Tomcat
Tom and Tim
Reader Note: This story is clearly made up. None of this happened.
I love to watch Dateline, and every time I do, I jokingly wonder aloud to my husband if this will be the night we will finally see the episode on my brother Tom. Of course this is a joke, but one day in 2020, because there clearly wasn’t already enough going on, I got this message:
I believe my mother is engaged to your brother Tom. If you have a minute, would you be willing to answer a few concerning questions that I have?
I would indeed.
I never knew my three brothers were my half brothers until my brother Tom told me I wasn’t his real sister. I was about four years old and that seems about the right age to process that type of information.
Tom was one of a pair of twins, Tom and Tim. They were fraternal twins and early in their lives, they were eerily close. Apparently when they were very young, long before I came along, they talked in their own twin language that freaked out my mother. She said she would hear them in their crib, speaking in a language with a real cadence, one saying something, the other laughing. They would stop as soon as she entered the room.
They were also supposedly quite destructive when they were young. According to one story, they almost burned our house down when they were around 3 by putting all of their clothes in the oven and turning it on. They only managed to burn down the kitchen.
When I was around 3 or 4, someone thought it was a good idea for them to take me trick or treating. They would have been around 13, and instead of asking for candy, they were asking for money for UNICEF. They promptly split the money when we got home, no starving children the wiser. I was convinced we were all going to prison.
I also remember that they loved to take me shopping, not because it was fun, but because I was a good mule. On one memorable occasion, Tom had me put on a coat in July to go to a fireworks tent and then promptly stuffed it with what must have been in the 70s at least $100 worth of fireworks, telling me that if we got caught, I was the one who would go to jail. This, I knew, would not be good for my future career opportunities.
Somewhere along the way, they stopped being creepy twins and started being angry brothers. They fought. A lot. The fights intensified over time and I remember being terrified when my parents would leave me home with them at night, waiting in my closet for my oldest brother, Jeff, to come home from his job at Shoney’s and set the world right.
After my brother Jeff left home for the Navy, Tom was a kind of Jeff replacement for him. . We had recently moved to an 80 year old home on 5 acres that my family was renovating. There was nothing to do, no cable, no cell phones, no computers. Between the ages of 6 and 8, I spent a lot of time playing outside and the rest of the time trying to hang out with Tom.
Tom was in high school at the time and on the wrestling team. He had a weight bench in his room, as well as a pretty kicking sound system, on which I learned all the words to every Styx song ever written up to that point. I think the music was a big factor in our hanging out. I loved looking at his albums and dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” and Earth, Wind, and Fire.
He also had a girlfriend, Mignone, whose parents were French and who I thought was gorgeous. She was nice and played with me. I spent a lot of time at her parent’s house.
Sometime after high school, Tom got a new girlfriend, Denise. I didn’t like her as much. She went to a church that burned Styx albums and that made me sad.
Tom went to college and got an apartment off campus. My father, being my father, wrote Tom a check for the entire semester’s room, board, books, and tuition. It was later discovered that Tom had allegedly skipped the tuition and books part completely and spent that money on expensive clothing. He never enrolled in college at all. This, in turn, led to my father’s third drop off at the Navy Recruitment Center.
This was also Tom’s first strike.
Tom wound up stationed in Connecticut and that’s where he married Denise, when I was about 10 or 11. For some reason I was the only family member who went to the wedding. I remember it was really cold and not much else.
The next time I saw Tom, I was in high school. By that time, he was out of the Navy and my family was living in a model home in the first subdivision my uncle would ever build. My father had filed bankruptcy for the second time and things were, I would say, not super.
Tom was either in the process of divorcing Denise or already had. They had two boys, close together in age. I was about 18 and one day he came to our house, mumbled something about needing some sleep, and left his children. With me. All Day.
It was honestly my worst nightmare. There were no cartoon channels, no iPads with videos, no coloring books, just me and two boys that looked vaguely like my brother asking me where mommy and daddy were.
I was so pissed when he got back and when my parents got home, but no one seemed to think it was as irresponsible as I did. He would wind up signing complete custodial rights of those boys over to their new stepfather within the next year. I never saw them again.
Let’s stop here to acknowledge the irony of this situation. Tom’s biological father had signed his rights away to Tom and my other brothers as well when my father adopted him. This was something he always, for some reason, resented our father for. And yet he did the exact same thing. The cat’s in the cradle, man.
Sometime during the year of his divorce, Tom decided to go into the family business of real estate. Being down on his luck and newly divorced, he asked my dad for some cash to tide him over until he could close some sales. He needed the money to get settled, but he would pay it back as soon as he got on his feet. Instead, according to my father, he took that money and left town.
Strike two.
I didn’t see him or talk to him for several years after this. When he ditched my parents he usually ditched me as well. I went to college and my parents bought a bigger house that was never my home. I stayed there a few summers in undergrad, but tried to not go home much.
During one of those summers, Tom showed up again. Needless to say, no one was excited, especially my father, who was now sober for the longest stretch of time in his life since his childhood. However, Tom had news: he knew he had behaved badly in the past and he was ready to turn over a new leaf. He wanted my father to help him get sober too.
