California Nightwatch Blue

Yeah, that’s me – the tough lookin’ one. The one with the Eastwood squint that says, “You got me now, but you ain’t holdin’ me long, Copper. You just try and make me talk. You ain’t gettin’ this jail bird to sing, Copper.” Huh, maybe it’s Cagney more than Clint.

The other gang members in the photo? That’s my family, or what’s left of it. Mom? She’s there, along for the ride … moving in and out of something akin to the “fog of war”, wearing an internal Thousand Mile Stare. Next to her, my brother Bill, the middle child. He’s given up and just wants to go home. You can see it in his eyes. The other brother, Jay, the tall one with the George Hamilton tan and Valentino bedroom eyes - he’s dreaming about California girls on the beach and wondering why the hell he was appointed man-of-the-house at the age of fourteen.

It was the summer of ’65 and my Pop had just shot himself, well … killed himself more precisely, in the driveway of our house seven months earlier. So, what’s a family to do after something like that? Well, mostly not talk about it and pretend that nothing had happened. It was the 1960s you know.

But something DID happen. In that millisecond it took for that bullet to travel down the barrel of my Pop’s rifle and into his chest - our family motto went from “All for one and one for all”, or a mildly dysfunctional version of that, to “Every man for himself”. And because of that new family motto each one of us saw the world, our family, and our tragedy through four different sets of eyes.

Take my Pop’s funeral for example. We’re all sitting behind that magic curtain at the parlor. We can see out, but no one can see in. My brother Bill, 11, sits next to me bawling his eyes out. Jay, 13, sits straight and detached. Our mom, though terror-stricken inside, sits strong and stoic with light overcast weeping. And me, I’m fixated on the box with my dad in it. I knew, without a doubt, that that coffin was going to open and my Pop would sit up drinking a bottle of Coke. No tears from me. Honestly, I don’t think my 6 year-old brain I had any idea what was going on. One thing I did know - I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I shed no tears when all those around me were. My Pop never did sit up and I never did drink another Coke – only Pepsi.

Another thing that changed was that my mom was left alone to deal with raising three kids with no job, all the while feeling anger, guilt, denial, and more anger. What was the answer to all our problems, in her eyes? Move to Spain!! Even as an adult now, I have no idea where this came from except I know she loved Anthony Quinn. Maybe that was enough. He was pretty damn sexy in Zorba The Greek. In the end though, more balanced heads prevailed (probably grandma and grandpa) and there we were – a fractured family making our way down I-5 to California – the other Spain – for a summer-of-fun road trip. 

We motored from Washington State through Oregon and into sunny California in a brand spankin’ new Pontiac LeMans convertible – thanks to my Pop’s life insurance policy. It set us up fine and dandy with a stylin’ ride down the Coast. Not quite the GTO muscle car version of the LeMans, but man … it was sweet. It was Nightwatch Blue with a 328 V8 engine and a black rag top. People who live in the Northwest normally don’t go out and buy convertibles, it’s not weather conducive.  But, my mom did and in my mind we were the coolest family on the road, despite the fact that I knew, with every fiber of my being, that every towering eighteen wheeler that passed us was destine to topple over and kill us all.  And, if that happened we wouldn’t be like the Kennedys anymore. President Kennedy was assassinated one year and one month before my dad killed himself. So, of course, I believed the Kennedys and the Keetons were kindred spirits. But, if a fifteen foot high semi-truck flattened us on I-5 in our bitchin’ new car we’d then only be akin to all the other millions of U.S. Highway death statistics and that’s just not quite as awesome as living life in Camelot.

