Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (42 page)

The 23-year-old Geri had sat uncharacteristically still and mute throughout the entire heated exchange. As others stormed off and fled the table, she remained immovable from the neck down. Calmly, she then pivoted her head leftward about 45 degrees until she looked Dad straight in the eye. Stalwart, she projected her pent-up power directly at his face: “Goddammit, Dad, now look and see what you’ve done?!”

He didn’t answer.

As Mary Jo bounded across the street, I wound my way confusedly downstairs and out to the back yard. I circled around the side of the house, climbed the outside staircase beneath the nectarine limbs, proceeded toward the front of the house, and crossed the street to join Genie and Mary Jo. One by one, Dad was losing his children.

The three of us sat in the front of Genie’s pickup truck and bawled our eyes out. “There’s no way in hell we’ll stop seeing each other,” we promised each other. We made covert plans to meet at such-and-such restaurant at such-and-such time on such-and-such day of the week with such-and-such alibis to elude the tyrants. We forged an alliance that our father could not possibly dissolve.

We finally stopped blubbering when it dawned on us: “Where’s Geri?”

At that moment, Geri appeared at the small gate on the left side of the house and performed a series of maneuvers that she was wont to perform whenever she opened and closed a gate. She unlatched and relatched and again unlatched the gate to open it, stepped outside the gate, then latched and unlatched and again latched the gate to close it behind her—just to make sure that it really was, in fact and indeed, indubitably opened and then unequivocally closed. The three of us in the truck watched as she marched up the driveway toward us—mostly toward us—with rigidly straight lines but strictly perpendicular turns. “I hope she’s okay crossing the street,” Genie worried aloud, but Geri was in command. She advanced across the street and over to the truck with no visible emotion other than stubborn determination. She firmly pressed the knob on the passenger door exactly three times to make sure it correctly, completely, and fully engaged. She opened the door as widely as it would possibly open. She sat down beside me on the flat bench seat. She leaned her body far outside the truck to reach the handle, and then she slammed the door impermeably shut.

Only then, after a pause of two or three seconds, did she let down her guard. She abruptly inhaled a monumental scoop of air and exhaled the most unrestrained, purgative sobbing we’d ever heard. The rest of us burst into laughter as Geri rhythmically inhaled huge buckets of air and exhaled even larger barrels of groans.

Of all of us at the dinner table that evening—the same table where she had once been the brewing volcano with her frequent eruptions—Geri was the one who had kept her cool. She had been the most stolid and sane. She had been the most rational person there. She had told Dad what he needed to hear, and she stumped him. Yet she hadn’t stopped there. She had maintained her composure until she was safely, clearly, and conclusively beyond his sight and earshot. She had made the family circle whole again as much as anyone possibly could at the time. And then she let herself cry in the way that only she knew how. In the heat of the moment in which the family was being ripped apart, Geri had put everything in its proper perspective and held it all together.

Genie, Mary Jo, and I met secretly a few times at cheap diners, but that was the extent of our civil disobedience. The rift began to mend itself about a year later when Genie and David announced their engagement and their plans to be wed in a Catholic Church. Their commitment to a church wedding certified David’s legitimacy in the eyes of Dad and Mom and rescinded Genie’s excommunication.

Everything became okay—not great, but okay. Genie and David were still living together. David also remained an agnostic, despite his acquiescence to be wed in a house of God. But the couple was headed to the altar for the blessed sacrament of Matrimony after all. Mom and Dad figured they had better count their blessings and support the marriage.

Genie and David were married in Visitation Catholic Church in Westchester in 1980. They held their reception on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, where Mom and Dad introduced David to their friends as “our son-in-law, the professor” or “our son-in-law, the doctor.”

The wedding by a Catholic priest in a Catholic church had satisfied Dad’s demand for a lifelong commitment blessed by God. In that sense, Dad’s point had prevailed.

But so had another. Genie and David indeed set an example for the rest of the family. As a happily married couple, they demonstrated that there was more than one method toward the good.

