Because I Come from a Crazy Family

by Edward M. Hallowell

  When I arrived, the door was open. Dr. Merritt waved me in. I took a seat across from him.

  Dr. Merritt wasn’t young; he was quite puffy and chubby, dressed in a rumpled black suit, a wrinkled white shirt, and a nondescript black tie. He wore glasses, but one eye was covered with a white gauze patch. “I had a procedure on my eye,” were his first words.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Then there was silence. I had never seen a psychologist before, or any kind of professional in the world of mental health, so I didn’t know what was up. I looked at the floor, waiting for some guidance.

  “You’re Hallowell?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” I said. I didn’t know if I should stand and shake his hand but decided against it.

  “Your mother called the school and asked that you have a visit with me. Do you know why she did that?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m the school psychologist.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought.”

  “Well, how about if you tell me about your life so far?”

  I remember starting to talk and out of the blue the floodgates opened. I talked and talked and cried and cried. I do not remember a single word I said, but I was in that room for a good half hour. Dr. Merritt sat there, not saying a word.

  What happened next makes me believe he was either the best or the worst psychologist on the planet. He said, “You can go now. We do not need to meet again.”

  I left his office, went to the gym, changed my clothes, and went out onto the soccer fields. I thought no more about my visit with Dr. Merritt.

  Looking back, I would not have dismissed a ten-year-old boy who’d just tearfully sobbed out a story about family turmoil. But that’s me. I’ve always been a sucker for a sob story. I’ve always been the one who jumps in to save. Maybe Dr. Merritt was smarter than that. Maybe he thought it best for me to seal over those memories and let Fessenden, rather than him, save me. And that’s pretty much what happened.

  23.

  The varsity soccer field at Fessenden, adjacent to a grove of elm trees and the Swedish Home for the Elderly, holds two of my most haunting memories.

  The first happened on a rainy day in September 1963. I was in the eighth grade, thirteen years old. We were practicing soccer in spite of the rain. I liked playing in the rain because I hate the heat and it kept me cool. In spite of never being much of a jock I had made the varsity, and I was lucky to have Harry Boyadjian as a coach. Mr. Boyadjian had come over from Jordan the same year I arrived at Fessenden, both of us to escape fighting, me the fighting in my home, and Mr. B. the mortar shells exploding on the grounds of the school where he had taught.

  He emphasized a new concept to us American soccer players: Play your position. Don’t just run around like undisciplined fools chasing the ball all over the field, or as Mr. B. called it, the pitch. This concept worked so well that Mr. Boyadjian’s teams had been undefeated since his arrival at Fessenden.

  On this particular day, as I was trying to focus on staying in my lane at what was called, back then, left halfback, I happened to look over toward the grove of trees, green and glistening in the rain.

  I saw a man standing beneath the branches of one of the trees, maybe a hundred yards away. He wore a tan trench coat but no hat. I went back to focusing on practice, but something made me look over once more at that man under the trees.

  With this second look, I saw who he was. It was my father. Why hadn’t Dad told me he was coming? Why was he standing so far away? Why didn’t he have on a rain hat or carry an umbrella? Why wasn’t he at his school, teaching?

  Mr. B. yelled at me to get back in the game and stay in my lane, so I waved OK and refocused on practice. The rain started coming down harder and the field became mushier by the minute. I wiped water off my face and stole a glance in the direction of my dad but he was no longer there.

  To this day I have no idea why he appeared on a rainy day, not even a game day for us, stood by himself in the rain, a hundred yards away, never coming over to say hi or get a good look at our practice, and then simply left. I’d always wished he would come see me play.

  That image stayed with me, my father standing so far away in the rain, wearing a trench coat with no hat, watching for a few minutes, not waving, not calling out.

  The second image came two months after that. This time it was a sunny day, and we were playing a game against another school. Sometime into the first half the ref blew his whistle and announced, “This game is suspended. President Kennedy has been shot.”

  What? Was it possible? By the time we all knew that it was indeed true, we were walking back to the locker room to a world that had totally changed.

