by Tracy Ross
In the hazy light of early summer, I see my brother come flying down the sidewalk on his red Schwinn Fastback with the sparkly banana seat. He’s wearing a pair of tattered cutoffs and a tank top that says Lifeguard Waikiki Beach. At seven years old, he is my own personal blue-eyed Dennis the Menace, who likes to wipe Dentyne gum on his buttcrack and give it to me to chew. He pedals his bike as fast as he can, shouting, “That guy you’re going dancing with is coming in fast!”
The sight of my brother’s skinny legs pumping makes Mom rush into the house for one last peek at her outfit for the night: a tight denim vest over a peasant blouse with pouffy, see-through sleeves. Trailing her cloud of perfume, I follow her into the bathroom, where I find her opening her eye-shadow compact and sweeping a layer of turquoise across her lids. She squints into the mirror at her rosy cheeks, forest-green eyes, and slightly grey, widely spaced teeth, then leans down to tattoo my cheek with a glossy, cherry-red kiss.
We emerge onto the porch just as the jeep pulls into our driveway. A door opens, revealing a lanky, bell-bottomed leg. It’s attached to a man wearing tinted eyeglasses, a tan leather jacket, and a silky, wide-collared shirt. I can’t place him, but something about the man’s warm brown skin and feathered blond hair makes me think I have seen him before. Then he smiles, and a gold cap on his right, top tooth summons a memory into my brain.
I know the man from the boys’ section at Van England’s Department Store in downtown Twin Falls, where my mom takes me when she needs to buy my brother’s plaid polyester pants and matching shirts. Whenever the man sees my mother, he compliments her new hair color, platform espadrilles, or jeans. My mom smiles all the way to the checkout counter and out in the parking lot to her beige Mercury Cougar. When we get into her car, she taps her fingers on the steering wheel and says, “That man sure knows his fashions.”
One day, Mom realized she had never introduced me to the man. It was December, and we’d picked out a new coat for me to wear during the holidays. We walked over to where the man was folding a pile of little boys’ argyle sweaters. “Donnie, hello!” said my mom. “I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, Tracy.” The man looked at me and smiled, reminding me of the way my grandpa smiled when he brought me red roses for my birthday. I liked it when my grandpa did this ritual for me. It told me I was his special girl and deserved to have my own special day. The look in the clothing salesman’s eyes suggested something similar. But I wasn’t about to sit on his lap and wrap my arms around him like I would my family. I anchored my feet to the warped wooden floor and shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my Kermit the Frog art smock.
The man crouched down, putting us at eye level. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tracy,” he said. “My name’s Mr. Lee, but you can call me Donnie. I sure do like that coat you’re getting for Christmas. Wear it with a pretty dress, and I can tell by just looking at you that you’ll be the slickest thing since Wonder Bread.”
It was late afternoon, and sunlight slanted through a giant window facing west. I felt a stirring like a chick cracking through an eggshell in the center of my chest. I was the kind of kid who could live for a week on a compliment. I stood before my future father and fanned him with my eyelashes.
By that summer, Donnie was courting our entire family. Mom and he did the Funky Chicken at his favorite bar, the Cove. They four-wheeled into the South Hills, where they made out to the music of Mormon crickets. But when Donnie picked my mom up, he always brought Chris and me a toy. And when he dropped her off, he snuck into our bedrooms, patting our backs and leaving tender kisses on our sunburned cheeks.
Sometimes he’d pull into our driveway unexpected, gunning the engine of the Willys jeep. Jumping out and leaning against the metal doorframe, he’d yell, “Pile in! We’re going out! My treat!” Hearing the siren call of popcorn and drive-in movies, Chris and I would drop whatever game we were playing (me: Barbies; he: cutting the toes off my Barbies) and race outside, forgetting to put on our sneakers. Mom would toss her Woman’s Day magazine into a macramé basket and chase after us, carrying our shoes and her purse.
As my brother and I clambered up the jeep’s metal footstep, we’d kick and shove, each vying for a chance to sit behind our family’s date. But as soon as we were buckled into our seat belts, we’d have to pile right back out. Juiced on the knowledge that wherever we were going would invariably lead to ice cream, I’d have forgotten to stop off at the bathroom before loading up. Mom would help focus my mind on the heavy feeling in my bladder by saying, “Okay, who needs a pit stop before we leave?”
