THERE I WAS, THIRTEEN YEARS AND THIRTEEN ADDRESSES LATER, BACK IN PEACEDALE … this time on the first floor of the Sweet Fern Lane house (ADDRESS #22). The timing was good. By then my father was seventy, and I was the only one he had. It made sense to be closer; Jerusalem was only seven miles away. First, of course, I refurbished the apartment, which was smaller than the second floor. After painting, adding doors to the kitchen cupboards, and doing a great thing with a wallpaper that came in reverse colours, I enclosed the back end of the “L” shaped front porch, creating a big walk in closet, accessible by a bedroom window that I converted to a door.
The small bedroom was made tiny with the addition of my king size bed, but I was able to squeeze my little typing desk and chair into one corner, and it was there that I became an entrepreneur. Second, to generate quick income I solicited local home furnishing retailers, offering a drapery and window coverings installation service, and soon landed a few clients. Next I designed a flyer for “Window Dynamics” … my retail enterprise … and called Robert at Puritan Life to recommend a printer. He was the manager that I had hired, who ended up stepping into my shoes when I left, and perhaps he felt that he owed me … my first 1000 flyers were a “gift” from Puritan.
Third, I put an ad in the Narragansett Times offering handyman services, light carpentry, etc. That took off like a rocket. Some of my earlier projects included remodelling the first and second floor flats of a two storey rental house at Narragansett Pier, refurbishing living and dining rooms for a bitch in Peacedale, and rebuilding a deck at a house in Point Judith. Later I saw an ad looking for an installer of interior storm windows, and met with this unlikely young French woman at her space in an old factory building in Pawtucket. I started doing the fabrication and installation of the windows on a contract basis for her, and selling my own storm window jobs as well.
WHILE LIVING ON RUXTON STREET IN CRANSTON, I met a fellow one night at the Club Providence (Club Baths chain) named James Tucker, and we had started dating. He was a drip of the first order, such a dub that he made nothing Bob of the “KOOL” sailboat seem exciting and vivacious. Jim was more like a blob in human form, but at the time I was transitioning from Billy, and even a blob filled the empty space. Not long into our association Jim said, “I love you.” That was a bit of a shock as I was always the one to do the falling in love, the courting, and all that.
Nonetheless, it seemed as though I was obligated to say something, so I parroted back those words even though I regretted them as they came out of my mouth. Never before had I ever said the “L” word without meaning it, at least at the moment. In Jim’s case it is probably fair to say that I didn’t even like him. I didn’t dislike him, there really wasn’t enough of him to dislike … he might have been more interesting if there had been. Sadly, however, I had said the word, and being a man of my word I had to live up to it. Not long after my relocation to Peacedale, Jim moved in. Perhaps squeezed in is more accurate.
Jim was a travel agent and worked at the AAA office in Newport, so Peacedale was a reasonable commute. He was perpetually broke, so I supplemented his income, even though I was on unemployment. In the front hall I installed shelves with grow lights for his African Violets. For the rest of his plants, I built a small greenhouse off of the back of the house using discarded storm windows. (Some time after Jim moved out, the greenhouse looked surreal. He only took a few plants from the greenhouse, so the rest died and turned brown on shelves and hanging from the ceiling where he left them. My father asked, “What happened? As a kid you were crazy for plants.” “Yeah, Dad, but that was before I discovered sex!”)
Jim was divorced and had a precocious daughter, Katie, age eleven, who spent most weekends with us. When she was around at least there was someone interesting with whom I could converse. We were fans of the same late afternoon soap opera, so on Fridays when I picked her up at school, while driving to Peacedale I’d fill her in on the episodes that she had missed. Once I told her it was revealed that so-and-so (a main character) had been a prostitute, Katie didn’t understand what a prostitute was. As I tried to explain delicately … a woman, a man, favours for money … Katie says, “Oh! You mean a HOOKER!“ “Yes, Katie, that would be a hooker.“
Most weekends we would spend one day visiting with Jim’s family in Bristol—across the bay, through Newport, and beyond. I liked his parents very much; his sister and her family, and I adored his feisty nonagenarian grandmother. She was a hoot. She still lived alone, but Jim’s parents were planning to sell their home, and move to the recently vacant half of the grandmother’s duplex. They hired me to get the house ready to sell … new paint, wallpaper, and draperies for the entire house, a large split level … what is called “staging” today.
