by Diane Burke
On the fourth try, he yelled into the phone, “Don’t hang up! I don’t have any change left. Just give Mr. Orwitz a message. Let him know the roads are flooded. I’m having trouble getting back and I’ll be late.”
Several hours later, a very tall, very wet, very angry man appeared at my desk, dripping water from his rain gear on my switchboard and glaring at me.
“Who’s the idiot who doesn’t know how to answer a telephone call?” he bellowed.
My insides were shaking. I needed this job and no one knew better than I that I wasn’t qualified for it and was trying to learn as I went. I lifted my eyes, brimming with tears I was determined not to shed, and said, “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
Danny frowned at me for a minute or two and then said, “Make sure that it doesn’t.” Then stormed off.
It was only a few minutes later when an in-house call from the warehouse lit up on the switchboard. When I answered, Danny said, “Good. Seems you’ve figured out how to answer the phones inside. It’s only outside ones you haven’t figured out yet.”
“I’m so sorry, sir.”
“My name’s Danny.”
“I’m sorry, Danny.”
“You can make it up to me by apologizing to me again over lunch. What do you say?”
I smiled. “Sure. Lunch would be fine.”
We went out to lunch, no place fancy, a little diner not far from work. Then he’d start finding excuses to walk by my desk several times a day. Then he’d start taking his coffee break the same time I did.
He was a tall man with a good sense of humor. He had dark hair and wore a dark mustache—similar to my past boyfriend. He drove the exact same model car down to the year and color that my baby’s father had driven. I hadn’t consciously noticed those similarities. But my mother did.
When he pulled up to my house to take me on a date, we’d known each other about a week. I can still remember the look of shock on my mother’s face when she saw him walk down our driveway.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked.
I didn’t understand the question at the time. I truly did not see those similarities and I thought maybe she just didn’t like him or think he was good-looking enough or rich enough or whatever. I didn’t ask Mom for her opinions anymore.
We went out and, later that night, he did what most guys do: he made a pass. I turned him down. I burst into tears and blurted out where I’d been for the past five months and why.
Nothing makes a man scoot across a car seat and put his hands back on the wheel faster than an announcement like that one.
But Danny was nice. He didn’t end the date. He asked me questions. And more important than anything, he listened. He just sat and listened as I told him all about this perfect little baby boy who I had just lost.
We saw each other almost every night for the next week. We’d drive somewhere. He’d pull over. I’d talk. He’d listen. I was so grateful for his kindness, for the chance to tell another human being how much I missed my son. I was so desperate to feel that someone genuinely cared about me that I convinced myself that I was falling in love.
I was so emotionally and psychologically messed up at the time that I was incapable of loving anyone but, of course, I didn’t realize it.
One day I came home from work and found my mother waiting at the door for me. I could tell from the angry expression on her face that she was upset about something and I wondered what I had done now. When I reached the door, she said, “Come with me.”
We walked downstairs and I followed her into the laundry room.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“This came in the mail today.” She handed me a letter that had obviously been addressed to me but she had felt at total liberty to open. I took the letter from her hand and began to read.
It was from the adoption agency. It told me that the adoptive parents lived in New Jersey but didn’t tell me where, that the father was a mechanical engineer and the mother was an English teacher, that they had tried for five years to have a child of their own and that they were thrilled with the addition of Brett to their family.
Those all-familiar tears filled my eyes.
Brett. They’d dropped the name David, but at least they’d kept part of his name.
A mechanical engineer. Wow! That’s what his biological father was studying to be.
An English teacher. I’d considered becoming an English teacher once.
I didn’t know these parents and never would, but they sounded hand-picked by God.
My mother ripped the letter out of my hand. She held it over an ash tray sitting on the washing machine lid, lit the bottom right corner of the letter with her cigarette lighter, and both of us watched it burn until it was nothing more than gray ashes.
My mother looked at me. “We will never talk about this again.” Then she walked out of the room and up the stairs.
Never talk about it again? Is that how you got rid of pain and loss and grief? Is that how you disposed of your first-born grandchild? My son? Just torch all the evidence that he ever existed with a cigarette lighter?
One week later, I ran off and eloped with Danny.
We were living in a room in the Deer Trail Inn when, because of the overtime hours Danny worked, he asked me to find us an apartment, so I did.
In those days, people were more naïve. We didn’t have computers, Internet, cell phones. The television shows we watched were I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show, on which married couples dressed in chaste pajamas and slept in twin beds. Children played outside and not with video games. It was a different world back then. We were sheltered. We were naïve. I was a grown woman chronologically but, at that time, I probably had the maturation age of a fifteen-year-old. I was used to my parents making all the decisions and had never learned how to use good judgment or make good decisions on my own.
So when Danny asked me to go shopping for an apartment, I was excited and eager to do it.
