Fathers and Demons

Like a lot of East Coast liberals I was raised what I like to call PBS, Protestant But Secular. That is, my family never went to church, but if we had it would have been with the Congregationalists or the Unitarians. At one time, I am told, my parents were pillars of the church; my father even graduated from Harvard Divinity School. But one thing led to another, and by the time I was born, the Kenowers’ church-going days were done.

Things change, however, and if they change enough you sometimes end up back where you started. Shortly after my father married his fourth wife, he had a spiritual awakening, and before long he was driving to Barrington, Rhode Island every Sunday to attend Barrington Presbyterian. This was less of a seismic shake-up than one might imagine. In between losing and finding God, my father was always searching for the book, the philosophy, the way that would guide him through the uncertain waters of life. It only made sense that he should eventually return to the first and maybe greatest self-help book of them all, The Bible.

At this same time, my younger brother, John, and I had begun a great adventure of our own. Having dreamed all our childhood of fame, we decided at the ages of 23 and 21 that it was time to get on with the business of achieving the sort of incredible artistic success of which all our enemies would be jealous. To that end, we had written, and with much diligence and a little luck, had managed to find venues in and around Providence to perform a two-man comedy review. It was hard work, we were young, we still had our day jobs, and theater, especially small theater, especially small theater in Rhode Island, is not the quickest way to “the top.”

Still, we were doing it. We started with the proverbial nothing, just an idea, and in a year we were performing to audiences of laughing strangers. I said to my brother once, “If I had known at the beginning what was actually going to be required to do this, I don’t know if I ever would have started.” Fortunately, I didn’t know. All I did know, which is all one ever gets to know, was that I was in one place and wanted to get to another place. We called our show From Here to There.

That summer my father was invited to deliver a Sunday sermon to his congregation, and my brother and I decided to attend. The worshipers at Barrington Presbyterian were a fairly conservative bunch, though not in any bible-thumping kind of way. Rather they were uniformly white, tended to be 40 and older (with the emphasis on the older), the men drank scotch and the women drank Chablis, they liked to sail, belonged, if possible, to a country club, and by and large went to church because, firstly, that’s what you did; secondly, because it was a pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning; and thirdly, to cover their bases, because if this stuff wasn’t all clap-trap they were not the sort who got turned away at gates, be they pearly or otherwise.

So, naturally, for his sermon’s topic, my father chose demons.

My father had always been rather socially tone deaf. Trips to the bank or a restaurant with him often resulted in some odd exchange with a puzzled teller or waitress—he was always trying a little too hard, talking a little too loud, asking questions that were just a little too personal. I think the world of strangers at times must have seemed as disorienting as a hall of mirrors to him, but he struggled through as best he could, and learned over the years to endure the awkward silences.

And so—the sermon. Demons, it turns out, were other people. Not all of them, but some, and the way you knew for sure that they were demons was if they made you feel bad. He discussed the pragmatic uses of exorcism. And then, to be sure these polite, scotch-sipping Baringtonians who were waiting to get back to their rose bushes and tee times understood just what a demon sounded like, my father imitated one. There on the pulpit, he raised his hands up in two claws, and rasped a wicked feline hissing snarl into the microphone.

Of all the awkward silences I’d heard echoed back to my father in department stores and post offices, none echoed longer or louder than after he hissed across the church like a demon. And yet, in his own strange way, my dad was trying to help the congregation across the divide that everyone must eventually find the wherewithal to navigate, a divide that can seem quite strewn with dangers, snares, and yes, on very dark nights, maybe even demons.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t working, and the hiss was merely the worst of it. The crowd fussed and coughed and checked their watches. And I, as son and actor, thought how I wasn’t my father, and how I would never make such a mistake, and how I had gotten good reviews, and how once, as my brother and I took our final bows, an old man in the front row had clapped and clapped and could be heard above all the other clapping saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I would become famous, and I would be fine.

After the service, my dad wanted us by his side while he stood at the doors of the church and was showered in gratitude and praise, and so John and I got to watch as one by one the congregants tried to think of something polite to say to our father. It was all very familiar to me. I looked at my shoe tops and thought how no one in our family was ever a success. Success was the heaven toward which all ambitions strove, a lovely mountaintop where you got to rest at last secure in the certainty of achievement.

It always sounded like a lovely place, especially compared to the flames of failure, that unmarked grave into which all bad ideas, bad jobs, and bad marriages eventually disappear. Somewhere, I knew, there was a path that led from the idea to the fruition, from the desire to the experience. But where, I wondered, and how did you ever know for sure if you were on it? I’m sure the sermon had seemed like a good idea to my father at the time he wrote it.

Once the awkward procession was over, we learned that none other than Kenny Walhberg was downstairs in the “Playroom.” Kenny had been a friend of my family’s growing up, and the closest thing to a successful artist our mom and dad had ever known. He had run the Rhode Island Puppet Workshop, which toured around the state to schools and fairs and wherever else he could, putting on puppet shows for children and “children at heart.” He was like our own Jim Henson. Whenever he performed in my school I felt special because he would come up to me afterward and say hello.

Kenny, my brother and I were told, wanted to see us. This would be good, I decided. The acrid taste of failure, albeit my father’s, still sat on palate. I had not seen Kenny since I was a boy, and now, all grown up with a show of my own, we could talk shop, receive his professional blessing, and I could feel certain of my future once again.

John and I found him in a small room in the church’s basement, picking up abandoned toys now that the tots had rejoined their parents. Kenny didn’t look so good. He had put on weight, his mustache, which I remembered as a happy, bushy caterpillar, looked heavy and droopy under his nose, and his signature mop of curly brown hair, which had once seemed so wild and interesting, now merely appeared in need of a trim.

John and I skipped quickly over my father’s sermon and got right down to how great our show was doing. We told him about the theaters where we’d performed, about the good reviews we’d gotten, about our talented piano player and the lighting manager we’d just picked up.

Kenny nodded and picked up more toys.

“So you making any money at it?”

“Money? Not much yet,” I began defensively. “But we’re going to try and do the colleges, you know—maybe take it to Boston.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s real hard. I mean—there’s just very little money in it. I did it, and did it, and did it for fifteen years. And I tried everything, believe me: Schools, colleges, fairs—everything. But there was never any money in it. Maybe you get a grant here or there or whatever. It’s never enough. I finally had to give it up. It’s just so hard. It’s great to do it and everything—I mean it’s satisfying or whatever—but there’s just no money in it at all.”

We got out of the church as quickly as possible. Before we were off the front steps my brother and I were already reminding each other how we’d never much cared for the Puppet Workshop, that it had been a rinky-dink operation, that there was a big difference between puppets and theater, and that we had no intention of staying in Rhode Island.

All of this seemed true, yet it couldn’t settle the matter completely. As we pulled away, and as we tried to find one more difference between the Kenower brothers and Kenny Walhberg, the church bell called out the hour behind us, wishing all the congregants well for the rest of their Sunday. It was a sweet sounding bell, so full of hope. Just the sort of bell you’d want ringing to begin a wedding or end a funeral.