Sucking Up Yellow Jackets

by Jeanne Denault

  Seth says he still remembers how guilty he felt to be so relieved that he would finally be free of Max’s oppressive presence. We all felt some guilt but it didn’t stop us from enjoying the fact that we would be without the force of his vibrating personality crowding us into a corner. Linda and I had a great time. We shared a similar sense of the ridiculous and hadn’t had much recent time together to express it.

  Seth had his learner’s permit. All the way across the flat southern plains and up the west coast, Seth repeatedly asked Pete if he could drive for a while. Pete said, “No,” until we came to what looked like a rarely used gravel road along the western edge of the Frazer River Canyon in Canada when he told Seth he could drive. Seth was surprised but he changed places with Pete. At the time of the shift, the fast-moving river was in a wide gully no more than three or four feet below the road and there was no oncoming traffic. We were heading north with the river on our right.

  The road lost its benign appearance within the next few miles. Already narrow, it seemed to be shrinking and the canyon getting deeper much too fast. Seth’s knuckles were white. Pete wasn’t accustomed to sitting in the passenger seat and started flinching each time Seth came too close to the edge of what looked like a ten-story drop to the river below. Then he flinched and shrieked. It was just a little shriek but coming from someone who always needed to be in control and frowned at any show of emotion, it started Linda and me snickering. The road continued to climb and narrowed even more. The frothing rapids of the Frazer River were suddenly so far below us, they were just a misty strip of white in the distance. Pete’s shrieks increased in volume and his flinches almost put him in Seth’s lap. By then Linda and I were laughing so hard, we were collapsed in a heap. Seth was desperately driving on the left side of the road to get as far away from the drop-off on the right as possible when we realized a lumber truck was coming the other way. Seth pulled as close to the edge of the gorge as he dared, stopped the car, pulled on the emergency brake and turned on the flashers. The truck ground its way past us. The driver raised a hand to thank Seth for giving him room and continued on his way.

  Pete opened his door, gave his final shriek and reared back when he realized Seth’s right wheel was so close to the edge of the drop off into the deep gorge there wasn’t room for his foot. As soon as Seth was able to pull back into the center of the road, he stopped, turned off the motor and handed Pete the keys. Linda and I were still laughing. Pete was mad at us for days. I didn’t care. This was the price he paid for trying to play God. God doesn’t shriek. After that, when boredom threatened, Linda or I made a small shriek, looked at each other and started laughing.

  Alaska is vast but has few roads. In the ensuing six weeks, we drove every one. We took the car ferry from Valdez to Juneau and waited three days there for the ferry down the coast to Prince Rupert, the first place with a highway across Canada. Like all the trips I had taken with Pete, I had seen some wonderful places. Pete loved to drive. I didn’t. I loved to walk. I had just spent two months cooped up in a car. It had been worth it but this campsite was the last place I could walk for the next six days. Pete wanted me to go with him to drive around Juneau. We had done this once. He just wanted to be behind the wheel of the car where he was in control. I wanted to walk the trails around the glacier where we were camped. Seth and Linda had already made it clear the only reason they would ever get in the car again was because it was the only way to get home. This didn’t bother Pete but my lack of interest infuriated him. I made what seemed to me a valid argument but he persisted so I said, “No. I’m going to hike the trails here. There’s nothing in Juneau I need to see twice.” I had been pleasant but all he had heard was no.

  “You sure get ugly when you don’t get your way,” he finally said, as he slammed the car door, gunned the engine and swung into the road with his tires spewing gravel. Mouth open with shock, I watched the car until it was lost in a cloud of dust.

  Something basic in my perception of life changed in the two month trip. For the first time since Max had been born, I could see that I might have a future without holding my breath to stave off disaster minute by minute. Without Max’s energy-sapping distraction, I faced the fact that Pete wanted a housewife he could keep under his thumb, not an equal partner. Divorce seemed the best answer if I wanted to have a life of my own but I had invested so many years in this marriage, it was hard to walk away.

  Working on food accounts as an artist had fostered an interest in nutrition and health. I was appalled at the junk foods touted as healthy and equally dismayed that intelligent people believed everything they saw on TV. I planned to go back to school and study biochemistry as soon as we moved to Pennsylvania. I could see this made Pete uneasy.

  I hoped if he saw I could do well in a field other than art, he would eventually see me as a worthwhile, non-threatening individual. I realized this was one last attempt to turn him into Mr Darcy. He told me later that he assumed I would do badly in school and finally settle down and do things his way. We were both wrong.

  When I brought home a straight 4.0 average report card at the end of my first semester as a biochemistry major, Pete said, “That’s nice,” and asked what I had cooked for dinner. When Seth said he had done the same thing and made the high honor roll, Pete sneered and told Seth grades meant absolutely nothing in the real world, and then he said, “What difference does it make? You still have to get a hall-pass to go to the bathroom.”

