My Father Before Me

by Chris Forhan

  They would be married on a Friday night—an odd time for the pastor to choose, as the church didn’t typically hold weddings at night—but my parents didn’t question it. They invited more than a hundred people. Though few of the guests would have been unaware of the reason for the abrupt wedding, my parents wanted to celebrate their marriage openly, in front of family and friends. They were not ashamed. Not much.

  When they arrived in the afternoon for the rehearsal, they found the church dim and empty. They were summoned to the priory, the small redbrick building in the church’s shadow. It was there, they were told, that the ceremony would take place: it would be unlawful to celebrate the wedding in the church, since the bride was not a Catholic.

  Ange was crestfallen. Furious. But what could she do? And what could her mother do? Nothing—except allow her indignation to turn her against the Catholic Church forever. Ed’s grandparents said nothing, and Ed said nothing, although it must have begun to dawn on everyone that the pastor, in planning a night wedding in a small building without altar or spire, was intent on marrying these two children only technically: surreptitiously, without immodest pomp.

  The sky darkened, a light rain fell, and the arriving guests were directed away from the huge church entry doors and toward the narrow walkway to the priory. A couple dozen people were allowed inside the building, but no more than that would fit. The rest of the guests, with little to look at but one another’s bewildered faces, gathered in the drizzle on the walkway and on the priory’s concrete steps. Those nearest the door might have strained to catch a few words of what was happening inside.

  And then it was over. The teenage newlyweds emerged. The guests stepped aside to let them pass.

  7

  The honeymoon, at least, would go well. True, the vacation would be short—just the weekend—because Ed had to be back to work on Monday; he was planning to enroll in the university in the fall, but, in the meantime, like many other Seattleites, he had signed on at Boeing, the airplane manufacturer that was the city’s biggest employer. Still, for the next two days, Ed and Ange would be on their own, accountable only to themselves, free to breathe easily, to follow their whims, and to begin to grow accustomed to each other as what they now were: Mr. and Mrs. Forhan.

  They would spend the weekend in Victoria, British Columbia, a harbor town named after the great queen, a place of genteel manners, handsome Victorian- and Edwardian-era architecture, and luxuriant, well-tended flower gardens. Victoria would supply the splendor and pageantry that had been missing from the wedding.

  Around midnight, after the reception, the newlyweds boarded the grand steamship Princess Kathleen, which would travel unhurriedly through the night to the southern tip of Vancouver Island. In the morning, they would awake, disembark, and check in to their hotel; they would devote the long day to seeing the sights—and each other.

  They would stay in the opulent Empress Hotel, an imposing château-­style building surrounded by gardens and courtyards, abundant ivy climbing its outside walls. The hotel had played host to Rudyard Kipling and kings and queens. Edward, prince of Wales, had waltzed in its ballroom till dawn. Now Ed and Ange could waltz in that room. In the afternoon, they would dress in their best duds and partake in the hotel’s famously posh English tea service. The tea was dauntingly pricey, but this was special, said Ed: this was their honeymoon. As soon as they arrived at the Empress, he made sure to secure two tickets for tea, as well as for an evening dinner dance. Beyond those events, there would be gardens to meander through and carriage rides to take. The day was set—and afterward, after dining, after dancing, they would wander, blissfully weary, down wide carpeted halls, beneath extravagant chandeliers, back to their room. They would do what honeymooners do in private.

  First, though, Ed said, he felt a little tired. He wouldn’t mind resting for a bit before they started their day. He lay down, pulled the covers up, and fell swiftly asleep.

  An hour passed. Then another. He showed no sign of rising. Ange nudged him. No response.

  Later, she nudged him again. Teatime was approaching. “Yes, okay,” Ed mumbled. “Just a little longer. I’ll be up.”

  But he wasn’t. He slept through the tea, and Ange decided not to go to it alone—she dropped the tickets into the trash.

  Through the afternoon, through the evening, as the dinner dance came and went, he dozed. PFC Forhan had fallen asleep at his post.

