by Mick Foley
I lay in the darkness thinking of Terri, how I would take my dad’s great advice and throw it all out, like the Village People eight-track I’d sent hurtling to its wooded grave. I needed some guidance, but not from my dad, so I closed my eyes and asked for help from above, asked to be just slightly better than I currently was.
Then I turned to my pillow, closed my eyes, and saw Terri kissing my mouth with the gentlest of lips. But try as I might, her image started to wane, and the mouth of that pillow became the drunk blonde, and the gentlest of kisses became a probing wet tongue. The same probing tongue that had forced upon me my first kiss. Then Terri was gone and I was alone with the blonde, thrashing and plunging, my pity replaced by the most primal of urges. For once those old nuns were right, for the touching that night underneath my white sheets was impure to the core. The kettle was ready to boil, but turned quickly to ice with the knock at my door.
A moment later, my dad entered the room wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and a look on his face that was a stranger to me. In his hand was an envelope.
“Can I sit down?” he said as he flipped on the light switch.
“Sure, Dad, can I get you a chair?”
“Actually, son, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to sit here with you.”
I gestured him to the bed, and he looked at me for a long time without speaking. The light by my bed created soft shadows on his face, enhancing the scars that creased both eyebrows, and for the first time, I thought, my father looked vulnerable. The corner of his mouth drew up into just the slightest of smiles, and in a voice that was new, he said, “I wasn’t always like this. I want you to know that what you see here, you know, in me, is not how I was when I was . . .” and then his voice trailed off, and he held his envelope with both hands.
“When you were what, Dad?” I said. “When you were what?”
“When I was, um, with your mother, Andy. I wasn’t like this. I fell in love from the moment I met her. She was a singer. In a club . . . In Japan. God, she made me feel . . . like I was . . . the only man in the world.” He swallowed hard, then went on, his voice starting to shake, both of his eyes starting to well. “I thought you should know that.” Then, extending his hand to offer the envelope, he said, “This is for you, I’ll let you open it in peace,” and as he got up to leave, I saw that his cheeks were bathed in fresh tears. “Good night, son,” he said.
I opened the envelope and took out a faded black-and-white photograph. A beautiful woman, her hair long and blond, looking down at her hands, which were placed on a huge belly. Those hands cradling her belly as if it were the most precious gift in the world. And I instantly knew, my mother . . . and me, in a time when the future seemed like a friend to us both.
I’ve thought about that time, Tietam and me, alone on my bed, a great deal over the years, and I always come to those tears on his face. I was his son, and his tears were all real. After all of this time, those tears are still real.
The Rage / 1977
I still remember those fireworks. Man, they were impressive. Sure, it was only on television, but as I sat in the Delanors’ cozy living room, I could almost feel the heat as blast after blast illuminated the July sky in honor of our country’s independence. And when Mr. Delanor put his arm around me and patted me on the back, I felt for the first time in a long time that I really belonged.
The Delanors weren’t my first foster parents since the death of the DelGrattos, but they were the first to act as if they actually liked having me around—indeed, during the spring and early summer of 1977, I will dare say that they seemed to love it.
Little Rachel had been adopted almost immediately following her parents’ death. She was kind of like a blue-chip prospect. I, on the other hand, was like the last kid picked in gym class when it came to choosing up sides. It could have been the useless hand. It could have been the missing ear. Or maybe, just maybe, it could have been that nagging stigma of having single-handedly wiped out my last family.
So when the Delanors pointed to me on their visit to the Petersburg Home for Boys, I pretty much felt like I’d hit the lottery.
Mrs. Delanor wasn’t home on the night of our country’s two hundred and first birthday. She was at grief counseling. Her counseling generally took place on a weekly basis, but at certain times, like this night in question, when her sadness overwhelmed her, emergency counseling was made available to her.
Just a little over a year earlier, there was no sadness in Sandra Delanor’s life. She had what seemed to be an ideal existence. Victorian house, picket fence, a golden retriever named Shakes, a husband who was a pillar of the community, and a ten-year-old son whom she adored. A ten-year-old son who had accidentally stumbled upon his father’s pistol . . . and fired it.
Little Wilson Delanor’s pictures were everywhere. Eight-by-tens documenting his elementary school years smiled down on me from every conceivable angle, and snapshots of family vacations seemed to occupy every spare nook and cranny in their spotless home.
With his dark curls and impish grin, Wilson Delanor looked a lot like me, even if I didn’t let my impish grin out in the open very often. Enough like me so that passersby in their small town just north of Petersburg did double takes. Enough like me so that as time went by, I realized what my role was. I was the substitute kid. Which might have hurt my feelings if it hadn’t been for the fact that Doug and Sandra Delanor were just so . . . damn . . . nice. Damn, they were nice. I know that sounds repetitive, but I really don’t know how else to put it.
I can still picture Mrs. Delanor with her happy smile saying, “Andrew, would you like a piece of pie? I just baked it.” Or “Andrew, would you like some help with your homework?” Always Andrew, and always with that happy smile. A smile that was betrayed only by the sadness in her eyes.
