Looking back at the first visit Jan. 26, 1986
It’s hard when you give someone hope and then yank it away.
That’s what happened in 1974 when Louise refused to let me
stay at her house, ending any thoughts of reconciliation.
For years, I hated her for that, but only recently came to
understand why she needed to do it.
The 1974 incident was preceded by her calling me in November
1973, telling me we needed to talk, and promised to call me back.
I was living in the rooming house in Montclair at the time,
but didn’t trust the pay phone, so rushed down to my mother’s house on Trenton Avenue,
Paterson, to await her call.
Since I didn’t have a car, I had to take three buses to get
there, a two-hour trek that might have taken twenty minutes by automobile.
The whole idea shocked me because we’d been estranged for
more than a year and half without any hope of resolving our differences.
I thought she would never talk to me again after my idiotic
behavior during our break up and its immediate aftermath.
When I got the call at my mother’s, Louise’s voice hadn’t
changed, but sounded doubtful and I would later discover enough about her to
understand how alone and scared she felt, a condition she would suffer over and
over throughout the 1970s.
I didn’t help. I was still the same spiteful, unreasonable
and unfeeling person I had been when with her, only I hid it better perhaps,
although it would only take a small spark to reignite it.
I was still the bullshit artist, too, trying this time to
sound more intelligent and even suave, as I came to realize how unsophisticated
she was, and how I could play mind games (thank you John Lennon) with her, and
the 1973 phone call ended with nothing resolved.
Then, in mid-1974, she called again. This time, she wanted
to see me. Since I still didn’t own a car, I called Garrick and Hank, who
volunteered to accompany me to Scranton to see her. They mistakenly assumed as
I did that a reunion might be in the works.
We really didn’t know where we were going, following her
instructions, we almost missed the turn once we got to Scranton and only Hank’s
usual odd perhaps psychic instincts happened to see a bridge we were supposed
to cross just as we went passed it. He did this again in picking out the house
on the hill when we finally got turned around and onto the proper street.
I rang the bell. Mother and daughter greeted us, a startling
moment I was not completely prepared for, after more than a year and half
believing I would never see either of them again.
They invited us in, laughing, cheerier than I could ever
have imagined after all of the painful water that had washed under the bridge. I
was exhausted from working a day job as well as at night with the band
But it was clear from Louise’s talk how different our worlds
had become when she brought us down to the El Dorado club, where they listened
to country music, instead of rock and roll.
Hank and Garrick went back there late to buy me and Louise
time to talk alone, when the talk became serious as Louise mentioned the word “divorce.”
I was still attracted to her, and we came close to having
sex, but fell asleep, and by that time, it was time for us to head back to New
Jersey.
My daughter started to cry, repeating a phrase that still reverberates
in me more than a decade later, “Daddy, don’t go! Daddy, don’t go!”
The next time I visited them, Louise had grown cold and
refused to let me stay long in their house and would not let me get close to
her.
I could visit but I would have to get a motel room somewhere
else. But it was clear, the incident from my initial visit had shaken her.
She moved out of that house a short time later and did not
tell me where she’d gone, and only after she filed for divorce did I find out.
Even then, my visits were unwelcome. I had to go to court to get visitation
rights, after which, she fled to Oregon and only returned to Scranton years
later, previous years in which I missed my daughter’s growing up.
Later, Louise confessed that the first visit and hearing her
daughter cry out for me had scared the hell out of her and made her believe I
would take our daughter away from her.
Comments
Post a Comment