Sputterpub's Blog

Jack’s earliest memory is from kindergarten. Everyone he knows can remember back to age two or three or maybe four, but he has nothing before school. And he was a December baby – one of the oldest in his class – so that means he doesn’t recall earlier than age six.

What he remembers from kindergarten is the Bozo record. It must have been a class favorite; they listened to it over and over until he was thoroughly sick of it. He couldn’t take it any more. He complained to the teacher, but she told him they really didn’t listen to Bozo “all the time,” and insisted the other children liked it. Bozo remained on the play list.

One day Jack lingered behind the rest of the kids when they filed out the door for recess. The way he recollects, it wasn’t premeditated. He didn’t wake up that morning and say to himself “This is the day of reckoning for Bozo. That classroom is too small for him and me.” No, he was last out of class because of a loose shoelace, and when the door shut and he realized he was alone, he was dazzled with inspiration.

In a flash he was at the record pile and upon the Bozo album. He grabbed a crayon as he tipped the vinyl from its sleeve. The crayon happened to be green but that didn’t matter. It was the material Jack needed – not the color. He gripped the green crayon like it was an ice pick, and he pressed hard as he obliterated the tracks. His motions were radial slashes from center to circumference and back.

Jack destroyed that record and everyone knew it. His teacher talked to him about it and also called his parents. There were consequences. He didn’t get to go outside for recess for the rest of that week. His parents took away TV time.

Jack always remembered the incident, but not because of the punishments. And not because of the attempted humiliation of him in front of his peers (he picked up a little admiration for his destructive behavior), or the tiresome lectures he was forced to undergo (really boring, and extended by any facial expression that could be interpreted as insolent or cocky, so there was the aggravation of needing to maintain a straight face). Those weren’t the qualities that made his outburst memorable. The fact was, the record was ruined and didn’t get replaced; Jack never had to hear it again. And the truth was, he felt better after he wrecked the record. The act of fouling the tracks with drawing wax felt good.

That experience wasn’t enough to make him a monster. People are not that simple. Most of the time Jack was agreeable and cooperative. He tended to make a few friends wherever he went. His parents were quiet folks. His father was overweight and sedentary; after dinner and on weekends he liked to sit in his easy chair and watch sports while solving crossword puzzles. Jack’s mother read craft ideas in magazines and then made decorations out of Styrofoam and spray paint. His parents seemed to regard Jack with quiet approval as long as he behaved with courtesy and got decent grades. They were never extravagant in their praise or their criticism.

When asked for childhood memories, Jack describes the Bozo incident first. He tells other anger episodes too. He has some sweet circum-Christmas recollections – private plane trips from Casper to Denver, to shop; dozens of wrapped presents under the big, decorated tree (Jack’s mother tried to coordinate ornaments with room colors – once she even selected a two-tone station wagon to match the house). Jack’s favorite childhood food was the fried shrimp at Stapleton International (until he tried the dish again, on a nostalgia tour with Isabel, when they were 29).

But his most vivid memories involve anger. He was a pole-vaulter when he entered high school. Casper was a decade away from converting to fiberglass poles then, and Jack told family and friends he was too big for the old bamboo and switched his sport to diving. What he never divulged was how his frustration sometimes led him to abuse his pole in the locker room after practice. Yes the pole snapped one Thursday, and indeed he sprained his wrist and ultimately shifted his sport. But it may have been more than his weight that weakened that pole.

He’ll never forget the morning he and Isabel tried to leave their Marin high school to attend a vigil at San Quentin. Jack made it to his Corvair before the administration formed its little cordon around the school entrance, but Isabel didn’t. When Jack saw the Dean of Boys place his palm on Isabel’s shoulder and push her body backward, he was out of his car and on the man before he found words. He didn’t punch but he shoved. He got suspended, but he felt alive and strong that day. The episode didn’t hurt his relationship with Isabel either.

She evaluated his actions as protective. Powerful. Sexy. The event strengthened their friendship. She never forgot it. She’s sure it was one of the incidents that attracted her to him.

The episode with the jitney bus was protective and a little sexy, too, at the time it occurred, but afterward Jack’s behavior seemed extreme to her.

By then they were enjoying their first year of marriage. They lived in the Richmond district of San Francisco and commuted to the financial district most days by bicycle. They had low-level jobs they treated as episodes between college and the grad school they’d each enter the following fall (which school turned out to be unsatisfying to each of them, and prompted both to return to the City jobs and let them proceed to careers).