  I felt as if I knew President Kennedy personally. And like so many others, I loved him. He was so funny and witty and able to make me and all of us feel good about life. I didn’t understand politics, but as long as President Kennedy was in charge, I believed that everything would be just fine.

  And then, out of nowhere, with no warning, someone had killed him. I was stunned, we all were. A few muttered about how they didn’t like the Kennedys anyway, but that was a muffled mutter. The entire country lapsed into a numbed state of incredulity, even staunch Republicans, of whom there were many at Fessenden. It was too much to believe all at once. For me, in many ways, it still is, more than fifty years later.

  Dylan Thomas wrote, “After the first death, there is no other.” For many of my generation, JFK was our first death, our first encounter with sudden, catastrophic loss that would leave us innocent no more, yearning for a time we once had but never would again.

  24.

  After seven years of marriage, my mother divorced Uncle Unger. My final contact with him was not actually with him, but with his hats.

  That year of the divorce the three of us were summering in Chatham, living in the ivy-covered house on Minister’s Point where my mother had spent much of her childhood. At one point, Grandpa Kent and two other ministers had owned all of what naturally enough came to be called Minister’s Point. They’d bought it in the early 1900s for nine hundred dollars. Grandpa Kent soon bought out his partners and built the house covered with the ivy he’d started with a clipping he brought over from England. Next to that he built a windmill upon which he’d hang eels he caught, before skinning them.

  Attached to the roof of the house was a quarterboard with the words LIGHT OF THE EAST engraved in it. After the house left our family’s hands, we salvaged that quarterboard because it meant so much to my mother, but it has since disappeared.

  The year before, Unger had told my mother he’d buy her the ivy-covered house because she loved it so much. She was beyond overjoyed; for her it was a dream come true. But then Unger said, “You didn’t think I was serious, did you? I wouldn’t any more buy you that house than pay for Neddy’s tuition. I gotcha going though, didn’t I?”

  They lasted another ten months. When Mom told me about the divorce, I let out a whoop of delight and gave her a hug. “We have to go back to pick up some clothes,” she said. “He’s not there. He’s out of town for a few days.”

  All I remember from walking into that little house that day was the rack of hats near the front door: mostly gray felt fedoras with black bands, one brown fedora with a gray band, a few flat hats, and one straw hat.

  As Mom went around the house picking up what was left of her belongings and packing them into suitcases, I went at the hats. I started slowly but then built up into a frenzy I didn’t even know I had in me. One by one I took each hat, ripped at it, pulled the band, gouged at the rim inside with its gold monogrammed ULS and then stomped on the hat until it was as disfigured as possible.

  Never before or since have I flown into a rage like that. I would say it was uncontrollable, but that wouldn’t be true. It was supremely controlled. I am quite certain that if Unger had been there, I would have done whatever I could do to kill him. Such is the
primal nature of rage that there’s an off chance I would have succeeded. Years later, when one of my patients ripped all the sinks and toilets off walls and floors of the bathroom on the inpatient unit, I understood where his burst of superhuman strength came from.

  In those few minutes, I let it all out. When finished, I stood panting, looking down at all the hats strewn across the floor, hatbands lying here and there like jilted lovers after a lost weekend.

  My mother walked through the mess on her way out the door, two suitcases in hand. I don’t think she even saw the hats. There was so much she hadn’t seen along the way, which was just as well.

  I’d seen too much myself, which is why I exploded, taking it all out on his hats. Looking back, I wish Unger had gotten the help he needed. After his wife’s suicide, rather than seek help for only his daughters, I wish he’d sought help for the person who needed it most: himself.

  When he was on his game, he could be fun, witty, affectionate, and a good man. He could have taught me how to play baseball, a game he was skilled at; he could have taught me how to play bridge. (The story was, he was so good at bridge that he’d made his fortune gambling in high-end games on Atlantic crossings in the big ocean liners.) He could have taught me what he knew of the world.

