I LAY NAKED IN THE BED, in silence, focused on how the warmth of my tears turned cold once they soaked into the pillow. Patrick looked back in from the doorway again. He always apologized. I had given up looking for sincerity in his words.
A warm shower helped to wash it all away. My eyes were red, my face flushed. There were no bruises to be dealt with. But I did see something new in the mirror that day. It doesn’t take long for a victim to become an enabler, and I was right on course.
“How did you get here?” I seethed at my reflection. “And why the hell are you still here? Billie!”
It had only been a matter of months. But that was long enough.
My inheritance from Ewie alleviated the burden of yet another escape. I scoured the yellow pages for local divorce attorneys, female only. I was taken aback by the sheer mass of professionals who could make a living from rectifying poor marital decisions. My finger stopped at a name that sounded tough and gave an impression of someone full of moxie: Jody Badger.
When I first met Jody, I understood why the word “firecracker” was sometimes used as an adjective. A new Miata buzzed into the parking space next to mine as I arrived at Jody’s office for my appointment. A stout woman in a snug business skirt and blazer popped out of the convertible and looked me over.
“Are you Mrs. Jaimeson?” she asked. The label felt cumbersome.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Okay, then, let’s get to work,” she said, and without any welcoming gesture, she walked toward the building’s entrance, her thick heels rapid against the asphalt. As I followed behind her, she reminded me of Miss Piggy with shorter hair.
Jody was the sole employee at the Badger Law Office, a professionally appointed yet no-nonsense space. The empathy I had expected to see as I sat and explained my predicament never surfaced on Jody’s face. Instead, she sat behind her desk with the same matter-of-fact expression I had observed less than a year prior on Dr. Ray.
She handed me some papers. “First thing you need to do is to take this down to the magistrate’s office to file a complaint and request a restraining order against your husband. Once it’s granted, if he comes within fifty yards of you, you call the cops,” she instructed.
“Um, okay,” I stammered and took a deep breath. It felt like she was speaking to someone else . . . or to this hard shell that looked like me while the part of me that could show dread cowered inside. But I wasn’t looking for a therapist, I reminded myself; I was looking for an advocate. And there was no doubt in my mind that Jody would help me. I needed someone like her to be my bulldog.
“I’ll need a check today for a retainer, and we can get started on your divorce.”
Divorce.
As I sat in Jody’s office writing out my check, I realized that I was the one who held the live bomb now, but this time I could control the end result: sovereignty from Patrick.
I didn’t tell Jody anything about my childhood, but she seemed to have a keen awareness of how I ended up in her office that day.
“You’ve taken your first opportunity at independence and made a complete mess of it,” she told me, “and it’s going to get even messier before you’re through. Pay attention and learn from the cleanup.” I didn’t say anything aloud, but I vowed I would.
SEEING JODY BADGER was my first act of resolve. Telling Chris the truth about Patrick was the second.
Our letter writing had continued fast and furious. In fact, we had some of our hardest, most intense conversations in letters over the next several months. Chris didn’t have a phone, after all—and even if he had, he wasn’t the type to talk on the phone for hours on end. And we lived too far apart for a casual visit. “I was wrong about Patrick,” I wrote one day, my hand trembling but my words resolute, “and I’ve filed for divorce.” I told him about everything that had happened and how foolish I felt. How I’d tried to make it work, warning Patrick I would leave him, but my husband had only scoffed at the threat. I wrote about how I’d gotten a restraining order against Patrick, and that since he’d been served papers I hadn’t heard from him. Our lease had been up at the apartment, anyway, and I’d left it for another, smaller apartment in the same complex. It was a dumb move. It was a luxury apartment I should have realized I couldn’t afford, but it was familiar and easy. I needed easy. And I didn’t know where else to go.
As I enlightened Chris about the facts of my failed marriage, his understanding words brought comfort. He was proud of my strength to leave an abusive man. “Mistakes are okay as long as we learn from them,” he wrote back, without directly pointing out the financial ones that I was now making. He understood I had to come to this realization on my own.
Chris had his own truths to reveal in our letters. He told me that the summer before he’d left for Emory, when he’d walked through the Mojave delivering food, he had also traveled to our old neighborhood in California and visited with former neighbors. He had asked what the neighbors knew about our family, comparing what Walt and Billie had told them with what our parents had told us. For the first time, Chris had learned the extent of our parents’ deception and the truth behind the photograph on our mother’s dresser. Marcia and Walt had not divorced amicably, as we’d been told. Walt had still been married to Marcia when Chris and I were born. We were illegitimate.
My first thought on reading his letter was clarity. It was like all these scattered images from my life—of Quinn, of Shannon, of my parents’ contradictory stories—came together to complete a full picture. Chris had again been senior detective, and he’d given me the final clue that made everything else make sense. I was livid, but I wasn’t talking to my parents anyway. I wasn’t about to pick up the phone and call them on their bullshit. I knew that would be a waste of time and just invite more lies. I was leading my own life now, rocky though it was.
