A Checkered Past

By William Van Poyck

In April, 2004, A Checkered Past won first place (memoir category) in the Writer's Digest International Self-Publishing Book Awards, edging out over 1,000 other entries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Van Poyck
• Release date: May 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452428222

William Van Poyck

I am a single dad of 5 children from 21 to 12. I am the CEO of a private 132-bed work release center for men who are transitioning from prison back into society. I spent a total of 18 + years of my life before being paroled in 1984. Ten years later I was given a full pardon from Florida Governor Lawton Chiles. Today I run my own minimum security prison/work-release center. God is good!I am also the State Chairman for the Constitution Party of Florida www.cpflorida.com. I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010.

Book preview

PART ONE

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

---Blaise Pascal

The All American

Still today I measure all other men by the stature of my father, the finest man I will ever know. Yet, like Hamlet contemplating Yorick’s skull, I still examine my past and search my heart pondering how and why I broke him so. Haunted by Dad’s bitter disappointments, I wear them like iron shackles, unable to tell my own story without also sharing his—the man who inhabits my memory clothed in a thesaurus full of snapshot superlatives: Honorable. Principled. Strong. Infrangible. Courageous. Moral. Fearless. Quietly dignified. There exist competing tensions I will only truly see in life’s rearview mirror, for his heart sings in a multitude of keys: A brilliant polymath whose razor intellect is circumscribed by an uncommon common sense. Wise but pragmatic. A born leader who is inherently reserved. Adventurous but conservative. Intensely patriotic though suspicious of big government. A man of eclectic tastes and interests—as complex as a Mandelstam poem—whose love of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dostoevsky and Pasternak is matched by Hemingway, Faulkner, Melville and Twain. He revels in Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart as much as Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Artie Shaw and Fats Waller, and is equally at ease in an opera house as a downtown pool hall. He is a no-nonsense, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of guy who seeks challenges and endeavors that anneal the body and mind. He is all that and more; and being human he is also less.

Walter Stewart Van Poyck is born in the verdant Pennsylvania Dutch countryside—a variegated quilt work of tidy Amish farms—the youngest child, with two brothers and three sisters, and emotionally distant parents unable to express love. Dad is the prototypical Quiet American, a man who endures the Great Depression by working himself through college, graduating from Susquehanna University with honors and a business degree. He teaches himself to play the clarinet, then forms a band that tours pre-war Europe, playing jazz and swing music in London, Paris and Berlin. He returns and joins a promising young company—Eastern Air Lines—becoming personal friends with its famous race car-driving founder, the World War I Ace, Eddie Rickenbacker, whose portrait will hang with honor in our house for decades. Then, sensing the gathering winds of war, Dad joins the U.S. Army three months before Pearl Harbor. There he volunteers for the then-nascent 82nd Airborne—the All-American Division—training in dusty army camps throughout the South—Camp Blanding, Camp Wheeler, Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, emerging a commissioned second lieutenant.

With General Ridgeway the All-American Division lands in Morocco and fights its way through the Atlas Mountains and across the North African deserts, seeing bitter combat at the Kasserine Pass, where Rommel’s panzers teach the brash young American army some harsh lessons in mobile warfare. Dad paratroops into Sicily and fights across the island alongside General Patton’s army, then spearheads the invasion at Salerno and fights some more. Dad’s men slug their way up the Italian peninsula—Dad is a captain now—through ancient stone villages, across fertile valleys and over snow-crested Alpine mountain passes, fighting gut-wrenching battles every inch of the way. The Italians have quit but the Germans fight on, and the blood-soaked battlefields pile up. Naples. Monte Casino. Anzio. At the Anzio beachhead Dad’s men are pinned down in foxholes for sixty days as the shrieking heavy artillery attempts to hurl them back into the sea. Dad is wounded and awarded the Purple Heart, then thrown back into the fray. They finally break out, then liberate Rome, receiving a hero’s welcome.

From Italy Dad returns to England for refitting and training until the early morning of June 6, 1944, when transport planes—flying through carpets of 88mm anti-aircraft flak bursts so thick that the pilots swear they could land on them—zoom over Utah Beach and dump the division into the still dark Normandy countryside. Dad’s men fight and claw through dense tangles of hedgerows, across landmined fields and shattered villages, gathering around the sleepy town of St. Mere Eglise. There, one of Dad’s wounded troopers (later portrayed by Red Buttons in Hollywood’s The Longest Day) hangs by his chute from the church tower steeple, playing dead while the battle rages in the town square below.

