A couples first fight will be their last fight. It will be every fight in between. Everything after that is just building a good case. Gathering witnesses. Interrogation techniques. The silences. The snubs in the kitchen, the sneer on the other side of the door. The history written for the children. The future displayed in black and white. My parents were no different.
It’s difficult to tell you what they fought about. That’s against the rules. All the fucking rules. Nobody tells you the rules. You figure it out. You just know that twist in your guts that says this is ours alone. It’s not for anyone but us. It’s not even ours. We’re not supposed to show any signs of being a refugee in their war. So you shut up and you hunker down and you wait for it to be over.
Over was going to be when my younger brother, the youngest turned sixteen. That was always the conclusion at the end of the fights, before the angry silences. They would keep it together for the kids until he was sixteen and we were all old enough to handle a separation. No, that bit of irony wasn't lost on us. Or not on me anyway.
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Part One: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=294775159&blogID=421947256
Dad picked me up in his tiny hatch back, he used the ashtray but it was over-flowing and the entire flooring was covered in ash. I folded myself over my bulging belly and tried to fit in the space marked oldest daughter and only one to ask. On our way up to the VA hospital he explained that he understood he couldn’t ask me to do this, that I couldn’t do this but that he needed me to go along with it anyway. There wasn’t any way he could go back there and they were only going to let him out on his own if there was an adult who agreed to work with him and the doctor.
The emphasis of course was on the fact that it was my choice. That I needed to want to commit to it. Both he and the psychiatrist made that very clear. It was ridiculous sitting there in the sanitation of a hospital conference room staring at the man with the white coat, listening to his kind tone. The man was clearly insane himself. Who asks a twenty year old girl, pregnant out of wedlock to be responsible for the suicidal man who raised her?
Sitting there in an old pair of Dad’s beat up levis slung low under my baby I contemplated the idea that I was now to take care of him. It occurred to me that I should ask them both when the fuck it would be my turn but that hardly seemed fair with both of them being so fucking nuts.
There was no choice but to sign all the paper work. There wasn’t anyone else. And we both knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it if he decided it was time to go. The words could and would and should roll and tumble in my psyche. I knew I would carry it with my signature on the line or not. Some of us just have those shoulders.
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There was a backpack, a military pack that I remember from the night he came back. I don’t remember when he exactly left. I don’t remember more than the vague sick wonder of a child. Where’s dad? Mom must have muffled that for us. Must have thought the dark of inexplicable would rub it inconsequential.
And then there he was coming in the front door and he wasn’t mad. He was okay. The khaki green pack over his shoulder, the way his hair stood up from his head. The three of us were all over him, the way children are when the dad comes back in. Where were you? What were you doing? The unspoken; how could you ever stay away from us?
I don’t think he was gone more than a day. It felt longer in the wake of their fight. It felt longer not knowing if he was ever coming back. He told us he found a wonderful place, woods with trails and he would take us one day soon to see it. He told us hush it’s bedtime, I’m going to talk to your mother.
Even then I wondered at that pack. What was in it? What did a man put in a pack when leaving like that? Was it just beer? Was there a picture of his family? Did he take a book and slide it alongside the water canteen?
My brain tumbled all the possibilities, avoiding the idea of what must have really been in there. The little box next to the larger box with the mystery mom didn’t want in the house.
It occurs to me now that he might have set the date then, when he didn't go through with it. The date he could finally be done. And it must have eased a bit, knowing the deadline.
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