“Well, sir, if you’re a history buff,” he said to Dad, “you probably know that my father was at the signing of the armistice with Japan, right there on the USS
Missouri.
”
“Really?” Dad said. He stood, quickly crossed the room to the bookshelves, and pulled down a volume of the encyclopedia. He flipped through the pages and returned to us. “Here’s a picture of the signing,” he said. “It doesn’t say anything about Admiral, excuse me,
Commodore
Perry.” He handed the book to John.
Mom and I came around to peer over John’s shoulder.
“There!” John said. “That’s my dad.” He tapped one of the indistinguishable faces in the row behind the signatory table. I strained to see the face of his father but couldn’t make out any distinct features, and none of the attendees were identified in the caption beneath the photo.
“Guess we’ll just have to take your word for it,” my father sneered. I glared at him, but he was not looking my way.
While my mother went into the kitchen to brew some coffee, my father continued to avoid my eyes and pursue his interrogation of John. “Tell me, John, based on your military exploits, why didn’t you settle someplace closer to a base, say, a base like Alameda?”
John calmly replied, “Truth is, I never liked Navy social games. Not then. Not now.”
John was fine, I thought, just fine. He was handling my father. I could breathe easy, knowing it was safe to leave the two of them to talk, so I excused myself to go into the kitchen to help Mom. John stood, excused himself, and asked for directions to the bathroom.
As I turned toward the kitchen, I noticed my father returning the encyclopedia to the bookshelf. After replacing it, he quickly pulled out another volume. I stopped to observe him as he seemed to study one particular entry until he saw John saunter back into the room. Dad snapped the book closed and shoved it back onto the shelf without a word. What, I wondered, had he been so interested in, and why hadn’t he shared whatever it was with John?
As Mom and I served coffee and cake, I tried to steer the conversation away from our previous topics, but my father continued to run the show, and the next wave of questions quickly ensued.
“Barbara tells me your great-grandfather is Admiral Peary of North Pole fame. Why then, do you spell your name P-e-r-r-y instead of P-e-a-r-y?”
Without hesitation John answered. “Simple. He’s my great-grandfather on my mother’s side of the family.” Winking at me, he added, “I’m a real Navy brat.”
Dad leaned forward toward John. “Okay, then tell me this. If you’re so famous and can run in any social circle you want, what do you see in my daughter?”
My lips parted, but I could not speak. My eyes stung with tears as I tried to make sense out of what had just taken place. Even John was speechless. What in the world was my father implying, that being the daughter of a blue-collar worker had forever cast me in a lower social stratum and that I, his own daughter, wasn’t good enough to be with this man . . . my hero, the country’s hero? I was humiliated and embarrassed, not just for myself and for John, but also for my father, for insulting a guest that way.
I stood up, fighting back tears. “He sees a . . . a. . . . a real person!” I stammered.
John reached out and gently took my hand. He smiled at me and said, “Barbara makes me feel special. She has no airs; she’s honest and trusting. I’ve looked a long, long time for someone like her.”
I wiped at the tears that spilled from my eyes. After an uncomfortable silence, I thanked John and sat again. The visit continued with no more of Dad’s endless, confrontational questions. That day I never noticed how easily John answered each one. He hadn’t skipped a beat.
Later, on our way back to my place, I apologized for my father’s unforgivable insensitivity. John laughed it off.
“Please don’t apologize. It’s typical. Believe me, I know. Even at my age, I catch plenty of grief. I’m considered the black sheep of the family.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t live up to their expectations of what I should be doing with my life, or with my inheritance.”
I bristled. “Well, John, at least you know it’s not your money that attracted me to you. I told you that first night at Debbie’s, and I’m telling you now...what I want, what I need more than anything is honesty, plain and simple honesty, especially after my first marriage.”
I surprised myself with my own frankness and talked for a while about my first marriage, about enduring thirteen years of sexual infidelities. The pain still hurt.
“I want someone I can trust,” I whispered.
