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Every spring, a flood of memories
(by Maggie Fazeli Fard - May 07, 2008)
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Photos courtesy of Steve Cavallo
The watercolor paintings of Steve Cavallo, inspired by the murder of his childhood friend 45 years ago, will be on display at the Bergen County YJCC through May 25.
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Steve Cavallo wasn’t there when they found his best friend’s body.
He didn’t know why 7-year-old Jeffrey had been absent from school. He didn’t know why Jeffrey didn’t walk home with him or why he wasn’t around to play stoop-ball like they did every afternoon.
He didn’t know what to say when Jeffrey’s mother, Phyllis Rosay, came around looking for him, or what to do when all the lights in their Harwood Terrace neighborhood stayed on that night, illuminating her as she paced up and down the street clutching one of Jeffrey’s sweaters.
Cavallo didn’t know not to say “Awww” when the Palisades Park Police Chief walked into his first grade classroom carrying the cat that had been found near Jeffrey’s body.
He didn’t know that Jeffrey had been bludgeoned with a rock on May 5, 1963. He didn’t know that Jeffrey had been stabbed to death. He didn’t know that it wasn’t a maniac that had killed his friend, that it had been his mother, sweet, silly Mrs. Rosay.
And Cavallo didn’t know that after all this information came to light, it was OK to talk about it.
“Maybe because of Jeffrey’s age and the way he died, my parents never talked about it,” he says. “In school we never talked about it. After it was over, it was as if he never existed.”
This month, 45 years after Jeffrey Rosay was murdered, Cavallo is doing more than talking. Last Thursday, he unveiled an exhibition of watercolor paintings at the Bergen County YJCC that recall the chilling final hours of Jeffrey’s life, and the days, weeks and years following his death.
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“Goodnight Jeffrey, may the angels watch over you,” by Steve Cavallo.
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“About a year ago, we were down in
St. John , my wife and I,” says Cavallo, who now lives in Westwood. “I started taking pictures to do something on
Caribbean life. And I started thinking, ‘What do I know about
Caribbean life?’”
When they got back to the States, Cavallo and his wife were in a bookstore when she looked over and noticed something in his face.
“You’re thinking about Jeffrey, aren’t you?” she asked. Over the years, she had grown to recognize the wash of gloom that passes over his face every May, Cavallo says. “She told me to do a painting about him.”
The first painting was called “With every spring comes a flood of memories,” and just like that, it started.
There is the painting that imagines the last time Mrs. Rosay tucked Jeffrey into bed. And the painting depicting the Mockler brothers finding Jeffrey in a heap on the floor of the forest where they were playing hide-and-seek. There is a painting of the police chief with the cat, the original backdrop of the classroom chalkboard replaced by the trees of Highwood Hills, where Jeffrey was found.
“It’s all the little flashes of memory that I had,” says Cavallo. “It’s not necessarily how it happened.”
As the exhibition progresses, passing the murder in its visual timeline, the paintings become more troubling.
In one, Cavallo depicts Mrs. Rosay at Jeffrey’s funeral a la Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. While she was only in her 20s, the murder had an aging effect on her; her hands are bony, her neck long and deeply veined, the bags under her eyes bulging. Intensifying the image, Cavallo has painted a double-portrait. On one side, her head hangs low, her eyes closed in grief. On the other, she looks over her shoulder, eyes wide and clear. She is afraid.
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“When the kids come to visit me in Greystone,” by Steve Cavallo.
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Cavallo explains that Mrs. Rosay wasn’t immediately arrested. No one imagined that a mother could kill her own child like that, and she seemed genuinely surprised and distraught when Jeffrey was missing.
“How do you accuse a woman of this?” says Cavallo. “Mrs. Rosay was extremely intelligent and well-spoken, but she was like a child herself. She loved playing with us kids. Here’s this warm woman who would make us sandwiches and cut the crusts off.”
But as the days passed, Mrs. Rosay kept changing the story she told police. They knew she was lying when she said that Jeffrey had stayed home sick and eaten lunch before his disappearance: an autopsy revealed that Jeffrey had not eaten.
Mrs. Rosay was arrested then, but Cavallo thinks that police were on to her by the time of Jeffrey’s funeral. In his portrait, he imagines that Mrs. Rosay suspected that the police suspected her.
Mrs. Rosay was sent to
Greystone
Park
Psychiatric Hospital , the setting for some of Cavallo’s paintings. The artist imagines visiting day for Mrs. Rosay, her veiled figure followed down a long, empty hallway by two small skeletons.
Why two? Cavallo explains that Jeffrey wasn’t the first Rosay child killed. Jeffrey’s little brother, Harry, died a year earlier at the age of 3. It was later discovered that Mrs. Rosay had held a plastic bag over his head. The first sibling died of unknown causes in his crib.
“
Palisades
Park is a small town,” says Cavallo. “All the old-timers have a theory – she hated her husband, she hated boys, she wanted sympathy… everyone had their little theory.
“The show isn’t making her a monster,” he continues. “She wasn’t a monster. She was still a woman. She was still a person, whatever the problem was.”
Mrs. Rosay was released from Greystone and died without ever serving time in jail. Her husband, too, has since passed away. The remaining living Rosay is Jeffrey’s sister, Karen, who now lives in
Florida with her own family.
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Jeffrey Rosay, left, is pictured with his brother Harry. Both boys were killed by their mother, Phyllis Rosay. Harry was murdered at the age of 3 in 1962, followed by Jeffrey, 7, one year later.
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Cavallo contacted Karen when he started researching the 1963 events last year, corresponding with her over e-mail. Her responses have been consistently short.
“She just said, ‘Don’t forget my little, little brother,’” repeats Cavallo. “She said, ‘They were happy boys and they died too soon.’”
Cavallo has not forgotten Harry and still holds a vivid visual of the little boy in his mind: Harry, sitting under a tree, his blond hair shimmering wildly in the sunlight.
His strongest memory of Jeffrey, however, is more haunting.
“The day before Jeffrey died, we were playing stoop-ball and it rolled into the neighbor’s yard,” remembers Cavallo. “Neither of us would go get it. That’s the clearest memory. We were both scared to go into the yard. When the cops were questioning me, I felt really guilty about having that argument with him.”
In addition to reaching out to Karen, Cavallo found himself talking to old friends, neighbors and retired members of the police force eager to help him put the pieces together. His e-mail inbox has been filled with photos and memories for the past 10 months. And Cavallo believes that after 45 years, something good is coming out of that one terrible day.
“Jeffrey got his 15 minutes of fame and all his memories are beautiful memories. He was young enough that he was still this perfect little guy.”
Looking at the exhibition, Cavallo can’t help but wish it were larger. He says there were so many side stories, so much more he could have said.
“But I think I’m done with it,” he sighs. “I think it’s time to put it to rest.”
“Never Forgotten, Yet Never Mentioned,” an exhibition by Steve Cavallo, will be on display at the Bergen County YJCC, located at 605 Pascack Road in
Township of
Washington, through May 25. For more information, contact Jill Brown at 201-666-6610 ext. 222 or jbrown@yjcc.org.
Maggie Fazeli Fard's e-mail address is fazelifard@northjersey.com
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