When they had time in the morning, they liked to take what they considered the water route: into the Presidio to the marina to the wharf, around the embarcadero and then west on Mission, to where they locked their bikes at Jack’s building. At the time (1970s), Mission Street hosted cars, Muni buses, and also little jitney buses. On the day in question, and unbeknownst to Jack and Isabel, a car had fallen through weak asphalt at the corner of Mission and First, creating a big hole and a bigger traffic jam.

Traffic was so slow on Mission that Jack and Isabel could hardly maintain bike balance. Then a jitney driver, immediately behind Isabel, sat on his horn. The blare made Isabel turn to look. The jam made Isabel run her bike into the car ahead of her.

She and her bike were okay. Jack wasn’t. Before Isabel could wobble her machine to the curb, Jack had ripped the driver-side windshield wiper off the jitney. He was screaming at the driver when the guy decided to try to run him down. Jack yanked himself and his bike onto the sidewalk and behind a parking meter before the bus climbed the curb.

The incident didn’t end there. The driver and Jack took their argument to the next corner, site of the sink hole and a number of cops. One police officer detached himself from the traffic mess to tell the antagonists that yes, the driver could press charges of vandalism against Jack, but then again Jack could charge the driver with felony assault.

It made for a tellable anecdote. It probably should have raised attention to Jack’s temper. But this was still year one of the marriage. The only personality quirk Isabel was noticing involved Jack’s insecurity. They were young, carefree, in love, and yet he seemed uncertain about them. He told her he loved her too many times a day. He blew air kisses at her more often than she wanted to acknowledge. The little love notes were nice, but she noticed that when he looked into her face, it was like he was trying to see something there or figure something out.

They were halfway to their first anniversary when Jack said it. “I love you so much,” he murmured. They were embracing in the hallway of their apartment, their faces inches from each other. “But I worry that you’ll figure out what a Bozo I am.”

She was startled. His words made no sense to her. She reassured him and thought no more about it. Until it happened again. And again.

WTF, she would have wondered, if that acronym was then in play. Why was Jack talking like that? Didn’t he realize it wasn’t attractive? Did it have something to do with their arguments? For Isabel came from a bickering family; she was accustomed to airing whatever her feelings were and then getting over them. Jack’s family subscribed to silent anger. When his parents disagreed they grumped around and stopped talking to each other. As far as Isabel could assess, she and Jack disagreed often about little things and then quickly resolved their difference.

Long afterwards, Isabel concluded that Jack should have kept those words to himself. She’s a proponent of honesty and openness, but she thinks some negative emotions don’t deserve words. Jack’s stated fear was like a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more he voiced it, the more he acted it.

Sometimes he’d vary his statement. Like when he said, “My big fear is you’ll find out what a duck I really am.” She thinks that was around their first anniversary, when they moved from the City back to Berkeley for school. Shortly after that, they encountered a classic little rubber duck at a local toy store, and bought it. They named it Lucky of course, and treated Lucky Duck like some sort of pet. They took the toy with them on vacations. They made a little roost for him on their bedroom dresser. Jack stopped referring to himself as a duck but still occasionally used the Bozo statement. Maybe they should have bought a clown toy too.

They bought a house two years after the return to Berkeley. By then they’d dropped out of grad school and returned to City jobs in earnest. They could afford real estate.

It was a classic two-story box of a house, almost filling its lot. It had a small front yard, edged by a picket fence. The pickets were affixed behind the horizontal wood pieces: in other words, backwards. That meant that any pedestrian could easily kick a picket off the frame and into the yard. The street was a direct route to the local elementary school, so kids passed the place daily. Jack and Isabel were distressed at how often they returned home to find one or more pickets off the fence and on the ground.

One Saturday, Jack and Isabel hosted a visit from Isabel’s folks and her New York aunt and uncle. All six were in the living room when a couple of kids started to pass the house outside. Through the bay window they all saw one of the boys kick a picket out. Without a pause, Jack was up and out the front door. He grabbed the culprit by the shirt collar, hauled him across his lap, and began to spank the child with the detached picket.

The other adults were floored. Isabel was aghast. “Jack!” she yelled from the open doorway.

It was like he came out of a trance. He released the boy and walked inside. He seemed flustered and embarrassed. Isabel felt humiliated. To this day she’s not sure how that visit ended. She assumes everyone behaved and got through it – she’s never heard a word about it from her mother, and her mother doesn’t stuff her opinions – but she was so distracted by what she saw that she’s not sure.