10. Gay Liberation

Long before Mary Jo made a beeline for the pickup truck across the street in the late summer of 1978, she had found herself drawn toward unconventional paths. In fact, she marched to the beat of her own drummer at the earliest detectable age.

When Mary Jo was five, she didn’t want to go to kindergarten. It was the late summer of 1964. She wanted to stay home and to keep playing Stan’s 45-rpm singles on a little plastic record player that played only singles. Over and over again, she played “Don’t Dilly Dally, Sally” and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” by Brian Hyland. She pretended to be a disc jockey, talking about the songs, the weather, and the news around the house. “Bikinis are something just for girls,” she announced while spinning her tunes. “Stan and Genie are in the back yard right now, talking about something serious. Dad’s home from work today. He wants us all to get together to pray the rosary tonight.” Mary Jo’s only audience was herself.

When the time came to leave the music behind, she hated it. So she ditched kindergarten and walked home to the little plastic record player.

The next morning, Mom nudged Mary Jo out the door. “Please don’t drop out of kindergarten. It ain’t that bad.”

To make Mary Jo feel better, Mom bought her a music kit called the “Gumdrop Follies.” The kit included a record album of jolly songs and a pop-up cardboard cabaret of the frivolous characters who sang the songs.

“
It was magical,” remembered Mary Jo. “Everyone was happy.” Every day after kindergarten, she came home to the Gumdrop Follies.

Something even more magical happened in December 1970. Mary Jo was 11. She had grown out of the little plastic record player and into the family KLH stereo, which played both 45s and 33s. She was in the playroom spinning tunes when Geri, who was then 15 and who had just returned from Iowa, entered the room with a brand new hit single, “The Tears of a Clown,” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Geri slipped the single onto the stereo.

The song began with an upbeat bouncy flute and a tingling glockenspiel. Then the drums and bassoon set down a solid rhythm and bass line. Then came the happy tambourine. Then a chorus of voices harmonized about smiles painted on faces. It all seemed like a three-ring circus. “I couldn’t believe how good it sounded!” Mary Jo recalled. Her body could hardly contain her elation. She ran outside and jumped around in the back yard. Geri followed Mary Jo and jumped around with her.

When the song ended, Geri flipped the single to the other side to play “I Second That Emotion.” It did. It made Mary Jo doubly ecstatic.

There was no single thing about those songs that made her feel so wonderful. It wasn’t just the music. It wasn’t just the lyrics. It was everything all at once.

“
It was the feeling,” she relived the moment. “It changed me forever!”

Mary Jo found nirvana at the age of 11.

Over the next several years, she held private dance festivals for herself in the playroom. For each festival, she hooked up a pair of headphones to the stereo. With the headphones affixed to her ears like suction caps, she cranked the music full blast. She pulled her tunes from the eclectic collections of her older brothers and sisters. She spun the innocent rock of Stan, who handed down his bouncy doo-wop singles and the early albums of The Beach Boys. She spun the psychedelic rock of Genie, who swayed to the contrary beat of Traffic, Santana, and The Jefferson Airplane. She spun the soul, funk, and Motown rhythms of Geri, who boogied to Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and Kool & The Gang. And she spun the mellow folk rock of Joe, who pondered the introspective lyrics of Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian, and Jackson Browne. Regardless of the musical genre that blared into her headphones, Mary Jo imagined herself as the drummer, swatting and kicking the air around her. She dripped in sweat until the headphones slid down her damp hair and exposed her ringing ears.

For hours at a time, year after year, she listened to her own imaginary drumbeat.

Oddly, nobody interrupted.

By the time Mary Jo started hosting her private dance festivals, Mom and Dad were thoroughly preoccupied, struggling to lighten the burden of Stan and to shoulder the burdens of Genie and Geri. Little attention trickled down to the ranks of Mary Jo.

Occasionally, the inattention bothered her. But her relatively obscure position in the family had its advantages. It gave her greater freedom to do as she pleased. “I figured the less attention drawn to me, the better,” she said.

