Threads of Thought
By BB Curtis
Just a bit of a character study: Old man in a wheelchair, head bent at a 90-degree angle, can’t straighten out and all he can see is his own crotch.
I wonder if that little thread will cause a problem if I pull on it. It looks like it might. I shouldn’t touch it. I don’t have a lot of pants like I used to have. Once was I had half a walk-in closet of dress slacks and the other half suit coats. Needed a second closet for shirts and another for casual pants. That was in the days when I wasn’t stuck here in this damnable chair; when I was tall and straight; when I was young and strong; when I was vital and handsome and interesting.
Now, my days are spent staring. Everywhere I go, just staring. I can see pretty damned well. I’m not entirely sure about my distance vision since I can’t straighten out my neck enough to look at anything very far away, but I can see details of cracks and rocks and flooring everywhere we go. I never really lost my near sight like most people, though, more’s the pity. I’m starting to wish I had lost at least part of that. Being able to count the threads of my pants and the teeth on my fly is not something I wanted to do repetitively throughout the end of my days.
Sometimes I think the worst part is that my loving family parks me in this shitty chair, acting as though I’m not really in it, and leaves me to sit while they go take care of things. The most recent things were slot machines at a hotel in Vegas. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that they haven’t put me in a home or left me home alone. I should be happy that they brought me along. I should be grateful that I’m not in some unfamiliar room, parked by a window out of which I cannot see. I shouldn’t be so judgmental. It isn’t as though anyone else in the family has experienced being wheelchair-bound so that anyone has any idea about my thought patterns. Neither am I the kind who has much to say about either how I feel or what is passed off as kind and loving behavior, but neither do they ever ask me or attempt to start a conversation about my feelings. I am asked if I’m in pain. I am asked if I’m hungry. I am asked if I’d like a cup of coffee or if I’m thirsty. I don’t want to sound as though I’m abused. I’m not. I don’t want to sound as if I’m mistreated. I’m not. I don’t want to be unappreciative since I’m clean and well-fed and dapper and get to go places and am extremely well-maintained. What I’m not is particularly human. I don’t think I ever really have been in my wife’s eyes. My wife does her very best. I can see it’s not easy for her. I’m paralyzed on one side, which makes it damned near impossible for her to maneuver me in and out of bed, onto and out of the wheelchair, in and out of the car, and whatever. The effort she puts forth every single day is laudable. I get great meals. She keeps me and the house exceptionally clean, esthetically pleasing, and well stuck together. She maintains our car, keeps it up-to-date on maintenance and as clean as it can be. I am scrubbed and watched over. My medications are administered at all the proper intervals, even throughout the night, and monitored carefully, including watching my blood sugar and working with a couple of different types of insulin because my diabetes is crazy according to my specialists.
My wife also takes good care of herself. She’s always dressed beautifully with hair and makeup done. I believe the word for her had always been “impeccable” and that hasn’t changed. She takes great pride in having everything look good, even her old, broken, sick, disabled husband who no longer even vaguely resembles the man she married. However, she still dresses me as though I were the silver fox that my daughter said I turned into when I hit about 45. My wife still puts me in cream-colored slacks with a light blue belt, a light blue shirt, and cream tie and sports jacket. There was a time, back when I had feet, that I’d have been wearing cream-colored loafers as well. You can change out the color scheme and transplant cream with gray and light blue with navy blue or any number of other rather fabulous combinations. She purchased all my clothes and picked them out for me daily – always. I still have rather a mop of steel gray and pearl gray, wavy hair that she styles and sprays to keep under control. On the outside, I’m pampered and powdered and preened. I appreciate it, but there is a bit of something missing.
I guess it’s always been missing; and, over the course of time, I folded into myself emotionally and spiritually. Eventually, the feeling became so overwhelming that I folded into myself physically as well. All folded over. Head bent down. U-shaped, well, a U on its side, anyway. Maybe a sleeping U or a worn out U or a U that just can’t quite get it up any more. That’s pretty damned accurate. How did it all get to this point? Let me see, I’m quite sure I can go far enough back to take us both on a tour.
At the end of WWII I came home from the Philippines, hoping that the pretty girl I’d known in high school hadn’t done something stupid like fall in love and get married. I got off the Army transport plane someplace near San Francisco and found my way to the ferry to Oakland and then to the train station to take the City of San Francisco on the Overland Route to Chicago. It seemed so slow. Every mile took me closer to the girl I loved, the girl I wanted to call my own, the girl who had rejected me a few times, the girl I was determined to marry. I was counting the minutes and the miles, doing math in my head to determine the speed of the train. I tried to have a conversation with a few other of the guys who were headed home, but I found that I wasn’t listening to what their plans were and truly didn’t give a damn about their futures. I was far too worried about my girl and what she had done, was doing, and had plans to do. I didn’t even know why my head kept calling her “my girl.” She was no more my girl than the tracks underneath the train, the City of San Francisco, were my tracks or the train itself my train. I just knew I needed to get back home, back to Pennsylvania. I needed to find my girl and convince her that I should be her guy.
In Chicago, I remember changing to the Three Rivers train on the B&O line, the train that would take me to Pittsburgh and home. I wanted the last 465 miles of train ride to whiz by. They didn’t. It was like living encased in a time tunnel that was set to molasses. I could hear voices, but they came through fog. I could see lights outside the windows, but they barely moved although they should have been a blur. We finally pulled into the B&O station, and I nearly fell off the train and onto the platform. All I needed was a ride to Beaver Falls; and, as luck would have it, a guy from my old neighborhood had been on the same train, in another car. We ran into each other on the platform. His father was waiting with a car, thankfully. It wouldn’t be long and then I was home.
Mum greeted me with a few tears, a hug, and a home cooked meal. Although her cooking left a few things out, like spices and anything with flavor, it was still nice to eat food that was made in a home kitchen in regular-sized pots and pans using real food items. I crawled into my own bed for the first time in nearly two years. It was good to be home, and tomorrow would be the day I’d reconnect with my girl.
