Last Words Read online

  and told his family, "Principle—if it comes out of a dog's ass!" My

  mother said that when I was just a few weeks old he would look at

  my tiny hand and say, "Future district attorney." Sorry, Pops—it took

  a different turn. But I sure wish I could've known you.

  Mary was the first of his six children, all born in either Greenwich Village or Chelsea. She was frail as a kid and among other

  things was given a glass of Guinness stout each night to build her

  up. It worked. The physical strength she ultimately developed was

  matched by mental toughness. When she was ten she sent a box of

  horseshit to a girl on her block who had neglected to invite her to a

  birthday party. She was small, vivacious, made friends easily, played

  piano, was a great dancer, laughed loudly . . . and you didn't want

  her for an enemy. She always knew who she was and what she could

  do. She was never "the least bit backward about coming forward."

  She brooked no shit from the world—clerk, waiter, bus passenger.

  Anyone who crossed her would get a verbal broadside and a bellyful

  of The Look, a thing of such withering dismissal it could strip the

  varnish from a paratrooper's footlocker.

  This all served her well in the business world—in forty-plus years

  of work she had only five bosses. Her second job was great—at a

  then hot ad agency called Compton. These were the Roaring Twenties and she was a flapper—she played the field shamelessly, a selfadmitted cockteaser. "I'd lead them on but never come across." Yet

  in spite of this intense partying, she never drank, unusual at a time

  when so many people's livers were swelling to the size of beach balls.

  While her friends soaked up the gin, she soaked up culture. She

  read widely in the classics with a special fondness for—of course—

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  tragic heroines like Hedda Gabler, Anna Karenina, Madame

  Bovary. I don't mean that this cop's daughter was a cultural snob.

  She almost single-handedly kept the Broadway theater afloat in the

  twenties and had as well developed a taste for the thin rot of American pop culture as the lowbrows she tried to distance herself from.

  While she genuinely appreciated serious playwrights, her pursuit

  of high culture was also part of a pattern of social ambition—and

  certainly of her plans for me. She often called on her command of

  literature when later our lives had become a running battle. I think

  my early aversion to reading can be traced to the importance she

  placed on it and to her use of literary references in the middle of

  an argument. Maternal monologues would include stuff like: "How

  sharper than a serpent's tooth is the ungrateful child!" or "What a

  tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!" all delivered with the melodramatic flair of a Sarah Bernhardt. From an

  early age I was unimpressed, which was part of a larger pattern in

  our relationship. She insisted, I resisted. But one message did fall

  on fertile ground—she passed on to me the love of language, an immense respect for words and their power.

  The long struggle between Mary and Patrick entered its final

  stages in December 1937 when the court awarded her a legal separation. My father fought the action, contending that he was a loving

  father and husband. He was brought down in court by his own flair

  for melodrama. At a key point in the proceedings my mother's lawyer had my aunt Lil bring my six-year-old brother Patrick into the

  courtroom. My father sprang to his feet, flung out his arms extravagantly and cried: "Son!" Patrick cringed like a whipped puppy and

  clung to Ma's skirt. Bingo! Thirty-five bucks a week!

  He didn't want to pay, natch, and over the next two years they

  fought through lawyers until my father simply quit his job to deny

  her the money. My guess is his alcoholism was probably catching up

  with him as well. With time on his hands and liquor on his brain his

  harassment worsened. My mother—a policeman's daughter—had

  the remedy. Patrick remembers many evenings when the three of

  us would arrive from downtown at the 145th Street subway stop,

  she'd call the precinct and a patrol car would shadow us all the way

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  home. More often than not my father could be seen standing across

  the street.

  These sad and sorry performances were the final act of the

  drama—one that in many ways was a tragedy. My father's children

  by his first wife swear to his loving attention; his letters to them are

  shot through with gentle, jovial affection. Even my mother had to

  admit he could be an absolute joy to be with—thoughtful, romantic,

  tender, funny.

  And he'd done very well for himself. In the mid-1950s atthe zenith

  of his career he was national advertising manager for the New York

  Post, at that time part of the Curtis chain and highly respected—a

  broadsheet, not a tabloid. Several years running he was among the

  top five newspaper ad salesmen in the country. Remember, this was

  the 1930s, before television and with radio still in its ascendancy,

  when newspapers were still paramount in the area of advertising.

  Pat Carlin was at the hub of it all—a nationally known figure. All

  through her working life my mother would come across ad execs

  who'd started in newspapers and would tell her, "Pat Carlin taught

  me everything I know."