A few days later, though, I began to feel something else: gratitude. I’d known that something was wrong with Chris when he returned from that California trip. I could see something weighing on him, and now it made sense. He’d been furious with our parents and unable to act on what he’d learned. He couldn’t confront them and stir up toxicity that he would then be leaving me alone with. He couldn’t tell me and burden me with the same anger he carried, because I had no choice but to live with them for the next three years. If he’d been an only child, I’m sure he would have vented his outrage the moment he’d returned home from California. But because of me, he’d kept it all in.
Now I had left, too. I was no longer living under Walt and Billie’s roof, and Chris could tell me the truth. It was a truth that plainly still haunted him, though he’d had three years to work through it. But as mad as he was, entirely forsaking our parents was never as easy as we thought it would be. I’d seen all the rest of our siblings do the back-and-forth dance of “I’m done with them” and “Well, maybe I’ll try again.” It was never simple.
Our mom was many people rolled into one. She was the soccer mom who brought oranges to all of Chris’s games and the epitome of organization who headed up his Indian Guide and my Girl Scout meetings. She made us elaborate and beautiful Halloween costumes and helped us put the finishing touches on every school project with her artistic talents. We learned how to drive a stick shift under the safety and guidance of her even teaching temperament. And she had a sense of humor, dressing Chris, Shannon, and Quinn up like chauffeurs whenever we went to pick my dad up from the airport after a business trip . . . in the Cadillac, of course.
And our dad wasn’t just volatile. He also took us to Europe and delighted in watching us experience different cultures and strange gourmet foods, sometimes ordering for us in the local language so we wouldn’t be dissuaded from trying something we would normally think was gross. Sometimes when Chris and I built forts in the family room, Dad played guitar and sang his silly songs in front of the fireplace and pretended we were camping. He gave me a children’s book about a dollhouse when I had the chicken pox, inscribed with love to his “Woo Bear.” He could speak for hou
rs about the wonders of space exploration and had fascinating accompanying visuals, blueprints of his designs, and three-dimensional models of his image-capturing radar systems that now floated about the atmosphere we were orbiting amongst. When I was little, with every trip he returned from, he brought me treats from the plane. I loved the shiny foils and different languages on the packaging, and I loved the taste of the honey-roasted peanuts. Dad could never walk by a snack without eating it, so the fact that he had saved them for me meant the world. I don’t remember exactly when he stopped bringing me the peanuts. What I remember most is how I started hiding when he returned home, instead of running for him.
Our parents hurt us constantly, but they were our parents. We wanted to believe the warm moments showed who they genuinely were, not just another part of the show they put on.
But something had changed for Chris, and it wasn’t just time. He was finally finished. In one of his letters, he wrote why:
They are just totally beyond hope and there is no way to ever bring them back into reality. Over twenty years of lies and meaningless games has reduced them into a permanent state of psychotic insanity. That’s why I don’t stay in contact with them and why I don’t like to talk to them . . . [I]t’s like a disease which can be caught, if one is exposed to it too long then one will begin to feel its detrimental effects upon one’s own soul. I don’t know how to explain it really, but what I do know is that ever since I got away from them my life has been so much more happier and joyful. . . . They always say . . . “Just wait until you have kids” as if to imply that our family relationship was a “normal” one, and that we are just immature, unlearned little brats who don’t understand that this is the “normal” way family relationships progress . . . And I guess they think that as we “mature” we are going to become more like them, and that when we have our own families we are suddenly going to “see the light,” and that we will admit that they were “excellent” parents and that all of our earlier complaints were just the unfounded immature whinings of little spoiled brats . . . I bet this is just how they think. This must be the way they self-rationalize the entire situation to themselves . . . So I’m finished with them for good.
He’d written them a long letter, he said, that detailed all the emotional trauma and abuse we had suffered as kids. How their actions had caused him to lose all respect for both of them. He said he’d really laid it all out and explained how damaging it had been to grow up within a household filled with such painful behavior, so many lies, such hatred and contempt. He went on:
This was just about four weeks ago. I felt for sure that that letter would finally shake them into some kind of reality . . . And then, just a few days ago I get this stupid postcard from Colorado where they are skiing, and all it says in reference to my letter is this: “Thanks for your letter—saving them for your children to read one day!” Can you believe that? There they go again with that contemptuous-pompous stance. They just completely ignored everything I said in the letter! . . . Since they won’t ever take me seriously I’m just going to play along with their little acting game. For a few months after graduation, I’m going to let them think they are right, I’m going to let them think that I’m “coming around to see their side of things” and that our relationship is stabilizing. And then, once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I’m going to completely knock them out of my life. I’m going to divorce them as my parents . . . I’ll be through with them once and for all forever.
Chris had a knack for expressing himself in dramatic letters, and he always filled both sides of the paper with small print. He’d given them their last chance in a desperate attempt to be heard, I realized. His long letter, their quippy response, and his upcoming graduation made for a perfect break.