I woke several times during the night. Even looking back, there was more than one reason for that, I’m sure. It’s hard to determine which was worse, the peace and quiet or wondering what would happen when I drove over to 10th Avenue to see Wilda. My Wilda. I don’t know why I always thought of her as “my Wilda.” We met in junior high simply because of the alphabet. Our last names started with the same three letters so we were seated alphabetically with her behind me in every class. It took until I had a car (thankfully my dad felt that I should have one well before most other kids got one) that I was brave enough to ask her out. The car also gave me income. I chauffeured older guys across the state line to go places where the drinking age was lower than in Pennsylvania. I got paid. I had cash . . . all the time. Unfortunately, I was so impressed with the car that our date was nothing more than a long ride. Wilda was NOT impressed but was civil. When I dropped her off at her house, she said, “Thank you.” and left it at that, not even waiting for me to get the door for her. We didn’t go out again for several years and barely spoke at school, although she was always a lady and put on the best possible face, mostly as though we’d never gone anywhere together.
In our junior year in high school, I got up enough nerve to ask her to a party that our class was having at the park. She looked me up and down and asked if we’d be going directly to the park or would I be taking her for a joy ride at any time during this date. I assured her that I’d drive directly to the park and then take her directly home afterward. She agreed to go with me, but I remember a touch of hesitancy in her voice even now. The short version is that I thought we had a good time. She didn’t. I took her home, and the same thing happened as with the first go ’round. The only exception was that this time the entire school knew that we’d gone together and when she barely acknowledged my existence at school, it dug a little deeper because of the looks I got and the questions I couldn’t really answer. She was, however, my Wilda no matter what. I was never slightly interested in another girl. How could I be? Wilda was the pin-up girl of my high school, of the whole town, of my whole world. There was no one who could hold a candle to her. I know that’s a cliché. I know it sounds corny in this day and age, but it’s true. Wilda was my world, and that’s all there was to it.
The next year we graduated, and I went to boot camp. It was the middle of WWII, and I was soon off to the Philippines. I kept to myself most of the time and did what I was told. I’d play cards with some of the guys once in a while or help out in the motor pool since I was a decent mechanic – just things to pass the time. I was just waiting for my chance to go back home. The other guys would go into town on passes and have what they thought of as fun, but what they were doing wasn’t of interest to me. While there, I heard some scuttlebutt about whether or not I was a regular guy. Whatever anyone had to say meant nothing to me. Going home meant everything, and that’s all I cared about. You know what happened next and then I woke up back in my old room after nearly two years of jungle rot and crappy food.
I shaved, showered, found some clothes that didn’t look too out of date, although I wasn’t really sure what that would have meant. I kept looking at my hair, wishing that it had had a chance to grow in a bit more since the last GI cut. I liked how I looked with a wavy mop of black hair that had been a little too long and a lot too thick and a little too wavy before I went into the service. I ran the comb through it a few more times. A small part of me said that if I combed it enough it would stretch. I remember laughing at myself and hoping that I hadn’t become terminally stupid in the shitty jungle. I heard Mum yelling up the steps for me to get down to the kitchen for breakfast before she stopped cooking and started something else. I wasn’t one to miss a meal, so I threw the comb onto the counter top, galloped down most of the steps, leapt over the railing as I had nearly every day of my earlier life and headed at a trot to the kitchen.
“Stop bounding through the house like you’re 12 and sit down to eat like a gentleman.” Mum said adamantly.
She had oatmeal, eggs over easy, bacon, and toast on the table. I grabbed the salt and a the fork and made short work of most of it before getting hold of the spoon and taking care of that bowl of oatmeal in about six huge spoonsful. Mum was watching me and shaking her head.
“Well, you didn’t forget how to eat while you were gone.” she said and smiled. I think it was the happiest I ever saw her. She wasn’t the most pleasant person and never seemed to enjoy much of anything. Truth be told, the reason my dad had given me a car when I was still a kid was because my mother made him miserable just because she, herself, was miserable. He didn’t want me to be stuck home with her any longer than was necessary. The car was a favor, a way for me to have freedom and to have a way to get away from her. Maybe she actually had missed having me around every so often. It was hard to tell; and, frankly, I didn’t care all that much. I was on a mission, after all. I had someplace to be.
Before I finished my coffee, though, Dad walked in the back door. We exchanged a few pleasantries, made plans for later in the day to talk about things; and he was off to make a living while I was off to find my future bride. I gave Mum a quick peck on the cheek and left her standing in the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel, saying, “Boy hasn’t grown up a stitch while he’s been gone.
“My old car was in the garage. Dad had kept it in good shape for me. I drove to her house on 10th Avenue and parked the car. There was a tiny part of me that said that they might not live there any longer, but I jumped from the driver’s seat and took her front porch steps two at a time. I almost knocked her little, tiny mother over as she came out the door with a watering can.
“Hi, Miz Newman. How’re ya’ doin’?” fell out a bit awkwardly.
“Good morning, my boy,” she said, smiling. “Do I know you?”
“Sort of. I’m Danny Newell, I went to school with Wilda and just got home from the Philippines. Is Wilda here?”
“She left for work already. You might catch up with her if you head downtown on 14th.”
I thanked her, went back down the steps two at a time, almost tripped over the sidewalk, and hopped in the car, hitting the starter before my butt was fully in the seat. I made a U-turn to get back to 14th and headed in toward town. I surely did catch up with her just two blocks down. Who could miss her? She had a walk that could make your head spin. She was a brunette bombshell with legs that didn’t quit. Her hair swayed in opposition to her hips. I slowed down the car just to watch her walk for nearly an entire block. Then I pulled up beside her and yelled out her name.
She stopped dead and turn toward me. “Well look who’s back from the Pacific! Danny Newell, as I live and breathe! When did you get home?”
