Don’t Look Behind You

dad loved chasing the Blue Light Specials there.
    “When we got home, we ate spaghetti and meatballs. I came to dread Sundays because I was the one who had to wash all those greasy dishes!”
    There was no question that Joe Tarricone forged deep bonds with all seven of his children. He and Rose had been married three decades, and they were living back in New Mexico when Joe came home and once again shouted, “Pack up, Rose! We’re moving to Texas!”
    For the first time, Rose said, “No, Joe—I’m not leaving my house. I’m tired of moving for thirty years. No more.”
    He didn’t believe her, and his response was flip: “Then I’ll divorce you.”
    “Fine.”
    “My dad was blowing smoke,” Gypsy says. “But my mother meant it. She didn’t want to move again.”
    Joe hadn’t really expected to be divorced, thinking at first that Rose would change her mind about moving to Texas. And, of course, she didn’t.
    Their affection for each other didn’t diminish, but Joe was still the eagle, flying free, looking for a fortune in the next town or the next state.
    And Rose loved her garden and especially enjoyed knowing that she would be there when the perennials she planted returned each spring. She gloried in the permanence of being in her own house with her treasured furniture, curtains, and knickknacks around her.
    Gina was sixteen, Rosemary was thirteen, and Dean was ten when their parents broke up. Claire, Aldo, Joey, and Gypsy were out and on their own. Joe promised to support his youngest children and he kept that promise; he would never miss sending a check to Rose for their school clothes and monthly expenses.
    Not until the fall of 1978.
    School was starting in Albuquerque, and Rose looked for the extra check Joe always sent to buy Gina, Rosemary, and Dean new clothes for school and money for books and supplies. Day after day she checked her mailbox, but the check never came. Nor did the monthly child support that had arrived in the first week of every month. There was no check in October, or ever again.
    Rose and Joe were divorced by then, but she counted on him. That just wasn’t like Joe. He had always been a good provider. Rose had gone to a legal aid office when she and Joe split up, and they helped her get the divorce. She also got her GED certificate, a high school degree, after all that time. Rose was only fifty and she still had three children at home. Although Joe’s contributions helped out, she knew she would have to get a job,something she was actually looking forward to. After he vanished, she had no choice but to provide financially for the children.
    Rose applied for a job with See’s Candies and soon became a manager. She had no animosity toward Joe; it was just that their goals in life had grown so far apart. He kept his promise to come home at least twice a year to see their children and they had talked comfortably when he did.
    A few years after her divorce, Rose Tarricone began seeing an aeronautical engineer and they eventually married. He saw how hard she had worked over the years, and he also worried about her chronic migraine headaches. Her new husband wanted her to relax, and she finally agreed to retire from her candy factory job.
    No longer a married man, Joe Tarricone had been ripe for a midlife crisis when he received his divorce papers. In his midfifties, he was still a good-looking man, although his dark, wavy hairline had crept backward several inches. He embraced the style of men’s fashions in the late seventies. Up until then he’d mostly worn work clothes or armed service uniforms. Now he chose brightly colored leisure suits, polyester bell-bottom trousers, wide neckties, or muslin shirts with embroidery. Heavy gold chains were de rigueur for hairy-chested men like Joe, and he soon bought a few.
    He had married so young, he was suddenly single after thirty years, and it somehow felt wrong for a man who had always been part of a Catholic family. There was an emptinessthat Joe wasn’t prepared for, even though he was regularly in touch with his seven children and ex-wife. He wasn’t broken-hearted, but he was lonely, and he was ready to date.
    He was attracted to women a generation—or more—younger than he was. That wasn’t unusual; many men in the grip of a midlife crisis seek to recover their youth by dating women young enough to be their daughters. Joe Tarricone was certainly one of them.
    He was living in Seattle at the time of his divorce, working