My Big Fat Verbal Regret, by Hinda Gonchor

“The Duke makes me puke” is what I said to Ben, my 90-year-old stepfather, about his idol, the film star John Wayne, a.k.a. The Duke. Words I can never take back but will take to my grave.

Ben was a tall, broad, and strong man, and I think he sort of fancied The Duke as his second, the one who stood for him, was him, really, had he not been hampered for most of his life by a smashed-up leg. The handicap caused him to stay close to home, but he took pleasure where he could — family get-togethers were big, fixing the unfixable household appliances was big. The Duke was a thrill.

“They don’t make ’em like that anymore!” he often said with a satisfied grin on his face after watching Wayne drive the cattle through hostile territory or teach bad guys a lesson in right and wrong. As far as I was concerned — young moron and faux hippie that I was — that was good news. 

Ben came into my life after I was already married and had children, and while he was never my dad, he was the definite grandfather to my children. They adored him. He parted with very little on the monetary front — he was the kind of guy who owned two pairs of pants: one on him and one in the wash. Rather than forking over the money for an ice cream cone, he enlightened them with worldly information: how to climb a tree, tie a square knot, bake bagels; all this from his chair, bum leg straight out, cane at his side. 

We lived upstairs in his two-family house, so opportunities for togetherness were constant. Over the years, my son Joey had developed a way with tools. Ben had a woodworking shop down his basement. 

“Where’d you learn to do this or that?” I’d ask. 

“Papa taught me.” A much more lasting memory than a trip to the candy store.

Even with the bad leg keeping him close to home, Ben managed to have several wives, one before my mother and one after. He outlived them all, including a couple of girlfriends later on. The widows liked him, he said, because better than the fact that he had all his marbles, his eyesight remained intact. He could drive them to where they needed to be . . . the doctor, the supermarket, the hairdresser. When he finished his daytime taxi service, he went straight to the John Wayne videos. He didn’t care how many times he saw them. 

“The Duke makes me puke” just slipped out. I knew instantly I’d made the blunder of a century. Ben turned white. Although he was already kind of white, his hair, his skin, but now it was like a white shock. And he was sad. I made him sad. It was as though I’d said I hate America, to a soldier who had just won the Medal of Honor. 

Grown-up Joey was present at the height of my Duke stupidity. After said words were spat out, Joey looked at me like he hadn’t heard me right. Of course he was aware of the bond between his grandfather and The Duke. He was as stunned as I ever saw him. I had crossed the line with both of them. The incident gnaws at me.

Now, years since Ben’s death, if Joey and I are in the same place and John Wayne’s name comes up, he looks at me and I know he’s thinking, “The Duke makes me puke.” He knows I’m thinking the same thing. Joey and I are pals, in a way (as much as parent and child can be), but along with our respect and appreciation for each other, there’s always this Duke thing. It’s my everlasting punishment. 

Hinda Gonchor lives in East Hampton and New York City. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times and Self magazine.