“Last night.” I choked. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
She stood there for a second, hands on hips, head tipped to one side, tapping her foot on the sidewalk. “Aren’t you going to offer me a ride to work?” That was my Wilda Nothing much ever really phased her. I pushed the passenger side door open and watcher her legs as she got in the car. Okay. I watched her butt as she got in the car. She turned to me and said something that I didn’t hear.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked.
“Sorry, what was that?” I mumbled.
“I’m working at Haddie’s on 7th Avenue. You remember where it is?”
I nodded and set out for Haddie’s. It was only a few blocks, and Wilda talked the entire time. She asked questions, didn’t give time for answers, and then had some sort of comment that carried her into another thought. I nodded a couple of times and said uh huh a couple of times and then we were there. She turned to me, tipped her head to the right, and said, “Why don’t you pick me up at 5:30?” I agreed. She got out of the car and waved as she walked around the side of the building. I was out of breath just from having listened to her. She was like a gale force wind that wouldn’t stop blowing long enough for you to take in air. What a gal!
I went home and checked the closet. There was a suit in the back. I’d developed some muscles I hadn’t had before being drafted but hadn’t put on any actual extra weight. The suit fit fine. I found a shirt and tie that seemed okay to me and asked Mum to press everything. I wanted to look at least as presentable as Wilda had when she’d gone in to work, even if I was more of a short-sleeved-shirt-and-slacks guy. I spent a decent part of the day trying to figure out what to do with my bedroom that now looked silly young and then helping Mum with a few things that I knew Dad wasn’t going to do . . . and it got close to 4. I showered, brushed my teeth, shaved, found out that my aftershave had gone bad and borrowed some of Dad’s, combed and recombed my hair, put on my best duds and went to get Mum’s approval. She looked me up and down and said, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t really know. I’m picking up Wilda and wanted to take her out for a good dinner. Maybe we’ll head in toward Pittsburgh to go to a better restaurant.”
“So all of this is for Wilda? My memories are of you complaining that she treated you extra poorly after that picnic thing. What’s happened in the meantime?”
“Honestly, nothing. I took her to work this morning, and she told me that she got off at 5:30 and asked me to pick her up.” I stumbled through this a bit since I hadn’t stopped to think about it. I was just forging ahead without logic – my mother’s favorite speech. I was thinking I was in for another one of those.
“Well, do what you want, but be careful. She’s not . . . wait a minute, you picked her up for work?”
“Yeah. I drove to her house, talked to her mum, and found her on her way to work so I drove her.”
“You don’t think before you do things. You look fine.” She shook her head and scowled a bit. “Have a good evening.” she said with her brows knit together and waved me out the door, but as she was closing it I heard her add, “She’s not good for you.”
I drove over to Haddie’s and parked near the alleyway that went to the back of the store where I’d dropped Wilda off that morning. I was about 15 minutes early so I lit a cigarette and slumped down in the seat a bit. For the first time in a few days I started to put the past and the present together. If you looked at the eight years prior to this very day, Wilda was mostly cold and disinterested. All the while, I had remained smitten. I saw only her while she saw anyone but me. What was I doing? Why was I sitting here waiting to see the woman I wanted who didn’t want me? Mum’s question was valid. What had happened to make me think that any of that had changed. I was in the process of sitting up to start the car to go, and there she was, opening the passenger side door, seating herself, and talking in one long sentence. I was right back to having no logical thoughts. We went to dinner at one of the better restaurants in Pittsburgh as I’d suspected and to a movie. I managed to stumble through the evening without doing too much damage, mostly because she never stopped talking during dinner and was attentive to the movie once we were in the theater. It certainly makes things simple for someone who is on the quiet side by nature to spend time with someone who has an overpowering personality – it completely removes that nasty responsibility of having to make small talk. We drove back to town, and I dropped her at her house. This time, she let me open the door for her and took my hand to let me help her out. She stood in front of me for a minute, head tilted to the side for the third time that day, and said, “What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?”
“I have no plans, yet.”
“My sister is having a get-together at her new apartment. Oh, you might not have known that she and Ed Sommers got married a bit ago. It was right after he was released from the service. You and Ed always got along well if I remember correctly from school. You can pick me up at 7.” I realized at that moment that one of the reasons I felt about her the way I did was that all she did was make her statements clearly. There was no hedging and no bullshit. She was just waiting for my answer without any flirty looks or other types of persuasions. Almost everything with her was totally matter-of-fact. Go with me or not. Pick me up or not. Just give me an answer so I can make plans. So, without knowing for sure if I was being asked because her opinion of me had improved or if I was just really convenient at the time, I agreed to take her to Viv’s new place. On my way home I started to wonder how many people would be at this shindig.
If you lived in Beaver Falls, you knew the Newman girls. There were three and one was prettier than the next. The oldest, Justine, was on the tall side, shapely with long legs, raven hair and a pouty mouth. She was truly the brains of the bunch. She was fluent in five languages and seemed to learn simply by being next to a book. The next was the dancer, Vivian, blond with a great chassis, all the right curves in all the right places as they say. She was far from the stereotype of a blond but didn’t hold a candle to her older sister in the brain department. The third, my Wilda, who had auburn hair, a more athletic build and almost as brilliant as the oldest. If you got to go out with a Newman girl, you were one lucky bastard. It was a badge we lowly guys could wear with honor. However, it also meant that they had befriended most of the city, male and female alike, because all of them were down-to-earth and likable on top of being attractive and intelligent. I had to admit to myself that I was not the most sociable person I knew. I could hold my own in light conversation, but I was not the “he’s fun at parties” type of guy. I guess, looking back over the long years, I had always been and still was a wallflower of sorts. I just preferred quiet.