  Ange was baffled, exasperated. How could this make sense? Was he weary from work, from the frenzied preparations for the wedding? Maybe. But a person doesn’t sleep through his honeymoon.

  Ange was starving. She sat on the bed. She told Ed it was time; he needed to wake up, really. They both should eat something. He lay still, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Ange rose, found his wallet, slipped a few bills out of it, and left the room to buy herself a hamburger.

  When she returned, Ed was sleeping.

  Finally, Ange, too, lay down in the dark and closed her eyes. In the morning, she woke, but he did not. She waited. She dressed. She left the room and wandered around, then returned. Just in time for them to leave and catch the afternoon boat back to Seattle, Ed woke. He rose slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”

  They hardly said a word about it; they certainly did not argue. Ange was despondent, but she would not confront her husband. She was dumbfounded and too unknowing about people, especially this person she had married. Decades later, she wondered whether Ed wasn’t depressed, but, at seventeen, she didn’t think about such things. Nor did she yet understand how sleep can be a means of avoidance. If you’re still in bed, there’s no telling what you might not have to do.

  On Sunday afternoon, they steamed south to Seattle on the long, luxurious Princess Kathleen, the gleaming ship that, three years later, in the fog of night, would run aground in Alaska, jarring its passengers awake, and then, as the tide rose—everyone having scurried off safely—slide gradually, serenely, permanently into the deep.

  8

  On their return from Victoria, the newlyweds settled into their first home: the top floor of a house lived in by a woman whose husband had died; she had space and could use the rent money. She cleared a shelf in her refrigerator for them. Eddie and Ange examined the gifts they’d received: a set of silver, a singing teakettle, an electric kitchen clock, a lace tablecloth, a set of Revere ware, a crystal relish dish, a Toastmaster toaster, a gravy ladle, a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. They were set.

  On the Monday after the honeymoon, Ange surprised herself by cooking, on a two-burner hot plate, a complete meal—pork chops and gravy, mashed potatoes, peas, and applesauce—and doing a serviceable job of it. She’d had no idea she could pass herself off so quickly and easily as a homemaker, but, in the widow’s home, as if fated to it, she did.

  Pork chops. Pot roast. Chicken potpie. Ange and Ed were young, deeply intelligent, and willing to work hard; in a later era, they might have been anything—or tried to be. But it was 1949, boom time in America, boom time for the family, boom time for young husbands in flannel suits snapping shut the golden clasps of their briefcases, boom time for young wives in the bathroom, scouring clean that bowl, that sink, that floor, boom time in the kitchen. Spaghetti and meatballs. Swedish meatballs. Meat loaf with bread crumbs. A gravy ladle, a relish dish. Ed and Ange had both come from brokenness and patched-together families. Now they would be making a family together, although only two months before they had not planned to do so, at least not so quickly, not now. They each must have needed mending, in essential ways. They must have had secrets, even to themselves. But did they sense that this was so? People did not talk about the self much then. Melon balls. Deviled eggs. Tuna noodle casserole. My parents believed in what they had been taught by example: reticence, discipline, duty, pleasantness, courtesy, self-denial, and elbow grease, elbow grease. The newest cleanser for unsightly stains. And disi
nfectant. Tide, so he can wear the cleanest shirts in town. Lux soap to prevent runs in stockings because “husbands admire wives who keep their stockings perfect.” For the kids, to improve their marks in school, a Motorola television.

  They were a team now, Ed and Ange, a team of two, relying solely on themselves to make a life of purposefulness and joy. But how much did they know about what might give them joy and whether such joy was possible in the world in which they lived, a world that offered a few narrowly defined, cramped structures to inhabit: marriage, family, church? Or maybe joy wasn’t the objective; maybe success was—or mere contentedness—which, for Ed, would mean a professional career with potential for advancement and, for Ange, an orderly household, a cozy home.

