Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I wish my father saw the hole he left in our family wall.  I wish that he had stood longer in wake of his violence, so he could see the level of damage that he inflicted.  I wish he let us stand there with him, so we could do the same.  I knew, however, that he didn’t want to know that his storms would leave us all vulnerable, even, to the weakest of winds.  Still, I wish he could have seen the image of her love spilling from the bruised and punctured aperture, because he might have done something then.  He might have been able to save us.  He might have been able to save himself. 
I watched her while she fell out of love with him.  I knew why she decided that she’d never share an intimate moment with him, again.  I understood why her only gestures were showing up for duty each day.  I understood her resentment.  I understood why she acted like a robot but I couldn’t accept her doing so.
One day, I asked her, “Why don’t you tell dad that you love him?  He tells you that he loves you, all of the time.”
She said, “I show him how much I love him by doing the work around the house.  I wish your father were that way.  He tells me that he loves me all the time but does he show me?  Would it kill him to let me spend more time with my friends?  Does he have to go insane every time one of my friends calls the house?  He smothers me with love.  I’m not sure that’s a true love.”
I said, “Do you love Dad?”
“I suppose I do.  I have no choice, now, do I?”
I had no choice but accept her newfound her new affection towards me.  She’d show tenderness only towards me, she’d play only with me, but what bothered me was that she did so, mostly when he watched us.  He was eager to join us and I was eager to welcome him, and then she’d say, “We were having a great time without you Ayden.  Why’d you have to come in here and ruin it?” 
I began, by the age of eleven, to understand that my parents were never going to be loved the way human beings needed to be loved.  I knew that they once truly loved each other, but I heard what they said to each other during the time of my brother’s death. 
Still she showed signs of respect for him on occasion.  She told me how proud I should be to have a father who was as smart as mine.  She said that she never met a more honest man, or for that matter a braver one. 
I also think she was willing to fall back in love with him.  He didn’t let her.  I don’t think he knew it, but he stopped trying, too.  He forgot how to love, instead, he pulled and grabbed for love.  He didn’t try to understand her and she begged to be understood.  She wanted him to stand up to his sisters on her behalf.  He didn’t perhaps because he couldn’t.  I do not think he knew how to live in a family that didn’t have a hole in it. 
Maybe he married her, thinking that she would eventually try to fly away.  He didn't know how to survive that.  He knew that he could live with someone who hated him.  He forgave his parents for doing so but I don't think he could forgive himself if he ever allowed something so beautiful to escape him. 
So, I think, he lived the life he knew.  He knew how to live unhappily.  His sisters used him as means to survive by controlling him and disrespecting him.  They spoke to him as though he owned a primitive brain.  They spoke to him as though he would only respond to careless, hurtful comments and hoards of unsolicited advice.  His father and he lived together before my father got married.  They fought like two beta fish, each of them sniping and weakening the other to the point where they no longer spoke.  My father denied this truth to me.  He would never allow me to see the world from which he came.  My mom didn’t deny me any truths especially concerning my father’s dad.  My grandfather acknowledged his daughter-in-law out of obligation.  “He didn’t give even give us a wedding card,” she said.
She told me that she turned bitter because she felt duped.  She said to me in confidence, “Here I thought that I married this great guy and then when I started getting used to feeling good, he changed.  I know that she tried to deal with his jealous rage but she couldn’t feel human amidst his control.  .
She said, “He told me that I couldn’t work anymore, Ewen.  He made me quit my job at the telephone company.  I loved that job.  It brought me so much happiness but no, the man had to work and the wife had to stay home and take care of the children.”
She might have known that he couldn’t let her work because she knew that he was born Irish and lived in Cabot.  You see, men like my grandfather Doyle worked for men who took from them.  The Irish men of Cabot had little dignity left when the walked home from work.  The only dignity, they’d own would be that they’d matter and they’d be irreplaceable.  Irish women typically worked in factories until they married.  Then they raised the children.  Their family and neighbors would be all that mattered to them. 
My mother’s childhood came before child labor laws, so she worked early and often in life.  She worked to keep a financially crippled family from losing its home.  She never knew what owning a toy felt like.  She never understood the concept of free time as a child.  Yet, she knew that she was important and that she mattered.  Unfortanately, she knew much more about obligation than she did about independence.
Still, a few years after she graduated high school, she’d learn to taste the air of independence, which was odd for women who lived in the fifties, the era of the submissive housewife.  She had a career before she met my father.  She worked as an operator for American Telephone and Telegraph.  My mom thrived as a career woman, because careers promised her something new.  Careers promised hope and reward.  Her good work promised promotions and benefits.  Her smile, sense of humor, and humility promised her great friendships.  She worked as general operator until she was promoted to shift supervisor.  She then became regional supervisor of sales of extension phones.  AT&T paid to send her to California for training.  She then moved to Cape Cod where she would sell people extension phones. 
She earned the right to be an independent woman.  She worked from the time she turned eight years old.  She worked for an old women, doing ironing, laundry, and other chores every day following school.  Each day, she wore the same clothes until the fabric ripped, wore, and fell apart.
