Scarcely a year passed before I was succeeded by a brother. My parents named him Brent. I daresay where the name came from for there were no for there was no Brent on either the Richard’s or the Beresford’s lineage. Perhaps it was from the Bible; perhaps it was from an old Celtic fairy tale. Wherever it came from, it wasn’t an auspicious appellation for my brother seemed to have been born under a bad star. Although my brother inherited my father’s looks and charm, he had not inherited my mother’s common sense or keen intelligence.
It was when Brent was a year or two old, and still in nappies, that the Troubles began in the family. At work (as I was to learn later), my father’s eyes began to wander. But the wandering eyes did not stop at that stage. My father’s form of indenture became philandering. Hardly did it matter if the women were chaste or unchaste, married or unmarried. He seemed to have no decency when it came to such small matters. As he became a philanderer, his thirst for alcohol at first lagged behind his thirst for women. This tom-catting would lead to a several short-lived affairs that my mother would quickly put an end to, each and every time, threatening to leave my father. Darkness descended upon my father at these times. Dark was the world he created; dark was the world he wallowed in. To deal with this darkness, I think, he drank. In this world of darkness, I think the alcohol chased away the ghosts that inhabited his realm. Most often it was Johnny Walker Red Label he drank. He’d sit in his recliner in the living room and drink his shots of Johnny Walker with ice and soda water. Most days, he went through half a fifth of Johnny Walker. But on a bad day, be it cast from a bad star on a moonless night, or a day when we all avoided him, he’d drink a full fifth. They say a drunk drinking passes through four stages: jollicose; bellicose; lachrymose; and, finally, comatose. My father was the exception. When drinking, he would immediately pass to the bellicose state, and then almost as quickly into the lachrymose state. Inherently a man with a stiff upper lip, my father would beseech my mother when he was drinking, when she’d just caught him out on one of his affairs and chased the tart away, crying like a toddler who’d dropped his bottle whenever she caught him out on one of his many seductions. Abashed to see him this way, my mother would gradually give in and agree to let him stay. Despite my age, I, too, was embarrassed for my father when I saw the tears. But they didn’t cease to flow. There was, I believe, some hidden he realized somewhere within himself he would not fully flower without her by his side. And seeing him there, begging her not to leave, she would give him a tongue-lashing fit for a stevedore. I was no less abashed to see my father in such form. But more than discomfited, I was confused. Of course, at that age, I was scarcely aware of the all too often detrimental relationships between men and women. It was all a mystery to me. It still is. I was confused. I was confused then, no less than I am now.
But the philandering gradually faded away. Why, I can’t say. As the philandering faded, drinking became more an end in itself. In fact, I think the alcohol itself diminished my father’s once unbridled libido. My mother begrudgingly ignored him as much as possible, first when he was on a binge, and then, only then, when he was coming off that binge. With time, my father no longer became tearful when he was drunk and at odds with my mother. She’d let him sit in the basement nursing a bottle of Johnny Walker, while the rest of his family went on with their lives. What first began as a library in the basement, turned into a parlor, and then a part-time bedroom. When he was drunk, she preferred he slept downstairs. The next day, sober, though no doubt hungover, he had all the dignity of a bank president. At least he did in the first years he abused alcohol. She did what she could to shield Brent and me from his drinking. Soon, sleeping down in the basement was not good enough. Soon, when he was drunk, she packed his beige canvas and leather Gladstone bag and would call a taxi to take him to the Randolph House. Located downtown, this male boarding house hosted similar lost souls for a couple dollars a night. We could almost feel a heavy weight being lifted from my mother’s shoulders as the taxi pulled out of the driveway with my dad. My father would remain at the Randolph House, where he continued to drink away his troubles. Per his wont, this would last three or four days. Then the first days he would return to appease the gods of withdrawal. Although initially petrified that my father’s drinking would out, she soon found that there was no way to hide it. Soon, the neighbors got used to seeing the taxi departing our house with father. Soon, the community knew that John Richards was a lush. Congruent within that circle were those who knew he was also a philanderer. Once they knew those facts, they saw him in a different light. My father to them was now just a doppelgänger of the man they’d known. He was now a man of little substance.
Given his affair with the bottle, his profession at the bank soon suffered. Mr. Robert Winthrop, the bank president, turned his eyes away from father’s habit as long as he could. But when my father failed to secure adequate collateral on two large loans he made to the bank’s customers, and the bank lost a considerable amount of money, Winthrop let him go. Had the stars been in the right alignment, he might have taken this as proof he needed to quit imbibing. However, they weren’t. Fortuity only seemed to fuel it. Within a few weeks of the bank letting him go, he found a job selling shoes in the Mercantile Emporium a block away from the bank. His boss was one of his drinking buddies. Unlike my father, he was one of those functional alcoholics whose drinking never seems to interfere with their performance in life. Drink, however, ruined my father’s. So there, from the porch he staggered with that weathered Gladstone, the piece of luggage that she always kept packed. In time, I half hoped he would take the Gladstone and be gone for good as he weaved out the front door and down the sidewalk. Eventually, when she was sure he was sober and that his binge had stopped for the moment, she’d let him return. But with each episode, she grew colder, she grew less sympathetic for the foibles inherent in the man, the inherent weaknesses\ in all men. With each episode, she made him spend longer periods at the Randolph House. As time passed, she would set down new rules about how he behaved in the house when he was not on a binge. With smouldering irritation he followed her new rules and regulations. In essence, she would let him know that he wasn’t the one really in charge of the household. But he would go along. He was no less distressed than a sailboat hugging the coastline in a tempest.
About this time, I recall a haunting vision of my father. One I’ll never forget. He was on a binge, a really heavy binge. Mother was packing his Gladstone downstairs. As I passed down the upstairs hallway that led past the master bedroom, I looked in at him. He had just retched all over the carpet in the master bedroom. Shortly after literally spilling his guts, he passed out one more time. The whole tableau would have made a recruiting poster for Alcoholics Anonymous. Passed out on the floor was my father, a man in his boxers and sleeveless, muscleman t-shirts lying in his own vomit on the carpet. There, for the fascination of the provident, lay my father on his side, and the strong, suffocating smell of scotch he had just vomited. Lying in the emesis, was a half-smoked cigarette. It would add one more cigarette burn to the dozen or so that were already there. At first, my mother did all she could to keep Brent and me from seeing our father in such a condition. She had little luck in this enterprise.
Not a year later, I have a similar image of him. This one would certainly amuse the followers of the late Susan B. Anthony of the village. Bringing up my father up the sidewalk to the front door of the house was a police officer. He was supporting my father. He politely introduced himself as Officer Ben Martinez. Seeing Martinez there, my mother ran out and grabbed my father’s free arm. “I think this one belongs to you?” inquired Martinez. Back and forth they flailed, half-walking, half-weaving, down the side walk to the front door of the house, like palsied parishioners dancing at a church social. As soon as they reached the stoop, my father bent over and vomited all over Ben Martinez’s tan officer’s pant leg. I remember mother apologizing to the officer who was a true gentleman, and him telling her not to worry herself about it. A day later she baked a cake for Martinez and left it at the police station with a short “thank you” note.
As the years passed, her resolution grew. Less and less she’d tolerate about my father’s drinking especially when he was around his two boys. No longer was he allowed to sleep in the master bedroom of the house, even if he was sober. Where Rebecca Beresford had been such a warm and wonderful mother, one with nothing against an individual, I watched her become hard and bitter, I watched her become worn; I watched her become old before her time, time when