“I’ll never be anything but honest with you,” he said as he reached across to stroke my hair. “You’re too precious to hurt.” His soothing words made my heart skip a beat.
This man really loves me,
I thought,
and doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to be truly loved?
At that very moment my parents were discussing the man who was promising always to be honest with me. They didn’t care whether he was famous. Even though Dad had his suspicions about John, they both could see I was infatuated with him. They had decided they would not interfere in my life. In any event, it would not be proper to discuss their feelings or mine. Silence, not sharing, ruled in our family. Never again did they voice any opposition to John, his family, or his career.
Joyfully, I took their silence as acceptance. When John and I visited them the following week and John began calling them “Mom” and “Dad,” they seemed to like it, and they seemed to like John, too. I saw no reason to question why John moved so quickly into my family, much sooner than one would expect in a normal budding relationship, because his presence vanquished my loneliness. In hindsight I should have recognized a red flag but, back then, I was hopelessly color-blind. So although I never had their official approval to go along with John to Mexico City, when I did go, I had the time of my life.
FOUR
Moving In
The Mexico City trip was as exciting as I dreamed it would be. We shared beautiful scenery, exquisite meals, sightseeing excursions, and great shopping. And John wanted to buy, no,
insisted
on buying me expensive gifts throughout the trip. I felt I had stepped into the pages of a fairy tale.
Back home, in real life, things were pretty fantastic as well. John was spending more and more time at my house. When he suggested moving in permanently, he made it seem not just a welcome idea, but an obvious one. Not only would we be together as much as we wished, but “with me around all the time,” he said, “your life will be as grand as it deserves to be.”
As tempting and right as the idea sounded, something held me back. I didn’t say yes.
As though to prove his point, one afternoon John showed up with a twenty-four-by-twenty-eight-inch, $8,000 lithograph from the Collier Art Gallery in Los Angeles. He informed me of the details as he hung the art above my fireplace.
“No, no, no!” I cried out. “I can’t have that here. My insurance doesn’t cover such expensive art.”
He waved away my reaction. “Nothing’s going to happen to this, Barbara. Come here and take a close look at this Zapatista, the bold lines, the color, the passion!” I did. I stood beside him and had to admit that what I was examining was stunning and unusual, like John. “It is an exciting piece,” I agreed, “but I don’t see how. . . .”
“Think about it. When I move in, the painting is protected, you’re protected. Now that Jenna’s no longer renting I’ll help with the expenses. Who can argue with that?”
Bingo! He called my winning number. After I agreed to his plan, he fixed us a drink, remarking offhandedly that he would soon be improving my liquor cabinet, as well. “Grocery store brands,” he said, “just don’t cut it.”
John moved in the next day. He didn’t come with much. He brought his clothes, some furniture for the room that would serve as his office for consulting work, the hospital bed he said the doctor had prescribed for his back and neck issues, and most wonderful of all, his golden retriever, Gobi. When I expressed surprise at how little he’d brought with him, he said he had decided to leave most of his furnishings behind for his cousin, Jason Green, to use over in John’s Danville house.
“You’re so good-hearted, John,” I said. He gave a no-big-deal kind of shrug. Then we turned our attention to our newly integrated family: me and my two cats, John and his dog.
The next six weeks provided plenty of ups and downs, as they probably do for any couple that comes together to work through the awkward period when candlelight and stardust meld into the unexciting routines of daily life. It wasn’t easy. I knew it would take work and time to achieve a full level of comfort. Yes, I assured myself, we just needed time.
But it wasn’t long before time became my adversary. One evening, as I sat at the oak desk in my upstairs study, I looked at the pile of bills before me and shuddered. Before John had come on the scene, I considered bill paying a dull but not unpleasant routine. Bills came in . . . checks went out promptly in full or at least with minimum amounts due. It was a practical matter, not an emotional one. Now bill paying had become pure torture. Decisions about who would get paid and who would not were getting harder and harder to make. There wasn’t enough money to cover them all. Tonight was no exception.