Beyond being preoccupied, Mom and Dad had several reasons for letting Mary Jo do her own thing in her own way at the speed of her own metronome. One reason came as a birthright. As one of the youngest children, Mary Jo didn’t have to set an example for anyone else. Stan and Genie carried that weight.

Mary Jo had also been “the sick one” as a child. She had pneumonia as a baby, a swollen optic nerve as a toddler, a throat problem that kept her merrily at home from kindergarten for a month, cold after cold during the first few years of grade school, and a mild heart murmur in the fourth grade.

“
Don’t push her too hard,” the doctor warned Mom. “Take it easy on her.”

“
Don’t push her too hard,” Mom relayed the word to Dad. “Take it easy on her.”

Mary Jo made it easy for them to take it easy on her. She caused no major fuss. She kept Taco’s secrets safe beneath her chair at the dinner table. She might have been physically frail, but she could fend for herself and find her own way outside the home. She elicited no great sympathy as a cute little blond girl who always made lots of friends.

Perhaps the single greatest reason why Mary Jo eluded the radar screen, though, was simply that she was not a boy. In those days, boys upheld the honor of the family name. Girls surrendered the family name. Boys grew up to earn money. Girls grew up to spend money. All things being equal, boys were deemed to be much more valuable than girls. For that reason, boys were often treated far differently than were girls. In this respect, our family was no different from the vast majority of American families.

The fairest comparison is between Joe and Mary Jo. Both were on the younger end of the scale. Both suffered their share of ailments, although at different ages. Both caused few problems. Both demanded little attention. And both loved sports.

The laconic Joe tried his hardest to keep a low profile. He kept quiet during moments of family turmoil, and he kept quiet during moments of family peace. But when he channeled his budding athletic prowess toward Little League, prematurely filling a baseball mitt in the third grade with his big Farindola hands, the rest of us brothers and sisters were quick to cheer him on from the splintery bleachers. Over in the Little League snack bar tucked behind first base, Mom handed out free suckers to the kids, paying for the suckers out of her own pocket because she couldn’t bear to make the kids pay a nickel for candy. Mom swiftly became the most popular mom in Little League; but for us, Little League was a family affair that revolved around Joe. We reserved our pride in all things athletic exclusively for him, from star second baseman in Little League to “athlete of the year” in the eighth grade to the diamonds, hoops, and gridirons of high school. When juvenile rheumatoid arthritis sidelined his athletic career in the eleventh grade, a palpable cloud of mourning descended over our home. Our athletic star had fallen. We rearranged the furniture and the bedroom assignments to give Joe his own room with ample space for a brand new king-size therapeutic waterbed to soothe his aching joints.

In comparison, Mary Jo’s athletic thrills and spills went largely ignored, no matter how conspicuous she made them. In grade school, she took up skateboarding in an unusually obtrusive way. With colored chalk, she painted an enormous ocean wave over the entire width of our sloping cement driveway. She rolled up and down the driveway for hours on her grating steel wheels, crouching on her ankles until her butt grazed the board. She imagined herself hangin’ ten and shootin’ the tube. She skidded and sometimes wiped out. Yet the incessant, abrasive sound of steel scraping against cement right in front of our house never raised an ear lobe. Nobody complained about her wave or the noise. Nobody commended her for her artistry or athleticism. We nonchalantly walked or drove past Mary Jo as we came and went.

In junior high, she moved up to real surfing and immersed herself in a whole new world at the beach where she could become one with the waves and hang out with the other kids who had no interest in school. She turned heads at the beach as one of the few girls who was brazen enough to take up the “boys’ sport” of surfing.

She taught herself how to surf by watching and emulating the boys day after day during those endless summers of junior high. She received prized pointers from Genie’s famous surfing boyfriend. She borrowed surfboards until she acquired her very own—an old, heavy, waterlogged thing—as a hand-me-down from a kook at the beach who went by the name of Weasel. She held her own on the days of the big swells when the waves became crowded and contentious. She gained respect from the boys.