I don’t read a “real” newspaper regularly. But when I visit my mother, it’s the first thing I turn to upon waking. I scan the Sports and the Arts, but I save the Obituaries for my third cup of coffee. I’ve always read the death notices, and sometimes I wonder if doing so means that I have a problem.
As a kid, I played a game where I’d find the oldest dead person in the obituaries and award him or her the longevity prize. Then, I’d count the number of years everyone in my family had to live to measure up to this winner. That was the closest I got to death—believing, like most kids, that nothing so final would come to anyone I knew anytime soon.
Reading the obituaries when I visit my hometown has its rewards. Usually I encounter someone I “used to know when.” A former professor, sometimes an old schoolmate. This isn’t thrilling business, and maybe it’s just the maudlin-depressive part of me that searches for certain death in this particular, outdated form. But one dreary, late fall morning last year, I found a name that truly set me back.
Lumpkin, Hoyt Leon (73).
It’s my Aunt Carole’s husband, a man she divorced over 30 years ago, a mere 10 years before she herself died of a debilitating form of multiple sclerosis. Her last years—she died when she was 56—were ravaged ones. She looked like she was 104, toothless, wrinkled.
She looked like one of those screaming faces from the opening credits of “The X-Files,” an alien in the body of a woman who used to drive a fancy yellow Firebird.
My uncle’s obituary is a revelation in many ways. I hadn’t seen him since they divorced; he didn’t come to Aunt Carole’s funeral, but then neither did my grandmother for reasons known only to her. She claimed to be suffering from acute agoraphobia. I never believed her, and wondered then, and now, how a person could live with herself after refusing to attend her daughter’s last rites. But that was my grandmother, MaMa, a victim of her own narcissism.
And here before me now is Uncle Leon, or as I knew him then, Uncle Leo.
I’m sure it’s him: graduate of Woodlawn High, check. Former member of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Check. How many Mormons named Hoyt Leon/Leo Lumpkin of a certain age who graduated from Woodlawn High in late 50s Birmingham, Alabama, could there be?
My mind travels back to those days. He and Aunt Carole married in secret; they slipped away for a secret service, the time and place forever unknown to me. They told the rest of the family about their deed only the day before Aunt Carole introduced Uncle Leon at our weekly supper at my grandmother’s—a setting where we’d get takeout deli from Browdy’s. Uncle Leon was a lapsed Mormon, while Aunt Carole was a lapsed Jew. They were married for just over fifteen years, and then they slipped away again, this time from each other.
After their divorce, as we watched Aunt Carole’s body and mind fail, we failed to know or care where Uncle Leon went. None of us bothered to keep in touch with this man who had been a regular feature at our Sunday suppers for all those years.
My mind returned to my mother’s kitchen table, though I still felt caught in some distant twilight zone. Isn’t it the strangest thing to read from an objective news source that a relative—even one by marriage—has died? It’s just so displacing.
Uncle Leon was survived by his sister. I didn’t know he had a sister. None of us ever met her or anyone else in his family. I think I assumed he didn’t have any family, as if he appeared fully-formed at age 33 fresh from a pod or some adult orphanage.
As if he weren’t real until he became “one of us.” Which, of course, he never really did.
All this flashed through me in a moment as I scanned his final notice. In another moment, I called my mother over:
“Look at this Mom! It’s Uncle Leo!”
She read the obituary.
“Are you sure?
“Who else could it be?”
“I guess you’re right. How strange. You know, once they put Carole into the home, we never heard from Leo again.”
Why would he stay in touch with any of us, I wondered? Did we ever really like him? Did we accept him at all during those 15 years?
I know that MaMa didn’t. She and Aunt Carole lived together in a one-bedroom apartment until Carole finally moved out at some point in her early 30s. And when Carole moved out, I overheard my Dad mutter, “She’ll regret this one day.”
I don’t know how one regrets abandoning one’s mother’s bedroom while in the prime of adult life, but then my Dad said many mysterious things when speaking of his mother.
As for Uncle Leon, Dad’s opinion was that the guy was a “know-it-all,” plain and simple.