That autumn of 1944, the Allies launch the largest airborne invasion in history, Operation Market Garden, later immortalized in Cornelius Ryan’s book and movie, A Bridge Too Far. The objective is to capture a string of bridges in Holland, far behind enemy lines. The 82nd Airborne, along with tens of thousands of British and Polish paratroopers, in transports and gliders stretching from horizon to horizon, float down into fields of Van Gogh sunflowers. Allied intelligence has downplayed reports that numerous elite panzer divisions—honed and battle-hardened from the Eastern Front—are hiding and refitting in the area, and Dad and his men drop into a maelstrom of fiery destruction. Weeks of desperate, frenzied combat follow—troopers against armored divisions— fighting town-to-town, street-to-street, house-to-house and room-to-room. On a September afternoon Dad’s company is resting in a bombed-out farmhouse—enjoying a rare lull in the battle—gathered in a circle devouring roasted wild rabbits. Just as Dad leans back in his chair a German mortar round drops through a hole in the roof and hits his right leg. In that split-second blackout the thunderous explosion demolishes the room; the crunching concussion blows out eardrums and sucks air from lungs. Radiating shrapnel whistles by, tearing flesh and bones. But Dad is still alive. When he regains his senses Dad peers through the cloying pall of smoke and dust and sees his men dead and dying. Shaken, numb, on the verge of shock, Dad sees a bloody leg lying a few feet away. It takes him a moment to understand it is his.

Captain, one of Dad’s men calls out, I’ve lost a leg.

I think I’ve lost both of mine, Dad hollers back. The cries and moans of his wounded men fill the smoky room as Dad props himself up and injects himself with morphine—failing to chalk an X on his helmet, the sign that morphine has already been administered so as to prevent an overdose. He sees a long bloody cord—a tendon? a vein?—snaking from his stump toward his severed leg and for reasons he is later unable to explain he uses his bayonet to cut the cord and stuff it back into his raw, gaping stump.

Ever the stalwart commanding officer, Dad shouts out orders as troopers stream into the smoldering hulk of a house. Take out that damn mortar emplacement! Medics arrive and take one look at Dad, then mumble something about concentrating on those who can still make it. A medic injects Dad with morphine, but fails to chalk mark his helmet. Finally Dad is carried to a field hospital—a tent in the woods—where numerous troopers lie grievously wounded; the Germans are advancing and vicious fighting surrounds them. At the field hospital the doctors practice battlefield triage, where those deemed mortally wounded are given morphine and set aside to die while those who can be saved are operated upon. They examine Dad and shake their heads—better to work on someone with hope. Dad is given another morphine injection, and then laid on the ground, where he huddles in his corner surrounded by shattered bodies and listens to the doctors comment that he will soon be dead. Dad lies on the blood-soaked dirt struggling with death itself—like Jacob wrestling the angel at the Jabbok River—refusing to give up or accept defeat. Then Dad sits up and throws off his blanket.

Dammit! I’m not going to die! he barks.

The startled doctors—elbow-deep in blood—look up from the operating table in consternation. Give him morphine, one doctor instructs. When the medic approaches with the syringe Dad reaches up and begins strangling him. Suddenly a young Jewish doctor enters the tent.

Wait, he says, eyeing Dad. Any man fighting like that isn’t ready to die. The doctor leans close and whispers to Dad. I don’t think you’re going to make it, captain, but we’re going to try to save you. Dad nods vigorously, then pukes up the rabbit all over the doctor.

I know this story by heart though it is seldom told—Dad is not one to brag or glamorize war. The details must be coaxed and cajoled from him, usually at Thanksgiving or Christmas meals greased with liberal doses of good beer or wine. I once hear the story at an 82nd Airborne Association convention, told by a trooper who was there. Lesser known is the rarely told part Dad keeps close to his heart—I hear it only once, recounted with a mixture of sheepish embarrassment and adamant conviction by this solidly grounded man who does not trifle with truth. While unconscious, on the threshold of death, Dad has a remarkable vision—not a dream or morphine hallucination, he firmly insists—a mysterious luminous being of blindingly brilliant light, identifying himself as Dad’s Spirit Guide, appears to assure Dad that he will live. It is not yet his time to die. It is this profound experience that gives Dad the strength to rise up from the dirt and grip the medic’s throat.

