I was still living on Magnolia Avenue come November, having moved from the rear apartment I had previously shared with Bobbi Jean to a ground-level unit that wrapped around the side of the building. I’d been out of work for three weeks. Thus, I hd filed for unemployment along with a quarter of the island. Over the past two months, the City of Wildwood’s population had plummeted from a robust 220,000 to an anemic 5,200. All along Atlantic Avenue, the overhead traffic signals rose and fell like blinking buoys. The midtown streets ran wide and empty. The ashen tide had lost its groove.
People were always finding ways to take advantage of the offseason unemployment boom in seasonal towns like Wildwood. One guy I knew managed to collect in Wildwood despite living in Northern Ireland that winter; another enlisted the aid of an accomplice so he could collect while slinging drinks in Central Florida. Across Cape May County, there was an entire subculture devoted to working under-the-table jobs while collecting full benefits. Local officials were well aware that to acknowledge such things would be to take accountability. It was much more practical to turn a blind eye.
***
My relationship with both parents remained severely strained throughout this period – an unfortunate, albeit necessary, reality which is reinforced via this excerpt from a letter written to me by my mother, dated November 10, 1993:
Bob, one thing I want to mention to you on the side is how bad Dad feels about the way you treat him and talk to him. You know, Bob, Dad probably gave you more time and effort throughout your lifetime than he did any of the other children. I know you say you were just running track for Dad’s sake, well … I think if you really stop and think about it, all the time and effort he put into it, if you had just stuck with it, I am sure you would have won a scholarship to some college and would be in your Junior year by now, completing a college education for FREE! Then, in another year or so, you would be coming out of college owing nothing on student loans! I realize you didn’t want to run track anymore, but don’t you think at 20 years old it may be time to stop and reflect on all your Dad did for you and how much it hurts him when you are constantly “put out” and make both him and I feel like we are just butting into your life? None of the other kids make us feel this way. They may not always agree with our suggestions, but at least they listen to us and think about what we say without being so put upon as you seem. After your birthday when we were coming home from the shore, Dad said he couldn’t understand what he’d ever done to make you so hostile toward him. He was so worried about the heating situation in your apartment, and when he asked you about it, your answer was always, “Don’t worry about it.” All I am asking, Bob, is that you treat Dad a little nicer – take time to talk with him and be in the same room with him. He cares so much about you and feels like you just don’t want to be bothered with him at all. It is a very hurting situation. You will never know the way you talk sometimes, how it hurts a person. I’m sure you wouldn’t talk to any of your friends that way, or you wouldn’t have them very long.
Track. Cross country. Student loans. Engineering … The whole thing sounded like one big ball of hooey to me, perhaps even more so given the prepackaged way it was being presented. The more I insisted upon straying from that path, the more my father reinforced the notion I was shattering every dream he ever had for me. And eventually, that shit took its toll, grinding me down to the extent I spent several years believing I was a total failure – a wholly vile and worthless individual, completely undeserving of long-term love or compassion.
All of which might explain why it was I sought solace in the arms of a 16-year old girl who was categorically succeeding in all the places I once failed. Meghan was an honors student, a class treasurer. Meghan was stable and well-rounded and well-liked; a 5’10 forward, attractive, hard-working, a loving daughter, a cherished sister. Meghan was already half a dozen admirable things I could never really see myself becoming. And yet, she seemed so horribly wounded – bleeding in so many places she kept hidden from the world.
Meghan was a child of divorce; a damaging affair that had resulted in Meghan’s older sister Lauri going off to live with their mother. Meghan never forgave her mother or her older sister. Meghan’s mother had given birth to Lauri during a previous marriage, but Meghan’s father had legally adopted the girl when she was a child and he had raised her as his own.
Meghan was the primary reason I had decided to remain in Wildwood that off-season. Well, Meghan and the fact that I had no other place to go. I mean, sure, my parents had extended a conditional offer for me to come back home and live with them. But the fact was I no longer had that in me. The thing about Delaware County – and there really is no easy way of getting around this – is that any worthwhile native who ever aspired to make a name for him- or herself needed to leave that place in order to do so. None of which is to say that Wildwood represented a place where stardust dreams were given to orbit. But it is to say that Wildwood represented one very necessary step in the wrong direction for me … and I needed that in the grand summation of things.
The weekend after I turned 20, Meghan and I attended our first high school mixer together. I spent most of that evening in the cafeteria kitchen, helping chaperones prep and pour RC Cola into Dixie cups. I appeared so out of place that at one point the Wildwood Catholic Vice Principal, Mr. Turco, sidled up alongside me and said, “Do you mind if I ask exactly what it is that you’re doing?”
“Oh, yes … I mean, no,” I said, glancing round to find the other chaperones had disappeared. “Not at all, sir. Y’see, I’m, umm, Meghan’s boyfriend?”
I said this while pointing with my thumb toward the dance floor, where a loose configuration of high school juniors bounced and ricocheted like gas molecules in a compound.
“Meghan Mac?” Mr. Turco said, upper-brow furrowed foul with skepticism.
“Umm, yes, sir,” I said. “Meghan Mac. That’s right, sir. It’s just that, well, umm, y’see, she’s all the way out there dancing with her friends right now, and I, umm, well, the ladies who were back here a minute ago, they all said it’d be OK for me to help, and …”
“No need to explain,” Mr. Turco said, as he scraped a plate of leftovers into the garbage. “It’s just we get a lot of kids from Middle Township trying to sneak into these events. When I swung around the corner there and saw you standing all alone, tinkering with the bevearges … well, let’s just say I wasn’t quite sure what it was that you were doing here. That’s all.”
I am the guy who stays too late at the party because there is no place that I belong.
Day 353
***
(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB)