LANCERS AFTER ED SULLIVAN

by Kirby Michael Wright

LANCERS AFTER ED SULLIVAN

TROY AND I TOOK TURNS accompanying our father to Moloka’i on weekends. I hated going. I think he saw his brother Bobby in me. My uncle managed the Barefoot Bar at Queen’s Surf and, according to Daddyo, “Bobby got liquored up and chased after every skirt.” He’d considered Bobby a failure since the day he flunked out of Saint Louis. It was tough existing in my father’s universe. Once he’d formed a bad opinion of you, it was impossible to get him to switch to good.

* * *

During my Kahala weekends, I was the man of the house and felt a duty to protect my mother and Jen. I’d shortened my sister’s name because that’s what her friends called her at Kahala Elementary. I’d hear my mother singing to songs playing on her transistor radio. Sometimes she tapped. Her singing and dancing had a purpose—the girl inside was searching for that spark of hope the woman had misplaced. The use of voice and limbs fired up her optimistic nature, giving her face a vibrant glow. With my father gone, she seemed a decade younger. I watched The Lady from Shanghai and realized my mother did bear a resemblance to Rita Hayworth. There was something magic about her when she was happy and I felt she’d been a star or even a princess in a past life. She moved gracefully through the house doing chores and often hummed tunes from old Broadway shows that seemed vaguely familiar.

* * *

June Spoon invited Jen and me to join her in the living room. She wore a tailored green muumuu, a string of pearls, and white heels. My sister and I sat on the couch while she recited a Blanche DuBois monologue from A Streetcar Named Desire. Her theatrical experience was spotty at best, but she had sung “Beyond the Reef” on the Jack McCoy Radio Show. She’d also appeared with Connie Stevens on an episode of Hawaiian Eye. She’d been a member of a beachfront audience and was paid minimum wage to applaud wildly after Connie finished singing “What’s New?”

My mother finished playing Blanche and bowed.

I clapped. “A star is born!”

“Oh, go on,” she said.

“Face it, Mom. You’re a natural.”

“Better than Ethel Merman,” Jen said. My sister had on a pink muumuu with a hibiscus print. Jen wanted to be a rock star. Our mother had influenced her to dream big, but I was worried that Jen’s dream was missing the vital components of dedication, hard work, and sacrifice. Those components had never seemed to mesh with my mother’s Broadway dreams back in Massachusetts, especially after her parents divorced and the party home with the red baby grand and the maid was sold.

“You know,” June Spoon said, “I feel so alive with Daddy gone.”

“Me too,” Jen admitted.

“Me three,” I chimed in. “But why do you call him ‘Daddy?'”

My mother toyed with her pearls. “Well, he’s your father.”

“But he’s not yours.”

“Well, then I guess that I shouldn’t.”

“Would you have married him,” I asked, “knowing then what you know now?”

“Your father was quite a gentleman when we first met. He opened doors, listened to every word I said, and took me to all the big shows in Boston. He even wrote me poetry.”

“He wrote poems?”

“Love poems scribbled on a legal pad. He’d recite them during our picnics on the Charles River. I was sure marrying him would make my life wonderful. Harold S. Wright is the best actor I have ever met.”

“He deserves an Oscar.”

“He certainly does.”

“When did he change?”

“Oh, there were signs along the way. My father called him “that strange fish” and said it was impossible to warm up to him. The big change came not long after you were born, Kirby. I couldn’t understand why he hit you boys. I’d never seen anything like that in my life and he threatened to hit me too when I stood up for you. My mother said he was trying to hide something.”

“Hawaiian blood?”

“No. It was something about his personality, some odd thing she noticed. Thank god you didn’t turn out like him.”

“Still wanna divorce?”

“I want to wait until you and Troy graduate from Punahou and go off to college on the mainland.”

How could my mother live with a man she didn’t like? Our house was her prison. It struck me that, since she was a fake wife, maybe she was a fake mother too. Did she think of her three children as characters in a strange play, one where everyone pretended to love each other?

