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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
Cuesta de San Jose, noted for the metal 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 expatriates
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 into the wall is a bureau and clothes closet. Bathroom
is next door and is not connected. 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.
Jiminy Cricket just alighted onto 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 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 as just a “bad seed.” Not worth further effort. It was the
way things were. Yet, Reggie 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 unplanned pregnancy, and
sought 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—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.
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: Reginald 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. Reggie felt more compelled to stay in New York and he
did for all his working life.
Damon Runyon, 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. Runyon
memorialized the trial in his book Famous Murder Trials.
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 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
funds from the Railroad safe in Albany,
where he was the Station Manger. He was caught in an audit with the
personal loan document in the safe.
With the foreclosure of the Queens
property ongoing, my brother asked my Mother to come to Hawaii, live there and care for his
daughter. Mother went to Hawaii.
Reggie moved to an apartment in New
York City. Household items I shipped by a moving
van to Maine
or we sold off at yard sales. Mother would return to live with my father
in Queens some years later, after the
death of my brother’s wife.
When the Queens’ house was sold
I moved my wife and daughter to my employer's hotel complex of several
buildings located at the mouth of the Kennebunk River.
We lived in one of the cottage’s facing the River. A truly beautiful location and was the
quintessence Maine
place. I had sought this
employment while in graduate school and worked for the owners during the
summer months when single; I applied for an residency at the University
of Paris, École Supérieur des Beaux Arts, I was accepted and went to
paint in France, from there I went to Spain where I met my first wife.
The reason that I sought employment in Maine
was my disgust with my life in New
York. I
wanted to have a place that I could do my art and New York was not working for me; I was
feed-up with graduate school and dull employment at the New York Central
Railroad. The residency management
job in Maine
allowed me to earn money and to do my art at the same time. I had many
free hours to paint: all my living expenses were covered. The owners were
more like family than employers. And, when I returned from my paintings
days in Spain,
I asked them for reemployment at my old job as resident manger, they
graciously agreed. They provided a cottage residence for my family.
With my wife and daughter, dog and TV
and boxes of household stuff we packed the age-worn station wagon and we
left New York,
never to return. Off we went to a “new” life in Maine. There
followed while we lived there, year round, three more children, all
Maniacs: That is, born in Maine.
Jobs, producing income, buying our Maine
home and restoring it, new employment in urban planning, leaving my hotel
work; then an offer for a major planning job in Indiana. We temporarily shuttered the Maine home and relocated to Indiana. A merger with my firm and a
computer software firm in Virginia
resulted in my transfer to the D.C. area. I quit my planning firm and
began consulting work for a firm in New
York City. I was assigned to a project in Baltimore; from this job I found other consulting
assignments in another firm in and around Washington, D.C. At first we rented an apartment in Virginia, then we
purchased one. This was the late sixties and Vietnam. The “Great
Society” programs enabled me to easily land employment as a consultant,
one project led to another.
Reggie and Mother moved to Virginia after he
retired from the NYC Railroad; he thought it would be best, 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 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 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 twenty-eight 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.
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