Dad is promoted to major and decorated again, and ends up in Walter Reed Hospital outside Washington, DC. There he endures countless operations and grueling rehabilitation. He has lost his right leg above the knee and much of his left foot, and his body is riddled with jagged shrapnel that will still be working its way out of his flesh decades later. At Walter Reed Dad is cared for by a beautiful young army nurse named Phyllis Herland, and so they fall in love. When Dad is discharged—with a chest full of medals—he is told by Eddie Rickenbacker—who maintains a proud company policy of hiring disabled veterans—that his job with Eastern Air Lines has been preserved. And so in 1947, Dad and Phyllis move to Miami—languid and sunny and all aquamarine—with Dad’s new wooden leg and a pocketful of dreams, where they marry and settle into a tidy little bungalow to raise a family and seek the fullness of the American dream.

In my own young eyes Dad is Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Gary Cooper in High Noon. And yet there is something distant about him, as if an important part of him is held in reserve. It is the cumulative weight that has mounted up with a biblical cadence, strung along the continuum of years, as fate painted ever more brushstrokes on his life’s canvas. If you look up stoic in the dictionary you will find Dad’s picture—wearing his Airborne uniform and cradling his Thompson submachine gun. It is an age-old story possessing the quality of a minor Greek tragedy, the contours of which—now absorbed with a wiser eye—are starkly clear in the light cast through the prism of hindsight. As a child I grow up aching desperately for my father’s attention and approval but he is constitutionally unable to give me what I need most, a simple hug and the words I love you.

In The Beginning

This is how it happens for me. My life begins unspooling on the cusp of winter, this terrible January morning—bitterly cold for Miami—a day when fate pauses, clears its throat and reshuffles the cards. It is 1956. My mother, Phyllis—young, beautiful, gentle in spirit, and heavily pregnant with her fourth child—is a registered nurse, naturally concerned over the mysterious illness plaguing the family next door these past several days. Dizziness. Nausea. Fatigue. Pounding headaches. A doctor has diagnosed a nameless virus, dismissing its importance. What more, my mother had wondered the day before, can I do to help? My father—blessed with a first-rate intellect tempered with down-to-earth common sense, stalwart, honorable, retired major, 82nd Airborne, twelve years removed from the shrieking German mortar round that blew off his leg and exploded his dreams in the dark, dense forests of Holland, aspiring young executive with Eastern Air Lines—had agreed with Mom. Yes, she could stay overnight with the neighbors, nurse them back to health. Now, as Dad cooks us a French toast breakfast— my older brother Jeffrey, almost eight; little Lisa, approaching three; and me, William—he wonders aloud what could be keeping Mom, why his phone call goes unanswered. Wait here and watch your brother and sister, Dad instructs Jeff. I’ll be back in a moment with your mom. I sit gurgling in my high chair—so I am told—wide-eyed and chubby at sixteen months, happily contemplating the promise of a velvet future.

Dad goes next door, leaning heavily on his briarwood cane, his limping gait defined by the limits of his wooden leg. When nobody responds to his knocks he opens the door and enters the house, stepping right into a stygian scene where everything is as wrong as it can ever get. Even now, at this distance, across the long span of years, I close my eyes and struggle mightily to imagine, to feel, the icy terror that stops Dad’s throat and grips his heart. There, crumpled on the floor, is the father of the house, Kurt Krohne. Lying on one couch is the wife, Lois Krohne. On another couch Dad sees Mom, deathly still. The family dog, a terrier, jumps up and down, yipping frantically. Dad, grizzled combat veteran and no stranger to sudden death, finds himself in a funerary chamber, inhabiting one of those moments that forever mark a man before and after. It only gets worse. Tucked in their beds, wearing colorful animal print pajamas, are the kids: Kurt, Jr., 8; Kathy, 3; and baby Karlene, 2. Everyone is dead or dying.

Dad instinctively deduces the culprit; carbon monoxide gas. Dad’s combat training kicks in and he smashes out windows, throws open the doors. He frantically races from body to body, struggling to haul them from the house, burdened with a leg that drags like an anchor. At some point he desperately calls for an ambulance, and surely cries out to God. The screaming police cars and ambulances race past The Parrot Jungle, pouring into our sleepy neighborhood where they discover Dad resolutely working to resuscitate my mother—there yet remains the faintest of heartbeats—battling to hold back the seepage of fatal time.

