Riding my disability scooter is much like riding a bicycle, as it allows me to travel slowly and investigate my surroundings. Often that means finding some of nature’s beauty. Recently, while riding on a sunny day, I spotted a beautiful Amanita muscaria mushroom, red and polka dotted white. Although it is deathly toxic, its natural beauty is a visual treat.
Perhaps it was an omen, for when I arrived home the package I had been waiting for was there: “Son of a Gun: A Memoir” by Justin St. Germain. The mushroom turned out to be a fitting archetypal image of the toxins within beauty — the beauty being love — a main theme the author revolves his plot around.
St. Germain opens his memoir with his mother’s murder in 2001 and closes after a long struggle of attempts to heal his confused childhood, full of many abusive stepfathers who gave him little to no love. His beautiful opening bicycle journey ends when he discovers his mother has been murdered by her latest “serial husband,” Ray, in the town of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday, Tucson, Ariz.
Universally fitting, it is the same time period in which the Twin Towers come down. Violence dominates the national scene and St. Germain’s personal story.
While the author presents his detailed past and relates some history, he learns to understand and survive his relationships and his life.
Once, St. Germain told his mother that he’ had a panic attack. She’d had them, too, during hard times in her life. “Mom told me the way to deal with times like these is to focus on the present and not think about what’s soon to come. Soon it will pass. It always does.” Afterwards, St. Germain “felt calm for the first time in his life.”
However, ironically, the whole book is a study of his past and the way he learns to understand and deal with his troubles.
The mother’s relationships with her sons are complicated. Although the mother did sacrifice for her sons and showed she loved them, she also made them feel they were to blame for many of her problems.
“She tried to pin her failed relationships on us [St. Germain and his brother Josh]. … She had to have someone to blame and it was never her.”
His 44-year-old mother is a master at crossword puzzles and Scrabble; she egotistically brags about her Scrabble score. She and her sons end up “killing Ray” at their game of Scrabble. It is too much for their stepfather Ray, when the mother, the “master of words,” fails at communicating with him. Words are presents for the present and her fatal flaw.
St. Germain is not afraid to present negative images of himself: When the author leaves for college, Ray and his mom give their goodbyes. He then shakes hands with Ray and says, “ ‘Take care of her.’ … It was like we were two cowboys selling a horse.”
The author does have a few semi-healthy relationships with men. At his mother’s funeral, the author recalls when a gentle “hand squeezes his shoulder.” It was his heroin addicted Uncle Tom, who had tried to escape his addiction by moving to Tombstone, Ariz.
However, “It was the worst place in the world for an addict.” St. Germain fondly describes building a fence and relating with his uncle: “I thought of my uncle every time I passed that slapdash fence and wondered where he was and if he was alright.” In another touching image, the author describes “trying to dodge the groping hands of the congregation to find Tom.”
St. Germain sensitively presents images of the toxins of abuse and of the beauty of love. He attempts to discover how those sons of a gun are created in order to understand his and others’ lives.
I hope to read more from this young, sensitive author.