  Instead, with no one to stop him or help him, he let his demons take him over, retreating to Charleston to hole up, in the same way I think Uncle Jimmy retreated to Chatham. I like to think that with the right help he could have been a good stepfather, just as I like to think that with the right help, Uncle Jimmy could have become a success in business, and my dad would never have divorced my mother.

  After I finished taking my fury out on the hats, I looked around. Minister’s Point had given my mother so many happy memories, as well as me and our entire family. It was better to dwell on that. As I calmed down and took in my surroundings, I realized that Unger had always been an intruder. If I had been older I would have known that what he wanted from my mother she couldn’t give him, any more than he could give her what she wanted. They had each lost their true love, one to death, the other to madness, and nothing could bring them back. It was a mismatch from the start: two broken people looking for repair.

  25.

  Three houses stood on the property we owned on Minister’s Point. About fifty yards to the right of the ivy-covered house stood what we called the Big House, because, of course, it was so big. It was up a slope from the ivy house, atop a steep dune, with at least a fifty-foot drop to the beach, looking straight out to the bay, and beyond that to what we called the Outside Beach, where we often picnicked, then beyond to the Atlantic Ocean which we swam in during those picnics. The dune had a view that grown-ups marveled at.

  What I loved was the roofed porch that ran almost all the way around the Big House. As kids, we loved to run up and down on that porch, hopping in and out of the many wicker rocking chairs the grown-ups would sit in at cocktail time while marveling at a spectacular sunset.

  I can see Uncle Jimmy in his rocker, can of warm Pabst in his hand (one of his many eccentricities, he liked his beer at room temperature), Duckie with her bourbon and water on the rocks, same for Mom. They’d both be wearing summer dresses, while Skipper would have on his suit, white shirt, maroon knit tie, and boater as he rocked and drank his highball of scotch and water. Gammy McKey would have on her navy blue dress with white polka dots as she drank her sherry. It could get awkward if Aunt Ruth (not a real aunt, just one of the many close friends who got designated Aunt or Uncle) was there, as Skipper and she might have had an affair. She’d made a living playing the piano around the world, and also playing backgammon for money. Other random visitors would come and go, people whom all of us kids had to greet with a handshake before going on our way.

  I loved the Big House because it was so airy and full of rooms with high ceilings, so high I don’t remember what the ceilings actually looked like. There must have been fifteen bedrooms on its three floors, if you include the attic (and why not?). You could get lost in that house. It was so vast it echoed. But at night it wasn’t scary because there were always so many lights on and usually a fire in one of the fireplaces, plus there were always lots of people there. No one ever stayed in the Big House alone, but no one family resided there all the time, either. It was a come-and-go house. I never knew which bed I’d be sleeping in until I got into it.

  On the other side of the Big House, maybe a hundred yards to the right and down a slope, there was what we called the Little House, which actually wasn’t all that little. Spillover from the Big House would stay there. I remember Aunt Madge, freckled, friendly, red-headed Aunt Madge from Nantucket, staying in the Little House one entire summer, and when we asked her one day, as we were driving somewhere in her car, if we could visit Nantucket, she said she’d love for us to come but—and these were her exact words—“I doubt it.”

  Lyndie and Jamie learned to swim on the beach in front of the ivy-covered house, in bathing suits someone—maybe Aunt Nell—had knitted for them. There are old photographs of Benjie and Johnny and Lyndie and Jamie all playing on that beach, along with Duckie and Mom and Uncle Jimmy. Dad wasn’t in any of the photos.

  Mom loved that ivy-covered house. She thought of it as her home. If only my family, under Uncle Jimmy’s direction, had not sold Minister’s Point for a song, we’d be wealthy today. Of course, we had many, many chances to become rich that we didn’t take advantage of, mostly, I think, because our minds, the grown-ups’ minds, didn’t have the knack for amassing a fortune. It was like a missing gene.

