Authors: Carine McCandless
“Oh, we came with friends today,” he answered to one. “They’re out of town; we’re here with neighbors,” he told another. They smiled at us and said, “Well, give your parents our love.”
We put on our coats and began to make our way home.
“Do you want to cut through the woods?” Chris asked. I did. Taking the detour on the way home would keep us away a bit longer. Plus, Chris always cheered up when we were in the woods; he loved nothing more than when our family hiked in the Shenandoah, and he often provided captions to the scenery, as if he were preparing an image for
National Geographic
magazine. Chris loved to look at every type of plant, animal, and bug he hadn’t seen before on the trail and point out those he did recognize. He enjoyed walking along small streams, listening to the water as it traveled, and searching for eddies where we could watch the minnows scurry amongst the rocks. On one Shenandoah trip, while we were resting at a waterfall, eating our chocolate-covered granola bars and watching the water pummel the rocks below, he said, “See, Carine? That’s the purity of nature. It may be harsh in its honesty, but it never lies to you.”
Chris seemed to be most comfortable outdoors, and the farther away from the typical surroundings and pace of our everyday lives the better. While it was unusual for a solid week to pass without my parents having an argument that sent them into a negative tailspin of destruction and despair, they never got into a fight of any consequence when we were on an extended family hike or camping trip. It seemed like everything became centered and peaceful when there was no choice but to make nature the focus. Our parents’ attention went to watching for blaze marks on trees; staying on the correct trail; doling out bug spray, granola bars, sandwiches, and candy bars at proper intervals; and finding the best place to pitch the tent before nightfall. They taught us how to properly lace up our hiking boots and wear the right socks to keep our feet healthy and reliable. They showed us which leaves were safe to use as toilet paper and which would surely make us miserable downtrail. We learned how to purify water for our canteens if we hadn’t found a safe spring and to be smart about conserving what clean water we had left.
At night we would collect rocks to make a fire ring, dry wood to burn, and long twigs for roasting marshmallows for the s’more fixings Mom always carried in her pack. Dad would sing silly, nonsensical songs that made us laugh and tell us about the stars. “Come on, Dad,” I’d say. “With all you know about space, you have to know if there are aliens. Are there? Tell me, please!” Dad would grin mysteriously and dodge the question. “Space is vast, Carine. We’ve only been able to explore a tiny part of it. Maybe they do exist; maybe they don’t. Maybe they live among us and we don’t even know it!”
Later, in our tent, Chris and I would curl up in our hunter-green and navy-blue sleeping bags, the soft linings covered with pictures of mallard ducks. On particularly cold nights we’d zip them together, and Chris would whisper, “Carine! Shhh. Listen . . . I’m pretty sure there’s an alien outside our tent.” Depending on my mood, and on the level of noise in the forest, I would either panic or laugh.
Though the wooded grove shortcut from church was nothing like the Shenandoah, Chris made the most of it. He told me about all the different trees, and we collected leaves that had fallen from each. We looked for the empty shells of the cicadas that had sung to us all summer. The bugs always climbed up the trees before shedding their skin for a new life. We loved to spot their old armor piled up on the ground, no sign of the cicadas in sight.
A FEW WEEKS LATER,
Dad went away on business. He was gone for several days and it was like the house’s vibrato changed frequency, lowering until it could barely be felt at all. We made chocolate chip cookies with Mom, and I snuck bites of the dough even though she warned me I’d get worms.
“After the cookies are done baking,” Mom announced, “we’re going to go on a drive and do a little house hunting.”
“What’s house hunting?” I asked.
“We’re going to find a place for the three of us to live.”
“Not Dad?” Chris asked.
“No, not Dad. Just the three of us. I’m going to get us out of here. We shouldn’t have to live like this anymore.”
Chris and I exchanged a wide-eyed look.
Finally!
we thought, but neither of us dared say it.
“I’ve been to see an attorney,” Mom continued. “I’m going to leave your father.”
Warm cookies in hand, we climbed into the Suburban and drove around town, eager to spot
FOR RENT
signs in front of smaller houses on streets that were just far enough away. Chris sat in the front, wrote down the phone numbers, and talked about his friends who lived near one place or the other.
