We still kept in close touch with Sally; Joey was growing to be everything Joe would have been proud of, no matter who his real father was, and another snippet that concerned me at first, but I followed Sally’s lead in this particular case. Steve Dolan had shown he’d inherited all the business acumen his forebears had in such great measure. He’d rebuilt his part of the family’s business empire from the chaotic, almost bankrupt shambles his drunk of a father had left it in, turning around the problems caused by Jerry Dolan and becoming, at a commendably early age, the wealthiest man in Springfield, and one of the richest men in the state, with a chain of huge hardware super-stores across the Southwest.
However, the stories we’d heard all those years ago about how he treated his son were borne out by, of all people, Sally, who’d somehow wrapped herself around Dolan’s boy and taken him to her heart. She was obviously deeply taken with him, as was Joey, and from what Sally told us, Joey took extra care of his young half-brother, even though he was unaware of the relationship; he just knew and understood almost instinctively that young Robbie was special and needed protecting, and he stepped up; like I said, a boy for Joe to be proud of.
And so it went, my babies growing into tough, hard-headed, smart, spiky, erratic, brilliant, maddening, unpredictable and absolutely adorable miniatures of Kat, their Moran blood showing in every line and aspect of them. And then, one day, when Moira and Morag were just about 10 or so, I got a call from Sally that was going to change our lives. I’d just come in from a long and hectic day in the office, the girls were in the midst of one of their daily, never-ending territorial disputes, the central air was playing up, no joke in the South Bay in summer, and Kat had a splitting headache from the heat, trying to locate a repairman who’d come out at such short notice, and constantly dealing with our touchy pair of green-eyed monsters, when Sally called.
“Frank, I need a favor, and I need it quick. Young Robbie Dolan’s finally told that pack of swamp rats he calls a family what he thinks of them, and he’s here with me. Frank, the boy needs help; his pig of a father’s denied him any help, all his life, they’ve given him nothing, not a damn thing; everything he owns in the world is here in one ratty old holdall! He got a scholarship but he had to turn it down because his father refused to help him with living expenses, just flat-out refused; the bastard claimed they had nothing to spare for him, after buying that worthless tramp daughter of theirs a new car and a trip to Europe. Frank, the poor boy needs someone to give him a chance at a life; he’s a lovely kid, he’s just like Joey in so many ways, and it breaks my heart to see him left out once again; he deserves a break too, just a chance to make something of himself. I know how smart he is, he knows everything there is to know about game software, Joey says he’s a genius, apparently the University of California thought so, too, do you know anyone there in Silicon Valley who might be able to help him?”
As it happened, I did; my good friend and fellow A’s fan, Steve Vargas, who owned a small but influential and highly respected game software company in Palo Alto, not too far from our home. I gave him a call and asked him to at least talk to the boy; he agreed, we made the call, the rest you know.
When Robbie came to stay with us, I was struck firstly at how much, from certain angles, he resembled Joey (that would be the legacy of their pig of a father), but also how many of Angie Raynes’ features he had; she was always a looker, even if I did consider her the Queen Bitch of the Western World, and Robbie had inherited a fair portion of her looks; the next thing was how soft-spoken, diffident, and humble he was; I guess a lifetime of being nothing and nobody had given him zero expectations, but worst of all, no detectable sense of self-worth; it seemed he’d learned to live with it, but it wrenched at Kat’s heart, though.
This boy was her own close kin, and she couldn’t tell him, but I could see after only a few days she was completely in love with him, as were the girls; for them, he’d gone from being houseguest, to trusted friend, to big brother in just a few days, probably because there was absolutely no pretence or guile in him, and the girls instinctively fell in love with that aspect of him; the perceptions of the young are uncannily accurate, and it was no trouble at all for them to spot that Robbie was the real thing.
Robbie was honest, helpful, mild, and sweet-natured, unassuming, and smart as a whip, and before he knew it, he was one of our kids, just as much as Moira or Morag, never mind that he was almost eight years older than them. The sight of him sitting with the girls of an evening, after a long day at his new job, patiently teaching them basic calculus, or trigonometry, or algebra, his complete absorption in helping the girls because he wanted to, always brought a lump to my throat, and I’d look up and see Kat also watching him intently, a fond smile on her lips.