Finding me in the rearview mirror, Donnie would tip his hat and throw me an encouraging wink. “You run inside, Trace,” he’d say. “Don’t worry. We’ll wait here for you to come back. But whatever you do, don’t fall in.”
Looking at his reflection, I would wrinkle my forehead, trying to decode the message he was sending. Chris had told me that alligators and snakes lived in the sewer pipes under our house, but I didn’t want to disappoint my new friend. Donnie was the only man I knew who actually picked up speed when he saw me, racing toward me and holding out his arms to wrap me in a fierce, high-impact hug. Once entangled, he’d hang on as long as I did, resting his chin in the crook of my neck and smoothing my strawberry tangles. If I was wearing one of my favorite terrycloth tube tops, our hug would have shoved it up over the top of my belly. An amateur stylist by way of his job at Van England’s, Donnie would smooth it back down over the elastic waistband of my polyester cutoffs.
In the jeep, I whined that I could hold it until we got to the Arctic Circle, our favorite ice cream joint. I edged closer and closer toward tears. But before I could stage a full-blown go-to-pieces, Donnie cut the engine and offered to walk me inside the house. He waited in the hallway while I clutched the sides of the toilet, holding my body a few inches off the seat. Who knows how long it took for my bladder to finally relax enough to flush the Kool-Aid or whatever sugary drink I’d been chugging out of my pipes, but when I finally stepped out of the bathroom, Donnie hoisted me onto his shoulders and carried me back to my mom and brother.
I can’t say that I ever knew I was missing a biological father, but with Donnie around, a whole new world opened up. It was defined by adventure, excitement, and fun. I also remember feeling encapsulated, I think, by love. Night after night, he drove us away from the depression that still clung to our house like a needy child. I know my mom fought hard to infuse our lives with stability and joy. But by the time Donnie found us, we were all ready for the kind of light only a man in need of a new family can shine.
His favorite thing was taking us on outdoor adventures, a passion ingrained in all of us since birth. On weeknights and official holidays, we’d fish for slow-moving trout at Dirkies Lake, swim at Nat-Soo-Pah hot springs, or four-wheel to obscure ghost towns near Sunbeam Dam or Idaho City. He held off on the big adventures, like weeklong camping trips near the North Fork of the Wood River, because he didn’t have a camper-trailer big enough to accommodate all of us yet. But on evenings when the light was just beginning to turn purple, we’d switchback down the narrow road leading into the Snake River Canyon to one of our favorite picnic spots. A supper of cheese, crackers, and Hostess cupcakes would be followed by Chris and me running around like demons, high on sugar and the invigorating feeling of cold grass under our feet. Eventually, the sun would sink below the rim of the canyon, lending an eerie glow to the mist floating around Shoshone Falls. With the birds retreating into the bushes and the heat rising out of the canyon, Donnie would slip off his sneakers and crack his first beer of the evening. Leaning onto his forearms, he’d tell us about himself.
He was born on March 12, 1943, in the mountains above Loveland, Colorado. His mom, Mary Ann, was seventeen, and his dad was a chauvinist a-hole. One day, Mary Ann asked if she could go deer-hunting with her husband. They wouldn’t need a sitter, she said, because she’d bring the baby along. When Donnie’s daddy responded by saying, “A woman’s place is in the home,” Mary Ann
filed for divorce. A year later, she met a wire-stringer for the Mountain Bell telephone company and baby Donnie got a new pop.
Donnie lived in thirteen different states before he was six years old. Mary Ann and his new dad, Edward, had three more children, including a boy named Larry and two beautiful daughters, Lori and Debbie. Lucky for Donnie, the family settled in Idaho, the most mountainous state in the U.S. Rivers flowed from snowcapped peaks into wildflower-infested meadows. Pheasants and sage hens soared above the beet fields and Mallard ducks hid in pristine wetlands. As a teenager, Donnie started hunting, a love that would last his entire life. He graduated from high school, joined the National Guard, got married, and got divorced.
