A Tale of Two Parents
*
This is the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
*
1972 – 2000
*
“So tell me just what is it you have against me?”
The accusation came out of nowhere and I had no idea what Dwain was talking about.
Since we had moved back to Oklahoma so I could resume my career at the Journal, my wife and I had tried to include Dwain and Gerri in our lives. We visited them and listened to Dwain brag incessantly. They came to our house for dinner (more than once, which I felt was a major accomplishment). Dwain took us flying once or twice.
We were almost like adults, if possibly not close friends, and I was still learning from him and enjoying it. Until he started in again.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on? What you’ve got against me?” he demanded one afternoon, apropos of nothing.
Just what is eating at your craw? I remembered from my childhood. And I was instantly a child again.
“Uh, nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Ah…what are you talking about?”
“You’ve got something against me,” he accused. “You’re playing so nicey-nice, but you’re holding something back and it’s obvious. You wanna tell me what it is you think I’ve done to you?”
Do not challenge The Man.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad. I thought we were on a pretty good footing here.” The more nervous or angry I become, the better my English.
“I can just feel your disapproval. And I think you should tell me about it. Let’s have it out right now.”
I couldn’t get out fast enough. I don’t even remember how the conversation ended, but I drove away, saying to myself for the twentieth time, “That’s it, cocksucker. I really don’t need this shit. How much do I have to try? Of course I have issues with you, but I’m trying to work through them. What are you trying to do?”
That was 1972. I next saw him 28 years later.
I told myself that I had just shrugged my shoulders and walked away. C’est la vie; c’est la guerre. What, me worry? I could give a shit. I raised myself with no help from either one of you, thankyouverymuch, and particularly you, bucko.
Actually, I did shrug my shoulders and walk away. Actually, I did take my future into my own hands from high school onward.
Actually, I did fool myself that it was OK.
*
When I returned to Oklahoma for my stepfather’s funeral, after several years of counseling, I asked Rick if he would come with me to visit Dwain. Since I was there, it seemed very important to me to make one last effort.
“I’m in the phone book,” Rick began. “He knows how to reach me.”
“That’s not the point, bro. He’s our father, and he’s an asshole, but he needs to know your boys, and you and I need to make the effort because obviously he can’t.”
“I wrote him a letter,” Rick said. “I told him I wanted him to meet his grandsons. He never even replied.”
“Goddamnit, he can’t! You and I have to be bigger than that! Please come with me. I’m thinking of going out there in the next couple of days.”
“Not unless you call first and ask if it’s OK that we come.”
“No, I don’t intend to call first. That won’t work.”
“Then I won’t go.”
So I went alone. I didn’t tell Marianne, who had already returned to California. I didn’t tell Mildred. I told Aunt Verna, because I needed an address.
*
I parked Bob’s Explorer at Dwain’s gate, opened the latch and started to walk up his driveway. A suspicious old man sauntered towards me, his expression equal parts hostility and distrust. About five feet apart, we both stopped.
“Are you Dwain?” I asked. People change a lot in nearly three decades. He no longer had the moustache that I had thought he was born with.
“Yee-ah.” Nothing more.
“I’m Steve,” I said, and there was a good five seconds’ silence, which felt like five minutes.
“Well…I’ll be damned!”
*
“I always wanted to see you boys, but your mother–“ Dwain began as we settled on a porch swing to talk.
“Ah!” I held up my hand in a traffic cop gesture. “I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came to try to mend some fences.”
“I know. I really wanted to be a father to you boys, but your mother–“
“Dwain, I really can go there if that’s what you want.” And I could have. “We can get into that. But that’s not why I came. I came here to talk about you and me. Nothing more.”
“But your mother –“
“Dwain,” his wife, Gerri, broke in. “Leave it alone. Why don’t you listen to Steve?”
His last challenge to me, nearly thirty years earlier, had been, “Let’s have it out right now.” I couldn’t have done it then. This time, I was calmed by the knowledge that, yes, I could do so, and I could best him at his own game. Bring it on, Ace, one part of my brain was saying. You’re easy meat. But, at the same time, I had told him the truth: I voluntarily chose the more difficult path. Let it go; mend fences; move on.
*
For the next two hours, he talked. About his parents, Daisy and Roy. About working the mules. About the “major heart attack” he had had and didn’t know it until the doctor told him. About being unable to eat anything except bananas because his esophagus had “turned inside out.”
“I didn’t know what it was until I remembered this old boy whose esophagus had turned wrong-side out, and I realized that’s what was happening to me. So I laid down on the floor and taken a tennis ball and worked it up my front from my waist to my throat ‘til I got it back in place again. Gerri wasn’t home, and it must’a took me a good two hours, with sweat just pouring all over me.”
The giant, bellowing man who gave me a childhood stutter, whose answer to every slight or setback was verbal or physical violence, the man I couldn’t stand up to even as a young adult, was no longer a threat or a dread. He was a nutcase.
Still so fascinated by his own reflection in the pool that he couldn’t see anyone else, he wasn’t capable of realizing how shallow his pool had always been; how like a fun-house mirror, reflecting now giant, now dwarf.
The threat had gone out of him. Or out of me.