My parents accepted him with open arms, wanting to help him and hoping he would come back into the family fold. His twin brother had just moved back home and it seemed like a good time for new beginnings.
I was dubious. Drunks are drunks, but they don’t necessarily do the things Tom had allegedly done. Plus, I had never once seen him drunk, but then again, I only saw my father drunk a handful of times, so who knows. I did know that using sobriety to get back in the door was a master manipulation tactic.
Tom also had a new girlfriend, Rosemary, who was actually quite lovely. She was smart and funny and I enjoyed spending time with her. She came over for game nights and went shopping with me and my mom. We all got close to Rosemary that summer.
Tom proposed and my dad, who was by this point not just selling homes, but building them, offered to build them a home at cost. They were thrilled. Rosemary picked out paint colors, cabinets, and all kinds of furniture in anticipation of the closing date. Because of my brother’s poor credit history, the loan would be in Rosemary’s name only, which she didn’t mind, as she had a good job and good credit.
Not long after the closing, but before they were officially to move in, my brother called Rosemary and told her he had rented an apartment in a neighboring city and that it was over. She was devastated.
My family did not know about this until, after her credit card statements came in, Rosemary broke down and called my father.
She was financially ruined. Tom had allegedly spent all of her cash and had run up debt in her name in the neighborhood of $70,000. She didn’t find out about any of this until he left.
Custom golf clubs, signet rings, clothes, shoes: these were the things Tom was supposedly buying with the credit cards Rosemary had allowed him to use in order to buy things for the house. She never thought to check the account in those pre-internet days. She also didn’t know about the lines of credit he opened up in her name that he was able to max out before she discovered them.
Tom knew exactly when those bills would come and had gotten the hell out of Dodge before they did.
Rosemary couldn’t go to the police, because she had technically given Tom permission to use her credit cards. Everything he did was reprehensible, but none of it was technically illegal.
My father was apoplectic. This was Tom’s third strike, but this time, it involved someone who wasn’t family. This aggression would not stand.
He called Tom and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was to pay Rosemary all of her money back or he would kill him. I mean, it wasn’t really that much of an overreaction when you have a woman who you thought was going to be your daughter in-law in a puddle of tears at your kitchen table.
Tom was incensed: he said my father had just threatened his life and he was going to call the police and file a report. My dad told him to go ahead and do that.
I don’t know if Tom ever called the police, but I do know that Rosemary received a check from Tom not long after, and on it, it showed his last name as his biological father’s last name.
With that name change, he dealt the final death blow to his relationship with my father, and by proxy, with me. I was the fruit of the poisonous tree and Tom disowned me along with Dad that day.
I saw Tom once in the following years. It was a rare outing with all of my other siblings and my mother to see my grandmother. It was unusual for my oldest brother to be home, as he was still in the Navy. We stopped at a convenience store on the way home, and there Tom was, walking back to his car and clearly trying to pretend that he didn’t see his entire family right in front of him.
My oldest brother, Jeff, said something to the effect of, “Hey shithead, are you just going to walk by without giving your big brother a hug?”
We all wound up talking to Tom for a few awkward minutes before getting back in the car, where we proceeded to talk about what a freak Tom was for the rest of the ride home.
And that was it. For the next 10 years or so, I didn’t hear from or see my brother Tom. He didn’t call. He didn’t come to family gatherings. He didn’t send cards. I think my other brothers talked to him, but I was busy trying to grow up and get away from the family tree. I honestly can’t say that I missed him, which is kind of sad.
The next time I heard from my brother was on September 1, 2003, the day my father died. His death had been a train wreck in slow motion, but I was still devastated and somewhat in shock. My future husband was driving me to my father’s family’s house, when an unknown number came up on my flip phone. This had been happening all day, as people had been calling to confirm his death or offer condolences, so I answered the phone.
“Hey, how are you doing?” asked a male voice.
“Who is this?”
“It’s your brother, Tom.”
Well, I thought, it makes sense he might want to reach out on this, of all days. He started talking about what a big man dad was, and at first I didn’t realize that he meant that literally. Then, he asked, “So, since he was so tall, he probably had a set of custom golf clubs, right?”
I told him I had no idea.
“Because if he did, it sure would mean a lot to me to have them.”
Thank god I had a flip phone so I could slam it shut and throw it in the backseat.
I don’t know enough about baseball to know if you can get a fourth strike, but this was Tom’s.
The following weeks were a blur of estate settling and family in-fighting over the will and the money. I was hearing through the grapevine that Tom wanted to contest the will, but I never heard from him directly and he didn’t come to the funeral.
A month later my maternal grandmother died. It really was a bad year. I had been driving back and forth weekly from my home to my father’s family’s home and I was exhausted when I got the call. I told my now husband I would drive down by myself, as that side of my family can be a little much.
And here was Tom, standing by my grandmother’s body, telling me how we should really spend more time together, we used to be so close. I didn’t say what I wanted to say. That was the very last time I saw my brother.