All he ever wanted was a son and daughter to call his own, and then his wife cheated on him with her high school sweetheart. When Donnie met my mom, he admired the Stevie Nicks swivel in her size-four hips. More so, he loved the laughing, redheaded children that clung to her slender legs and narrow ankles. Years later, when I was grown with two small sons of my own, he’d tell me that he liked my mom from the second he met her, but that Chris and I were the glue that affixed the seal on their marriage certificate.
“I probably enjoyed seeing you two more than I enjoyed seeing your mother,” he said. “I bonded with you. I loved you. There was no chance it wouldn’t work out.”
I remember the day I first decided that Donnie needed to become our permanent daddy. It was the end of summer and he had brought over his black lab, Jigger, to play. I’d met Jigger a few weeks earlier, on a hiking trip to the sand dunes near Mountain Home. She’d followed me up and down the greasy hills, pushing the top of her head into my outstretched palm.
I was a sucker for any four-legged creature, but there was something about Jigger’s eyes that made me want to tell her my heart’s deepest desires. Asking Donnie’s permission, I slid my hand under her collar and led her gently into the backyard.
We talked for a solid hour—well, I talked and she listened—sitting off to the side of the house under an aspen tree where I thought no one could see us. I whispered, in case Chris was spying.
“I love you, Jigger,” I began. “And I love your owner, too. He’s the nicest man I’ve ever met. When you get home, tell him I want him to be my daddy. Then you can come live with us, starting tomorrow.”
Jigger listened, breaking her gentle, bird-dog stare every so often to lick my cheek or grass-stained foot. I took each kiss as a form of doggie affirmation, as if she was saying: I like you. He likes me. Pretty soon we’ll all be sharing the same steak.
She was right. Mom, Chris, Donnie, and I tied the knot nine days shy of my fourth birthday, on November 3, 1974. I say it like that—we tied the knot—because that’s how it felt: the four of us vowing to love, cherish, and honor each other till death—or some other unforeseeable catastrophe—tore us apart.
3
The Power of Love
You’re lucky,” my mom told me. “You know what it’s like to be loved.”
She and I were sitting in the living room of our house on Richmond Drive in February 1976. I wasn’t in kindergarten yet because I’d missed the cutoff date at my school, Sawtooth Elementary. My birthday was in November, the same month the valves in my unborn brother’s heart filled up with calcium. One day Mom felt him rummaging around near her ribcage, and the next day: nothing. She called the doctor, who told her to lie on the couch and eat Jell-O; that would get the baby moving. A week later, when he still hadn’t tickled her kidneys, she knew he was dead inside her.
The doctors scheduled Mom for something she called a D&C, a simple procedure to vacuum the baby out of her body. It happened a few days before my fifth birthday, but, due to complications, the simple procedure turned into a hysterectomy. Marlene and Terry came over to make the ice-cream-cone cupcakes and blindfold the dozen kids at my party for pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. But sometime between presents and birthday cake, I lured my friends into my bedroom to tell them my mom was in the hospital and that we shouldn’t be having so much fun.
Even then, I had a sense for which of my friends would respond best to my dramas and who would give me the wrong response. I’d already been caught—and punished—for showing Marcie and our neighbor Wendy a Playboy magazine I’d stolen from my dad’s stash in the garage. We were simultaneously horror struck and mesmerized by the models’ balloon-size boobs and hairy armpits, and our laughter made Marcie’s dad look behind his La-Z-Boy where we were sitting. When he found us, he threatened to call my parents if I didn’t tell him where we got the magazine. I could tell from the tone in his voice that magazines with naked ladies were bad, but there was no way anyone could make me rat out my new daddy. When my parents found out I’d stolen the Playboy, they scolded me, but only lightly, and later I heard them laughing about it.
At my party, my friends and I grouped up between my white-and-purple bed frame and the wall, buttercup yellow. Marcie stuck her feet in my flowered sleeping bag, while Wendy pulled my Porky Pig nightlight out of the wall socket.
“My mommy is in the hospital trying to get out our baby,” I told them. “We can eat cupcakes and I can open my presents. But after that, I think God would want you to go home.”
