by Henry Hack
A few months later I noticed a change in my husband. He began coming home from the office later in the day and I smelled alcohol on his breath on more than one occasion. He also became short with me and was quick to anger over inconsequential things. We were both social drinkers, usually a cocktail before dinner a few nights a week, or a glass or two of wine with dinner. Even when we went out to a social or business function we never over-indulged. What was going on? Was it my refusal to pursue adopting a child? Or was it another woman? Or something else entirely?
Tom’s time in the office continued to increase. He came home later and later – and drunker and drunker. I finally decided to confront him. I had to find out what was wrong in our marriage, and hopefully try to fix it. I waited until the weekend and when we were at the breakfast table Sunday morning I said, “Tom, I love you.”
He smiled at me and said, “And I love you too, Maria.”
“Then you have to tell me what’s going on. I’m afraid for you, for us, for our marriage.”
“I don’t want to trouble you with my problems.”
“Is it another woman?”
“Another woman? Of course not!”
“Then what is it? Maybe I can help. Please let me help.”
“You can’t, Maria. It’s the business. Things have been going sour.”
“How bad?”
He looked at me directly in the eyes and said, “My accountant says I’m on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“I’ll go back to work,” I said. “Tony Damiano would be happy to have me back.”
“No, that’s not necessary, yet. I should know in a few days how things will work out. Don’t worry, you’ll be provided for.”
I didn’t like the sound of that last comment and pressed him on it. He said, “Bankruptcy doesn’t mean we lose all our personal assets. Just the company’s assets are at risk and to be reconstructed. We’ll be okay. I promise.”
I relaxed a bit and said, “You know I’ll be with you all the way, Tom. I’ve never been this rich before and I certainly remember how to make do with a lot less.”
“Thanks, Maria,” he said. “Thanks for sticking with me. That’s why I didn’t tell you sooner. I was afraid of what you might do.”
“I would never desert you Tom. I love you.”
He squeezed my hand and nodded. “I love you, too,” he said. “Remember that. No matter what happens, remember that.”
Five days later, the company declared bankruptcy and two days after that my dear husband, Tom O’Shea, hung himself from a rafter in the garage. He left no note – I guess he felt he didn’t have to. And he had taken care of me with a sizable insurance policy, which paid off regardless of the manner of death, as well as the house and cars.
After the funeral, I put the house on the market. It sold quickly as I had priced it a bit below market value. I also sold our three cars. I bought a small house in a nice neighborhood only a few miles from Maxwell’s restaurant where I resumed working. I was financially secure, but now had two dead husbands in my past.
I couldn’t help but think that God was exacting his revenge on me – taking Tom’s life in return for my killing of Jim and abandonment of Frankie. I hoped and prayed He was finished with me.
CHAPTER TEN
The months flew by and I settled into my new home with the Ryan’s. Things seemed to be finally going well for me. My school grades were not excellent as were Margaret’s, but very good, the category just below hers.
I rode my bike all over the neighborhood and even back to Levittown where I used to live. While there, I played with some of my old friends and stared wistfully at my old house. I missed my mother and father terribly, but Daddy was buried in the ground, never to return, and Mommy – where was Mommy? I was beginning to believe that she would never return either.
I had been thinking these thoughts while sitting on the sidewalk, my back resting against a sycamore tree, with my bike on its kickstand parked next to me. I was startled by a hand gently touching my shoulder. An elderly gray-haired woman with a kindly smile said, “Son, may I help you with something?”
I scrambled to my feet and said, “Oh, no, sorry, ma’am. I’m just leaving.”
“I’ve seen you ride your bike around here and look at my house. Now you’ve been staring at it for almost ten minutes. Care to tell me why?”
“I used to live here.”
“Ah, I see. Were you happy here?”
“Yes, ma’am, for a while. Until my Dad died and my Mommy ran away.”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Bennett told me the story when we moved in. How dreadful. So, you must be Frankie Chandler.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where do you live now?”
“A couple miles away with Mr. and Mrs. Ryan and their daughter.”
“And are you happy there?”
“Yes, ma’am, they are all very nice to me.”
“Would you like to come inside? Perhaps see your old room?”
“I…I…don’t think so,” I said.
“You’re probably right. I shouldn’t have asked. If you’re happy now, let the past stay in the past, if you know what I mean.”
“I think so. I’d better be going home.”
“Good-bye, Frankie. I’m glad you’re happy now.”
My twelfth and thirteenth birthdays were spent with the Ryan’s and they were much better and memorable than the previous two at the State Home. They over-indulged me with gifts and hugs and good wishes, and I had overheard Mr. Ryan speaking of adopting me.
“Well, he is a good boy and, yes, let’s look into that,” Mrs. Ryan had said. “That would be fine with me.”
Shortly after the Ryan’s informed me that they had filed the papers to officially adopt me, tragedy struck the household. Mike Ryan, age 47, had a severe heart attack at his job as a construction supervisor in Brooklyn. Despite the heroic efforts of the responding EMT crew and the ER doctors, he died a few hours later. The family was devastated, especially me. I had now lost a man who had become like a second father.
