The Other (37 page)

He gave up. He decided to live with it, hoping she might be chastised by this episode, hoping that its aftermath might be penitential, and for many years it was, or seemed to be, because there was nothing like it again, nothing quite so disconcerting. But then, one night in 1968—in between Ginnie’s mental-ward incarcerations—he stood in the doorway of John William’s bedroom feeling helpless while Ginnie said, with her hands on her hips, “Look at me, John William. I want you to look at me while I speak to you, John William.” She was holding a sheet up, carefully, by a corner, as if it was poisonous or radioactive. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she sneered. “Well, I notice
everything
! I notice every one of your sickening semen stains.” Her expression deepened, and the nascent crow’s feet by her eyes became fissures. “I can’t tell if you’re listening to what I’m saying,” she said. “Please acknowledge me when I speak to you, John William!” And then she took him by the chin. “Now, listen,” she said. “I’m the one who has to clean up this semen. I’m the maid”—But she
has
a maid, thought Rand—“I’m the one doing the disgusting work of scrubbing your semen out of this sheet, and I don’t want to do it anymore!” At this, the boy shook his jaw from her clutch. He looked left, toward the floor—it was defensive, Rand saw, the plate of his skull exposed, but also submissive, demonstrative cowering, if spiced by anger. “Okay,” said Ginnie. “That’s terribly disrespectful.” And she dropped the sheet over his head, under which he struggled like a netted animal. “You sit like that. With your sheet—stop squirming. You sit like that with your sheet on your head until I give you my permission to take it off.” And there he sat like a Halloween ghost for the next forty-five minutes. Was any of this normal? Rand didn’t think so. The boy was just the victim—the chief victim—of his mother’s mental problems. Rand was angry but didn’t say a word—everything about his family life was so ambiguous and twisted, so contorted and convoluted, that he finally felt speechless. A lot of nights, he came home from work to strained silences and ill tempers, but he didn’t say anything, because he felt intimidated. In the secretarial pool he passed through at Boeing each day (trying to look chipper for the duration of each journey, top-of-the-morning and entirely squared away) there was a freshwater aquarium, and Rand had noted a number of times how the fins and tails of certain fish were gouged, torn, chewed, tattered, and otherwise severely abused. He felt like these fish looked—a secretary would find him one morning belly-up and bloated, white around his edges, and have to fetch the little net and flush him down the drain. What should he do? Kowtow or rebel? Slap Ginnie across the face or fix a Dewar’s and water? He did nothing, as usual. He feebly registered discomfort on occasion; he sometimes railed but consistently to no avail. Either way, he was pathetic in the mirror he was always holding up to himself; the reflection he saw, of a limp noodle, of Walter Mitty without the dreams, was both depressing and reinforcing. “I tell you that I wholeheartedly disapproved and did not participate,” Rand Barry told me in our lair at the Rainier Club, “but I won’t deny my culpability, in that I was listless and did not stand up to her as I should have. I confess to this shortcoming—I ought to have been different. There should have been more strength in me. That’s easy to say in retrospect, but at the time? It was a different…era. A different time in my life. I let it happen. That’s wrong in itself. It’s the old cliché about the German population. At the very least, they acquiesced. They stood by. They didn’t object. I mean, regarding Hitler. That was me in my own home, that’s an accurate comparison. I deferred. I turned a blind eye. I stood aside, I bit my lip. I let these things happen—these things that couldn’t have been good for John William. That makes me guilty, to some extent—I don’t know exactly how much, but to some extent. I fully accept that. My wife was mentally ill, and I didn’t do enough to protect my son from it.”

Rand rapped the side table a few times with his Sprite glass, but carefully—he didn’t want to break it. Was this the rap of regret? Of anger? Of self-loathing? Of blame? Or was he merely settling his ice, the better to drink without spilling?

“I’m not your judge,” I said. “I’ve got my own guilt.”