“Look, Mom, that one has a swing set!” I pointed.
“That one has a basketball hoop!” Chris said when we passed another.
“Look at that flower bed,” Mom said, shaking her head. “What a travesty. I could put some petunias in there and brighten it right up.” In front of the next house, she said, “I know this one doesn’t look like much, but imagine the potential! All it needs is a fresh coat of paint on the windows, doors, maybe the shutters. It’ll come to life and we’ll have gotten it for a bargain.”
She looked stronger with every mile we traveled. Her eyes and shoulders lifted and her voice had an exhilaration to it as she told us about her meeting with her attorney, Doreen Jones.
When we got home, Chris organized his army men so they’d be easy to pack up, and I organized my stuffed animals. The notepad of rental phone numbers sat next to the phone, with Mom’s notations about whom she’d left a message for. When Dad returned, Mom told him she was divorcing him, that the three of us were moving out. A massive fight ensued, one in which Dad beat Mom down even more with his words than with his hands: “You’re stupid, Billie! You don’t even have a college degree. I can see to it that you can’t get a good job, and there’s no way you can take care of those kids on your own!” He peeled away her strengths until all her insecurities were exposed. Then came the salt in the sugar jar. He gave Mom an expensive token from his trip, and all was forgotten.
The next time Dad left, we went house hunting again. And the time after that.
Doreen says
this and
Doreen says
that—Mom would chirp about her most recent meeting with the attorney. With each trip, Chris took less interest in writing down the phone numbers of rentals, until he stopped bringing a notepad altogether.
Occasionally I lost patience with my mom’s unwillingness to leave Dad. I’d pack my little red vinyl suitcase with essentials, like my favorite pajamas and stuffed animals, throw in a couple of Pop-Tarts, and announce
I
was leaving. I’d get as far as the end of the street before realizing that no one was coming after me. I’d return to the house, but instead of going inside, I would climb into the Suburban and lie down until someone came out to retrieve me. “If I could drive,” I contended, “I’d be out of here.”
Sometimes Mom kept her resolve to divorce Dad longer, and Chris and I were summoned for a sit-down with both parents to discuss important matters. “You each need to say who you want to live with. And we need to know that right now,” they’d say. To answer correctly was impossible. The chosen parent would look smugly at the other in victory, while the odd one out would scream at Chris and me for being so cruel and unappreciative of all that they had sacrificed on our behalf. This summons to appear and decide came frequently, always with the same outcome.
But when we were older and the divorce bomb was launched into the air, we caught it and kept it alive, tossing it around and examining aloud with our parents what a great idea we thought it was, daring them to finally follow through with it and bring the relief of an explosion. All the while, the house hunting continued. In time, Chris and I viewed the drives around town as just that: drives. And when we were old enough to stay home alone, we declined to get in the Suburban at all.
“Okay, kids, I’ll be back soon. I’ve seen some great options over in Mantua. You’ll see!” Mom enthused, though we didn’t really listen.
MY OLDEST SISTER, STACY,
always said her life began the day Marcia took her and her siblings away from Walt. They didn’t have much money, and Walt’s child support payments were sometimes inconsistent; with the distance Marcia had gained for herself and her children, Walt could no longer control them, and money was the one weapon he had left against his ex-wife. Marcia contacted authorities three separate times to collect back pay from Walt.
In addition to income from Marcia’s jobs, they relied on church friends and family to help them get by. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are,” wrote Theodore Roosevelt, and the quote inspired Marcia through the most difficult years. Walt’s parents sent birthday and Christmas presents and back-to-school clothes. Walt and his siblings had come from a volatile home, but with Walt’s musical and academic talents he was regarded as flawless, especially by his mother, Margaret, who reportedly doted on him. But as loyal as she remained to Walt, even she could see that her son had not done right by his first wife.
Marcia’s parents were immensely reliable with their support, helping their daughter and grandchildren both monetarily and beyond. They watched the kids when they weren’t in school while Marcia worked, and they helped care for them when they were sick. It wasn’t an especially easy life, but it was peaceful and loving.