  Turning that smile upside down, that’s what it would take, and, if the advertisements were right, a Hoover vacuum and a Kelvinator refrigerator and heels and earrings and a pinched-waist dress and a dainty apron to waltz through rooms in and giddiness about that spick-and-span frying pan. Mop, wax, and buff. Mop, wax, and buff. And to make yourself pretty for him and keep that zip in your step, a trip to the beauty parlor to sit with your head in a metal cone. And he? He needs a close shave and cuff links and a stiff-bristled brush to maintain that mirror shine in his shoes and someone to happily hand him a highball when he comes home. He needs to loosen his tie, ease his slippers on, light a pipe, bury his nose in the newspaper. Daddy’s home—shhh. Weekends he keeps the lawn trim and the whitewalls white. He writes checks for the mortgage and utilities and writes one to his wife—her allowance to run the household: to pay for the groceries, the children’s clothes and shoes, the schoolbooks and fees, the birthday parties, the Christmas presents. What might she want for Christmas? Wow her with Pyrex ovenware or a Rid-Jid ironing table—she’ll want to marry you all over again. In the meantime, Pep vitamins to keep her going, because “the harder a wife works, the cuter she looks.”

  His nose in the newspaper. Her head in a metal cone.

  9

  How hard it is even to know what is true, let alone to speak of it. And who says you should speak of it? What good would it do?

  My father did not talk with his young wife about his past, about his parents. When she asked, he went silent—or responded brusquely, with tepid, near-meaningless words. Maybe he was too profoundly sad about his early years to be able to speak of them. Maybe he couldn’t admit to himself how sad he was.

  The young couple must have recognized themselves in each other. Even in their first days together, they might have sensed that they shared something deep and broken, something each desired to repair. Or to forget. In some ways, they had been living the same life already. Like her husband, with generations of Irish laborers behind him, Ange came from a family steeped in the ways of hardworking immigrants—in her case, Norwegians and Swedes. They were stolid and taciturn; when compelled to speak, they were often, like Ed, self-disparagingly wry. Like Ed, Ange had been raised among people who kept to themselves, who kept their secrets. And, like him, she didn’t have much of a father.

  Her mother, Esther, was raised by Norwegian immigrants in the rugged wintry flatlands of northwest Minnesota, in Lake Bronson, a village of only a hundred people. A photo taken when Esther was seventeen shows her wearing a mop of thick black hair that threatens to cover her eyes completely. She has unsubtle features: a strong nose, big dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a large jaw with a wide mouth. She is pretty but awkward, stoop-shouldered, as if dropped onto the earth and still in a daze about it. This is the year she fell for the handsome Ed Peterson. In rural Minnesota, where there couldn’t have been many possibilities for romance, Esther might very well have taken him for dashing. Ed, four years older than she, son of Swedish immigrants, had the looks of a silent-movie star: he was square-jawed, like a young Gerald Ford, with a broad, big-dimpled grin and wavy blond hair parted down the middle.

  Don’t marry him, Ed’s older brother warned Esther. He can’t be trusted. Stay away, her friends said. He’s a lady-killer.

  She thanked them for the advice, then married him.

  We live two lives; we have two selves—at least. There is the self within us that is always mute but never deserts us: the self we think we are, the one we yearn for others to understand, the one we struggle to protect. The other is the self defined by and exhibited in the roles we take on in the world: son, daughter, parent, student, pilot, accountant, actress, wife. The two selves, happily, occasionally overlap and sustain each other. Often they do not, and that is the world’s fault, a dark joke at the root of human existence about which we can do nothing. Or the fault is ours: we make a choice out of fear or unwarranted hope or blind faith in the rightness of the customs of our tribe. We turn away then from the self within, which turns away, too, cringing.

  Like my own mother after she met an Ed of her own, Esther had suddenly become a housewife. Her husband got work as a customs agent. That’s why my mother was born, in 1931, not far from the Canadian border, in Noonan, North Dakota, a town of about four hundred whose primary claim to fame was its aversion to color: an ordinance required that all buildings be painted white.

  If life in Noonan was monotonous, at least Esther had the movies. She was nuts for Janet Gaynor. While pregnant, Esther sat enthralled in the dark, watching Gaynor play a wronged woman who descends into addiction and degradation in a Shanghai opium den. If Esther’s baby turned out to be a girl, she knew what she would call her: Angie, after this dissipated junkie.