In many ways, she was Auntie M’s exact opposite. She was slim, maybe even skinny, a problem which I guess was compounded by her seeming refusal to eat just about anything. With the exception of an occasional cigarette or drink that she held with shaking hands, I really can’t remember anything that she put into her mouth.
Auntie M loved to hug. Maybe even lived to hug. Mrs. Delanor, on the other hand, made contact only with the slightest touch of a fingertip, and even then it seemed like she was forcing herself. Like she was trying to relearn a gesture that had once been so natural.
On one evening in late June of 1977, about four months after my arrival in their home, I had watched as she poured herself two or three glasses of sherry over her normal limit. Had watched as her hands shook less with each passing swig.
She sat down on the couch, and while Mr. Delanor looked intently at his paper, she looked intently at me as I played intently with Shakes the dog. The dog had originally been named Jebby when given to little Wilson on his seventh birthday, but the boy had done a switch in honor of the way the puppy emphatically shook his head anytime an object of any type found its way into his mouth.
On that June night, Shakes was having his way with one of Mr. Delanor’s old slippers, and was really growling up a storm as I rubbed the dog’s belly and tried to pull the slipper from the clenches of his stubborn jaw. I looked at Mrs. Delanor and saw her smile, which was not unusual. But something about her didn’t seem quite right. And then I got it—realized what was different. Her eyes. For the first time, for the only time, her eyes were smiling too.
She tucked me in that night as she usually did, with a story—this one was about a little pony who joined the circus. But on this night, she touched my cheek with the faintest of fingertips and said three words that I thought were long extinct . . . “I love you.”
She was already sobbing quietly when she closed my door, and she didn’t leave her bed for the next three days, but I will never forget those fingertips or those words. Words that hurt her so much, but made me so happy.
Mr. Delanor was a fifth-grade teacher and coached cross-country, winter track, and track at the middle school. The man liked his running. At one point he
’d been a hell of a runner himself, having held a Virginia high school record in the fifteen hundred meters that stood for nearly a decade.
Sometimes he’d take me running with him. I hated it but never had the nerve to tell him. I was afraid it might hurt his feelings, so I played the role of the happy runner, talking with great excitement about that happy day when I would run for his team. That sentiment always brought a smile to his face—a face that seemed to walk a very fine line between all-American good looks and outright nerdism. The strong chin and classic nose said “all-American.” The oversized ears that supported thick black-framed glasses said “nerd” in a way that Potsie Weber or Ralph Malph couldn’t even begin to approach.
Mr. Delanor didn’t attend grief counseling with his wife. He said that he’d “come to terms with it” and that “someone had to be strong” in the family.
Mr. Delanor talked a lot about family. And never more so than on July 4, 1977, while we watched the red glare and bombs bursting in air.
“Hey sport,” he said to me, utilizing one of the three nicknames he threw my way regularly in random order, the other two being “pal” and “chief.” But at this particular moment, I was “sport.”
“Hey sport?”
“Yes, Mr. Delanor?”
“Hey come on now, chief, you know you can call me Doug.”
“Okay, Doug . . . sorry.”
“Hey pal, nothing to be sorry about. Listen, chief, how do you like being part of this family?”
“Oh I like it a lot, Mr. Delanor.”
“Doug . . . sport.”
“Yes sir, I like it a lot . . . Doug.”
“Well then, sport, what would you think about us making it official?”
“You mean . . .?”
“That’s exactly what I mean, pal. I mean you being our son, me being your dad.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded my head. Nodded my head while I watched Shakes shake his own head back and forth, a rubber chew toy paying the consequences.
Mr. Delanor said, “Think about it sport-o, think about how happy Mrs. Delanor will be.”
I nodded again, thinking about her fingertips and her gentle voice . . . saying those magic words.
“But chief . . . Andrew, there’s one thing I need to know before we can make this happen for real. One thing that’s real important.”
“Yes sir?”
“What I need to know, chief, is . . . can you . . . keep secrets?”
“Secrets?” I said.
“That’s right, sport, secrets. Can you keep them?”
“You mean, keep them from . . . Mrs. Delanor?”
“Well yes, Andrew, sometimes we might need to keep a secret from your . . . mom . . . for her own good.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Sure, sport. Look, I love my wife. And I think you love her too, don’t you?”
I nodded my head.
“And chief?”
“Yes sir?”
“She loves you too. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes sir.” My voice was but a mouse’s squeak.
“But it hurt her to tell you. Do you know why?”
I shook my head slowly. “No sir.”
“Because she’s afraid she might lose you. She’s afraid that you’re going to leave her. Leave her like . . . our son did.”
I felt tears welling up, but I fought them back. I fought hard. Then I yelled, “No I won’t, Mr. Delanor. I won’t leave her. I promise. I promise.”
Mr. Delanor took it all in, then smiled and said, “Do you keep your promises, sport?”
“Yes, Mr. Delanor, I do, I swear I do.”
“Well chief, if you’re able to keep promises, then you won’t ever have to call me Mr. Delanor again . . . or Doug for that matter. Do you know what you’ll call me, pal?”
“Dad?”
“That’s right, sport, you will call me Dad, and do you know what you’ll call Mrs. Delanor?”
