Friday the Thirteenth September 13, 1985

 

Friday the thirteenth. Not good; not bad, but a mixture of both. I guess it’s all in the way you survive it.

Safire has her husband to look forward to, a man possessed by the fact that she must leave.

She’ll be here later to talk and to hide, her world tumbling down around her as the man she married slowly deteriorates. He told her last night that it’s all Bob’s (the Fotomat manager) fault that she isn’t going to Baltimore with him – and set out to find Bob and kill him.

It’s madness and an immature mind. But we all go through it one time or another. With Louise, I once ran out of the house with our baby to keep her from leaving me, then hid outside the door until she and her lover ran out in search of me, then stepped back into the warm house with the baby.

I got this cockeyed idea from Hank, who had sone something similar nine months earlier when he swiped his girlfriend’s son to keep her from leaving him, managing to get all the way to Ohio before Pauly frantically talked him out of it over the telephone, telling him the FBI would catch up with him.

These acts of desperation always backfire. Our loved ones do not see them at attention getters so much as something nuts.

Safire doesn’t understand her husband’s rhetoric. He won’t actually kill anyone, least of all himself. He’s simply looking to keep Safire unstable, off balance and in doubt. Sooner or later, she’ll stop believing him after he’s cried wolf too many times.

Maybe someday, he’ll become so miserable he might actually commit some outrageous act. But not now. Now, he will simply slink away, mumbling his threats, meaning none of them.

My uncle Ritchie is different. He inches closer and closer to killing himself, maybe looking for attention, I don’t know, but always coming close to the point where it might actually happen.

Men like Safire’s husband always leave a little wiggle room between themselves and that final act. They are always feeling ahead with their foot for where the cliff starts before they are in danger of tumbling over.

My uncle moves towards it recklessly in no way knowing how close he’s getting, gambling that someone like me will snatch him back before he falls off.

Perhaps he even means it.

Back in 78, he drove his truck into the river behind Service Diner, then fought with the police who tried to rescue him.

When I got care of him, I couldn’t trust to leave him alone. Whenever I blinked, I found him headed towards the river.

This made me force him to come with me to Toms River for Thanksgiving, because I was scared, I’d find his body floating in the Passaic River when I got back. Even then, we had to lock him in a room down there, only to find that he had climbed out the window. The police found him walking the highway with no winter coat and worse, no shoes.

A week later, while I was at work, the police caught him waste deep in the river again, but almost like a baptism, not quite committing himself, waiting for someone to notice. Fortunately, someone did.

I guess this was a cry for help. Just as what Safire’s husband is doing it.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how he can continue without her, even though they both love and hate each other. He needs her to have someone he can blame all his troubles on.

If he does anything today, he might someday look back on it with regret, or blame the day for his actions, for the pain he feels.

That’s the problem. It is always somebody else’s fault, never his.

 

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