  In 1935 he won first prize in the National Public Speaking Contest held by the Dale Carnegie Institute, beating out 632 other

  contestants. Throughout the thirties he was in great demand as a

  luncheon and after-dinner speaker. In those days public speaking

  was a big deal. At one time, according to my mother, between salary,

  commissions and public speaking fees my dad was bringing home a

  thousand dollars a week—a film-star-sized sum at the time.

  His set speech was "The Power of Mental Demand"—which also

  served as the defining theme of his life. The title was that of a book

  written in 1913 by Herbert Edward Law. I still have his copy of it; on

  the inside cover is an inscription: "This is my bible. Please return to

  Pat Carlin, 780 Riverside Drive NYC." The speech itself depended

  on its dramatic ending. After a forceful inspirational talk, he'd

  slowly bring the tone and tempo down until by his penultimate line

  he was almost whispering. "The power . . . of mental . . . demand."

  He'd point around the room at various members of the audience.

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  THE OLD MAN AND THE SUNBEAM

  "Each of you . . . in this room . . . has it." Then the big finish. He'd

  practically shout, "PUT IT TO WORK!"

  Electrifying, my mother said.

  He was a dynamo, well matched to his live-wire wife. At its best

  their marriage was a great romantic adventure filled with energy,

  excitement, sparkling repartee. My mother claimed that when she

  and my father were married, "Madison Avenue said, 'That's not a

  marriage—that's a merger.' " He called her Pepper after her spunkypersonality; she called him Ever Ready after his sexual drive and

  availability. Several times she told Pat and me how great the sex in

  their marriage was, and when she did a wistful look would come

  into
her eye. Dad's approach was uninhibited for such prim and

  proper times. According to Ma she'd sometimes hear him call from

  another room, "Mary, is this yours?" go in and find him standing in

  the nude, holding his penis with the ice tongs.

  She told me once about the last day he ever saw me. I was only a

  few months old. He came to whomever's home we were staying with

  at the time, and began playing with me on the living-room floor.

  Then he picked me up, held me above his head and sang this song

  to my mother:

  The pale moon was rising above the green mountain

  The sun was declining beneath the blue sea

  'Twas then that I strolled to the pure crystal fountain

  And there I met Mary, the Rose of Tralee

  She was lovely and fair as the rose in the summer

  But 'twas not her beauty alone that won me

  Oh, no, 'twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning

  That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee

  Early in their courtship they'd made "The Rose of Tralee" their

  own song. I'm sure it poured absolutely sincerely from his great sentimental Irish heart. But it didn't work. The Rose of Tralee was determined and he was history. He never saw me again.

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  Something—I don't know what—happened in 1940 or early 1941

  that changed his course. It must have been related to his alcoholism

  because the next trace I have of him he was working as a kitchen

  assistant at the monastery of the Graymoor Friars in Garrison, New

  York. In a letter to his daughter Mary—by his first marriage—he

  chirps:

  My new job is assistant to Brother Capistran who is in charge

  of the cafeteria. On Sunday I attend the steam table, dishing

  out food. During the week I have charge of the men who mop,

  clean up and get the place ready for the following Sunday. I have

  a private bedroom and I eat with five privileged characters in a

  small dining room, the same food as the priests and brothers . . .

  I have lost thirty pounds, mostly around the waist. I feel swell—

  not a drink in over six weeks and there is plenty available.

  Oh yes!

  I first saw this letter in 1990 when I was fifty-three, the exact age

  he was when he wrote it. Besides the eeriness of that, there were

  other things that struck me. His spirit seemed completely unaffected

  by the change in his financial circumstances—this was a man who

  only five or six years earlier had been at the top of his game, promoting and employing the Power of Mental Demand and commanding

  a small fortune doing it. But he seemed to be a person who defined

  himself and his self-worth in terms of his own relationship to the

  universe at large—not the material world and its narrow standards.

  It made me proud of him and gave me reason to believe that my own

  very similar sense of what's important had come directly from him.

  It's a connection, a profound one. I don't have many.

  By the fall of 1943 he was writing to his other daughter Rita from

  Watertown, New York, where he'd landed a job at radio station

  WATN, selling commercial time and playing records on the air—

  the same thing I'd be doing just thirteen years later. "Well here I am

  a veteran 'cowhand' with twelve days' experience lousing up the air.

  I think I ' v e set radio back twenty years . . . This old horse is learn12

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  ing something new. I'm going to stick it out until I develop enough

  technique to up myself." Best of all there was a station sign-off he

  said he'd like to deliver; and this was at the height of World War II

  and its patriotic fervor:

  "I pledge allegiance to the people of the United States of America

  and all the political crap for which they stand. Big dough shall be

  divisible with union dues for all."