To condense a good bit of trivia, we started dating regularly; and, the following spring, I bought her a ring, we ran off to the Poconos, and got married. I had taken a job on the B&O as my mother had wanted. Her brother worked for them in Chicago, and she thought that there was just nothing else in the world like the railroad. This, I think, had more to do with the fact that her brother was home from work at predictable times on predictable days and had a family life. On the other hand, my father, who was self-employed, was seldom home; and she spent most of her time alone and lonely. Looking back far after both my parents had died, she was alone because she was a miserable person with whom no one wanted to spend time. My dad wasn’t home by plan. I wasn’t home for the same reason. Her sister lived in the other side of the duplex that they owned jointly. Aunt Annie was adorable and loving and put up with her sister, my mother, because she had little choice, if you ask me. I normally just did my best to ignore her. One of my daughter’s favorite stories is about me going back and forth to the phone about every 5 minutes or so, picking up the receiver that was sitting on the kitchen counter, saying, “Uh huh.” and putting it back down until my mother finally quit talking – usually took about seven or eight repetitions. She and I got along great. I generally heard not a word she said, and I recommended that to others.
Wilda and I were happy. Well, I was happy. Maybe I shouldn’t speak for her. If I’m going to keep this entirely on the up and up, she kinda’ complained a lot about other people, mostly, and how she was treated by them, and what stupid jackasses they were, and, oh my. I wonder what she used to say about me when I wasn’t around. Back to my point: My wife was multi-talented and had fabulous taste. She designed and made most of her clothing, and she always looked amazing. On a beautiful and perfect Sunday morning in early summer, we walked into church a bit early. One of the greeters was not just another church member, but a friend of the family. She shook my hand warmly, and we exchanged pleasantries while Wilda was talking to the other greeter who was on a committee with her. They were discussing dates and times for future something-or-anothers. Wilda turned toward Helen with a smile, and Helen immediately commented exuberantly on Wilda’s “simply gorgeous” suit, adding, “And I’ll just bet you made that. I wish I were talented like you. I’ve tried to sew and everything I make looks like a half blind eight-year-old made some hasty mistakes with the sewing machine. You look wonderful.” she smiled and patted my wife on the shoulder. After services, when we got in the car, Wilda let loose about Helen. I remember being totally confused. Helen was, first and foremost, one of the nicest people I’d ever known. She and Wilda had worked together at church on many projects. Helen and her husband, Dan, had been to our home for gatherings, and both women taught Sunday School, jointly handling the four-, five- and six-year-olds, during the school year. I couldn’t imagine what set her off. I couldn’t remember being away from Wilda’s side long enough for something to have taken place that I didn’t witness. I couldn’t figure this out to save myself.
“That damned woman! How dare she!” Wilda yelled, “All that bullshit about this suit. I wish I hadn’t worn the stupid thing. Now she’ll be asking me to make crap for her to wear. All I’ll ever get is hems to set and sleeves to fix. She’ll probably bring over her kids’ clothes so I can mend them and then expect me to make stuff for them, too. Who does she think she is?!” I drove the car and didn’t look sideways. I was totally confused. I couldn’t figure out how that lovely compliment from Helen had turned into this mess. That incident took place a couple of years before our daughter was born. Our daughter never played with Helen’s kids. Helen and Dan never came to our house for a party again. Wilda barely spoke to Helen at church, and she changed her Sunday School teaching to a different age bracket. I never once heard Helen ask Wilda to sew anything — nothing. Nothing for her, nothing for her kids, nothing. I wonder what Helen thought had happened. Wilda never mentioned Helen to me again. I suspect that if she’d had a row with her, I’d have heard all about it, especially if Wilda’d found out that she was correct about that long ago compliment actually being some sort of deceitful way to get her to sew for Helen and her family. I have to think that I wouldn’t have heard the end of it, just like I never heard the end of backing into a pole. The three of us, Wilda, Grace and I (Grace is our daughter and was five at the time), had gone out for a quick dinner at one of the little diners in town. They served home-style food like meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy and plain peas – stuff I like. We got in the car to leave, and Wilda was ranting about something the waitress had said or done. I don’t remember. I didn’t really care. I turned in the seat; looked out the back window; and, in the growing darkness, missed the fact that there was a pole not far behind us. I backed into the pole. Sighing, I clearly remember sighing with my eyes closed, I got out of the car and went to see the damage. There wasn’t any except that a bit of paint was missing from the pole. I got back in the car to drive us home. At least backing into the pole had stopped the tirade about the waitress whom I couldn’t remember having done anything but serve our food correctly. A few months went by. We had gone about our normal lives, doing things, cleaning things, going places, being human. Then, we decided to go to the drive-in. There was a great little, specialty popcorn shop in our hometown. We always went there to get white cheddar cheese popcorn to take to the drive-in. I parked, went in, got our order and came back to the car. I handed Wilda and Grace their bags of popcorn and turned on the car.
“Don’t look at a pole and back into it, OK?” Wilda said with a smirk.
“OK. I won’t.” I said, caught a bit by surprise. I wasn’t sure why she’d said that. We drove through town without incident and pulled into the drive-in, parked, and I got the speaker and hooked it from the top of the window. We watched the two features in practical silence. Grace had fallen asleep between us, her feet on my lap and her head on Wilda’s. It was time to leave so I replaced the speaker on the pole and started the car.
Again, I heard Wilda say, “Don’t look at a pole and back into it, OK?” All of a sudden I realized what she was talking about.
“Honey, are you still hung up on me bumping that pole outside the diner a few months ago? There was no damage to the car.”
She smirked again and sat there all kinds of self-satisfied all the way home. It was not the last time I heard about the pole. Over twenty years later and after several more reminders of that stupid pole, with both my daughter and my granddaughter in the car, we heard about that damned pole again, in another state, no less. Then, when my granddaughter was a senior in high school 12 more years later, we went to visit for a special occasion. Everyone was dressed up for my beautiful granddaughter’s Junior Miss pageant. She had chosen me instead of her father to walk her out on stage. My heart was about to burst I was so proud of her and my daughter for bringing her up to be such a wonderful young woman. We got in the car to drive to the convention center where the pageant was being held.
“Don’t look at a pole and back into it, OK?” was what I heard from the passenger seat, again.
In stereo, from the back seat, from my daughter and granddaughter came, “For God’s sake, are you ever going to stop that shit?”
