I found it not so different from the illicit world in which I was raised, if you subtract the looming raids. The criminals of my youth were replaced by masked upstanding citizens who cheerfully engaged in backstabbing, exploitation, and manipulation in order to accomplish their selfish goals. Of course, there were those who fought the good fight, but their dedication and idealism was all too often sullied by the inherent griminess of political backbiting and deception.
Although seemingly a drastic course of action, quitting Congressman Murtha’s office strangely enough paved the way for a painful self-examination of my destructive lifestyle. In need of a job, I decided to forgo the pursuit of another office position and impulsively accepted a bartending job in a neighboring town. The job was educational for me. There, in the smoke-filled frenzy of the bar scene, I saw myself from a shocking new angle.
A veteran of the bar scene, I assumed I would find comfort in the familiar surroundings. Instead, I found myself repulsed by the spectacle that played out on a nightly basis. The job provided a favorable income but it also gave me a shocking glimpse of my life over the past few years. Drunks are a pathetic sight, and in every drunk, I saw myself. I recognized the complicated mix of emotions, from mockery and self-pity to anger and fear. I shared the loneliness, desperation, and self-destructive tendencies of every barfly. It was like looking into a mirror.
I was acutely aware that if I stayed on my current course, the odds were stacked against me. I could either weep over the peculiar hand I was dealt, or change my game. I needed to break away from my self-constructed chaos and fashion a new playbook. I began to think, as I had been trained to do, like a gambler. I realized that the history of my “book” contained enough losses that a win was inevitable. I saw myself as an underdog who needed to accept the past and still bet on my own future—to take control of my life and become my own odds maker. I knew better than most that odds do not dictate the game’s outcome. Upsets are a marvelous thing. I was, after all, the Bookie’s Daughter.
Epilogue
“Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names.
They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.”
Jim Morrison
“The only question in life is whether or not you are going to answer a hearty
‘YES!’ to your adventure.”
Joseph Campbell
It is said that the human body renews itself every seven years. That each cell is shed and replaced by new cells, thereby regenerating the body. This renewal has always intrigued me and I have often thought of my life in seven-year stages. The first three stages (birth to twenty-one) constitute the years I have covered in this book.
The fourth stage represents the years I lived as a half-assed escape artist. In a desperate attempt to distinguish myself from the role I inherited from my parents, I ignored the madcap events of my youth and simply lived in denial of the past. I desperately wanted to create a new identity, embrace life’s possibilities, and discover my own potential.
In pursuit of this goal, I left my hometown of Jeannette and settled a thousand miles away in Vero Beach, Florida. There, in fresh surroundings that were not troubled by past memories, I began to build a new life. After a period of working in the home cleaning business, I secured an office manager position with a local entrepreneur and began to put aside money for the education that had so far eluded me. Returning to my characteristic pattern of escape, I threw myself into work and again embraced my love of books.
The anonymity that came with my new surroundings allowed me, for the first time, to form a life free from association with my father’s criminal world. To the Floridians I encountered, I was not linked to a notorious name. I was simply another “damn Yankee.” I reveled in my newfound anonymity. Working hard and keeping an eye on the future, I only encountered my demons in dreams. Although no longer anchored to the physical locations of my past, I found that the ghosts of Clay Avenue had joined me in my migration south; they remained my faithful companions. Three years into my new life in Florida, a deep and overwhelming sadness still consumed me. In an attempt to escape, I ran away again.
It was in Atlanta, Georgia that I entered the fifth stage of my life—a stage of reflection and confrontation. I turned to psychotherapy, which changed my life. My entry into the world of self-reflection was difficult. Trained not to “talk,” I spent my first few sessions in uncomfortable silence. Mercifully, the floodgates finally opened; I found I had a voice and a great deal to say.
It was during this period of musing on the past that I began to prepare for college. Given that I had been only an occasional attendee in high school, I had to backtrack before I could go forward. With a plan in place, I enrolled at the community college and began a full year of remedial algebra classes. Somewhere amidst my full-time job as an insurance underwriter, countless hours in the math lab, and regular counseling sessions, I began to achieve a sense of peace. Healing begins when you bear witness.
The pursuit of a college education would dominate the sixth and seventh stages of my life. Luckily, my initiation into the world of academia coincided with a burgeoning relationship with the man I would eventually marry. My husband, Teo Sagisman, has proven a loving and patient supporter, as my journey through academia would span more than thirteen years. The slow process of night school is not for the faint of heart, but for me, the journey was nothing less than divine.
In January 2009, I finally attained my goal, graduating from Georgia State University with a Master’s degree in religious studies. My life-long dream of an education now a reality, I found myself thinking again of my formative years. After decades of trying to “divorce” the past, I realized it was time for me to “answer a hearty ‘YES!’ to [my] adventure.”
Reaching back through time has not been an easy task, but it has been cathartic and illuminating. In writing this book, I have relived traumatic events, but the process has also provided me with a unique opportunity to reconnect with my tragically flawed and oh-so-human parents. I came to see them, and our story, both from the perspective of a child caught up in their madcap lives and also that of an imperfect adult, who through her own struggles has reached a place of loving acceptance. I recognized that running away from the past is impossible. The half-assed escape artist had come full circle.
My parents built their lives around the demons they inherited in their youth and their addictions. The driving force that directed the events of their lives, and by extension the lives of their daughters, resulted in numerous unintended consequences. My sister and I were raised in a world of excess, crime, and consequences. We understood that for every action there was a price to pay. Our parents never sugarcoated their crimes and they never denied their faults. I loved both my parents in spite of their many flaws. Although I spent decades trying to understand the paths they chose, I finally arrived at acceptance. They were what they were—they were my greatest teachers.
My mother taught me many of life’s most important lessons. Her unending anger and deep mistrust, refusal to let go of resentment, and inability to admit wrongs showed me what I did not want in my life. These powerful and destructive personality traits made me aware of the need to deal with the demons of my own past. Watching her self-destruct into an increasingly isolated prison of her own making informed my life in profound ways. Through her inflexible example, I learned that love and forgiveness are the most powerful
and liberating of forces.
Bonnie’s defiance and her refusal to receive or give emotionally to her family and friends ultimately destroyed her life and almost destroyed her daughters. Her death in 2006 left me with a flood of unresolved emotions. I focus now on her positive attributes: her fabulous sense of humor, inquisitive mind, and creative energy. I remember her fearlessness, her astute sense of justice, and her childish delight in God’s furry creatures. I will forever marvel at her wild spirit and forever grieve for the wounded and abandoned inner child who ruled my mother’s life.
From my father, I inherited a love of life and a childlike glee over life’s joys. He shared with me his positive attitude, which emerged even in the darkest of times. For all his criminal activities, my father was also a man of great compassion and generosity. He never turned away from those in need. His desire to do good was just as intense as his penchant for living a life of crime. I also learned from his monstrous struggles. The destructive force of my father’s addictions remains with me on a daily basis. Through the example of his life, I am forever reminded that moderation is the key to a healthy life.
For all the illogical decisions Big Al made during his life, he had a perspicacity that took years for me to recognize. His warnings about the political world were right on target, as were his views about the dangers of legitimate “Wall Street bookies.” It was his concern about my naïveté that took me years to understand. My most difficult lesson was in realizing that the idealized legitimate world I had constructed in my youth does not reside separate from the criminal world. They are, in fact, deeply entwined. Con artists, sexual predators, thieves, violent monsters, and master manipulators reside in every neighborhood and in most work environments. Unfortunately, they too often dwell behind masks of respectability.
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