“Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
The Poconos was three years after the wedding in Las Vegas. We were three years older. Time was running out.
Nothing had happened.
Nothing happened in the Poconos either.
III
Days Inn served the continental breakfast in the lobby: coffee, muffins. While I ate, I read USA Today and The BG News (“A daily independent student press”). Newspapers were my business; they interested me.
They were my father’s business too.
I drove along Wooster, just to have a look. Pretty homes, lovely verandas. BGSU seemed enormous—it stretched its way along into town until I came to Main Street—a real, honest-to-goodness Main Street.
The Cla-Zel Theater, billiards, pizza, Chamber of Commerce.
American Family Insurance, Kirk’s Coin Laundry, H & R Block, Huntington Banks.
I pictured Adam going to Bowling Green State University, editing The BG News, eating with classmates at Mark’s Pub. Maybe this was where he might have ended up if I hadn’t entered his life, taken him north. Taken him away from his father.
I got back on I-75, headed south. My eye was drawn to my hand on the steering wheel, to the red garnet there.
The flat Ohio countryside continued. Near Findlay, two cement silos rose up on my left: “Pioneer Sugar.”
Only talk shows or static on the radio.
NINE
I
Psychologists call it “Searching Behavior.” For the living, it is one way that some deal with grief for the loss of a loved one. I’d read this somewhere, but couldn’t remember where.
I think it’s simpler than that. I think there are family ghosts. I think they are something real and powerful that we carry inside us, that without them we’re empty, without direction. They steer us, advise us, converse with us daily.
They bring the past and the present together. Give us a future, a perspective. They humble us.
At Exit 161: the University of Findlay. Exit 145: Ohio Northern University. Exit 142: Bluffton College.
Adam could be studying at any of them. Findlay and Lima must have newspapers where I could work. Or the Dayton Daily News. It was possible.
Near Lima: Comfort Inn, Days Inn. “United States Plastic.” Beside it: “Christ Is the Answer.”
I crossed the Ottawa River, thought of Canada’s capital. Like Dixie, my world and the past had come with me, clinging, recurring like distant speed bumps.
Ohio State University, Lima Campus, off to the east. A woman hanging wash on a line.
Flat. Cows. The sun came down in actual rays through the clouds: like a postcard.
I was thirsty. The juice machine back in the Bowling Green Days Inn lobby had been out of order.
Economy Inn, Hampton Inn, The Olive Garden—all visible from the highway.
Exit 111: the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. The sign said, “75 South—Dayton.” Again. There was no doubt where I was going.
At Piqua, Exit 83: “Paul Sherry RV’s, Ohio’s Largest Dealer, 350 + New Ones & Used.” Red Carpet Inn. Edison Community College.
The giant Panasonic factory on my right, near Troy.
Dayton, eighteen miles.
I thought of Adam and the three blond students I’d seen at Chi-Chi’s in Bowling Green, thought of them in residence at the bucolic campus there, of how different his life was compared to theirs.
Near Tipp City, south of Troy, the road flared to three lanes. The chain restaurants resurfaced: Red Lobster, Bob’s Crab Shack, Outback, Bob Evans.
Then, DAYTON CORP LIMIT.
Bobby Swiss. Adam. Jeanne. Everybody was there with me. My father was there. Even Aidan, my stillborn son.
II
Nanny—my paternal grandmother—was born June 15, 1885. She died December 27, 1974. Her maiden name was Annie Sutton. She was baptized at St. Mary’s Church, on Bathurst Street, in Toronto.
Because she lived at Maxwell with my parents, a lot of the trivia of her life fell into my father’s hands when she passed away. And now it’s fallen into mine. That’s how I know her dates, her place of baptism. I’ve got her birth certificate and her death certificate.
I also came across three postcards from France.