I surely loved my Wilda. Even though she was prone to these tirades and had a penchant for verbally beating the hell out of people, she was always the light of my life. When we had disagreements, I would silently agree to disagree since there was no such thing in Wilda’s repertoire, and continuing to argue was a serious waste of time and energy on my part. Her energy reserves were outrageous and endless when it came to arguing. I had learned early on while she and her sister were on an argument marathon that it was useless to even hope that there was a shadow of a chance of making your own point with her. I had help. I didn’t learn it on my own. Wilda and Viv were roaring over top of each other, seemingly not even taking breaths. Anyone listening could not follow the exchange (and I use the term loosely). It was just a cacophony. No real words were recognizable. The syllables all just battered together, noise for noise. My brother-in-law and I sat at the picnic table in their expansive backyard listening to our wives’ explosive rhetoric, glancing over at the animation and facial expressions that would have indicated an outbreak of sheer physical violence at any time to someone new to the situation — me, at that point. I asked Reggie if we should break it up.
He took an exaggerated draught of his beer and sighed. “Let me give you two bits of advice. First, never, ever, interrupt these two, especially when they’re together. Second, if you fight, you will lose.” I kept watching and listening and realized that he had figured it out already. Those two simple truths may have been the best advice I ever got from anyone. I’m quite sure it saved me considerable pain and suffering over the course of my life, including the most recent of my time sitting in this damnable wheelchair, unable to walk away any longer, unable to find something else to do like tear down an entire car engine for very little reason except that it kept me in the garage and not in the house. I clearly remember the time I told my daughter a secret to dealing with her mother. I think little Grace was about 10 or 11, we were waiting for Wilda to do what-the-hell-ever it was that was so important that it absolutely had to be done right that very minute as we were supposed to be leaving the house for a family outing on my one and only day off. Let me fill in a bit of detail so that you can understand why washing a coffee cup seemed so damnably superfluous to both my daughter and to me at that time. I was a manager for the B&O. That meant that I worked about 12 hours a day, six days a week. Since I was the most recently promoted, I had the worst schedule. Nights. The location of my job was nearly an hour drive from home. I was gone 6 nights a week for 14 hours all of those days. The slowest night of the week was Sunday, so I didn’t work on Sunday nights. I got home at about 9 AM on Sunday mornings. If we were going to do anything, I just didn’t go to bed until that night and was able to sleep in on Monday to make up for it. As you may be able to see, the time was both limited and important . . . at least to my Grace and me. Gracey came into the living room and plopped down next to me on the sofa with a scowl in her pretty, little face. Have I mentioned that she looked like her mother? Maybe not, but she was equal to her mother in beauty. She sighed and leaned against me. I put my arm around her and patted her on the wrist.
“What’s wrong, little honey? You seem out of sorts.” I half whispered as I leaned my cheek against the top of her head.
She sighed again, “Why does she always do this?”
“Do what, sweetie?” although I thought I knew the answer.
“Well, gee Daddy, every time we get ready to go somewhere, she comes up with 15 stupid things to do before we can leave and go have fun. Do you know what she’s doing? She’s washing out a coffee cup. There was ONE coffee cup left from after breakfast, her’s; and it couldn’t just sit in the sink until we get home tonight and be washed another time with a regular load of dishes. Oh, no! It has to have it’s own sink-full of hot water and detergent and be washed, rinsed, dried and put in the cupboard. Then the sink must be drained and wiped out, because, well crap, I don’t know because. What could possibly happen if the sink were left to just dry on its own? What horrible disaster would befall our house if the stupid cup just sat in the already dry sink until later?” She harrumphed and folded her little arms across her little chest, thoroughly disgusted, and nuzzled closer to my side. “She’s annoying! Also, all she does is babble. I swear she hasn’t noticed that I walked out of the kitchen already. I’ll bet you she’s still talking . . . to the air now. How do you put up with her?”
I found myself saying, “Well, dear, I have two pieces of advice for you.” I instantly realized that the advice she needed might not really be what I was thinking, which was a quote from Reggie. I was the one who saw this as an argument if I said anything. Grace wasn’t going to say anything to her mother because that’s not how she was reared. She didn’t talk back. She knew that fighting with her mother was never an option — at least not at that age. That would come later. However, I had some great advise, I thought. “Getting along with your mother requires a talent. The most important part is to learn what to listen to and what to ignore. She can go on and on about something that you and I view as nothing. Ignore that part so she doesn’t make you nuts. Don’t listen. It’s not important. However, the tone of her voice changes when what she’s talking about is something that you’d better be able to repeat back to her. When you hear that tone, listen up. It’s important. Remember everything she says.” I felt really good about that advice. It was something that would allow my child to get along better with her mother. Grace didn’t move. Grace was still scowling. If anything, the scowl lines in her forehead got deeper.
“Daddy, did you just tell me to NOT listen to Mom?”
Well, gosh all get out, I certainly had. Might not have been the best advice to give to a pre-adolescent girl. I thought for a moment. “Not exactly. I meant that you should be discerning about what is important and what is not.”
“How can I tell the difference?”
“Hmm,” I needed a moment, “let me put it this way. If you think that interrupting her [this is where Reggie’s advice came into play] would start an argument you cannot win, then let her talk and let it be. If what she’s saying includes something that you need to do, pay attention. On both counts, it pays to be quiet.” I don’t think I made the point well enough to answer my daughter’s question about how I put up with my wife. I think that she just gave up pursuing the issue. I don’t think I’m wrong on that. I think Grace gave me some huge leeway on this one.
