Riding Fury Home (10 page)

Soon afterward we took a family vacation to Cape Cod. Grandma Katie came along. Dad drove all the way to the Cape, my tiny grandmother next to him in the front seat, her head barely rising above the seat back.

Mom and I sat in back, giggling and playing car games, calling out the states of license plates and singsonging aloud the Burma Shave jingles as they came at us sign by wooden sign: BEN—MET ANNA—MADE A HIT—NEGLECTED BEARD—BEN-ANNA SPLIT—BURMA SHAVE.

My parents rented a weather-beaten wooden bungalow a few blocks from the beach for the week. Each day my family packed a picnic lunch, beach towels, and blankets and headed for a day at the sea. To get to the shoreline, we first had to clamber through a gap in the sand dunes. This wasn't a great swimming beach, because the water was frigid, so once we deposited the cooler and arranged the beach blanket, Mom and I went off to climb the huge Cape Cod dunes. We ran down in great leaps, over and over. There was a giddy, almost hysterical sense of abandon as we leapt and sank, leapt and sank, deep in sand. Far away down the beach, my father was a shadow, sitting on a blanket with Grandma.

 

 

NOT LONG AFTER DAD returned, we started a new routine: Sunday dinners out at Bucky's Chinese Restaurant. Bucky's was on the far side of Manville, about fifteen minutes from our house. In the restaurant's former incarnation, it had been Italian, and the new owners hadn't bothered to replace the prior decor of ornate red and gold velvet wallpaper. On our first visit, Dad looked around the dark, almost windowless restaurant and declared, “This must have been a Mafia joint.”

All the round fake-wood Formica tables had lazy Susans as centerpieces, which I thought was swell—no need to ask anyone to pass the food. The waiter brought us menus, but Mom didn't even bother to open hers. She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling, looking bored. Dad and I opened our menus and stared. I liked thinking about the different dishes, but the truth was we always ordered the same thing: Family Dinner for Three, which started with eggrolls with plum sauce, then wonton soup followed by “Two Choices from Column A/One from Column B.” In our case that meant shrimp with lobster sauce, moo goo gai pan, and green pepper beef.

After we placed our order, the tense silence between my parents became even more prominent. It was like this at home, too, but seemed worse at the restaurant, when we were supposed to be having a fun time. I started frantically babbling, telling whatever story came to mind. “In class today, Mrs. Henderson told us about when she was a girl in Vermont, and how they bled the trees for maple syrup . . . ” until the egg rolls arrived and we had a diversion. I was proud that I could grab the egg rolls with my chopsticks. Dad had taught me to use them long ago, when he and I had lived alone together. He'd learned how when he went to Japan with the army at the end of World War II. Now, I tried to teach Mom: “Look, Mom
it's easy.” I raised my hand, holding the pair of chopsticks. “You just put one inside the crook by your thumb, the other leaning against your third finger.” I wiggled the wooden sticks to demonstrate. She shook her head, “I prefer a fork,” she said flatly.

The waiter brought the soup. I watched as he ladled out the wontons, spinach, and broth into our bowls. As he spun our soup toward us, I was searching for another story, but my mind was blank.

We started eating as I said, “Here's one: Knock-knock!” This was a true act of desperation, because I considered knock-knock jokes for babies.

Mom looked up. “Who's there?”

I smiled at her. “Orange!”

Mom held her spoon in midair. “Orange who?”

“Orange you glad you came a-knocking!” I gave her a big grin. Dad seemed completely oblivious, focused on his soup. Mom gave me a quick smile and lifted a wonton to her mouth.

By the time the dishes were brought to the table in their silver-lidded platters with pedestals, I had run out of stories and jokes. I focused on the food on my plate. The only noise at the table was the quiet rumble of the lazy Susan as each of us spun it around to claim our shrimp with lobster sauce.

MY PARENTS' WORDS were dense and hot. In my pajamas, I was crouched in my eavesdropping spot in the upstairs balcony that overlooked the living room. Mom and Dad thought I was asleep as they argued, their voices rising. Some part of me wanted out of there, bad, but it was too late to move.