In a weird way, life was good in my version of Camelot. I was just young enough not to understand the tragedy that had befallen our family. I don’t know exactly when my mom started drinking too much, but I would guess it wasn’t too long after the morning she found her husband lying on the ground in his skivvies with a bullet in his stomach and a second in his chest. That day in October was also the day mom disappeared. She just went away and never ever seemed to come back - not the way she was when Pop was alive.  But that was then - not now! Now we’re a family of four touring in our new Pontiac down Pacific Coast Highway. I’m in the backseat, my short cropped Spock haircut blowing in the breeze. It’s California! It’s the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean and Eric Von Zipper in Beach Blanket Bingo. It’s Mustangs and Woodies, surfboards and sand and doing the limbo. It’s quintessential young America in the 1960s and it was breathtaking! This was my version of our trek to California.

My brothers? I’m sure they have a different version. Bill was five years older than me and Jay seven. They were old enough to understand the enormity of our catastrophic loss. I found out later in life that Bill was scared to death during the entire trip and just wanted to go back home to the stability of grandma and grandpa. Being alone with our mom was always an adventure and also most likely a little terrifying. One time she downed a bit too much Jim Beam, got in the car (with us in it) and took the pedal to the metal. My brother, Billy-boy, wrestled the wheel from her and we got home safely. Jay’s version of our California trek is yet to be determined. He was the oldest and it took its toll. With being the oldest comes high expectations and high guilt. Jay-bird, as our grandma would call him, never did find his way out of the maze of guilt that was placed on him by our mom. I hope he makes it out some day.

What was my mom’s version? What did her eyes see? What did her heart feel? I have no way of knowing. Mom died in 1987. Lung cancer pummeled her to death before I grew up enough to understand about regrets. How was I to know that twenty years later my heart would ache for one more conversation, one more birthday, one more Christmas, just one more summer afternoon on the back patio surrounded by her glorious hanging fuchsias. But wait a minute, have I forgotten how many fights we’d been in or how many times we’d go months without speaking to each other? No, I haven’t forgotten. I’m only five years shy of the age she died, 62. I’m old enough now to understand. She was a human being, just like everyone else.

When she was lying in bed at the nursing home dying I asked her if she had any advice for me. All she said was, “A girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do.” Pretty sound advice, though definitely in a tad bit different category as her “last words”. I’ll set the scene – mom is in a propped up hospital bed. Jay is on one side of her with his hand on her shoulder. I’m on the other side of the bed holding her hand. All she can say is, “Jay! Get me out of this God damn place, you hear me? Get me outta here!” Remember, the woman is hooked up to a morphine pump. She thinks Ted Turner is trying to murder her and knows for a fact that the nursing home is a front for a Chinese drug ring at night and then there’s the fact that the docs believe the cancer has gone to her brain. Mom keeps begging Jay to spring her outta the joint. We tell her everything is okay and we’ll be back tomorrow to visit. My mother turns and looks at Jay - turns and looks at me and then looks straight ahead and delivers the best, most rich (as far as a writer is concerned) last words ever, “You two make me sick.” Just imagine the way Bette Davis would deliver that line. That’s how she delivered it. Both my brother and I had to hold back from laughing. It was so mom. As Jay and I took leave I asked her if I could give her a kiss and in the very same Davis infection she said, “I don’t think so.” I left the room and as Jay and I giggled over mom being mom something tugged at me inside. I poked my head back in her room and said, “Can I give you a kiss, now?” Her response, “I suppose so.”  Those were the last words my mom spoke to me ….. and they were perfect. You know why? Because sometimes, a girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do.

I think that’s exactly what she was doing the day she packed us all up, shoved us in that Nightwatch Blue Pontiac and headed out on her “my husband just killed himself, I’m scared to death, what do I do now” fun and sun road trip to California. She was doin’ what a girl’s gotta do. She was trying to make sense of something that was impossible to make sense of.  It still doesn’t make sense to me 51 years later. Our family was never the same after that bullet entered my Pop’s chest. Every man for himself stayed with us for a long time.

In the end, all the life evidence, all the family evidence … it all points to the fact that there really is no such place as Camelot. But, I am my mother’s daughter and this girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do and there will always be a place for my dear tormented, angry, sweet, loving, tap dancing, dysfunctional, singing mom at my Round Table. She’s earned it.