Girl Called Karen (4 page)

T
he next day saw a flurry of activity. One of the worst scenes took place at the family dining table. My father was eating supper with us, an event so out of the ordinary as to mark the seriousness of the situation. Little four-year-old Grace kept asking for her mother, and her father didn’t answer. I finally shouted at Grace that her mother was dead, that she was gone and wouldn’t be back.

My father began to weep. That was the most shocking thing that any of us had ever seen. I was so sorry that I had hurt him. All six of us were very still.

There was a funeral to prepare for. Some neighbors and people from our church came and did things for us. The older kids and the ragtag urchins were given haircuts and new clothes, and everyone could see how beautiful we all were.

A lady whose son was in my class at school came and took me shopping. She got me two of the most beautiful dresses. They weren’t little-girl dresses, they were for a teenager and store bought. I was thrilled. I have never forgotten them, but I had very mixed feelings about this charity. It didn’t feel right to have her buying things for me. We were not poor people. I believe she sensed my distress for she said that she had sons and had always wanted to shop for a girl. I accepted that explanation.

Other people brought food and flowers in abundance. I was pleased to realize they cared about us, but I wondered where they had been when my mother needed help.

Family came from far away. Everything that anyone said felt like criticism of my mother. She had died slow and hard, but no one seemed to understand that. My grief mingled with anger and gratitude. My Aunt Eileen was an anchor in the whole drama. She didn’t make judgmental statements, at least none in front of me. She was available for comforting, and I think we all leaned on her. People from everywhere in northern Ohio came to pay their respects, and the funeral procession was lengthy. Then everyone went home, and somehow we were supposed to go on.

I should say almost everyone left – Grandma Lucile and Aunt Eileen and Aunt Mary Louise and Uncle Lyle stayed on and had supper with our family. Grandma Lucile and Grandpa John lived in Florida, and Uncle Lyle
and Aunt Mary Louise lived in New York City, and Aunt Eileen lived in Chicago. Mostly everyone was pretty quiet, and then Uncle Lyle said to my father, “We know it’s going to be awfully hard for you to manage with all these kids. We’d like to help…. Mary Louise and I want to take the two little ones to our home to live with us.”

I held my breath. I knew that for me it would be unbearable to lose my little sister and brother, and they would be heartbroken to be separated from all of us and from each other. The six of us could hardly bear waiting for my father to answer.

“No,” he said. “I want to hold my family together. I don’t want to break us up. We can manage. We’ll find a way to manage.”

You could feel the sighs of relief all around the table. We were going to stay together and live with our daddy.

My girlfriends were my greatest source of comfort through the next days. My best friends were Gloria Rutkowski, Kathy Horton, and Carol Hill, and their mothers were quietly present in my life. I can’t honestly remember any dramatic conversations or tearful scenes, but I did know they cared. I was a Girl Scout, and that was a comforting place to be. My Catholic school was my safe haven from all the hurts.

Mama had died in March, and somehow we muddled along without her. We were a family. We knew we had to stay together, but we argued and scuffled the way most kids do.

Shortly after mama died, Larry was given a
gasoline-powered
airplane. He loved it, and it was shattered when I inadvertently stepped on it. He broke into tears, and he chased me all over the house and the yard. He was beet red, sobbing, tears streaming down his face. I had never seen my brother like that, and I really thought he would kill me if he caught me. I think his profound grief for the loss of our mother spilled over that day.

Father hired a housekeeper to take care of the home and his children. I discovered that the woman was sleeping with my father in my mother’s place, and I hated her. I was the leader, I was mean, and my siblings and I made her life miserable. In retrospect, it was one of the larger mistakes of my life. She genuinely liked us kids and probably would have made a compassionate stepmother, though I doubt that my father would have thought her a suitable wife. My father’s relationship with her had developed too soon after mama died for us to accept her, let alone welcome her.