AS MY FATHER WAS DRIVING TO WAKEFIELD ONE DAY, the rear end of his Buick fell out … parked outside at the beach for a few years, the salt had taken its toll. He replaced it with a second-hand Chevrolet, only the second time in his life that he didn’t buy new and Buick. The first was a used 1960 Caddy, in forest green, a gorgeous car! Next he informed me that “we” were going to build a garage in back of the Brecka Drive house, conveniently the back of the lot bordered a dirt road. I told him that if I was to participate it had to be a two car garage, and I wanted half. The way my business was going, I needed the work and storage space.
He agreed, and once the concrete slab had cured we started construction. He worked diligently, out every day wearing his pith helmet, cutting and marking all of the wood, and I would go down when I had free time during the week and on weekends, and hammer the pieces together. Once the framing was done, Jim helped one day getting the plywood up onto the roof. He was so inept that simply holding the end of a 4‘ by 8‘ sheet was beyond him. My father was always referring to him as, “As useless as tits on a bull!” He got that right.
When the roof was ready for shingling, Dad asked me to measure the length at the peak, then at the overhang. He made me measure it five times, and every time it came up 5/8” different, 5/8“ in 24 feet! “Get the kerosene, burn the Goddamn thing down!” he yelled, a few times. “Um, Dad, I install draperies on sliding glass doors, in brand new homes, and the doors are frequently off 3/4” in six feet. “Well,” he acquiesced, “maybe no one would notice driving buy at fifty miles an hour (not that anyone drove more than ten on that dirt road).” One of the many Dad-the-perfectionist stories … like father like son, I drive myself crazy at times.
THE AAA OFFICE WHERE JIM WORKED WAS AT THE BRICK MARKET PLACE, one of the first elements of Newport’s post-Navy renaissance. The mall was a quadrangle design, with all of the shops opening onto the inner courtyard, and the exterior walls facing the parking lot were mostly all solid brick. AAA’s office, however, was on an outside corner, with a wall of glass facing a passageway from the parking lot to the mall, and another facing the lot. The latter got direct sun most of the afternoon, and I got the job of installing sun-proof shades. These the Mylar rollup type used in showroom windows … like mirrored sunglasses. From inside one could see out, but from outside all one saw was a giant mirror. One day a fellow, who must have been waiting in the car for his wife, needed to take a leak. Rather than picking any spot along the extensive solid brick wall (or finding a men’s room for that matter), he walked up close to the windows, whipped it out, and relieved himself … while twenty-two people in the office looked on in slack-jawed amazement. That’s the funniest window coverings story in my repertoire.
WHEN JIM WAS PICKED AS A TOUR LEADER for a seven day trip to Hawaii, I was looking forward to the break. While there he apparently had quite a fling, and when he came home he couldn’t wait to tell me about it. The fool. The biggest problem with cheaters is their guilt. They feel so badly for what they have done, that they have to spill their guts to their mate, in hopes that he/she says, Oh, that’s okay, Honey, I understand … or words to that effect. Bullshit. You feel guilty, suck it up, live with it, but don’t tell me and expect forgiveness. So one evening on the way home from Bristol we stopped at his office, and he showed me the letter he wrote to his Hawaii trick while he was on the flight home. He showed it to me!!! Just what I wanted to know … that after being gone for a week he wasn’t thinking about how great it would be getting home to me, he was missing the slut he shagged.
In a fit of rage I went storming out the door, on the way throwing my keys at him. One of my stupidest passive aggressive moments, I should have left him stranded, not given him my car … but I think it was more about throwing something at him … ANYTHING! Too bad I didn’t have a brick. To the bridge I stormed, my hitching thumb out, and got a ride just before the bridge. Two guys drunk, or something. The passenger gave me a cigarette, and as I lit it I dropped the match on the rusty, dirty metal floor of this old shit-box of a van. The driver went ballistic, and threw me out. Fortunately we had already crossed into Jamestown. From there I walked across the island, and got another ride just before the Jamestown Bridge. That was a blessing because this was a rickety old cantilever bridge with open grate deck, which I was always nervous enough driving on, I couldn’t imagine walking on it.
