Father's Day

My mother died in mid-July of 1971. In the Spring of 1972, I was sent to California to live with her brother and his family. At some point between those two times, I think probably the Fall of '71, my father signed custody of me and my brothers over to my grandmother. I remember it very, very, vaguely, but I know I was there. My brother John was, too. We can't remember whether George was. And we both remember that Papa asked us whether we wanted him to sign.

At the time, I was almost or just turned 11, but precocious by nature and prematurely aged by loss. I knew that taking custody of us was something my father would never have done, wasn't capable of doing, didn't really want to do, although I think he probably wanted to want to. Frankly, while I did feel rejected, I rejected him, too: I'd spent the night at his apartment a few times, both with and without my brothers, and I knew that any life he could have provided wouldn't have been very comfortable.

But I wished so hard that none of that were true, that he was like the men in movies or on TV – Eddie's Father, or Uncle Bill – who would take care of children and make them feel safe, the kind of man who could actually parent the children he fathered. I hated knowing what I knew, and I hated my father a little for making me know it. So I said, “Yes, Papa, you should sign it,” when what I really wanted to say, at some level I wasn’t even aware of, was, “No, Dad, I want you to put down the martini, grow a spine, and be my father.” I think both of us probably wished for that, but it never happened.

I still loved him, though: he was my dad, and the only parent I had left. I knew he loved me, too, in his way, which was warm if not particularly solid, affectionate if not reliable. It was, really, the love of a child: immediate, and heartfelt, and sweet, but not to be depended on. Dependable or not, though, it was the only unconditional love for me I knew of, aside from my grandmother's, and I returned it. And I’ll definitely give him this, he told me a million times how much he loved me and how proud of me he was. If only he could have matched his actions to his words, he’d have been the best father ever.

I’ve always said that my relationship to my father was like that of an innocent bystander to a five-car pile-up who gets hit by flying glass: I got badly hurt, but it wasn’t about me. If my father could have destroyed himself without hurting me, he would have. But he had drinking to do, and finally nothing ever got in the way of that. Eleven years later, after the second of a series of three massive coronaries, he told me, “The doctor said, ‘Jack, if you don’t quit drinking and smoking, you’re going to die.’ And I said, ‘Doctor, if I can’t drink and smoke, I don’t want to live.’”

He got his wish. The third one killed him. Oh, Papa.