After Visiting Friends (20 page)

I say, “I don’t know.”

“Well, I like the dreams, anyway. I like seeing my little Franta.”

#

The day I leave Chicago I make one more stop, out in the western suburbs—it was there
that some weeks earlier I had tracked down a reverse directory of 1970.

Some people call reverse directories the Gray Pages. It’s a phone book organized by
address first, then name and telephone. So if you want to know the phone number of
a house, but you don’t know the name of the person who lives there, you use the reverse
directory. Reporters rely on them all the time. It allows them to get quotes without
leaving the newsroom. I have this fantasy that the reverse directory holds the way
forward. I’m convinced that if I can get hold of
CHICAGO 1969
and
CHICAGO 1970
, and see the names of the people on the 3900 block of North Pine Grove, I’d recognize
one of the “friends.” So I make the trek to this place that publishes the reverse
directories, because no library goes back that far. I stare at the list of names,
of numbers, all up and down Pine Grove—Barbara Vanicek at 3915; Helen Jahns at 3917;
Frances Flanagan at 3926; Penny Johnson at 3941; Margaret Sturm? Charlotte Klein?
Norma Lauver? Jo Ann Tornai? I recognize no names but wonder if one of them is The
One.

#

I have a fantasy. I play it out over and over: a woman, alone, at home. Margaret Sturm,
let’s say. It’s just after lunch. She’s brushing crumbs down the drain. Wiping away
what’s left of her tuna on white toast. The water warm on her hands.

The phone rings.

“Is this Mrs. Sturm?”

“Yes.”

“Did you live on North Pine Grove?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know a man named Bob Hainey?”

Silence.

#

I have a fantasy. A rental car. Something anonymous in that GM way. There’s me. In
the car. Morning, nine thirty. I want to be here before the day gets going. Before
she leaves.

I’m around the corner. Mouth dry. Anticipate the moment. Foresee the worst case. Prepare
for it. From a boy, it’s what I’ve done.

Turn the corner. Keep walking. Address in my head. Reciting it over and over. Up the
walkway, up the stairs.

Now, ringing the bell. Peering into the window set into the door. Sheer curtains.
It’s a hallway, dim.

A shadow approaches. The door opens.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

#

I spend a week cross-referencing the names in my reverse with names of friends in
his college yearbooks. Names of friends from the
Tribune
and
Sun-Times
. Names of family friends. Nothing. I ask my cousin Mark if he knew of any other women
working at the papers back then.

“Only two,” he says. “Lois Wille and Sheila Wolfe.”

They’re not in the reverse, either.

#  #  #

Christmas Eve, my mother’s house. When I take my bags upstairs, there’s a manila envelope
on the bed. Inside are my father’s obituaries from all the Chicago papers—yellowed,
pressed, neatly clipped.

I go downstairs. My mother’s in the kitchen, staring at a recipe.

“You said you never read Dad’s obits.”

“I found those. I’ve been meaning to give them to you.”

And she walks past me. From the other room I hear her say, “I need you to go into
the basement and bring up two chairs for the dining room.”

I stand in the kitchen, holding the envelope, and I know the conversation is finished.
And I know, too, that she’s more of a mystery than ever. Still, I think, I have to
change this. When she returns, I say, “Where’d you find these? Did you clip them that
day?”

“You have to pick up Gramma. She’s waiting.”

I put on my coat.

#  #  #

A new year. The midwinter grind. Another year, and I’m still stumbling after my father,
like a young boy who tries to match his father’s boot prints in the crusted snow—the
father’s stride too large, his impressions too deep.

I can’t stop thinking about those women that Mark and I had discussed—Sheila and Lois.
I call Sheila. She says that she didn’t know my father, as she worked at the
Tribune
. “I knew your uncle well,” she said. “But not your father. How did he die?”

I leave messages for Lois, but she never returns them. I sit at work, wondering why
she is not calling. I convince myself she knows something. I Google Earth her building,
looking for clues. I Street View. Zoom in. Nothing. I decide I will go to see her.