One day Larry and I, with some neighbor kids, got into an exciting fight with water guns. Our housekeeper tried to move the action out of the house. I defied her, locked myself in the upstairs bathroom, and dumped water out of the bathroom window so it whooshed through the kitchen window below, soaking the poor woman and the kitchen floor. She was one unhappy camper. I still refused to come out of the bathroom.

When my father came home, I was wrathful because of his betrayal of my mother’s memory, and my rage grew greater as I remembered his sneaky midnight violation of my body. So I was sassy, and I ended my outburst by screaming, “And that woman has no right to be in my mother’s bed.”

He slapped me across the face.

First I had lost my mother, and now I had lost my father.

We six kids escalated the battle to rid ourselves of the housekeeper, and that “menace” soon went away and stayed away. Not long after that, father began seeing Marge, whom he said he met at a church function.

How can I describe Marge? It’s difficult because my contact with her was so brief that it left me with few memories. I remember a skinny, short-haired blonde with bony feet and without much bosom. My mother was dark-haired with an ample bosom, just right for comforting little people.

We went to the drive-in movies one evening. Larry and Sandy and Patti and Grace and David and I sat in my father’s car, and he sat in Marge’s car. Other than that adventure in togetherness, we saw very little of Marge and did almost nothing with her. We never shared a meal. The two adults spent more and more time together. Eventually, we six kids were left with a housekeeper while my father and Marge went to Florida. I don’t know where her six-year-old son stayed, but it was not with us.

They came home from their Florida vacation and walked onto our porch, looking tanned and affluent. They were surrounded by six excited, messy children bubbling over with delight because their daddy was home. We were together again. We needed to be a family. We
were
a family. But our delight wasn’t reciprocated, our joy wasn’t rewarded by hugs or kisses or any show of affection at all.

The vacationers never entered our house that evening. They didn’t treat it as their home. They never seemed to realize we were not just a bunch of waifs. They never acted as if we were a famil
y
–
their family.

Finally we calmed down enough and quieted our welcoming hubbub so they could make themselves heard, and, without bothering with any preliminary explanation at all, they abruptly told us they were married.
MARRIED
! I don’t know which of them said it first.

I was stunned, speechless, in shock. I don’t remember much. I don’t remember what the other kids said, and I have no idea how long the honeymooners stayed. I never said any of the “right things,” although in retrospect, I can’t imagine what would be a right thing in that circumstance.

When I saw they were about to leave, I asked if they would be picking us up for church in the morning. My father looked at the ground and was silent. Marge said they had decided that we would not be attending church anymore.

That bombshell was yet more shocking than their marriage announcement. It was mean. It was cruel. It was disastrous.

What was I to do? I looked straight at my father and asked, “What about Catholic school?” He looked away. Marge said, “You will not be attending Catholic school.”

I was dumb, mute, utterly shattered. Never had I contemplated the powerlessness of a child.

Don’t whine, don’t cry!
I got a ride with parish friends to church the next morning, and I choked back my sobs as I told the priest I didn’t know if I would ever be returning.

If you understand anything about Catholicism and especially twelve-year-old Catholic girls, you will know that I was totally involved with my religion. I attended a Catholic school, where the nuns were my strongest role models. My mother had died a very few months ago. The faith that we shared was my greatest comfort, and now I had been deprived of it.

Later on, my father and his bride said they were making living arrangements for all of us. They talked of buying an unoccupied estate, which included quite a bit of property, several stables, and two houses. My father and Marge, with her son, would reside in the main house, while Sally’s six children would live in the servants’ house with a housekeeper.

That plan offered hope. We’d get to see our daddy
and spend time with him, and his new wife couldn’t help loving us as soon as she got to know us. So the kids all began their happy chatter about “when our daddy gets our farm.”

My mother had died in March 1955. My father and Marge had been married in early summer, and I don’t know exactly what happened next in the adult world. I only know that my sister Sandra and I were sent to New York in July for a “vacation.”