Of course there were other episodes between then and their divorce, and after, and Isabel was always surprised but never astounded. She wasn’t present when he punched out the side window of a bus, in anger at a rude driver. She was when he kicked in the passenger door of a pickup truck that had nearly bumped Isabel – she admitted that it was kind of funny, how the driver leapt out and complained that the truck was his brother-in-law’s, and demanded proof of (pedestrian?) insurance, but still, it was extreme.

The one time Jack hit her, she really did feel she deserved it. She knows that’s a standard response of an abused spouse, but she was hassling him that evening, raging at him about something and insisting he stay to hear more, warning him when he offered to leave that he’d better not, grabbing the back of his shirt when he tried to open the front door. She did all that, and he spun around one hundred eighty degrees toward her, left arm extended, and his palm smacked her against the right side of her nose. Her contact lens flew out of her eye, and that more than the impact made her call a time out. But her nose bled for an hour after, and by the next day she had a shiner.

Isabel didn’t know how often Jack was hitting their son Max, until she witnessed it. This was long after their divorce. Max was ten and getting into regular trouble in day camp. One Wednesday he had to be picked up early and because it was dinner night with Dad, he got to deal with both parents immediately after bad behavior. Jack smacked Max on the top of his head and Isabel leaped between them before her mind even registered the action. She got Jack out of the house, returned to Max, and handed him one tissue after another while he cried till he could talk. That’s when she learned how often Max angered Jack. And what Jack did when angered.

It wasn’t okay. Isabel didn’t let Max spend time with Jack again until both Max and Isabel were sure Max would be safe. Jack modified his behavior. Father and son never stopped seeing one another but the visits became less frequent and shorter.

Max is now 35. He’s happily married and besotted with his infant son. It’s obvious that Max’s son will have a better father than Max did.

Isabel hasn’t had to deal with Jack’s anger in 20 years. That’s Joy’s job now. But having seen Jack and Joy in the last year, around the celebratory events in Max’s life, Isabel can tell he hasn’t prospered. He seems to seethe. He appears joyless and pessimistic. He makes her think of words like grump and curmudgeon.

It’s obvious that Jack is still angry. But maybe he’s just angry at Isabel. Perhaps he still blames her. Maybe his darkness is from his failure to forgive and his disease is all bottled frustration. No, she thinks. Jack is too stooped, too infirm, too spent for it all to be about her.

If he were vigorous, Jack could be an angry clown. As it is, he’s just a sad one.

“I’m sorry about all the grandma drama.”

“Huh?”

“You know. The tension between your mother and Joy.”

“I didn’t particularly notice, Dad. Other than the time Joy hauled you inside lest your salad get cold.”

“Uh huh. That’s what I mean. I think they got along okay at the beginning, but then the stress built. You coulda cut it with a knife.”

“I don’t think Mom was stressed.”

“Whatever.”

The phone conversation ended soon after. Jack rarely called his daughter. He always responded when she phoned, and he often thought about calling, but those thoughts tended to occur between 2 a.m. and dawn, or when he was somewhere phoning wouldn’t work. This call was a kind of debriefing after the visit.

He and his wife had just made a road trip to Eugene when Isabel happened to be there. Jack and Joy and Isabel all live in the Bay Area, but when Addy and her husband moved to Eugene and began having babies, Isabel bought a house there, had a cottage built for herself in the back yard, and began visiting for two or three week spans every few months. Isabel is not wealthy, but she’d bought her first Berkeley house, with Jack, in 1975. It cost $49,500. When she married her second husband the first place was sold, and her half of the proceeds (about $75K) went toward the $260,000 home across town. After her second divorce, that house was exchanged for a creekside cottage ($314K), which she enjoyed for 17 years. By the time the nest was empty it was worth $750,000. Which made an all-cash purchase in Oregon easy, with funds left over for the studio cottage she acquired in Berkeley.

So it wasn’t weird for her to be in Eugene when Jack and Joy showed up. It was only unusual because Jack didn’t visit often.

Addy mentioned the call to her mother. They were sitting on the old blue couch in the living room, sipping cider and white wine (respectively), to the sounds and smells of Addy’s husband cooking dinner. The kitchen didn’t have an exhaust fan, so there were always smells when Ian cooked.

“Grandma drama? I appreciate the almost-rhyme, but what’s he mean?”

“You know, Mom. Joy was tense around you.”

“We hardly interacted,” Isabel said. “I mean, there was the opening hour, when Joy wanted to count all the ways we’re similar, and made me smoke that j with her. That was weird. But not dramatic.”

