Thanksgiving she baked a turkey and made rolls, but then seemed to give up, for there was nothing else on the table.
When Muriel was home, she spent her time with Michael, listening to him play the piano or clarinet, typing his homework, or discussing the mysteries and thrillers that she loved and that he had begun to read almost as avidly. As early as the sixth grade, Michael had been a reader of true-crime magazines and comic books, as had Bob. But Bob soon moved on to science fiction, whereas Michael began buying copies of the National Enquirer , scanning its pages for sensational crime stories. He clipped some of the articles, and Muriel helped him assemble them into a scrapbook.
Bob and John began to feel left out. Whatever love their mother could muster for her children seemed to be allocated disproportionately to Michael. Only he received the music lessons, the expensive clarinet, the private-school education. But not even Michael received motherly hugs or kisses. Muriel seemed incapable of expressing any physical affection. Bob and John increasingly sought emotional contact and a family life outside their home, and were all but adopted as surrogate sons by their friends’ parents. Bob dressed in tie-dyed overalls, let his hair grow, and hung out with hippies. Though Michael seemed to have a few close friends in high school, he seemed content, even eager, to stay at home with their mother whenever she was there.
Michael’s aunts, Louise Scharf and Ruth Miller, and other relatives were concerned about Muriel’s blatant favoritism towardMichael. But she always defended it, saying Michael was much smarter than the other boys, was gifted, and needed special attention. Louise and Ruth disagreed. Michael was undeniably smart and talented, but so were Bob and John. Virgil’s sisters thought Michael was arrogant and rude, in part because he was spoiled by his mother. Once when relatives were visiting the Swango home, some from out of town, Michael entered the living room, looked them over briefly, then went to his room without so much as saying hello.
On another occasion, Muriel mentioned to Ruth and Louise that Michael had wrecked his car. “What happened?” they asked.
Muriel said, “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask,” she replied.
After Bob left home, Muriel complained to Ruth that she’d had to hire a yardman because Michael didn’t want to mow the lawn. “If I had a strapping young man like you do at home, I certainly wouldn’t hire someone” was Ruth’s indignant reaction. Yet Muriel seemed indifferent to their concerns. As the family members said on many occasions, for Muriel “the sun rose and set” in Michael.
Given Virgil’s work in Vietnam and devotion to the American cause, Bob’s dress, friends, and increasingly antiwar politics were bound to cause trouble. Muriel expressed no views of her own on the Vietnam conflict, saying only, “Your dad’s there so you should support him.” But Bob and Virgil argued violently on his rare visits home and grew increasingly estranged. Muriel worried that Bob’s views would influence Michael and John, and that further conflict might erupt in the already fractured family.
Bob graduated early from high school and enrolled for his freshman year at Quincy College. In the spring of 1970, he wrote his father a letter reiterating his opposition to the war and concluding, “How can you call yourself a Christian, doing what you’re doing to these people?” He showed the letter to his mother. “You can’t send that,” she protested. “It will really upset him.” Despite the warning, Bob posted the letter.
Several days later, Muriel told Bob that his father was flying home to see him. When Virgil arrived after the twenty-two-hour flight, he met with Bob alone, grim-faced and determined. Virgil said his son was nothing but a “Commie fag,” gave him $20, and orderedhim out of the
Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar