by Cathy Lamb
“Stay out of this, Lance! You don’t know what’s going on here at all. No one does except for me and Janet. I will speak as I wish to speak to her. We’re husband and wife, and she knows her role. Janet, you are excused from the table to go and lie down and rest. I’ll be up shortly and I will reexplain things to you.”
“No.” She shook her head, many times, too many times, but she was stressed. “We won’t discuss it. I don’t want to discuss it. I am telling you I don’t want the press there. I won’t come, I won’t stay at that…that…party if they’re there. I will not be a part of a political statement, a statement against gay people, especially not on my anniversary!”
“You will!” he bellowed, standing up, throwing his white napkin down on the table. “You will do as I tell you to do as my wife!”
I stood up. “Herbert! Stop yelling at her! It’s her anniversary, did you forget? It’s supposed to be for you two. Not you and your political ambitions, your ballot measure in November, and all your anti-gay friends!”
“Sit down this instant, Stevie! I will not have you interfering in my marriage, or in this family!”
That hurt. It shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have let it, but it did.
“This is her family!” Lance and Polly said together.
“Sit down!” he bellowed again, his face reddening.
“Why should I sit down?” I said, not sitting. Before my operation I did not stand up to Herbert. It felt good to be standing now. “Why should I sit down? Because I’m not a part of this family? I already know that. I’ve known that since the first day I came to this house. I knew you didn’t want me here, that I was a burden to you, trouble, a stupid, fat girl that you had to take care of because she was the daughter of your wife’s sister. Sanctimonious you. Self-righteous you. Taking in an orphan. I get it, Herbert, I do. I have never fit in, and you’ve never let me forget it.”
Herbert’s eyelid started to twitch.
“You fit in with me,” Lance said, his voice cracking, tears popping up. “You always have, Stevie girl. You’ve always been my sister, not my cousin.” He pounded his heart. “You’re my sister in my heart.”
“And I have loved you, Stevie, each day—” Aunt Janet said.
“Me too, Stevie,” Polly said, near tears. “I have always loved you. Sit down and shut up, Dad, you’re a walking garbage disposal.”
“Polly, you will silence yourself. Silence yourself! Don’t you ever tell me to shut up or I will write you out of my will.”
“I don’t care, Dad. I don’t want your money. Take me out of your will. Shove your money into any crack you care to.”
That was true. Polly was about as thrifty as me. She believed that rainy days came and saved for them like the dickens. Lance was the same way. Generous, but he had his gold tucked away, too. Herbert had forbidden Aunt Janet to pay for almost anything for us after the age of fifteen so we had scrambled for babysitting jobs, tutoring jobs, and burger-flipping jobs from a very young age.
Herbert held up both hands, about two feet from Polly’s face. “This is my home, you will obey—”
“This isn’t your home, this is your house of terrors,” Polly said. She reached up both her hands and smacked Herbert’s hands, hard, with her own, then she whipped that paper bag to her face.
Herbert tipped up his chin, then coughed, sat down. He pulled at his lapels. “I didn’t mean you don’t fit in, Stevie.”
“Yes, you did. Don’t try to manipulate me, don’t try to twist what you’ve been saying for years. Don’t try to deny it or change things. I get it, I’m not stupid. What I don’t understand is why you’re making a political statement when your wife has told you she doesn’t want you to so many times. She does not share your rabid attitude when it comes to gay marriage, anyhow.”
“You’re always trying to smash Mom down,” Lance said. “Her feelings don’t even count to you. She says she doesn’t want the press there, so respect that wish.”
“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Herbert said, his tone scathing. “You’re not even married, Lance, not even married. You have no idea what marriage entails. You have no idea of the problems, the challenges and difficulties—”
“I would like to know!” Lance said. “I want to know more than anything!”
“Yes, there have been many challenges and difficulties for Mom in your marriage,” Polly snapped, removing the bag from her face. “It’s been a terrible time for her. The decades have flown by, filled with emotional torture. She can’t speak her own mind, you’re constantly putting her down, controlling her, she can’t even think what she wants to think, she’s never been able to become who she wanted to become—”
Aunt Janet, tiny and frumpy, leaned way back in her chair, hands on her face.
