But Stuart and Nancy never lost touch and never fell out of love. For a full year, Stuart went from house to house, selling obsolete writing instruments, while Nancy languished in her housewifery. She fell into a depression, which she treated with Klonopin and booze. She received countless love letters in the mail, ironically handwritten on Exxon letterhead by the typewriter salesman to whom she’d relinquished her heart.
Exxon Office Systems Company
12000 Ford Road—Suite 200—Dallas, Texas 75234
Nancy my love,
I love you. I miss you. I need you. I oftentimes wonder why we do it all. It seems so hypocritical to suffer all this pain just to feel happiness. Whatever, I will love you always. I need to be with you, no matter how much we must sacrifice.
I’m on the road now, making calls to people who don’t want to buy, mainly because they don’t need it. Eventually, I’ll be able to convince them that they need it even if they don’t.
Soon, we get a new product line and new prices. They are going to change the typewriter a bit and completely change the word processor. That will be good. Right now, the word processor is a real dog. All of the other systems I’ve seen can run circles around it.
Enough. I love you. Please take care of yourself. Keep the children happy for me. Hugs and kisses, etc.
Always,
Stuart
Stuart returned from Texas after understandably failing to sell a product that nobody wanted. He and Nancy began seeing each other again, much to the dismay of the entire town. People often mistook Stuart for thirteen-year-old Pete’s older brother because he was so young. Nancy and Pat’s children were humiliated by all the attention. Pete asked her one day, “Why is the swim coach sleeping in a car on the street?” Stuart was not allowed home with his parents and not allowed into the Shorelands house—Pat would’ve killed him—so he lived in his blue Toyota station wagon.
As winter enveloped Greenwich in a blanket of fresh snow, Pete confronted Pat and Nancy about what he had to finally accept: Nancy and Stuart were having an affair. In response, they told him they were getting a divorce. He replied, “Does that mean we’re not spending Christmas together?”
1992: EIGHT YEARS OLD
Mortal Kombat for the Sega Genesis had just been released and I needed it. Video games had become a way for me to feel smart and capable. I was bad at baseball, bad at soccer, bad at football, bad at school—bad at everything except drawing, it seemed. I liked how video games had original art and music. I liked the puzzles and the coordination required. I liked that I could play them with my brother Andrew, who was so much cooler than me.
I was in my dad’s row house in Bridgeport, Connecticut, talking on the phone with my mother. My dad had been living there ever since he’d started dating Katie, whom he had married in 1990. “It’s not THAT violent!” I whined into the receiver.
“Absolutely not. I’ve seen it on the news. It’s absolute carnage! You’re eight!” she told me.
I went on to plead and beg for nearly twenty minutes. I told her that there was an option to remove the blood graphics and that playing video games did not mean I would become a murderer. “It’s not REAL!” I shrieked.
I was very aware of my father and stepmother in the adjacent kitchen. They were speaking softly to one another and setting the table for dinner. When I got off the phone, my father said to me, “I’d never let you speak to me that way. You were begging like a dog.”
I cast my eyes down in shame, knowing he was right. How could I forget myself in front of him like that? I felt sick. I hated myself. I sat down quietly, placed my napkin on my lap, and kept my eyes lowered so they couldn’t see the tears threatening to spill over my cheeks.
That very same night, one town over, my mom went out with Andrew to Toys “R” Us and purchased Mortal Kombat so they could surprise me when I returned.
CHAPTER 4
In 1981, divorce was still fairly taboo. Nancy was forced to sell the Shorelands estate to shed her life with Pat and start afresh with Stuart. They decided they needed to get the hell out of Greenwich, where everyone knew their names and sordid story. Fairfield, another suburb of New York City that was slightly farther north on the Long Island Sound, seemed like the perfect escape. They bought—well, Nancy bought—a house on a street called Pilgrim Lane and moved the whole family, with Pat and Nancy’s children splitting time between Fairfield and Greenwich.
