My Father’s Room

By Ramblin’rose

It isn’t large. If you pace it off, toward the south-west, and there the doorway leading to the inside patio, you find it to be about six paces. On the width end, you have five paces, allowing for the glass doorway leading to the balcony, suitable for a solitary chair of modest size. Here you face west, more or less—tilted to the north. The condo, as this is just that, has a lovely garden some ten feet below the balcony. A reproduction of an Olmec head is immediately in its center and several feet from it is the gate to the street; turn left and walk to the corner and this places you on Questa de San Jose, noted for the cross, lighted at night, with a dangling wire connected illegally, of course, to the main wire, across the roadway. Turn right and head down the sloping street; watch out for booby traps, a Mexican thing, and in about five to ten minutes you are at the central marketplace of San Miguel de Allende.

Sunlight almost always streams in from the southwest window and its glass doorway to the patio in my father’s room. The sun warms the dark tones of the chapapote surfaced tile floor. This is Mexico and sun is almost a constant and one of the compelling reasons for visitors and ex-pats like me to call it home. No screen on the door to the patio or to the garden area as seldom is mosquitoes or flies a major concern. A double bed against the wall, bookcase and a desk with several chairs make up the furnishings. Built in the wall is a bureau and clothes closet. A few plants in Talavara ceramic pots are arranged in a linear fashion and surround the walls of the interior patio. The patio makes the room seem larger. As far as I knew, Reggie, my father, never made use of the patio. He had no guests, no friends here, alone in his room. Bathroom is next door and is not connected.

Jiminy Cricket just alighted on the bedspread. He is looking at me; so I am looking at him. “This is my room, now!” “Reggie is dead.” A thimble full of his ashes is in a ceramic vessel on the mantel of the fireplace. The fireplace has never been used. Now, because I wanted to do so, it has a screen, it would be safe now to fire it up. But when Reggie slept here, that was not possible: I doubt if he could start a log fire, even strike a match! Jiminy Cricket didn’t stay around; he jumped, or did what crickets do; he was gone. Jesus, I thought, Reggie incarnated as a cricket? He wouldn’t like that: God-like, demanding, a fearful force in my youth. And here I am, in my father’s room. Here to put to the rest at last, my own restlessness—declare once and for all to hear—why he was he, and now, at last, I must be me.

When Reggie called soon after my Mother’s death in Hollywood, Florida from heart failure— she had multiple pacemakers—I was shocked! Distance was very good for our relationship. My brother, the doctor, was the light in Reggie’s eyes; he succeeded in all that he undertook: A brilliant surgeon, wealthy, respected in his professional life yet, he ended his life as an alcoholic and lost all his money and the respect of his peers.  Reggie must have seen me with my inability to find myself, to have a purpose and direction, as just a  ‘bad seed’. Not worth further effort for it was the way things were. Yet, he called from his apartment in Florida: “Roland, I need your assistance”, and in so many words or less, ordered me to come to Florida, make arrangements with my spouse, and move him and his household effects to our home in Kennebunk, Maine. “Piss off, I thought!” But the same force within me that made me marry my first wife in Copenhagen, Denmark, due to an unwanted pregnancy, and seek his help in moving us back to his home in Queens, New York, promoted me to say, “I will be down to see what I can do!”

He had done it again. And I had done it again, to myself—caved in—gave up my freedom to meet or deal with someone else’s need. In his case, he was willing to come to our home, give up his eighty-seven years of hard-won independence, to be safe, cared for— so he thought— and the devil with what this may mean to us. His indifference, his need to satisfy his needs was paramount and you can just take it and lump it, buster. To hell with anyone else! We had room, or I should say we had a bedroom for him, my significant other oldest boy was away at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and the youngest was in high school; home but easy going by nature and would manage.

When he was just married, in the Heights in the Bronx, he and his brother worked as shills at crap games run by Lefty Clark and other crooks; they said to bring in needed money for the family. To satisfy their ego, I am sure that also had something to do with it.

It was like when Reggie came back from work at night, when we lived in Queens Village and after washing up, lounged in the sofa in the living room, he would call out; “Nellie, more ice tea!” No please, no I will get it myself! Just, bring it to me Nellie. She could be doing something that required her full attention and her personal wishes and he, king of the Serengeti plains, wanted his now. You can wait! He didn’t have a middle name. It should have been Disregard: Reggie Disregard Rose. He did adopt a middle name, some name after a movie star he liked: understandably so. Reggie was asked to consider a movie career. In the Heights, a movie company mogul asked him to go to LA, as New York movie companies were moving to California and to seek a career in acting. But family and for other reasons, Reggie felt more compelled to stay in New York and he did for all his working life.

Damon Runyon’s, as a reporter for The World covered the Ruth Snyder/Judd Gray, murder trial, a sensation in New York, in 1927, describes Reggie, a ‘key’ witness as handsome, having star-like qualities, a quick mind with a retentive memory that pinpointed Judd Gray to being one who had bought a railroad ticket, documented that Gray had lied as to his alibi.

Working as a cashier at the $100 window at the Belmont Race Track wasn’t all about a second job and supporting the family while he was employed at his primary job at the New York Central Railroad. Hardly! It was about his gambling addiction. Gamble he did! And lose he did. He finally got in so deep that he involved his closest friend into loaning him money, his friend illegally borrowed from the Railroad safe in Albany, where he was the Station Manger. He was caught in an audit with his friend’s personal loan document in the safe. Reggie lost all, including his house and my home in Queens. Mother went to Hawaii to my brother’s house to take care of his daughter because his wife was very sick with a failing heart condition, one that had gotten worse over her lifespan.

With the Queens house under foreclosure, I moved my family to Maine to my employer’s apartment on a compound that housed this residence and several inns that I was employed at before I left for France and Spain and my re-started art career. Wife, newborn baby daughter, dog and TV and boxes of stuff were packed and transported in the age-worn station wagon, off we went to a ‘new’ life in Maine. There followed three more children, all Maniacs: That is, born in Maine. Jobs, producing income, a house and job move for a time to Indiana and then family relocation there. Years sped by. Our family moved to Reston, Virginia; I worked in and around D.C.  At first we rented an apartment then purchased one. This was the late sixties and Vietnam, the “Great Society” programs enabled me to land employment as a consultant, one project after another. Reggie moved to Virginia after retiring from the Railroad; he thought it would be best, in his personal interest, to be near me. Shortly after he settled in Virginia a job change required that we move the family back to Maine. He moved then settled in Hollywood, Florida. There was a racetrack there and he could get employment and follow his bliss—gambling!

Foolish me. I gave up my art—what is my calling—to satisfy some stupid middle class sense of value. Do what is the right! I doodled faces on Styrofoam cups at meetings, hating what I was doing, on the one hand, and still enjoying the challenge of doing it right. Damn good at what I did. From a race relations project for the US Navy to a project for the Job Bank for the Department of Labor I succeeded in each and left a mark. But it wasn’t me.

Now, I am in my father’s room—aging—as he did here. I will have to make it alone—as he did here. My spouse of 28 years has left me. The room is not sustaining, the environment not life enhancing. Yet, I must go on living, in my father’s room, with memories.