As Luck Would Have It (19 page)

That explanation apparently did not sit well with my aunt, who stormed over to the Casslemond's house that very evening and raised enough hell with them to frighten Mr. Casslemond's wife, and maybe Mr. Casslemond himself, someone who did not appear to me to be easily intimidated.  I found out later that she had threatened them with a court order and criminal charges of harassment or even kidnapping, if they did not stay away from me.  Christian did not know all of the details, only that his grandmother was so upset when he visited the next day that she barely spoke without breaking into tears, and Mr. Casslemond had said little, only that Charles would take Christian and Carter to the game and that he should call Joseph to see if he wanted to go
with them
.  When I found that out, I told Joseph he should go without me and I would just stay at home, but he flat out refused and said we would watch the game on TV at his house and just order the pizza instead.  It would be almost the same
as going to the game
, he reasoned, but I knew differently. Joseph loved hockey more than just about anything and though his parents took him and Richard to see
t
he
Blackhawks occasionally, he had to be disappointed by this news.

When Sunday arrived, Aunt Doreen declared that we would all be going to Mildred's ho
u
se at 1:00 for lunch, that she had prepared a little birthday party for me.  I just shrugged my shoulders and then took off at noon on my bike for
the half mile
ride to the Klein's house
,
despite the December cold.  I knew that Mr. Klein would be home that day and was tempted to ask him to drive us for a visit to see Mr. Casslemond and his wife, but thought better of it after I came into their warm family room, my face red and stinging fro
m
the wind, and I smelled the aroma from Mrs. Klein's chocolate chip cookies that she had just pulled from the oven.

Maybe it would be best if I just called Mr. Casslemond's wife between periods; who knew what my aunt would
do when she discovered I'd just walked out
, she might materialize at the Casslemond's house in a rage once again and if she did, things would go better for everyone concerned if I was not actually there.  I didn't think she would have the nerve to drop in unannounced at the Klein's; Edna and Harold so much better equipped to defend themselves against her attacks than the poor Casslemonds.  I felt so sorry for them just then; determined to do what was right after everything had gone so miserably wrong just one year ago; at home alone, with Charles and their grandsons downtown
at Chicago Stadium
, with nothing to do but for Mr. Casslemond to watch the
g
a
me on TV and Mr. Casslemond's wife to make them lunch and bring a beer or two for him to enjoy, but really how much enjoyment could there be when they had to be thinking constantly of the awful anniversary that tomorrow would signify, now made hopelessly worse by my aunt's ugly threats.

If all these random thoughts caused my mood to sink more than it already had, things were to get considerably worse when there was a knock on the door and my aunt walked into the living room completely uninvited while I was in the middle of enjoying one of Mrs. Klein's cookies.  He's coming with us, is all she said, pointing to the Buick outside where Uncle Jack was waiting.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Klein tried to reason with her, but were not making much headway as far as I could tell; Doreen firing off a volley of insults that were both disarming and unsettling.  I told her I wasn't going anywhere and she dismissed me and called me an ungrateful bastard.  When Mrs. Klein, who had said very little up until now, came to my defense and said that such language was not allowed in their home, my aunt must have decided that this would be as good a time as any to finally tell Edna what she really thought of her, and when she did, Joseph and I just stared at her in silence, but Mr. Klein, who had tried to maintain a sense of calm to that point anyway, acting as a mediator to this dispute
if you will
, suddenly became quite angry and told her to get out of his house, then turned to me and said that I should stay put.  She turned to leave, yelling that she would be back with the police and an arrest warrant.  As luck would have it, just as she swung the storm door open, the pizza delivery boy had stepped onto the porch and would have no doubt rung the bell, or at least knocked politely, but in
stead was hit on the forehead by the force of my aunt's angry exit, leaving a red welt on his face and our pizza strewn among Edna's evergreens.  Yes, Joseph, this
was almost
like going to the hockey game, except for the fact that the players don't normally start fighting until after the game begins.

Once everyone calmed down and Mrs. Klein found an ice pack for the delivery boy, Mr. Klein decided that he would take everyone to Giordano's himself after the game was over; salvaging at least a portion of the celebration.  He joked that if Aunt Doreen made good on her threats, better to enjoy dinner first and not have to face that experience on an empty stomach.  We all laughed and I felt better now, but still I had to wonder what would happen next and where I would be living after tonight; Mrs. Klein assuring me that I would stay there at least until tomorrow anyway.

The restaurant was crowded and humming
with the sounds of people talking and laughing.  I looked around the room with the colorful Italian paintings on the walls and checkered cloths on the tables.  It was exactly what I imagined a restaurant in Rome or Venice would be, complete with the strolling violinist and guitar player who stopped at our table and played while the Chianti was poured for Harold and Edna.  Everything looked and smelled wonderful and when the waiter came back to take our order, I said I wanted pepperoni on my pizza, but Joseph elbowed me and reminded me of the pork prohibitions and would it be alright with me if we order the vegetarian special instead.  That turned out to be an excellent choice and Christian was right, the pizza was about the best I'd ever had.
The crust was so thick and crispy and the spicy sauce oozed out from the top of the cheese when you took a bite.  They brought a huge salad with tangy peperoncinis in it that made my mouth water.

I wasn't sorry that I had stood up to Aunt Doreen, but I was rather nervous about what she might do now or the trouble she might decide to cause.  The thought of it distracted me from the good time I was having and the luck that had brought me here
, to this second family really, and just then, to my newer third one.  
I saw Christian and Carter
being seated at a big table across the room, followed by Charles,
Mr. Casslemond
,
and Mr. Casslemond's wife.  I waited a minute to see if they would notice us, all of the sudden thinking of the seemingly improbable series of events that created this picture and brought us together in the same restaurant at the same moment.

What was the force that had set these things in motion and what possible purpose might have been secretly steering it?  I was bewildered by the thought of it actually; if the salt trucks had gone out earlier, if Mr. Casslemond had not made that last delivery, if I had not forgotten my winter jacket and gone back inside causing us to leave two minutes later, if any small thing had been different, then the Casslemonds being seated across the room would have meant nothing to any of us, assuming we were even there because I probably never would have even heard of Giordano's, and at this very moment we might have just been eating at home after the hockey game, because my father loved to watch the games with me and my mother might have made her
chicken chili
, one of my favorite meals, and we might have gone out on Monday night to celebrate my birthday instead, probably not to Giordano's, but to Angelo's
maybe
, where they love
d
to take me.

But with luck or destiny tightly in control, it was to be pizza instead of
chili
, with the Kleins instead of my parents, with no more games to watch with my dad on TV at home; home now being with my aunt, if you wish to call it that.  What good could come from trying to figure all of this out; why torment myself searching for some explanation that could never be adequate, the endless
asking why this and not that, the difficult questions whose answers could only generate even more murky questions with even more unattainable answers.  The only solution to this anguish was to give in to fate and accept life for what it is
,
a temporary condition of virtual chance, where things keep moving and bouncing off each other in some random chaotic order, with no obvious or perceptible purpose, like billiard balls on the table, sometimes landing in the pockets and sometimes missing them, why, we can't begin to know, and
to recognize
for certain that at the end of the day, the best we can hope for is that the good times we have are at least equal to the pain we had to endure to get them.

I snapped out of this intellectual
daydream
when I saw Christian waiving and his family walking towards our table, where Mr. and Mrs. Klein had already stood up to introduce themselves to the Casslemonds, who they had not met before, but seemed to instinctively recognize.  Mr. Casslemond's wife gave me a big hug and wished me a happy birthday, the others
shaking hands and exchanging friendly greetings.  It seemed as if on cue the waiters were there moving table
s
and chairs around so that we could all sit together; Mrs. Klein suggesting that they have their dinner with us while we had our dessert and coffee.  We all crowded together around the table, the largest
and
loudest one there, but nobody seemed to notice in the least, or care even less, especially me as I was pretty much the center of attention now, with all that had happened the past two days, not to mention the fa
c
t that it was my birthday celebration that was indirectly responsible for us all being there.

The warm chatter of conversation encircled me as more wine was poured for the adults, and Christian was telling Joseph about the game;
did you see
Marcel Dionne's hat trick on TV?  And guess what, they had all crammed into the Camaro for the ride over and yes, the beautiful Chevy was now officially his.

Given the circumstances, it was probably the best birthday imaginable and one that I remember so clearly now, nearly 45 years later. 
I was still so saddened and often overwhelmed by grief, but n
othing my aunt did or said from that point would in any way diminish how I felt about my friends,
nor would her threats or curses serve any purpose other than to possibly satiate her need to control others or express her distasteful opinions.  For when we returned to the Klein's house after dinner, there were no police to be found, nothing to disrupt the pleasant evening we had all shared, in sharp contrast to the angry and unsettling afternoon we had endured.  There were to be no arrests, no citations, no injunctions, and no court orders.  Instead, the next evening Uncle Jack appeared and apologized to the Kleins for his wife's
behavior
and to ask me if I wanted to come home.

Doreen had been under an enormous amount of stress, something no one had been able to predict or fully understand.  He'd done his best to dissuade her from intruding into the lives of others, but admitted that he exerted little if any influence over what she did.  The loss of her sister ha
d
been extremely painful and her only way to deal with it apparently was to lash out at others who she felt were either more vulnerable than her, or in some way responsible.  Her loathing the Casslemonds was displaced and terribly out of proportion; she understood that herself even, but could not find
a way to forgive them, nor learn to accept the fact that I had.  The empathy they showed towards me and my accepting their affection only served to exacerbate her pain and grief.  She had been seeing a therapist for the past month and would be starting on medications to control her depression and anger.  For the time being, she would be staying with Mildred, so it would just be the two of us at the house if I agreed to go.  Yes, I said, it was time for me to come home.

I knew that it wasn't just Doreen who would need to get better and become more accepting; I would have to change as well, exploring my own grief and my reaction to hers.  I didn't know that I would ever come to like her more as a person, but intuitively I understood that there had to be more to Doreen that what we saw, something deeper that made my mother remain as close to her as she did, and love her not just because they were sisters.  I gave it a lot of thought because I had no clue how I was going to do this; what resources could I use that might help me with my own anger, and in turn, in dealing with my aunt?

Dr.
Rosenberg listened carefully when I brought it up during our next session. 
She thought it
might be a good idea to enlist the help of an outsider, someone interested, but perhaps a bit removed.  But who
did I know with the experience, the knowledge, and most of all the compassion to provide some direction to a confused and troubled teenager?  It would not be a teacher, the guidance counselor, Mr. Klein
, or even Dr. Rosenberg herself
. 
T
he person who would help steer me through some treacherous waters that lay ahead was not the one I would have imagined, but was perhaps the one with the sharpest perspective on what had gone wrong, the one person close enough to the tragedy to peek through its veiled covering, but fa
r back enough not to be swallowed up
by
it.  She had felt the weight of it all but had not let it crush her; it would be Mr. Casslemond's wife that would help provide me with some answers and in the process, possibly help Doreen with some of her own.