“Enough!” Herbert shouted. “Enough. I will not, not, have you four interfering with my decision again. Do you understand me? We will be making a statement about what a happy, successful, long-term, heterosexual marriage is at my anniversary party! We will be an example to the whole damn state. Janet, you will smile and be a gracious wife even if you have to come home and go to bed for three days afterward. You will not fall apart. You will exercise control. Control! Restraint! Control! You will pretend you are a model wife. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”
Aunt Janet heard him. Her eyes teared up, she bit her lip, her hands shook, and she dropped her face, her face, right into her plate. Right straight into the steak and mashed potatoes.
We were all, at first, too stunned to move, even when Aunt Janet’s sobs ricocheted off each wall in that formal, intimidating, ghastly dining room that Herbert had insisted they have because he was a leader in Oregon politics. A leader.
And there his wife sobbed, her face in her dinner.
7
Ashville, Oregon
My grandparents, I remember, did not care for Uncle Herbert at all.
One weekend, Herbert, Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly all came from Portland to see us at our Schoolhouse House. Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly always came for at least three weeks in summer, and then twice a year beyond that. This was one of their “twice a year” visits that Herbert allowed, and it was the visit that he attended, too.
I now know why he came: He wanted to see Helen.
I knew we were not looking forward to seeing Herbert because Grandpa, kind Grandpa, who treated everyone from Helen, to me, to Grandma, to his employees, and everyone in town with respect and care, said to Grandma, “So, old Hatchet Face is coming to visit.”
And Grandma, who volunteered at church, constantly brought crates full of fruits and vegetables to people in our town who were on hard times, and ran the town as mayor with admirable leadership and compassion, said, “Please don’t strike me down dead, Lord”—she raised her right hand up—“but I wish that Herbert would be eaten by a rabid coyote and dragged into the hills by his toes.”
To which Grandpa rolled his huge shoulders and said, “Honey, the Lord isn’t going to strike you down. Every time he deigns to see Herbert, I know he’s rolling his eyes and saying to himself, ‘I screwed up with that one. What was I thinking? I must have been drunk on the apples from the Garden of Eden. Drink makes a man do things he would never otherwise do. Shame on me. I screwed up.’”
Grandma pushed her white curls back and said, “When I see his pointy, scrunched face I want to use my mother’s scissors to poke him in the privates and turn him into a hen!”
Grandpa said, “Honey, the other day I was studying the pigs’ troughs and wondering if we could squish his dead body into one.”
“I’ll get the head, you get the feet,” Grandma said, waving her hand. “Praise the Lord!”
“Praise the Lord, Glory, and give me a glorious hug.”
My grandparents could not understand where they had gone wrong. Why had their beloved daughter Janet fallen for Herbert? True, Aunt Janet was rather homely (they didn’t say that, it’s what I thought then), and her light was completely smashed by Helen’s b
rightness, and she had low self-esteem when she left the farm and went to college and met Herbert, but surely she could have done better.
It was a constant source of heartache to my grandparents that their beloved daughter was married to, and I quote from Grandma, “a putrid thug,” and from Grandpa, “a eunuch.”
Praise the Lord.
Grandma and Grandpa greeted Herbert politely enough—they faked it—with no mention of pig troughs or hens, then went to hug Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly.
The problem was that Helen didn’t know how to fake liking someone, nor did she understand that sometimes you have to be polite, and civil, to family members that you do, in your heart, wish were in someone else’s family who lived in Siberia.
It was the middle of summer, and Helen came down to dinner in a sleeveless red satin dress with wildflowers peeking out of the neckline. She had Grandma put her hair up in a ball, and then she stuck little branches from trees and a fork through the ball. She was also wearing a purple bikini top over the dress and her black rubber boots, complete with the requisite chicken wire to catch the voices.
Halfway down the stairs she stopped and stared at Aunt Janet, Herbert, and the kids.
