box-like structures built right after the Second World War to house returning servicemen and their families. The house was already twenty-five years old when my parents acquired it, just a year before Mom was killed.
Schiffert Box and Lumber, where Dad worked, was an old-fashioned company that had been founded in 1890. They hadn’t manufactured wooden boxes since the 1960s, but retained that part of the name. Dad got paid every Friday, in cash. It’s only within the last five years that Schiffert has paid by check and at two-week intervals.
Every Saturday morning Mom would do the weekly grocery shopping. On Friday evenings she would circle the loss leaders in each grocery ad or flyer, then we’d tour the supermarkets buying only the items on sale.
I was holding Byron’s hand, walking from the house, across the lawn, which Dad kept smooth as a golf green, toward our Ford Maverick, parked at the curb. The car was a shade of gold that Dad laughingly said the used-car salesman had referred to as Freudian Gilt.
The day was hot and breezy, with a few sheep-sized white clouds floating across the sky. Mom was wearing a white dress with red anchors patterned on it, white shoes, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with a red ribbon around the crown. Her family had been over for dinner the previous Sunday and Mom had borrowed some folding chairs from Grandma Palichuk, which we were going to return after shopping.
Mom had the trunk of the car open, had one chair inside and was reaching for a second when a gust of wind whipped her hat off. The hat hit the pavement beside the car, turned on edge, and rolled like a plate into the street. Mom moved instinctively to chase it.
She only took about three steps, the street was narrow and three steps was far enough for her to move right into the path of an oncoming car, driven by George Franklin, who lived only a block down the street. George Franklin didn’t even have time to apply the brakes. The car hit Mom, carried her about twenty feet down the street and deposited her on the pavement. I can still hear the sound of her head hitting the street. She died instantly, the doctor who arrived with the ambulance said.
Dad was mowing the back yard with a gas lawnmower, so he didn’t know anything unusual was going on. Someone had to go to the back yard and get him. The neighbors didn’t think to keep Byron and me away from the scene. I was sobbing because I knew what had happened was not play. Byron and I looked down at Mom, and Byron said, ‘Mama sleeping?’ and through my tears I said, ‘Yes, Mama’s sleeping.’
Then a woman in a swirling gray housedress took us each by the hand and hurried us into her house. Even though the doctor pronounced Mom dead at the scene, Dad insisted on riding with the ambulance to the hospital.
Mr. Franklin was not at fault. He wasn’t speeding. He was in the correct lane. His car was in good mechanical condition. Between the accident and the funeral, Dad walked us down the block to Mr. Franklin’s house. I held onto his right hand, and he carried Byron in the crook of his left arm.
Mr. Franklin was a tall, gaunt man with a hairline that went back like a horseshoe, a crooked nose, and sad blue eyes that protruded slightly.
‘I just want you to know I realize what happened was an accident,’ Dad said to him. ‘There was nothing you could do. Gracie should have looked before she ran into the street after her hat. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened to anyone.’ Dad held out his hand to Mr. Franklin.
Mr. Franklin’s hand was trembling violently as he reached to shake my dad’s extended hand. He spoke very softly. He said he hadn’t slept since the accident, didn’t know if he’d ever sleep again.
‘Don’t be hard on yourself,’ Dad said. ‘It could have been your wife. It could have been me driving home from the hardware store on a Saturday morning.’
There was no way Dad could have done more – I don’t know if I could be so generous in similar circumstances – but what he did wasn’t enough. Mr. Franklin had a nervous breakdown, lost his job as an accountant with the Grain Exchange. He stopped driving. His family left him. He stayed home alone and drank all day. On the first anniversary of my mother’s death Mr. Franklin put a gun to his head and ended his pain.
Dad had a married sister in Kansas City; my mother had one in Chicago and one in Milwaukee; and Grandma Palichuk lived only a ten-minute drive from us. Each of them volunteered to take Byron and me, to care for us and to raise us as their own.
And some good cases were made, the best by my dad’s sister in Kansas City, my Aunt Noreen, who was married to a lawyer, lived in a five-bedroom house with a swimming pool, had only one child, a girl, Phoebe, and was desperate for a son, but unable to bear any more children. No one considered for a moment that Dad might want to raise his own sons.
But my dad, big awkward rough diamond that he was, refused all their offers, even ignored Aunt Noreen, who, after being turned down, threatened to sue for custody on the grounds that Dad lacked the ability to care for us properly. It was about ten years before Dad forgave his sister for that threat. He intended to look after us himself, he said. And when Dad says something, he means it.
It wasn’t easy. There were housekeepers, play schools, and day-care centers. There were babysitters who did exactly that – sat – often having friends over who ate everything not locked up. There were housekeepers who drank, who entertained boyfriends, who quit on a moment’s notice, stealing whatever they were able to carry.
There were also some wonderful women who tried to be mothers to Byron and me, some hoping Dad would take a fancy to them if they were nice enough to us and kept the house spotless. Others simply loved children. One was a middle-aged lady named Mrs. Watts, a black woman whose family had a cottage on a lake some fifty miles out of Chicago. She took us to the lake for two weeks when I was eight and Byron was six. Dad came down on the weekends and slept in a hammock on the porch of the cabin, and we went fishing and boating and collected rocks and shells. But Mrs. Watts’ mother became ill and she had to go look after her instead of us.
It was Dad who enrolled me in Little League, where I immediately showed skill and power beyond my years.
‘Did you ever play ball?’ I asked him.
‘I used to play in a commercial league when I was a teenager. I played third base with all the grace of King Kong. The thing I did best was get hit by the pitcher. The ball didn’t hurt so much because I have big bones. I’d lean over the plate and dare the pitcher to hit me, and often enough he would.’
We muddled through. By the time 1 was in first grade I’d mastered the washer and dryer, the vacuum cleaner and the dishwasher. We went to school in clean if unironed clothes. I did the dishes as soon as I got home from school. Byron learned to cook, first out of necessity then for pleasure. I can see him standing on a chair in front of the stove, five years old, frying pork chops, boiling carrots that I had cut up, salting, peppering, shooing me away if I tried to help. We got our share of burns and scrapes and cuts, but we were truly scared only once. When I was six, I reached up and put my finger under the knife as Dad was slicing bread for Sunday morning toast. I still have the scar. There was blood everywhere, and Byron kept a washcloth pressed tightly about my finger as Dad hurried us to Emergency, the cloth turning raspberry colored in spite of the pressure Byron put on it.
‘How long will he be on the disabled list?’ Dad asked the doctor after he had stitched me up. ‘This boy’s the star of his Little League team and he’s only six.’ I was pale and still snuffling a little. My knees were like water, and I didn’t feel the least like a star baseball player.
The hand recovered, and I roared through every league I played in. Our high-school team won
