Mrs. Healy was a
great Mom. She was one of many in our neighborhood when we were growing up. Mrs. Fort, the crossing guard, was another,
and so was Mrs. Dooley, the librarian…Mrs. Lindell, Mrs. Briggs, Mrs. Talbot,
Mrs. Roth, Mrs. Mellander, and so many others. My mom was one too. Every kid knew that if you got hurt or you
got in trouble, and couldn’t get home; these were the people you went to. The
same was true of their families. A lot
of our families had younger kids but the older brothers and sisters were always
there for us.
When we first moved
to our neighborhood, I didn’t have any friends. Most of the kids on our block
were girls. I was a small kid so I frequently was a target for older kids at
school who would push my books out of my hands, or me to the ground. I remember one day I got knocked into a
parkway and started to cry. Mrs. Fort saw it happen and she said to her son, Ed,
who had come by, “Go get him, Ed. Make sure he is alright.” Ed brushed the dirt
off of me and said, “Buddy, you need to learn to travel in numbers. You need to
make some friends.” Ed walked me home, talked to me, and was very nice. I’ll
always be thankful for that. The next
day I went about trying to make friends.
There were three
sisters that lived next door to us. They kept saying to me, “You need to meet
Kevin. He is smart and likes science and stuff.” I didn’t know who Kevin was or
where he lived, so I just ignored them. I went and read encyclopedias under the
willow tree in our backyard. One day when I was walking home with an armful of
books from class and the library some older kids knocked me down again. This
time a kid came running and helped me pick them all up. He was holding my math
book. He said, “I think we are in the same grade. My name is Kevin.” And thus
it began.
Kevin and I became
best friends and stayed that way all through grade school and high school. He taught me how to smoke, drink beer and sing. Kevin was extremely intelligent. He was a fan
of Hemingway and Popular Mechanics. My
mother loved him. We used to have to
walk around on tip-toes because Kevin was asleep on the family room couch. After high school he went to work as a “wrench
monkey” as he called it, and I went to college. He used to come to visit me for
the weekend to see concerts, like Dan Fogelberg, which is the one where he fell
asleep on my shoulder because he worked so hard. During the year I took off, he
was often my traveling companion out on the road. He and I always had a lot of fun together.
After I graduated from
Illinois and was getting ready to be wed I asked him to be my best man. He
said, “No, that has to be your brother. I will stand up though. Fraser will too.” Mike Fraser was my other best friend in high school. On the night
of my wedding, after all of the people had left, it occurred to my new wife and
I we had no transportation to the hotel where we were staying the night before
we left on our honeymoon. Kevin pulled
up in his boat-like Pontiac. His backseat was full of all kinds of electrical
stuff and tools. I put Karen on my lap and we drove the mile down to the
Westin, laughing the whole way.
After we got settled,
starting a family, Kevin and I started drifting almost completely. We stopped
going out for beers together, there were no more Thanksgiving Eves, and our calls
and visits became less frequent as we got more and more absorbed in our own lives.
I don’t remember
exactly when Mrs. Healy died. Because she was a great Mom to a lot of kids, even
beyond her children, there were many people at her visitation. My whole family went. Kevin
came in. It was one of the very few times I ever saw him in a suit and tie, and
a trench coat. Karen said to me, “After this, I am going to go back to your
parents’ house with your sisters. You need to go with Kevin.” I squeezed her hand. I walked up to him. We shook hands and I whispered
in his ear, “After this, the Black Pearl?” He nodded and smiled. “I’ll meet you
there.”
My bedroom at my
parents’ house was on the ground level. It was what we all called the basement,
although it was not one. It had a big window and a door that led out to the
lower patio. My desk sat in front of that window. On certain warm nights Kevin
would come, knock on the glass. We would sneak out to drink coffee at JoJos
and talk entirely too long for high school students. When we got older he would
come to the door and we would go to the Black Pearl to run up a tab for beer.
The Black Pearl was a Chinese restaurant that also had a sort of tacky tiki
bar. We liked it because it had a great jukebox, the beer was cheap, and
Albert, the bartender, would let us run a tab that we could pay off monthly. We had a lot of other good friends that went
there too so it was a great way to run in numbers.
On the night of
Mrs. Healy’s funeral there were not many people in the Pearl. Kevin and I sat
at the bar. We talked a lot, laughed and
shared some good memories. We drank a toast to Mrs. Healy. We loosened our ties
and rolled up our sleeves. At one point in the conversation, Kevin said, “You
know we are drifting apart.” I said, “What do you mean?” He stared into the
mirror behind the bar and said, “We’re in different worlds now. You’re living
in Chicago; you have a house, you have a wife, and a good corporate job. I’m still alone and turning
wrenches and living with my brother.” I said, “I don’t think that
matters.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not done with you yet, T.S. It’s just
going to be different now, but I’ll always be here to pick up your books.”
My wife is
wonderful in many ways. She is a Mom in the style of my mother and all of the
other mothers I grew up with. She is also someone who gets me. She recognizes how
important Kevin was in my life and has always tried to make sure that he stayed
that way. She once called me on the train, it was my birthday, and she said, “I
can’t pick you up tonight, but I have arranged for a ride.” I was upset, but when
I got off the train there was a big Pontiac waiting for me. Nice birthday gift.
When Kevin got
married I was his best man because he didn’t want his two brothers to fight
over the position. The marriage did not work out and Kevin moved to Wisconsin
to be closer to his parents who had retired there. Every month for awhile we talked
on the phone. When we did it was like I just saw him yesterday. We would talk
about family, music, books, and politics, which we never agreed on.
Eventually our
calls became limited to when something bad happened. Some accident, someone was sick, or someone
had died, like my father, and then those drifted off too. He grew increasingly reluctant
to talk about his life and I guess I did too.
Maybe there is something inside us that we wanted to keep; a memory of ourselves
as young men and friends forever.
The drifting has ended
now. Kevin and I haven’t talked in three
years now. Don’t know how that happened.
I think there is
something inside me in which I can’t bear telling him that I have Parkinson’s Disease. Even though he is one of the
people I most want to talk to, I just haven’t been able to. I don’t want to
call him with more bad news. Maybe there
is something inside me that wants to also preserve something special and
good. I don’t know.
On the other hand,
it is a nice day. The sun is shining and I feel well.
Imagination. “Hello,
Tim Dooley. Me. I need to get in touch with your brother, Kevin. Can you give
me his current phone number?”… A pause and then a happy voice…“Yes, T.S., I
can. He’ll be glad to hear from you.”
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