You hear about Mary?

Like mother, like son.

To my fellow outlaws, outcasts and misfits,

Greetings from Toronto. It is chilly and crisp in the best of ways. This sprawling city on the lake reminds me so much of Chicago which I desperately miss.

If you happen to be in Chicago, pick up the December issues of Chicago Magazine. I used to go into Kroch’s and Brentano’s when I was a kid and devour this magazine so this is a bucket list moment to publish a piece in it.

Full disclosure, also when I was a kid at Kroch’s, my friends and I would have one kid create a distraction so another kid could grab a Playboy off the shelf closest to the counter, then rush back and put it inside another magazine, like Good Housekeeping, using that as a cover so we could read the Playboy (not for the articles.)

It didn’t take long for the counter person to figure out why six pubescent boys were circled around a Good Housekeeping giggling and untucking their shirts.

Last but not least, THANK YOU for all your support. In celebration of the holidays, I dropped the monthly subscription price to $5 bucks and $50 for the year. If you signed up at $70, you will be able to renew at $50 when your subscription expires.

And away we go…

It was 2001. I was twenty seven, driving trucks for the city during the day, performing stand up comedy at night with a side hustle of fencing stolen merch, which included anything from fishing poles to high end electronics.

I was also a drunk.

I knew it and was increasingly terrified I could do nothing about it. Every time I left the house, I promised I wouldn’t drink.

Three days later I’d stagger home ashamed and lost.

An average day: Still up from the night before, I would drive out to the airport to start work at 7am. On the way there, I stopped at 7/11 and picked up three packs of Marlboro Reds, two chili dogs, a super Big Gulp of Mountain Dew and the Trib. I would eat everything, get to work, throw it up, read the paper then start work.

After work, I’d go home, change, then hit whatever stand up show I was performing in that night where I was usually paid in drinks, setting in motion another barbaric run.

I was waking up (coming to) outside, in alleys, picking pebbles out of my cheeks, then staggering back into my “life” and wife like nothing happened.

I will fix this, I told myself.

The demon who destroyed my father, my grandfather, my uncle and my mother, would not get me.

I will outrun it. I will kill it. But unbeknownst to me, it already had me. I was naive enough to think I had a chance. That was the great lie - this time it will be different - I will be different.

Then April 12, 2001 rolled around.

My wife Katie and I were living in a tiny one bedroom garden apartment on Higgins Avenue, a working class enclave on the northwest side. We had a beautiful view of the front bushes and the feet of people passing by.

The front door and the back door side by side on the same wall. The door on the right led to the alley. The door on the left led out to the street. I was sitting on the sofa when there was a knock on the back door.

I opened it. It was Dave.

Dave was a six foot tall Ecuadorian with ice blue eyes and a show stopping smile who often dressed in the black suit with a blood red shirt like Fenster from Usual Suspects.

Dave’s dad was a thief who made his bones by stealing one of the first shipments of LED watches coming into Chicago. Now that he was older, his dad moved from stealing to fencing, all while selling used cars on Cicero Avenue.

Whatever Dave and I didn’t move during the week, we brought to Maxwell Street on Sunday mornings.

Maxwell Street was a pirate’s cove, founded by Jewish immigrants followed by the black southern migration north to avoid Jim Crow.

On the surface, it looked like a flea market, but it was really where anything stolen during the week was sold on Sundays. There was a famous sign there that reads: WE CHEAT YOU FAIR.

Dave and I would meet up for drinks Saturday, push straight through to Sunday then hit Maxwell around 6:30am and move everything from leaf blowers to cameras, all while dining on greasy tacos and listening to blues music, the amps running off car batteries.

So it was no surprise on April 12th, 2001, when there was a knock on my back door and I opened it to see Dave holding five DVD players still in the box.

"Hey man, I'm hot right now. You mind watching these ‘til I cool off? I need a buck fifty for each. Take whatever you want off the top."

Translation: “The cops are watching me. Can I leave these with you until I feel an appropriate amount of time has passed and I can take them back? I am selling them for a hundred and fifty dollars a piece. If you sell them for more, keep the difference.”

"Of course, man. Leave ‘em in the corner," I said.