I went to work day to day, started a business with my dad, eventually was not home much either, and found every possible opportunity to take my daughter with me to help with our vending business . . . so she was not forced to be home all the time to have to listen to her mother. I’m not sure that was the right thing to do. As I sit in this chair with nothing but time for contemplation, I realize that Gracey’s early years must have been something less than idyllic. When I look back I see that she spent much of her time in the forest that was the lot across the street. The elderly lady who owned the lot and house next to it was the last of a line of the very wealthy who had chosen not to live in Pittsburgh although the offices for their businesses were there. Mrs. Rice was a tidy little woman of an advanced age that was hard to guess. She didn’t come out of her over-sized home often, and most of the staff she used to have, probably before we bought the house across the street and turned it into apartments had gone away by one means or another. Our best guess was that she lived there with only one staff person — the man who kept the front yard neat, maintained the car, took her to church on Sundays and shopping on Mondays. It was anyone’s guess, but chances were good that he also did the housekeeping and maybe the cooking as well. He was about 50 to her 80 plus and was still able to get around well. There was a vacant lot to the south of the lot upon which the house was built. It was part of the estate. At one time in the rather distant past it was a garden to rival some of the palace gardens of Europe. Over the course of time and inattention it had become just overgrowth. Trees and bushes as tall as some of the trees along with flowers with too much stem and too few blooms were well fertilized by dead leaves and downed, decaying branches. When it rained, which it did quite often, we could smell the decay from our house. However, Gracey spent inordinate amounts of time in that forest, Sherwood according to Grace. I later found out when we were reminiscing on the porch in another state 3000 miles away from PA over a couple of beers that there were half-dead bushes that had grown too large for their stem-work to hold upright and had bent over to form cave-like structures. The stalks and stems were so dense that even the rain didn’t penetrate, and Gracey had books and snacks stored in one of them where she’d go and curl up to read when she needed to be alone and find peace. These communes with nature remained her solace through her life and, according to one of our conversations, had a great deal to do with her spirituality.
I built up my business and invested some of the money (while still working on the railroad) into rental properties and a small shopping center. It turned out that I was good at making money, and my wife was good at saving money. We had amassed a decent fortune by the time our daughter was getting ready to go to college. That year just before she left was a bad one. Five years before, after never being sick a day in my life, I was hospitalized. It took about a week back in the 60’s to figure out that I was diabetic. I was released from the hospital with a special diet and after having been taught to give myself injections of insulin. Things didn’t get better from that point. They weren’t always terrible, but nothing got back to normal in any way. By the time my daughter was a senior in high school, we had sold the properties and the businesses and had our house up for sale, and we were getting ready to move west — doctor’s orders. Gracey had already decided to go to college in Utah, and we were preparing to move to Arizona. I was going to be forced into an early, medical retirement with a partial pension. Before we finalized everything, we took Gracey to school. The cross country drive was interesting to say the very least.
We had a 1969 sage green Coup de Ville that easily towed a 20 foot, silvery-gray travel trailer. In early September of ‘72, we loaded it with Grace’s clothes and things for school and took off for a few weeks to get to Utah and get her settled and then do some exploring on our own. We had decided that, since my health was failing, we’d give hard consideration to my doctor’s suggestion to move west for cleaner air, lower humidity, and fewer plants to which I was allergic. My allergic reactions created infections that were becoming harder and harder to treat because of diabetes. The allergies were trying to kill me and the antibiotics were so strong that they were beginning to destroy my immune system – also trying to kill me. Things looked somewhat bleak. We knew one thing, though, I could breathe in Arizona. Back when Grace was seven, we had taken a vacation that took us across country from Pennsylvania, over and down into Arizona. We spent a couple of weeks in Phoenix. That would have been the summer of ‘61. The car broke down on the way, and we got stuck for a couple of days in a tiny town with about 3 stores, one restaurant/motel, and a gas station in I Don’t Remember Where, Colorado, near Pike’s Peak. We did a little hiking. There wasn’t much else. We were together, the three of us, and we had a great time. We got back on the road for Phoenix, a two-lane road back then. As we came down out the Rockies and got closer to Flagstaff, I realized that I could close my mouth and breathe through my nose. Grace noticed the same about herself. We were both yelling on top of each other, so excited that we could breathe through our noses. This was something neither of us had ever done before. This was HUGE! Later that evening we arrived in Phoenix. The next morning, Wilda and Grace were in the motel pool – Wilda looking like a bathing beauty getting (maybe) too much sun and Grace working on becoming the next Esther Williams. I had taken off to explore the city and look for someplace interesting to have dinner (have I told you yet that my two favorite things other than my wife and daughter were driving and eating good food?). I found a place that might have been called The King’s Table, although of that I am not sure; but it looked like a castle and had statues of knights out front. Without seeing anything more than that, I knew my daughter, who had an affinity for the Arthur legends, was going to love it. If the food wasn’t that great, we’d find take out later. As I was parking the car in the motel lot, I turned from locking the door to see a wall of BEIGE coming our way. It was a sand storm, something we didn’t even realize existed outside of in the movies in the Sahara Desert. I ran to the pool and grabbed my family and Wilda’s beach bag, dragging them into the room and slamming the door shut. Wilda and Grace looked scared, huddled together on one of the beds. The storm was visible out the window. I turned on the TV, hoping to find a weather advisory, and it was already on the right station. It was being touted as a larger than normal storm and might last up to an hour or so. We noticed that the sand was starting to come in under the door and put towels in the way. We closed the drapes to reduce the amount of fine dust that might come in. Then, we raided the ice chest for munchies and settled in to watch whatever game shows were on in the afternoon. As we already knew how, we made the best of it, even though Wilda was clearly unhappy and made more than a few rough-edged comments. Grace and I ignored her. Grace and I could still breathe properly through our noses. We were still excited. Back to our third trip out west. My daughter graduated from high school in ‘72 and was going to college in Salt Lake City, 3000 miles from home. We had already planned to move to Phoenix within the next year, so we’d be close enough for short trips to visit each other. Things were working out better than we expected with a mid-40s medical retirement. We made our way along I-80, stopping here and there for some tourist things we missed on our second trip, two years before when Grace decided that she wanted to go to the University of Utah, consequently applying, being accepted and