  I praised Seth but he was at an age when my opinion didn’t count. All he heard was his father’s contempt for what he had done. That was the last time Seth was on the high school honor roll.

  Chapter 53

  Max loved parachuting and was good at it. But once he got over the thrill of being paid to jump out of airplanes and shoot guns, boredom set in and he and the Army were often at odds. His problem with reading other people and following what he felt were arbitrary rules, coupled with his recurring love of explosives, made his last year and a half in the Army a disaster. He didn’t have the smarts to hide his brains and was bullied physically and psychologically by barely literate men who resented him.

  He was like a clumsy kid trying to pick his way through an uncharted minefield. Eventually he took one misstep too many.

  He had the capacity to work hard but he liked to choose where he spent his energy. The Army began to feel like a strict high school with spit-shined shoes and very short hair. He didn’t have a problem with the shoes but decided to let his hair grow. We didn’t hear from him for months. I assumed he was still in Germany jumping out of airplanes. I finally got a letter from Max. I recognized his handwriting but was confused to see a postmark from a base in Kansas. There was no return address.

  The letter was full of anger, he blamed me for everything that had ever gone wrong in his life and informed me I would never see him again. I should have been delighted at this possibility but the habit of loving this exasperating child overrode any self-preservation.

  I was frightened. I knew something terrible had happened. The letter gave no reason why he was in Kansas, nor what had triggered this outpouring of pure vitriol. Months went by without another word from him. He finally called Pete in New York. He needed a lawyer. It turned out he hadn’t done anything to harm anyone else. He was still obsessed with guns and explosives, had serious issues with authority figures and pushed all the wrong buttons of the people in control of his life in the army.

  Max finally got out of the Army and dragged himself home. The next six months felt like six years. He was an angry wreck and seemed determined to pull the rest of the family into the carnage he had created.

  Pete had a studio apartment in New York, furnished with items he chose without any help from me. It was like a jewel. It had the best sound system he had ever owned, a new television, Danish designer furniture, cutlery and china from a high end store, and handsome linens. It was a classic New York bachelor’s apartment: the first apartment he ever had all to himself and he was loving it. He sa
w every movie, every play, became an expert on good restaurants. This was the life he really wanted. He came to Pennsylvania most Fridays to do his laundry but rarely lasted the whole weekend.

  I envied him but wasn’t smart enough then to realize what a disservice I had done him by marrying him when he gave me the choice.

  Max had taken the GED shortly after he enlisted and aced it. As soon as he could after he got home, he took the SAT and had high enough scores to get into the engineering school where my father earned his engineering degree.

  Max was comfortable with other engineers. They thought he was normal, which was a delightful first for him. A compulsive worker, he satisfied all the requirements for a Chemical Engineering degree and a Mechanical Engineering degree but balked at taking double doses of the humanities courses required for Bachelor of Science degrees in both disciplines.

  Most students took the humanities courses one at a time sprinkled through the four years. Max had managed to avoid them. With his literal mind, he was offended when philosophy and psychology professors stated what he considered pure speculation as scientific facts. He flunked everything but the language requirement.

  He spent the summer depressed. On the fourth of July he and Seth were setting off home-made fire-crackers when Max made the mistake that gives fire-crackers a bad name. He didn’t realize a fuse was already lit and blew off the tips of his right thumb and first two fingers. This required reconstructive surgery that continued into the beginning of the fall semester.

  Pete called the dean; certain Max had lost his chance at a college degree. The dean was unfazed. He said engineers were always blowing parts of themselves off. He suggested Max take a semester of intense language school in Germany since he already spoke some German. If he came back fluent enough to speak it, write it, read and understand engineering journals written in German and wrote a paper on the German government, he would satisfy the humanities requirement for his BSc. It was a great college.

  Chapter 54

  Max’s odd mind-set was finally a saleable asset as an engineer. His ability to think outside the box kept him employed. When he encountered a theoretically unsolvable problem, he instinctively approached it wondering how he could solve it, not if. And more often than not, he did solve it. This made the bureaucratic naysayers wild and repeatedly put him in the awkward position of inadvertently showing up the people who had originally proven the problem was insoluble.

  Fortunately, he worked for large firms, was willing to go anywhere, at any time and had smart people in charge who recognized the value of a wildly creative mind in a troubleshooter. Particularly one who knew and followed every Federal regulation when he worked in facilities where pharmaceuticals were manufactured.