One by one, around the circle, my friends’ faces clouded over. Most of them went to church, so they understood the concept of God. If they were Catholic, like I was, they also knew that God the Father could fly down from heaven and light our hair on fire if we didn’t put others’ needs before ours. Nearly all of my friends prayed “Now I lay me down to sleep” before they went to bed. But when it came time to sacrifice their party favors for a woman they knew vaguely as “Tracy’s mommy,” they just stared at me, blinking.
“Maybe we could finger-paint your mom a picture,” offered Marcie, pitching forward on her corduroys.
“Or save her a piece of cake,” said Wendy, picking at the carpet.
“Or maybe all of you can come back to the living room and join the rest of the children who were nice enough to come to your party,” said a mother I didn’t know, sticking her head through my door and furrowing her eyebrows.
Some people don’t know how to recognize a child’s strange way of coping with trauma. But when my mom came home six days later, I knew I had been a good daughter. She pulled up her nightgown and showed me the layers of blood-stained gauze wrapped around the center of her abdomen. Her skin looked doughy and waterlogged and blue bruises lined the insides of her arms.
“I’ll be good as new in a little while,” she said, when she saw me staring at her injuries. But for some reason I knew better than to believe her. We were standing in the bathroom in front of our big oval mirror. Static lifted my hair from its roots and stuck it to my mom’s bandages.
A few months after her surgery, though, Mom actually did start feeling better. She came out of her bedroom dressed in a black leotard, matching tights, and glittery, navy blue legwarmers. She turned on the TV, and a man with hair like a space helmet started telling her to do leg kicks. I hopped around behind her, trying to copy her footsteps.
In the mornings before my first year of school, Chris went to Sawtooth Elementary and my new dad drove his jeep to work in the boy’s department at Van England’s. If Mom was feeling happy, she’d pull my hair into braids and tie my Holly Hobbie pinafore into a bow. We kept ourselves busy, cleaning out the closets and watching As the World Turns. But every afternoon, something came over my mother that made her want to go to sleep. Climbing onto the black vinyl sofa in our upstairs living room, she’d mutter, “I wish I knew what it was like to be loved. But no one’s ever really loved me.” When she said it, she wasn’t looking at me, but somewhere beyond me, near the fake oak tree we kept in the living room, flanked by matching statues of Asian kids in kimonos.
I sat Indian style near the base of the couch, studying the bottom of my mom’s feet. It’d been more than a year since we’d married Donnie, and I was confused by her confession of loneliness. It made no sense for her to say that no one lov
ed her, because even I could see that my new dad waited on her hand and foot. The stories she told about my old dad made me think he’d loved her too. And what about me? I loved her more than anything.
Besides that, ever since the wedding our life had seemed so much happier than before; even a five-year-old could see it. In my Mother Goose–influenced worldview, everything about our new life shouted love, from the songs we’d sing on our way to go skiing at Soldier Mountain to the TV dinners we got to eat in the basement while watching Sonny and Cher. Love is what made my dad jump out of his beanbag during a chase scene in Starsky and Hutch to rush down to Safeway for Ruffles, my mom’s favorite potato chips, and spend an entire Saturday during the middle of sagehen-hunting season helping Chris build race cars for his Boy Scout troop’s pinewood derby.
I was pretty sure love accompanied my parents into their bedroom on the rare occasions when my dad would sneak out of work and surprise us for lunch. After a quick grilled-cheese sandwich and tomato soup, he and my mom would make me go down for a nap, then nudge each other into their bedroom, smooching and holding hands. When I heard the latch on their door lock behind them, I’d sneak out of bed and press my ear into the two-inch space between their door and the carpet. The muffled noises seeping through the gap made me feel weird but happy. They sounded like people licking strawberry ice cream.
So when my mom offhandedly mentioned how alone she felt on that blustery February afternoon, confusion swirled like a cloud of mosquitoes. Even then, a part of me knew that my mom’s sadness was more powerful than any love anyone could give her, and that her life before me had been too difficult for her to ever be truly happy. I knew she’d grown up in a place where love was doled out in slaps and insults, and that, more than once, she’d received actual coal in her Christmas stocking. This knowledge made me feel both lucky and guilty. I’d sit with her on the couch looking at pictures of my real dad and hold her hand as sobs wracked her body. But I was young and full of energy. I bounced up and down on the sofa and said, “But I love you, Mommy. I do.”