July 28,1917
Dear Father
Just a card to let you know I am well and hope you and mother are in the best of health I received 2 letters from you dated June 24 and July 1 and am glad to hear you are well I will write a letter later on for I know you like to hear from me often so cheer up good days coming when we meet I remain your loving son HMS XXXXXXXXXX
September 13,1917
Dear Mother
Just a card to let you know I am always thinking of you and hope you and father are in the best of health as it don’t leave me so bad for I am picking up again I remain your loving son somewhere in france do my bit XXXXXXXXXXXX
September 24,1917
Dear Father
Just a line to let you know I received your letter ok and glad to hear you and mother are well as it leaves me getting on well after the shell shock I got but my nerves are a little shaky yet but will come around alright the Dr. said I remain your son HMS XXXXX
Not exactly French postcards as I understood the term.
Since Dad’s death, my cousin Jacquie was the oldest in the family, so I asked her. “Who are they from?”
“Uncle Mike. He was Nanny’s brother. He was adopted. He was in the war. He was shell-shocked. He was never right afterward.”
All news to me.
“I’ve got an old picture of Da and Jim, standing outside 222 Berkeley Street in 1918. The house is decorated with streamers and flags. There’s a big sign across the top of the veranda that says ‘Welcome Home.’ It was all for Mike.”
“Did Nanny have any other brothers or sisters?”
“No. She was an only child, so Da and her mother adopted Mike. That way they had a boy and a girl.”
“Two of them are signed ‘HMS.’ What’s that? His Majesty’s Service, because he was a soldier?”
“His name was Henry. Henry Michael Sutton. But he was always Uncle Mike.”
Henry Sutton. That was the name of the godfather on the baptismal certificate of Dad’s that I’d come across—the one in that brown leather folder that he kept in the top drawer of his dresser. A person to go with the name. A new sprig of foliage on the tree.
“What happened to him? To Mike?”
“He married Agnes after the war. Marie Agnes. Aunt Aggie. They had two boys—Tommy and Jimmy Sutton. Tommy joined the Christian Brothers and became Brother Julian. He died just after World War Two. A urinary tract infection. He was only twenty-four. Jimmy joined the paratroopers. He moved out west. Edmonton, I think. He had a son who became an Anglican minister.”
Tributaries, with small rills trickling off. I could hear them, bubbling, like streams down a mountainside.
“During the Depression, Mike couldn’t get a job. He used to take a shovel and go line up somewhere downtown with the unemployed, waiting for work. He didn’t have the carfare to get there. Nanny used to give him a ticket.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Agnes died first. He married again.”
“Where are they buried?”
“I don’t know.” A sigh. “I’m sorry, Leo. I haven’t thought about them in years. I don’t know what happened to any of them.”
Da had wanted a son, so he had adopted Mike. My Uncle Jim, like Da, had wanted a son. In my mother’s story, he would have even taken me. He had adopted two sons.
Ghosts are real. They don’t need our belief. They exist because struggle and failure have value. They slow down time, let us move backward.
They had traveled here with me, through Ohio, to Dayton. In my 1960 Chev.
Dayton. Main Street.
There it was again. Everywhere.
It seemed as good a bet as a
ny. I turned off.
Left: downtown. Over the river. Stop at the traffic lights at Monument Avenue.
Interstate Mortgage Company, Fifth Third Bank, National City Bank. I was in a financial district.
The Dayton Convention Center at Fifth and Main.
I pulled over in front of Otis Elevator to orient myself.
I turned back, went east along Fifth.
There it was: the red, white, and blue striped logo of the Greyhound Bus Station, from my dream.
At St. Clair—another name from Toronto, from the past—I pulled into an Arby’s parking lot, stayed in the car, pulled out my map of Dayton, saw where I was. Looking up through the windshield: Hauer Music Company. To the left, a building with the windows broken, slated for demolition. Slated into memory only. Like the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas.
I reached into my shirt pocket, took out the address and phone number. I looked at it.
Arby’s didn’t appeal. Not enough hunger yet. Where I wanted to go was south through the city. Southeast, actually. A suburb called Kettering.