In the weeks after the funeral, a lot of businessmen and lawyers visited the Ryan home and I picked up snatches of conversations – “the life insurance just about covered the funeral expenses,” “the stock market has been in a severe downturn,” “What job skills do you have?”
Two months after Mr. Ryan’s death, Mrs. Ryan called me into the den with Margaret and she motioned for us to sit down. I could see the tears in Margaret’s eyes and I knew that she already knew what her mother was going to say – and it wasn’t going to be good. “Frankie,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “We are in a bad situation now that Mike is gone. It’s money. There really isn’t any. I’ve talked to a lot of people and here’s what I have to do – I have to sell this house and I have to get a job. Me and Margaret have to get an inexpensive apartment, and she’s going to have to work part-time till she finishes high school.”
When I heard “me and Margaret” I knew what was coming next. “Frankie, I just can’t keep you anymore. You have to go back to the Home.”
“But Mom,” I cried out, “you can forget about adopting me and just keep the foster care money. And I’ll work part-time too. I’ll be a help.”
“It just won’t work, Frankie. They worked out all the numbers for me. I can’t make my bills with supporting you. I just can’t”
I looked at Margaret, who was sobbing hard now, and I began to cry too. She ran over to me and said, “Oh, Frankie, it’s like losing my brother Petey all over again.”
That got Mrs. Ryan crying too and when we finally all calmed down, I quit the fight and accepted the situation. “When are you taking me back?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Could you let Officer Boyland know?”
“Sure Frankie…oh! Your bicycle. Maybe the officer will take it again for you.”
I was bitter and told her to sell it when she moved. “Sell all my things,” I said. “I just need some clothes.”
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“Oh, Frankie,” she said, and started crying again.
When Police Officer – now Detective – Boyland got the call from Mrs. Ryan later that afternoon he volunteered to pick me up himself and transport me back to the state school for boys. It was obvious that Mrs. Ryan was extremely thankful to be relieved of the long drive and the need to repeat our sorrowful good-byes of the previous day. Between Petey and now me, she probably feared that further emotional pain could put her right in the ground next to her beloved Mike.
We hugged and said good-bye at the front door, all of us resolving not to cry again and we all held up well. With a simple suitcase in my hand, I joined Detective Boyland on the sidewalk.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m never ready to go back to that place.”
“I understand.”
“Sure you do,” I said sarcastically.
“I spent a few years there myself.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, no kidding. Listen, I’m not going to bore you with the details of my life and troubles, but I want to say this to you. Life is not fair and I’ve found out that life was not meant to be fair.”
“What do you mean?”
“Frankie, we just gotta deal with what comes our way whether we like it or not. That’s what I mean.”
“You mean like your father falling down a flight of stairs and getting killed and your mother running away?”
“Yes.”
“And some guy always wanting to stick his dick up your ass?”
“What?”
“Never mind. And how about being happy in a foster home and the man ups and has a goddamned heart attack and dies and now you’re back to square one? So I’m supposed to roll with all those punches according to you, right?”
“Frankie, I…”
“Hey, Detective Boyland, leave me alone, okay? Just take me back to where it seems like I belong.”
On my fourteenth birthday I was still in the State Home. My age was now working against me both for another foster home and on any adoption candidates. I began a growth spurt and began to fill out my thin frame. There were few leftovers at the communal dining table and Mr. Eglund, who had grown to really like me over the years, shook his head one night and said, “My God, Frankie, where do you put it all?”
“I don’t know, sir,” I replied. “I’m just hungry all the time.”
“Well, come over to the staff table if you’re not getting filled up here. I’ll give you some of our food.”
Just after my fifteenth birthday, a couple came in and interviewed me and a few other boys my age. The man, Mr. Harold Jonas, had actually felt my shoulders and biceps as he looked me up and down. When Jonas and his wife went into the office with Mr. Eglund, the four other boys who were interviewed and I compared notes.
“Jesus,” Jason said, “the fuck was feeling me all over.”
“Me, too,” Stanley said. “He must think he’s buying a slave.”
“Whatever he wants us for,” I said, “I guarantee there’ll be hard work involved.”
“I hope it’s not a farm,” Willy said. “I hate fuckin’ farms.”
“You’ll take it though, won’t you?” Jason asked.
“Yeah, anyplace is better than this place. The food sucks, the beds are hard and we gotta work our ass off here too.”
“I can’t wait till I’m eighteen and outta the system,” Stanley said.
“Then what?” I asked.
“I’m joining the Navy.”
“To see the world?” Jason asked.
“Why not?”
“Yeah, why not?” Willy said. “We won’t have too many other options, will we?”
Mr. Eglund stuck his head out of his office and said, “Jason, please come in.”
The rest of us started to leave the outer office area, but Eglund said, “Stay awhile. The Jonas’s may again wish to speak to one or more of you.”
I was called in next and the Jonas’s asked me more questions. Mrs. Jonas, a very pretty brunette, smiled a lot at me and occasionally licked her lips which made me feel uncomfortable. I went back outside to await the decision and five minutes later Mr. Eglund called me back in and told the other boys they could return to the dormitory.
