A Fire Side Chat
Chapter 7: THE NIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN
Fire is roaring in our outdoor fireplace while my husband Kory and my brother George watch from the bright red Adirondack chairs on the deck of the cabin Kory and I built on George’s land just outside of Magnolia, Mississippi. The night air is quickly cooling, so I snuggle down into my coat and pull my hat down a little tighter on my old bald head. This is how we often spend cool Sunday nights when everything is closed. We stay home and I cook. Then we build a blazing fire with wood we split ourselves from dead trees on the land. Kory’s two West Highland terriers are vying for our attention, distracting us from the endless fascination of fire watching.
Our conversation ebbs and flows, including occasional long silences when staring at the fire seems enough all by itself. I ask Kory “Do you want any more wine?”
“I’ve had enough. And I have to get up early with the dogs so I think I’m going to bed.”
“But the fire is far from going out. Stay awhile.”
“No. You and George enjoy it. The dogs and I are going in. I’ll leave a light on.“
He steps up to the covered breezeway of our dogtrot cabin with his pups at his heels and disappears into our bedroom — through the door under our neon “Bottoms Up” sign with a pink flamingo perched next to a blue martini glass, a not-so-subtle double entendre.
I stir the fire and adjust the logs to revive the burn. The fire flares and brightens. George says, “Kory sure don’t drink like he used to.”
“That’s a good thing. He cut back in the late nineties after he wrecked the Jag and left it with part of the front bumper hanging off. He knew he hit a curb, but didn't realize the damage until the next morning. He decided to dial it back. And he did it all on his own. Well, maybe with some help from his psychotherapist. You know his dad was a functioning alcoholic and I think he was afraid he might be headed down that road. They say children of alcoholics are at greater risk of becoming alcoholics. “
“Well, not always. God knows I can drink and in my younger days I was hell on wheels and could drink most anybody under the table, but I never felt alcohol pull on me; maybe because I worked offshore in the oil business for weeks at a time with no booze. It never got a grip on me.”
“Well, our parents weren’t alcoholics either, so that helped for sure.”
“The hell you say! Daddy was an alcoholic! Maybe you were too young to remember, but I was pullin him out of bars on City Park Avenue in New Orleans from the time I was a kid. Momma would send me out to get him home for dinner and he was always drunk. Now I don’t say it affected his work and I don’t know how much he drank on the road, but I do know he came home drunk Friday night and stayed that way until he left sober again on Monday morning. His drinking was a big reason for the divorce. You know that because you were there.”
“Where?”
“At our house on Belvedere Road the night everything blew up between them and we almost died!”
“All I recall is one fight when she was throwing dishes at him, but he dodged and they busted all over the floor.”
“Well, that was the night; so you do remember it.”
“But that’s all I remember. It was bad, I don’t remember anything else.”
“Pour yourself some more wine and I’ll tell you.”
As I reached over to the small table between us to refill my glass, I pictured mom’s large serving bowl with its thin border of bright red and yellow flowers. Pictured it striking the hardwood floor in the dining room and exploding in jagged pieces. We used that bowl so often for so long that it had a nearly totemic meaning for me. I still miss it as something long lost.
Suddenly it was gone, and it felt as though our family was gone with it. I could still remember their angry voices. Oddly, no emotion was attached to the memory, though surely I must have felt desolate and afraid. This one mental snapshot with its limited soundtrack was all that survived
the confusing rubble of memory.
“We didn’t know it, but mom was seeing Richard, that lawyer from New Orleans. She went to business school to learn to type and take shorthand. Then she got a job as a secretary at a law office. Gram came to live with us while she studied and stayed on to take care of us when mom went to work. I don’t know if she was just bored being at home or was planning to make some money so she could leave Daddy. She complained about his drinking and how he wouldn’t even let her go to the grocery store when he was away during the week because he wanted to mind all the money.”
“I do remember that. She told me she left him because he was so controlling and was never home anyway. Their good times were way behind them after nearly twenty years of marriage.”
“Yes, but he was a drunk and she’d had enough, so I think her job was part of a plan. She seemed happier after she started working; except of course when Daddy came home drunk and mean on Friday night.”
“I do remember her going down to the bus stop at Belvedere and Cedar Hurst Road each morning to go to work. She was always dressed up with a hat and white gloves. She liked looking pretty.”
