Going to Church in the Strawberry Patch

Trying to Grow Up In Spite of Myself

A Memoir by Tom Bessette

Copyright 2009 BessetteBooks

Chapter 1
 Death and Anger

The parlor was dusky, candles lit in corners,
smelling of heat, wax, and dampness. I peeked into his coffin.
He lay with his eyes closed, made up, hair luster-less and fake looking.
Dog tags splayed on his chest, mustache awry.
I peered intently. He opened his eyes.

“It’s OK, Tom, Let it go.”

My friend and I had just that minute gotten back from camping.

The doorbell rang and there was a cop at the door.  I still had vestigial memories of eluding cops during my drug addled teen years, so the adrenaline coursed through me and I sweat and stammered, looking through the open door at the uniform standing there on the porch.

Without preamble, he said, “Is this the home of a Robert Bessette?”

Christ, after all he’s been through, what the hell do the stupid cops want with him now?

“Yeah, he lives here, uh, what’s the matter?”

“Can I speak to his father?”  The cop looked as nervous as I felt, now that I think of it.

“Not here,” I said, tongue-tied, talking to a dreaded cop.

“You his brother?”

“Yeah, I’m his brother, what’s wrong? What do you want, anyways?”

He eyeballed me like I was what the matter was, and I broke out into a new round of sweat.

“He’s dead.  He drowned in the Poestenkill, after getting high with his friends…”

He was still talking, but my head clouded over and I couldn’t believe it.  What?  Dead? You gotta be kidding me!

My buddy Bob had been standing beside me and I came to, hearing Bob say that he thought my parents were at a picnic up on the hill.  My knees had gotten jello-y and I had to lean against the door jamb for balance. This is gonna just kill my parents.

Suddenly, Bob was saying see ya later, and I was being handed into the front seat of the cop car.  The front seat!  I had always been in the back seat, the few times that I had ridden in cop cars before.  Bob must have told the cop where to go because he sure didn’t ask me.  The cop started the car and growled the siren.  He shot up Central venue towards Columbia.

My brother Bob was the really rebellious one in the family although my parents knew nothing about it.  He hung out with the rougher guys in the area, tried all kinds of this and that, but somehow traveled under the radar, probably because he normally kept his mouth shut (as opposed to my normally keeping my mouth open). 
He got drafted in ‘68 and did nearly a year in ‘Nam before being about blown to bits by a mortar.  I remember his letters home during his tour, talking about being depressed about having to kill kids a lot younger than he was, occasionally including a Polaroid of him standing with his gun over some muddy and mangled fourteen year old Viet Cong corpse.

After the mortar, he spent the better part of a year in a VA hospital on Long Island, and when we visited, we were more likely than not to see a sudden tenting of his skin, a trickle of blood and a piece of shrapnel pop out, like the birth of the monster in that Alien movie. 

When he was released and discharged, he floated a while, far away in thought, hanging out at Matty’s Tavern with what was left of the rough crowd after the attrition of Viet Nam. He finally got a job with the post office right around the time that the term ‘Going Postal’ was getting its genesis.  Two guys got shot in less than a year and mom was worried sick about it.  Imagine barely surviving Viet Nam only to get shot delivering mail in our own town. Shit.

The cop drove on up the hill to Masten Avenue and my parent’s friend’s house. He dropped me off in front and as soon as I got out, he high-tailed it back to his other cop duties, whatever they might be, leaving me to face my parents alone.  Crap.

I could hear the party out back, going full steam, my father’s voice roaring above it all, telling one of his stories.  I headed over to my parents, who were sitting in a grouping of folding lawn chairs with about fifteen other people.  I had one of those moments where even though I was clearly walking towards my old man, it seemed he was getting farther and farther away every step I took.

As usual, my father was in the midst of telling a loud, enthusiastic, and somewhat profane story, and I found myself yelling to get his attention, and it took a few minutes to be heard over his loud voice.

“Dad, Dad, for Christ’s Sake, shut up a minute, I gotta tell you something! Dad!!!”