* * *

June McCormack had been raised in the Waltham burbs, a twenty-minute drive west of Boston. She was the child of a stockbroker who’d made a killing in the Roaring Twenties but lost it all to the Great Depression. Pops started coming home late, claiming he was “burning the candle at both ends.” Gert, his wife, hired a detective. The detective trailed Pops to the Black Rose Tavern and saw him with a floozy. June was ten when Pops declared bankruptcy and the Waltham house was auctioned to the highest bidder. Gert won custody but was forced to hock her pink sapphire bracelet to afford the rent at a Brookline flat. The ruby ring went for food. Finally, the cognac diamond wedding ring sparkled in the pawnshop. June had everything and nothing during the first ten years of her life. What left a lasting impression was seeing Gert board a streetcar for First National Bank, where she worked as a teller.

* * *

My mother was on the lanai leafing through an album with a red velvet cover. I sat beside her on the couch. The album contained tintypes, albumens, and daguerreotypes on paper-thin metal glued to black pages thick as card stock. She marveled at how young everyone looked. She recalled fall colors, ice-skating on Waltham Pond, and trips with her parents to New York City. She drifted back to a simpler time, the years of plenty when she was protected by a powerful father. She turned to a tintype of them strolling the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Her mother wore a hat, a mink coat, gloves, and an orchid corsage; Pops sported a camel hair topcoat, fedora, tie, and an ebony cane; between them was a girl clutching a teddy bear. My mother showed me pictures of a Tudor mansion with a bar the size of a small nightclub. Her father wrapped her in a world of silk dresses, singing lessons, and the theatre. Isabel, the black maid, loved her like a daughter. Much of her childhood was dedicated to learning show tunes and singing to her parents’ friends while Gert’s fingers tickled the keys. Pops promised her Broadway stardom and stages in Paris and Rome. She wanted Hollywood too, where she could be the lead in musicals and live in a mansion with a view of the sea. The fame that Pops had promised left a desperate need for recognition in my mother’s childhood soul, one that she carried into adulthood and married life. Pops’ promise had been broken but her desire for fame was never extinguished. Like the plant that survives on air, my mother nourished herself on the fantasies of an indulged girl.

My mother had lost Pops in the spring. He’d suffered a heart attack after losing a leg to phlebitis and died alone at the Pick-Congress Hotel. The manager had found him in a wheelchair with Sparky, a pet parakeet, clinging to his shoulder. My mother couldn’t stop crying when the call came and there was nothing I could do to cheer her up. She’d only seen her father twice in the Sixties, on stopover visits. Chicago was never the final destination. I suppose she harbored a deep resentment for his financial failures, including not being solvent enough to pay for her wedding reception. She treated her father like a distant uncle. Pops meant everything to my mother as a child but nothing to her after the baby grand was trucked away.

Daddyo tried comforting my mother after the Chicago call by handing her a box of Kleenex and patting her shoulder like she’d done a good job at something. My father sped off in his Olds and returned with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He prepared a Manhattan and stuck a breast, coleslaw, and a half-cob of corn on a paper plate. He carried his offering into the master bedroom and shut the door. I pressed my ear to the door and heard sobbing. “Now, June,” my father said, “drink your Manhattan and eat some chicken for strength. Things will get better, just wait and see.”

Jen crept over to the door and stood beside me. “Is Mummy okay?” she asked.

“No.”

My sister left but returned with her pink blanket. She spread the blanket outside the door, sat down, and draped the blanket over her shoulders.

