Ted The Drug Dealer

My mother married Ted the Drug Dealer in the summer of 1980, back when he was just Ted the Lightbulb Salesman. He won her over by knocking down some fence posts with his Cadillac.

We lived in a three story house during the Carter Administration. The house had a top floor apartment that I have never seen, even to this day. There was always a tenant up there. He was only ever referenced when my mother said things like “I’m going upstairs to get the rent from The Schmuck.” He was a musician, or a painter, or a serial killer. He must not have been very good at any of these things – there were no hit rock bands or famous impressionist painters from Garwood, New Jersey. No unexplained murders, either.

After my father left, my mother went into business for herself as a hairdresser, which meant turning the first floor of the house into a beauty salon. We moved into the basement where a few years before, my Uncle George the Bastard had put in a kitchen and carpeted the two little rooms. The bigger one had a fold out couch where my mother stayed. My brother and I slept on another fold out couch in the smaller room, around the corner from the furnace. The pilot light and burners provided something of a night light. It was like sleeping near a campfire that gave off no heat. In the midst of the Cold War, I imagined we were living in an underground bunker after some apocalyptic nuclear nightmare.

Starting up her own business also meant she would need parking, so the back yard had to be paved over. Up until then we had had an above ground pool, grass, and a swing set. The pool was for Layne the Favorite. I think my mother believed that he would become a champion swimmer one day, as long as the Olympics came up with an event for swimmers who just went around and around at top speed in small circles. He could win the gold in the 400-meter Whirlpool. It was easy to imagine his dizzy-eyed, nauseated picture on a box of Wheaties.

The pool had to be taken down. The day it happened, there was a crowd of people assembled to assist:

1. My father, the Son of a Bitch.

2. Bernie the Disco Prince, a lanky fellow my mom was dating.

3. The UPS driver.

4. Bertha Levine - my mother’s arch-nemesis from high school.

5. Bill, a twenty-something stoner she had hit with her car the year before.

She could get anyone to help her. It was like a superpower. In person, you had no chance at all. Her jaw would clench, and she would stare at you with her huge brown eyes and grimly say, “Fred. I need the pool taken down. For my businesssssssssssssss.”

This worked on my father because he didn’t want to have to pay more than the $40 a month he was paying in child support. He had been married three times before and had other ex-wives and children to finance.

I think Bill the Stoner was there to have her sign lawsuit papers from when she had run him over with her car. The UPS driver was just trying to deliver a package, and that may have been the day that Bertha Levine finally worked up the nerve to translate all her high school pain and rage into a murder attempt on the architect of her misery. We all knew why Bernie the Disco Prince was there.

They all got the same treatment. “How do you expect me to sign for that package when I can’t get that goddamned pool taken down? It’s for my businesssssssss.” Or “Bill, put those papers over there and help me get the pool taken down. Without my businessssss I haven’t got a pot to piss in. You wanna get money out of me in the lawsuit? Then help me out. You can’t get blood from a stone!”

Or poor Bertha Levine. “You brought a knife? Are you kidding me? What good is a knife gonna be? You can’t dismantle a pool with a knife. Here, give me that and take this screwdriver instead. I always said, Bertha, back in high school, I told you, you weren’t too bright. Not a lot of smarts up there in that empty head of yours. Too ugly to land a husband and dumb as a bag of matzo balls. Go outside. The kids will show you what to do.”

I ended up working next to Bertha. She was red-faced, sweating, hair stringy, teeth gritted, hissing, “I hate her SO much!” over and over as she took the screws out of the side of the pool. The UPS man asked if I would sign for the package because he had to get on with his route. My father hung out near the fence posts that hadn’t been taken down yet, chain smoking and glaring at Bernie the Disco Prince, who was preoccupied with the fact that the pool was still full of water.

Bernie the Disco Prince (every time he saw my mother): “Carol. There’s still water in the pool.”

She put her hands on her hips and stared at him.

Mom: “It’ll be fine, Bernie. Don’t worry about it.”

Dad (muttering through a thick blue haze of cigarette smoke): “Idiot.”

Me: “Um, Mom. I think the water’s going to be a problem.”