As soon as he understood what I was telling him, his face got that look that was usually reserved for the worst trouble you could get yourself into.  Everybody was all hushed up and I was able, somehow, to remember that Bob had been taken to St. Mary’s in Troy. We got into the car and sped off to the hospital.  The old man drove like a maniac, pounding the horn and passing traffic on the left. My father had to make the identification, my mother was unable to even look at him, and my father wouldn’t take me, not that I was in any shape to see my brother’s corpse.  I have little memory of the rest of that afternoon.  My father called Pete and Judy and Sue, telling them over the phone.  Friends of my parents came over apologetically, shamefaced and staggering; how does one give condolences to people who have just outlived their son?

The authorities insisted on doing an autopsy; I was worried sick that it would show he had been doing drugs.  My father argued against it but they said it was the law and went ahead.  When the results were in, my father was the only one to see them and told us all that his system had been clean, that drugs weren’t involved and it was just a tragic accident after all.  I swear I saw something in his eyes…

We weren’t the type of family that had a selection of new looking dress clothes stuffed ready and waiting in a closet, so we all had to hit the stores to buy something wearable at a wake and a funeral.  Pop and I went together and I couldn’t understand either of us in that we seemed to be happy about having an excuse to go shopping for something that we usually wouldn’t buy.  I was mad at my brother for dying, my sisters for crying instead of talking about it, my mother for being too stunned to even respond much, my brother Pete for being his usual straightforward self, my father for being my father and myself for having difficulty responding in any kind of natural way. I couldn’t even think straight.  I was walking woodenly; exceedingly self consciously and robotically overreacting to every comment and action as if it was abysmally stupid and unthinkable.  After all, we were grieving and people are expected to be stiff and somber and strong.

Bob was only twenty-six and was a well known and popular guy, and my father and mother, being pillars of their church community were also well known and beloved. It was one of the biggest non-political funerals Cohoes had ever seen, with people lined up around the block to get into the wake. We didn’t really have a receiving line; people just kind of came up to us to say the same things over and over, as if rehearsed: “He looks so good,” “Our hearts are with you,” “He’s with the Lord now,” and I was secretly worried that he might not, in fact, be with the lord at all. 

For some reason the funeral director, who was well on in years, followed me around during the wake, asking me what he should do and what we wanted, seemingly about every detail that I thought we hired him to handle.  I don’t know where my sisters were emotionally, but I was a total basket case.  I don’t think I was mourning a brother so much as playing the part of a grieving sibling, without a script to follow.  God, what a total ass I was. 

My mother literally had to be almost frog marched into the funeral home, her legs were so wobbly, and she didn’t even seem to be trying to help herself.  I was mad at her for being so weak.  My father would get into loud pleasantry exchanges with well wishers and I was mad at him because he should be being somber and robotic like me.  The damned undertaker should be handling things for us instead of bothering me every few minutes with asinine questions like “Where do you want me to put the Mass cards?” and “Should those chairs be on that other wall?” and “What color tie do you want to bury him in?”  Tie?  He probably hadn’t worn a tie since he was finished with Catholic school dress codes for Christ’s sake!  Why bury one in the goddamned coffin now?  Mom, dammit, get up and talk to people!  Dad, stop smiling!

Over the next few days, I dealt with his buddies who hadn’t saved his life.  They all had reasons like, ‘I didn’t see him’ or ‘I thought he was in the woods taking a leak’ or ‘I knew I wasn’t a good enough swimmer to help him’ or some other stupid excuse.  Yeah, sure.  A few times a day one of my sisters would come screaming into the yard, yelling, TOM!  Dad’s crying, get in here!  I’d race in to save the day and he’d snuffle and say “I’m OK, I’m OK!”  Another letdown.  How could I be a savior when people wouldn’t be saved?  I wanted to be the ‘man’, to help my dad, to be powerful, to be in charge.  But I was still the youngest, the baby, not needed, underfoot.

I was nineteen and that was before the drinking age was raised to twenty-one, so when my brother’s true blue friends invited me to come down to Matty’s where they would buy me beers, I went.  I can’t remember her name but I got to know the young woman who claimed to be Bob’s serious girlfriend, although none of us had heard a word about her until then. She said they were talking marriage but I think that was bunk; I think she was having delusions and I was mad at her for sullying my exquisite bereavement.  She had bad teeth, sat at the bar with the guys and smoked, and I kept thinking that Bob really dodged a bullet on this one. She introduced me to her younger sister and we sort of dated for a while but there was no spark; I hope she wasn’t telling anyone we were talking marriage. I got drunk a few times and stumbled home to my listless mother and quiet father.  No Veteran brother to fight with anymore. 