Once at Route 1 that ride went north, but before too long a got a ride south from a fellow who didn’t have a specific destination in mind … I knew what that meant. He drove me all the way to Peacedale, but I had him drop me off at the traffic rotary, from whence I walked the half block home. Another time I would have enjoyed the shag. Jim wasn’t there yet, but somehow I got into the house without breaking a window, or maybe I did.
SHORTLY AFTER BILLY LEFT I HAD STOPPED SEEING DR KELLER, but not long after Jim moved in I was back on the couch (figuratively speaking, Tom didn‘t actually have a couch). Also, for three months I attended an “Anxiety Management Workshop” at the Peacedale Guild. I found it quite helpful, and I enthusiastically embraced the program. One technique was to nip anxiety in the bud, by mentally saying “NO!” and changing your thinking. Mentally hell, there was many a time I’d be in the car or walking down the street, chanting loudly, “NO! NO! NO!” At the end of the program, one participant said that he knew there was no class valedictorian or anything like that, but he wanted to say that if there were, he thought it should be me. Everyone agreed. I was touched.
So with Dr Keller’s help, and the workshop, I’d come a long way and had done a lot of healing. No longer was I willing to compromise my happiness for the sake of not being alone. If need be, I‘d stay single. Although when Dr Keller first said that some people choose to be single, I was shocked. I always thought everyone was like me, either coupled or looking. In any event, sometime after the key throwing Jim got home, and for the first time in my life I was able to say, You know, this isn’t working for me, it’s not what I want my life to be, you need to leave.
Single in Peacedale did not necessarily mean lonely. Newport was still only twenty-two miles away, and I’d visit Bob and Deb many a Friday or Saturday night, and stop at “David’s” on the way home. Of the two Newport ’gay’ bars, David’s was as hot as its owner and namesake, especially on weekends. One night I met a sailor (well, over the years I had met plenty of sailors in Newport) who smuggled me into his room in the officers’ quarters on the Navy base, where I had a great night, despite having to keep my voice down, and then I snuck out before dawn.
During my summer of love with Billy Davis, when we weren’t in P-Town we’d go to Moonstone Beach, a beautiful stretch of undeveloped sandy shore, which had the added distinction of being, at one end, a nude beach, and a little farther on a ‘gay’ beach. At the back of the barrier beach was Trustom Pond, framed by the ubiquitous deep stands of tall bulrushes. It was only eight miles from Peacedale, and a perfect place for a lot of hot fun in the summertime, as well as the spring and fall. And occasionally a good place to at least meet likeminded men, while taking an innocent stroll along the shore with my dog on a sunny winter’s afternoon. Innocent. Yes, right.
OF ALL MY COMMERCIAL VENTURES the “handyman” business was keeping me the busiest. One client, Sabra Cicilline, retained me to renovate a bathroom in her lovely Narragansett colonial, not far from Ray and Mal. Sabra had three children, two older girls and a very cute teenage son named David. He was very friendly, and always went out of his way to make sure that I had refreshments. He seemed unquestionably ‘gay’ to me, not that it mattered. He was probably “jailbait” which was deterrent enough, but his father, John, was the lawyer for a lot of Mafia figures, and chief legal counsel for Raymond Petriacca, Sr., Rhode Island’s leading mob boss.
This was not my first brush with the Mafia. There was, of course, my old pal Dinky “Stinky” O’Conner of the Sea Ranch in Jerusalem, whom I harassed as much as possible when I was still a child. And in high school my brother dated Raymond Petriacca’s daughter. He had met Raymond a few times, and some years later, when Jay was running the laundry and drycleaners at Quonset Point Naval Air Station, Petriacca called him to ask a favour. He needed to get his sister a “legitimate” job for a while, and Jay took care of it. Then Petriacca owed Jay a favour, which he would cash in a few years later.
Just about any “legitimate” business named “Consolidated” was a “family” owned business, and when Jay was running a uniform and linen service in Torrington, Connecticut, his biggest competitor was Consolidated. He started undercutting their prices and landing their accounts. On the way to work one morning on his usual route, a winding road along a reservoir, the steering column dropped down.
Jay managed to hold it up with his foot and limp to a station, where it was discovered that the bolts had been sawed part way through. At the office he got a call, Did you have an good trip to work this morning, Mr Edwards? Glad to see that you arrived safely. You have a lovely wife and two beautiful daughters, be careful whose business you cut into. Jay called Petriacca and never had another problem.