Bernie the Disco Prince shot me a grateful look. He had been dating her for three months and still hadn’t figured out Layne was the favorite. Me being on his side was like the tiny nation of Lichtenstein jumping into World War II. Zero effect. I think Bertha Levine, who had only been there for two hours, knew Layne was the favorite. Maybe her backup plan was to kidnap him and not give him back until my mother admitted that Bertha was pretty AND smart. Bernie was a moron. I should have got him and Bertha together. If only there had been more time.

That was when Ted the Lightbulb Salesman arrived, driving his big, dark blue Cadillac. It turned like a giant hovercraft into our driveway and moseyed up the hill. He stopped at the wooden gate that blocked the driveway from the backyard. I couldn’t wait for that gate to come down. My brother had rammed me with his bike when I was six and I hit it with my face. I needed five stitches in my eyebrow (I still have the scar). It was my only ambulance ride, and the only reason I went to the hospital was because a neighbor saw it happen and called 911. Otherwise my mother would have just put a band aid on it.

Ted got out of the Cadillac, wearing a traditional dark suit. He sold lightbulbs, which was the shorthand I used. Actually, he sold light fixtures and long fluorescent tube bulbs to big businesses, like chain grocery stores and manufacturing facilities. He had been across the street from our house, selling light bulbs to the metal processing plant, when he spied my mother in the yard and came over. After finding out she was starting her own businessssss, he was quick to offer to supply her with all the lighting she would need. All our home-type lighting had to come out and be replaced with something more appropriate, and he was just the guy to hook her up.

He stopped at the fence and gazed at her.

Ted the Lightbulb Salesman: “I’ve got those sample fixtures in the trunk if you want to take a look.”

My father’s eyes narrowed, and he started sniffing the air like an angry squirrel.

Mom: “Ted, I don’t have time for that. I got all these people out here and they can’t manage to get the goddamned pool down.”

Bernie the Disco Prince: “It’s still full of water.”

She turned on him.

Mom: “What is wrong with you?”

My father snickered.

Ted looked at the pool for a minute, then went to the trunk of the Cadillac, opened it, and came back with a heavy sledgehammer in one hand. He walked over to the section of pool Bertha and I were working on. I backed away in a big hurry.

Me: “Bertha. We should get out of the way.”

Bertha (snarling): “I hate you too. Demon spawn.”

Ted whacked the flat side of the pool once with the sledgehammer and the whole wall collapsed like a burst balloon. A flood of water whooshed out, taking Bertha’s legs out from under her and washing her most of the way down the hill, howling bubbly profanity the whole way. She ended up in the parking lot of the auto parts store that was next to our house, soaking wet, muddy, and madder than ever.

I tried to warn her. Maybe mom was right about her all along.

Bertha got to her feet, shook her fists at the sky, and screamed, her wet, dirty hair in her face, clothes soaked, and missing one shoe. She stomped to her car and squealed away in a cloud of exhaust. She never came back for her knife or her shoe. I’d like to think Bernie the Disco Prince retrieved it and brought it to her, like Prince Charming with the glass slipper, and the two of them lived happily ever after.

My mother grinned.

Mom: “There you go, Bernie. Goddamned thing’s empty, so take it apart.”

He did. It was easy work after that. It was also Bernie the Disco Prince’s last day on our merry crew of day laborers.

Mom (looking back at Ted): “Can you do something about those fence posts?”

He looked at them, six square wooden posts standing in a line where our fence had once been. The fence had come down easy enough, but no one had been able to get the posts out of the ground. This was the 1979 equivalent of King Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.

Ted got back in the Cadillac without a word and backed out of the driveway. My father chortled.

Dad: “Another winner, there, Carol.”

Mom: “Son of a bitch.”

He shrugged and kept smoking.

I saw the Cadillac pull into the driveway of the place next door and slowly creep up to the first fence post. He put the bumper of the big car up against it and accelerated slowly and relentlessly until it popped out of the ground. He backed up and went for the next one.

My father flicked his cigarette into the wet remains of the pool.

Dad: “Pool’s down. You kids have fun.”

He headed for his car.

Mom: “Lotta help you are, Fred. This is for your kidssssssssssssssss!”

Ted knocked all the posts down and for good measure, took out the gate I was so mad at.

So I was all right with Ted, up until the day he found a used Winnebago for sale, and suggested we all move into it. For five years.