The Cleavers, we were not. For starters, mom never owned a pearl necklace and didn’t serve cold, frothy pitchers of milk. She drank. And not anything that came from a cow. I do think my dad had a cardigan sweater (no pipe), but the women he chased might better remember his taste in fashion. My grandmother, matriarch by default in their frequent absence, was a glass-half-empty widow who I’m now certain existed somewhere on the autism spectrum. Somewhere cold and emotionless. She could look at you in a way that made you wonder if you’d walked into the wrong house. Or one of those ice hotels where people pay to scrutinize their own exhales and snore on frozen beds.
But things usually heated up at about 3:00 am. Like a Peruvian volcano. That’s when mom or dad (sometimes both) presumably ran out of recreational options and returned to wherever we had not yet been evicted from. They believed in loud entrances. Too bad for any occupants that had school five hours later, and sometimes for the whole slumbering block.
My parents lived in fragile, smudged up glass, but hurled stones like Paul Skenes. Just call it accusatory co-dependency. Mom could deflect blame more effectively than a space shield. (She once-and rather convincingly-held ME accountable for her decision to marry dad. Which happened 11 years before my birth.) With an acid tongue of his own, and an iron worker’s strength when out-insulted, dad proved a fitting Frazier to mom’s smack talking Ali. It just never ended.
But, then again, we never finished anything-not homework, not household chores, and certainly not the occasional effort to improve our own lives. I remember a grandiose plan to paint the whole interior in soothing beige. Who knows? A non-confrontational vibe might have softened our dynamic. Too bad that we called that mission a wrap after one feeble swipe with a roller brush. To me, that 12- inch swath would forever symbolize whatever was lacking in our collective makeup. It could have been our family crest. And appropriately, it wasn’t even straight.
We walked alone, I was sure, as the Stepford world of perfect people shunned us from within their perfect houses filled with perfect harmony and bliss. A utopia in which parents never argued, kids always did their homework, grandmothers gave out more love than a Michael Landon character, and most importantly, men with holsters never paid calls during the wee hours. I imagined one giant normalcy club, complete with passwords, secret handshake, and probably some special ring that turned red and beeped when a Patterson approached.
As it turned out-I had watched one too many episodes of Leave it to Beaver.
My enlightenment came one warm summer night in 1965 when my pal Paul got permission for a sleep-out in the new camper his dad had just purchased, the cute, compact kind designed to piggyback on a pickup. They were the “Joneses” of Midway Drive, smugly possessing the neighborhood’s first color tv (which revealed that the Cartwrights never changed clothes), an elaborate flower garden, pure-bred Shepard pup, and now those status-symbolling vacation quarters, complete with (cramped) kitchen and snooze compartment. An ideal place for two eight year olds to tell stories and feign fear of “No Face Charlie” (A tragically disfigured soul who walked highways in solitude while the world slept) in.
After a few hours of Sweet Tarts, discussing whether Samsom could whip Hercules (for my money, the Greek in a massacre), overstating our disdain for icky girls (I did kind of dig Patty Bredar, except when some school lunch got stuck in her braces), and waiting until we were pretty sure that Charlie was a no show, we drifted off.
Shouting.. still dark.. ragged breath.. desperate scuffling. Outside the camper, Paul’s older brother, Ritchie, had the dad in a headlock. Blood spurted from the older guy’s face as he absorbed drunken uppercuts. Ritchie staggered and fell. His father kicked him. Hard. In the face. Not a kick that knocks mud from your shoe or gets rid of a nipping chihuahua, but instead the kind, issued in this case via steel toed work boot, meant to turn the recipient into a bobblehead-and maybe forever.
I’d seen shoving matches, of course, and slaps in the Patterson Colosseum, but this was full-blown MMA-people trying to hurt people, and not just physically. Hateful dialogue rang out, rich with exposition. Paul’s mom, a diminutive woman about as demonstrative as flowered wallpaper, actually DID have vocal chords, and even a personality, both now employed in haranguing the combatants. Initially, she just screamed for them to stop. When they wouldn’t, she unleashed skeletons, the sort of sordid family history that I’d assumed lurked only in our (disorganized) closets.
Mr. “Jones,” it seemed, found marital fidelity just as “challenging” as did my dad. And his spouse vowed, in tears, to soon explore what is beyond this earthly existence-and take her husband along for the ride. Brutal stuff. “Redrum” had never been threatened in our home. Nor, apparently, was this Ritchie’s first bender..or second..or 10th. The episode ended with Paul’s mom jumping between them and daring either to strike her, which her husband seemed to seriously consider.
The next day, I straightened my neck and began to meet gazes. A famous writer once said that most people lead lives of quiet desperation. Our confirmation of that, I then realized, had merely been loud, and human, not unique. We weren’t alone in our turmoil, and there was no “club.” And whatever “normal” meant, I wanted no part of. That henceforth would be by MY choice as the judgement of others- self-imagined or real-held diminishing power. At some point, the Patterson curse of “otherness” would begin to feel more like willful non-conformity, a path to be followed just as far as my limited talents and ability could take me. Like I had another choice? We are what we are.
As for Paul’s family, I think that his parents divorced a year or two later. I can’t say for sure, because we were gone by then- via eviction, of course. My parents, though, did remain together-at least in their fashion. And things got somewhat better. Mom beat the bottle, but not strictly for our sake. Her Dr gave two options: quit or die. Dad eventually aged out on philandering. A man is only as faithful as his options, some cynics say. The cynics, not me. I loved my late father. Still do, and my departed mom even more. Nobody’s worst actions can completely define them. Everybody’s house has some glass in it.
Grandmother died one frigid January day while I was at school. My brother and I took a hard look for her grave a few years ago. We couldn’t find it. I doubt she would have cared. We are what we are.
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