When I, once asked her if she had a happy childhood, she said, “I didn’t think there was such a thing, Ewen. I guess, I didn’t want to think that children could be happy.  I want you to be happy, though, even though I’m not, Ewen.”
Her days in between childhood and marriage were the only days my mom admitted to the concept of happiness.  As much as I thought that my dad’s reminiscing was full of hyperbole, I found my mother’s musings about her pre-marriage experiences in California and at the Cape to be authentic and beautiful.   
Everything about my mother was beautiful.  Her face, her figure, and most of all her smile collected everyone’s attention.  Her eyes glimmered yet they owned a particular depth that manifested the pain of a childhood lost.  I heard men treated her as though she were a movie star.  I wondered how receiving such fond treatment felt. 
According to my mom’s sisters, my mom was unaware of her beauty.  “That’s what made her beautiful,” my Aunt Peg said.  “She embodied everything decent.  She loved to play.  She, so badly, loved to play and she loved everything simple like backyard picnics.” 
I wonder how her life would have faired if she stayed at the Cape with her career firm in hand.  I wonder what would have happened if she didn’t spend her weekends sitting on her sister’s front porch reading and singing to her nieces.  I think that’s why she stopped running.
I think she might have understood that she’d had run far enough.  I think she, first, ran, when she felt she could, quickly away from the aspects of family life that punished her for being responsible.  Yet, I think, she ran further than she expected. 
You see, I knew my mother, and I knew she hated being reminded of her beauty.  So, I think that as a child, she hid from her beauty by being the responsible child.  I think as an adult she hid, then, too.  She hid long enough to watch her siblings build buoyant families and then I think she had enough of Cape Cod.  I think she had enough of being everyone’s favorite aunt. 
So, my mom came back to Cabot, looking for man as honest as her father.  I think she thought she found him.  He was a man who boasted modest charm and impeccable honor.  He had something those other men didn’t have.  He had the ability to keep his integrity in tact and his zipper shut. 
He proposed quickly and she thought about all of those men who disappointed her.  She thought about all of her friends who were now surrounded by husbands and children who loved them.  She paused and then she recited the word that would change her life forever. 
She said, “Yes.”
“Did you say yes?  You agree to marry me?”
“Yes, I said, ‘yes’.  I’ll marry you Ayden Doyle.”   

I saw beauty defeated when I watched my mom speak now.  I saw her so lost and alone that she resorted in treating me like I was adult enough to help her.  I watched her while she spoke about him.  I felt the intensity that she sewn into each word.  On one occasion she said, “I can’t even speak to my friends on the phone, without him getting angry.  You know that, Ewen.  You know that.” 
His jealousy and fierce mood swings censored all her happiness.  Then when he’d begin to show his violent self, she’d lash at him with the venom of a cornered snake.  She’d look at him with disgust and say, “I’m nothing more than a trophy wife to you Ayden.”
I think she was right.  I think that’s the only way he thought he could keep her.  I think he figured that he needed to control her to keep her and then he would find shallow ways to make her happy.  Until then, I think he never wanted his trophy to get dusty, dirty, or broken.  So, he kept her hidden and brought her out only to show her off to the world.  He walked with her only to make his statement.  He wanted to say, “Hey I’m something, aren’t I?  I married the prettiest girl in town.”
He married a beautiful woman.  He married a woman who knew how to knock the swagger out of his step, the moment he’d arrive home from work.  Right before my eyes, she’d get so angry that she’d ridicule him, mimic him, and attack him.  She’d use every nasty verbal assault that would pass by her mind.  I cringed as I witnessed the bravado that lined my father’s face vanish.  I watched his sharp mind shut down.  I watched him welcome every insult like a swift punch to his chin.  Someone must have taught him how to stand still and wince hard to consecutive insults.
I watched my father reduced to a “spineless invalid.”  My mom said, “Yes Ayden, that’s all you are, really.  You’re a spineless invalid.” 
I wanted to save him.  I wanted to stop seeing him attacked.  I wanted to stop seeing my dad suffer.  I think the worst part was that he knew I watched and he couldn't do anything about it.  I shivered from a bleak coolness when I watched him fight back with defeated words.  In defense of her powerful and devastating artillery, his shotgun misfired often.  He responded like a little boy who had been hurt badly, a little boy whose brain turned against him while he stood in the overwhelming presence of bullies.  He’d say, “Hey, knock it off will ya?”
“Hey knock it off will ya,” she’d say.  She mocked his tired voice, reminding him that his accident would always leave him vulnerable.  “You sound like your drunk.  That’s what all these people, who you think are your friends, say about you.”
“Mom stop.  Please stop, mom.  Leave my dad alone,” I said.
He turned and looked at me with the eyes of wounded animal.  His eyes dropped in defeat but he looked at me with this, “Don’t look at me will ya,” look.  Someone had done this to him many time before this day, I figured.  I remember the look in his eyes.  There were others in his life that disabled his survival mechanisms.  He was not equipped to stop a verbal assault like this.  . 
My mother proved to be powerful adversary and a brutal punisher.  She had no means to stop, once she began, either.  She looked like a person who had a lot of pain to deliver.  She, apparently, had stored her anger, for years, like missals one on top of the other, fermenting in a poison that came from the defeats of her childhood. 