It was a confusing time for all of Nancy and Pat’s children. Missy and Robbie were certain that Nancy and Pat were getting divorced after nearly seventeen years of marriage solely because their neighbors, the Joneses, were getting divorced. Pete was distraught and filled with teenage rage at having to relocate, abandoning his high school and his friends. Andrew was a toddler and didn’t know who his father was. Was it Pat or Stuart?
Stuart and Nancy were married in 1983. They were happy hippies, she in a boatneck, bell-sleeved, embroidered wedding gown and a flower crown, and he in a classic black tuxedo. He even shaved for the wedding. They were astonishingly happy. The way they looked at each other on their wedding day could make the sourest, dourest faces blossom into wide, toothy grins.
They took the kids in a newly purchased van on long camping trips, during which they’d booze themselves silly and smoke consecutive packs of cigarettes. Stuart taught the kids how to fish, to pitch a proper tent, to build a fire and grill hot dogs. He was young, sporty, and competent in a woodsy, classically masculine way—a tough stepfather not to like.
But he was twenty-five and had been shouldered with the responsibility of helping to raise four kids. There was no learning curve. It was a hard slam into fatherhood. Nancy helped him start his own carpentry business, which he ran out of a dusty red van. He struggled to make ends meet, and Nancy struggled with the reality of the failing business venture. He and Nancy drank to cope with their financial decline. She was consistently taking Valium, Fiorinal, Vicodin, Trazodone, Gabapentin, Klonopin, and other prescription drugs, nearly all downers. Booze was the glue that held them together.
1989: FIVE YEARS OLD
Pop, which is what I called him, used to take me with him to his carpentry jobs. I’d sit up in the rafters with him as he installed insulation or built out an attic. He’d hand me a two-by-four, a hammer, and a handful of nails to keep me busy. I’d sit next to the battery radio blasting rock and roll hits from the seventies and bang nails into the board while he drilled, sawed, scraped, and caulked.
We went on daily runs to “the dump” to deposit large pieces of wood and detritus, the refuse from the day’s work. I loved to watch the enormous maw of the compactor chomp down on wood, metal, and glass. Rapt, I’d watch as entire wardrobes were reduced to shards of wood and metal.
One day, I didn’t want to leave the dump. I refused to climb back into the van. Frustrated, he drove away without me, leaving me stunned next to the lip of the compacting pit. I was all alone, a five-year-old at the construction dump. I didn’t know what to do. So I stood there and wept inconsolably. Moments later, Pop’s red van returned. He swerved into the lot and jumped out of the driver’s side. Scooping me up and squeezing me close, he said over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
CHAPTER 5
Shortly after Stuart and Nancy married, she became pregnant. She already had four children but was excited to have a child with Stuart. Despite her pregnancy she continued drinking excessively, smoking excessively, and taking prescription drugs.
Borrowing against her trust fund, she bought a large house on Colonial Drive, also in Fairfield. So inconsequential were Stuart’s opinions and desires to her that she didn’t even tell him she was going to buy it. That was how Nancy lived her life. Everything was and should be available to her.
The house would’ve made the Brady Bunch jealous. Stuart, in all his Davy Crockett–ness, beautified it with an incredible tree house nestled into an enormous oak tr
ee in the backyard. He built a pool for the kids to swim in as well.
On July 27, 1984, James Bruce Whiteside was born at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport. Stuart’s parents wouldn’t come meet their new grandson. They thought the affair turned marriage disgraceful. This was a great source of misery for Stuart. He was proud of the life he had created with Nancy and he wanted to share it with them, to show them it had all been worth it. James wouldn’t meet his grandparents until two years later, when Stuart’s father was dying of throat cancer and expressed a last wish to see his grandson.
With an infant in arms, Nancy decided it was time to get sober, and shortly thereafter, Stuart followed suit. They went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, fighting the beastly disease of alcoholism together. By 1986, they were both proudly sober, but with their sobriety came a price: they fell out of love.
Without the haze of drunkenness, Nancy became astoundingly aware of the lifestyle downgrade she had accepted to fulfill her desire to be with Stuart. She had left the comforts of being the Greenwich country club housewife to be the sole provider for five children and a husband in his twenties. She had funded a failing carpentry business and borrowed against her trust fund to impulsively purchase a large home. She became resentful of Stuart. She still wanted to be the Greenwich housewife she so clearly wasn’t anymore. When James was two years old, she and Stuart filed for what turned out to be a very hostile divorce.