“There’s no subject he doesn’t have an opinion on,” Dad declared, echoing a sentiment I heard MaMa pronounce whenever my aunt and uncle were absent.
Dad’s opinion was that his only sister married out of fear of becoming an old maid. I suppose he had a point. But then I thought my aunt was pretty. She had translucent skin, big green eyes, and she dyed her hair a deep red, poofed into a beehive. In good weather she wore capris with exotic Egyptian-styled slip-on shoes. She smoked L&N cigarettes, frequented Mammy’s Pancake House, and loved anchovies on her pizza—a pizza I remember her eating while my Dad and grandmother suffered through Passover’s Bread of Affliction.
I never learned how she met Uncle Leon. Maybe it was at Mammy’s. Or maybe it was at Aunt Carole’s favorite nightclub, The Boom-Boom Room. Sometimes MaMa would accompany my aunt to these places. But I guess that on the night she met Uncle Leon, Carole had managed to get out of the apartment without her mother. Clearly, at some point she did have to take charge of her life—trust her own instincts.
Still, when I saw her new husband, I had to wonder if she knew what she was doing.
I found out that I was meeting him only as we were driving to my grandmother’s. My brother and I were reading comics in the backseat when I heard my mother say something about Carole and her “husband.”
“What are you talking about,” I falsetto-screamed.
“Didn’t you tell them,” Dad asked Mom.
“Why should I tell them,” Mom answered. “She’s your sister.”
Dad at least volunteered the following then: “His name is Hoyt Leo. I don’t know what we’re supposed to call him. He’s a Mormon, or was, and he has only three or four front teeth.”
Not much to go on for some; for me, it was a story straight out of a Ray Bradbury.
Soon we were there, and I was shaking hands with this new member of my family. I remember my grandmother actually saying welcome to the family, and I thought then that her tone—kind of whiny and beleaguered—sounded like she was apologizing for something. Like the family either had something to hide or some ritual to enact that no one would welcome. I was too young then to believe that anyone in my family could ever be insincere.
Uncle Leon was a tall, but not-so-commanding presence. He wore a black suit, white shirt, and skinny black tie at that first meeting, and maybe his choice did signify some future history. He had black hair, too, and if I had only been able to peer into the future then, I’d have described his hair as Kramer-esque.
Something straight out of David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
He had a wide face until you reached his chin, and then that bone tapered out for another good six inches, giving his head the semblance of a yield sign, especially after he grew his six-inch sideburns a few months later. At 6 feet 4 inches and weighing around 220, he certainly fit the ex-football player physique.
Best of all, he drove a potato chip delivery truck, something I had never heard of. The company was Charles Chips, and so Uncle Leon’s brand supplanted the family favorite: Alabama football icon Bear Bryant’s own favorite brand, Golden Flake. A sacrilege in much of Alabama, and certainly from my Dad’s viewpoint. And I have to say that to this day, I’m horribly conflicted when I survey the grocery store chip aisle. I feel like a traitor no matter what I do.
On that first night, Uncle Leon didn’t say too much, but when he did, I counted them. Two upper teeth and a single lower one.
Over the first five years that I knew him, Uncle Leon altered his appearance someone drastically. I wish I could say it was for the better. At least he did get his bridgework done, which I suppose led to one of the other noticeable changes. It must feel good to be able to chew, because Uncle Leon did a lot of chewing after getting his new teeth. I’d say he gained fifty or sixty pounds easy.
So picture this: Uncle Leon’s weight gain concentrates strictly in his belly which now must exude considerable energy just to maintain its containment. And it tries, aided by Uncle Leon’s choice of belt to complement his purple flares and paisley shirt: a very wide, black faux leather belt with a huge round, brushed steel buckle that has one word imbedded in it: LOVE.
Still, no belt in this world, saying love, hate, or even Woodlawn High could have subdued that belly of his for long. It shook, folded over, and threatened all sorts of mayhem. Not that Uncle Leon ever seemed to notice or be bothered by it.
Though I wasn’t so sure how my Aunt Carole felt.
But maybe I did know then as I believe I know now, for I see this scene clearly:
Uncle Leon puts his arm around her as they’re saying goodbye to us. Instead of returning the gesture, her arm reaches right across her own chest. She holds tight to her other arm, an instinctive defense.