Next door, oblivious to the uproar, I impatiently squirm in my chair. Lisa plays with her French toast while Jeff wonders what is keeping Mom and Dad, and why the street is filling with flashing lights and moaning sirens. When Jeff tries to cross the yard a police officer stops him cold.

Is everything all right? Jeff asks, looking past the officer at the commotion next door.

Yes. Everything is fine, the officer lies. He grips Jeff’s shoulders tightly. Just go on to school, he orders.

Jeff demurs, struggling to get loose. I can’t. My father told me to stay and watch over my brother and sister.

The officer insists, pushing Jeff away. Your father wants you to go to school right away. I’ll watch your brother and sister. Everything will be fine. Now go.

And so he does.

The hospital scene is grim. Mr. Krohne and his two little girls are dead. My mother, Mrs. Krohne and little Kurt, Jr., (Jeff’s friend and playmate), shrouded in oxygen tents, barely cling to life. Mom dies at 5:55 p.m., and Mrs. Krohne follows two and a half hours later. Little Kurt, receiving continuous blood transfusions, hangs on until 3:50 a.m., and then draws his last breath.

Investigation establishes that Mr. Krohne, in an attempt to keep out the frigid air during that two-week cold streak, had stuffed the gas heater flues with steel wool, trapping in the warm air as well as the invisible, odorless carbon monoxide that a gas heater generates.

That afternoon, when school lets out, Jeff’s walk home is interrupted by the mother of his best friend. Why don’t you sleep over our house tonight, she gently suggests. I’ve checked with your father and it’s O.K. It will be fun. Jeff happily agrees, though he wonders why the woman is so sad—as if she’d been crying. Jeff spends the night playing with his friend, enjoying the unexpected adventure of a sleepover on a school night. The next day he is kept out of school—some excuse is invented—and he spends the day playing with his buddy. But by evening Jeff senses something is wrong, and he suddenly demands to go home. The woman invites Jeff to sleep over again but Jeff resists. I have to ask my mom, he insists. The woman gets on the phone, speaking quietly, and the uneasiness covers Jeff like a wet blanket.

Your father says you can sleep over again, the woman says cheerfully.

But Jeff digs in his heels, sensing some veiled menace he cannot articulate. No, he says. I want to go home. I want to see my mother. The woman nods, then begins to cry.

They drive up to the house to find the yard and driveway overflowing with cars. Inside, the house is packed with solemn adults—aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends—all red-eyed and grim-faced.

Where’s Mom? Jeff asks expectantly, looking around in bewilderment. Where’s Dad?

Our maternal grandfather, Ed, bends down and hugs Jeff tightly. He lives in Massachusetts and Jeff is surprised to see him.

Your father wants to talk to you, Grandpa Ed whispers hoarsely, steering Jeff toward Dad’s bedroom.

Jeff quietly enters and sees Dad slumped in his bed. Dad sits up and holds his arms out to Jeff, tears streaming down his face. Jeff has never seen Dad cry, so he begins to cry too. He runs to Dad, knowing that something is terribly wrong. Embracing Jeff tightly Dad speaks through a scrim of tears, explaining that God needed Mom’s help and has taken her away.

When is she coming back?

She’s never coming back, son.

Jeff cannot understand. Never? He tries to comprehend the dimensions of never but it is outside the limits of his imagination. A part of him recognizes that this is death, a concept he has heard of but never fully grasped, and he senses that his own circle of life has been irretrievably broken. Jeff erupts in anger, squirming out of Dad’s arms, and screams in protest.

"But God doesn’t need her! We need her! Jeff hollers, pulling away from Dad. Then he races from the room—leaving Dad behind—wailing in despair. I want my mother! I want my mother!" His plaintive cries echo through the house and the adults turn away. Grandpa Ed reaches out and catches Jeff. Let’s go outside. We need to talk. Outside he explains that because Mom was a nurse God needed her in heaven to help care for others. But Jeff does not want to hear it, and he pulls away angrily. Then I hate God! Jeff says, spitting out the words. He runs down the street screaming for Mom, while neighbors watch from behind curtained windows. With a grandfather’s patience Ed calls after Jeff, over and over, beseeching him to come back, until, crushed and bewildered, Jeff finally stops running and stands alone in the street, sobbing. Then, with no place left to go, Jeff turns around and slowly trudges back, his spirit overwhelmed by the weight of his grief.

