Learning to Cry (28 page)

As Karen and I increased in volume and Doreen wiped up the mess, Melissa opened up with her infantile tirade. God forbid she would just stand there and take her punishment. She seemed incapable of accepting responsibility. Somehow this was all my fault, and now that Karen had joined in, it was her fault, as well. The louder we got the louder Melissa got and, as with most of our disagreements, it only ended when I walked out of the room. Karen followed me.

Doreen cleaned up most of the mess while Melissa screamed after us like the small child she had become. You want to see your daughter mature as each year passes, but somehow Melissa regressed as she reached each new annual milestone. At this rate she would be back to infancy in a few years, and we would change her diapers. Sadly, that could be an exact reality if she overdosed or was on the wrong end of a car accident. Jesus, it wouldn’t be that long before she could get her license. That was one of the scariest things imaginable. My 8-year-old daughter would be more responsible.

The following morning was more of the same. Doreen’s dad picked her up, and I insisted on telling him of the night’s activities. Sadly, I am not sure he cared. I had been told he was older, but when he stood in the front door, I couldn’t help but think that he must have been in his 70s. Maybe at that age you realize you are so close to death your daughter can do whatever she likes. You won’t even be around to see it so why does it matter. It makes you wonder why people even have kids in their 50s. If they can’t tolerate the responsibility any more than that then why procreate?

Melissa never did say she was sorry. She never admitted to doing anything wrong. She never apologized to Karen for waking her up or to me for keeping me out of bed. It was obvious she really didn’t care.

I got her out of bed early the next day. I made her do some chores, and we continued the weekend as planned. The little girls had lost too many weekends and too many opportunities because of Melissa. It had to stop. Did all of our lives have to be put on hold for this child? Did we all have to sacrifice for her inability to care about anyone but herself? 

If you love all of your children equally, when do you draw the line with one in order to save the other two? Is there a point in time where it is acceptable to give up and cut your losses, letting the wayward daughter drift out to sea on her own? Jesus, I was sick and tired of this shit.

Melissa

Everyone turns 16. The only way to keep a child from turning 16 would be if the child died. Otherwise the inevitable always occurs. Melissa was only a few days away. She realized her father wouldn’t help her get her license, but her mother was another story. Every time she asked to go to the movies or hang out with her friends, she saw the glint of hope in her mother’s eyes. Her mother might love her, but she was all consumed with herself, as well.

When her mother weighed the time spent driving Melissa to all of her social events against the dangers of having her drive, it was an easy choice. Her mother’s only worry was that Melissa wouldn’t get her license, so she would help her get it no matter what. Her father was only concerned with her being responsible, so she never even bothered trying.

Scott was still the primary instigator in her life, and he told her to tone it down. He told her to keep her grades up, complain a little less, and attempt to play the part her parents expected her to play. Is being a daughter nothing more than playing a role meant to portray what people expected? If her mother needed a little more attention and adoration, then that is what she would give her.

She told her mom she looked nice and asked her if she lost weight. It was all about the subtle compliments and the next thing Melissa knew, she was behind the wheel. But, actually driving was more difficult than she’d imagined – when to turn, how to break, what might happen if you turned the radio volume up at the wrong time. Melissa had trouble focusing on more than one thing most of the time, and driving required significant multitasking. Still, after several rides in her mom’s car, she got the hang of things. As her 16th birthday came and went, she found herself behind the wheel of a car. Luckily, her parents kept the former nanny’s Honda Civic for her, so she didn’t have to wonder whether she would get a vehicle of her own. It had been in the driveway for the last several months with her name on it.

She admittedly would have preferred her father help teach her. But since he refused, she really had no choice. Her mother was an adequate tutor. But it was emotionally draining for both of them. Melissa had a disturbing experience on a major highway early on when she turned on her left-hand turn signal but didn’t merge into the left lane. The cars behind her and passing her over the shoulder blared their horns. She heard one man scream through the window as he flew by.

Her mother, in the passenger seat, yelled “Turn left! Turn left!” over and over again.  Then, when Melissa almost did as she was told her mother screamed, “Not now! Not now!” as a car zipped by them only a few inches from their front bumper. They both laughed when they pulled over to the side, and Melissa finally got out of the car. She hadn’t been allowed to drive home that day, but it wasn’t very long before she was back at it again.

