Bad Habits (10 page)

After two long years of serving on the front line, Dad got to come home. He was never injured during the war, but on the plane ride home he was bitten by a mosquito and caught malaria. As if the emotional scars from Vietnam weren’t painful enough.

Once back in Chicago, he was determined to start a life for himself. With the money he saved over two years, he was going to put a down payment on a home and hopefully meet the right gal and start a family. This was his lifelong dream.

Sadly, what took place next was the finishing touch to destroying my dad’s dream of creating a good life. His brother forged his name and spent all of his Vietnam money. It was gone.

Needless to say, my pop was devastated. This wasn’t the type of devastation that caused him to get mad, punch his brother in the face, and move on. This was the type of devastation that dug deep into the core of his soul and remains to this day.

My perception was that my father dealt with this by coming to terms with the fact that money is always supposed to be a struggle to get. To him, it always seemed that as soon as he got some money, it immediately went away. He didn’t know what else to do to earn a good living, so he decided to go to beauty school because that’s where the hot chicks were and where he could have as much sex as possible. Smart guy. He obviously had a great time because he married the hottest beautician in the joint—my mom.

My mother came from a poor household too, so they both had a lot of experience with putting food on the table with no money in the bank. My dad took a job at a steel plant and my mom got her license as a beautician. She worked from home and did the majority of hairstyling for our neighbors. Her strategy was awesome when we were desperate to get dinner.

Mom would wait for a neighbor to walk by our house and say, “Hey, Mike, your hair is looking a little long. You want me to trim it?”

Everyone would say, “Yeah, it is pretty long. Okay.”

And then she would collect five bucks from them.

That night, boom bam, we were eating noodles with ground chuck for dinner.

When people say to me, “Jenny, you really are a scrapper in Hollywood,” I know that this is why. I learned it from the best.

I’ll always find one way or another to feed Evan.

No one really had money in our neighborhood, but there was always one family that seemed to have the best toys, clothes, and lawn décor: the Baruchs.

Those damn Baruchs would rub it in our faces too. My Big Wheel had a crack in the seat, so when I rode it, you could hear me coming from a mile away because my ass was scraping the concrete. I really wanted the new Big Wheel that had pink pompoms.

Soon after mine broke, Diana came whizzing past the front of my house with the fucking Big Wheel with pink pompoms.

“Hi, Jenny. Do you like my Big Wheel? You will never ride it. Ever!”

Whenever I would say to my mom, “Why do the Baruchs get everything? It’s not fair!” my mom would reply, “Jenny, don’t be jealous and envy what other people have. It’s a sin.”

The next day I would catch my mom out on the porch squinting her eyes to watch Mr. and Mrs. Baruch put up the most amazing Christmas decorations on the South Side of Chicago. I could hear my mother say, “Look at that. That is not fair. They shouldn’t be allowed to have those beautiful decorations. They are sinners. We deserve them. We’ve never missed a single Mass. Ever!”

I so badly wanted to tell her, “Didn’t you just say we shouldn’t envy other people’s stuff?” but I couldn’t. My mom worked so hard to take care of us that I could never be mad at her for all of her contradictions no matter how wishy-washy they were.

This is where I created a belief system to help me cope—that rich people were evil.

I think this was the only way to not be depressed about not having money.

There is even a religious song that proved the theory: “Blessed are those who are poor … for someday you should laugh.”

I knew I couldn’t help my parents at this young age to get money, but I knew I could make them laugh. I would regularly put on shows to give them a chuckle to help ease the pain of poverty. I was hoping this would hold them over until I was old enough to help them financially.

Our monetary strain got progressively worse through the years. In my teenage years, it was even more difficult not to have the material things I wanted. I so desperately wanted the new sparkly blue Schwinn ten-speed. I had a picture of it up in my room and would pray for it to any saint who would listen.

One afternoon, I was sitting on my porch when Diana Baruch rode past my house on the blue Schwinn bike that I had been praying to God for. She paused in front of me and said, “Like my new bike?” and then rode off laughing.

I couldn’t believe this was happening again! How could I not envy?

I mean, come on, God!

Then a miracle happened. Well, actually two miracles. The first was that my mom took us to McDonald’s.

McDonald’s for us was like going to Disneyland. It was considered a luxury. One reason we were able to go was that my mom scored two perms from nuns at the convent and made a whopping fifteen dollars! The other reason was that McDonald’s was promoting that Monopoly game where you collect stickers for each square and win big cash. My mom was collecting them from everybody she knew. Even the nuns would give them to my mom when they saw her.

So off we went to McDonald’s and came home to devour the food.

My mom pulled the Monopoly squares out of the bag and uncrinkled the paper Monopoly game board she had been gluing the other squares on.

Just as I was sinking my teeth into a hamburger, my mom started screaming, “Oh my God! We won! We won!”

She jumped up and down as if she had won a car on
The Price Is Right
. I ran over to look at her Monopoly board game and all the stickers were covering every square.

I too began jumping up and down and screaming.

My mom then ran outside and started screaming, “We won twenty-five thousand dollars!”

Friendly neighbors hurried over to celebrate and jump up and down with us. I was so excited. God heard my prayers.

Of course, I immediately thought of myself and asked, “Can you buy me that ten-speed I want?”