So this is how it begins—seven souls, including my unborn sibling, flying away like a rush of angels. But this is not how it ends. It takes all kinds to make a world and different spirits meet life’s meanest circumstances in diverse ways. Some rise up, endure, overcome. Others less so. On this cold raw day our small family has stepped into another life. Like the spreading ripples of a stone-smacked pond the consequences of this terrible day will flow ever outward, cascading over my father, already gravely wounded by life, beating and driving him into a stoic shell. They will brush young Jeff with a very heavy hand, grinding him down, scarring his psyche until, burnished in the crucible, seeing the world through the lens of his own private pain, he will emerge headstrong, rebellious, distrustful, hating uniforms, authority and all they represent, desperately seeking THE ONE who stole our mother away. And ultimately, through Jeff, that singular event will reverberate down the hallways of our lives, reaching out across the years, prodding me incessantly, tapping me on my shoulder—ripples destined to shape and form Lisa’s and my lives until, still moving inexorably outward, they will bear their peculiar fruit and deliver their cargo of grief and pain, to us and many others, over many years and lives until finally, in each of our lives, coming full circle, pain against pain, loss against loss.

Someone To Watch Over Us

After losing Mom to poison gas and Dad to a sixty-hour workweek, life takes on a different tempo. The search is for someone to watch over us. It does not go well. We begin a four-year procession of uniformly unsatisfactory housekeepers whom Dad changes like counterfeit money. Their treatment of us ranges from indifferent to brutal, with each failing for her own singular reason. One is recklessly inattentive, another a drunk. Still another steals anything not nailed down. They sail in and out of our lives like ghost ships on a foggy sea, then west, beyond the map’s edge, leaving their own particular residues in their wakes. And always, skirting the periphery, lurking in the shadows, ever poised to swoop in to latch onto us kids, is the odd, frenetic woman we know as Aunt Phyllis. Technically not our aunt, Phyllis camps out on the fringes of the family network—such as it is—a strange woman, married to someone who is related to someone who is married to someone in the family tree—something like that. She owns a substantial documented psychiatric history including hospital commitments, psychotropic medications and electroconvulsive therapy. By the time she enters our lives she is a flighty, carefree spirit whose volatile mood swings and fierce temper are legendary—as is her drinking problem and her abuse of prescription narcotics. And, though married to Uncle Al, she is secretly in love with Dad and possesses a dark obsession with all of us kids, intent on making us her children. Later she will play a more substantial role in our lives, but during these early years she is relegated to the background, coming and going with mysterious irregularity.

In this often unaccompanied childhood I begin reading at three and never give it up. Dad is a lover of books and I take after him. Although dearly close to Lisa and Jeff, it is while lost in that solitary pursuit, inhabiting enchanted worlds peopled with heroic knights, magical dragons and wise kings, reading of endless adventures across vast, uncharted lands and seas, that I feel most at ease. It is alone, treading the pages of my books, that I find myself—or at least the person I want to be, brave, noble, honorable, chivalrous—as I doggedly search for my own place in the universe.

The train wreck that is our succession of housekeepers culminates with the hiring of Mrs. Dano. Stern and sour in disposition, square and solid as a linebacker, she emanates a cold, controlled fury, an angry bitterness with the entire world that she quickly acquaints us with, administering her rigid discipline with Teutonic vigor and efficiency. She has bone-white hair twisted into a tight bun, and a grim slit across her scowling face that passes for a mouth. A devout religious fanatic belonging to some obscure Christian sect, she fervently believes in not sparing the rod. Announcing that sin resides deeply within all children, and declaring the need for pain as a path to grace, she introduces us to her concept of pre-emptive beatings. When Jeff, age ten, returns from school each day Mrs. Dano beats him viciously with her favored instrument—a wooden coat hanger—declaring the punishment is for all of the sins he surely committed in her absence. Eventually Jeff begins resisting, running away to hide. Then he simply stops coming home from school until after dark when Dad returns from work.

Lisa and I, ages six and five, respectively, are trapped in the house all day. Almost daily Mrs. Dano lines us up, haranguing us bitterly, then beats us with the feared coat hanger. Then she locks us into a pitch-black closet the rest of the day, ignoring our screams, our sobs, until we finally stop crying and begin begging to be released. We hug each other in the darkness as the day slides by until Mrs. Dano finally opens the door. She makes us kneel and pray to God for forgiveness. Then, as she always does, she warns us—if we dare tell Dad, not only will he not believe us, but she will then chop us up and feed us to her dogs. She waves a big knife in our faces to reinforce her point. We are petrified, and even now my memories of those days, hazy as they are, remain infused with the fug of pure terror.