Our family was not new to death, although this was the first death of one so young.

I was just starting my sophomore year in high school when his brother Harvey died. I was a year into my behavior problems but it hadn’t gotten too bad yet. I was at a Friday night Dance when my father showed up and took me away.  A neighbor had found Harvey dead on his toilet, seated, but bent down so that his face was cheek to floor, a strong stench in the room; he’d had a heart attack or stoke while taking a crap sometime overnight.  They had already taken him away when I got there with my father. I hardly knew Harvey because he spent his time hanging out in the Northside grill giving money away and living alone.  He had never married, was five years older than my father and none of us really knew him, probably including my dad.

The rooms of his apartment were cluttered with debris and filth, it still stank and we had to sort through to see if there was anything salvageable because the landlord wanted to clean up the apartment and rent it as soon as possible. He had lost most of whatever money he had from his long term job at the arsenal and there was very little in the apartment worth keeping besides a few of those types of record sets collected from Readers Digest and the like. ‘Collection of Romantic Love Songs’, and ‘Worlds Greatest Operas’ and whatever.  There was very little to tell of the man, no pictures or papers, ratty furniture, dried food bits scattered about, half filled coffee cups, broken glass, threadbare clothing; as I read this I see it does tell about the man.  We didn’t know him, perhaps no one did and I know that my father and his other brother Kaby had almost no contact with him in the last ten years or so of his life.  He had lived in that apartment for close to all of those10 years and I had never been there. My father said that he had had a perennial girlfriend who had stuck with him for 30 or more years, possibly hoping, maybe not really caring.  My father knew her, knew who she was, let her know Harvey was dead and I can’t recall if she came to the wake or funeral.  I just know that few people came to pay their respects outside of the immediate family, the people who had to come whether they wanted to or not.  No one hated Harvey as far as I know; no one particularly cared.  He died a bit before his sixtieth birthday, alone and rotting. My father seemed unaffected by the death of his older brother, my mother said something about the poor lost soul and my sisters, to my memory had nothing to say at all. Another Goddamn wasted life.

My maternal Grandfather Odilas, called Pip, died earlier than that, in 1965.  I did know Pip because when he stayed with us over the last few winters of his life, it was my job to bring him his insulin in the morning and help him strap on his wooden leg.  Although he had lived in the states for forty-two years he still had a fairly thick French Canadian accent.  I could speak and understand Quebecois French pretty well but I had a devil of a time deciphering his accented English. He seemed to be always crabby and bitching about something or other.  For years I thought he had a special strange name for my mother that sounded like ‘Mato’ and I just assumed it was OK because she always answered to it, and it was years later when I spoke of it to her that she told me it was just his garbled way of pronouncing her name, Marietta.  His English was an incoherent blend of accented English and idiomatic French anyway; maybe no one really knew what he was saying.  Our relationship wasn’t the traditional Grandfather-grandson relationship, probably due to his incapacity to move around well, I have no memories of spending much time with him beyond my obligatory morning chores.  I always looked forward to the day when he would move to my cousin’s house in Greenwich for the better weather, let Joe help him with his stupid leg.  I was nine, I beg childhood.

His wife, my mother’s mother, had died in 1948, seven years before I was born, obviously I never knew her and we weren’t the type of family that reminisced about people that were gone so I was well into my adult years before I knew that she died of a stroke at fifty-four and was a warmhearted woman. Her name was Alice and I have a few pictures of her, one sitting in a rocker holding a prayer book in a corner of the house I grew up in.  She and Odilas had immigrated to the Cohoes area from St. Jean Quebec.  He was a shirt cutter and worked for Cluett Peabody, one of the famous Troy shirt making companies.  The company closed their St. Jean Plant and he could choose to move or lose his job, so he moved his wife and kids ranging in age from six years old to a newborn to an apartment in Troy and then later to Cohoes where the family established itself.  They raised their kids, bought the houses in Waterford and Cohoes that became the family homesteads and spoke English with increasing confidence.  She had her stroke and died, he developed diabetes, lost his leg and died sixteen years later and that was that.