“B
UT
I
WOULD ALSO
like to accentuate the positive,” Rand told me that afternoon. “Here I’ve been emphasizing certain factors which I feel contributed to my son’s…unhappiness. But, on the other hand, there were many happy times. There were sunny days. We were an ordinary family. You couldn’t pick us out from other Laurelhurst households. I could tell you about excellent summer-vacation journeys—our trip by car to Edmonton and Calgary in the summer of 1966 was a highlight; now, that was a wonderful time together. In ’65, we drove to Yellowstone. In ’64, we sailed as far as the Queen Charlottes. We had a nice group of friends, some of them with children who were John William’s age, boys and girls both, fine boys and girls, and we were very active socially speaking, at the Seattle Yacht Club. This was a lot of fun for us—I’ll emphasize that. I mean that you had the Valentine Costume Party, and dances for the teen-agers, and every Christmas a Poinsettia Ball—and Laurelhurst. Laurelhurst was a wonderful place to come of age. There was a well-organized football program, on top of very good Little League baseball, and our park was well kept. You could go there on a Saturday morning to play tennis and all of the leaves would have been swept from the courts. I also remember that the gym at the grade school was kept open on Friday evenings so that the neighborhood boys could play basketball there together. Wasn’t that nice! And I felt good about the fact that things were well supervised. There were a lot of responsible adults who took an interest in children, and who took the lead in organizing and monitoring activities. Our kids were not made to fend for themselves, and if they said they were bored, as kids often do, an adult could point to any number of opportunities to get involved in good things that would fill their hours. It’s amazing to me, when I think about it now, that people had the time and the commitment and enthusiasm for so much activity outside their employment. Is it like that now? Of course, this was before so many of our women entered the workforce, so things were different. But what’s my point? To accentuate the positive. To say that John William grew up in a wonderful neighborhood, in a wonderful era, with all the advantages you would expect were entailed. You can paint a picture any way you want, and I see now that the picture I’ve been painting up to this point, which is mostly about how troubling my wife was—I see now that this isn’t one hundred percent fair. Yes, I’d better back up and do justice here, and tell you that, on the bright side, Virginia chaired, for about three years, the Laurelhurst Neighborhood Gourmet Society. This was a monthly theme dinner in somebody’s home, with wine and friends and interesting recipes. And some of these people were also part of a once-a-month bridge club, which eventually became a Saturday-night bridge group we were regularly involved with in the early sixties. She could actually be a very charming woman, Virginia. She was more sophisticated than other women, often admirably so. For example, she invited a Jewish family, the Mayers, who had just moved in on Laurelcrest Drive, to join the gourmet circle. Others hesitated, and we could see they were uncomfortable, but Virginia, she liked the Jews and the Greeks and the Italians, the warm Mediterranean peoples, not just their cuisine but their style, their ways, and in this she was ahead of her time.

“Myself, I was active as a Scout leader. I was not able to make the time commitment required to be a Scoutmaster, but nevertheless I attended Monday-night meetings and, I would say, about every other month was able to go along on troop hikes. I attended the Jamborees. Due to my nautical background and my stint with the Seabees, I had some facility with knots, and so one of my responsibilities was to help the new boys feel at ease and learn the small tricks associated with knot-tying. So this was my way of giving something back to the community. The hiking—I’ve sometimes wondered just how much influence the Scouting experience had on John William, and if it was formative in some way, because, as you know, he became so interested in wilderness. All those hikes we did, you see. Did you know that John William was an Eagle Scout? That he was Senior Patrol Leader, which is the highest rank a Scout can aspire to? He was. He was serious about it, too, the Scouting. I want you to understand what a highly ethical young man he was—again, looking on the bright side. ‘To help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight’—that’s from the Scout Oath, which the boys said at the beginning of each meeting. Some of the boys, you could see, were facetious. They were smart boys and had a tendency to be sarcastic at their age. But John William wasn’t like that. I think he was glad to have this serious ritual. We didn’t go to church, because I am a lapsed Catholic and Virginia is an atheist, so for our son this was the only real ritual in his life, this reciting of the Scout Oath and the other rituals of Scouting. Do you know very much about Scouting? There is a lot of ceremony. It is a little bit too solemn for my taste, but I was happy for my son to be involved in this activity. I remember when he made the Order of the Arrow, which is reserved for boys who are the cream of the crop, who rise to the top by virtue of their achievements. This was a ceremony in the basement of a church with the lights dimmed and a color guard on hand, and a father dressed up as the Indian sage Akila, and the point of all of this was the presentation of a badge in the shape of a primitive arrowhead. Well, I’m not much like this, but even me, if you didn’t look out, you could break into a grin during something of this nature. Not John William. He was nearly in tears. In retrospect, putting two and two together, that makes me a little uncomfortable. He seemed so admirable at the time, such a high achiever as a Scout and elsewhere in his life, but in retrospect it’s clear that my son was, the term might be,
over the top.
Such intensity! I liked it a lot, and so did other adults, but you would have to say now, looking back and seeing what’s happened, it was a sign I missed, this intensity. No, I was just grateful that he did so well at everything, and so this
force,
which I felt was largely responsible for his achievements, was something I celebrated. And how was I to know differently? Really, you should have seen John William on these Scouting trips, showing the younger boys how to build a crisscross fire or lash together sticks. They respected him, and, frankly, so did the men, and so did I, because he was so responsible about these things, such an exemplar of Scouting at its finest. I remember seeing him make a sundial once and thinking, Where did he learn that? Because certainly he hadn’t learned it from me. I was not very particularly an outdoorsman when it came to the hills and mountains, you see—I was a man of the sea, I guess; I liked to be under sail. Now, John William, he liked the mountains, but he also liked to go canoeing in the Union Bay Marsh, which we did when I had the time. Do you know this area of the city? Do you know where the large parking lot is behind Husky Stadium? There was a canoe house down there, with nice rentals available. For fifty cents an hour you got a handsome canoe and a pair of very nice paddles made of ash, and off we went together, exploring in the channels. What a lot of fun that was! We had a bird book and two pairs of binoculars, and I would bring along a big bag of peanuts or potato chips. And—we identified plants. Out there in the tulies. You have your cattails and your lily pads, of course, which most people know, but after that there is quite a variety of vegetation, and this struck John William’s fancy. In fact, he made a marsh-plant identification poster for his Nature Merit Badge, and, later, a marsh-plant identification scrapbook with notes, et cetera, for his eighth-grade science class. We used to paddle to a place called Gadwall Cove where, it goes without saying, there were gadwalls and the like, but of course our big hope was to see an otter or a beaver or a muskrat or a mink. So that was one of our hobbies—something we did together. I like to think back on it, because I’m a birder, and it was uncanny to see such avian life in such an urban setting—for example, we saw a few Virginia rails, and—do you know this bird?—the northern phalarope.”