* * *

Weekends inspired my mother to phone Gert and her Bostonian aunts. After catching up on ailments and financial woes, she dropped the receiver back in its cradle. “Those poor, poor women,” she told me. On Saturday, she put on a yellow cocktail dress and platinum wig. She invited Jen and me to her sunset concert on the lanai. We flopped on the couch and listened to “Anything Goes” and the haunting “In The Still Of The Night.” Her gestures and expressions made me think of the girl performing show tunes for Pops and his friends back in Waltham. Perhaps, even back then, she feared the Fabergé egg-of-a-world her father had created might shatter, spilling her dreams of stardom into an uncaring universe. I remembered our first and only cruise aboard the SS Lurline: June Spoon approached the mike in a snow-white dress and opera gloves. My angel of a mother sang about a magical land of golden gates and sun-kissed girls. She held out her long arms as if embracing the audience. Wild applause and her first-place trophy made her think Broadway was still within her grasp.

My mother asked us if we thought she could make it in New York.

Jenny raised her hand. “Yes!”

“Try Off-Broadway first,” I suggested.

June Spoon frowned. “But I prefer Broadway.”

“Try out for The Glass Menagerie at the Kennedy Theatre,” I told her.

“Maybe I will.”

“You’d be great as Laura’s mother.”

“I’d rather be Laura.”

“That role’s for a younger actress.”

“You’re right, Kirby. I’ve become a fat old woman.”

“Violet at Star Market thinks you’re my big sister.”

“I don’t look that young, do I?”

“It’s the Irish blood.”

She patted her cheeks. “Peaches and cream.”

I told my mother to audition for Hawaii 5-0. She said you had to be “friendly” with the casting director. She claimed Jack Lord never smiled in public, wore a big floppy hat, and didn’t offer her his empty grocery cart. “What nerve,” June Spoon said, “that man saw me coming but returned his cart to the rack.” She said Jack Lord had been a used car salesman and that she couldn’t be bothered with such a rude man running the show.

“Gotta start somewhere, Mom.”

“You’re right, Kirby.”

“They need actresses for Hot L Baltimore at Manoa Theatre.”

“Isn’t that play full of dirty language?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to try out.”

“No, I suppose not. But everyone’s so young and talented these days.”

“You look young and have loads of talent.”

“I should lose a few pounds first.”

My mother’s make-believe world transported her to the crossroads of absurdity and delusion. The sky was the limit and fame was lurking around the corner. She’d never abandoned the dreams Pops inspired back in Waltham, visions that survived her lean teen years, working the Maybelline assembly line, and secretarial jobs with harsh bosses. I spotted defeat in her eyes and told her she could be as big as Liz Taylor or even Barbra Streisand.

Her eyes brightened. “Yes, but not Liz.”

“Why not?”

“Liz can’t sing.” My mother sat down beside Jen on the couch. She launched into her I Wonders, musings on how life would be different if she had married another man. “I often wonder about that Fletcher Eaton,” she said. She claimed he had to sell his blood to pay for her dinner at Durgin-Park.

“Was Fletcher the man who got away?” I asked.

June Spoon gazed into the ti garden. “That brilliant man invented polyester,” she sighed. “Now he’s a millionaire.”

“Does he belt his children?”

“Are you kidding? Why that nice man wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

There were other suitors besides Fletcher. She shifted her mood according to each man’s financial worth. June Spoon was heartbroken about Fletcher, but her spirits picked up when recalling the BC quarterback.

“The best thing I ever did was dump Burt,” she said, rolling her eyes. “My brother saw the poor man selling loafers in Southie.”

Later that night, my mother pulled on a honey blonde wig, applied mascara, and dabbed on teal eye shadow. She squeezed into a white sequined gown and flung an ostrich feather wrap over her shoulders. The gown revealed a midriff bulge. “Kirby,” she said, “what shape is my face?”

“Heart-shaped.”

“Mary Robello says it’s moon-shaped. It’s not moon-shaped, is it?”

“No.”

She patted her belly. “I think Mary’s jealous of me.”

* * *

My mother answered Daddyo’s customary call on Saturday night. “I miss you, Dear,” she said. I darted for the master bedroom and eavesdropped on the extension.

“Is Kirby doing his chores?” my father asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell ‘im I’ll be inspecting his work.”

“How’s Troy?”

“That boy’s a big help.”

“Did he catch some fish?”

“Not yet. He just dropped the kaka lines.”