* * *
My relationship with Uncle Leon also led me to an area that I had only explored through the bold maneuverings of my adolescent friends. They thought nothing of standing at our local newsstand, picking up an accessible Playboy magazine, and exposing the pictures to any and all passers by. Of course, the one time I tried this on my own, the store owner gently but firmly suggested that I look at more appropriate material.
But with Uncle Leon, I struck gold.
I didn’t know anyone who actually subscribed to Playboy before I met him. But when he and Aunt Carole moved into an apartment just across the street from my grandmother and had us all for supper at their place one Sunday, well, there they were, proudly displayed on the living room coffee table with Uncle Leon’s address clearly labeled on the front. I could barely eat my kosher salami that night.
Over the following weeks, when we returned to our regular suppers at my grandmother’s place, I’d wander outside after eating. Was it possible to sneak into Uncle Leon’s apartment? Would they have left the door unlocked? Was a window enough of an opening to slide in?
With my little brother as lookout, I tried the door. Unlocked. I motioned him over.
“Knock on the door loud if someone comes out of MaMa’s apartment,” I commanded.
And so I went in. In the living room closet, I found stacks and stacks of back issues. I picked a few, opened them to the center, and proceeded to easily tear out the centerfolds. I got three the first night, and three more over the following several Sundays. I don’t know if Uncle Leon ever caught on to what I was doing, if he ever discovered the missing Playmates.
Or if he ever let his subscription lapse.
Of course, today I wonder just how my aunt stood all this, or if she said anything about it at all.
It’s not an amusing business to consider your relatives’ sex life, and I swear that I’ve done so only for the sake of this story. Still, it’s hard not to wonder what went on in their private lives. I, for one, believed that they would become just like any other married couple—a couple who would someday have children of their own.
I said as much to the wrong person, however, on the night I met my new uncle. Oh so innocently, I thought my grandmother would find my thoughts hopeful and echo them:
“Just think MaMa, one day you might be a grandmother again!”
From the look of abject horror on her face, you would have thought I had said:
“Hey MaMa, I was thinking about defecting to the Soviet Union and then helping them invade America so that we could torture old Jewish ladies for fun.”
Her words, though, were even more terrifying:
“Oh, no, no, no, no! She can’t have children. Ever. Don’t ever say that again. Do you hear me,” she yelled.
I guess I didn’t know what I was saying. I had only the barest notion then of how couples made babies, but as time passed, as I learned the fundamentals, as I saw Uncle Leon’s girth grow exponentially, I thought about him and my aunt. About him crushing her with his weight. She weighed probably 105, if that. He was almost three times her weight. I didn’t consider this image for long. It was just too horrible.
So maybe my grandmother knew something I didn’t. Maybe my aunt was more fragile than I knew. Maybe my grandmother saw a weakness, a defect that spelled doom for all.
Or, alternately, maybe my grandmother was a selfish bitch who wanted her daughter solely for herself.
My grandmother is still the only Jew I know, the only adult or person of any sort, who apologized for Joe McCarthy, claiming that he was misunderstood: that he was only trying to rid us of all those communists who were fluoridating our water, foisting the UN and UNICEF on us. Who maybe were behind the little green men living in the earth’s core. You know those men, right? My grandmother loved lying in bed late at night listening to talk radio from northern cities. Feeding her imagination and paranoia. If she felt this way about McCarthy, what did she feel for the rest of us? Especially for my poor Aunt Carole? And for years, Aunt Carole endured this only to find solace, salvation, in the arms/stomach of Uncle Leon?
When, after years of living with and being unsuccessfully treated for MS, my aunt literally lost her mind, was it these experiences that did her in? That she decided NOT to remember? That she completely disassociated from?
If so, could anyone blame her?
In a funny way, I think Uncle Leon did love all of us. We were his family during those years, maybe the only ones he had. In perhaps the strangest turn of all, after a few weeks, I heard him refer to my grandmother as mom, to her face. I certainly never saw her as such. She was a cranky, formidable matriarch, and poor Uncle Leon never knew, or at least I don’t think he did, what she said about him behind his back. That he was a liar, a braggart. That she never wanted to see any child that he and Aunt Carole might produce.