I took a second to fight back tears again, and then managed to squeak out, “Mom?”
“Yes, pal, you’ll call her Mom . . . if you can keep a secret.”
“But . . . um, Mr. Delanor—”
“Dad, call me Dad.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, chief?”
“We don’t have any secrets.”
“No, not yet, but we will.”
“When?”
“As soon as you promise . . . are you ready?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Guessing isn’t good enough, pal, I need you to promise. Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then, chief, here is the promise. Promise me that for the sake of your mother’s health, you won’t tell her about any of the things that you and I do together. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Mr. Delanor smiled and nodded his head. He put his hand on my shoulder and kept smiling. Then he asked me to put out my hand, and when I did, he dropped a shiny new quarter into it. Then he stood up.
“Chief, put that quarter in your pocket. It’s for being a good boy. Now you watch that television, and I’ll be right back.”
With that he turned and walked to his bedroom, leaving me to look at my shiny new quarter. A quarter that I slipped into my pocket just as Mr. Delanor was reemerging from his bedroom, looking to my naïve eight-year-old eyes like a ghost with a pointy white hat.
Mr. Delanor looked at me for a long time. A little too long, it seemed.
“Why are you dressed so funny?” I asked.
“Well, sport, it might look funny to you, but there’s really nothing funny about this. No, sport, to the contrary this garment means that I belong to a very important club . . . a club that I want you . . . my son to join someday. Would you like to join the club?”
I thought he looked ridiculous, but again, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I nodded my head slowly. As I did, a car’s headlights flooded our living room with light. Mrs. Delanor had returned. Mr. Delanor seemed to panic.
“Remember, pal,” he said as he ran for the bedroom, “this is our secret.”
In his haste he neglected to close his door completely, and from my spot on the couch I could see him slide his bed to the side, pull up a rug, uncover a small opening in the floorboards, and throw his wadded-up ghost outfit into it. He was just skidding the bed back into place when Mrs. Delanor, my soon-to-be mother, walked into the room with her warm smile and her sad eyes.
I woke up that next morning with the realization that I was going to have a mother, a real mother. And a father, a real father. A mother who had said she loved me, and a father who wanted me to join his special club when I got to be old enough. I looked on my nightstand in the room that still housed all of little Wilson’s things, and tried to find my quarter. It was gone.
That afternoon, while Mrs. Delanor took her daily nap, Mr. Delanor asked to see my shiny new quarter. Sadly, I told him it was gone.
“Sport,” he said, “if you want to join our club, you can’t be losing things. That’s irresponsible, understand?”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Now chief, if you can’t be responsible, we can’t have you in the club.”
“But I can be responsible, Mr. Delanor. I swear I put it on my nightstand last night, but when I woke—”
“All right, chief,” Mr. Delanor interjected, “I’m sure it was an honest mistake. So I’ll tell you what . . . I’ll give you another one, and to make sure you don’t lose it, I’ll put it in your pocket myself . . . okay?”
“Okay.”
“And remember, don’t tell your mother about this, all right?”
“All right.”
“About any of it.” And then he took the quarter and put it in my pocket. But before he let go of that quarter, I was pretty sure I felt his finger rubbing my testicle. He looked at me and smiled.
“How was that . . . son?”
“Um good,” I said, happy to have the quarter, but not
sure of what had just gone on inside my trousers.
“Call me Dad,” Mr. Delanor said, still smiling.
“Okay . . . Dad.”
Within a week I had fourteen shiny new quarters to my collection, and an accumulated total of two and a half minutes of Mr. Delanor’s clandestine pocket pool. The contact was no longer incidental, it was pretty obvious, and the duration was longer with each passing episode. It no longer consisted just of testicular tickling either. No, now my penis itself was part of the act as well. An act that always ended with Mr. Delanor and his goofy smile saying, “Remember, this is our secret.”
I weighed the positives and the negatives of the situation. On the positive side, I now had a family. Mrs. Delanor had taken to calling me son, and had even echoed her three magic words after a bedtime story about a girl who had a hundred dresses. As she walked away, I had said, “I love you too, Mom,” and she had raced back into my room and for the first time wrapped me in a tight hug, so that the mangled cartilage of my missing ear was crushed against her bony chest. Even so, for that brief moment, her breast seemed like the safest place in the world.
Now, the negatives. Let me see. Oh yeah, I was being molested by the guy I called Dad, and even at the age of almost nine, I knew that something about that was wrong. Sure, I’d made a cool $3.50 in the process, but I still had a hard time rationalizing Mr. Delanor’s behavior. I wanted to tell his wife, but I knew I couldn’t. She’d be devastated, and besides, I’d given my word.
I turned nine that August. I had a lot of money, 23 dollars and 75 cents to be exact, but my guilt far outweighed my income. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. And most importantly, I couldn’t tell anyone, because I’d given my word. To make matters worse, my real father, Antietam Brown IV, was legally fighting the Delanors’ adoption efforts, despite the fact that he had shown no fatherly inclination in eight years and nine months. The legal proceedings were taking their toll on Mrs. Delanor, whose naps had become longer, whose drinks had become more frequent, and whose bedtime stories were becoming increasingly less coherent.