I had found a two bedroom, one floor walk-up apartment above a storefront in downtown Paterson that was priced well within our budget and made an appointment to see it. I went after work. It was dark and the landlord told me the electricity wouldn’t be turned on until he had a paying tenant. He showed me the apartment by the glow of his cigarette lighter.
Yeah, I know. I’m cringing, too, admitting my stupidity.
We walked through the rooms and I knew they were large, particularly the kitchen, but I really couldn’t see much with such little light. I was hesitating and planned on coming back with Dan when two other people walked in. The man showed the apartment to this woman the same way. The only difference was this woman ooh-ed and ahh-ed in each room and said she wanted it and was ready to give a deposit and sign the lease on the spot.
My guy said, “No, you don’t. We were here first and this lady has first rights to the place.” Then he told me he couldn’t hold it and I had to sign now or it would go to the other woman.
I gave him our money and signed the lease.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
When I brought Danny the next day in daylight to see our new home, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The place was filthy. It was so dirty, there was a black grease stain from floor-to-ceiling where an old pot-bellied stove had once been and the flue at the top had been sloppily filled in with cement. Roaches ran rampant. The bedroom windows were warped and wouldn’t close all the way.
I will never forget the look of horror on Danny’s face.
“I’ll fix it!” I promised. “I’ll have it sparkling clean by the time you get home tonight.”
He was angry, and I can’t say I blame him. He shook his head and headed out for work. Before he left, I asked him what was his favorite color? He said, “Purple.”
When Dan got home at ten p.m. that night, I had scrubbed the place the best I could. I had a pink sofa and blue chair delivered from Salvation Army for our first living room set. And I had painted every room in the apartment a different shade of
purple!
Danny never liked that color again.
The months after I married Danny Flanagan passed in a blur. We had married exactly twenty-one days from the day we met. I didn’t know the man, and he didn’t know me. Looking back on it years later, it wasn’t a big surprise to either of us that the marriage was not based on love and did not have a good foundation for all the trials and tribulations that all marriages experience.
I wanted to get away from my mother. I wanted to run away from never-ending pain. I wanted to believe somebody, anybody, in this world thought that I was worth loving.
Danny had his own reasons for marrying me. He felt sorry for me and genuinely wanted to help me. He also, unbeknownst to me at the time, was a convicted felon who had just served time for armed robbery. He was on a methadone maintenance program because he was a recovering heroin addict. He married me thinking it would be his clean slate, an opportunity to live a whole new life.
Of course, this information about him never came into the conversation in the twenty-one days I knew him.
He continued to hide the information from me for many months. I only knew him as a warehouse worker who put in tons of overtime. I was stupid, naïve, immature. I accepted without question his excuse that we couldn’t ride to work together because he was working overtime. I never suspected it was because he was reporting to a clinic for his daily dose of methadone and he didn’t want me or anyone at work to know.
But decades later, life has taught me at least one very valuable lesson: in time, everything is revealed. That’s what makes lying so insidious. Eventually, the truth comes out every time.
Danny wasn’t satisfied with methadone. He began to wash it down with alcohol. It wasn’t long before I realized I was married to an active alcoholic. Dealing with that reality for a twenty-year-old was hard enough. I was ill equipped to cope with my own emotional issues let alone know how to deal with alcoholism.
Gradually, over six months or so, the rest of his secrets came to light, as well.
I panicked when I found out I was married to an active alcoholic, drug-addicted felon. I was also pregnant.
I called my mother and begged to come home.
The homecoming was tense, to say the least. I give my mother credit. From her point of view, I was the selfish, ungrateful child she kept trying to help, the one who kept defying her, who kept making messes that she was expected to clean up. I’m not sure, if I had been the mother and received that telephone call, that I would have opened the door again. I was grateful to her. I truly was.
For the time we were back together, I honestly tried to be the daughter she wanted. I was polite and grateful and obedient. If she said “jump,” I was more than willing to say, “Sure, Mom, how high?” I was home. (Although, this was Michigan now, not New Jersey.) But home isn’t lumber and a roof. It is family, so I was home.
I was surrounded by my siblings and, again, sharing a room with one of my kid sisters. I was content and happy and eagerly looking forward to the birth of my child seven months from then. I even made an appointment at the local college with a counselor for career advice. I brought home brochures to my parents and the three of us began to talk about viable careers, what evening classes I could take, and what job I might be able to handle while I went to school.
Life was good.
I admit that I selfishly wondered why they couldn’t have been this helpful with the birth of my first child. Did legitimacy really make that much difference to my parents? Did a marriage certificate, a mere piece of paper, really change the love a grandparent can feel for a child?
But I had been such a wild child; I knew better than to voice these feelings. I worked hard to push any negative feelings about the adoption last year into the deep recesses of my soul. My parents were helping me now and I was so, so grateful. I was going to make my mother proud of me. I was going to make her happy that she’d decided to give me another chance.
That plan lasted a total of ten days.