And every few minutes, he tried to bring the conversation around to Mil. I finally let him do so for a while. It seems that nothing was ever his fault.
*
“You know, I coulda seen you on the street and I wouldn’ta recognized you,” he said as we walked back to Bob’s car.
“So, tell me. Why don’t you go see your grandkids,” I asked as we hugged goodby. Californians know the value of hugs, and I was hugging my past, hoping it was finally behind me.
“Well…Rick wrote me a letter. Said I didn’t know what I was missing…”
“You don’t,” I interrupted. “They’re a couple of great kids, and if you don’t get to know them, it’s your loss.”
“So he says I haven’t been a good father, and maybe he’ll give me a chance to be a grandfather, but only on his terms.”
“Go see your grandkids. They need to know you and you need to know them.”
“Well…I don’t know. You see – “
“Goddamnit, Dwain, go see your grandsons.”
Dwain, 1957
We hugged a last time and I drove away, only slightly angry at him for this last exchange. I suspect I will always be angry with him for what he was and for what he did, not only to me but to my mother, my brother and that poor boxer dog. There was no happy ending, no reconciliation, no forgiveness. My past was not behind me. Nothing had changed but recognition.
He was, after all, right: there was – is – something sticking in my craw. But it can only control me if I forget that it’s there. So, sorry pops, but I’m in control now. I just did things you could never do: I reached out; I calmed your anger and, more importantly, my own; I acted like a nice guy.
*
I wrote him a chatty letter a couple of weeks later and sent him a Christmas card that December. He responded to neither.
Nor did he ever make contact with my brother’s sons. He did, a couple of months later, show up on Verna’s doorstep, looking a bit confused.
“I guess I just wanted to see if I could still find my way here and home again,” he told her. “I reckon I better be going now.”
*
I periodically grow a beard, which never looks very good, my Indian blood and my premature gray combining to make it scraggly and motley. I had a beard at Bob’s funeral, which I had worn for not quite a year. The morning after my visit to Dwain, as I prepared to leave for the airport, I shaved it off.
**
“Remember when Mil was here and threw such a fit because we left her alone?” I asked Marianne. “The fascinating thing about the whole conversation with Dwain was that, evidently, she’s always been that way.
“Dwain told me ‘Every time I picked you boys up or brought you back to your mother’s, she would cry and say, “I’m so lonesome without the boys, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”’
“Remember? That’s the exact same thing she said the last time she was here!”
*
Mildred was on the shady side of 76 when she made her last trip to California. Bob had only visited once, for the wedding reception two years earlier. That was the they-don’t-even-keep-salt-on-the-table visit. She’d gone downhill since then, but I hadn’t realized how rapidly.
Mildred, 1960
She didn’t seem that old to me – just a little aged and slow. We made the mistake of taking her to an upscale Italian restaurant, where the service was excellent, but tables were at a premium. It wasn’t at all like the “Day-all Rain-cho” back home.
“Aren’t they ever going to give us a table?” she moaned as we sat at the bar at 7:45, waiting for our 8 p.m. reservation.
“Aren’t they ever going to come take our order?” she asked, when we were finally seated.
“Are they ever going to bring our food?”
“Where’s the check? Are they ever going to bring the check?”
“You’ve had quite a bit to drink, Steve.” Gee, I wonder why! “Are you sure you’re OK to drive?”
“You can drive, if you’d like,” I offered through gritted teeth.
This was Friday. She’d arrived that morning.
*
Marianne founded our local handicapped soccer league, which has grown from three teams the first year to eight-plus teams recently. The players might have Down Syndrome, autism or Asperger’s Syndrome; some are paraplegic, some quadriplegic. There’s a place for everyone in this league. Her Saturdays are taken up with practices and games for her special kids.
She had a team practice the next day, which we explained to Mil, thinking she might want to watch. She didn’t.
At the same time, a long-time client of mine was in a convalescent home, dying. She left a message at my office that she wanted to see me to talk about her will.
This was Saturday.
Edna died the following Tuesday.
*
Marianne went to her soccer practice. I tried to explain to Mildred why I had to leave briefly, but that I would be back as soon as possible.
I was probably gone less than two hours.
When I returned home, Mildred was hysterical and hyperventilating.
“Marianne not back yet?” I asked.
“No! Nobody’s back! Everybody left me here all alone,” she wailed.
“Mil, I told you that a very close client of mine is dying,” I tried to explain. “She wanted me to go to her apartment and find her ‘gift list.’ I really didn’t mean for it to take that long. But what could I do?”
“You left me here all alone. I’m just so lonesome, I could die!”
Ungenerously, I thought of the Hank Williams song. Bad me.
“Mil, calm down,” I tried, in my best soothe-the-client voice. “It’s okay. I’m sorry we left you. But you used to be able to entertain yourself with a book.
“And it really hasn’t been all that long.”
“You don’t understand,” she sobbed. “I’m just so lonesome I can’t stand it! I called the airline and changed my tickets to go home tomorrow.”
Once again, I had not tendered the proper deference. Once again, I was the wiggle-worm child who didn’t want to be hugged. Once again, I stole attention which rightfully belonged to her and spent it on someone else.
Ah, yes: how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a child who is just like his father.
*