After long, desperate months it is Jeff who finally sets the brake, emptying his heart to Dad. Dad grimly inspects our legs and backs, striated in hues of red, black and blue. We trail behind him as he wheels into the kitchen to confront Mrs. Dano. He asks no questions, seeks no explanation, only points his service .45 at her chest and orders her to leave. She departs quickly, silently, and Lisa and I, squinting like gunfighters, peer through the spokes of Dad’s wheelchair as her car speeds away.

When Aunt Phyllis urges Dad to let her move in, it must seem like a good idea. Dad, busy climbing the corporate ladder at Eastern Air Lines, believes he can rely upon her to look after us. What follows is two years devoid of structure, marked by endless bright days spent at the beach. Aunt Phyllis is a fanatical sun worshiper and every morning she takes Lisa and me to one of Miami’s many beaches, plopping us on the sand to play among ourselves until the sun begins setting in the western sky. These endless summer memories now flash in my mind like sun-glazed snapshots: Lisa and I playing alone on Miami Beach, scooping sand into painted tin pails at the curling surf’s edge; Lisa and I lost among the feet of adults thronging Tahiti Beach or Matheson Hammock; Lisa and I chasing squawking seagulls and scuttling crabs along the shore at Key Biscayne. Most often we are alone, fending for ourselves, jettisoned there by Aunt Phyllis, who disappears for most the day. Jeff is rarely present. He’s either in school or roaming the neighborhood like a stray cat.

Other, darker images, vaguely sinister, wheel through my memory like dim, sepia-toned dreams: The many times Aunt Phyllis parks me at poolside at some cheap Miami Beach motel (Stay here, she orders me. Don’t leave the pool deck.) while she leads little Lisa away, hand in hand, deep into the rabbit warren of rooms. I particularly recall The Apache Motel—Aunt Phyllis’ favorite—its garish fluorescent sign forever burned into my memory. I am a regular there, sitting pensively on a chaise lounge awaiting her return, wondering what she and Lisa do all day in the rooms. Often Aunt Phillis recruits a poolside stranger (Watch this kid for me, she commands. Make sure he stays here.) and I spend the day running around the pool, occasionally swimming until some adult scolds me out. I recall trembling on the high dive, and the applause from a stranger when I finally dive in. Mostly I charge around, a restless, fidgety little boy with nowhere to go, adopted by guests and staff, like a lost pet, taking turns to watch over me. I spend many long summer days there, always alone, missing Lisa. Sometimes I am brought up to those rooms but, try as I might, the details escape me. The images are elusive—jerky, grainy and dark—flickering in my psyche like an ancient silent movie, barely tickling the edges of my memory. I wonder why I cannot remember—perhaps I do not really want to know—but the larger part of me is pleased I can’t.

It is a strange Gypsy-like existence. Life with Aunt Phyllis is simple—there are no rules other than to obey her. Jeff adores her, for she gives him free rein to do and go where he wants. Aunt Phyllis adores Lisa, dressing her up in pretty dress, brushing her long hair obsessively. Aunt Phyllis tolerates me, but even at my tender age I sense I am a burden, a nuisance accessory to the Barbie Doll role she has cast Lisa in. When her temper flares—and it is maddeningly unpredictable—she screams in my face and occasionally smacks me. But for the most part it is a life of benign neglect and I travel with her like so much baggage.

Then there is uncle Al—Phyllis’ tirelessly patient husband—a garrulous man, unfailingly kind to us kids, cheerful and jaunty with his rakish cap, seemingly wise in all the ways of the world. He has an infectious laugh and a take-over-the-room grin that fills his friendly, impish face. He often takes us to the racetrack, sagely pointing out the winners, sometimes bringing us back to the stables where Lisa and I eagerly pet the horses and feed them carrots. Just as often I am perched on a barstool in some dark, cool club where cigar smoke, whiskey and soft jazz permeate the air, where dice and cards and poker chips slap the tables and skimpily clad women bartenders pat my head and feed me peanuts. I taste my first beer and learn to calculate poker odds, and I feel special, secretly pleased, knowing I am not supposed to be in this forbidden adult world. Uncle Al— perpetually smiling, laughing, waving a drink—is always watching over me. And I feel safe.