  The world my mother entered would offer little in the way of comfort or merriment. The Depression was on; she would spend her first five years in a series of tiny towns with few pleasant diversions; and her mother’s mood was often grim and sad. Nonetheless, she was sprinkled at the start with fairy dust: with a name, accidentally misspelled though it might have been, pilfered from the silver screen—a reminder to Esther of a world of glamour and enchantment that she might yearn for but could never enter, not least because it wasn’t real.

  Esther couldn’t help herself: she wrote a fan letter to her favorite actress, informing her of the tribute. My mother still has the photo Gaynor mailed in return inscribed to “Baby Ange.”

  Within two years, Esther gave birth to twin girls, Janet (naturally) and Janice. Eventually, the family moved back to Lake Bronson. In photos from her infancy and childhood, my mother poses alone or with others in a landscape invariably bleak and forbidding. The twins appear like cute ghosts—blond, unsmiling, in identical outfits: cotton dresses that fall to mid-thigh; overalls over striped short-sleeved shirts.

  Then their father got lucky: a better customs job opened up in the port of Seattle, at the airport. If he was willing to move fifteen hundred miles west, the position was his. Esther wasn’t keen on the idea. She had never traveled so far from home, and her mother was ill; she couldn’t imagine packing up their three little girls and moving to a new, strange city without even a place to live. She would prefer to stay, for a time, in Lake Bronson with the girls and tend to her mother. They would join Ed in Seattle later.

  After a few months, Esther and the girls boarded a train west. When they pulled in to the Seattle station, Ed was there, standing on the platform, ready to greet them as they descended from the car.

  Standing a little farther off, at a discreet distance, was his new girlfriend.

  Betty was only twenty, nine years younger than Ed. “I’d like you to meet my friend,” he said to his wife and daughters. The next part of the story, my mother believes, may be apocryphal, but it’s part of the tale as Esther remembered it: standing at the station, only moments after greeting her, he handed her divorce papers. “How could you do this?” she demanded. “What am I going to do?”

  What, indeed, could Esther do—a woman with a high school diploma but no particular marketable skills? It was 1936. Seventeen percent of Americans were out of work. Even finding a home could be difficult, since divorce was frowned upon, and some landlor
ds weren’t interested in renting to a single mother.

  She and her daughters spent the rest of the decade, nearly penniless, moving from home to home, in Seattle, Lake Bronson, Minneapolis, and Chicago, usually rooming with relatives or friends. Sometimes quarters were so cramped that the whole family shared one double bed, the three girls sleeping side by side, their mother wedged in horizontally at their feet.

  At least Ed was sending her fifty dollars a month. The gallant Ed. It was his money, mainly, that the family lived on. Intent on divorcing Esther, he chose the grounds of cruelty. Later, Esther told her children that the grounds were desertion: Ed had gone west without her and their daughters and, when they followed him there, turned his back on them. His grounds, her grounds, and the truth somewhere in between, or nowhere to be found.

  Ed married Betty, the young woman who had accompanied him to the train station. Two years later, Esther had a mystifying surprise for her daughters: she decided it would be best for the three of them to live for an entire school year with their father and his new wife. Ange was almost ten and her twin sisters eight when, at the end of August 1941, Esther packed a few suitcases, telling her girls that there was just no place for all four of them to live together. With war having broken out in Europe, shipyards and airplane factories in Seattle were in a frenzy of activity, and workers were streaming into the city. Every room in town, it seems—every bed—was filled. Esther would come for her girls when she found a place where they could all be together. I know, I know, she said, I’ll miss you, too, horribly. But there’s no choice, as you can see. No choice. Really.

  10

  September passed, then October, then Thanksgiving. Esther stayed away. Even on Ange’s birthday, even at Christmas, she did not appear. Betty was kind to the girls, but their father was distant and dictatorial, ordering Ange to shine his shoes and roll his cigarettes.