OVER THE YEARS I HAD A FEW MOB “CONNECTIONS” OF MY OWN. While working for Bob Frances Decorators, one of the most notable was the infamous Louie-the-Fox. Mrs Louie-the-Fox and I worked together a few times, and I ultimately installed new draperies throughout their entire home. I even installed new Venetian blinds in Louie’s favourite barbershop, where he was gunned down not three weeks later; a little too close for comfort.
One appointment in Johnston found me pulling up in front of an expansive compound, with four large ranch style homes situated around a huge three storey Colonial, all completely surrounded by high chain-link fencing. As I opened the front gate a big black Cadillac containing four ominous looking gentlemen was about to pull out of driveway, but when they saw me they stopped.
At the front door I was greeted cordially by a middle-aged woman who didn’t know what I wanted, and then we heard a call from the back of the house. “Oh,” she said, “the old lady.” She led me through the main building into a single storey apartment that had been added to the back. When I walked in I glanced out the window, and saw the Cadillac with its four occupants stationed outside. The “old lady” yelled out the window, “It’s okay!” and waved them away.
Back at the shop Bob filled me in, and amongst other “activities” this family made most of their money in a business that the “old lady” had started … abortions. One of the curtains that I installed was on the door of a back stairway that led all the way up to the “clinic” on the third floor. Over the years I’d read about one or another of this family being charged with income tax evasion and other assorted crimes.
Next is one for the small world department. One evening I presented myself at the door of a lovely home, and introduced myself to Margaret Skeffington. When I said “Lance Edwards” she did a double take, and asked if I was any relation to Jesse Edwards. Yes, of course, he’s my father. As it happened she had been the switch-board operator at Louttit Laundry, and claimed that my father had taught her how to smoke cigarettes.
Margaret was the matriarch of the funeral home Skeffingtons, chief undertakers for the Mafia, and close friends with the Petriacca family. After the Skeffingtons’ son finished law school he was clerking at the Attorney General’s office. That Christmas, as was customary, the son delivered boxes of gifts and booze to the Petriaccas, and left with boxes as well. The next day his picture was on the front page of the Providence Journal, questioning what a clerk from the AG’s office was doing at the home of Rhode Island’s premier Mafia boss.
The bathroom that I remodelled for the Cicillines was some of my best work, naturally, and the whole time I kept David at arm’s length, even though it seemed that he wanted to get closer. Over a decade later I read an article about David in San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter. He had become the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, and the country’s first openly ‘gay’ mayor of a capital city. He said he never realized that he was ’gay’ until his late twenties. Hell, I knew the first time I laid eyes on him. His resume reads like a who’s-who, including having been a classmate of John Kennedy, Jr., at Brown University. In the 2010 midterm elections, he won the House seat vacated by Patrick Kennedy, Teddy’s son.
LATER ANOTHER WOMAN RESPONDED TO MY “HANDYMAN” AD, and the first thing she asked was what age qualified for my “senior citizen” discount. I assured her that my prices were fair and reasonable, regardless of age, so we made an appointment. She had had a shell built on a lovely site in Green Hill, overlooking Green Hill Pond and the barrier beach beyond. The interior had been sheet rocked, but all the finishing needed to be done, mouldings and trim, etc. A stairway needed to be rebuilt, a deck reconfigured and reinforced, and a few other things including creation of a room divider/shelf unit using an antique fireplace fascia and mantle.
At sixty years of age, Estella Thorpe was a queer bird (I mean that in the most loving and non-homosexual sense), and we hit it off from the get go, primarily because I could visualize what she wanted and turn her ideas into reality. Despite how much I liked her, and the fact that all of my handyman projects thus far had been verbal agreements, for this project I thought a written contract would be a good idea. At the time I was having an affair with a Rhode Island Deputy Attorney General. We would get together when his wife, chief legal counsel for a Fortune 500 company, was out of town … she travelled a lot. He wrote up a blanket agreement, which became the boilerplate for all contracts that I would use for the next twenty-three years.
What a good summer that was. I’d pack up in the morning—my cooler, my tools, my dog—and spend the day at that idyllic location. Sometimes I’d take Daffy for an “innocent” walk on Moonstone Beach after work; it was, conveniently, on the way home. In the process Estella and I became very dear friends, as we continued to be for the remainder of her eighty-seven years.