1988: FOUR YEARS OLD
My siblings were always watching PG-13- and R-rated movies. My mother would tell them, “You can’t watch that,” but then disappear into her bedroom. One night, Missy went to Blockbuster Video to rent a movie and came back with the comedy-horror film Gremlins. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. I was beside myself with fear. I wouldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t be alone. I even thought a gremlin would pop out of the toilet and bite my butt. My imagination ran wild and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Around every corner lurked a gremlin to maim and dismember me.
My family grew exhausted from my fear. “Gremlins aren’t real!” they’d tell me, giggling. I would cry and clutch their legs. “Please don’t leave me!” I’d wail.
One night, I woke up screaming. I was sure there were gremlins lurking in each dark corner of my bedroom. My mother rushed into the room and scooped me up. “It’s OK. Nothing’s there. Gremlins aren’t real. Don’t be scared.” I sobbed into her shoulder, shaking violently.
She stood abruptly and took my hand. “Come with me,” she said, winking. “Let’s sneak a snack.” She and I used to wake up in the middle of the night, go to the kitchen, and make a bowl of Campbell’s split pea soup. “Sneaking a snack” was our nocturnal rebellion and bonding time. We’d sit at the kitchen table and spoon the salty green mush into our mouths, whispering and laughing by the wan light of the stove.
“What are you so scared of?”
“They’re gonna get me. I just know it.”
“I know they seem real because you saw them in a movie, but gremlins don’t exist. What you’re feeling is fear. We’ve got to get rid of your fear.”
“But how?”
“I know what we’ll do. Come on. Up you get. Come with me.”
My mother rummaged under the sink and extracted a brown paper lunch bag, then scooped me up and carried me into the family room, which was home to a large white-brick hearth. It was majestic and beautiful. Setting me down, she opened the fireplace screen, set a Duraflame log into the andiron, and lit the corners of the log with an extralong wooden match. Then she sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. I was confounded. It was three a.m. and here she was, lighting a fire! I climbed up onto the sofa and cuddled next to her.
“Fear is a nasty, nasty thing. It makes people do all sorts of craziness. It’s much scarier than those gremlin puppets from the movies. You see this paper bag?”
“Uh-huh. Why?”
“Well, I want you to talk about your fear into this paper bag. Then we’ll seal it up quick and throw it into the fire! Then, no more fear!”
“What should I say?”
“I can’t tell you that. You have to be able to say it yourself, otherwise it won’t burn up.”
“Hmm. OK.”
She opened the bag and held it out to me. I sat there for a moment, steeling myself, while the Duraflame crackled and spat in the hearth, casting shadows over the night-owl mother and son.
“I’m afraid of the gremlins. I don’t want them to eat me. I know they’re not real, but I’m still scared!”
“OK, now shout into the bag, ‘I’m not afraid!’ ”
“I’M NOT AFRAID!”
She snapped up the bag and folded the top over. Yanking me off the sofa by my hand and dragging me over to the fire, she threw the paper bag into the happy blue flames, then began jumping up and down and laughing. “You did it! You did it!” I giggled and jumped up and down and spun in circles with a huge fire-lit grin on my four-year-old face.
She sat me on her lap in front of the fire that was joyfully consuming the paper bag filled with my fears and said, “You mustn’t be afraid to speak your fears while I’m here to hear them. You can always talk to me, Jimbo.”
CHAPTER 6
The Colonial Drive house was the epitome of late-eighties joy and excess. Thanks to the Occidental Petroleum checks, Nancy and the children could enjoy a wealthy, carefree life, buying anything and everything they wanted. Pranks and antics happened all over the place. The kids ordered Domino’s pizzas and hid under the wooden steps to the front door. When the delivery man arrived, they poked kitchen knives up through the gaps in the wood, shouting that the house was haunted. They threw little James off the roof into the swimming pool. Robbie gave Andrew “swirlies” in the toilet by dunking his head into the water and flushing. Pete made yogurt-and-mayonnaise smoothies and told his siblings they were milkshakes. Andrew gave pieces of dry cat feces to James, telling him they were candy bars. They gathered acorns and climbed onto the roof to throw them at passing cars. They rode a twin mattress down the long staircase. They threw pillows down onto the first floor and dove into them from the balcony. Danger, mischief, mayhem, and independence.