offered a full academic scholarship. Although not recommended, she road in the travel trailer so she could spread out and read or play the guitar and sing – her favorite pass times. On the third or fourth day, we came to an RV park with shade and a stream in the middle of nowhere Nebraska. I wish I could remember the name of the spot. We’d stopped there the last time we were traveling through. It was exceptionally pleasant, quiet, and refreshing. We got a prime spot near the brook that cut through the property and stopped for dinner and for the evening. My wife entered the trailer as I was setting up the barbecue. Moments later, I heard crazy coming from the trailer and ran over to see what could possibly be happening. What I saw stumped me for a couple of seconds. Wilda was on the floor in a heap, hysterically crying and screaming sounds that were not words. Grace was standing up in front of the sofa, glassy eyed, with a look of both shock and fear on her face, her hands covering her mouth, apparently unable to move. I started to pick up Wilda who was in the path from Grace to the door and told Grace to go outside and sit at the picnic table until her mother stopped. She squeezed past me. I didn’t notice that she grabbed a kitchen towel on her way to the door. I started to calm my beautiful Wilda who, right then, looked like a raving lunatic. She’d had some episodes like this before. I used the same process. I pulled her onto my lap and rocked her back and forth, all the time half-whispering that everything was okay and that, if she could quiet down, she’d see that all was well. I just kept rocking and repeating the “it’s okay” speech. Eventually, maybe 20 minutes or so later, she was quiet and had fallen asleep. I carried her to the sofa and put her there, gently, trying not to disturb her. I then went outside to let Grace know that Mom was asleep, and we would make dinner. I went out the door and stopped dead in my tracks. My daughter was at the picnic table with a towel dripping with blood in her hands and blood running from her nose/mouth. Her head was bent down a bit, and she was silently crying huge tears that were falling onto the table, mixing with her blood, and being partially absorbed by the old, dry wood. So that you know, one of my least favorite jobs on the railroad was emergency crew. When there were train wrecks or crashes of any sort that involved one of our trains, I was part of the on-call crew to assist in all aspects of the emergency. My first-responder skills were not what you’d call well-honed, but I had some. I went back in the trailer and grabbed a couple more towels and some ice and took them to my baby girl. I took the dripping towel away and gave her a fresh one and wrapped my arms around her and rocked her. Unfortunately, I did not know what to say to her. I did not know what happened. I did not want to guess. I just knew she needed to be held so that’s what I did. Eventually, the bleeding slowed as did the quaking that comes along with tears, and I asked her if she could tell me what happened. She wiped her face with a clean towel and tried to dry up her sniffles. She swallowed hard. Her head was still down, leaning against my chest. I still couldn’t see what was bleeding.
“All I know is that I was on the couch reading, Mum came in, stomped over to me and slapped me across the face. Next I remember, you were telling me to go outside. When I put my hands down, I saw blood and grabbed a towel. I’ve been sitting at the table ever since. Daddy, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” she started breathing too fast and twitching so I patted her head and held her tighter. I put my cheek on her hair and started humming a song that used to put her to sleep when she was little – “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing”. She relaxed and sort of melted into me. I could feel the full weight of her head on my right arm that was crossed over my chest, holding onto her left shoulder. As her body relaxed, more tears came. Quiet tears again, as though her eyes were leaking and her body just didn’t have the strength left to spasm. I just kept humming and rocking for several minutes, I don’t know how long. I was focusing on wrapping my little girl in safety to make sure she knew that I was there with her and that she was safe. Looking back, I don’t know why this was not a huge clue to me that there had been issues about which I knew nothing. After some time went by, possibly 20 minutes, I leaned back and tried to lift her face by her chin. She whimpered. I guessed that I had hurt her but needed to find out about the bleeding. I asked if she was awake. She gave a slight nod. I asked if I could take a look at her face. She pushed her head and shoulders against me, as though drawing strength from getting even closer to me or trying to make herself small, I couldn’t tell which. She said nothing. I waited. Finally she slowly raised her head so I could look at her face. There was some dried blood crusted on her sweet face that started at the edge of her nostrils and ran down at least to the bottom of her chin. Her eyes were closed as though she were unable to look me in the eye. I asked if her mouth hurt. She shook her head. I had to assume, at least at that point, that her nose was the source of the blood. Whatever it was, it seemed to have stopped. I asked her if I could take a look at her teeth. She spread her lips in almost a sneer. Her teeth looked fine. I asked her to open her mouth. There were no visible traces of any blood in her mouth or around her teeth. I took that as a good sign. We sat for some time at the picnic table under the tree, by the brook, as the sun was leaving the sky. The air got a little colder, and she pulled her arms in between us to stay warm. She trusted me to protect her, but I was beginning to realize that I hadn’t done such a great job of that. In that moment and looking back, I wish she and I had had more of those moments without any of the reasons for that particular moment. I hope that she felt the same but wouldn’t blame her if she had been thinking that I’d failed her. As darkness was setting in, I realized that we needed to figure out some next steps. I gave Grace a squeeze. She pulled away from me a bit. Her face brightened a little. She tried a smile and looked me in the eye for the first time.
“What do you say to some dinner, Daddy?” she said, meekly. Her getting-more-adult-every-day face resembled her four year old face right then. The innocence in her eyes; the expectant look with tiny creases in her forehead and between her eyes; the dimples at the edges of her little smile; the shy, slight tip down of her chin – the look that shy children get when telling Santa what they want for Christmas, hoping for the very best. I chucked her under the chin and whispered that she should go clean up her face. We got up and went inside the trailer. Wilda was still asleep on the sofa. Her face looked stressed. I didn’t want to wake her, not out of kindness but out of defense of Grace and self-preservation. However, I couldn’t just leave her on the couch without dinner, or could I? Grace came out of the bathroom looking bright and shiny clean. Only her eyes belied the fact that she was distressed. There was a small general store on the campgrounds so we walked there and found that they had a take-out window that offered bar foods. We ordered hamburgers and fries and iced tea. They had some outside seating of which we gladly took advantage. We ate in peace, avoiding the most obvious issue. What was I going to do about her mother? Pragmatism took me back into the general store. I got dinner for Wilda. We went back to the trailer. I had my arm around Grace’s shoulders on the way there. She had her head down. I asked her to wait at the picnic table again and went into the trailer to wake Wilda. I said her name a couple of times, and she woke up and turned to sit on the sofa. She looked around, a little confusion showing on her face. She shook her head a bit, but it didn’t appear to have the desired effect of clearing her head.