“I don’t.”

Mr. Barry clutched at his tie’s knot. He had fixed on the idea again of starting at the top and smoothing his tie downward. “This is a bird a bit like a tern but, oh, smaller than a killdeer,” he said.
“Too Late the Phalarope,”
he added. “Alan Paton. I mention that title because you’re an English teacher. Not many people read
Too Late the Phalarope,
but I have, because its title attracted me, and I can tell you, it isn’t about the phalarope at all, which doesn’t mean this novel doesn’t have its merits. But the phalarope makes a small appearance only. It isn’t about the phalarope.”

We had that settled.

“John William liked the soft drink called Dr Pepper,” Mr. Barry said, “so I always brought bottles of Dr Pepper for us to drink in the canoe. He also liked to go to the Burgermaster, which I point out to establish that fast-food items were part of our cuisine. We ate hamburgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Swanson’s TV dinners, fish and chips from Spud on Green Lake—all of that. Because, number one, Ginnie did not like to cook, and, number two, she was hospitalized on three occasions for extended periods, during which John William and I fended for ourselves by eating what I would term ‘convenience’ foods.

“By the way, I have to say that there was this matter of the ongoing dissension between Virginia and myself in John William’s life. He was certainly aware of the carping and nastiness. Let me tell you something. On more than one occasion, I moved out altogether. Did John William share that? In fact, on three occasions I packed a suitcase and left the house for periods of varying duration.” Mr. Barry gouged his forehead with a knotty forefinger. “I still have a fairly good memory,” he said. “The first time was in August of 1962. On that occasion, I stayed temporarily with my brother Walter before reconciling and returning. Then, on the Tuesday before Christmas in 1968, I left again, and again I stayed with Walter for three and a half days. On the final occasion, which was in June of 1970, I checked myself in at the University Tower Hotel on 45th and Brooklyn, in the University District. That hotel has since been remodeled, and you wouldn’t recognize it, but in 1970 it was very traditional, close to the freeway and not far from the Seattle Yacht Club, where I had a slip leased for my boat. As I recall, I spent most of the month of June living there, and, frankly, in many ways, I enjoyed that. I could read the newspapers and go to ball games and drive out to the horse races at Longacres after work if I so pleased. This was a very nice life, free but, quite frankly, lonely. I wasn’t prepared to abandon a wife who was ill after I’d made the vow ‘in sickness and in health,’ and I absolutely couldn’t abandon my son and therefore leave him bereft of a male role model in the home on a daily basis. A lot of men I know who have been divorced, as I have been divorced, have made a much easier transition. Not me. I have felt considerable guilt, and, to get back to what I set out to say, I just couldn’t leave John William in the lurch while I was living the carefree bachelor’s life at the University Tower Hotel in June of 1970. And so I called home often. I spoke with him daily. And do you know what? He was very mature about it. In 1970, John William had just turned fourteen years old but he comported himself like a young adult in the course of those conversations. I was embarrassed to have to acknowledge to my own son the wreck of my marriage and my domestic failure. I gave him to understand that I was at a loss and uncertain about my future. You should have heard him in response to his father. ‘Don’t think of me,’ he said. He said, ‘I know that when adults get divorced they worry about how it will affect the children, but don’t worry about me.’ Does that characterize it for you? Again, in retrospect, it was over the top, but at the time, I just felt fortunate that my son was so mature about this and everything else.” Mr. Barry gouged again at his forehead. “Years ago,” he said, “I had season tickets to the Seattle Repertory Theatre, and so I was fortunate to see the marvelous play by Paul Zindel called
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,
which was eventually made into a movie starring the actress Joanne Woodward. Do you know this play? The family in this play is a mess in every way, the whole thing is a lot of testimony to what a mess they are, but somehow the child, or one of the children, a girl, turns out to be wonderful despite that. And it goes to show, you can’t predict. Environment isn’t everything, genes play a bigger role—in my mind, the major role. A child can turn out perfect despite a lot of bad experiences. I used to think John William was that way. The saving grace of my life was that, no matter how awful my marriage seemed to be, and other things, my son was absolutely golden, just perfect. Smart, athletic, mature, gifted, polite, sincere, hardworking, golden. That’s how I thought of him.