  Realizing that it would give him an additional edge, he put himself through a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering while working full time (often in another country) and sent us all formal invitations to his graduation ceremony. June 15th 1966 was a perfect day. The sky was a clear blue so vivid it looked as improbable as a re-colored Technicolor background. There was a gentle breeze which cleared away the odor of the car exhaust and oil refineries usually a part of West Philadelphia ambience. The streets were washed clean, thanks to a two hour deluge the night before.

  Seth collected Linda, Andrea and me and drove us all into Philadelphia. Pete met us there. Max was waiting for us. He glowed. This was his turf and he was an assured, gracious host. We talked with him briefly and then made our way to the auditorium.

  Even though we were quite a distance from the stage, I had no trouble recognizing Max. The vivid orange lining of the master’s degree hood was draped around the neck of his black gown. When he turned to face the university president, he automatically straightened and pulled his shoulders back. I felt sudden tears; it was the same gesture that had identified him in the Florida courtroom. Only now his face was wreathed by a grin of hardwon success. My tears overflowed unchecked. I didn’t care who saw them.

  Ever since I first heard it as a child, I had been baffled by the biblical fable of the prodigal son. I finally understood the point of the story. We expected the other kids to succeed, we white-knuckled Max all the way through his life breathlessly waiting for the next mind-numbing disaster.

  This joy in his success was straight from the gut. I wasn’t alone. Pete and the kids felt it too. We had all lived for years with Max’s threatening behavior hanging over our heads. When he walked across the stage and got his degree, he glowed with well deserved pride. I gave a profound sigh of relief.

  He had battled with missed deadlines at the university because he was out of the country so often but he managed to convince administrators and faculty that he had to stay employed to afford the degree and he had to be willing to go where his company needed him at any moment to stay employed.

  His tenacity worked to his advantage for once. He presented cogent, winning arguments and won.

  Pete and I grinned through the whole day. I kept thinking of the father in the fable and knew how he felt. I would have been thrilled to give Max all my sheep, gold, land and donkeys. I would have given him my first-born son but I already had.

  EPILOGUE

  With the help of a smart, pragmatic marriage counselor, degrees from two top-notch universities, a good job and my children’s support, I was able to see that my own opinion of me was all that mattered. And I liked what I saw.

  Pete and I were separated for a long time and finally divorced. He said we had “a perfect marriage until those women’s libbers got hold of me.”

  The scariest part of this comment was that he believed what he said. The kids just shrugged and said, “Of course. It was a perfect marriage for him and that was all he saw.” A friend asked if I could remember what had been the last straw that finally triggered the divorce. Without a moment’s hesitation I said, “It wasn’t one straw; it was a haystack.”

  Andrea is an artist with a special talent for print making. She has battled a chronic illness with fierce determination, courage and informed denial since she was eighteen. A tough little person, she won’t let anyone tell her she can’t do something because she is ill. Her husband Chris is a positive, loving man who supports her belief she can do anything at all. They have lively five-year-old twins, Ainsley and Aidan, who are natural comedians.

  Seth finally decided he wanted to shape his own future and has aced every thing he has tackled ever since. He inherited Pete’s quick wit but not the need to put other people down. He is a pilot for a major airline, makes beautiful, much sought after guitars, is married to Vicki, an equally smart and witty woman and has a gem of a daughter Emily, who he appreciates and adores. She has inherited her parents’ smart wit and skill at Solitaire.

  Max’s wife Jacqueline is a gem. Also an engineer, she thinks he is great. He knows how lucky he is and cherishes her. She holds her own at killer Solitaire. Max currently works out of state but they spend most weekends together.

  Linda used her managerial skills and understanding of people to become a successful marketing executive in New York City. She now works in Pennsylvania doing much the same thing but in a slightly more relaxed atmosphere. Her recently remodeled house is party central for the whole family. She is a great cook and baker but we would show up if she served store-bought macaroni and cheese. We all like her company. She has two daughters, Caitlin and Courtney, who have talents that continue to amaze us. Like their mother, they are lethal at killer solitaire. Linda is engaged to Jody, a warm funny man who makes her happy and delights the entire family.

  The portrait of Linda and Max hangs on a prominent wall in my house. Recently, I asked Max why he put his hand over his mouth every time his father held the camera up to his eye. This time he answered.

  “Linda told me to cover my mouth each time Dad was about to take the picture.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She said something bad would get me if I let Dad photograph my mouth.”

  “She didn’t say what would
happen?”

  “No but I knew if Linda said it would be bad, it would be really bad.”

  Now when I look at the picture, I can’t help smiling. There’s nothing significant in the covered mouth or the worried expression. Max was caught between two explicit orders. His father and his older sister were both in a position to harm him. He was wise to be worried. Any normal kid would have been.

  I hated the word normal when Pete used it but I love it when I can apply it to Max.

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