I picked up the phone bill and felt a ripple of anticipation as I ripped open the envelope. The telephone bill held special significance. I’d been waiting, even longing for it, because it would list all the calls John made to his family, calls that hadn’t appeared on previous bills.
I had come to think of those as “phantom calls” because John always made them when I was either away at class, at Mass, at work, or at the grocery store. It hurt that John would wait until I was gone before he’d call to speak with his family. Even though I explained many times how I yearned to connect, to talk with them, he continued to make the calls while I was away. When I finally got him to tell me why, the reason hurt even more. His family, he said, believed me to be a gold digger. It was absurd, of course. Each time I expressed how untrue, how unfair that was, John assured me that eventually they would come around.
This night I determined to take matters into my own hands. From the bill I would get the phone numbers and call John’s family myself. The plan was sneaky and a little embarrassing, but it had to be done. If I could just meet his family, even by telephone, I’d change their minds. They’d come around and accept me as the woman who made John happy. John would be ecstatic, and love me all the more.
Now I perused the bill closely, pen in hand, ready to put phone numbers into my address book. But there were no calls to Coconut Grove, Boston, Houston, or New York City . . . cities where he said his family lived. I was disappointed and confused. What about all the times John told me he’d called Sonny, or Grandmother Dannigan? I shook my head to clear my thoughts, and filed this in the things-to-discuss-with-John part of my brain, as I wrote the check for the amount due.
I put that aside and opened my credit card statement. I couldn’t believe it was right. The card was at its limit. I scanned through it in disbelief. Most were restaurant charges. I grabbed the bill, ran downstairs, and inserted myself between John and the television set.
“Hey, what gives?” he said, flashing a wide grin.
“This . . . this!” I sputtered, shoving the bill into his hand. “John, you said you needed to use my credit card for
one
business lunch.
One.
But... but...” I could hardly get the words out. “Look at all the charges!”
“No sweat,” he said, tossing the bill on the coffee table.
“No sweat? You haven’t paid your share of the expenses yet, and you misused my card. You stomped on my trust!”
“Hey, wait a minute, Barbara. Let’s be fair. You never asked for it back, so I assumed it was okay to continue to use it.”
He rambled on, rationalizing what he’d done, twisting my actions so they seemed wrong and elevating his into the right. He was a master of words, and his words made me dizzy. Then he said, “You’re getting to sound just like the gold digger my family says you are.”
I gasped. If there was one thing I knew I was not, it was that. I had an excellent job and an education, owned a sports car, held two house mortgages . . . held my own. His words struck through me so deeply I felt fighting mad. “I want my card back. Now!”
John stared at me. Scowling, he took out his wallet, yanked out the credit card, and threw it at my feet. “Goddamn Indian giver.” He stood and glared at me. “I didn’t realize this before, but you’re just like your mother.”
“No, I am not!” My voice was loud and harsh and filled with fury, completely unlike the calm me, the controlled me, the rational, reasonable, responsible, let’s-talk-things-out me. As a child growing up with verbal abuse, I promised myself I would never yell in anger. No. I’d always talk things out calmly with my mate. Yet here I was, raising my voice, and I couldn’t stop. “I’m not like my mother,” I cried. “I just want to get the bills paid, and damn it, John, you’re not helping. You’re making it worse.”
“I told you from day one, my commission checks are sporadic,” John barked as he stood up. “I cannot help that.” He shot me a look of disgust before he turned and strode toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“To pack my bags. I can’t stand this anymore. I know when I’m not wanted or appreciated.”
The bewilderment I felt from anger quickly dissipated into fear as I watched John turn and walk away from me. With each angry stomp of his foot up the stairs, my hidden fears grew, fears I would not fully understand until much later. The fear of loneliness, of financial abandonment, of another failed relationship, each of which in turn triggered a fear of social and parental embarrassment. It was more than I could bear. I decided right then that I would back down and find a way to work it out. I would return to the comfort of John’s arms, whatever the cost.