In Pieces(9)

It was two weeks after my thirty-eighth birthday in November of 1984. I had long since quit trying to please my father—mostly because I avoided him—and had successfully tucked the thought of him into an unused corner of my brain. Occasionally he’d call to ask how I was doing and whenever I heard his voice on the other end of the phone, I’d grit my teeth, bracing myself as if preparing to give blood. He’d immediately segue into asking who I was dating and did we want to meet at his club for a round of golf, finally offering to teach me to play. The only time I’d try to conjure up his image was when a writer from Ladies’ Home Journal or some such magazine would ask about my parents in an attempt to create a profile on me. Most of their inquiries about my childhood I’d dance around, telling only an edge of the truth, but when they asked about Dick, my answer was always the same: I didn’t really know my father. On that November day, now with two children of my own and about to enter into my second marriage, I received a manila envelope addressed to me in my father’s instantly recognizable handwriting. I didn’t read what it contained. I couldn’t face it. I put it away, but I didn’t throw it away.

The thought of that small manila envelope, stacked in a plastic shoe box with notes and letters I’ve kept over the years, has floated to the top of my memory—belly up—many times. But only now, as I dig to uncover all the pieces of some lifelong puzzle, do I feel brave enough to read his words.

Inside the envelope are two folded documents and a note from my father, written on two small sheets of lined notebook paper dated November 12, 1984. I read that first. It’s curt and angry.


Unfortunately I picked up this month’s McCall’s Magazine and read about your happy life and successful career. As usual I was depicted as the man who divorced your mother when you were three years old. This time, however, I was categorized along with some of your past boyfriends as missing something you desired in a man. For your reference, I am sending copies of a letter to you and Rick written in 1951 after your mother had left.



Even now I feel a stab of—what? Guilt? Sadness? Fear? I can feel my father’s anger, the jolt that I’ve disappointed him. I set the small note aside without finishing it and pick up another of the envelope’s contents. It’s a copy of the legal document stating that on January 23, 1953, the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles, after the required one-year waiting period had elapsed, decreed that the divorce was finalized. Margaret Field and Richard Field were no longer married.

Then I look at the last of the documents: a mimeographed copy of a letter my father wrote to Ricky and me on October 23, 1951, a month before the divorce papers were originally filed. It’s a three-and-a-half-page handwritten letter on the National Drug Co. stationery, never finished and never mailed, but clearly never thrown away either. This letter has had a long history: First it was never sent; then it was sent, but never seen. Now, sixty-six years later, I hold that letter, or rather its mimeographed copy.

They are the words of a man who feels wronged, who wants his children to know why they are not going to be with their father, who thinks his children are entitled to know him. If he had been forced to live separately from his dad, he writes, he would have wanted to know why, so that his “judgment of him could have been fairly appraised.” He in turn wants us, his children, to consider him fairly and for us to know he “craves” the love and respect of his little boy and his little girl too, and that on this day, he has signed the divorce papers, to give our mother her freedom. “Without going into it,” he writes, “the divorce is being settled out of court because of what any published proceedings may someday be to you” (meaning if the press got hold of the story). He goes on to say that in no way would such proceedings reflect on his character, adding that he’d been told that, had he chosen to contest the divorce, he would’ve had a good chance of keeping his children (meaning sole custody). Instead, he will lose his two children, whom he wants—giving us up, without a fight, to protect us from gossip. He tells us that he has loved our mother, perhaps too much, “for if I hadn’t, I might have been able to keep her from wading in until she got over her head.” He writes that there has never been anyone else but her and there isn’t now. The letter stops, almost midsentence.

With reluctance, I pick up the smaller letter and continue reading.


I’ve included the final divorce papers of your parents. As you might notice, it doesn’t take a mathematician to see why it was necessary for your mother to divorce me. For twenty years, I have been hurt and belittled by the media concerning you and now with the days dwindling down to probably a precious few, I had to speak my piece and remind you a little of the past… Happy Birthday. Your Dad.



From wading in until she got over her head.





3


Jocko


BAA NEVER IGNORED us, not like Dick. But during all the many months we were living at Joy’s house, my mother was moving from one job to the next, so even when she was with my brother and me, I’m sure that part of her was somewhere else, thinking about other things. She wasn’t being cast in leading roles, and many times she’s listed as “uncredited”—meaning she had no lines at all. But she was working steadily and gaining ground, appearing in a few major films as a minor character, co-starring in a couple of B movies and beginning to work in the expanding world of television, even starring in the science fiction classic The Man from Planet X. But whether she was preoccupied or not, I always felt thrilled to be in the same room with her, intoxicated by her childlike glee, which was just the same as mine. She was my mother and I know that in a lot of ways the connection between us was hardwired, but that doesn’t completely explain how I felt. I was enchanted by her.