"You sure Katie'll be cool with this?" he asked.

"Only if I don’t move them," I joked.

He set them down, we hugged, then he left out the back door. Not five seconds later, somebody banged on the front door.

I knew by the knock who it was right away. Only one organization on earth bangs on a door like that. Dave was like a brother. I couldn't believe he'd set me up like this.

I opened my front door and sure enough, there stood two guys in suits holding up leather billfolds.

"FBI, where were you this morning?" the stocky brown haired FBI agent asked.

"I was at the airport. Teamsters. Swiped in and out. Was there all day. Just got home," I said holding their judgey stares. 

"Can you prove it?" the black haired thin agent asked.

"I'm on camera all day."

"What about your mother?"

"What about her?" I asked.

"She robbed Forest Park Federal Bank this morning," he said.

"Oh, fuck. Thank God," I blurted out.

"Excuse me," he said.

I thought it best not to tell him I thought they were there for me.

"Sorry," I replied, "Haven't talked with my mom in years. You need anything else, I'm not talking without a lawyer."

I slammed the door shut and waited. If they knew anything, they would have never let me close the door but I still waited to hear their steps go up and out the front door.

I paced the apartment while the Polish ladies shouted over the humming perm domes in the beauty salon on the other side of our shared wall.

I tried to convince myself I didn't care, that because my mother lost custody of me I owed her nothing, be a fucking animal, push it down, she made her choices, she was turning tricks and now she caught a federal case for bank robbery, she has to live with it.

I sat on the sofa and wept.

Then my uncle, my mom’s brother, called.

“You hear about Mary?” he asked.

“FBI was just here,” I replied.

He was trying to piece it together. This is what he knew so far. Mary was living in a small apartment alone, the drink whittling her down day by day. She apparently met somebody online, a guy name Vinny Valero.

Vinny Valero.

Of everybody in the entire world and all of the internet, my mom finds and fell for a guy named Vinny Valero.

My mom could walk into a room filled with level headed emotionally stable men fresh out of Wharton business school then spot a drunk Italian guy in a wife beater hitting a baby and be like, "Whoa, who’s the hot guy with the kid?”

So Mom falls for Vinny, who she never actually met, only talked to long distance or on AOL Instant Messenger.

It looked like she was tired of her drinking, of the insanity, of turning tricks and anonymous men beating her so she hatched a plan - rob a bank and show up on Vinny’s doorstep in Florida where he lived with a sack of cash so she could finally live happily ever after.

So on April 12th, 2001 (two days before my 27th birthday) she walked into the bank, approached a teller and calmly explained that her son (me) was being held hostage and if the teller didn't give her five thousand dollars, they’d kill me.

The teller gave her some cash and my mom made it a block away before getting arrested.

While my uncle told me all this over the phone, another call came in. He hopped over to answer and came right back, “It’s fucking Vinny Valero, lemme call you right back.”

He hung up. I waited.

This was the conversation my uncle and Vinny had:

"I want you to know I really love your sister," Vinny said, "but I think she has some problems."

"You think," my uncle said, "she's in jail for robbing a fucking bank. A bank she robbed for you."

"I had no idea she was going to do that,” Vinny said, “My intentions with your sister are nothing but honorable... but... there's something I need to tell her and I'm hoping you could tell her for me... because I think she's going to be mad."

"What?” my uncle said, then realized, “If you’re fucking married, I’ll kill you.”

"I’m not married. I'm a woman," Vinny said, "do you think she's going to be mad?"

"Mad?!? Now she's gonna kill you," my uncle screamed.

But because he is Irish, he could not wait to rub this in his sister’s face. He raced down to Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown. They marched my Mom out in her new prison garb.  She sat across from my uncle, her brother, speaking through the thick glass.

"You talk to Vinny?" Mom asked.

"I did," he answered, using everything he had not to drop the bomb right away, savoring each moment.

"What did he say?" Mom prodded.

"Funny word "he"," my uncle said through a smile his sister had seen many times.

"What the fuck's up with you?"

"Nothing’s up with me. But there's a lot up with Vinny."

Then he let it go...

