Chapter One

There are certain years over the course of one’s lifetime that stand out in hindsight not so much for their easy good fortune but rather for their difficult forced growth. 1968 was such a year for me. It was a year of rapid changes, when all one could do was ride the turbulent waves ashore, fighting and floating simultaneously. For my family, these waves came in the form of four consecutive holidays spent with my eccentric grandparents, holidays that eventually pulled us under, both personally and financially. I now realize the signposts were there for us all to see, but we humans are not particularly adept at understanding events untilafter they have surprised us. My mother’s descent into mental illness and the tragic details of her secretive past hung over those days like a brooding, persistent fog. Only the storms brought on by the inescapable family holidays were strong enough to clear the horizon and reveal the truth.

Why was my family so bizarre? Had I been secretly adopted? Was I being punished for the sins of some previous life? Surely I could not be genetically related to these people. All I ever wanted was a normal family—whatever that might be—free from the constant insanity and fighting, to be raised in a supportive environment along the lines of what I saw in other respectable homes.

My grandparents were holed up in a brick mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, just a half hour from New York City. Grandpa had been an explorer in the 1920s and a foreign war correspondent during World War Two, and there was a mysterious bomb shelter on his property, a subterranean hideout where he frequently slipped away for solitude and gin. World War Two was a fresh memory, with Cold War tensions running high, and my grandfather was well prepared for the coming Russian invasion, his bomb shelter stocked with booze and tin cans of herring packed in oil. Knowing this, I decided when doomsday arrived I’d take my chances above ground armed with my favorite candy rather than retreat to Grandpa’s Armageddon palace.

In 1968, when I was a boy of ten, three generations of my batty clan gathered in Greenwich to celebrate Thanksgiving. I awoke at seven o’clock the morning before Thanksgiving Day to the sound of a loud thud coming from the hallway. I put on the casual clothes my mother had laid out the night before and departed the relative safety of my bedroom to see what had happened. My grandfather’s bathroom door was slightly ajar and I saw him standing in front of the toilet, rubbing his forehead. “Damn that low door,” he muttered to himself. He flushed the toilet and his hearing aid popped from his ear into the swirling water. “Get back here!” he shoved his hand into the toilet, too late. I dashed down the central stairway before he could see me. My family was seated at the formal dining room table waiting for Grandpa and me.

“Good morning, Henry,” my grandmother kissed me on the cheek. “Did you see your grandfather?”

“I think he’ll be down soon,” I pulled up a seat next to my father. Granny l