I never told my parents of the plans Chris had shared with me to eliminate them from his life, but I had no doubt that he meant it and would follow through with the same vigor he did every decision he made. He wrote to me about hitting the road after graduation. He said he had not yet decided exactly where to go first. His only plan was west. He assured me that he would come to visit me before he headed off on this journey of undetermined length or distance. He asked if he could stay with me and hoped that I could make arrangements to have Buck during that time. I was ecstatic at his request and wrote back immediately that my door would be forever open for him.
Meanwhile, my interaction with my parents was virtually nonexistent. We talked as little as possible. But in May of 1990, in a rare reunion, I traveled with them to Atlanta to see Chris graduate from Emory. I was vague about Patrick’s whereabouts, not wanting them to know I’d filed for divorce. Our interaction was forced but cordial.
I remember being surprised at how tan, fit, and muscular Chris was when he met us at the airport. He was always in great shape—he had a runner’s build—but this was different. As he carried Mom’s bags, his biceps stretched the limits of his short-sleeve seams. Chris wasn’t trying to show off his bulk; he just didn’t care to purchase new clothes. I recognized the effort that it took for someone of his relatively small stature to develop such size and strength. He had been building his endurance. He was training for something. I made a mental note to buy him some new clothes when I got back to Virginia.
As I watched Chris cross the stage, diploma in hand, I was so proud and excited for him. After the commencement, the two of us took a sentimental drive in the reliable old yellow Datsun back to his place. It was a shock to walk into my big brother’s apartment, so stark and bleak, and different from mine. It was a complete contrast to his childhood room, which Mom had painted blue and decorated with the model planes he used to put together with Dad. In his college room, there was just one picture on the wall, a poster of Clint Eastwood from his favorite film, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Even that seemed more symbolic than decorative. His unadorned mattress, absent of the typical comforter with matching pillows, was supported by concrete blocks and two-by-fours. His desk had been created from similar materials, but it did its job—upon it sat his beloved books. The dwelling suited Chris, who was all about substance without ornamentation. It certainly did not look like he planned to stay for very long. As we turned the corner into his tiny kitchen, he was excited to show me how one simple cup of rice could make a huge meal and require such little expense or effort. Later I wouldn’t be able to get this detail out of my mind.
I sat on his bed and we talked about all that we had shared through our letters, all that we had shared through our childhood. Although we both were on the brink of a freedom we desperately needed, he had the confidence and solid plan that I still lacked. He had been careful and protective of himself and his goals, while I had made careless choices that had taken me off my own course through an attachment to another. He didn’t need anyone else’s strength but his own, and I was still finding mine. Still, while so much had changed in both of us because of our distance from our parents, and we knew we would soon be physically heading in different directions, we revisited the past that would keep us eternally and emotionally parallel. We talked more about Chris’s trip to our old neighborhood in California. It was the first time we’d seen each other since he’d written to me about all he’d learned.
“Mom told me again yesterday that she wants a divorce,” I divulged with a roll of my eyes.
“What? Geez! Why does she always do that? Their lives are just one big falsity, an outrageous, perennial lie,” he said, and I noted how like his letters he sounded—slightly formal, intense, assured. “Their whole life is just one big game. They’re on this constant cycle of vacillation, switching back and forth between a state of total misery and a state of false happiness. Like one day they will have a huge fight of insane proportions, the kind of fight that would immediately end any normal marriage, and then the next they’re pretending that their marriage and family is the very symbol of American prestige and success.” He shook his head and let out a lengthy sigh. “I guess that’s why I have always thought of
them as the most fake people I have ever known. They brainwash themselves into this false sense of security and satisfaction by falling back on their treasured money and worthless luxury expenditures to shield themselves from reality. And the worst part of it is they expect you to take them seriously.”
“Sometimes I honestly wonder if they just can’t help themselves,” I speculated. “Like you said—it’s like a disease. They invent an alternate reality and dedicate themselves to it completely . . . and blindly . . . like they really don’t realize what they’re doing. But I can’t help but think they’ll wake up one day. I mean . . . how can they possibly continue like this forever?”
“I know,” Chris replied as his eyes traveled to a distant place. “I used to get very sympathetic thoughts for them, especially for Mom—they used to come to me all the time. I’d be studying and then a sort of vision would pop into my head of Mom as an old lady, deserted by both of her children. I’d picture her all alone in a dark house . . . a dark, deserted, silent house. She’s old and crippled, her skin is wrinkled and her hair is white, and she’s sitting in this old dusty chair. She’s gazing down at her hands, where she’s holding a picture of you and me together when we were just little kids, and tears are streaming down her face. I used to get visions like that all the time, and then I would almost cry myself, and I’d feel sorry about all the problems we had, and I’d feel that surely things could be changed for the better and we’d come to have a good relationship.”
Chris was still staring off into nothingness. He looked compassionate. Then he tightened up and the look left him as he turned back to me and sighed. “But then,” he continued, his voice flat, “I’d remember a time when they acted so irrationally and treated us so terribly, and that sympathetic vision would be blown clear out of my mind.” He shrugged. “I no longer get any of those sympathetic visions. They’re gone forever. I’d just be fooling myself if I still had them. They aren’t ever going to change because they’ll never be able to admit that they’re the problem.”
The Wild Truth Page 10