Past Miami Valley Hospital on Main, the road changed. Suddenly, for the first time in what seemed to be hundreds of miles, I saw hills, trees, and the landscape became small-town pretty. Oakwood: a bandstand—a gazebo—in a park at Shantz. The road wound upward. Somewhere Main had become Far Hills.
Arrow Wine and Spirits. Lincoln Park Medical Center.
Kettering City Schools Board of Education building.
I was close.
At Stroop Road, I pulled into the Town and Country Shopping Center. I was finally hungry. For lunch, I treated myself to New Orleans-style crabcakes and seafood chowder at the Peasant Stock Restaurant.
III
East along Stroop to Woodman, north to Dorothy Lane, then east again to Galewood. At the Midas Muffler on Dorothy, near the tail end of Woodlane Plaza, I pulled in, took the slip of paper from my pocket, read it: Bobby Swiss, 2926 Galewood Street, and the phone number.
It was 2 p.m.
Midas advertised Lube & Oil, Brakes, Pipes, Mufflers, Shocks & Struts. Nobody came out, nobody bothered me.
I drove across Dorothy Lane, up Galewood.
The address was a small, white, wooden bungalow on my right, with a door in the center. It probably had two bedrooms. I continued driving, mesmerized, till Ghent Avenue, turned left, another left at Acosta, then back along Galewood for another look. I did it again. And once more.
I was here, at last.
A working-class neighborhood. Blue-collar. Neat, clean. Real estate had a name for homes like these: starter home, empty-nester.
It was the middle of the afternoon. I parked down the block, pulled on my ivy cap and sunglasses, got out, wandered up the street. Opposite the house was a park set up for kids, backing onto a complex that included a Montessori School, Baptist Center, Ballet School.
I found a bench in the park, behind a swing set and sandbox, sat down, stretched my arms along its back, pulled the cap down low over my eyes, let the sun beat down.
I sat there for an hour, staring at the house, then I left.
On 675 North, I drove until the usual signs appeared, near Fairborn: Holiday Inn, Fairfield Inn, Homewood Suites, Hampton Inn. Bob Evans, McDonald’s, Arby’s, Wendy’s.
I ate dinner at Chi-Chi’s. I had the chimichangas and a beer. It had been good in Bowling Green, it was still good here.
The Hampton Inn that I checked into was on Presidential Avenue, off John Glenn Parkway, right opposite Wright State University. Standing in my room, looking out the window, I pictured Adam going there, carrying his books across the broad campus, living in Dayton, with his father.
TEN
I
I dreamed that night of my father flying in on a plane to meet me. At the airport, I told him that I didn’t like looking after his money, that I didn’t want the responsibility. As in other dreams, he was young. His hair had blond streaks in it—which, if you’d seen my father, made no sense at all.
He told me that young people are always angry, that when I was older, more damaged, I’d understand.
The dream was already fading as I stepped out of my morning shower. Sitting on the edge of the bed, studying the map of Dayton, I realized that it had disappeared down drains, into the rivers around the city—the Greater Miami, Wolf Creek, the Stillwater. Mad River.
Mad River.
During the last six months of his life, Dad suffered from dementia. It was triggered by the first of the two bouts of pneumonia that finished him. It was explained to me that pneumonia in the elderly can act like a stroke, cutting off necessary oxygen to the brain.
There were moments of lucidity, mingled with the madness. One day, sitting in the green, cloth-covered chair in his room, five days before he died, he talked.
“I’m near the end. I know that.” Pause. “If you move over to the other side of the plane, there are better seats. I was in Hamilton yesterday. Today I was in Kingston.” The eyes, watery. “I slept with a woman last night. She was a big woman, bigger than that nurse who used to come to see me.” Struggling. A frown. Then: “I dream a lot now. I don’t know when I’m dreaming and when I’m not.”
I listened.
I’d phoned Jeanne before I went to bed the previous night.
“Tonight?”
“Hampton Inn.”
“Big spender. What’s Dayton like?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“You must have some impression.”
