First off let me say that Robert was a goon. He went to school indifferently and sullenly, kept his head down except when he was cheating on a test, went to summer school, flunked out, went to night school, threw a rock through the trophy case, went to juvie, bungled a grand larceny, and got sent to prison. In prison his cellmate was a guy named Frank Nakamichi. This Nakamichi character was doing time for arson. Some guys served their sentences. Frank Nakamichi didn't. He escaped through a tunnel, stabbed a guard in the throat in the process. He then returned to Tokyo, where he became a smuggler of rare fish, an adjutant to a mid-level boss, and, in time, one of the most powerful criminals in Japanese history. Frank Nakamichi died in a gundown on Kosaka Saiwai Street in 1979.
Second off let me say that Robert's first wife was a woman named Eileen. She had rescued Robert after he got out of prison--he had been a pretty heavy drinker in his day, and Eileen believed in the Bible and wasn't afraid to say so--and to repay her for her care and her comfort he married her. They had one child, a son named Arthur, and then Eileen miscarried a handful of times. They named each of the children who they lost, even when friends and relatives suggested that naming dead children was an unhealthy practice. "Tim, Tom, Tina," Eileen said. Though Robert and Eileen were still young, they stopped trying to have more children when the doctors told her she had a rare blood disease that was causing the miscarriages. Robert and Eileen resigned themselves to Arthur, which is to say that they elevated him to godlike status. At that time, Robert owned and operated a little hardware store in downtown Portland, and all the money he made went for his son's betterment: education, entertainment, even a small savings account so that when Arthur graduated college he could start his own business without a loan. Then one day Arthur was driving with a friend, and the friend went through a red light, and a car broadsided them and killed Arthur instantly.
Third off let me say that Eileen died from taking too many pills shortly after that.
Fourth off let me say that Robert went on to live a life of abject dissolution for the better part of a decade. He lost the business, got back into petty scamming, then got back into larger cons. At first he was careful, the way an old thief is, but then he was less careful, and he got caught with eighty cases of stolen cigarettes. His mother, whose name was Roberta and who, when she was a younger, more vivacious woman, liked to tell people she was named after her oldest son, grew ashamed of him, so ashamed that she refused to take his phone calls. She had a stroke, then another stroke, and was buried next to her husband, who had died when Robert was only three years old.
Fifth off let me say that Robert wrote a letter to a woman from prison. This was in 1971, and he had met her through a pen-pal program. She was a young college student named Julie Goldstein, and she believed that all incarcerated men were being denied the opportunity to improve themselves. "I agree with you implicitly," said Robert, who had learned many big words in prison. "I hope that we get the opportunity to meet face-to-face and discuss this and other pressing issues in contemporary criminology." Julie wrote back to ask Robert if he had any violent tendencies toward women. "No," he wrote, "and I never have. I was a thief, not a thug." They were married eleven months later. At their wedding, which was sparsely attended on both sides due to the unusual circumstances, a man who worked in the kitchen had a heart attack and died. He was a Japanese man named Arthur. His name broke Robert's heart. Four years after Julie and Robert were married, he was released from prison on account of good behavior. He got a job driving a truck that made morning deliveries to restaurants. He was a hard worker and soon had purchased three trucks. It brought in enough money to make a stable life with Julie, who was teaching elementary school. Two years after Robert was released from prison, he and Julie welcomed a son, Ezra. Julie insisted on raising him in her faith, and Robert did not disagree. "You have given me nearly everything," he said to her one night. The more intimate Robert became, the more formal his speech. "Who am I to stand in the way of a significant spiritual desire such as this one?" Julie kissed Robert. Ezra cried softly from the next room: nightmares. Julie and Robert held each other and pledged to have another child, and another one after that. They never did. They live in Seattle. I have never been to Seattle, or any nearer to it than San Francisco.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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