At some point Aunt Phyllis begins telling Lisa and me that she is our real mother. She shows us a scar on her belly and tells us that is where we came out. We come to believe her and take to calling her Mother. Aunt Phyllis begins passing herself off as our mother to anyone who will listen—local shopkeepers, merchants, doctors, and school officials—capitalizing on the first name she shares with my mom. I become happy—it was all a misunderstanding—for now I have a mother again, just like all the other kids. I follow Aunt Phyllis around like a lost puppy, grabbing her leg and hanging on for dear life whenever she stands still long enough. I do not want to lose my mother again.

In the fall of 1957, Dad is a contestant on a local Miami television quiz show. He wins the grand prize, including an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe. Dad takes Jeff, then nine, as they travel through Holland, visiting and paying respects at the immense Margraten Cemetery near Maastricht, where the American war dead—including many of Dad’s friends—are buried. They visit the Canadian and British cemeteries near the town of Nijmegen. The bridges at Nijmegen and Grave, spanning the Waal River, are of particular interest to Dad, for that is where he lost his leg. Together with Jeff he locates the very farmhouse, his old command post, where he was hit. At some point they venture into Germany and tour our old castle—swindled from our ancestors a century earlier— now a tourist attraction.

Nineteen fifty-seven proves to be a portentous year for our broken family— though it is unrecognized at the time—for even as Dad appears on that TV game show, a young divorced mother of one, a struggling secretary named Lee, is sitting across town, watching that show. She comments to her daughter, Toni, about how smart Dad is and how much she would like to meet him. She speaks with great prescience, for her wish will come true, yielding fateful consequences that will reshape our destinies. She will enter our lives, which will never be the same, and I will learn that dreams die, like people, slowly, with dread, bitterness and regret, and right up to the very end, with hope.

The Die Is Cast

I am almost six that summer of 1960 when Dad lines us up like little soldiers.

Do you remember Lee, the woman I’ve introduced to you? We nod in affirmation. Lee is tall and blonde and appears nice enough. We have met her perhaps twice.

I am going to marry her. She will be your new mother. Dad states this as if pronouncing a sentence. She has her own daughter, Toni, who is also twelve, just like you, Jeff. Dad looks at Jeff meaningfully. So you are also getting a new sister.

Too young to fully understand, my feelings are decidedly ambivalent. What about Aunt Phyllis? I wonder to myself. Isn’t she our mother? I look at Jeff to take his cue; his face seethes with rage. Lisa’s expression is inscrutable.

What about Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Al? Jeff demands.

Dad tells us that they will no longer live with us after the wedding. Sensing our resistance Dad instructs us to be good and not misbehave. We must accept Lee and Toni with open arms, Dad orders. But even I can see that Jeff’s mind is already closed like an angry fist.

We will soon have a new house, it is being built right now. It’s on a pretty lake and will have a swimming pool. Dad throws this out like a hopeful bribe. We’ll be moving there soon and we’ll be one big happy family.

Jeff blurts out all of our thoughts—he does not want a new mother or sister, does not want to move, or leave the neighborhood—but Dad silences him with a commanding gesture. It is already settled and not open for debate. We must accept the facts. It is time for us to grow up, to act like adults, to be good troopers and follow orders.

Privately Jeff explodes in anger, telling Lisa and me that this is a terrible betrayal. Nobody, nobody, can ever replace our mother, Jeff shouts angrily as he stomps about. We must never, never accept an imposter. Jeff grabs my shoulders and shakes me like a doll.

You must never forget our real mother, William, Jeff instructs me through sudden tears. "Never! Don’t ever let anyone take her memory away."

I nod dumbly—unlike Jeff, I have no memories of our mother to retain—but through my confusion I understand. It will be us against Lee—the enemy—whenever she moves into the house!

On another day we are again lined up—I am dressed up in my little Sunday school suit and Buster Brown shoes—while Lee examines us like a general reviewing her troops. She smiles tightly and makes small talk—I am too young to grasp the awkwardness she must be enduring—then introduces us to Toni. She is tall and gangly—all arms and legs like a filly emerging from the birthing paddock—with wavy, lustrous black hair and an endearingly bashful smile. She is painfully shy, with big hopeful eyes, and though Jeff has branded her the enemy I secretly decide I like her.

A loud, bitter argument fills the house, Lee and Aunt Phyllis throwing venomous words like hand grenades. I lie beneath my covers straining in the darkness to understand the words. Aunt Phyllis bellows, her words climbing the ladder of hysteria, shouting that we