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Perfect Frosting. His son was an "introvert" who desperately wanted to better himself, said William Bremer. Arthur's one passion was "books —books on math, books on psychology. He wasn't bright, but he read a lot and he passed most of his subjects. Honorablemention didn't mean nothing to him in a class. Jeez Christ, if his team didn't get a run or a score he'd come home and yell and kick at things." At other times "Artie baked a lot at home —cakes and cookies—and he made perfect frosting. He was a perfectionist. Artie would decorate each cupcake from a pastry-frosting bag, and if I dipped my finger in the frosting he'd be mad as hell."
Then, wringing his large rough hands, Bremer said: "I used to pound it into my kids, 'You've got to find yourself, you've got to find yourself.' 'Aw, forget it,' Artie'd say. He never paid any attention to that. Yeah, I spanked my boys. Roger got his cracks, and Artie got his cracks too. He must have been very sick. None of us knew it. But he must have been a very sick person." Draining half his beer, William Bremer concluded: "I just hope to God that no parents have to go through this same thing with a boy. Rather he should have gone out and shot his father. Rather he should have shot me."
Childish. Shortly after his 21st birthday last year, Arthur left home and moved into a dingy, three-room apartment near Marquette University. He studied photography for nearly two semesters at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, briefly tried to go into business making large campaign-type buttons with various catch phrases. He worked half-days as a busboy at the exclusive Milwaukee Athletic Club and as a janitor at the Story Elementary School. Cutting himself off from his family, he slammed the door in his mother's face on the two occasions she tried to visit him. "Arthur did it to Wallace on our wedding anniversary," Sylvia Bremer says bitterly, "and he didn't even know it was our anniversary."
Last September, Arthur began dating Joan Pemrich, a 15-year-old high school freshman, telling her that she was his first girl friend. Says she: "He didn't act like a 21-year-old. He didn't know how to bowl or rollerskate. I don't think he knew how to do anything." Bremer impressed her as "weird" and "childish" by insisting that they talk about her "hang-ups." One hang-up was her refusal to accompany him to pornographic movies. "He really needed some kind of love," she says of their breakup, "but it wasn't going to come from me."