We couldn’t help looking forward to the trip. It was exciting to think of seeing the big city, and it would be wonderful to come back home to our family and our new home on our farm. So Sandy and I happily said goodbye to Larry and Patti and Grace and David and to my father, who was strangely very quiet. Little sister Grace had turned five in May, and David would be “tore” (four years old) in October.

All of us kids – even the little ones – were thrilled because we’d soon be back together again in a joyous reunion on our daddy’s new farm.

S
andy and I were visiting Aunt Mary Louise and Uncle Lyle in New York City. We thought almost everyone in New York was rich, but now I know that my aunt and uncle were not. They had lived in Hell’s Kitchen in a cheap little apartment on Ninth Avenue where it got so hot on summer nights that sometimes they rode back and forth on the Staten Island ferry to cool off in the ocean breeze. They could ride all night for a nickel, and it was a way to keep cool. They had been living on money from the occasional odd job while Uncle Lyle was writing books and articles.

Their fortunes had now improved enough that they lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. It was a nice place. Aunt Mary Louise was a neatnik and took pride in her house. It must have been tough for her to see her living room
torn up night after night as we brought out our bedclothes and made up the living room couch before we settled down to sleep.

Sandy and I at ages eight and twelve had no clue to the sacrifice and generosity of that young couple when they housed and entertained us in the bustling overcrowded city.

The time in New York was a jumble of pleasure and pain. The city was exciting. I fell in love with Joe Whalen, one of my uncle’s friends. He was my first crush, and I have remembered him my whole life.

Uncle Lyle could be wonderfully creative. One of my best memories is the subway play. We concocted a play and presented it to a captive audience while hurtling through the under-ground world of Manhattan. And our audience applauded us. One lady leaned in, clapped enthusiastically, and said we were pretty and talented. Others began talking, agreed we were very good, and offered to share snacks.

The whole experience was so affirming that I believe it contributed to my belief that I was talented. People say that New Yorkers are cold and unfriendly. I have never found it so. This rich experience set the stage for all my adult visits to New York.

Sandra and I loved going to the movie theater, which became the site of my first social protest. Because I was twelve, I was required to purchase an adult ticket at the higher price, but Sandy and I were directed to the children’s section. It was filled with loud, sloppy
kids, and I didn’t think it was right for us to be seated there. I knew an adult was permitted to take a child into the quiet adult section, and I had bought and paid for an adult ticket.

I screwed up my courage and went back to the usher, to whom I explained the injustice of this situation. I was very scared when I did that, as I had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the belief that adults were not to be questioned. The usher was a great tall black man in an impressive uniform. He listened patiently, nodded his head slowly, and, behold, we were shown to the adult section.

We returned often, and he always gravely showed us to the adult section.

I credit my Uncle Lyle with encouraging this protest and my future social protests. My Uncle Lyle and later Aunt Eileen were instrumental in shaping my world view.

It was a great vacation, but it was marred by our differences in religious belief. Uncle Lyle was a
card-carrying
atheist, or he could have been if atheists carried cards. I, on the other hand, was a
well-indoctrinated
little Roman Catholic prepubescent female. It was the worst possible combination of
self-righteous
zealots locked in acrimonious combat.

Until this time, I had not encountered atheism. I had a vague idea that it was the lack of something. You know, like not believing in something. It had never occurred to me that someone could be more fanatic about
denouncing religion than a missionary could be eloquent about an evangelical cause.

Catholics were still forbidden to eat meat on Friday. On one occasion, Uncle Lyle and his friend, Bill Gaines, the publisher of
Mad
magazine, drove to a frankfurter joint for Friday night supper. Little sister acquiesced very quickly to a juicy hot dog, but I was steadfast in my faith. I ate no supper that night. And I told Sandy she would go to hell.

Some of the religious discussion occurred after Sandra and I had gone to bed for the night on the living-room couch. Uncle Lyle would pull up a chair to ridicule Catholicism and preach atheism. I would often escape into sleep, leaving my eight-year-old sister to defend the faith against the infidel. Night after night, the logical adult would win the debate.