#

That morning. Still dark. A yellow cab to La Guardia. The Williamsburg Bridge to the
BQE. From the back of the cab, I scan the dark cityscape of Queens. My eyes looking
for the small square of light here, or there, in the darkness. Something electric.
Tiny holes in the larger darkness. Sisters and brothers, I think. I know them. How
we awaken in darkness each day. The shuffle to the bathroom, the feel for the switch.
The water, on. A hand, testing it for the warm. The gaze into the mirror. And the
scan of the face. Searching for our familiar flaws, the landmarks that confirm each
day we are who we are. And inside always the thought, How many more mornings will
be given to me? I see their light and I wonder, What is their mission today? I see
their light and I say my prayer. May your day be strong, my brothers and sisters.

#

I slip into Chicago, take the El from O’Hare. When it stops at Cumberland Avenue,
a chill wind swirls in. Past the Kennedy Expressway, across the parking lot of the
grocery store where once I rode in circles, I see my old home. Through the light rain,
I see the window of my childhood bedroom. The window of that morning. I tuck my head
into my chest. People are boarding. What if my mother gets on? I have not told her
I am slipping in.

#

Lois lives south of the Loop. Some sort of conversion. There’s a doorman. I slink
around the corner, huddle against the rain in the doorway of a restaurant. I call
her number, get her machine. I hang up.

Nerves. If I gave in to them, I’d still be standing in the doorway. But I do what
I do when I’m reporting: I get into character. Like that scene at the opening of
Pulp Fiction
when Jackson and Travolta are talking about Quarter Pounders, and they walk to the
apartment and they’re still talking B.S., and then, just before they shoot up the
apartment, Jackson says, “Let’s get into character”—that’s what I have to do. If I
don’t step out of myself, I don’t step out of that doorway. I tell myself, This is
not a story that involves me, this is me reporting a story about some other guy. I
have to depersonalize it.

I tell the doorman I’m here to see Lois Wille. He picks up a phone, says, “There’s
a Michael Hainey here to see you. . . . Okay.” He hangs up and says, “They are on
their way out and cannot see you.”

I look past the doorman. Behind him is the door and the elevator. A man is coming
out. I calculate in that moment whether I can run to the door before he can catch
me. Instead, I go quietly and retreat to the doorway of the restaurant. I stare at
the drizzle on my shoes, count the wages of a failed day. I wish I had had a few drinks
before all this.

Screw it. I call Lois. Again, the machine. This time I leave my name and number. A
minute later, she calls. “What do you want?”

“I think you knew my father.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You weren’t with him the night he died?”

“If you want to find people who knew him, I’d suggest you go to the public library
and find some old
Sun-Times
and get names of people from back then. Don’t call me again.”

I stand in the doorway, convinced she knows.

#  #  #

I Google:
CRAIG KLUGMAN SUN-TIMES
. He’s now the editor of
The Journal Gazette
in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I cold-call him. He says, “Of course I remember you. How’s
your brother, Chris?” I tell him fine. And then he asks me about my mother. I say
I’m writing a book about my father and can he help me. He tells me he’s on deadline,
but to e-mail him and we’ll make a date. He writes back and tells me to call him Thursday
at lunch, next week. Then he adds a P.S.:

Beware of romanticization of older men (and some women) who look at their youth and
see nothing but good times. The colorful characters they often recall were, often
or not, drunks.

I’m still looking forward to talking to you. I just hope you’re not disappointed with
my remembrances.

—ck

I decide to talk to Klugman in person. But I don’t tell him I’m coming.

At dawn, the Chicago Skyway, east, into Indiana. A rising sun, hard in my eyes. I
make the two-hour drive and find the
Journal Gazette
building in the center of town. As I pull up, the Gary Wright song “Dream Weaver”
comes on the radio. That song always calms me down. Takes me back to 1976 and how
I thought that whirlydoodoo sound was the trippiest thing ever.

Klugman’s not surprised to see me. Or at least it doesn’t show. He is compact. A kind-faced
man. He wears a red-and-white-striped shirt; rep tie; gray herringbone jacket. He
shakes my hand
and smiles. I tell him that I “just happened” to be in Chicago and figured I’d drive
down and maybe we could have lunch. He suggests a place near his office.

As we walk out, he asks once again, “How’s your mother?”

I offer generalities, and then I ask, “How would you describe her? I mean, back when
my father was alive?”

