Prologue
Present Day
As a boy, I made a bet with my brother, Frankie, that I wouldn’t make it past fifty. At seventeen, I thought fifty was over the hill. Here I was, in this room on the morning of my ninetieth birthday, and Frankie wasn’t here to see it. As the youngest of five boys, I was the only surviving Hadley. Jimmy, the second oldest, died last year at the ripe old age of ninety-eight. Frankie, who was closest in age to me, died of a heart attack thirty years ago. Hopefully, he was looking down at me, throwing five bucks in my direction. Five bucks was a damn expensive bet for a couple of kids in the 1940s.
I didn’t need to be here. Nursing homes were the last stop before that celestial discharge in the sky. Unlike my dear friend Alex, I was a virile ninety-year-old who was playing ping pong at the senior center until two months ago when Alex fell and broke his hip from which he never recovered. Over the years, Parkinson’s disease took a toll on his body, but his mind was sharp as a tack. I couldn’t fathom living without my dear Alex. Alex and I swore we’d die together.
Alex had been awake for days, stricken with insomnia and recurring nightmares he only divulged to me. Finally, he accepted the sleeping pill and now rested peacefully and comfortably
Alex was a living angel, who had saved my life more than once. To our mother, he was her ‘little angel,’ and her five sons her ‘demons.’ As the youngest, I was her ‘little demon.’ My brothers and I were heathens, and that’s the way we liked it. Walter, Jimmy, and Donnie used to have peeing contests in the backyard. Donnie could always pee the farthest, hitting the bucket each time. Too young to play that game, Frankie and I played it in the bathroom instead. We infuriated our mother. She always made us clean up our messes. Ah, those were the good old days.
Despite our shenanigans and my forbidden love with the Polish boy, our parents never attempted to change us. I never appreciated them until they were gone.
Alex and I did what we had to do to protect ourselves. In the 1950s, the police and government often threw innocent homosexual men and women in jail. In the era of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, paranoia ran rampant in the United States. Historians prefer to talk about the Red Scare and the fear of Communism instead of the Lavender Scare. Until the Stonewall riots in New York, Alex and I kept our forbidden love a secret. No one knew except close family members.
The type of love we shared was so forbidden, it was unspeakable, particularly in our small, gossipy Catholic community. Slightly effeminate and different from my brothers, people talked about me, making assumptions that were often correct but never spoken aloud. When kids threw rocks at me on my way home from school, my big brothers protected and defended me. You’d think those bullies would have stopped after my six foot one, two-hundred-pound football star brother, Frankie, punched Gerry Cormier’s lights out. But no, another group of hooligans took over. When Donnie nearly ran them over with the family tractor, they finally stopped.
Life wasn’t always easy. The Hadleys did whatever they could to keep the Orchard alive. Living through the Depression, followed by the Second World War and the death of our nineteen-year-old brother at Normandy, proved to be feats we feared we’d never overcome. Yet, despite everything, these challenges taught us all about the variations of what family meant.
With the arrival of a young man from Poland, family became more important than ever.
Just when I thought Alex had fallen into a peaceful slumber, his eyes sprung open. “Happy birthday,” he said.
“You could have waited to tell me that after your nap. You haven’t slept in three days.”
“I don’t want to sleep on your birthday.”
“Why not? It’s just another day.”
“That’s not what you told me last year.” Last April, Alex turned ninety, and I planned a big party at the senior center, but COVID hit some members, forcing the center to close again. Instead, we had a small gathering at the house. “Tell me a story.”
“I don’t think I have any more stories to tell.”
“Nonsense. Come sit down and read to me. Read from your book.”
Many years ago, Alex surprised me with seven books. He had gathered up the journals I’d kept over my long life and turned them into books. These stories were more than memoirs and collections of fictional short stories. They illustrated me and Alex’s journey in life together. These books were both presents to me and to my family whose support was unwavering in a time when people like Alex and I were shunned.
Alex referred to book number two, which began in 1950, his favorite book. “Please… sit down.”
With a muffled sigh, I sat down with book number two. And so it began.
