“I wasn’t there, was I?”
“No.”
Mother suddenly looks hurt and angry. “That’s your favorite memory, one that doesn’t include me, one when our marriage was coming apart?”
I realize that I have stepped in it.
“You asked me about my memory of him. Not of you and him.”
“Edward, your father was cheating on me. Did you know that? He was cheating on me with one of the women in his office, and I told him that I was leaving and that he should think about our future together. And this—this—is your memory.” My mother is definitely angry.
“I did not know that. It doesn’t affect what I remember.”
“Oh, really? What’s so special about Thanksgiving and football?”
Now I’m angry.
“Football is all I had with him. It’s the only way he could stand to be in a room with me, is if we were watching football.”
“That’s not true. That is a horrible thing to say about your father.”
“It is! It is true.”
“I don’t know why,” my mother says, her voice cracking and tears welling in her eyes, “you can’t remember something that isn’t so painful for me, something from later on, when he was such a good man who didn’t fool around anymore. Why can’t you remember all of the good things he did here, the things he accomplished, the honors he was given?”
“Because I was never a part of that. Who among your friends now knows me? No one. How many of those awards dinners did I go to? Not a single one. What do I have to remember about all of that?”
“Edward! You talk as if we’re ashamed of you.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
“No.” She is indignant.
“Who did you hide away in a house on Clark Avenue? Who is invited here only once a month for a dinner that no one really wants to have anyway? Who gets letters from a lawyer when Father wishes to speak to me?”
It angers me all the more that my mother would pretend that these things haven’t happened.
“What are you talking about? I always gave you love, always,” she says. “You’re mad.”
“No, Mother, I’m developmentally disabled. But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy.”
I stand up from the couch and stalk toward the front door, and then I turn back.
“You sit around here and pretend that father was a god all you want, Mother. I will not.”
I open the door, step through, and then slam it behind me.
I stop on the front step to catch my breath. I can hear my mother crying on the other side of the door.
Donna Middleton is sitting on the front step of the house on Clark. I pull into the driveway, set the brake, turn off the ignition, and climb out.
“Edward, I heard the news about your father. I am so, so sorry.” She is walking across the lawn toward me, and when she reaches me, she presses her hands against my cheeks. Her hands are warm.
“I can’t talk to you,” I say.
“It’s hard, I know your family is going through a terrible time, but I just—”
I grasp her hands and pull them away from me. “I cannot talk to you.”
I push past her to the front door and disappear inside the house. My father’s house. My father is dead. I don’t know whose house this is.
At 2:01 p.m., the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Edward, this is Ruth Buckley.”
“Yes.”
“I read the news about your father today. I’m so sorry.”
“Yes.”
“How are you doing?”
“OK, I guess.”
“Would you like me to set aside some time for you today? If you need it, I can do it.”
“I think I will be OK.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Edward, death can be a very a difficult thing to handle. If you need to talk, at any time, you call me. Do you have all of my numbers?”
“Yes.”
“Edward, are you certain that you’re handling this?”
“Yes. I know the stages of grief.”
“Where do you think you are?”
“I’m not in denial. It happened. I know that. It was in the newspaper. I’m always in isolation. I don’t feel angry, except a little bit at my mother, who is deifying my father—”
“Many people do that immediately after the death of a loved one.”
“Yes. I’m not bargaining. I don’t think I’m depressed. I haven’t accepted it yet. I guess I would have to say that I’m dealing with it.”
“OK. That’s good.”
“Yes.”
“Call me if you need anything. And I do mean anything.”
“I will.”
“Good-bye, Edward. I will see you Tuesday, if not sooner.”
“Good-bye, Dr. Buckley.”
The phone rings again at 6:17 p.m. as I’m clearing away the dishes from my spaghetti dinner.
“Hello?”
“Edward.”
“Hello, Mother.”
“Edward, I want to apologize for yelling at you.”
“OK.”
“I feel so crazy sometimes. This can’t be happening.”
“You’re not crazy, Mother. And it is happening.”
“I know. Will you still be at the funeral tomorrow?”
“I will be there.”
“Thank you.”
“Mother?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for yelling, too.”
It is Halloween, but no one comes to the door. This is as I planned. On Halloween, I turn off all the lights and put my car in the garage, and it seems for all appearances that I am not home. That is so much easier than telling eager children at the door that, no, I have no candy for them. Children get sad when you say such a thing to them, and that is difficult enough. But some adults, they get violently angry. That I do not need.
Kyle, I guess, is off enjoying Halloween in Laurel, at his grandparents’ house. I watched through a tiny slit in the curtain as he walked out to the car earlier today with his overnight bag, accompanied by Donna in her nurse’s scrubs. Jay L. Lamb’s “memorandum of understanding” said nothing about watching my friends from the living room of the house I live in, and even if it had, I would like to see him prove that I did it.
Tonight’s episode of Dragnet, the eleventh of the first season, is called “The Big Shooting,” and it’s one of my favorites. It originally aired on March 30, 1967.
In this episode, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate the shooting of a police officer, but they are hindered by two things: The cop, who survives the shooting, has a mental blackout about what happened. Also, there are no other eyewitnesses to the shooting.
For months, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon keep at it, slowly accumulating clues and evidence about the shooter and his cohort. (I love the word “cohort.”) Finally, one of Sergeant Joe Friday’s informants lets him know where the men can be found. Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon bust in on them in a cheap motel and take them downtown. They still don’t have an eyewitness who can identify the men. But Sergeant Joe Friday has an idea.
He dresses the amnesiac cop in his uniform and has him stand at the door when the men are interrogated. Thinking that they had killed the cop and now worried that he will identify him, they get spooked and admit to the shooting. Once again, Sergeant Joe Friday gets his men.
I would like to be lucky enough to not remember those who take things away from me.
Tonight, I need a new green office folder.
Dear Mother:
Although you have apologized to me and I have forgiven you for the events of today, I feel that I must make it clear to you that there is much you either don’t know or don’t want to know about your now-dead husband, my father.