The only thing about him that worried me was his almost complete lack of presence; his entire life he’d been shunned by those who were supposed to love him, and he’d learned early in life that drawing attention to himself wasn’t possible in a household where no-one could see him, and so he’d learned how to “switch” himself off; it was a long time before we could get him to join in family activities, as he had no way of relating to them; he’d never been included, so had no real idea how to be included, and it confused him. His relationship with Joey was different, more one-to-one, but I truly believe that it was Kat and the girls who taught him how to venture out of himself.
Socializing with the immediate family was no issue, but taking him anywhere was always fraught with difficulties, as he immediately sank into himself and literally disappeared from view; it took him a long time to un-learn that, and Kat used to regularly curse Steve Dolan and Angel Raynes for turning their only son into a living ghost, a pale shadow of who he should have been.
Her relationship with Robbie was slightly different to mine; in her eyes, Robbie was her boy, she was fiercely adamant about that, and anyone who stepped between them was going down, period; the only people in the entire world she was prepared to share him with were Sarah, the girls, and me. That was the effect that boy had on our family.
As the years progressed, various things happened, some good, some not so good. Casey, Robbie’s sister, became involved with him, after she’d spent four years searching for him; she actually came to see us, to tell us what and how she felt, and I had to tip my hat to her for the bravery she showed by doing that; Kat was quite capable of skinning her alive and then slow-roasting her for what she’d done; after all, this was her Robbie we’re talking about here! I never commented on what they were doing, not when my own darling wife is also my baby sister, but Casey convinced Kat to let her in and be a part of our family. When that sack of shit Steve Dolan tried to attack Robbie, our boy did to him what I should have all those years ago, he hospitalized the bastard, and when we heard what Steve had been doing to Casey for years, I drank a special toast to Robbie; that was my boy!
In due course Robbie and Casey had a baby, the loveliest little boy I’d ever seen; he looks just like Robbie, and Kat and the girls absolutely worship him; as far as they’re concerned he’s theirs, Robbie and Casey just get to look after him once in a while! Of course, they also feel like that about Robbie; much as they love and adore Casey, Robbie’s theirs, he belongs to them, and they want him back.
All things considered, Robbie and Casey were happy; they loved each other, they had that beautiful boy, and his mom lived near him again. Sarah had met and married my buddy Steve, and had a little girl, Caitlin, a black-haired, flashing-eyed little Sarah lookalike, already a beauty at just two years old. Steve and Sarah lived in Novato, while Joey and Karen and my own great-nephew, little Joey Jr. lived literally around the corner from Robbie up in Daly City, so all the family was still close, and close by if they were needed.
With all this domesticity breaking-out, I was waiting for that call from Robbie, the same one I’d had from a panicked Joey before he got married. Something was up with Robbie, and I thought I knew what it was. In many ways, Robbie and Joey are mirror-images of each other, although they’d both look skeptical if you drew their attention to that fact; they think alike, dress alike, like the same food, the same baseball teams, the same TV shows, have the same sense of humor, and they both even have the same little facial quirks and mannerisms; it wouldn’t have surprised me if one day they hadn’t married lookalike girls!
So I waited for that call, and sure enough, Joey called me to give me a heads-up, followed a short while later by a call from Robbie. Joey had just needed a little reassurance, that he was up to the job, that he was doing the right thing, that he deserved someone like Karen, and Kat and I were happy to calm him and tell him what he needed to hear. It had been fairly easy; while Joey had never had a father, he’d always been a sporty, outgoing, gregarious and popular boy, worldly, confident, and self-assured, a typical young American male, and boosting his confidence and calming his jitters was accomplished with a pep talk and a couple of beers.
Robbie, on the other hand, was a horse of a different color entirely; he’d never had any positive reinforcement, no strong older male role-model, no-one to show him how to be a married man, or even how to grow into a man, only contempt and neglect, so the boy had learned nothing about how people worked, nothing except what young Joey could show him as they grew and matured together. Steve Dolan should have taken his son in hand, he should have told him things, and shown him by example, but the only thing that sack of shit had ever shown his son was how to be an invisible, valueless nonentity.
Now I had to try and give him the confidence to be what he should be; a man grown, embarking on one of the most important and significant adventures of his life. It was ironic, and not in a good way, either, that the man who was going to try and show him what a father should have, was the man who twice almost killed his father, only drawing back from the brink at the very last second. Something told me this was going to take a little more than just a chat and a couple of Coors…