It was sometimes a little uncomfortable when Marcia’s kids would visit us in Virginia, because Chris and I had a lot more material things than they did. We had new skis, new bikes, the latest styles in clothes and shoes, newer models of everything electronic that Marcia’s kids didn’t even have older versions of. We were the ones Dad always provided for. Yet they never complained when it was time to go back home.
Our siblings came in different groups, usually, for several weeks at a time, but then Shelly came to live with us for her last two years of high school. I was ten and Chris was thirteen.
Soon after arriving, Shelly realized she’d underestimated how bad things were. For much of her life she’d witnessed Dad beating her mom, but now she was witness to Dad and Billie violently assaulting
each other
—sometimes physically, always verbally. Mom often ignored Shelly, and Dad traveled so much he was barely around. When Mom did acknowledge Shelly’s existence, it was usually to bark an order at her or chastise her for some wrongdoing. But Shelly was committed to staying in Virginia. Hardened from past experience, she proved to be even tougher than Chris was. We learned from her what it looked like to stand up for yourself.
When Dad next traveled to Europe, he took all three of us kids with him, as well as Mom. When Chris ducked into nudie magazine stores in Amsterdam, Shelly told Mom he was checking out tennis shoes a block over. Though she had his back, Shelly and Chris bickered like crazy on that trip, once even to the point that Chris screamed that Shelly was going to kill him after he’d teased her too much. When we were all in the car one afternoon, Dad reached his limit with them. “I’m going to pull this car over and spank both of you!” he said. Shelly laughed at him. She was seventeen, much too old to be spanked, plus she had our father’s number: he’d never laid a hand on her before.
Perhaps because they were so similar, Dad had a soft spot for Shelly. When he’d spent time with Marcia’s kids in California, he’d made them all line up outside his office door, to come in and be smacked one by one for whatever the baseless infraction of the day was, his sturdy frat-house paddle firmly in hand. When it was Shelly’s turn, though, he told her he wasn’t going to hit her. She should scream out loud anyway, he explained, so the others wouldn’t know. She felt the special treatment was because she saw him for what he was, and he knew it.
One night while Shelly was living with us, I was taking care of my daily chores in the basement—organizing some office files; Windexing the glass-fronted cabinets and tabletops; ensuring that Dad had one pen in each color of blue, black, red, and green, in soldier formation, awaiting him on his desk alongside one yellow and one white lined pad of paper stacked beneath one green steno notepad. Upstairs, Mom was making dinner. I could smell the ground beef and cumin as they sizzled together on the stovetop—taco night. Dad was working on his own creation on the piano, concocting a rendition of a Bill Evans song. Evans was just one of the many jazz greats Dad taught Chris and me to appreciate; Miles, Ella, and Duke were also favorites. The soft thump of the piano pedals began to form a repetitive pattern on the wood floor above me as he delicately worked a decrescendo into a specific chord progression again and again.
“Jesus Christ, Walt!” I heard Mom implore from the kitchen. “Do you have to keep playing that same line over and over like that?”
“Yes, Billie!” he yelled back to her. “And if you knew anything about music, you would understand why!”
I had already finished all my less-than-challenging sixth-grade homework and knew Chris was doing his in his bedroom. I trotted up the steps from the basement and saw Shelly lying back on an array of pillows on the family room couch, studying for a world history test. Her long red curls fell softly around the headphones that covered her ears. She had her bare feet and polished toes up on the coffee table, textbook on her knees. Her Walkman was turned up so loudly I could hear every word of Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home.”
She turned off the music when she saw me.
“Now, Carine,” she mimicked, “you’d better make sure that I have one blue pen, one black, one red, and one green all lined up next to my notepads. And they better be set up parallel to the lines of the wood grain on the desk. Do you understand me?”
“It’s impossible to line up a straight edge with walnut wood grains,” I mused. “The grain isn’t straight.”
“Oh, whatever, little Miss Smarty Pants!” she teased back.
“What are you reading about?” I asked.
“Wars,” she answered flatly. “As if I don’t know enough about that already.”