Then Mom said a word that hit me in the throat and I stood and cried out, “No!” Both Mom and Dad looked up at me, their mouths open. My bare feet were pounding down the wood stairs, along the concrete floor in the hall, into the living room where Mom and Dad were sitting on opposite ends of the couch.

“No, you can't!” I yelled. “You have to try! Please, please don't get a divorce!”

Back in my bed, I shivered. In spite of the silences between my parents, the stabbing looks, I had told myself a story of my family to hold on to—a story of love. It went:
No matter how bad things are, we all
love
each other. We're together even when we're apart. We'll
always
be together.
There was a desperate fluttering in my chest. Dad had been back from England just over a year, and it was all falling apart.

 

 

MY PARENTS DID TRY, for another month or so. During that month of November 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot dead. Grief struck us all. We spent a muted, somber Thanksgiving at Aunt Rita's. One night at bedtime, a couple of weeks after the assassination, my father came into my room to tell me he would be moving out the next day. Dad stood next to my bed and held my hand while I cried. He tried to comfort me: “I promise we'll spend time on the weekends together.” He looked unbearably sad. I felt so bad for Dad. I choked off my tears and smiled feebly at him.

After Dad left my bedroom, I lay in my bed, imagining myself in a courtroom. Somehow, I'd gotten the idea that in a divorce children have to testify, and I knew from Perry Mason that you had to swear on the Bible. Like on TV, I saw the scene in black and white.
The judge would be bald, with deep jowls and a black robe. We would all stand for the judge. His gavel would come down with a
whap.
They would call me to the stand. “Who do you love more—your mom or your dad?” Swear it on the Bible. “Who would you choose to live with? Choose! Choose!”

“No, you must choose,” the lawyer in the black suit would say. “Mom or Dad; Mom or Dad? You
must
answer!”

I clutched my sheet in my fists.
Mom needs me more,
I thought,
so I better say her.

Mom came in to say goodnight. She got into bed and held me while I cried. “I don't want to choose! I don't want to choose between you!” I wailed.

She stroked my hair and explained to me that custody was all settled and there would be no fight. I would live with her and visit with Dad one day each weekend. My body went limp with relief—I would not have to choose.

 

 

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS AFTER my parents separated was a bonanza for me. My secular parents didn't celebrate Chanukah but had decided early on that they didn't want me to feel so different and deprived, so they gave me Christmas presents. Dad had just moved out a couple of weeks before the holidays, and he and Mom were vying to outdo each other. Dad bought me a pair of skis, boots, and poles from E. J. Korvette, and Mom bought me a beginner's guitar. I found there was an upside to the tug of loyalties pulling on me—the unspoken
who do you love best?

On our first excursion to the rather pitiful ski slopes of northern New Jersey, Dad brought along a how to ski book. Neither of us had ever skied. We laced on our boots, clipped on the skis, and grabbed hold of the rope tow to the top of the beginners' run. We wobbled to a spot out of the main traffic. Then my intellectual father, who believed one could learn anything from a book, held the book in the air and read me instructions.

And then I was off, flying down the hill, unable to hear Dad's voice reading Step 2. He had not gotten as far as “How to Stop,” so I flailed down the ski run until I fell on my backside and skidded to a stop near the bottom. My wet rear end confirmed the disappointment that had been growing in me: My father wasn't the all-knowing genius I'd believed him to be. After he careened down the slope, I insisted we get ski lessons.

On our weekend dates, Dad often took me into New York City. Usually we went to a museum, and every now and then we would stand in the half-price ticket line for a Broadway show. It was thrilling to be treated to such special excursions. Alone with Dad, I vibrated with excitement. Then, over dinner in a New York restaurant,
I would stare at Dad's woeful, angry face while he complained about the stress of supporting my mother. “When is she going to get a job?!” was his chronic lament. I shook my head from side to side, my face filled with sympathy.