Estella was an extremely brilliant woman and, at the time was going through her third divorce. She called me one evening completely distraught, and told me that her husband had committed suicide. I arrived a half hour later with a bottle of vodka and a jug of orange juice. As I learned that evening, both of Estella’s previous husbands had committed suicide as well. Quite a history. We got through the night.
SINCE MY MOTHER’S DEATH IN 1965, I always took my father out for dinner on his birthday in December, which never failed to be an embarrassing experience. At one dinner John Harris and Bobby joined us, and we went to the lovely Plainville Inn. This was the night that I first tipped a bartender to water the drinks, but it was too late. For some reason a conversation struck up between Dad and a man at the next table. Dad said that we were all his sons, and the guy said, jokingly, That can’t be true, they all have hair. My father got down on his knees and started kowtowing to the man, saying, “Allah! Allah!” or some such. Mind you, this was about the least embarrassing of all his birthday dinner antics.
His last two birthdays occurred while I was living in Peacedale, the first of which was his 71st, and I took him to Wakefield’s classic and elegant Old Larchwood Inn. The restaurant consisted of about six small dining rooms, and after we arrived they stopped seating people in the room we occupied; subtle, but to the point. At the end of our meal the waitress, a cute young blond, made the mistake of asking my father if he wanted desert. The words still ring in my ears to this day. “Yes, my dear.” he drooled lecherously, “You, spread out on this table wide open.” “DAD!!!” That was it, the last time I‘d take him out in public.
During 1981 Dad’s health started to require more attention, and the wisdom of living close became ever so clear. He had a few hospital stays, got stabilized on meds, and then seemed to improve. By the time his 72nd birthday came around, which would be his last, rather than inflicting him once again on the innocent public, I had a small dinner party at my place, inviting Ray and Mal, my new friend Estella, and a fellow I was dating, Charlie I think, whom I only vaguely remember. Somewhere along the line I had mentioned something to Dad about Estella’s three suicidal husbands, and he was concerned that this was supposed to be a fix up … if so, what were my intentions. Funny.
BY THE BEGINNING OF 1982 he was going downhill, and on one hospital admission a technician was checking his vitals, but there was no reading on the heart machine. The fellow found the problem, and after plugging in the machine, he said, “For a moment there, I didn’t think you had a heart.” “I’ve thought that a few times.” I jested. Up in his room a nurse went through a check list, “Any trouble with his speaking?” “Yes, it never stops.” Another irresistible zinger. As I walked into his room one day, there he was laying on the bed with the covers off, the hospital gown hiked up, and his business hanging out there for everyone to see. “Dad! Cover up!“ “Hey, it’s nothing anyone hasn’t seen before.“ “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean anyone wants to see yours!“
The prognosis came down, my father needed bypass surgery, years of drinking and smoking had caught up with him. One afternoon a young Asian doctor walked in, probably in his mid-thirties, to Dad he probably looked 13. He introduced himself, and said, “I’m going to be your surgeon.” With a look of horror on his face, my father yelped, “OH! NO! No you’re not! You can cook me up some Moo Goo Gai Pan if you want, but you’re not cutting me open!” “DAD!!!” In his defence—not that there was one—those days in Rhode Island one rarely saw an Asian except in a Chinese restaurant. As it turned out, neither that doctor nor any other would be doing his surgery.
Dad’s overall health was so poor he was not even remotely a surgical risk. Second and third opinions, no one would touch him. What is the prognosis? His condition will worsen, his leg will continue to swell, and will ultimately become gangrenous, and then we’ll have to amputate. That’s surgery, and a lot more dangerous. But then it will be an emergency, the only lifesaving option.
Why not just take our chances and do the bypass before it comes to that? Sorry, cannot. It was a pretty dismal situation, I brought Dad home. He needed to be in an extended care facility, aka nursing home, but he would have no part of that, and I was loath to suggest it. All of his good friends (i.e., his drinking buddies) had become scarce once the Brecka Drive “bar” stopped serving. Never saw hide nor hair of them until later … afterwards … when they all had dibs on this and that.