My father’s Parents died when I was young also, in 1961 when I was not yet six years old. The sum total of my memories of them is the compulsory Sunday after church visit.  We’d sit in a darkened room, staring at them seated side by side in their easy chairs, the heater blasting summer and winter, the shades drawn, television blasting.  I didn’t know their names, had no memory of anything but them sitting there.  He had already had his stroke and would sit looking bewildered and trying in a garbled way to speak. She had the most stern look I had ever seen and have ever seen to this day and when she spoke it was in a gruff, terse voice, in French and I could understand but don’t remember any of her comments.  These visits give me my only memory of Harvey other than at his death. Once during a visit I climbed up on my fathers lap to suck my thumb and twirl his ear, like usual, only to find that it was Harvey, who I remember said nothing and sat and endured it until I, realizing my terrible mistake, bawled and fled to the safety of my fathers arms.

My sisters told me in later years that Grandpa Charlie was a wonderful warmhearted man, much like my father, who was always available, when not working, to repair kites and bikes for the neighborhood kids.  Her name was Albertine and my sisters tell of a stern woman who clearly didn’t have much use for grandchildren.  She did what was necessary but there was no grandmotherly spoiling going on in her house.  They loved Charlie and pretty much avoided Albertine.  My mother’s brother in law later told me that she was working on her fathers  farm in Canada when a relative got her a job offer at one of the Harmony Knitting Mills in Cohoes, and came down and worked for a year until her father needed her back on the farm, which she detested.  I guess they still used outhouses, or something she couldn’t bear to go back to. Charlie proposed; she didn’t think much of him, married him to stay in the states and punished him over and over for it for the rest of their lives. Well, so my uncle said, but he never had a good word to say about anybody anyway.

I hardly knew my brother, and now he was dead and gone.  We had shared a bedroom, growing up, but I was nearly seven years younger and was more of a pain in the neck to him than a buddy, for sure.  Different friends, different experiences, different attitudes.

I remember standing at Bob’s open grave, next to my mother, looking down as the coffin was lowered.  Mom was dulled, having cried out all her tears.  Judy and Sue, my sisters, snuffling beyond her, my father stoic and subdued, quiet, for a change.

I felt all tightened up, seething, hating myself and my parents and the stupid undertakers and the priest, whose ancient words had sunk down into the damp grave and had not soothed anyone or changed a goddamned thing. It all seemed so stupid and pointless.  Did we really lose anything?

I looked around at the throng of people surrounding us.  There were literally hundreds of them; family, parental friends, Bob’s friends, tons I didn’t know at all.  Somebody must have thought that we lost something of value.  I must be the only asshole here.  A stupid, immature, underfoot kid, squarely in the way, thinking only of myself and how things affected me.

My brother had lost his life and people were devastated.  Why couldn’t I feel it?  Why couldn’t I put my own feelings away and think of them, and my dead brother, and the waste and loss?

The only one I could feel any concern for was my father.  We had been buddies when I was a kid and head-butting adversaries when I was a teenager. We had gotten to be friends again in the last year or two, after he retired, watching baseball together and going camping and canoeing.

I felt my father’s pain, and my own.

I watched my mother stare woodenly at Bob’s hole, and felt some contempt, and that’s about it.  My sisters, red eyed, affected me not.  I didn’t want to look at my oldest brother, Pete; we just didn’t get along too well.  I felt distaste at his façade of unconcern, as I interpreted it.  All the others?  Just a crowd of strangers, as meaningless as a thousand ants in a colony underground.

I should think about this, and figure out why I was such a piece of nothing, such an idiot.

Bob was dead down there in that coffin, the priest was done spouting his crap, and the crowd started walking away, back to the cars.  I stared down at the casket, strewn with flowers and handfuls of dirt, thinking that this was as good a time as any to look back at myself.  That I was a jerk, I had no doubt. Why?

I left everyone, got into my car, and drove off, alone.