“Yeah. I was there.” Addy put her cider can on the round table next to her and started to curl her legs beneath her before she remembered the fresh ink on her left calf and instead started rubbing lotion into it. “But after that, she noticed whenever you and Dad were together. And she was, well, distracted would be an understatement.”

“Jeez. We didn’t even talk that often. And what does she think: I want him back?” Isabel realized as she spoke that she didn’t mean the question. In her ear, she was starting to sound like her own attention-seeking mother. She thought “jeez” at herself then.

“No. Yes. Exactly. You were the one who broke up with Dad. Maybe Joy thinks he isn’t over it. Maybe he isn’t over it.”

“The only thing he’s not over is the anger. If he ever gets beyond that, he’ll be a different person.” Isabel finished her wine and rose for a refill.

Jack did not mention the phone call to Joy. That might surprise Isabel and Addy, because they know how concentrated and condensed the couple is; they assume talk occurs all the time. Jack married Joy in 1990. He’d lost the love of his life, as he considered Isabel, and he was even more determined with Joy to be nice, attentive, make her happy, give her no reason to complain. That strategy had failed with Isabel, but like any insane campaign, the failure just made Jack try the same method harder. So Jack married and focused all of his attention on Joy. Five years later he retired so he didn’t have to travel away from her. They used the money he inherited from his parents to enable that retirement, and also to purchase all the cable access, paper wares and packaged foods that would make their days effortless and entertaining. They didn’t get around to travel (except for the occasional road trip to Eugene). They never developed a social life. Eventually Jack picked up some small construction jobs from two old (school) friends, which got him out of the house for a couple of half-days some weeks. But most days Jack and Joy spent together, in their adjacent matching recliner massage chairs, in front of their huge plasma television system.

They were not aging well. Like typical 21st century Americans, they didn’t exercise and they took in a diet high in carbohydrates and vegetable oils. They got plenty of sleep but not so much at night. They managed to eke a significant amount of stress out of a work-free, argument-free existence. At nearly 70 both had health complaints. Neither felt well. Their house was always dark, and when Addy visited she wondered if that was owing to chronic depression, a desire to get a better TV picture, or an avoidance of mirror images. Isabel has told Addy stories about her attempts to get Jack to try personal enhancements – arguments she made in their 20s for Jack to shave off the beard or try perming his scarily straight thinning hair – Jack always responded by saying no thanks – he didn’t have to look at himself so he wasn’t bothered by what he never saw.

But Jack had been fit when he said that. He didn’t have good hair, and he could have paid more attention to his face, but he was well-built and strong. All in all, Jack was attractive in his 20s and 30s. At 70 he looked 95.

At 70, he and Joy were lumpy of body and pasty of face. Their hair was lank. Their nails were brittle. Their skin was liver-spotted. Their postures were bent and their walks were shuffling.

Jack didn’t tell Joy about the telephone apology, but he thought about it. He had the call with Addy the night they returned home, and then he had trouble sleeping. He pondered grandma drama.

It wasn’t that at all. It had nothing to do with Addy’s kids or grandma status or anything like that. As far as Jack could tell, Isabel was friendly. She looked good; maybe that was part of Joy’s problem. No. It got worse as the visit lengthened. It had to do with seeing Jack and Isabel together.

Yech. Life sure hadn’t worked out as anticipated. Not that Jack had any exact aspirations. It wasn’t like he had a calling. And growing up a boomer, in the suburbs, schooled in split sessions and public universities, he worked where he landed and did well enough. He never thought his adulthood would be so adventureless, or that his early retirement would mean days of tranquilized solitaire. He felt negative. He acted grumpy. No wonder Isabel and the kids called him a curmudgeon. He was a master of sarcasm.

He had a rough night. By the time the sun rose he was up and pouring his second cup of coffee. He decided to take a walk. It would be the beginning of some regular exercise.

He’d had a few glimmers of clarity during the dark hours. He received a sense he wasn’t able to articulate, something about Joy not being jealous of Isabel now as much as she was jealous of a time: when Jack was happy and Isabel was around. Bigger, though: he realized how angry – furious even – he still was at Isabel. And remembered a book he’d read back when they were married – was it Bradshaw on Family? – that discussed how easy it is to confuse hurt feelings with anger, and how especially guys often said they were angry when they were actually hurt – and all of a sudden (of course long overdue) Jack wanted to examine his own feelings, to see if he could distinguish hurt from anger. He didn’t have a plan beyond that, but he knew he’d have to run the exercise alone.

He snuck his sweats out of the conjugal bureau and slipped out the door as the sunlight hit the porch.