Peter learned that God was not like his father, though God was indeed the “Captain of his soul,” that He was Peter’s heavenly Father with a capital F who would smite him for disobeying his parents. Peter prayed for his salvation every time he attended church, afraid that he would go for a long swim in the fiery lakes and rivers of Hell with a capital H if Jesus wasn’t in his heart when he died. Peter accepted Jesus as his Savior with a capital S so often that He with a capital H was getting frequent-flyer miles to Peter’s soul.
Peter was just never sure of his salvation, mainly because Reverend Epson’s son, Ian, smoked, had green teeth, and dressed like a member of the rock group Kiss. Ian wore high platform shoes, and sat in the front row with black and white greasepaint smeared on his face, sticking out his tongue at the little choir behind Reverend Epson. If a pastor’s son was such a hellion, then who was Peter, the son of the Captain and Hel, to get into heaven?
In between church and school, Peter stayed inside at home and tried to be good.
But that would be a lie, too. Peter did everything in his power to get out of that house, but the Captain wouldn’t let Peter “mingle among those heathen out there.” Instead, Peter was stuck with a thundering father who cursed him and drank heavily and read from the Bible, and a cloudy mother who nursed him and drank more heavily and kept everything “shipshape for the Captain” while secreting away a small fortune in change and small bills in Campbell’s Chicken and Stars cans in the pantry. “For a rainy day,” she once told Peter.
“Those heathen” were the Underhills’ many neighbors, none of whom were really heathens to Peter. They were the Melting Pot Players, appearing daily and nightly outside the balcony-seat window of Peter’s room. They were always more entertaining than the three channels on TV.
Peter used to watch his neighbors from his bedroom windows, wishing somehow that he and his family were more like them. Like the Tuccis next door, who spoke Italian and sat in lawn chairs smoking and drinking wine and laughing and talking with their hands and fighting. Or like the Hites across the street, whose old grandmother spoke only German, who used to cook out every nice day and ate bratwurst and wieners and drank beer from tall glasses and generally got fat together. Or like the Steins, who used to throw block parties with music and lights strung between trees over which they sometimes played volleyball while sipping Budweisers and coming out of the house with just-baked cakes and pies. Or the Mathers, whose father worked in New York City on a TV game show that featured a huge maze, who were always out in the street playing kickball and basketball and kick-the-can and street hockey and curb-to-curb football, sweating together as a family.
Peter’s father simply never went outside unless he had a “damn good reason.” He built a huge deck anchored to the slope behind the house to “raise the value of the house,” a house, Peter later learned, that had been creeping inch by inch toward that sandy slope and could one day tumble into the woods above Huntington Harbor. The Underhills ate out on the deck once. Once. Other than tending to the grungiest red and pink geraniums ever planted in the gaudiest white plastic planters on the front porch, the Captain did nothing to the yard except cut it once a week, never bagging or raking up the clippings and clumps, because “it’s good for the soil if you let it all rot.”
Peter saw his first Fourth of July fireworks shows from his bedroom window, wishing that he were rocketing over Huntington Harbor like the Apollo astronauts who were always doing something outta-sight on the TV. He spent most of his childhood in his room, cleaning, making his bed until pennies bounced off it, doing homework, reading books like Sounder and The Bermuda Triangle, building model ships and getting high off the glue fumes, and staring out into the woods behind his house, woods that sloped right down from the backyard deck past a dance studio to the sand and rock shore of Huntington Harbor. Peter was only a ten-minute walk from the water, but he could only go to the harbor when the Captain wanted to play sailor every weekend.
Other kids—like Eddie Tucci, Eric Hite, Mickey Mather, and Mark Brand—could stroll through Peter’s woods past the “Cave,” an old concrete cistern covered with graffiti, and disappear into the trees any time they wanted, coming back up the hill laughing and munching on Dolly Madison cakes or chewing on beef jerky or sucking down RC Colas in tall bottles that they bought at Milldam Bait and Tackle. Sometimes they wore baseball uniforms, other times matching football jerseys. They had freedom that Peter could only dream about. Each one of them was living a boy’s life; Peter only had a subscription to Boy’s Life.
“And then Mom left,” I whisper. “She freed herself, and that freed me.”
Peter would never be one hundred percent sure why his mother left, since he hadn’t spoken to her since that day in December 1975, and he hadn’t even gotten so much as a postcard, but one thing Peter knew for sure: Hel hated each and every sinew of the Captain’s salty, seagoing guts.
Peter had seen and heard the signs well before her departure. But because he was a child, he didn’t understand the sarcasm in his mother’s voice when she said, “We can’t possibly start the day without the Captain’s hot cup of damn Joe,” or “Everything is just hunky-fucking-dory, Petey.” He didn’t notice all the ingredients she bought at the pharmacy that she stirred into the Captain’s whiskey sours—“Just a little something extra special to help the Captain sleep.” He didn’t see the splotches on her face as bruises—just as gobs of makeup.
Christmas Eve 1975, another Christmas Eve service at the Methodist church. Dripping candles, wilting poinsettias, whining carols, never-ending prayers, Ian sticking his tongue out, the familiar reading from Matthew. Peter was twelve. During a guitar and flute performance of “What Child Is This?” his mother rose from the pew, kissed him on the forehead, said, “Be good, Petey,” and left the sanctuary.
“Woman always has to go to the head,” the Captain growled. He never lowered his voice, even in church, for he was always at sea, and this particular Christmas Eve he was swimming on a half-dozen whiskey sours. “She never could learn to hold her piss.”
And that’s the last time Peter ever saw his mother.
The next morning, after finding no Campbell’s Chicken and Stars cans in the pantry, Peter opened his gifts, and his father said nothing.
Nothing.
One day she was there, the next she was gone. Peter didn’t like God much for that, but he wasn’t going to tell Him. He had been praying for more freedom, for more excitement in his life, for something other than what he was experiencing every day. He wanted to tell God that He had missed, that His aim was off, that He was throwing too many breaking balls out of the strike zone. Though Peter was the one who prayed for the gift of freedom, his mother got to open that gift, and Peter became the Captain’s favorite Seaman Recruit to kick around from that day on.
Luckily, Peter knew where his mother had hidden the sleeping pills, the ones she used to crush to a fine powder and later slip into the Captain’s last whiskey sour of the day. Peter found that using a rolling pin was fairly effective and quieter than using the little hammer his mother had used, so he filled a plastic bag and emptied half of it into the Captain’s third whiskey sour the day after Christmas. The Captain was three sheets to the wind and out like the lights on the Christmas tree within twenty minutes.
Once Peter started powdering the Captain’s morning cup of Joe, he was finally free to roam the neighborhood…
Henry would want more back story here. He would say that I’m only scratching the surface, like the gulls outside my window swooping over the bay and dipping their wings into the foamy crests of waves. He would ask: “How did your mother’s leaving make Peter feel at the time? Won’t the reader find it hard to believe that it was ‘business as usual’ on Christmas morning without Peter’s mother there? And wouldn’t Peter’s father react in some other way than saying ‘nothing’?”
Maybe I’ve repressed a few things, but this is what I remember: the Captain sipping his coffee while I opened my gifts, eating limp bacon and watery eggs in the kitchen,