It was fun to visit New York, but these ongoing ecclesiastical discussions upset me. I identified my church with my dead mother and felt I must defend it at any cost.

Then a telephone call came from my father to Aunt Mary Louise. He asked her if she’d like to “try us” for a while.

I heard her explain this to Uncle Lyle. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, “but it sounds as though he’s not eager for their return.”

Uncle Lyle was silent.

There was a second call the next day. Uncle Lyle
spoke with him, then turned to the three of us and said, “He’s planning to give away five of the children.”

He handed me the phone, telling me that I should talk with my father. I had just seen a movie in which the leading lady was a feisty, dramatic woman who had captivated the hero with her lively ways. So with this cinematic heroine as my role model, I dramatically denounced my father for his outrageous plan. I asked if “that woman” was still going to be with him. It was she who had said we would not be going to church anymore. It was she who had said, “You will not be attending Catholic school anymore.” It was she who was making my father arrive at all those bad decisions.

That ended the discussion. My father refused to go on talking to me. I had no idea then that it would be the last time in my life that he would ever speak to me. Or that it would be the last time in my life that I ever spoke to him.

Uncle Lyle and Aunt Mary Louise had been startled by my father’s request. Now Lyle was upset by my behavior. He said I should have been tearful and loving instead of snotty. Looking back though, I doubt that my attitude made much difference in the grand plans of the honeymooners. In any case, twelve-year-olds are not recognized for their diplomacy. A temper outburst was a rare response to conflict from me. The alternative I had found for “Don’t whine, don’t cry” was more often that I would simply withdraw.

I wanted to go home. I had been planning to go home. I knew I was needed there. I wanted my mother and my home and my church. I called my mother’s best friend, Mrs. Smith, and she said that I could come to live with her. She would meet me at the airport.

Uncle Lyle bought me a plane ticket. He was annoyed at my father for not buying my plane ticket. I don’t think Uncle Lyle had a lot of money, and he and Aunt Mary Louise were expecting their first child. A plane ticket for an ungrateful guest was not in his budget. I was really too young then to understand all this. As I grew older, I began to connect the dots.

So it was decided. My sister and I would be going home the next day. Aunt Mary Louise told us that we were welcome to stay in New York until things got straightened out. I would have none of it.

That evening Sandra walked into the bed-room where Uncle Lyle was resting on the bed.

Sandy had a lisp. Sandy still has a bit of a lisp. On this occasion, she said, “Uncle Lyle, can I talk to you?”

He sat up, surprised. Until this moment, Sandy had always been in my shadow.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.

“Sure. What is it?”

“I want to stay with you.”

Almost as a reflex, he asked, “But honey, what about your church?”

“Uncle Lyle, could I tell you another secret?”

“Tell me.”

With some vehemence, she announced, “The Catholic Church has almost ruined my life!”

All of this was reported to me later. I saw Uncle Lyle coming from the bedroom. He went into the kitchen where Aunt Mary Louise was preparing supper.

“Guess what?” he said. “Sandy wants to stay with us.”

“How do you feel about it?” she asked hesitantly.

“I’d love it!” he said. “You know I love both the kids.”

“Let’s talk to Karen,” she said.

They called me to the dining table. They sat across from each other. Sandy sat at one end and I at the other.

Mary Louise spoke. “Karen, you know Uncle Lyle and I would be happy to care for both of you,” she said. “I would see that you go to your church on Sunday, but I wouldn’t avoid meat on Friday. We would work things out.”

Then Uncle Lyle spoke up. “Sandy wants to stay with us,” he said quietly. “We’d be happy if you –”

I interrupted him by speaking directly to Sandra Lee. “What about the church?”

She shouted at me: “The church has almost ruined my life.”

I stared at her in disbelief. During the next
twenty-four
hours before my departure, I didn’t speak another word to her.

So I went home, and Sandra stayed. For years, I felt that I had abandoned her.