You Made Me Cry

Step forward and be recognized, Sir Charleton,” said Queen Raquelina.”

Hitching my sword belt to a more comfortable position over my washboard stomach I strode forward to be honored by my beloved Lady and patron. My six-foot broadsword clanked noisily over the flagstones as I made my way up to the royal dais.

Just as I was going to make my bow to her Majesty the damn thing caught between my legs causing me to face-plant with a loud crash.

The Court tittered in amusement as the color rose to my cheeks as I attempted to rise.

Needless to say when you’re wearing fifty-five pounds of armor it took several attempts to get to my feet.

I’d get partway to my feet only to have my knees buckle and back down I’d go. At one point just as I was just about to successfully get upright my helm fell to the floor with a CLANG!! Carefully reaching down to get it I felt my feet slip and down I went ass over teakettle.

“Hold on. Almost there. I got this. Ohhh Shit!!” I cried falling back on my ass.

By the time I finally managed to get to my feet, the Royal Court was in hysterics.

The loudest laughter came from the royal throne.

“Fucketh me!” I said.

That’s when I woke up.

***

“Oh boy, what the hell was that about?” I muttered rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. 

Several cups of coffee later, as the  cobwebs had cleared, I guiltily looked at a package sitting unopened on my desk. 

I knew what was in it as I had already received an email from my younger brother, Matt before it arrived in yesterday’s mail.

“Charlie, I’m forwarding some family pictures I found in an old scrapbook that you might be interested in,” he wrote. “A lot of them are of Mom and Dad and when we lived in the Bay Area back in the day. All the Best, Matt.”

To be honest I did not want to open it. 

The last time I had shown my wife my favorite picture of me from childhood, she had wryly commented that I looked like Beaver’s fat friend, Larry Mondello from the TV show Leave it to Beaver.

Ouch! But ya know she was right. I was definitely not svelte in the photo. And the depressed expression on my face spoke volumes.

As I said before, I did not want to open that package. It was a veritable Pandora’s box chock full of sadness and regret. 

I had spent years in therapy dealing with anger over my parent’s breakup in 1964 and my mother’s subsequent behavior afterward. And the last thing I wanted to do was start my day pissed and feeling shitty.

Ah, that day, that awful day in the Spring of 1964 when it all fell apart.

I have never talked about what happened that day, not even to my wife. The memory is too painful. Even years later it still bleeds. A wound that remains unhealed.

But, I guess to get over it I’ll need to go through it again.

***

Nothing seemed different when I awoke that Spring morning. It was gonna be another boring Monday at Louise Van Meter Elementary School.

A typical hurried bowl of Honey Comb, a quick kiss for my Mom, and I was off to school riding my gold-painted Stingray bike.

The overall feeling at home was tense as of late. But, that was not out of the norm for a home where the man of the house was gone for most of the time.

Now the Old Man, my Dad, was a pilot for United Airlines and he flew a lot of trips to the East Coast. So naturally, he was gone a lot and he was under a lot of stress.

My Mother was strictly a stay-at-home Mom. And I think she liked that. What I don’t think she liked was that she was married to a taciturn, uncommunicative man who drank more than he should when he was at home.

The Old Man could be moody, no doubt about that. Ya never knew what his frame of mind was gonna be like from day to day. Sometimes he would be the life of the party and others, well let’s just say you wouldn’t want to get on his bad side. He could be explosively violent. He’d never yell or curse instead he’d smack you when he got pissed or drank too much.

Now at this point of the story, you are probably thinking this guy sounds like a real asshole – but you have to remember this was during a different time when hitting kids was not uncommon. Also a lot of people self-medicated with alcohol when dealing with anxiety, stress, and depression back then. 

So I don’t want to make it out that the Old Man was some kind of abusive bastard. 

He had his issues for sure, but at heart, he was a good man. I think he just didn’t know how to relate to being a family man. After all, this was his second marriage as he had an ex-wife and two kids before us whom he was still supporting. Plus he was a pilot which was a big deal in the sixties. Pilots enjoyed a certain prestige and were known to be party guys when not flying. They worked hard and played hard. 

My Mom on the other hand was a beautiful, classy lady who had immigrated from Europe to America before briefly becoming a stewardess for Capitol Airlines. 

That’s how she met my Dad. 

They met on an airline flight, fell in love, got married, and decided to have kids. Having children was probably my Mom’s idea and not my father’s as he was still paying child support. Throw in the fact that the dude was pushing forty years plus when I was born – so he probably felt like he was done.

Anyway, we all ended up walking on eggshells whenever the Old Man was home in between trips.

But, underneath the tension, I could tell there was a sense of rebellion brewing coming from my mother.

She started wearing this ugly shirt she had received from my father for Christmas all the time. While she had gifted the Old Man with a brand new set of golf clubs all he had given her was this puke yellow “Peanuts” sweatshirt with the Lucy cartoon character on it. A quote was printed under Lucy saying something along the lines of being crabby three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year. I guess it was a subtle jab from my Dad inferring Mom was being kinda bitchy all the time.

Needless to say, it was a shitty gift and a disastrous choice made by the Old Man. You see, my mother was raised in a non-tactile English kind of way. She wasn’t given cuddles and hugs as a child – she was given stuff in place of affection. And she expected love to be given in the form of nice things. Often, she in turn would give us all wonderful presents and that was her way of expressing her love for us.

So you can imagine how hurt she was when the only gift she received for Christmas was a crummy sweatshirt from my father saying she was a bitch.

*** 

School at Louise Van Meter was rather uneventful that morning except for a disastrous moment during recess when one of the girls had an “accident” on one of the benches and had to be quickly hustled off to the girl’s toilet. One of the unfortunate teachers had to clean up her mess. 

