Nancy’s lip started to quiver. She put a hand to her mouth and bolted from the bathroom. I stood there alone with Jane and hoped for an explanation. “Bobby, we’ve all done the best we could. It was a difficult situation, and, someday, you’ll understand.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “We all love you.”
I just stood there, stunned. It was a Christmas I knew I’d always remember. Jane patted me on the back and said, “Let’s go back out there and join the party.” Everybody else seemed to carry on as if nothing had happened. Nancy and Jane pulled themselves together and my uncles freshened their drinks. I tried to tell myself nothing had really changed, but I suddenly felt like I was in a room full of strangers.
It was definitely weird, but that’s just how people did things back in those days. People covered up and hid things. Family secrets. Secrets from the neighbors. Nobody questioned things, even the most obvious. People didn’t want to pry too much in those days, I think. It was probably easier that way. When Nancy got pregnant with me, Idie and Helen shipped her off to St. Anne’s, a charitable social services agency run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart. St. Anne’s, which first opened its doors in 1908, was where Catholic families sent their pregnant teenage daughters to do penance for their promiscuity. There, on North Occidental Street in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, they could carry their children to term hidden away from the world. Idie would visit Nancy on the weekends and they’d take occasional trips to the Echo Park lake, where he’d paddle her around in one of the little rowboats that were available for rent.
Nancy, I found out later, had a terrible delivery. She was in labor for two days and her pelvic bones cracked when I pushed through. Idie and Helen decided to adopt me and brought me home. Even after the Christmas revelation, I still considered Idie to be my real dad. I never met my biological father—and I’ve never wanted to. Oh, I know his name and his story, but he doesn’t matter to me. He’s never been a part of my life and he never will be.
Idie provided me with as good a childhood as possible, but it was getting tougher for him all the time. By the time I was fifteen, I was getting unruly, and he was retired and not able to generate much income. He decided to sell the Palm Desert house and move us into a mobile home. To this day, I think it was an unbelievably dumb move. How much could the mortgage have been on that desert house? A hundred and fifteen dollars a month? So we continued our steady journey down the economic ladder. Still, Idie kept going. He continued to drink hard, but it, and his age, began to catch up to him. Doctors said he needed heart surgery. Helen gave me the news. “Bobby, your dad has to go into the hospital and have an operation.”
Okay, I thought. It sounded serious, but doctors know what they’re doing, so everything would be all right. I was wrong. Idie went in, but he didn’t come out the same. He idled for a few months in a zombielike state. He wasn’t the vivacious, exciting dad I’d grown up with. He was just another old guy in a hospital gown now. Then one day he died. I was shocked. He was gone. The seed of anger started to take root. What kind of life is this? I wondered. How can the one guy I cared about and loved suffer all this shit? How could he lose his business, go broke, and then be gone in an instant? Is this all there is to look forward to? I was fifteen, and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Idie had given me a lot of his personality. I must have absorbed it through osmosis. Like him, I could never handle the nine-to-five routine. The old man was all over the place and strictly in the moment. I was just like him. Now I was on my own and left to my own devices. I raised myself from then on. I took up Idie’s favorite pastime and became a big fan of Bacardi 151 rum mixed with cola. I’d sneak it from the liquor cabinet. Helen never noticed. The raw alcohol taste of the rum took some getting used to, but mixed with enough cola, I could bypass the gag reflex. I loved to feel the warmth of the booze heat my innards and spread to my arms and legs. Even better was the way it made my head feel. I could achieve some degree of peace and satisfaction. I felt complete. Confident. It was a magical elixir. Some kids in my class thought Wheaties were the breakfast of champions. I knew different. Getting a buzz on before I left the house made school more interesting. I could talk to girls and I discovered they liked the bad boys. I was this wild desert kid. I lived for cigarettes, booze, dirt bikes, and trouble. These rebellious skills would serve me well when I started my rock-and-roll band as an adult. But I also discovered Jack Kerouac and his philosophy, which urged a sort of mad love for life. I adopted that as my creed. Be mad for living, I thought. Always. I mean, what other choices did I have? I