“Frankie,” Eglund said. “Mr. and Mrs. Jonas would like to take you to their home – their farm – in the Mohawk Valley. How does that sound to you?”
Shit! Another farm! I said, “That would be fine. I’d like to go.”
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Jonas said. “A fine looking boy, and strong, too.”
Vicky Jonas was right about me – on both counts. I was now five eight and a solid 155 pounds and I hoped a girl would find me attractive. I had dark-brown curly hair, clear light-brown eyes, a square chin with a small dimple in its middle, bright, white teeth and a nice smile – when I smiled, of course, which wasn’t often.
“Can he come with us now?” Harold Jonas asked.
“I don’t see why not,” Eglund said. “I’ll help Frankie get his things together and he can say good-bye to the boys. We should be no more than fifteen minutes.”
“Fine, we’ll wait here.” Jonas said.
“So, you’re outta here again?” Willy said.
“Yeah,” I said, taking my shirts out of the dented metal clothes cabinet next to my bed, “to another fuckin’ farm.”
When we finished packing up my things, I waved a general good-bye to all the boys and said with a smile, “I hope I never see your ugly mugs again.”
“With your track record you’ll be back here before Christmas,” Jason said with a laugh.
Then they all laughed and wished me luck. No one at the time realized just how accurate Jason’s predication would be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Jonas’s place was a small dairy farm – a dozen milk cows, scads of chickens, some pigs and a few sheep. What they grew on their few acres was primarily for animal feed. Mrs. Jonas also tended a vegetable garden for the family’s use which consisted of the two of them and now a third – me. My chores were many and varied – weeding the vegetable patch, slopping the hogs, milking the cows, crating the eggs and loading the truck for Mr. Jonas’s trips to the wholesaler.
The work was not back-breaking, but it seemed to be never-ending. After a few weeks it became repetitive and boring – the same chores over and over again. On a warm day in early June I helped load up the big truck with full milk cans and crates of eggs and Harold Jonas left for the long ride to sell his goods. “Frankie,” Vicky Jonas said to me, “let’s have a cold drink and then you can help me weed the vegetables.”
I drank two tall glasses of sweet lemonade and headed out to the vegetable patch with Mrs. Jonas. Vicky, as I noticed when I first met her, was a fine-looking woman in her mid-thirties and today she was showing off her attributes. She wore denim cut-off shorts – and short they were – with the bottom of her left cheek occasionally showing, and a thin, low-cut tee shirt tied at her midriff, which just about contained her firm, ample breasts. I walked behind her out to the garden and felt a little dizzy as the sun hit me.
We worked a few yards apart for a while then Vicky came over and knelt beside me. She turned to me and smiled. I noticed the full red lips, the white teeth, the cheery blue eyes and the droplets of sweat on her forehead just under her dark brown hair. I also noticed her breast as she bent over to pull a weed. I could see all the way down, almost to her nipple and I felt myself getting an erection. Suddenly, I wavered and had to put a hand down to the ground to keep from toppling over.
“What’s wrong, Frankie?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just felt a little weak – dizzy.”
“Poor boy, probably still not used to the summer sun. It is hot and close. Come on inside and have another glass of lemonade.”
I made it back to the kitchen with Vicky holding my arm and I gulped down another glass of lemonade. But the dizziness did not go away and Vicky said, “I think you’d better l
ie down awhile.”
She helped me to the bedroom and took off my work boots and socks. “Here let me help you out of your work clothes. You’ll feel better just in your underwear – cooler.”
But she didn’t stop there and had my tee shirt and jockey shorts off in a flash. Then her tee shirt and cut-off jeans came off even faster and she was on me in an instant kissing me full on the mouth, moving her naked body over mine.
“Mrs. Jonas, what…?
“Hush, now,” she said. “Relax and enjoy this. It will make you feel better, I promise.”
I had a full erection now – I just couldn’t help it – and when she wriggled down my body and took me in her mouth I almost couldn’t stand it. After a few moments she slid me inside her and said, “Just lay back, Frankie, I’ll do all the work.”
It was over quickly – much too quickly for Vicky Jonas. She told me that this was okay for starters, but she had a lot to teach me and assured me that I would love every minute. Still dizzy, I slipped into a deep sleep. When I awoke, Mr. Jonas was already home and dinner was getting ready to be served. I dressed and went cautiously downstairs sure the guilt of what had happened would be all over my face.
“How’re you feeling, Frank?” he asked. “The missus told me how you almost fainted out there.”
“Oh, much better,” I said. “I guess the heat got to me.”
Now I was wondering if it was just the heat or something Mrs. Jonas might have slipped into my glasses of lemonade.
“Yeah, you city boys need some time to adapt to the outdoor world. You’ll get used to it.”
A few days later when Mr. Jonas headed into town to get the truck serviced, Vicky approached me and asked, “Would you like another lesson in love?”
“Uh…Mrs. Jonas…er…I don’t think this is right.”