(Should start by reading the previous post so you can get things in order.)
So, when I left off, Mother had put my brother and me on a Greyhound bus from Hollywood to Santa Barbara to live with our father and his new wife, Charmaine. Charmaine already had a daughter, Vivian, who was our step-sister, a year or two younger than me.
I don’t know when Dad and Char were married or when they bought their house. Mother learned she was pregnant in the spring of 1962, and her baby was born October 22, 1962. But this was all revealed to me several years later, only mentioned here to somehow understand why Mother suddenly shipped my brother and me away.
So, there we are trying to make a blended family with our dad’s new wife and her daughter. Mostly, it was pretty good, and Charmaine was actively trying to be a good mom. She had a friend, Ann, whose son was in my grade and his younger sister. And Char also had other friends and relatives in the area so it seemed there was often something to do.
And Charmaine was also pregnant and was probably pregnant before my brother and I arrived. Sometime during that summer, Charmaine moved out. She later told me (after my own divorce) that she had to move out because she didn’t like the way Dad treated me and my brother, and she didn’t want her child to be raised that way.
So, she moved out and had her baby in August of 1962, my younger half-brother, Christopher Patrick. I only got to see him a few times as a baby. I think Charmaine did most of the heavy lifting when it came to helping us try to get to know Chris.
My Dad managed to arrange after school care for me and my brother by having us go to classmates’ homes after school. I went to Mike’s house, and I forget where Scott went. This was easily arranged because my mother’s mother (my Grandma Wilfley) was the school secretary at Monroe Elementary and she knew everybody.
Mike’s mother, Pat, had been one of my mother’s close friends in school so it worked out well that I went to Mike’s house. I liked that because Mike always had fun things to do and he had other friends in the area to play with and we usually all played in Mike’s back yard.
I was in third grade now, in the fall of 1962. I don’t recall having any contact with Mother since she put us on the bus. My birthday was in late November, and one of my classmates (Mark) had a birthday around the same time. His mother contacted my dad to arrange a joint birthday party. It was fun, and between his invites and mine, pretty much our whole class was invited. Since it was at Mark’s house and his mom did much of the arranging and organizing, I remember my dad mostly standing around “helping.” But I was just turning 8 and somewhat oblivious to grown-up stuff so it’s possible my dad had a bigger hand than I recognized.
There are other details about the party that don’t matter. What I do remember is that this was the only birthday party I had as a kid that I can remember, that I had a good time with it, that my dad was there and my mother was not.
So this as late November 1962. Sometime after my birthday, but before Christmas, we found out Mother was back in town. She had herself a very small apartment off of De La Vina Street. I remember one time Scott and I went to her place for dinner, and she was complaining about the tiny refrigerator freezing her carton of milk. That’s the only clear memory that I have from that.
I don’t remember if we had any Christmas with her, but shortly after that it was decided Mother and Dad were getting back together and she was moving into the house. It is mostly a blur, but I remember she was acting strangely sometimes.
She’d become addicted to her tranquilizers and vodka, which seriously messed up her head. Doctors would sometimes come to the house after Dad went to work and would give her some sort of shot. She started hallucinating around this time. One time I wanted to go outside to play and she told me I can’t go outside because there’s an axe outside the door and if I go out the door the axe would fall and cut off my head.
Another time she would hallucinate having a little girl and was leading her hallucination around by the hand. Obviously I couldn’t see her imagined little girl, but one night at bedtime I was getting ready for bed and she brought her little girl in for a good night kiss. I was sitting on my bed and Mother told me to give the little girl a kiss so I leaned in Mother’s general direction and kissed empty air. Mother Blew Up at me, telling me to kiss her girl “for real” because her little girl was over in the corner. Hell, I was only 8 and confused as hell about kissing a girl I couldn’t even see.
It wasn’t long after this that mother was taken away in an ambulance and didn’t return. Apparently she’d been taken to a local hospital in the psychiatric ward, and after a court hearing (where both her mother and her father had to appear) it was decided she needed to go to the state mental hospital at Camarillo.
I have no idea exactly how long she was there but it was a good month and a half, maybe two months …. maybe? I don’t remember the time span, and I don’t recall what we did after school while Mother was in the hospital.
I do somewhat remember not doing well in school that spring in third grade because my mother was sick. I guess somehow I was supposed to just get on with things and not try to figure it out.
But Mother did eventually come home and there seemed to be relative peace for a while. The school year ended and summer 1963 had started. I was still just 8 and Scott had turned 10 that February (we’re 21 months apart). Then one Saturday Scott and I got up in the morning and both Mother and Dad were gone. I don’t remember if there was a note, or maybe Mother had called and Scott answered the phone …. whatever, we simply learned that Mother and Dad had gone to Santa Monica and would be back later or the next day. No idea why or anything.
We later learned that Mother and Dad had gone to get quickie-remarried and had a one-night “honeymoon.” So apparently Charmaine had divorced Dad sometime along the way. Once Mother was back in the picture we had no contact with Christopher, although Charmaine did come over occasionally to talk to Dad. She was always nice to us kids. Scott and I were always sent to our rooms, but that was no surprise as we spent most of our time there anyway. The living room was for grown-ups, apparently. Mother loved her television and heaven help the kid who interrupted whatever she was watching.
That’s all for now.