The Confession Read Online Free PDF Page A

manageable.

3.
    â€œONE LIVES BY MEMORY…AND NOT BY TRUTH,” IGOR STRAVINSKY wrote. In my case, I have lived by neither. My memories of my early years are curiously spotty. Specifics, like the names and faces of friends or teachers—even of close relatives—sometimes seem to float around in my mind in a useless muddle, blurry and disconnected. Dates, simple anecdotes, the ephemera of a child’s life are all upturned and broken, as if attacked by a vandal. It is really remarkable what I don’t know or can’t be certain of. Until this book was nearly finished, I had always believed that all three of my grandmothers were named Mary. My father had to remind me that his biological mother, whom I never met, was named Margaret. Long reminiscences about her life may have filled our dinner conversation, but the details have all melted away.
    What color was our house? I couldn’t say. What did my father tell me about his time in the service? Nothing comes to mind—really, nothing. I think back now and wonder if it was the anniversary of Nagasaki, not Hiroshima, that coincided with my birth. I should know this; we even used it in campaign materials. “James E. McGreevey was born on the anniversary of…” Nothing.
    In place of hard facts are sharply detailed feelings: moments of elation and pride; large doses of hope; ultimately discouragement, pain, and a soul-racking fear.
    More than anything else I recall being, or trying very deliberately to be, a perfect child. Not a Goody Two-shoes, but a kid who did good, who worked hard and met every expectation. I strove to achieve in the excessiveway that psychotherapists tend to regard with concern. My drive was unrelenting. I know I overreacted to the expectations my teachers and parents had for me. But while other kids might have considered them goals to strive for, to me they were marching orders. It never occurred to me to ignore them. Whether I was motivated by some sort of religious duress or the pressures of the firstborn son, I can’t say. But I approached the small tests of a young boy’s life with the anxiety of a rookie pitcher at the World Series. My future rode on every single move.
    To put it another way, I had an almost electrifying feeling of being observed. I suppose this is not unusual for a Catholic of my generation. We were raised to believe that God kept unsparing records on every one of us, each new entry composed in permanent ink. Before God, my life and heart were an open book.
    I do know that I was a good reader, from the time I was very young. Besides poring over the Elizabethan histories my grandfather shared with me, I remember as a youngster reading about Greece and Rome with my dad, as well as the wartime biographies he loved—MacArthur and Churchill, Patton and Eisenhower. The other kids made fun of me for lugging around these weighty books in grammar school, but I loved them, and cherished the time my father and I spent together reading them. Where my mother was training her children to be curious scholars, I later realized, Dad was schooling us to be leaders. He took an extraordinary interest in my progress in school and church, my interaction with adults and other children, my overall social development. For my ninth birthday, I believe it was, and every year thereafter, he addressed my card this way: “To my lad of great expectations.” The words were almost unnecessary; I knew just how high those expectations were. I also felt sure they were not misplaced.
    I’m sure he also encouraged my two sisters, but not in quite the same way. They grew up to be very accomplished women—Sharon’s a principal and Caroline became a nurse. But he invested a different kind of attention in me; he drove me harder.
    Once I was out in the world, I faced my first real-world challenge: getting Virginia Jones, my kindergarten teacher, to like me. I won her over handily. I remember feeling pride in my