“That’s easy: worldly, cynical, and quite beautiful.” He pauses. “I always thought
she was dealt a bad hand.”

He goes quiet and quickly brings his fist to his mouth and takes a blast from an inhaler.

“Did she ever remarry?”

“Yes.”

He spits out a small breath.

When we get to the table, he hangs his coat on the chairback. The waiter asks about
drinks. Klugman orders a martini in a rocks glass. I order a glass of red.

He gives me a look.

“Do you know what your father drank?”

“No,” I say.

“Boilermakers. He was a shot-and-a-beer man. The first time I saw him drink it, I
asked where he learned to drink that, and he said, ‘From my Polish father-in-law.’
We always loved that night in October when they turned the clocks back, because it
gave us an extra hour to drink. The bars didn’t close until four but we’d keep going
until five or six in the morning.”

“Where did you drink?”

“Usually it was Andy’s. Your dad liked it because it wasn’t filled with newspaper
people, so he could forget about the business when he was there. As the assistant
copy chief, your father’s job was, in short, to make sure no one was embarrassed.
He had to protect the editors, the writers, the paper. Your father was my first boss
and my best friend on the paper. He gave me advice. He protected me from the bosses.
Ralph Ulrich was the kind of guy who’d walk past your desk, and if I might be talking
to someone, he’d drop a
note scribbled on newsroom paper in your in-basket: ‘No chitchat on deadline.’ ”

He takes a drink of his martini.

“It was rare for guys as young as Bob to run the desk. You know your dad was the night
slot man, right? So, picture a big horseshoe-shaped desk, and around it sit six or
eight guys. These are the copy editors; we’re the guys who read the stories before
they get sent to the composing room.

“Your dad sat inside the horseshoe. That’s why your dad is called the slot. Every
story goes to him. He reads it, then passes it off to one of the guys around the desk—what
we call ‘the rim’—who correct it for grammar and other errors. The night slot man
makes sure the story is solid. Then he signs off and sends it to the composing room,
on this rickety conveyor belt that carried the story to the third floor, where it
was turned into metal copy. Slot Man was like doing air-traffic control.”

“And you guys worked together how long?”

“Four years. I started there in ’67, out of college. I was happy to not have to go
home to Fargo.”

“So what was the night shift like?”

“Incredible. Think about it. We worked into the night, and by seven the editor in
chief, the managing editor, the city editor—everyone has gone home. And you’re on
your own with no boss. We had a few editions to get out: like the three-star, which
was the home-delivery edition, closed at ten. Then the four-star, which was the street
edition, at 1:30 a.m.” He pauses. “It was wild. But I was young. If my head wasn’t
up my ass half the time, then my thumb was.”

He laughs.

“Your dad was probably the best headline writer of the time. He taught me everything
I know about writing heads. How to make them grab you. I still remember one he wrote,
for a young mother who OD’d in her apartment: Hippie Mom Found Dead In Pad. Your dad
loved anything done in a new way. I remember a talk in
Andy’s about radical ideas, and he said, ‘If you got ’em, keep ’em.’ I said, ‘What
do you mean?’ He says, ‘Don’t be tied to the past and how things are supposed to be.’ ”

“What was the newsroom like back then?” I say.

“You have to understand. Until 1968, newspapers rarely questioned politicians or cops.
But by then you had Martin Luther King marching in Chicago. You have the ’68 convention.
And we’re covering this stuff, and all of a sudden the ‘official version’ of City
Hall isn’t jibing with our reporting. In the past, we’d look the other way. But then
it became harder and harder to. The thing that blew wide open was the Fred Hampton
killing in ’69. That’s when we had to decide: Do we go with the ‘official version’
from the police—of which we had for so long been partners and trusted their word—or
with what the facts were telling us? That changed it all in Chicago. I mean, Bob dies
in ’70 and a couple of years later, there’s Watergate. Burglars. Co-conspirators.
In the span of two, three years, the old order dies. Completely.”

“Did you go to my father’s funeral?”

“I was a pallbearer, but I don’t remember who else was. I had to buy a suit. I drove
with Mark. Your cousin. He had this beautiful blue Benz and he had the radio on, playing
rock music. I remember thinking that was not right.”