Her father would have been a little easier. Melissa remembered being in the car when the nanny did the exact same thing, and he sat there, asking her if she planned on turning left or was she attempting to get to know the neighbors a little better. He never did lose his cool in the car. Melissa always wondered why he managed to get so mad on other occasions but not when things rattled him.

Sadly, the little Honda Civic wasn’t Melissa’s ideal vehicle. She had wanted a jeep. She requested one on several occasions, but it didn’t seem likely she was going to get it. Most kids would have been happy with any car. Just having a car to call their own would have sufficed, but Melissa pushed the envelope. Maybe it was her mother’s influence. Why be happy when you can constantly find things that don’t measure up? No matter how good things are going you can always find something to bring you down. Want more, want more, always ask for what you don’t have.

Some might scoff at this, but it is a true talent to turn anything into a negative.

Father

I moved out of my parents’ house when I turned 16. I spent a year with my aunt and uncle and a year with my grandmother. I worked a couple of jobs and paid for all my incidentals. I realized at a young age if I were going anywhere in life, I’d have to get there on my own. My parents loved me, but their priorities were vastly different than mine.

To celebrate getting my license, I took the vast fortune I’d saved since I was a very young, withdrew it from my bank account, and purchased my first car. I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t ask for anyone’s advice. I got my $200 and purchased my car. Now one might wonder what kind of car you can purchase for $200.

It was a Chrysler – that much I can remember. It had two doors, and it reminded me, and anyone who looked at it, of a tank. It was huge. How you can have a two-door car that big is beyond me. The doors weighed so much they must have been on special hinges. The car alone must have been several tons. It was all steel, like the older cars, none of this plastic crap that bends and folds at the slightest touch.

The tires on this car were as bald as a watermelon. None of them had any tread at all. The heater and defrost didn’t work, and the rear axle was bent so you rocked back and forth in rhythm with the speed you traveled. It was like getting a massage as you drove down the road. I purchased all of this at the junkyard for the rock-bottom, bargain-basement price of $200.

The beast did manage to get me back and forth to work. I drove it to school and used it for my many extracurricular activities. If you are basically on your own at 16, you might not quite be ready to face the challenges the world has to offer. All of the clichés really do hold true. There are not many, if any, teenagers who understand the magnitude of life’s hardships that await them.

As summer changed to fall and winter approached, it didn’t take long for me to realize my car needed a heater and defroster. I picked up a couple of friends, and we all headed over to a party. We had some beer with us, each popped open a can and eased back into the ice-cold green vinyl seats. Vinyl is damn cold when the temperature is close to 30 degrees. I scraped off the ice from the inside of the car windows and we were off.

It is one thing to brush off snow and remove ice on the outside of your windows but when you are scraping the stuff off on the inside, you should wonder about the viability of your vehicle. It didn’t even melt as it hit the floor. It just fell in mounds of beautiful white clumps on the floorboard below. I scraped enough to give me a viewing window, cranked up the car, and we headed on our way.

With three guys breathing heavily and no heat keeping us warm, the glass quickly iced over again. I was very shortly rolling down the window and hanging my head outside to see as I drove. It was dangerous in retrospect, and the fact that I was drinking at the time made matters worse.  The stupidity of teenagers astounds me in my aging years. I literally was driving with my elbow on the door, a beer in my left hand, my head hanging out the window, and my right hand on the wheel. Should I have been shocked at the possibility of getting in a wreck?

As I tooled down the road doing around 45 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour zone, I jumped over a low spot in the asphalt and flew straight through a red light. I didn’t realize it until my buddy said, “Dude, you just ran a red light.” It’s a wonder that we didn’t die that evening. All it would have taken was another car crossing the road at the wrong time, and there would have been little teenage body parts sprayed everywhere. Sadly, it didn’t even faze me.

The only time I remember even being slightly unnerved was one Saturday afternoon when the same guys and I headed to the lake. It was a warm sunny day, and we’d smoked pot all morning. We were so stoned we could barely keep our eyes open. Good thing you don’t need them to drive, I guess. With the sun’s glare off the hood hitting me in my blood-shot corneas, my eyes were mere slits, as thin as a razor. They remained this way as we glided over the back country roads.