Gross!

My chief tormentors, Chris Diavalo and Alice Grunt were sidelined with some kind of childhood bug that was going around  – so I pretty much was left alone to pick my nose, scratch my ass, and daydream during most of my morning classes. 

The one highlight of the afternoon was I got a note from Becky Berry during arithmetic asking me if I’d like to sit with her at lunchtime the next day. Since I was totally enamored with this rather androgynous pixie I was over the moon over this new development in our relationship. It didn’t matter to me that Becky had freckles and wore coke bottle glasses – she was the first “girl” EVER to express any interest in me.

For a fat lonely kid like myself, this was a major win!

With wings on my feet and song in my heart, I pedaled home only to run smack into a house that no longer felt like my own.

There was a quietude that felt like the world had taken a sucker punch to its gut. It’s as if all the life had been drained out of it.

My mother was sitting at the kitchen table in the gathering gloom with her hands folded waiting for me.

“Go to Merle’s house next door and join your brother. I need to speak to your father when he gets home. I’ll be over shortly,” she said. 

“Is everything okay,” I asked.

“It will be,” she said.

“But…”

“Just go, Charlie.”

*** 

It was awful.

Sitting on the couch, 

with my brother, Matty.

Pretending to watch TV.

Wondering.

What the hell was going on that necessitated us being exiled from our home?

Merle, our neighbor and a friend of my Mom’s was a lanky woman who looked like Joan Crawford, tried to make us comfortable while we waited by making us peanut butter n’ jelly sandwiches but we couldn’t eat. 

Eventually, my mom joined us clutching a mascara-smeared handkerchief. It was obvious that she had been crying and had used it to wipe her tears away.

She immediately sat next down to Merle on the couch and began to quietly confide in what transpired moments before.

Merle would make commiserating noises and would occasionally pat my mother’s hand in consolation.

Well, we didn’t know what was being said because they were speaking so quietly. All we could gather from the snippets of conversation was that something bad had occurred and it had to do with the Old Man.

Occasionally one of them would glance over at Matty and me, give us a weak smile, and continue whispering to the other.

It wasn’t until I heard the word “divorce” mentioned that I knew that something bad was going down.

Now, this was in the 1960s and the word “divorce” was akin to saying somebody was dying or had died. It was like typhoid – you didn’t want to catch it or have anything to do with it. 

Occasionally you might hear about one of those “Hollywood people” getting a divorce in the papers but for the most part, it was something that was looked down upon pejoratively by most folks. It wasn’t done a lot back then and it was usually discussed in hushed tones or malicious gossip. 

You have to understand that for my generation raised on the Donna Reed Show, Leave it to Beaver or Fathers knows Best this was a taboo subject not commonly exploited. 

Saying so and so was a “divorcee” sounded like they were an outcast, a failure, or an unwanted member of the tribe. 

Of course, nowadays divorce is common but in those days it was a big deal as most people tried to tough out their marriage even if they were stuck in a bad one.

So, when I heard my mom say that awful word it felt as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over my head.

At one point my Mother got up and made a phone call home.

When she came back she looked at me and said –

“Your Father wants to see you.”

I immediately burst into tears.

***

The house was dark.

It felt different.

Scary.

Sad.

And I was terrified as I walked slowly upstairs to see the Old Man.

My mom’s parting words lay heavy in my heart. 

“Tell him it’s for the best,” she said.

Well, I didn’t want to tell my Father anything – nor did I want to give him some cryptic message from my Mother. 

I didn’t even want to see him.  How I got into this predicament was beyond me. All I wanted was to cower underneath the covers and hide from the world. 

Walking up those dark stairs seemed like a nightmare – one that I couldn’t wake up from.

Each step brought me closer to an uncomfortable unknown.

Eventually, I arrived at the doorway of my parent’s bedroom.

It was almost completely dark. Illuminated by a small bedside table lamp.

Fearfully I peeked in.

*** 

I remember watching my Dad as he slowly put together pairs of sox which he then tossed into an open suitcase.

He was so sad. 

So beaten down. 

I couldn’t utter a word for what seemed like an eternity.

I wanted to hug him but I couldn’t.

All I could do was watch him pack his clothes.

“Hi Dad,” I finally managed to say.

He looked at me with the eyes of a man who had just received a death sentence from his doctor.

“Your Mother wants me to leave,” he said as he continued to put his things in the suitcase.

Oh, I wish I had said a million things at that moment – like “Don’t Go,” or “Please stay,” or even “I love you, Dad.” 

Instead, I blurted out the stupid message my Mother had wanted me to pass along to him.

Upon hearing it, my Father’s face crumbled. 

Tears filled his eyes as I stood there tongue-tied.

I was stunned as I had never seen my Dad express any emotion like this before. And I felt just awful for hurting him so deeply.

The Old Man suddenly stopped packing, took a few steps towards me, and then gave me a hug for a brief moment before turning away wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

He resumed packing his bag and I fled terrified from the room.

***

Later after my Father had left, I lay in bed and thought about my parents splitting up.

It just seemed so unreal. The whole divorce thing. 

What did it mean to have your two parents living separate lives?

Would I ever see my Dad again?

I didn’t know. 

I was just a child.

***

After their divorce, my Mom began to act irresponsibly and through the later years, she married or dated the worst of men.

Every relationship ended in disaster.

You see with my father gone she had lost her anchor. 

Years later my mother was diagnosed as being bipolar and had to be institutionalized several times for manic depression which came as no surprise to Matty and me.

In the end, I realized I had not only lost my father but my mother as well after their break up.

But, I think the cruelest blow was my loss of innocence that day and it is something that I have never fully recovered from.