Apology Accepted
When I was nine years old, my family bid adieu to the house that my parents had rented for years in Norristown—and then settled into a community that, less than a year before, had been the stomping grounds for cows and chickens. To label Center Square Greens as suburban might appear ambitious, for the landscaping did not bother to include pavements, the transportation schema had no place for busses, and my paper route took me two hours to navigate each day, with only twenty mailboxes to stuff.
You require at least that much of a sketchy backdrop for what follows.
Years later, as I was approaching my sixteenth birthday, I was taken off guard when my father was actively encouraging me to take the steps necessary to obtain my driver’s license. I wanted that little card so badly that it hurt, for I could not picture myself straddling my Schwinn to make my way to the dances that punctuated my rites of passage each and every weekend. Yet, my father never encouraged anything that had to do with the plans of his firstborn. I was soon to discover that there was certainly more than method to some madness here.
I carefully followed through all the preliminary procedures—and then (yes!) passed the test. However, not a week had gone by when my father let me in on his collusion: Every Friday, I was to get into the car, drive to the beer distributor in East Norriton, park, turn off the engine, wait, then give some underling the keys to the trunk—so that he could remove my father’s check that was waiting there, then fill the trunk with several cases of beer. I was a criminal at sixteen—a minor transporting hooch (pre-Boardwalk Empire) through the pavement-less streets of Center Square. It then seemed so clear why my father wanted me to go for that coveted brass ring.
However, I didn’t see the rest coming.
Being the pivotal lackey in my father’s Budweiser cartel, I assumed that there would be no issue when it came to my asking for the car for the weekend dances (my Friday after-school booze runs meant that dear ol’ dad would be well into his cups, not about to get off the couch throughout the weekend, sated, snoozing and snoring through The Lawrence Welk Show and “the fights”). Wrong, for he barked that I could have the car—as long as I made sure to take my younger sister, then a freshman in high school, to and from her weekend haunts, her gaggle of friends included.
I came to imagine that my sister would actually canvass the halls and cafeteria of our high school, going up to girls in her class, saying something like, “Where do you live? Wow, that’s really far! You win! My brother will pick you up at seven.” Each weekend, it was always the same: no sooner would I drop off my sister and her cronies at their destination, and then it would be the time to taxi them home. The sad truth walloped me: I passed my driver’s test to become a chauffeur for Daddy’s little girl and her minions.
At my wits’ end, I approached my father, weakly armed with some flimsy arguments against the utter inequity of the situation. However, I was quite the fool to think I had a chance against the tag team I was wrestling. So, this beaten cabbie pulled out the only defense that this teenager could muster: I cut off my nose to—well, you know the rest. After that day, I no longer asked for the car. Each day for months, I would not speak to my sister.
That’ll show ‘em. Won’t it?!
Wrong again. One evening, my father came into the living room with my jacket, ordering me to put it on and get into the car—the shotgun seat. We pulled out of the driveway—and drove for what seemed like hours, with both of us not saying a word. Until he stopped the car—in front of St. Gabriel’s Home for Delinquent Boys (then called Fatland Protectory).
I can still hear what he said next. Looking as if he wanted to smack the stuffing out of me, he leaned over and shouted, “Get out!”
I was too shocked to cry. I knew that he meant exactly what he said—and I knew I had to get out of the car. No sooner had my two feet landed on the ground then he pulled shut the door.
And, drove away.
I stood there, confused, and very hurt—for several minutes.
My father, having turned the car around somewhere, pulled up and stopped next to me. He then said something like, “You have two choices. You come home, and you take your sister wherever—and whenever—she wants to go. Or, this is your new home.” Beaten, I opened the car door, my tail—and what little pride I had left—between my legs, and began the silent ride home, being the only one who believed that I was right.
Decades later, my sister (we have since mellowed into a close, adult bond) called me at home. That night, the words she spoke were drenched by her sobbing, the sobs one usually hears when death or tragedy is part of the caller’s message. Her son and daughter are two years apart, as are we. It appears that my sister had been detecting a pattern of behavior and attitude in her daughter toward her brother that, for my sister, brought the past crashing back. Seeing herself in her daughter somehow made my sister aware of what she put me through.
And my sister had called, wanting me to forgive her for what, light years ago, had happened.
Jim F. Patrick taught high school for 43 years in Philadelphia. Email Jim Patrick