It was the kind of road that was most likely gravel a couple of years before, and the new age of asphalt had finally found its way to the sticks, paving it smooth. Trees lined each side, and there was a lone house sporadically placed here and there, sitting all by its lonesome with the only neighbors several miles away. I flew over the hills, trying to get that feeling in your stomach when you hit one just right. You know that butterfly effect when your stomach turns over slightly as you lift off the ground and quickly plummet back to pavement. It only happens on just the right hills, and you have to be going pretty damn fast.

So we zoomed along, and I reached the crest of one hill and hit the gas. My hood stuck out, seemingly a few hundred feet so it took a few minutes after I crested the hill to see the road again. As I came down over the top I saw a little boy squatting right in the middle of the road, grabbing his multi colored ball. It was one of those little rubber balls used for kicking and playing with friends on a beautiful sunny afternoon. Jesus, you see this in the movies, but it just doesn’t happen in real life, right? An animal maybe or even a guy crossing the road, but a little kid getting a ball… It was too cliché to happen in real life. Sadly, for me, it did. Maybe sadly is not appropriate but anyway, it happened.

I swerved the car out of the road, yanked the wheel too hard trying to correct the adjustment, and watched my hood as we vaulted back over the pavement to the other side. I managed to release my foot from the gas so at least we began coasting. I, then, went back the other direction, ended up on the road again and zig-zagged back and forth until we stopped. My friends laughed the entire time.

I opened my car door and threw up. My hands shook. Damn, my entire body shook. I felt like I might pass out. I looked behind me and was amazed at the distance I had travelled. The boy looked like a speck so far back on the horizon with his ball in his hands. He walked back to his house, and nobody was the wiser to what almost occurred.

I had several circumstances in my childhood where I was lucky. This was one of the most blatant. The multitude of possible variables that day overwhelms me even now. I could have killed the child in the street, wrecked the car and hurt myself, or one or both of my friends. All of the above and more so. Someone could’ve been injured. They could’ve lost a limb. The child could’ve forever been in a wheel chair with brain damage etc. How stupid are we as teenagers?

After I had gathered my senses, we started the car back up and went to the lake. Granted I drove slower, but that was the only real change. It wasn’t like I had learned a lesson, or changed my ways. I just adapted to my situation, altering my behavior to the minimum extent possible. You can kill just as many people driving while impaired going 40 miles an hour as you can going 70. The point is not driving at all. Jesus, the irony is almost more than I can take. Maybe you only think you mature as you age. Maybe the reality is your destiny is always set ahead of time. You just meander through life until you meet your defining moment of inevitable failure.

Melissa

Melissa had now been driving for a couple of months. She had a few close calls, but for the most part, she’d fought her way through the learning process with very few scars. She drove her sisters back and forth to school and picked them up from activities. She drove over the rolling hills to the movie theater, and as long as she was home by 10 p.m., her mother let her off on her own. Granted this was all at her mother’s house. Her father’s house was a completely different story.

He didn’t let her younger sisters in the car with her. She drove during the day only when it was light outside, and she was not allowed to have any of her friends in the car. This was all asinine, and she, of course, did not listen. But still, it was insulting.

With her new-found freedom, she also found that Scott, Mike and Dana were no longer as bothersome as they had been in the past. She would still get an earful now and then from Scott, but he didn’t talk as much as he once had.  It almost felt as though she was finally on the right track. Maybe her life was moving forward again. She never really understood how she fell into depression, so to her it made perfect sense that she might not ever know when she would fight her way back out again. Maybe one should not question things when they are going well. Just ride the white horse into the sunset and see what happens.

Since it was Friday night and Melissa was at her mother’s house, she told her she was going to the movies later that night. She would pick Sarah up, and the two of them would head out as soon as school was over. She would pick up her little sisters and bring them home, but this was the only time she had to spare. She felt so independent with her newfound driving status. It had the added benefit of making her feel grown up.