* * *

My mother and Jen were Kahala Mall addicts. They gorged themselves on jumbo hot dogs at Orange Julius, chocolate-covered macadamia nuts at Morrow’s Nut House, and lemon meringue pie at Woolworth’s. They topped off Saturday night with a visit to Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor. June Spoon seemed more like a binging teen than a fledgling actress worried about her figure.

I ate Hungry Man dinners and stayed up late phoning KORL talk radio. Tom Slaughtery, the jock, called me “The Kalihi Kid.” My incessant calling inspired me to create three imaginary characters—a Portuguese bus driver, a Japanese mamasan, and a hooker from Oklahoma. I’d dial and redial, switch voices, and have one character criticize the other. The mamasan slammed the hooker for selling her body. The bus driver wanted to date with the hooker. The hooker told the mamasan she was a working girl and informed the bus driver she’d be at Makapu’u on Sunday wearing a red bikini. I created a soap opera of intrigue. Invariably, another listener would call and racially slur one of my characters. That caused an avalanche of call-in complaints from the Portuguese, Asian, and haole communities.

“I’m having a nervous breakdown,” Tom Slaughtery confessed.

“Eat Portagee bean soup,” the bus driver advised.

“You need my deluxe massage,” the hooker offered.

“All you buggahs stay pupule!” the mamasan chortled.

* * *

Daddyo assigned chores to the son who remained behind in Kahala. He’d leave behind a Work List. My previous chores included hand sanding the garage ceiling, turning garden valves on and off at precise intervals, and repairing broken sprinklers. The second my old man got home, he raced to the garden and clawed the soil. “This dirt’s bone dry!” He was never pleased unless the soil was the consistency of mud. If I devised a more efficient way to complete a chore, he considered a challenge to his logic and authority. I borrowed Mr. Applestone’s power sander to speed up my progress on the garage ceiling.

“I said to hand sand, Kirby,” Daddyo griped.

“But power sanding made it fast.”

He stood on the Olds’ bumper and ran his hand over the ceiling. “You sonuvabitch,” he said, “you gouged this god damn surface!”

“Where?”

“Right here. Right where I’m feeling.”

After he’d gone inside, I hopped up on the bumper and ran my hand over the same spot. It was as smooth as glass.

* * *

My mother wanted to split before Daddyo returned Sunday night. She said waiting was “pure torture.” We rode with her to help Father Keelan feed the homeless at Saint Andrew’s Priory downtown. Jen handed out plastic spoons while our mother slung scoops of macaroni salad. I slopped beach stew into paper bowls. Keelan asked June Spoon to perform. She sang “If I Had a Hammer” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” A local woman requested Kui Lee’s “I’ll Remember You.” My mother sang that song with great conviction and passion. The woman lowered her head and wept after the song.

* * *

The Olds was in the garage when we returned. Daddyo flung open the front door and charged out, saying he felt “funny as hell” coming home to an empty house. He accused my mother of volunteering because she liked to pretend she was a star and didn’t care about the homeless. But June Spoon still glowed from singing in public and there was nothing he could do or say to dampen her spirits. Her dream burned with renewed hope that evening, even after Daddyo popped the Lancers Vin Rose during Ed Sullivan. Perhaps June Spoon convinced herself that giving in to her husband’s desires kept the family together. As Daddyo sweated over her in the oily moonlight, I wondered if she escaped by imagining she was performing at some no-name theatre in New York filled with fans who idolized her.

June Spoon had fallen out-of-love with Daddyo. The good inside her had been shaded by the horror of giving in to a brute, the same horror Blanche experienced with Stanley. My mother was sleeping with the only man in the world she truly despised.

 

 

 

Kirby Michael Wright was the 2016 Artist in Residence at the Eckerö Mail and Customs House in the Åland Islands, Finland. He won the 2018 Redwood Empire Mensa Award in Creative Nonfiction. The Queen of Moloka’i, his latest book, is based on the life and times of his Hawaiian grandma.