"Vinny is a fucking woman. You robbed a bank for a woman that was conning you the whole time!"

Mom clenched her teeth, stood, then stormed off, guards at her sides.

That night she sharpened her tooth brush and at breakfast, stabbed every Italian she could find, eventually causing a riot that got her transferred out of that prison to a prison in... Florida.

None of us visited her in Florida. Our hearts had been broken too many times. But guess who lived in Florida? Vinny.

At first, Mom was too furious at the betrayal to see her but after awhile, with nobody coming, Vinny wore her down.

They reconciled and fell in love through the glass. Mom got out, did her halfway time and probation in Chicago, then moved back down to Florida to be with Vinny.

But the demon never relented.

She would get drunk, get violent and Vinny would put her out. Mom would live on the street, homeless, until my uncle would go down, find her and convince Vinny to take her back. This went on, back and forth, until a new demon arrived - cancer.

She was diagnosed with lung, heart and brain cancer and before she knew it, was in the hospital, unconscious, on life support, riddled with tubes and wires.

A call came in.

“Hi, Mick, this is your mom’s friend in Florida.”

“I know who you are. You don’t have to say “friend".” We know you two love each other. I’m happy my mom finally found somebody. You’re a saint.”

“Thank you. Anyway, the priest just read last rites and they are going to pull the tubes and turn off the machine. Once she goes, I will call and let you know.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She hung up and I waited.

Twenty minutes later, my cell rang.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi Mick, this is your mom’s friend in Florida.”

“You don’t have to say that,” I said.

“Okay. Thank you. Anyway, the priest read last rites. They took the feeding tube out and turned off the machine. We were all praying and crying, then Mary’s eyes flashed open. She looked at the nurse in the corner and said, “Who the fuck is that bitch?” and well, she’s out in the parking lot having a cigarette and nobody knows what to do.”

“Yep, sounds about right,” I said.

Mom moved back in with Vinny and lived another six months with hospice.

Two weeks after my mother got arrested for the bank job, on April 21st, 2001, I went to my first twelve step recovery meeting. I drank that weekend.

For the next year, I tried and failed to get sober, and as they say, things got worse. I moved to Los Angeles to pursue the dream and one day found myself downtown on LA’s skidrow.

I stared out at a sea of homeless wandering through a maze of boxes and tents. I smiled and thought, ”My god, they figured it out! They only got one problem to solve.”

I didn’t know how to be a husband, a friend, a worker, a writer, a human, but what if I never needed an answer to any of those questions. What if I only needed to answer one question - where is my next drink?

That is a life I could live. That is a life I could finally manage. So what if I had to live in a box or a tent. That is a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Then I thought, “Did you just talk yourself into being homeless?”

I had.

That night, April 27th, 2002, I went back to that twelve step recovery program where I have remained ever since.

When I celebrated fifteen years sober, my son was thirteen, the same age I was when my mother lost custody of me. Prior to that, I judged my mother with incredible coldness and cruelty, relishing in a perpetual victim hood. She put cigarettes out on me, beat me, abandoned me, starved me, forcing me to panhandle on the street.

I looked at my son and thought how could she do that?

Then a voice whispered, “What kind of father would you be if you never got sober?”

The same or worse.

Then my rationalizations began - “No,” I thought, “If my son had been born when I was drinking I would have stopped, I would never let myself get as bad as my mother.”

Those were the same lies I told myself when I tried and failed to get sober on my own. In that moment, I realized those were likely the same lies my mother told herself she tried and failed too, after every line she irreversibly crossed, promising never to cross again, all while descending deeper and deeper into darkness - just like me.

After my mom got arrested, my aunt and uncle (who took me in and raised me through high school) cleaned out her apartment. They found a box of my old baseball cards and a few of my grade school quizzes and drawings.

Amidst her many forced moves, amidst the darkness that stole her life, her dreams, her womanhood and her son, amidst the cunning demons that convinced her to sell her body and rob the bank, amidst all that, she kept a handful of mementos from a life and son she lost long ago, a son who could only understand, forgive and re-love his mother after being haunted by the same demons, demons he now keeps at bay one day at a time.

Much Love,

Mick

©MickBetancourt 2023