NOT LONG AFTER JAY DIED DAD HAD CHANGED HIS WILL, leaving me 50%, 25% to each granddaughter, and naming me as co-executor with Jay’s ex-wife Nanci. What an insult! No, pick one or the other, your choice. When he insisted on naming both, I told him that was the same as naming Nanci solely, as I’d refuse to serve. Ultimately Nanci was out.
Later he realized that he never saw either of the girls (or Nanci for that matter), and wanted to change the will again in favour of me, what did I think? Give me the house, divide the remainder 50/25/25, and so he did. Of everyone in the family, he was the only one who liked Juli, Jay’s youngest, and couldn’t understand why no one else did. Then Juli stayed with him one summer … his opinion changed rapidly. So much so that he changed his will again, the house and 75% of the remainder to me, 15% to Jayna and 10% to Juli. That said it all.
Once I got Dad home a social worker came to the house to help set up home care. First, Meals-on-Wheels. Oh, no, Dad didn’t want that, “My son will take care of my meals.” A home healthcare aid, “No, my son …” and so forth. With the help of the social worker I was able to get some help during the day, but at night I was on my own. It was winter and no one wanted to drive down to the virtually deserted beach community at night. This was not going well. In the end I got things set up and only had enough of my own money to keep the program going for ten days. Estella, my rock during this time, said, “Well, you have ten days. One day at a time.”
No matter what, I never would have put my father in a home, I respected his wishes—but he had plenty of money to pay for his care, and I had to find a way for me access to the money, while guaranteeing him that I couldn’t and wouldn’t put him in a home. So I contacted his lawyer, Earl Shaw, who was gracious enough to come down to Jerusalem and talk with us. When Earl arrived Dad would not discuss anything about his care, he simply told me to leave. I had known this man for thirty-six years, I knew how he operated, I wasn’t going anywhere. “Anything you have to say to Earl, you can say in front of me.”
All of the history came flowing to the forefront of my mind. There was this man, who physically and emotionally abused me my entire life. The man who abused my brother so badly that he became a rage-oholic, and took his anger out on me with violence. The man responsible for so many wounds and scars, that it was taking and would take years of psychotherapy and thousands of dollars to heal myself. The man who ruined my mother’s life … who caused her so much pain and despair that she saw dying as the only solution, her only way out.
Despite it all, there I was, still by his side … I was all he had. The son who would never desert him, never walk away; the son whose only concern was providing for his comfort and proper care. There was no question in my mind what that miserable old bastard planned to do, I knew him too well. Despite my loving and caring, even in this, his final stage of life, all he could think about was violating me one last time. He was going to write me out of his will. Oh, no! No, no, no! Not on my watch. “Sorry, Earl, I apologize for wasting your time.”
TWO DAYS LATER DAD WAS NOT DOING AT ALL WELL. He didn’t want to eat, or go to bed. He wanted to stay in his lounge chair, so I let him. That night I tried to get some sleep in the bunk room, but when I did snooze I had dreams that death was in the house, and I was afraid that it was going to get me by mistake. When I checked on him just before dawn he was non-responsive. I called the hospital, they sent an ambulance. I drove myself there and was wandering around like a zombie, being ignored. Finally a nurse put her arm around my shoulders, took me to a chair, sat me down, and got me a cup of coffee. I will always remember her kindness.
For the next five days Dad remained in a coma, moaning loudly all of the time. Estella, God bless her, said, “My dear.” Actually it was her standard exaggerated long drawn out “dear” more like “deeeaaahha” with typical Rhode Island accent, not even the hint of an “R!” “My deeeaaahha, your father is not going to go quietly into that last good night.” He didn’t. Inevitably, his leg became gangrenous, but by then there was no point in surgery. Two days later at three in the morning I got the call, “Sorry to tell you, Mr Edwards.” Now I was “Mr Edwards.” I fell back to sleep and dreamt of my mother.
Seventeen years earlier, after my mother died I longed to dream about her, just to have the sense of being with her once again. When I did have that dream, she and I were at my father’s funeral. That freaked me out, as I thought it meant that I wished it was him that died instead of her … and, of course, that was exactly what I had wished. I never dreamt of her again until that morning, after I was told of my father’s passing. It was the same dream; we were together at my father’s funeral. It was then that I realized that I had misinterpreted the previous dream; the message was that she would be with me when that time came. And so she was.
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