Yes, I think those missals were stored years before she knew dad or I.  I think those missals were from another war.  I think she fought someone and lost before she met my father.  I think she battled a man who used a powerful advantage to defeat her.  In victory, he held her up high as a trophy.  I know dad’s dreadful abuse was enough to make her hate forever, but I think my mom’s father taught her that she must accept her circumstance.
My grandfather leaned on a child when he stumbled over his stubborn pride. He convinced her to adore him and then he used her shoulders when his were unavailable.  As she grew, he shared his most intimate moments with her.  He was too busy surviving to understand that he took from her. I think she wanted to hate him, but how could she hate the man she proselytized to others about.  So, I think she kept her hate packed in missals, and then when she was convinced that she had nothing to live for, she aimed those missals at my father. 
She said, clearly and often that I was her son and every time she spoke about leaving him, she said, “We’re going to leave you.” 
He said, “You’ll never leave me will ya, buddy?”
“Never dad.”
I wondered what he thought about his prize now, on the days, when he walked with arm and arm with her in front of others.  He still clung to the status that came from being Kathleen’s husband.  I think he still wanted his friends to know that Ayden was something, all right, having Kathleen on his arm.  I wonder if he felt this false esteem was worth the price that came from knowing this beautiful woman aspired to unmatched cruelty. 
He overlooked the obvious.  He smothered all of his memories with bright budding flowers so he could say, “Yeah, look at me.  I’m something, all right.” 
I never believed him.  I knew that he saw a truth in her brutal characterization of him.  “You’re a nothing, Ayden.  You have nothing to offer a woman, nothing.  Look at this pathetic man that I married.  Look at this ugly man, disgusting man.”
You see, I think a mechanism in his brain malfunctioned when his face got numb from all her punches.  I think he finally saw his sad life before him and I think that was the one sin he couldn’t forgive.  His survival depended on ignoring every wretched truth and she forced his eyes to touch the hopelessness of his home.  . 
So, after all the choruses of “I have not one drop of love left for you anymore,” he would surrender his humanity.  He’d lung at her from his corner.  He’d take her, dragged her by her hair, and hit her.  He’d smear lipstick on her face while he had her arms pinned under his legs. Sometimes, he’d even rip her shirt off.  He pushed his hands in her face to silence her terrifying screams.  She’d scream, “I hate you with all my heart.”
I’d jump on him and he'd throw me off him as if I were as light as a stuffed animal.  On some occasions, he pushed me into my room.  He’d tell me that he’d kill me if I didn’t stay there.  I’d stand in my room feeling like a terrible coward while her screams sang through our house. 
He thought hitting her would be enough to stop her.  It only enraged the fire in her.  He’d open the door to my room and say, “Witch, witch your mother’s a fucking witch, Ewen.”
Then hours would pass, whether we wanted them to or not.  Hours passed and so did the days that came with them.  Then, a day would come where the two of them would be forced to walk pass the door that led to their inside world and lead them to the door that led to an outside world.  As they stood together, they knew that walked with the passion of their parents.  They expected to live like this.  So, that’s why stayed so close together in public.  They were a good fit, despite their deep hatred and resentment towards each other because they witnessed first hand how marriages could survive hate. 
.  They knew they needed to do what their parents did to survive.  They knew that they couldn’t continue destroying each other.  They knew they’d soon be allies.  They knew that they would surrender their fondest treasure to survive.  They had no choice.  I’m convinced they saw no other way to survive. 
You see, I had witnessed the closest beings, I had in the world, suffer greatly at the hands of each other.  I didn’t know what felt worse, seeing them in pain or seeing them attack something that was so precious to me.  I knew I had to save my mother.  I knew I had to save him too.  I knew it was time for them to do as their parents did.  I knew the time had come for them to lean on me.
So, life became manageable when she witnessed for the first time, something that he’d been doing a long time.  She saw him level me with a wild forearm.  She watched him stand over me and scream,  “You see this is all your fault.  Do you hear her?  Do you see what you caused?”
Her scream sounded new.  Her scream owned no hatred.  Her scream owned no bitter resolve.  Her new scream filled the house with fear.  She became a woman stunned by the sight of seeing her child struck.  I always thought that she knew that he had hurt me but I guess knowing and seeing are two different things. 
Dad and I, understood what that scream meant.  We knew that until then, she stood as woman who couldn’t be hurt.  Nothing he could do could stop her from attacking him.  She used his physical abuse against him.  Until that moment, she showed no signs of weakness until she witnessed him as his most natural self. 
My dad looked at me, now for what I was.  I was the boy that he could hate in public and by doing so, he could hurt her enough to stop her from hurting him.  The three of us knew from that day on that he would never hurt her again by hitting her.  He knew he could really hurt her by beating me as though I were a voodoo doll. 
When I was very young, I cried to stop them from hurting each other.  I felt an unnatural power when I learned that I could make them stop.  That was the thing about that kind of power.  I became addicted to it.  That’s why I embraced my new way to stop them from hurting each other.