My mom, still jumping up and down, suddenly morphed into a philanthropist with the power of Oprah. “You all get one!” She pointed to all of us kids with her mouth open and her eyes wide and bright.

“Woohoo!”

Now I was jumping up and down as if I had won the Showcase Showdown on
The Price Is Right
.

My mom ran back inside the house to call my dad at work. I followed her in to maybe catch a scream from my dad on the other end of the phone. Mom asked Dad’s boss to page him and have him call back immediately.

While we waited for my dad to call, my mom shouted out all the bills she would pay off with this money. I was a teenager, so all I cared about was making sure I got my damn dream bike.

I asked my mom to guarantee that I would get my blue Schwinn. She was so elated with joy she just kept screaming, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

With that confirmation, I went over to the Baruchs with a pep in my step. I was cocky with a new attitude. I envisioned myself riding past their house showing off my ride.

I stopped in front of their house and shouted to Diana’s bedroom window, “Hey, Diana! Diana!”

Moments later she came to the front door. “What?” she said in her usual bitch tone.

“We won twenty-five thousand dollars and my mom is buying me the same ten-speed you have, and I thought you should know so you don’t confuse yours with mine when it’s parked in front of my house.”

“You’re a dork,” she replied. She slammed the door and went back to her room.

She was right. I was a dork, but I was a winning dork! I ran home and continued to celebrate with my family. My mom told me that she talked to my dad and he was leaving work early to take our prize into McDonald’s to cash in.

That was a huge deal.

Dad never missed work. He couldn’t afford to.

Mom told me that our win was announced at my dad’s work and the steel plant celebrated for him. It was a good day for the McCarthys. A really good day.

When my pops pulled up to the house, we all greeted him by jumping up and down on him. He giggled with a delight I hardly ever saw from him.

My parents sat down at the kitchen table and went over the game together.

My dad smiled. “Wow, we really won. This is really gonna help. Let’s go take a ride to McDonald’s and talk to the manager.”

Holy shit,
I thought,
we get to go to McDonald’s twice in one day! Woohoo!
We all jumped in the car to go claim our prize and have dinner as a family at my new favorite restaurant in the world.

As my dad started the car it misfired, which would normally cause him some audible grief and cussing, but this time it was symbolic of our newfound life, as if the car were saying, “Giddyup.” My entire family had a healthy glow as if we had just come back from vacation. Nothing could bring us down. Mom looked at me when Michael Jackson’s “Ben” came on the radio. I was smiling and singing along. Not even the sounds of Satan could faze me and kill the high my family was on.

When we got to McDonald’s, my dad told us all to order whatever we wanted while he talked to the manager. My dad explained to the manager that we won the Monopoly game and needed to know what the next step of the process was. The manager congratulated us all and looked at the Monopoly game to confirm our win. His smile slowly faded as I heard his lips slowly mouthed the words “Youuuuu didn’t wiiiiiiiinnnnnnn. You used the same piece twice.”

I quickly looked at my parents, who looked down and realized their mistake. The defeat and sorrow that came over them caused a little piece of me to die in that moment. It was the longest, most awkward, painful moment, as my mom and dad and their four daughters stood there with long faces, staring at the McDonald’s manager in complete shock. Again, being a teenager, I thought of myself first. My bike. My dream bike! I had already told Diana I was getting one. The whole neighborhood thought we won. Everyone at my dad’s work thought we won.

All I could feel was shame, embarrassment, and anger. The manager could see the look of devastation on each of our faces and gave us our dinner for free. We all shuffled over to a booth and ate in silence.

Swallowing that food was like swallowing glass. We were all sucking back tears from the rise and fall of our McMoney as we suffered through our last McMeal. I remember looking at the life-size Ronald McDonald statue and wanting to punch him and bleach the stupid red smile off his face. Once I got past my own depression about the bike, I could see the true devastation in my parents.

I so badly wanted them to get ahead financially and felt hopeless at age fifteen. Looking back now, I can see how this didn’t help my dad’s belief system of having money one minute and then it disappearing before his very eyes the next.

This was the day I made a promise to myself.

I was gonna make it up to my parents.

The McCarthys would overcome this.

Someday, I would pay off their bills and make them proud. But first, I had a lot more sinning to do.

Every year, Christians prepare for the risen Jesus during the season of Lent. Well, not exactly.

Every year, Christians celebrate the anniversary of people preparing for the risen Jesus during the season of Lent. Well, not exactly.

You see, nobody prepared for Jesus to rise from the dead because nobody knew ahead of time that he was going to rise from the dead. So for the six weeks before Easter, nobody was wearing sackcloths and ashes, nobody was fasting or abstaining from meat, and nobody was giving up things they liked. But today, we prepare for the risen Jesus—even though his resurrection was about two thousand years ago. Which is like saying that someone is preparing for a wedding anniversary. Hey, you prepare for the wedding, not the anniversary!

This is why so many people have a hard time dealing with Lent. We’re asked to suffer to make ourselves more presentable for Jesus. It’s like losing a bunch of weight so you’ll look like a dreamboat in front of your onetime sweetheart at the high-school reunion. But when your former sweetheart sees you, he doesn’t realize you had to drop twenty pounds to look so hot. On the other hand, Jesus knows what you looked like before and after. And supposedly he loves you either way. So what’s the point?