“It’s dark? How long have I been sleeping?”
“An hour or two, I think. I wasn’t paying attention. How do you feel?” I asked, tentatively.
“I think ‘groggy’ would be the proper term.” she stated. “I’m having trouble remembering how I ended up in here and on the sofa.” She looked less assured than usual. She looked a little frightened, as a matter of fact. I wasn’t sure how to respond. As it turned out, my silence was valuable in avoiding much further discussion. She looked down for a couple of seconds and collected herself and her thoughts. She drew in a deep breath and let it out, then looked up at me. “I must have been extra tired.” She brightened a bit. “How about I make dinner?”
“Honey, you were so knocked out, I got some take out for us. We thought we should let you sleep, so Grace and I have already eaten. Can I fix your plate for you?” She nodded and moved to the kitchen table. When I put her plate down in front of her, I felt a wave of fear as it was becoming more and more clear that my wife possibly just had a psychotic break; and I was wondering if it was the first time as a reaction to the realization that our daughter was soon to become her own person as we left her to fend for herself, or if it was the most recent in a long series of breaks that may have caused horrible times for Grace . . . what the past had brought and what the future was about to bring. I patted her on the hand before she picked up her hamburger. She turned her face toward me, gave me a half smile, and then went about the business of eating dinner. I went out to talk to sweet Grace again. Nothing else of note took place for the rest of that trip. We got Grace moved into her dorm room, toured the campus, shopped, and saw some of the sights. It was an amazing celebration to start her college career, but I had a hard time not wondering again and again over the years how many of those blackouts my lovely wife had when I wasn’t around and with what my shy and retiring daughter may have dealt in silence.
Wilda and I went back home after a few weeks of visiting places we hadn’t been before. We were becoming reacquainted and adjusting to being a party of two instead of three. Once back home, I spent more time in the hospital than out. My doctor put me on medical retirement and told me again I had to go west. We were doing what needed to be done to move us to our semi-retirement place of choice. We had decided eleven years prior, when vacationing in Phoenix, that that was where we wanted to live. We sold cars and business trucks, rental properties and the business, and our home. We bought a moving van and packed it up to go to Phoenix. This process took us into Spring of the following year. By March, we were on the road, got to Phoenix and two weeks later, after putting earnest money on an awesome piece of horse property that included several small cabins for vacationers, I was in the hospital. Citrus pollen and I don’t get along. Who knew? I spent most of my life in western Pennsylvania. Citrus trees? None. The result was that we walked away from the purchase of our dream property, got into our moving van, and took off to find someplace else to settle. The other result was that over the pace of over two months I got to know a lot of highways and off the beaten track byways of four states before we gave up and went to see our daughter, still with no decision on living space for any of us and the end of her third quarter coming within days.
With other options hitting zero, we quickly found a house in Salt Lake City with a mother-in-law apartment for our daughter. As it turned out, we didn’t need that apartment. The relationship between my wife and my daughter, now more of an adult, was not something that was tenable with them under one roof. It became painfully (for me, at least) apparent that they were not going to find common ground or whatever the hell it was going to take for them to get along in any possible way. Our family was drifting into rapids that were impossible to navigate, and we ended up on different sides of the continent quickly. I never entirely lost my connection to my daughter. Whatever I had thought that our lives together were supposed to be, they were not going to be. Anything that I had imagined or expected was not going to be. There were times when I was not able to talk to my daughter because my wife wouldn’t allow it. I now have to wonder what the fuck I was thinking to let her run my life and our daughter’s life to such an extent. I went years without having any contact with my one and only child. I still wonder what she thinks about that. I’ve never asked her. I think I should. I find that she is amazing for never having judged me openly about my lack of real action in relation to the things where I should have protected her. She has never called me on any of this, and my stupid ass has never made any steps toward correcting what I really knew to be wrong. Decades have gone by. Her life has taken a few turns that had to be excessively difficult for her, but I wasn’t there to help because Wilda and her shit got in the way. I have NOT been where I should have for my daughter because my wife, her mother, refused to allow it. I am surprised that Grace has never confronted me. She has had every right to. Right now, we are all together in a casino on the east side of Las Vegas, getting ready to have dinner. My wife, my daughter and my granddaughter are headed toward the entrance to a buffet. My headstrong wife is still in charge. I am without the use of half of my body. My daughter, who is now a mother and successful business woman, will not take up the issues she has with her mother. However, she is here, being the best person she knows how to be, and I think it’s for my sake and the sake of her nearly adult daughter.
I feel guilty for not having done something. I am, however, proud of my daughter for never having confronted my wife and made this into the grand shit-clash it could have been.
That thread is still calling to me to pull on it to see what happens.
Epilogue: I’m gone now, but my daughter speaks of me as though I were a hero. Sometimes, I hear her as I float through the ether and wonder why she acts as though my non-action had no real affect on her. Then, I hear what is going on inside her head where she wonders why I didn’t leave her mother so that she was not forced to deal with someone who should never have had children. I try to yell to her that I’m sorry I didn’t see and seem to have refused to hear that she was in pain and that our lives were not as they should be. I cannot. I do wish that there was a way for those of us who have passed over to let people know that we are sorry for having let them down and that, being human, our shortcomings and imperfections cannot be fixed later unless we figure out that we need to do so before we are gone. I have to hope that she will go through the rest of her days overcoming that crap that I helped leave behind.
Oh, dear Grace, I am sorry!
© Bobbi Bartsch Curtis, 2021, All rights reserved.
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