Her mother grunted her acceptance, and Melissa was off to plan her evening. She, of course, was not going to the movies. “The movies” was a standard excuse for everyone her age who really planned to go to a party.  All the kids had the plan pretty down pat. They would even buy the movie tickets which benefitted everyone. The theater sold more seats, the patrons enjoyed less people actually in the movies, and the kids got to do what they wanted. How many times is it possible to please everyone so easily? Melissa and Sarah headed out to yet again another party. The scenes melted together as they all held a basic pattern. They would both drink way too much and end up with one boy or another. They might or might not have sex with them, and during all of this Scott enjoyed himself immensely. He loved the plans and the parties, but for the most part let Melissa do the coordinating with little intervention. He might come up with an idea now and then, but he was much more silent as of late. He sat in the background in the inner recesses of her mind.

This was the first time Melissa drove to a party. It was the first time she had been allowed out at night under these circumstances. Her mom had plans for the evening anyway, and it was easier if Melissa was not around. It seemed that Melissa not being around was easier on everyone. Thoughts of leaving this world entered her head, and she wondered if her family would not be better off. What did she provide for them anyway? An amusement? A simple toy to discuss and discard when it became old?

As it ended up the party was pretty much like all the rest they attended. Alcohol, drugs, and boys were plentiful, and they hung out, getting intoxicated. Melissa met a boy named Scott, of all things, and she really did like him. He seemed different than the rest, but then again they all seemed different in the beginning. Since she was only supposed to be at a movie her time was cut short, and she abruptly told Scott she had to go. She didn’t feel too drunk to drive, and she made her way out to the car to find Sarah.

Melissa stood waiting for several minutes, but Sarah was nowhere to be found. That was not typical Sarah. She was normally on time. Melissa was now beginning to feel a little nauseated and was ready to drive home before her stomach got any worse. She ran back in the house and asked Scott if he had seen her. He really did seem like a decent guy and offered to help her look around. There were still kids everywhere. Music blared in the background, most of them were drunk at this point, and several of them danced in the living room. The house was a complete disaster.

The two of them ran upstairs and after opening a couple of doors saw Sarah. A boy held her hair with his left hand, and he smacked her across the face as they entered. He yelled at her. Slurred was more like it.

“You damn bitch, you bit me.”

Over and over again, he yelled. Melissa stood there with her mouth open. Scott ran forward and tackled the other boy as they both fell forward. Sarah, just sat there for a moment and then slowly toppled over like she was no longer in control of her body. Jesus, what had happened?

Melissa landed next to her in one leap and tried to get her to talk. It seemed Sarah was coherent, but she wasn’t focusing. Melissa screamed at this point.

“Sarah, let’s go home, please Sarah, please, dear God, get up!”

Luckily, they stumbled to their feet, and with Melissa’s help, they practically fell downstairs to her car. She helped Sarah into the passenger’s seat, and at that point Melissa noticed Sarah didn’t have on her pants. She hadn’t seen them and had no idea where they were. Melissa just wanted to leave. She was crying and sad and tired of this life she was leading. She no longer wanted to be this person she was turning into. Who was she?

As she started her car and backed up Scott hit his hand against her window. He yelled at her and told her not to drive home. She couldn’t focus, but she knew there was no way she was going to stop. He relentlessly continued, begging her to get out, and she refused. She threw the car in drive and as she lurched forward, she heard him scream to turn her lights on. He repeated it over and over again. Melissa had not turned her headlights on, and she was getting ready to pull out into the road.

Maybe there was a nice guy left in the world. Maybe all he had wanted to do was help her. She pulled into the road and made a left-hand turn. Sadly, she made the left-hand turn onto a one-way street. She saw the sign the second it was too late to turn around. There were no cars coming in her direction, but they were all stopped at the light on the next block. The traffic light happened to flip green at that exact moment. She cried. She hit her steering wheel and cried. She just needed all of this to stop.

She pulled to her right in a driveway, stopped the car, turned off the lights and shut down the engine. In the dark with Sarah piled up next to her in the passenger seat, she swore this was it. She might get into trouble, she might not always do the right thing, but she was no longer doing this. She could no longer keep it together. She just wanted to be home in bed. She wanted to be safe in bed where these things didn’t happen to girls like her.