Beyond the Hole in the Fence

Book summary

In 1950s New York, young Rainy and her Gramps escape an authoritative threat by merging with a vibrant traveling carnival. As they weave through the challenges of life among outcasts and face both a polio epidemic and the devastating Hurricane Able, Rainy confronts the meaning of "normal". Gwen Banta crafts a poignant tale in "Beyond the Hole in the Fence", exploring love, growth, and resilience amidst a backdrop of thrilling escapades and heartrending shifts.

Excerpt from Beyond the Hole in the Fence

My grandfather often said that every new day is like a bundle of Christmas. I found that to be a delightful thought once I finally reconciled his philosophy with my childhood, which could be more accurately described as a bundle of carnival freaks.

I confess that my lifestyle wasn't always so unorthodox. Although my birth name was Lorraine Merrill, everyone called me "Rainy" for short (except local delinquent Tommy DiGiovanni, who saddled me with "Drippy"). My early childhood resembled a stick drawing of a-mom-and-dad-and-dog-and-cat pastoral scene--like the kind of pictures that goofy kindergarten children create as their depiction of normalcy. But I thought I was as normal as all my other paste-eating, crayon-wielding friends … until I had to color my parents out of my drawings.

In my memory, I keep an album of snapshots of my mom, but sometimes it’s too painful to flip through the album because she died just before my eighth birthday. My mother was a gentle, soft-spoken schoolteacher who won a trip to Niagara Falls for being voted the best elementary teacher of the year in the Triple Cities, which includes Endicott, Binghamton, and Johnson City.

Dad, a baker at Eatwell Bakery, crowed with pride when we learned she had won the contest. Although he couldn’t get away from work long enough to accompany her, he insisted she go see the falls. "You earned this, bunny face," he told her, "and I want you to have the time of your life. I'll take care of our puppy." (I was the puppy. My father's nicknames for people he loved revolved around soft animals with floppy ears.)

Traveling had always been my mother's dream, but two days after she arrived, she stepped backward off a cliff while taking a photo, plunging to her death onto the rocks below. The account of her fatal accident was in all the newspapers and resulted in stricter safety regulations being implemented for the area, improvements that came too late to save my mom.

My father’s euphemism for her death was, "She's now resting in Niagara." He also claimed she probably passed out the second she slipped and therefore didn't suffer, which we both convinced ourselves to be true because we couldn't bear thinking of the alternative.

Not too long after my mother’s accident, my dad experienced a nervous breakdown at the bakery. His only explanation was that the smell of donuts made him inexplicably sad. After an extended hospital stay, he finally returned to his job, but he took his melancholy to work with him every day for five years like a thermos of coffee in a lunch pail. There were intermittent hospital stays during those years, and with each one, I lost a bit more of my dad.

Unfortunately, the owner of the bakery eventually let him go "for the sake of his recovery," which my grandpa declared was a cowardly way of saying; "I'm firing you because I'm a callous blockhead."

The day Dad lost his job, my irate grandpa marched over to Eatwell Bakery, pulled the boss aside, and accused the guy of being a "heartless donut-hole." (I suspect Gramps cleaned up the actual story when he related it to me.) According to Gramps, the boss sputtered like a dummy and claimed he couldn't just stand by while my dad's tears dripped all over the pastries. Gramps, with his usual touch of irony, told the boss that his muffins were tasteless anyway, so my dad was only doing him a favor. The best revenge was when Gramps spontaneously slugged an innocent-looking blueberry pie and two hapless croissants before storming out the door.

When my father lost his job permanently, I was thirteen years old. Because of my father’s loss of income, we had to move out of our house on Elm Street into a roomy but modest apartment above a six-car garage on nearby Jennings Street. Gramps and my father were very close, so Grandpa gave up his flat and moved in to help us out. "You just get better," he told my dad, "I'll mind the puppy."

My grandpa, a local landscaper, would often bring home different plants and bugs to teach me about botany and entomology. He was a very funny man with mischievous blue eyes, silver hair, and a tender heart--kind of a skinny version of Santa Claus. He was my own bundle of Christmas.

Gramps was also very creative. Together, we decorated my room with paper monarch butterflies we made from newspaper and wire, and every time he would bring home a new species of caterpillar, we would create a likeness out of papier-mâché until my room looked like the Museum of Natural History. I told Gramps that all that was missing was a dinosaur, and soon afterward, a Tyrannosaurus with bloody claws showed up on my dresser.

He was also very good with chemistry, so he conducted a variety of science experiments in our kitchen like the neighborly scientist Don Herbert on the television program, “Watch Mr. Wizard.” One time, Gramps caused a fizzling eruption while creating bath balls, so the ingredients oozed all over the counter like a creature from a horror movie. I loved it, of course.

Gramps knew my favorite experiments were the ones that went awry, so I always suspected that he planned the exhilarating outcome. I wasn’t sure until my dad spilled the beans after Gramps botched a baking soda and vinegar experiment which caused an explosion that peeled some of the wallpaper off the kitchen wall.

"Don't let 'Mr. Wizard' fool you like he used to fool me, Rainy," my dad yelled from his bedroom, which was all the confirmation I needed that Grandpa planned his science snafus as a means of entertainment.

I know my dad and Gramps tried very hard to make my childhood seem normal, but how does a kid know what normal is, anyway? It seems to me that we define normalcy based on personal experiences, so at that point in my life, I had no concept of what was different. And yet my childhood turned out to be as unconventional as one might ever imagine.

***

As time passed, Dad's doctors prescribed a variety of medications for him, but he continued to slip deeper into depression; and every week he became thinner and weaker. Grandpa and I did the cooking and cleaning while my father stayed in bed most of the time.

Grandpa's cooking was very creative. He made grilled cheese with pickles, and beans on toast with shaved carrots on top. (The carrots were to ensure that I met the USDA's recommended daily quota of vegetables in case the Endicott Nutrition S.S. ever knocked on our door to inquire.)

Although we had limited funds, Gramps always made dinner fun. Each week, he brought home a gooey jelly roll from the A&P Grocery. I always got the biggest slice of the pinwheel-like confection. To make it as "Parisian as the Eiffel Tower," Grandpa added a dollop of his homemade strawberry jam on top, undaunted by the threat of cavities.

My father stopped coming to the dinner table, so we served him his meals in bed. Gramps tried to make him laugh by playing pranks in hopes the silliness would lift Dad’s spirits. One day, he bought home plastic ice cubes that contained bug-eyed insects and served them to my father in a glass of lemonade. Dad didn't laugh much anymore, so when he feigned horror, we were delighted.

On another occasion, Gramps, pretending to discover something "nasally offensive" on his shoe, scraped it off and then licked his finger to identify the brown substance. "Yup," he said, "it's that tick-riddled dog with the overactive bowels that belongs to the Westons."

On his cue, I scooped up a finger-full to taste for myself. "Hmm … I think you're right, Gramps. That’s beagle poop."

Of course, it was peanut butter, but Dad laughed loudly anyway. We were encouraged each time he laughed, although even then, I knew those moments were rapidly slipping away.