At Home in Upper Arlington
Sunday, March 8, 1964
I heard the “termites” in the basement again on the weekend. I was working on a model in the rec room when they started chirping again. The house was very quiet for a Saturday because my brothers and sister were all playing over at the neighbor’s house. So I could hear them real good, like a scratching noise.
I was just starting to try to find out where exactly it was coming from when Dad came down stairs.
“Dad, what do termites sound like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you hear that sound? I think we have termites in the walls.” Then we were both quiet listening.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, licking his lips quickly. “I know what...You had me worried there. That’s not termites. Just forget about it, son.”
“But what is it?”
He got that funny little smile of his on his face, cocked his head to the side and whispered. “This will just be our little secret, Tom. And we won’t tell anyone about it, especially not Mom. She’ll just worry about it. You wouldn’t want to worry your mother.”
“Gee, no, Dad.”
“Good, that’s my son.” He put his arm around my shoulders as he led me upstairs.
It wasn’t until later that night I figured out he hadn’t given me any secret to keep!
So today after school I’m back in the basement listening for those termites. Luckily the little kids are all upstairs in their bedrooms playing, so I can hear good. Dad’s not around, just Mom. I don’t have to wait too long.
The termites are back and I’m looking everywhere for them. Finally I pull up the sofa cover and look underneath the old sofa and find it. It’s that machine from Dad’s office. You talk into a microphone and it makes a little plastic record of your voice. It’s supposed to be for a secretary to use but he doesn’t have one. He let us use it once to record part of the sound of the Wizard of Oz off the TV. Now the little record is going around and around and the scratchy noises are voices coming from the needle.
I move in to look at it closer. Suddenly it stops and I freeze! Did I do something? Dad’ll have my hide if I broke it.
You can hear a pin drop. The only sound is Mom walking around in her bedroom. I hear her footsteps move away and then back to the phone in her room. Suddenly the machine comes on again! There’s a clicking noise, like dialling a phone. I hear Mom’s loud voice coming through the floor. Then I hear a scratchy version of her voice coming from the machine. If I lean close to the machine, I can hear the words.
Mom says: “I can’t wait till Friday. I’ll see you tonight.”
A man’s voice says: “But Lesley, I told you...”
Mom says: “Tonight! The same place and you’d better be there, buddy-boy!”
She slams the phone down and the machine stops. Then I hear her footsteps coming out of the bedroom. I drop the sofa cover quick. All I can think is she’d better not see me by this machine. I check the sofa one last time before she calls down to me from the kitchen.
“Are you down there, Tom?”
“Yeah, Mom, just reading.”
“You come up here and watch the kids now. I’ve got to go out.” I take one last look at the sofa. I haven’t changed anything.
In green ink, Summer of 1973
So it was, dear Theresa, the opening shot in the war between my parents. My father’s original crime. Can you believe it! Spying on your own family! The James Bond complex carried to an illogical extreme. He must have had a confederate... Now I know why he courted the friendship of that nerd electrician he met working for Motorola. He used to take us to his super high-technology house in Worthington. The nerd had the whole house wired to his “Eagles Nest” attic where he sat up late playing the 1812 Overture on a monster tape deck with eight speakers or else listening through hidden microphones scattered through the house to the rest of his family. The original George Burns. And Dad was his willing apprentice. “Say man, can you help me bug my wife?”
Imagine them creeping into the house while the little woman’s out. Iago and Othello (who’s who?) going to the basement to catch Desdemona in the act. Rigging it up, bugging the house, the original White House Plumbers. Now we’ll get her!
In blue ink, 1978
Interesting question, was he motivated by jealousy?
