Chapter One--Wendy

My mother used to openly fantasize about all of the things she was going to do once my father died.

 Her sentences always started with “When he goes…” and then she would focus on one of the many aspects of her life with Dad that she despised. There was a smorgasbord of miseries and indignities and slights she was going smash to the floor with relish as soon as he took his last breath. The looks on our faces as she indulged in one of these monologues through her clenched teeth never stopped her from verbalizing with wicked delight how she would finally start enjoying her life when he was out of the way.

We all knew that as soon as Dad’s body was zipped into a black bag and delivered to the funeral parlor, probably even before she notified close friends and family that he was dead, Mom was going to take his crappy old footstool out to the backyard and set fire to it. But before she lit the match, she was going to grab an old hatchet from the shed and bludgeon it to splinters. I was always worried she might consider doing the same to Dad’s corpse as well.

To an outsider, even to us some of the time, this kind of irrational, violent reaction to a footstool seemed like something that would come only from a person who struggled with emotional instability. Mom did display flashes of that, especially when it came to Dad. But in her defense, not many outsiders had actually seen the footstool.

 It was awful. At one time, it was probably an average, solid piece of furniture, but that was at least a century, and five rolls of duct tape ago. Dad’s answer to most repairs was duct tape. Dad was willing to go through all sorts of half-ass repairs like that to preserve the footstool because in his mind, it was a family heirloom, having been brought all the way from Pennsylvania by his grandfather. There was no touching story that came with the footstool, no legend about being carried through the snow and rain, or having been sat upon by a someone famous. It had merely survived being pitched by someone else before it made it to our home.

“It’s an antique,” he’d say, whenever my mother attempted to haul the footstool out to the alley for the trash man to pick up. Dad would always find it, and drag it back into the house and plop it right back in front of his chair, making a point to rest his feet on it, letting her know, in their own private language of hate, that the footstool was there to stay. It would be thrown away only over his dead body. This was something Mom was willing to wait around to do, but there was one glitch to her plan: she went before he did, and the footstool stayed in that house, in the same spot, for another 20 years.

My mother died an unhappy woman. She was bitter and uncomfortable, and toward the end, pissed off that the old man was still as healthy as a horse, while she was gasping for every breath. To her, it was the ultimate indignity, another final and swift kick in the ass from the fates.

There were a lot of elements of my mother’s life that were sad. And if you looked only through her telescope, she’d adjust the lens for you, so that at each and every angle, there was Dad, standing there holding all of the blame.

Mom used to talk about how she dreamed as a girl of becoming a stewardess. She even went to a special school for it right after high school, but quit early to come home and marry Dad. Just a few weeks earlier, they discovered that Mom was pregnant with my sister, Sandra. Their wedding was thrown together within a few weeks, so Mom could walk down the aisle while her tummy was still flat and smooth. My grandparents were mortified and very concerned that the wedding take place before anyone had the opportunity to do simple math and start talking amongst themselves. Even with the wedding behind them, the speculation would begin as soon as my mother started to show. It was important to my grandmother that everyone in town believe Sandra Sue was a honeymoon baby born a little early.

Fifty years later, my mother would say with as much wistfulness as she could manage, that she always dreamed of flying the skies, serving cocktails to sophisticated businessmen in suits, but she ended up marrying a trucker with dirty fingernails instead.

She’d muse about how pencil-thin her waist had been before she met Dad, who was also held responsible for her weight gain. Her waist thickened, anchoring my mother and her dreams to our crowded little ranch house on Hickory Street.

It was Dad who dashed her dreams of being a stewardess. It was Dad’s fault that she got fat and was stuck at home raising us. Her list went on and on, and she never forgot or forgave even the smallest mistakes Dad made. It almost made you feel sorry for him. Almost.

Dad was the proud owner of what had to be some of the most selfish moments in marital and parental history. I’m ashamed to even repeat some of the thoughtless ways he behaved. He had already pulled off an assortment of assinine behavior long before I was even born. Most of it was alcohol-induced. 

He spent Christmas Eves at the bar downtown, leaving Mother to get us dressed for church and shuffled back home in the snow to put out our stockings and leave cookies and milk for Santa. Once we were asleep, she’d start assembling our new bicycles and wagons from Santa all by herself. Dad would stumble in with whiskey on his breath just as she was finally lying down to catch a few winks before we were awake, begging to see what was under the tree.

Dad insisted that we wait until he was awake and not hung over to begin our Christmas mornings. Some years, we didn’t even get to open our socks until after we’d returned from Grandmother’s house for Christmas dinner. Mother would be crying and tense and fuming, but trying her best to keep things festive and happy for our sakes.

            Dad glared at her for ruining Christmas with her bellyaching and weeping, and Sandra Sue and our brother Rudy  and I would cautiously open our presents. Our Christmases were strung together with an aching similarity, differentiated only in photos by how much we had grown, what clothes we were wearing, or the gifts we had received.

            These kinds of scenes would probably be classified as garden variety dysfunctional moments compared to some of the other unforgettable displays that we were witness to. For some reason, travel always brought out the worst in our parents. Many of their memorable scenes took place in cars or when we were on our way to visit someone.

            One year, on the way for a visit with our Grandparents who lived five hours away, Dad actually pulled into the parking lot of a diner at the side of the road and left Mother, Sandra and I sitting in the car, while he went inside, sat down at a booth, and ordered a plate of Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes, a piece of apple pie and three cups of coffee for himself.

            Sandra and I were asleep, but Mother had shared the story so many times, that I felt like I could remember it. The truth is, I don’t remember waiting in the car while Dad ate like a king, but I do remember the battle that ensued after he came back to the car. It was raining, and Dad smelled like fresh rain and hot coffee. Mother, who was pregnant with our brother, Rudy, pounced on Dad, attacking him with a venom that woke us both, although we both pretended we were still asleep in the back seat.

            “You are the most selfish jackass I’ve ever known!” she screeched.

            Dad said nothing. He just put the keys into the ignition and started the car. Mom continued.

            “I guess we’re not hungry, are we girls?” she said.

            “As long as Daddy Dear gets some supper, we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about the rest of us. Don’t worry about your pregnant wife and two children. We don’t get as hungry as dear old Dad,” she goaded, on and on, getting more and more cruel as we inched down the highway in the station wagon.

            Dad’s silence fueled her fire. With each mile, the tension grew to an unbearable peak. Mother was slapping and clawing at Dad’s arm, making him swerve a bit on the road. Finally, he pulled over.

            “Goddammit!” he hollered. “I’ve been working 24 hours straight, Lou. Twenty-four hours! If I want to stop and get me something to eat, by God, I’m going to do it!”

            Mom had opened the car door on her side and heaved her pregnant self out onto the side of the road. She slammed the door as hard as she could. Sandra and I held our breath. Dad didn’t like it when Mom slammed things.

            He got out of the car and followed Mom, who had started waddling away from us and the car, in the rain. Was she leaving us?

            “Louise, get back in this car! Where the hell are you going?” he bellowed.

            My sister and I watched as our parents pushed each other and fought in the rain. Even their shadows were fighting out there on the side of the road, lit by the headlights of the station wagon.

            They finally returned to the car, soaked and silent. Mom and Sandra and I had a piece of cold peach pie and some milk when we arrived at our grandmother’s house.  Dad probably didn’t spend more than five bucks on that dinner for one, but he paid for it over and over again. Mom pulled that night, that meal, that blatantly selfish moment, out again and again for all of us, especially Dad, to consider on a daily basis.

            Divorce wasn’t an option, I guess. Divorce was scandalous and unacceptable and expensive. But misery, they could manage.  It was ordinary and acceptable and free.