June
3, 1994
When talking to Rich Haas last night, I kept
thinking of the old deodorant TV commercial from the 1960s: Cool, calm and
collected. You wouldn't think his world had just been shaken to the foundations
-- though his feet have always been more firmly placed than Jimmy's and others
of the old Garley gang. The impact of his mother's moving back into the Lake Hopatcong
house lacked the devastating sense I got from Jimmy four days ago.
Options are everything. People are less
emotional when they have enough sense of balance that they can ride out the big
storms along with the petty. Jimmy has never been comfortable with change,
although his life has largely been one long storm, casting him from island to
island. With each new landing, Jimmy lays claim like a new Columbus.
``This is will be my final resting place,'' he
seemed to say.
Rich has cast about with similar frequency,
living in New York City for a while, and for a longer time, in his mother's
Little Falls home where he grew up. In-between, he spent months, years and
alternate weekends in Maryland where he lived out the fantasy inspired by the
Dustin Hoffman movie, ``The Graduate.''
During the 1970s, we talked much in awe about
Rich's ability to sustain mother and daughter in that kind of relationship,
puzzled by him, admiring him, wondering about how the quietest of our old gang
had managed to become the most progressive.
But always, from the moment when they were
teenagers living in Little Falls until this week, Jimmy and Rich were friends
-- that deep mysterious kind of close friends, inspiring another kind of talk.
Were they or weren't they, some of us asked? How could two men live together in
Lake Hopatcong for nine years without women and not be -- well, you know. I'm
still not sure if our earlier admiration for Rich's prowess with women had been
an underestimation.
Still, friendship can wear thin, especially
with Jimmy. Those of us who lived with him even for a short while know the
great patience it takes to endure his habits and moods. Self-centered does not
define Jimmy adequately enough. For Jimmy, there is only Jimmy -- although
sometimes his manipulations take on a more generous appearance. Some of us ask
how Rich had managed to live so long with Jimmy without killing him. Certainly Garrick,
who lived with Jimmy off and on for nearly as long a period, came close to
murder routinely. Their legendary verbal battles make up a healthy chunk of our
folk lore.
Now, Rich and Jimmy part again with the same nonchalant
nod with which they connected back in 1985. Jimmy's upset, nervous about the
future, yet the fireworks associated with breaks between Jimmy and Garrick did
not occur, at least not in public. All this is an amiable divorce with each
partner going his separate way. No whispered words of hatred or bad feelings.
For Rich this is easier. He has a job and
savings and credit, and a large part of the electronic claptrap (computers, pianos,
stereo's etc.) to fill any new space. I guess the hour and half (one way)
commute daily made a move east attractive. The fact that he and Jimmy are not
seeking another apartment together suggests a relief of sorts there, too. While
we may not have seen explosions, tensions existed and grew, and Rich, no doubt,
weary of the whole experience, seeks privacy again -- and maybe, if that part
of him as not totally died, a more romantic element Jimmy could never satisfy.
So calmly, without the usual rising clouds and
winds and rain, waves push them on to a new set of more desperate islands,
ending the nine-year nearly magical era on Bertrand’s Island.
Rich, of course, says we'll still picnic
there, the way we all did before he and Jimmy set up ``permanent'' residents
there. Yet, it won't be the same. That small paradise had often been refuge in
our own changes, a bit of solid unchanging ground to which we could go and feel
secure. Now nothing seems perpetual. Nothing anchors us. We all begin to drift
apart, seeking our own new islands.
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