Papa stopped hitting you when you reached his height. Papa spent too many hours at the firm, crunching numbers. Papa needs a few drinks when he gets home so he can settle down. So he can sleep. A few drinks for Papa is at least two bottles of wine. He doesn't drink it for the alcohol, just the sophistication.
That's Papa's rationalization.
Papa cheated on Mama every chance he got. Like it was a sport. Mama knew, but she pretended she didn't, and she prayed there would be no babies to abort. This created dissonance. That made you stand on your back foot, always. There was always that low, electric hum.
Mama was a dancer. She doesn't dance anymore. She kills time any way she can. None of it helps her. She is treading water and trying to ignore the impending danger just beneath the surface.
So, you feel things weird. Emotions don't run on tracks for you. They are constantly flying off the rails. You try to be made of something bulletproof, but you are just one large exposed nerve, throbbing. It doesn't make you special. There are papas and mammas like yours everywhere. Every state. Every country. Maybe on other planets.
And maybe, just maybe, you can break the cycle. And maybe that's enough. Or maybe that's just what you say because you're not old enough to buy wine.
We don't tend to fall far from the trees that give us life. Family trees are always tricky, covered in thorns and blood. Maybe the best you can do is to try not to fall.
Saving this space for Mr. Mader
ReplyDeleteNice. I love the last paragraph, especially. That hits hard.
DeleteActually took two minutes. Okay, maybe three.
ReplyDeleteYou pull up to the house, no longer yours, and see a light on in the second-floor bedroom, which is also no longer yours. You’ve taken a big leap coming here, and it seemed like a better idea three beers and a hundred miles ago, but you’ve convinced yourself there’s no time like the present, even though your head feels loosely attached to your body and the Sahara has parked itself on your tongue. You turn off the engine, wishing for the fatal snap of a key cutting an ignition, of a phone receiver you can slam down in outrage. And you realize it’s all like that, it’s all changing, and maybe that’s why your housekey no longer fits that lock, the big shiny one that you yourself installed because there was a break-in a couple years back, the one that promised if not total confidence at least to slow them down. Because anybody with the right equipment or stupid enough can get through the average lock. Finally you got her to agree and you put in the goddamn lock and now she’s changed the key. You discovered that on your last three-beer adventure that plunked you down in this very spot. And in some romantic-comedy serendipity, the moment you disengage the driver’s side door—another dissatisfying sound—the front door flies open. A not-small woman with a blond nimbus of hair burst out from behind it, gun trained on you.
“The hell are you?” she snarls.
You hope you haven’t wet your pants. You’re too afraid to look. You freeze there, half-in, half-out of the car. Looking at this woman who isn’t your ex-wife.
“Barbara!” you yell, your voice hoarse with sand, as if the gun-woman could extract the centrifuge of thoughts in your mind.
But something about it—at least you hope something about it—has made her lower the gun. “You don’t look much like a Barbara.”
“That’s my wife. My. Former wife.”
“You gotta be Joe, then.”
Some blood has started flowing back to your brain. “Yeah. That’s me. Where’s Barbara?”
“Dunno,” she says. Looking at her watch as if it could track his wife’s location. “It’s three hours ago in California, where d’ya think she’d usually be at this time of night?”
Your shoulders drop. “She left.” You feel like you’re going to cry. Dammit. Not here. Not in front of… “Who are you?”
She smiles a cruel smile. “Guess by process of elimination that makes me the one owns this house now.”
Her smile falls. “How much you had to drink?”
Confusion reigns again. It sounds like a trick question. “Not…much. I should be leaving.”
“Don’t be stupid at least,” she says. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
Did she invite you in? You look away, mumble something about the trouble, that it’s too late even in California. But really it’s because you can’t even imagine. Being inside that house again. All the memories. All those rooms. The pencil marks on the edge of the door. The drawer in the kitchen where you used to keep stray rubber bands and twist ties and batteries.
“I’m sorry, I can’t…”
But she’s already out the door, coming at you with a plastic commuter cup. It has a Bat Signal on it. “Might as well take it,” she says. “Barbara left it behind.”
You stare at the bat-winged logo. You don’t remember it. Maybe it’s not a question of her leaving you behind. Maybe you’d already let go.