  Gammy Hallowell bought Ryder’s Cove so my dad could get a job there when he got out of the mental hospital. He could have gotten a job anyway—he was a genius around boats—but she wanted to make sure, so she bought it for pennies on the dollar. Had she not sold Ryder’s Cove when Mom and Dad got divorced, we’d also be rich today. Had we held on to just about any of the real estate we owned when I was growing up …

  But making a lot of money was just not in our skill set. After Uncle Jimmy made the killing by investing in IBM way back, the Hallowells’ moneymaking came to a screeching halt.

  When my mother got divorced from Unger, I asked, “What will we do for money?” At least I had a shred of practicality in my fourteen-year-old mind.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said, “we’ll be fine.”

  My mother lived out her final years on a combination of what Ben, John, and I could send her, what Duckie and Uncle Jimmy gave her, and public assistance. Still, I don’t think it was poverty that made her sad sometimes in the years before she died. It was loss. I don’t believe either she or my dad ever got over losing each other.

  26.

  In the spring of my seventh grade year at Fessenden, my mother decided to take the blue Mustang she’d bought with some of the settlement money she’d received from Unger and drive up from Chatham to spend a weekend in Boston. She almost never traveled anywhere on her own, but Lyn wanted her to come up to talk about men—Lyn valued my mother’s input on this one subject, the subject Mom knew better than any other subject even though that knowledge never helped her find a marriage that worked.

  She checked in at the Howard Johnson’s in Kenmore Square. I got a pass to leave school for the weekend to stay with her. On the Saturday afternoon she took me to the one and only Red Sox game the two of us ever went to together. I had fallen completely in love with the Red Sox, a terrible team, so going to a game was a huge deal.

  Since Skipper was an avid Red Sox fan, my mother, like most of New England, had rooting for the Red Sox in her genes. Really, we all grew up loving the Red Sox except Johnny and Jamie, but even those two did not denigrate our fandom.

  Of my two brothers, Johnny was the brain and Benjie the jock. Actually, Ben was just as smart as, if not smarter than, Johnny, but he didn’t make academic achievement as much of a priority as Johnny did. Benjie loved sports. He was an All-Star catcher in the Cape League, and he would have been the starting catcher at the Naval
Academy had not the all-world Joe Bellino been on that same team.

  Skipper and Uncle Jimmy used to sit in lawn chairs on the hill overlooking center field at the Chatham baseball park, Skipper wearing his dark suit, white shirt, knit tie, and white straw boater, sipping his highball, and Uncle Jimmy in his sneakers and khaki trousers drinking his Pabst, while they watched Benjie play. Sometimes I’d come, too. After Skipper died and Benjie went off to the Naval Academy, Uncle Jimmy would still watch the town team, only now from his Jeep sipping tea, having given up alcohol.

  Since I was not brought up with any religion until I got to Charleston, sports, especially baseball, took the place that religion occupied for others. Be faithful. Play hard but play fair. Never give up. Root for the underdog. Be a good sport. I would hear all these instructions and many more of their ilk while growing up.

  Having been to a game only with my father, I didn’t know what to expect with Mom. I appreciated her taking me, though. It was fun to do something together, and really fun to go to Fenway Park.

  I wish I could convey now how beautiful she looked that day. If I could describe my mother’s beauty, not an easy thing for a son to do, I’d say she was demure, like Deborah Kerr or Audrey Hepburn.

  In spite of all her dissolute years with Unger, she still occupied her space in this world with uncommon dignity and grace. She could enter the finest club or the most exclusive gathering and be right at home. Even when drunk—a word that she’d never use—she was never sloppy or crude. Taught by Skipper and her teachers at Miss May’s School, she embodied the best of the tradition of manners, gentility, and kindness.

  The day of our game, she wore powder-blue slacks, a plain white blouse, and a pink cardigan sweater with large straw buttons. She wore the pearl tiara pin she always wore, a present from my father, I believe, and she had on her usual pearl earrings. Dressing for Fenway, she wore blue flats and an old floppy hat with a purple band. I am sure she also had on Arpège perfume, an aroma that activates her in my memory more instantly than any other cue.