“Hello, dear Helen,” Aunt Janet said, her voice gentle, weak, and wobbling. Her voice was always that way with Herbert around, as if she was afraid he was going to sling a sledgehammer at her. “It’s wonderful to see you.” She gave Helen a long hug, then wiped her eyes. Helen patted her nose.
“Nice boots,” Lance said.
“Hi, Aunt Helen,” Polly said. She was all done up, as usual. She was wearing a blue velvet dress and matching shoes. She resembled a doll. “Dad tells me girls should dress to please their fathers, then their husbands.” She told me later, as adults, that she hated dressing as she did, but Herbert insisted on it.
That gave me the creeps.
Helen stared at all of them, one by one, then she lifted her chin, scratched the wall, and sniffed, twice. Her eyes focused on Herbert, standing uncomfortably in our foyer, shifting from one foot to the next. She walked down a few more steps, paused, and tilted her head. “Hmmm,” she said. “Hmmm.” She stopped to within two feet of Herbert, eyeing him up and down. “I remember this one now.” She farted and said, “I think he’s the short weasel fart.”
I watched with astonishment as Herbert’s face got red and blotchy.
“Helen,” he said, quite seriously, although his voice quavered. “How are you?”
“I remember now.” She growled like a dog. “Bark bark, there’s a weasel fart!”
We all stared at my momma, transfixed.
“What do you remember, honey?” Grandma said.
Helen kept staring at Herbert, her gaze never leaving his eyes, although his eyes started to dart around nervously.
“Let’s go into the dining room,” Herbert said, coughing.
“I reeeeemeeeembbbbber,” Helen dragged the word out. “Yeesss, I dooooo.”
“What is it, sugar?” Grandpa said. I did not miss the smile tugging at his lips, his delight at seeing Hatchet Face Herbert twist and turn already making the evening worthwhile for him.
“I remember him,” Helen said. She pointed her finger at Herbert. It was the middle finger, which she tilted up toward the ceiling. “I do. It was on a night with rain. It was in the place with all the singing.”
Suddenly she dropped on her haunches, her face about one foot from Herbert’s bottom. I heard Grandma’s quick inhale, then I heard Grandpa’s chuckle. Herbert turned about purple.
“Hmmm…” she said again, still staring.
Herbert put his hands over his buttocks. “Helen. Stand up,” he said, as one would order a dog.
“No,” she said, in almost a singsong voice. “I’ll do it when the voices tell me to, not you.”
“Helen,” Herbert said again. “Stand. Stand!”
“Do not speak to my daughter in that tone,” Grandpa rapped out, coming in close and making short Herbert look small and ineffectual.
Herbert flushed further.
“No. The voices haven’t told me to stand, but I remember.” She tilted her head again. “Short weasel fart.”
“What?” Lance said. “What do you remember?”
Those words, from an eager child, seemed to knock a little something into Helen, and she stood up again. “I remember that this alien had a pee pee this size.” She pulled a skinny stick out of her hair. “This size. It was small. I didn’t want it.” She turned to her mother. “I didn’t want his pee pee. He wanted me to have it. I said no. Bad. I made him go home. I had to hit him, like this.” She slapped herself across the face. Twice. Hard. “Like that. And he still didn’t leave.” Her cheeks got red, and then she launched into her own brand of poetry, of which she had immense talent. “He’s mean. He’s a stick. He’s a slug with a tiny dick.”
And then Helen turned and walked to the dining room table, sat down, and put a red napkin over her head, completely unaware of the chaos she had started.
Oh, the dinner that night was tense.
I could tell that Grandpa was about to spring a gasket.
Grandma was so mad she actually slammed down her mother’s serving dishes.
Aunt Janet’s head hardly lifted up at all. That’s probably a good summation of Aunt Janet’s total life with Herbert: Her head hardly lifted up at all.
This, after Herbert’s heated, repeated, continual denials that he had ever shown Helen his pee pee.
Helen did not make the dinner much easier when, after grace had been said and the meals were before us, she got up, took another stick out of her hair, walked around the table, and stuck the stick right into the mashed potatoes on Herbert’s plate.