Nancy was much like Peter Pan. She didn’t want to grow up and she really believed the fantasy. Missy’s friends loved to come over and smoke cigarettes in the kitchen with Nancy, gossiping about their lives and the boys they were dating. She was the coolest, funniest mom they’d ever met. There was always music playing and the music was always about freedom. Robbie took up the guitar and played constantly. He learned “Puff, the Magic Dragon” to play for James, whom they all called “Jimbo.” The house thrived on creativity, and art was appreciated but never mandatory. It was the most human way to love art . . . for the very need of it. Nancy taught the kids that they could be anything they dreamed, all they had to do was try—which, for a wealthy white family in the eighties, was disturbingly accurate.
There were lavish Easters and generous Christmases in which the enormous tree was dwarfed by a sea of gifts. There was laughter and silliness. There were teenage parties and deception. Missy would often call the house when she was out with her friends and say, “I’m up in the playroom. Goodnight!” Nancy, being far too absorbed to take the steps, never made the trek to corroborate Missy’s story. Other times, Nancy would call the playroom telephone line from her bedroom to ask Robbie to make her a sandwich. Little did she know he was having a party up there. He’d arrive with a ham-and-cheese sandwich and she’d casually remark, “You smell like booze. Behave. Thanks for the sammie.” Then he’d return to his party.
Meanwhile, Stuart had met a lovely widow named Katie at Alcoholics Anonymous, hung up his carpenter’s tool belt, and gone back to school to get a teaching degree. He began substitute teaching and then landed a position as a high school English teacher in Stratford, Connecticut, where he continued to work for decades. He and Katie married an
d had two children together, George and John. Stuart and Katie would later divorce after more than twenty years of marriage. It seemed divorce was the new American dream.
1989: FIVE YEARS OLD
It was settled in divorce court that I would split my time between my parents. Mondays with my mother. Tuesdays with my father. Every other Wednesday with my mother. Every Thursday with my mother. Every other Friday and Saturday with my father. And every Sunday with my mother. I was shuttled around like a lost parcel.
In the beginning, my father had nowhere to live. On his custody days, I’d sleep on the floor of his friend Chris’s apartment. When my father met and started dating Katie, we moved into her row house in Bridgeport, where she had lived with her late husband, whom she’d lost to swift and brutal cancer. I recall a photo of a dark, extremely handsome man with a short, black beard. I often thought him the black-haired version of my roan father, an alter ego perhaps. The concept of death eluded me, but I watched her look at the photo with bright tears in her pretty, youthful eyes. It taught me that every adult has a story no one can imagine.
My twin lives were confusing. At my mother’s enormous house, I was surrounded by my four siblings. Even though they were technically half siblings, I loved them like we had been born of the same parents. My mother gave us anything and everything we wanted. We had multiple televisions throughout the house, a Nintendo Entertainment System, and a swimming pool. Trips to the grocery store were like winning the lottery. We’d slam items into the cart haphazardly: potato chips, ice creams, candies, sugar cereals, and snacks of every type imaginable. Upon exiting the store, Robbie would place a head of lettuce atop my head and we’d yank my T-shirt up over my face. He held my hand as we walked through the parking lot garnering strange looks and scandalized scoffs from other families. We called this stunt “Lettuce Head.” At the dinner table, my brothers would sometimes ask me to do “Lizard Boy,” a character I’d invented that was half lizard, half boy. I’d morph my face into a Grinchly smirk and dart my tongue out of my mouth while hissing and manipulating a single brow. Another dinner stunt involved a character I’d made up called “Licky the Dog,” in which I’d crawl around under the enormous dining table eating scraps out of my siblings’ hands while they howled with laughter.
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