My mother and I went out for the day shopping. We had had a very pleasant morning and both of us, tired and ready for lunch, decided to hit a local garage sale we were passing. We parked the car and had separated briefly since we were looking for different items when my eyes fell on a tiny, little dress.
I picked up the little piece of fluff and lace. A quick glance at the tag showed it was meant for a newborn. I played with the pink ribbon and smoothed the satin and lace. Should I buy it? I didn’t know whether I’d have a girl or a boy so purchasing clothing seemed a foolish waste of money.
But this was a garage sale. The amount they were asking for the dress was equivalent to what I’d pay for a can of soda. I was still contemplating whether it was a frivolous decision when my mother walked up behind me.
“Look,” I said, smiling widely and holding up the tiny dress. “Isn’t it beautiful? Should I buy it? I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance I’ll have a girl. What do you think?”
“What are you buying baby clothes for?” My mother had a puzzled expression on her face. “You’re not keeping this child. You’re putting it up for adoption.”
I will never be able to put into words the feelings that rushed through me. I was in total shock. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck and now the truck was going to back up and run over me again.
“What?” I could barely squeeze the word out in a whisper.
“We’ll put it up for adoption. There’s no way you will be able to handle college and a job with a baby. This will give you a clean slate.” Her eyes narrowed and her tone of voice became ominous. “And this time you will do what I say when I say it. Is that understood? No more screwing up. This is your last chance.”
“But I’m married.” I know that was a stupid thing to whisper. I don’t know what I was thinking. Probably that being married made the pregnancy acceptable. Never in my wildest dreams when I sat at the dining room table with my parents, discussing college plans and jobs, did I realize that my baby was not part of those plans.
“That’s why you can stay home this time. We’ll tell everyone that you’re a widow and that your husband was killed in Vietnam.”
Widow?
Of course, how could I be so stupid? In those days being an unwed mother was the greatest sin you could commit. The second biggest shame was being divorced. Society hadn’t progressed to the multiple marriages and divorces prevalent today.
I lost it.
I yelled at my mother. Right there. In public. In front of a small crowd of gaping strangers.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? What do you think I am, a %#@*#* baby machine? I just crank out kids and give them away to other women?”
I placed my hands on my stomach almost protectively.
“You are not taking this baby away from me. No one is ever going to take this baby away from me.”
I started walking toward the car, but had to throw in one more angry and cruel jab. I glanced over my shoulder and yelled, “You need help! Something’s wrong with a mother who can’t love her own children or grandchildren.”
I am not proud of my behavior or of the mean, cruel, thoughtless things I said to my mother. She was trying in her own confused, twisted way to help me. She honestly didn’t understand why giving this child away and getting a chance to go to college and have a career, the things she’d dreamed about and would never have the chance to do, would not be welcomed by me.
I hurt her. I was disrespectful and cruel. I never apologized to my mother but I didn’t purposely try not to. Throughout the years, the incident became just one more thing I buried inside. One more thing we didn’t speak about. One more thing we pretended hadn’t happened.
It wasn’t until I started writing this book that my emotions and memories of those situations came to the surface again. I wish I had apologized to my mother. I wish we had had a chance as adults to sit down and discuss this terribly painful, traumatic time in our lives. I wasn’t the only one impacted by the decision to place my first
born up for adoption. My mother was, too. I believe my mother second-guessed the wisdom of her decisions and, maybe in her own way, even grieved the loss of her first grandchild.
Somehow, I truly hope the good Lord has let my mother read these pages. I hope she knows that I’m sorry and that I wish I had been a better daughter. I wish I had handled things in a more mature, loving way. I hope the Lord lets her know that I understand. I really do. I forgive her … and I hope in her lifetime she was able to forgive me.
We make decisions in our lives, sometimes foolish ones, sometimes damaging ones, but we always make those decisions with good intentions. We don’t set out to hurt people. We don’t set out to cause ripples in a stream that become tsunamis of destruction. We take children to doctors for medical needs but frequently don’t take our children for psychological help—or we do and then are blamed later in life for that decision, too.
Life is nothing but choices and every choice ripples out and touches and transforms, for better or worse, everyone else in our lives.
As I said earlier, my mother did the best she could as the person she was, dealing with the circumstances she faced.
And so did I.
Within twenty-four hours of our argument at the garage sale, I was on a plane flying back to my drug-addicted, alcoholic, felon husband. No one was going to be able to take my baby away. I was going to find a way to get my husband off drugs and alcohol. I was determined to mold him into a good husband and father even if it killed me. And it almost did.
Chapter
4
THE FIRST ORDER of business when I arrived back in New Jersey was to figure out a way to pick up the pieces of my life. I confronted my husband, who was coming off a drunken bender and had a hangover to beat all hangovers, and gave him an ultimatum. I told him he had a chance to be a better man. That we were expecting a child who would need two parents—two sober, hard-working, loving parents—and I wanted us to be those parents. I told him I would help him keep sober and drug free. That I wanted our marriage to work and I was willing to do anything to make sure it did.