Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography Read Online Free PDF Page A

of friends for an uncertain future. In addition, the full extent of their financial calamity became clear once they realized that Tom’s father was either unable or unwilling to pay child support. At first Mary Lee’s mother, brother, and other family members rallied round to help, paying for a rented house on Taylorsville Road in the eastern suburbs. It also seems that they and the Mapother family helped pay the fees to send Tom to the local Catholic school, St. Raphael, which takes children up to eighth grade.
    The move south had at least one advantage for Tom: When he joined the school hockey team, he was a star player thanks to his Canadian experience. During one match in Indiana, the opposing player was so frustrated by Tom’s quicksilver ability that he unceremoniously grabbed him by the collar and threw him off the ice.
    There was, however, no disguising the difficulties the family now faced. They could not rely on the kindness of relatives forever. Everyone had to chip in. The two eldest girls, Lee Anne and Marian, got part-time jobs as waitresses, andTom got back into the old routine—taking on a paper route, mowing lawns, and cleaning neighbors’ yards. This time the money he earned was not to spend on movies or indulging his sweet tooth, but in putting food on the table. “No job was too dirty or difficult for Tommy, as long as it paid money to help his mom out,” recalled neighbor Bill Lewis, a former Marine who befriended the youngster. Not that Tom was as saintly as he is portrayed. He later boasted that he saw
Star Wars
some fourteen times, paid for from his part-time jobs, while he once skimped on tidying a neighbor’s yard so that he could catch an early showing of his favorite war movie,
Midway,
a dramatized account of the World War II sea and aerial battle in the Pacific Ocean.
    His mother was the main breadwinner, taking on three part-time sales jobs to pay the bills. “My mom could have sat there every morning and cried and cried,” Tom later recalled. “She didn’t. My mom was very proud. She had dignity. She’s going to work hard.” Even though the family received federal food stamps, they were ineligible for full welfare benefits because she had too many jobs. Juggling those three jobs took its toll. Mary Lee slipped a disk in her back when her boss in the electrical store where she worked part-time ordered her to move a washing machine on her own. She was in traction for eight months, so incapacitated that a family friend had to move in to help out. The store never apologized or offered compensation.
    The new young man about the house was incensed, consumed with an impotent fury at his mother’s treatment. Even today the incident rouses him to rage. “He [the store manager] didn’t give a shit about his employee. My mother’s not a bitter person, but I remember just being very, very angry about that.” Solicitous of his mother, protective of his sisters, Tom took his new role very seriously. At an age when most teenage boys have little time or patience for their mother, Tom became even closer to her. He admired Mary Lee for her unconditional love, steadfastness, and optimism. She was the kind of person who always sees a glass as half full, sings in the morning, and offers hospitality to strangers. When Mary Lee eventually returned towork, she enjoyed a treat from Tom, at least during Lent. Every day for six weeks, he washed and massaged her feet for thirty minutes when she came home.
    Tom was sternly possessive toward his older sisters, giving their boyfriends his stamp of approval and on several occasions threatening them if they crossed the line of propriety. Once he threatened “to kill” his sister Marian’s boyfriend if he touched her because he knew that the boy was dating another girl. Another time, a fellow pupil at St. Raphael who criticized one of his sisters found himself doing battle in the school bathrooms with an outraged Thomas Mapother. “I didn’t care, I’m