I thought about it, about the Convention Center, Otis Elevator, the Greyhound Bus Station, the building near Arby’s, boarded up, ready for demolition. I thought about Oakwood, the gazebo, hills, trees, the Peasant Stock Restaurant in the mall. “You can’t pigeonhole it. I saw a business section, some inner-city stuff. Then you drive farther, there’s a beautiful suburb, big houses. It’s like you. Too complex.”
We sipped our beers, four hundred miles apart.
“So I’m complex, huh?”
“Isn’t complex good?”
“How am I complex?”
“You’re always planning ahead. You’re smarter than me.”
“How could anyone be smarter than you?”
“Touché.”
“One example. Just one.”
“You taught me how to shop, how to plan. Buy bulk. Like the running shoes on sale, you bought two pairs, put one in the closet. I only bought the one pair. Two years later, you whip out your second pair, toss the old away. Me, I had to go shopping again. Like a dumbhead.”
“I got ’em on right now.”
“I know you do.”
“How do you know?”
“You wear them when you’re cleaning. You’re cleaning, aren’t you? Like a wild woman?”
“Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe I’m stark naked.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Think about it.”
“I am.” And I did. But not for long. I knew I’d never sleep.
We listened to each other breathe over the phone. It was comforting. She never asked the questions she wanted to ask, and I was grateful, because I didn’t know any of the answers.
Da, my father’s maternal grandfather, my great-grandfather—whose name was Thomas Samuel Sutton—was an imposing figure. On a wall in his room my father kept a black-and-white photograph in a twelve-by-fourteen-inch frame of my brother Ron, circa 1934, at about two years of age, sitting on Da’s knee. It’s a handsome photo—done in a studio. If I were guessing, I’d say Da paid for it. He looks pretty proud.
Ron is wearing a sailor suit. Da has on a three-piece suit and a bow tie. My father has Da’s ears, the long lobes. He has his mouth.
If Nanny was the matriarch of my memory, Da was the patriarch of the previous generation. My father must have lived in his shadow. Certainly Bampi—Dad’s father—did. There are some good stories of Da still circulating through the family. I’ve heard them. Jacquie has told me most of them.
Da couldn’t read or write. He used to get one of t
he kids around the house to read the newspaper to him. He spent time in the backyard, the garden, the garage of the house on Maxwell Avenue. When I was a kid we could still see some of the harps that he had carved into the side of the garage. He was born in Toronto in 1862. His father, Sam Sutton, was born in Dublin in 1842. Once, in the early 1930s, he raised the Irish flag on a pole from that garage. Someone complained. The police came and made him take it down.
Among my father’s things I also found a receipt, dated October 21, 1899: Received from Mr. Thomas Sutton, the sum of $951.46, payment in full for 81 Duke Street, Toronto … signed, Annie Russell, Executrix. Duke Street no longer exists. It’s been blended into Adelaide Street. The house is long gone too.
Da, son of Sam Sutton of Dublin, both illiterate laborers, had managed to accumulate enough cash to buy a house, something even I couldn’t do. He gave us all a leg up, a small start. It was a beginning. We stood on his shoulders.
In the photo, my brother Ron’s hands are resting on his great-grandfather’s. Ron told me once that Da used to take him out on Sunday afternoons for a walk, a ride on the streetcar, then to a playground. This would have been around 1937. Ron would have been about five years old. Inevitably, they would visit a bootlegger and Da would have a drink. When they got home, Nanny would be suspicious and grill Ron with questions. He’d always answer that he didn’t know where they went. Sitting in the corner of the kitchen, Da would beam, a twinkle in his eye, say That’s my boy, That’s my boy. We’ll go for walks and rides to the playground every Sunday.
Da, Thomas Sutton, was a widower from 1930 until he died in 1944. He lived at Maxwell Avenue for those fourteen years. I think he needed that drink on Sunday afternoons.
Ron died May 23, 1993, age sixty.
Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Page 35