The break, part II
November. We begin our descent.
Dad asks the three children to move back to the house and, for some reason, we accept. There’s guilt that we mistake for nostalgia, and one last chance to be kids again. We don’t think about the power play involved, how our mother will feel.
And, besides, mom’s been bitter and angry with us for over a decade. There’s been Valium and booze and cold cold words. There’s been therapy that began with, ‘my daughter is ruining my life,’ and ended months later with the therapist asking me: ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, what do you think are the chances of your parents’ marriage surviving once you leave home?’
I lied and gave them a 7. ‘I’d give it a one’, said the therapist. Mom cried conspiracy, and decided we’d had quite enough help, thank you very much.
(The sessions were filmed and used by the University of Toronto for teaching purposes. One day I’ll meet someone who watched them in class.)
After the split, I avoid my mother. I’m done in each time by her tight voice, by that laugh like spitting that comes always in front of, ‘well, I suppose at least you’re happy now. If it weren’t for you, daddy and I would still be together.’
In the weeks following the separation, mom’s friends rally round. My godmother, S, a close friend for over 20 years, takes her out to a lovely restaurant one day, plies her with fine wine and sympathy, then tries to sell her real estate.
Three months later, my brother will walk into my father’s bedroom one night to find S and our father going at it on the bed, while her husband sits fully 3-piece-suited in a chair nearby, smoking his pipe and explaining to my brother that, ‘he just likes to watch.’
December. A time for giving.
The women have begun to flock round. The temporarily unattached women who’ve made a steady career of being wealthy men’s wives. They swoop down on dad like a half-price sale on minks.
They’re slick and practiced, and on a first-name basis with all the town’s best divorce lawyers. Their top piece of advice on the matter is, ‘honey, get a Jew.’ They’re wrapped tight in designer slut, drenched in platinum perfume, and wet whisper their willingness to do anything.
They bring us food and wine and expensive gifts. By the tenth one we’re weary, and block the sales pitch before it gets off the ground, saying: ‘For your convenience, we now take Visa and MasterCard.’
Most nights, there’s a dinner party. Three or four of dad’s applicants, all shimmy and creamy and high-pitched laughter. He doesn’t care about any of them, and can’t remember their names, so he just calls them all sweetie. Pretty soon, he’s calling us sweetie too, and offering us Screwdrivers for breakfast.
Some nights, dad’s mistress and her husband come to dinner. My sister and I are instructed to flirt with the husband, distract him, while dad slips off with his wife for a quickie.
The husband’s an awfully sweet man; we blush and stammer, fill his glass and feel like shits. My brother keeps offering to take him on a tour of the house.
A week before Christmas, dad goes off on a sailing cruise, and mom comes to the house for the holidays.
At 2 a.m. on Christmas eve, the pipes in dad’s studio burst, and water begins gushing out onto his paintings. Mom comes to wake us up, and we grumble downstairs to begin moving his paintings to another room.
Mom is haywire, splashing over the floor, ordering us to go quicker and quicker, then rushes out to call the fire department. When she comes back, she’s suddenly spent – stands there just watching us, then breaks down. Nobody says anything. We move like robots back and forth past our mother, soaked and weeping in the doorway.
Nobody says anything because the irony’s so lousy. Because for a very long time, dad had spent each night in this studio drinking, till he was sure that mom was asleep. Because painting hooked him up with his first mistress, because there are naked pictures of his lovers floating around our feet. Because…
The firemen come and shut off the water, and tell us that we’ll have no heat until a plumber comes to fix the pipes. It’s twenty below outside. My sister flirts with a hunky fireman as they’re leaving.
Christmas day. No plumber will come to the house, but mom is more determined than ever that all our holiday rituals play out as before. Church, presents, turkey, flaming pudding, the toasts….
And snapshots round the tree. In those pictures, we’re huddled in a row in hats and mitts, teeth chattering under three blankets each. Our eyes, puffy and pink from a full day’s crying, glare bleary at the woman behind the camera saying, ‘smile now.’
We look forward to making dad feel guilty about being off in the sun. He doesn’t call.
When he does come back, he’s tanned and giddy and spends the next week recounting his seemingly endless series of holiday sexual encounters – starting with the woman in the airplane toilet.
Baby, it’s cold outside.
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