“That’s the size,” she said. “Sticky. Pokey. Thin.”
He stood up, furious. “Stop that, Helen! This instant!”
I thought my grandpa was gonna blow. He was out of his chair in a flash. For a giant of a man, he sure could move. “Do not ever speak to either of my daughters in that abusive manner, you runt.”
I drew in my breath. Was runt a cuss word?
Herbert shrunk down in his seat and Helen went back to arranging her food in the shape of a bird. Once the bird shape was formed she tweeted at it.
Herbert again said, “I deny her accusations, Albert.”
Lance said, “Please pass the salt.”
Polly said, “What’s for dessert?”
Then Helen took out three of the sticks in her hair and threw them down the table at Herbert, calling out, “Small pee pee. Very small.”
Oh, Herbert was raging then, and red, and humiliated. That’s when I knew for sure that there was total truth to this story of Helen’s.
Aunt Janet glared at her husband. I didn’t miss the tears. “You didn’t, did you, Herbert? I remember you went to New York, several times, when Helen was still there.”
“You’re going to believe your sister, a raving schizophrenic, over your husband?” Herbert shouted. “She’s crazy, she’s absolutely crazy.”
“All I can think of is those pig troughs,” Grandma said to Grandpa, her voice tight, pained, angry. “I think if we slice and dice him, we can squish him in. He’s a little man.”
“I’m thinking they’ll be big enough, too,” Grandpa said, slamming down his napkin. The crystal glasses shook. He got up again. “Get out of my house, Herbert.”
Lance said, “Please pass the salt.”
Polly said, her voice quavering, “What’s for dessert?”
And Helen tilted her head up to the ceiling and her face cleared, everything miraculously, inexplicably clearing at that millisecond, as if she had a picture in her mind’s eye, in rainbow Technicolor. “I threw a wineglass at his head. I threw a wineglass at the head of that short man with the small pee pee who’s wriggling over there on his bottom. He wouldn’t stop showing me his pee pee, but I said, Stop stop stop. Gross. It was gross, Momma. He shoved me against a wall. Bang. My head hit the wall and he grabbed these.” She he
ld her boobs up, then turned her eyes again slowly back to Herbert. “Him. I threw a wineglass with a blue swirl at his head right there.” She pointed to the right side of her forehead, then she slowly, deliberately, pointed her finger straight at Herbert’s scar on the right side of his forehead.
I heard Aunt Janet gasp and Grandpa roar, and then I saw Grandma crawl across the table, her cowboy boots knocking over the carrots in her mother’s serving platter, and she leaped right at Herbert, knocking him straight to the ground, and hit him, by golly, with a clenched first, right over that scar.
At the end of the table, Helen tweeted at her bird, then took the fork out of her hair. “I miss that wineglass. Where is that wineglass?” She cocked her head at me. “Do you know, girl kid?”
Grandpa did not pull Grandma off of Herbert, but when she was done, he dragged Herbert up and out the door by his collar, Herbert’s heels scraping the floor. Aunt Janet was making high-pitched noises and Grandma, Grandma, was swearing. I remember I had to ask Lance what “fucking bastard” and “lecherous damn asshole” meant.
I heard Herbert’s Cadillac spin around in our driveway as he left. It took about five minutes for Grandpa to come back into the house and drop his cowboy boots to the floor. When he did he found his wife comforting his crying daughter, Janet, his other daughter ripping up a napkin and putting the pieces on her head, and me, Lance, and Polly wide-eyed.
“I got the salt,” Lance said.
“Are we having dessert?” Polly asked meekly.
The next month was one of the best of my childhood. Lance and Polly and I played on the farm the entire time.
Aunt Janet did a lot of crying. I heard her tell Grandma and Grandpa she couldn’t leave Herbert because he would take the kids from her, use something against her that she had done. I didn’t know what that could be. I heard the name “Victor” and “wanted to marry me.” It was yet another secret. “I’ll never see them again, I know it. I can’t risk it…. He’ll say I’m a slut, an adulteress….”