Of course, during this time I never thought about life or our family from Uncle Leon’s perspective. I don’t know that I gave him credit for even having a perspective. I’ve learned better, I hope. And so, if none of us gave him credit for anything other than being Aunt Carole’s last grasp at avoiding perpetual maidenhood, and for being only a no-count, overweight, potato-chip delivery reject, I’d like to say something good about this man, my would-be forgotten Uncle Leo.
I think he did love my aunt and wanted the same sort of life with her that all the “normal” middle-class couple had. In the last few years of their marriage, they finally bought a house, far enough away from my grandmother to gain some peace and to live as an independent couple. Uncle Leon had the first Betamax recorder I ever saw, too, and he kept tapes of all the Alabama football games, thus finally endearing him to my Dad.
And I, though I was surely alone in this sentiment, appreciated his musical tastes.
Aunt Carole liked pop music, too, but her favorite act was The Righteous Brothers, especially the deep baritone of Bill Medley. I didn’t mind them, and I’ll stand by her favorite song “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” even today. I wonder all the time what that song really meant to her, the story it told about her.
But Uncle Leon’s tastes were more rock-oriented. Once, when they were at our house for Christmas, I had my stack of 45’s on the turntable, serenading/distorting everyone’s sentiments on this special day. I remember when The Guess Who’s “American Woman” cued up.
Uncle Leon emerged from his adult conversation. “Great song, buddy!”
We listened together.
American Woman, stay away from me-eee. American Woman, Mama let me be-eee. Don’t come hangin’ around my door. I don’t wanna see your face no more. Colored light can hypnotize, sparkle someone else’s eyes!
Of course to me, it was just another good song from that era. What was it to Uncle Leon? Or to Aunt Carole, if she was even listening as she sampled the giblet gravy?
And, unlike most adults, Uncle Leon played games with us kids. Once, he challenged me to a checkers match. Supposedly he was a chess master, and so maybe he did “condescend” to engage me in this lesser sport. When we played that day, however, for the only time in my checkers’ life, I was the master. I saw moves four and five steps ahead. I saw what I could do and what my move would force Uncle Leon to do. And he fell into every trap as I double-jumped him repeatedly.
Two weeks later, he trounced me in a rematch that must have taken all of four minutes.
I was only 12 then, and such victories and defeats didn’t always register. But I am still glad these did.
Just as I’m glad about the time Uncle Leon agreed to play hopscotch with me and my brother on a sunny summer afternoon. A 260-pound man doesn’t balance easily as he hops and bends on one foot to pick up an unpolished stone. But Uncle Leon did, and maybe that afternoon he scored as many points with Aunt Carole as he did with my brother and me.
After all, what’s so funny about a grown man playing hopscotch with his nephews? Why would you not pull for a fellow who, for his wife’s sake, attempted to fit into a family whose matriarch loved Joe McCarthy? A family that if not exactly urging your divorce, nonetheless applauded when that admitted failure occurred.
Peace was only a tenuous reality while Uncle Leon was in the family, but I can’t say it was achieved after he left, or before he arrived. My aunt’s loneliness, her horrible sickness and death made life hard. And then there was always my grandmother. I say “always” because she lived till she was ninety-nine, and he negative influence on this marriage mirrored the one she had on my parents’ marriage.
For Uncle Leon, you see, was not alone in never being accepted “into the family.”
* * *
These scenes run through me now as I get the scissors and cut Uncle Leon’s obituary out of the paper. I still keep it in my journal where it still rests securely and, I hope, in peace.
I can’t say that I loved you, Uncle Leo, but for a few years, I did know you. I ate your chips, stole your centerfolds, beat you once in checkers, and tried to like you.
I guess I did like you.
I had no real reason not to, but back then, like most adolescents, I thought that you were just some other family member who would always be in my life.
You came into my life one Sunday afternoon in the fall and exited on another Sunday, fifteen years later. I never really forgot you, though I also never tried to find you.
Except in the obituaries.
•••
© Terry Barr