Roscoe referred to himself as ‘county royalty.’ “You got your real royalty,” he said, ticking each item with a grimy index finger, “state royalty – that’s your governors or attorney generals, city royalty—mayors and bankers and then county royalty. That’s what I come from. You wouldn’t know it, but mention my name in Spencer County and you’re saying something.”
It was a mystery how a man who owned two pairs of pants and three shirts and slept in his car could brag about his status. Spencer County was more decrepit than my own Nelson County. Like all of us, they had seen better days.
Whatever was in Spencer County had no gravitational pull to keep Roscoe there and, like all things downhill, brought him to Chapin and Diane’s Diner where, in exchange for unloading the early morning truck and doing the breakfast and lunch dishes, he got three square meals of whatever did not sell.
“Look at this,” Roscoe said, rustling through his pants pockets disgorging a couple of coins, a dented bottle cap, and a yellowed piece of newsprint that had been folded too many times to still be legible. The only words I could read was “angel of the trap...” The photo was dark with smudges as if someone had fondled it. A faceless woman stood on a narrow platform attached to a pole.
“Isn’t she beautiful? That’s my mother, Edith. They said gravity didn’t apply to her. My father never forgot the first time he saw her sparkling through the air. Most people do not believe in love at first sight, but I am living proof.” He held his arms out, revealing a hole under his right arm. “My father brought a young and appropriate young woman to the circus, who he immediately forgot about when he saw the bedazzled woman above his head. She had to get a ride home because he drove into town and bought every rose they have.”
“Things were different then,” he said, tearing into a day-old doughnut. “My father was upper crust and my mother owned nothing more than leotard and a change of clothes. Neither side approved of them as couple. My father’s family had high standards and my mother’s family assumed he wanted one thing and one thing only, leaving her to raise the baby alone.”
“My mother had been warned about young rich men. But the next day, when she climbed down the pole, there was Dad again with another bouquet. He was a perfect gentleman, keeping his hands behind his back as they walked along the river until her father caught up dragged her back to the circus.”
“I don’t want you to think that his family was any purer than my mother’s. There’s plenty of ‘cousins’ walking around Spencer County who look a lot like me. But those kind of girls were for practice, not for marrying.”
“My grandfather threatened to disown my father, but he really couldn’t if he was looking for someone to carry on the family name. I have three aunts and two uncles by marriage. Blood can be passed down to girls but not a name.”
“My parents were happy. Whatever my mother wanted she had before she asked. She would stand above him when he sat on the porch so the sun wouldn’t burn him. He encouraged her to travel with the circus, always waiting for her when the train pulled up.”
“There were children before me. Well, not exactly children, but miscarriages, a still birth and an older sister who didn’t live a week and never had a name. The doctors blamed my mother’s work. ‘The human body is just not supposed to fight gravity,’ one of them said.”
“My mother wanted to quit. But my father wouldn’t hear of it. She was born to the sky. That is where he fell in love with her. He could no more imagine her not soaring than seeing the sun rise in the west. They would keep trying and she would keep flying. Maybe he thought flying made her happy. Maybe he didn’t want to be married to just a woman with her feet on the ground.”
“I was born prematurely in my grandfather’s parlor on Christmas morning. My mother was sitting in one of those big armchairs and I tumbled out in a bloody mess. My grandfather never forgave her for staining the Oriental rug. He would point out my birth stain and tell me how he much he spent trying to get it out.”
“Things fall. We might not like it, but gravity never asks our opinion. You will never know what it is like for a child to see his mother tumbling above his head-- the sparkling beads, her hair flowing. She somersaults into the grab of a strange man. It is only natural for him to be scared? It is only natural for him to scream, right?
He stopped, lifting his unshaven chin like a cornered porcupine. “I was four. I was scared. I called “Mama!” He said the word loud enough to startle the other three diners.
“One word, said at the wrong time, when her attention was on the grab. When her momentum took her out past the net, arms flailing until she disappeared from view and the crowd screamed.”
“The doctor said she didn’t feel anything. In a blink, she was a bird flying free and then a quadriplegic with a broken neck.”
“There was no way my mother could get up the stairs to the second floor. My father had the help bring down their bed and a small wardrobe that held the six housedresses she wore for the rest of her life. My bedroom was still upstairs and terrifying at night. My father had to hire a nanny to spend the night.”
“A week before she fell, they found out she was pregnant. The room next to mine was supposed to be my brother or sister’s room. That room became Marie’s, then Sophie’s and then Jeanette’s, until my father, not being able to afford a nanny any more, said I was old enough to cry myself to sleep.”
“Not only was my mother confined to a wheel chair, she barely talked. Most of the time her jaw would tremble and her tongue would loll about like an exhausted dog on a hot day. Whatever was going on behind her rheumy eyes, all she said was ‘no.’ She must have said it 20 times a day. She didn’t want to eat. She didn’t have to go to bathroom. She didn’t want to go outside.”
“At first, my father said nothing would change. We were still a family and he wanted us to be as normal as possible. He probably thought that somebody somewhere above would notice his decency and take pity on him. But heaven remained silent.”
“My grandfather was no help. He said the accident was the result of when people stray from their own. He offered no help, financial or otherwise, and the few times he showed up at our house, he could barely unfold his arms.”
My father descended into the crutches of the disappointed Southern gentlemen—alcohol and infidelity. At first, he tried to hide it, smelling of peppermints and eau de cologne. I am sure my mother was not fooled. Her “no’s” were quieter, slower and sadder. Eventually, he gave up, staggering about the house and cursing at anything that would listen. He took lovers up the back staircase to their old bedroom in which he had a sofa brought in. It was right above my mother’s room so I am sure she heard it all. I did.”
“Appalled by the talk of scandal, my grandfather dropped dead in mid rant in his parlor, not far from my birth stain. Most of his money went to a second cousin and the rest to a home for wayward women.”
“It was the last straw and my father let go, knowing that there was nothing beneath him. They found his Chevrolet wrapped around an oak tree on the road to the reservoir. He was probably on his way to drown himself and missed.”
“My mother was shipped off to a charity nursing home that didn’t think it was important for her to see her son or tell him she had died until the day of the funeral.”
“I went to a distant cousin who thought there was some inheritance waiting for me. When she learned there was none to be had, she threw me out at 15, saving me the trouble of running away.”
Roscoe smiled and pushed himself up from the table. He smiled while wrapping a filthy apron around himself. “Well, that’s my story. Every day wandering back and forth. Back and forth. Going nowhere.” He slipped behind the counter and added “But, then again, you can’t fall when you are already at rock bottom.”.