“That’s how she met Richard, I guess. He must have had business with that office she worked at and one thing led to another, though she never told me. Somehow Daddy found out about it and come home drunk one night to put a stop to it. They had a fight that carried on all over the house including the broken dishes. She cussed up a storm and told him to get out and never come back. Daddy didn't seem to want that even though he had caught her out and knew she was in the wrong. He went outside for a while to cool off, but then came back madder than ever, and with his gun. He pointed it right at mom and hollered at us all to be still. Then he ordered us to line up in the hall to the bedrooms, pointing with his gun. We were all scared to death. Mom put Gram and us kids up against the wall behind her to protect us.”
This was all stunningly new to me. “I don’t remember anything except the flying bowl. How could I forget?”
After a pause to absorb the shock, I asked, “What kind of gun was it?”
“A chrome-plated twenty-two revolver he kept loaded in his car when he traveled. He showed it to me when he was teaching me to shoot his shotgun. It wasn’t a big gun, but at close range it could kill. Looking down the barrel at his bulging eyes was terrifying, I can tell you that. You and Stevie were squalling and carrying on something awful.”
“Jesus, George! I had that gun for years! When he died, I found it in the top drawer of his bureau. His second wife Mytch offered me whatever I wanted, and I took it along with a couple of his rings and cigarette lighters. It wasn’t loaded but was next to an old box of bullets and I took them too. It had to be the same gun because it was a chrome 22, pitted and dull by the time I got it. I kept it as a memento. I had no idea it had ever been pointed at us! I finally gave it to Stevie a few years back because I thought he would like it being a hunter and all. I don’t expect he remembers any of this either since he would only have been three.”
“No. He was too young to remember, which is just as well. I wish I didn’t remember. Anyway, it got worse, because while we stood there in the hall, he read mom the riot act about running around with Richard behind his back. He told her never to see Richard again, but she flat out refused sayin she wanted a divorce. He looked like he’d been hit in the face with a shovel. He stepped back and then spat through gritted teeth “If I can’t have my own goddamn family, then by God nobody can!”
“He raised the gun and pointed it right at mom’s face from no more than three feet away. I knew he was going to kill her and us too. He was not playing around or just trying to scare her. He had blood in his eye. And he was plenty drunk enough to do it.”
“What did mom do?”
“You know she was one tough woman. She suddenly got real calm and determined and said in her normal voice. ”You can’t do this, Kermit. You will regret it the rest of your life. I know you are angry, but this is no way to settle our differences. These are your children; your own flesh and blood for God’s sake!”
“Daddy sagged and swayed, still pointing the gun at her while sweat ran down his forehead. Then he closed his eyes and lifted his chin toward the ceiling. I swear, I thought he was going to shot himself in the head, but instead, he began to cry. Then he dropped the gun to his side, walked out of the house, drove off, and came back only once more the next day to pick up his clothes. He was gone.”
I could hardly take it all in and I marveled at how my mind had somehow contrived to protect me by erasing the memory. Even the very gun he had used had failed to jog my memory when I found it in his dresser after his funeral.
I also wondered if it had somehow unconsciously colored my relationship with my dad forever after. We were never close anyway, even before. Though I accepted Mytch’s frequent assurances of his love, he did not seem to know how to be a Dad or how to show love if he felt it.
When he came to visit us after the divorce he never had much to say and often failed, without warning, to show up at all. He did take us to Ohio each summer to see his mother, Berta Best, his sister Merle, her husband Lynn, and their children. But he never had much to say other than to occasionally read road signs out to us on the two day drive up north, sometimes stretching out and emphasizing the words like a train conductor announcing the next stop. Even then he would not share what it was about the town or place that meant something to him.
His mother was the same and mostly scowled at us, complaining Stevie and I were entirely too noisy, that children were to be seen and not heard. Mostly, I remember him sitting in a rocker outside under a shade tree on Merle’s farm, one leg swung over the other at the knee, smoking his pipe and staring into the distance.
It was not until 1972 when he drove from Crowley to New Orleans soon after Julie and I married — just to bring us some used appliances and a box of canned goods — that I saw something he did as an obvious act of love. Parenting was just not one of his skills.
After he remarried, his drinking slowed, and I learned to look for and find his love in the many small acts and gestures that were the best he could do. He lived long enough to see me become a young lawyer, to meet his first grandchild, Erin, and his grandson Mark. He died of a stroke at 76 in 1979 with me, his thirty-year-old son, at his hospital bedside.
He had four sons, three straight and one gay, although at his death I was still a closeted “gay in waiting.” Ironically, only his gay son provided grandchildren, including a grandson to continue the family name, which meant so much to him.
The fire was dying so I stirred the embers for a last sparkle of flame. The wine was gone. In the excitement of discovery, I had drunk too much. I too was the son of an alcoholic. Just like Kory. It was time for bed.
“Good night, George.”
“Good night, Larry.”