I carried my father's anger home. More than once, I returned from a date with Dad and launched at Mom, “When are you going to get a
job?
Dad can't keep this up!” Sometimes she would say, “Karen, you know I just can't handle it right now!” and begin crying. Then I would feel awful, churning with guilt and anger and sadness all at once. Other times, she'd yell, “Go live with your father if you feel that way, but don't talk to me about it!” I'd go to my bedroom and slam the door.

 

 

I LEARNED TO PLAY guitar from a TV class on the public broadcast channel. I perched on a chair, practicing chords in what had been my parents' bedroom and we now used as a TV room. Mom had moved back downstairs to the study right after Dad left, as if she could not stand to sleep in that room. Soon, I had learned enough chords to accompany myself singing the folk songs and political poetry I learned from records: Peter, Paul and Mary; Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; and Pete Seeger.

Folk music was being rediscovered, with hootenanny clubs opening up where kids went to sing along. Even though I sang alone at home, I felt part of something, a message that was shared. On Saturday nights, Mom and I watched the half-hour
Hootenanny
TV show filmed at college campuses.

Playing guitar and singing was easy and fun compared with my years laboring at the piano, practicing the same fractions of sonatas over and over for meticulous scrutiny by my piano teacher. As I sang,
something happened in my body—my voice rode on my breath, my tight chest opened with song, the passion of the lyrics overcame my reticence and poured through me—something close to joy.

THE SUMMER AFTER DAD moved out, I spent a month at Camp Birch Ridge. I'd been going to the small camp in the Kittatinny Mountains of northern New Jersey since I was eight. I loved having other kids to play with all day long, and fell into the familiarity of camp routine with deep pleasure, relieved of responsibility by the structured activities.

Twice a day we swam in the lake. In the morning there were lessons, in the afternoon free swim. I was proud that by my sixth year at camp I'd advanced to training as a junior lifesaver. I swam a crisp crawl as Paddles, the swimming instructor, yelled directions over a megaphone for a practice rescue of a drowning camper. During archery, I stood with legs apart, bowstring drawn back, my focus keenly narrowed to sight along the arrow. All else fell away as I felt the power of letting the arrow fly, listening to the sharp
whap
as it landed somewhere near the bull's-eye of the target.

I even took an odd comfort in the dreaded inspections of our quarters, the check for neatly made hospital corners on our cots and
clothes folded in our trunks. Every morning, we stood at attention as the flag was unfurled and raised, then in the evening lowered and folded. At dinner, I ate with great gusto camp meals repeated from the same recipes each year, with ice-cold milk doled out by counselors in half-glass refills. And at night around the campfire, there was the group camaraderie as we sang together, flames sparking the dark.

That summer, I brought my guitar. I had learned quite a few songs from the class on public television. During free period, I perched on my cot in my unit's canvas tent, strumming and singing. Other girls joined me, sitting on the opposite cot. I felt almost giddy being at the center of their attention, leading them in song.

 

 

WHILE I WAS GOING ABOUT my days canoeing and making lanyards, back in Millstone, Mr. Fredrickson noticed that Mom's car had not moved in the driveway for two days. He went to check on her. I will never know how it was that my mother was still alive, two days after swallowing rat poison. Was there blood, shit, vomit? Was her skin ashen? Did they pump her stomach again, like with the sleeping pills?

Some things are beyond bearing, and so sink from consciousness, leaving no memory. When my month at camp ended, my father picked me up. Years later, he reminded me how, on the drive home, he told me Mom had attempted suicide again, that she was in a mental hospital again, but I have blocked that moment out. Dad moved back into the house while Mom was in the hospital, but I can recall none of those first weeks of eighth grade when I lived with Dad. What I do remember is this: I kept my focus elsewhere—on school, narrowing my anxiety to worries about getting my homework done.
I coveted straight A's. This was my mother's fourth suicide attempt by every lethal means she could think of: the rifle, the river, the pills, and now the rat poison. Hard as she tried, Mom always lived, and the whole possibility of her actually dying seemed unreal to me.