My mother told me a few years later that she had had a falling out with him after he asked her to come to his who knows what number wedding, but told her there were only three things she couldn’t tell the bride: that he had been married before, that he had children, and that he had a vasectomy. Even my mom wasn’t crazy enough to go along with all that.
Seventeen years passed. I got married, moved 5 times, changed careers, started my own company, and generally lived my life. I also went to a lot of therapy. I would occasionally hear a rumor about what Tom was up to, and it always involved a new woman. I honestly didn’t think about him that much when I wasn’t watching Dateline.
Until I got that message in 2020.
I told this woman (we’ll call her Jenny) that I hadn’t seen Tom in years, but I could tell her I didn’t trust him. I had, in fact, blocked him on Facebook when he made some comment about how much something cost on one of my posts.
She, in turn, told me her concerns. It was late October and Tom and her mother “Mindy” had met around Mother’s Day. My brother had proposed sometime in September, the first time he met Mindy’s daughters, catching everyone off guard. Jenny said he referred to himself in the third person and told her that “Tomcat will take good care of your mom.”
Tomcat.
Jenny told me about their whirlwind courtship: her mother, divorced for 21 years and lonely, was swept off her feet when Tom serenaded her on their first date. He bought her presents, took her shopping, and paid for everything. I had just finished listening to the podcast, “Dirty John,” and this was sounding awfully familiar to me.
That day at brunch, he was wildly inappropriate, making sexual innuendos about how good Mindy was in bed in front of her family. Good old Tomcat.
Concerned that Tom didn’t seem to want to talk about his family, Jenny started digging around and discovered Tom’s name change. When confronted, he explained the name change by saying it was done to honor his biological father who he grew close to later in life. He told her about his twin brother and oldest brother. He told her was estranged from his sister.
Estrangement is a pretty emotional word. I just blocked the dude on Facebook.
Jenny was also concerned that Tom didn’t have any friends and wanted to spend all of his time with her mother. She said she had had only one private conversation with her mother since Tomcat came on the scene. Whenever she called, Mindy would put her on speakerphone so Tom could join in. If one on one lunches or dinners were planned, Tom would just show up, unannounced.
Mindy’s sister, Jenny’s aunt, was also concerned. She was telling a friend about her worries when her friend said, “Wait. I know someone who was married to this guy.”
Tom had told Mindy about three previous marriages and three children, two sons (the ones he dumped on me) and a daughter he wasn’t sure was his (news to me).
The woman the aunt knew was not one of the three known ex-wives. She was ex-wife number five and she told a story much like Rosemary’s. Tommy was apparently still up to his old tricks.
At the end of Jenny’s digging, she came up with a total of about 8 marriages that she could prove and that didn’t include Rosemary or any other engagements.
Mindy, upon hearing all of this from her daughter and sister, said it was ridiculous and why would Tom be with her if he wanted money? She didn’t have any. She immediately went home and told him everything they said. Tom called Jenny and said that she could trust Tomcat and if she had questions or concerns, just come talk to Tomcat in person.
Jenny, I think, was more likely to want to punch Tomcat in the throat.
Not long after this, Jenny found out that Tom had talked Mindy into refinancing her house to redo the bathrooms. Her house, you see, was completely paid for and her credit was excellent. Mindy had a whole lot of potential money.
This was about the time Jenny contacted me. Talking to her was jarring. Knowing something is probably going on and hearing from someone who is being affected by it are two completely different things. I’ve made jokes about my brother for decades, but it’s really not funny when you are talking to someone who is afraid they are going to lose their mother and their mother, in turn, is going to lose everything.
Jenny also talked to my oldest brother, who knows more about Tom than I do. Tom, in turn, was not a fan of these conversations and messaged my brother to tell him to shut up and that he didn’t know anything about him and I certainly didn’t know anything about him and we could all go to hell. He then blocked my oldest brother on Facebook, because that’s easier than another name change.
Jenny took the new information she gleaned from us and seemed to talk her mother into kicking Tom out of the house and not going forward with the refinance. After not hearing anything from Jenny for almost 8 months, I figured her mother had seen the light and moved on. All’s well that ends well.
On Memorial Day, I got a text from my cousin telling me Tom had gotten married. I marveled at how quickly he had found a new one. Since my cousin and I are mature adults, he sent me screenshots from my brother’s blocked Facebook account.
Imagine my surprise when I saw Tom and Mindy on the beach in the Redneck Riviera, Panama City Beach, kissing in their fancy wedding clothes.
I messaged Jenny and found out that she had also found out about the wedding via Facebook. Tom and her mom had eloped and waited a week to tell anyone. Also, shortly before the elopement, and against the advice of everyone she knew except Tom, Mindy had sold her house and almost everything in it. That potential cash was now cash money.
My husband asked me how long the marriage will last and I answered, “as long as the cash lasts,” but I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe, like my aunt who has been married ten times, he finally found “the one” and me and my brother and Jenny are all wrong about Tom. I hope this is true for Mindy’s sake. I hope she gets a happily ever after.
I hope that, but I continue to watch Dateline every week, waiting to hear Keith Morrison’s voice talk over a picture of my brother: “He called himself Tomcat, but for the women in his life, he was more like a Dirty Tom.”