  As conclusive evidence it's scanty, but suggests to me that my

  father saw through the bullshit that is the glue of America. That

  makes me proud. If he transmitted it to me genetically, it was the

  greatest gift he could have given.

  His enthusiasm for radio didn't lead anywhere except home a

  year later, with daughter Mary in the Bronx. He might have had an

  inkling his health wasn't good and kept it from his family. Anyway

  he died at her house, aged fifty-seven, in December 1945, of a heart

  attack.

  I remember walking up the hill to our house—by now we'd had a

  home on West 121st Street for several years. It was a few days before

  Christmas. I was singing "Jingle Bells" and thinking of the presents

  my uncle Bill had let me pick out the week before, wrapped and

  waiting under the tree—an electric baseball game, an electric football game, a real leather football.

  The kitchen was quiet and my mother more serious than usual.

  She sat me down on a little stepladder that doubled as a chair—I still

  have it—and handed me a death notice from that day's New York

  journal-American. I didn't need to read beyond his name; I knew

  what death notices looked like. I don't recall any emotion. I just

  knew my brother would be happy and my mother relieved.

  Years later I came across the only record I have of his feelings

  for me. It's a telegram he sent to my mother on my first birthday

  in May 1938. We'd been separated from him for about ten months

  by then but my mother hadn't found work yet, so he was probably

  still fanning the hope things might work out. He wrote to her: "Just

  to let you know that one year ago today, I shared every moment of

  your anguish and prayed that I might share each pain—while your

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  present advisors said nothing and cared less. Thank God and you

  for the sunbeam you brought forth, whom I pray will outlive all the

  ill-founded gossip."

  He did have a terrific line of bullshit: praying to share the pains

  of childbirth sounds like vintage Pat Carlin. But he called me . . . a

  sunbeam.

  And he got his wish, though there are very few people alive to

  whom it matters. Not only did I outlive the gossip—by which I'm

  sure he meant my mother's quite public and vocal negative opinion

  of him—but I lived to write this book which will serve as testimony

  to my old man's great heart and soul.

  A sunbeam. Imagine that!

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  2

  HOLY MARY,

  MOTHER OF GEORGE

  My mother's visit to the funeral home was a frigid affair for

  both sides—her family and the Carlins. She had always

  kept her distance from Patrick's folks, considering them

  shanty Irish, and I'm sure they saw her as a climber, an uppity gold

  digger. They weren't far wrong.

  My mother's capacity for good living had long been blunted by

  the realities of salaried employment, but she retained her class pretensions and tried to realize some of them by using us kids as advertisements for her taste. Pat, when he was young, had always been

  dressed like a little sissy in Eton collars and short pants, explaining

  in part why his fighting skills developed so rapidly. I escaped the

  worst of that because she couldn't afford it, but she still took me to

  have my hair cut at Best & Co. on Fi
fth Avenue, because she knew

  that was where "the better people" had their kids' hair cut. The better people went to Best.

  Much of the struggle between Mary and her sons revolved around

  her "plans" for us and our strongly developed instinct for independence. She was a woman with decidedly aristocratic pretensions,

  indoctrinated with the idea that she was "lace-curtain Irish," as opposed to the shanty kind with its stereotypes of drinking, lawlessness, laziness, rowdiness, all the things which—to the degree that

  ethnic generalities have any meaning—come from that side of their

  national character that makes the Irish fun.

  There was a fierceness to my mother's striving typical of her generation (she was born in 1896). William Shannon in The American

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  Irish writes: "Social rules and conventions in America are set by

  women, and the standards women enforced in late Victorian America as to what was 'nice' behavior . . . could be cruel and rigorous.

  And to these standards the Irish mothers and maiden aunts often

  added exacting requirements of their own because resentment and

  competitiveness impelled them not only to want to be accepted and

  well thought of but also superior and invulnerable." Voila! Mary

  Bearey in a nutshell.

  She felt she had detected a diamond beneath my father's rough

  shanty-Irish exterior, and could clean him up, polish the gem. It's a

  common courtship fantasy. That mission thwarted, she turned her

  sights to the more malleable Silly Putty of her sons. Pat the Younger

  quickly screwed up that strategy. One time in the elevator of our

  building on Riverside Drive they encountered a lady of particularly

  regal bearing. "What a lovely little boy," she purred. "And what is

  your name?" "Son of a bitch!" answered the lovely little boy. Pat was

  dismissed early on by Ma as "being a Carlin" and having the "dirty,

  rotten Carlin temper" and I became in her eyes "a Bearey," a scion

  of her superior, cultured, lace-curtain ancestry. My quiet nature as

  a little boy became "the Bearey sensitivity." She had even named

  me for her favorite brother, George, a sweet, gentle soul who played