Despite my best effort to make sure everything was as he needed, his OCD ruled every part of our life. This was a man who put on surgical gloves and cleaned not just the rims but also the black rubber tires of his car every single night upon arriving in the twice-weekly pressure-washed circular drive.
In our second-to-last house before the storm, he’d ordered me relentlessly to spend the better part of three weeks first bleaching (with a cup and toothbrush) and then painting, meticulously, the grout on our tile kitchen floor. The tile was a sparkling quartz white, but the grout, a dove-gray color surely meant to hide dirt, instead proved for him evidence of “filth.”
I must say, my housecleaning was extraordinary—daily wiping down of baseboards, washing windows, dusting fan blades, polishing toilets into oblivion. Pantry alphabetized. Laundry room like a scene from a magazine, with big apothecary jars full of powered soap and pure silver scoops.
It was a passion fueled by panic. With every new household imperfection was an equal cruelty: verbal, emotional, increasingly sexual.
Every inch of our home, despite three babies and the constant creep of bayou soddenness at every windowpane, was pristine.
Even so, Liam met and registered evidence of dirt everywhere, every day, in every last corner of the place.
No, he wasn’t a neat freak when I met him. We had apartments a few miles from one another after I’d finished grad school and he was doing his residency, and his bathroom was so filthy there was green mold growing on the shower ceiling.
But Liam had grown up in what can only be characterized as chaos.
The youngest of four children born to a speed-freak truck driver father and his middle school–dropout teenage bride, Liam—along with his siblings—spent his formative years being dragged from flat brick projects to unfinished basements to KOA campgrounds of rural Missouri, stealing and selling feed corn to pay for clothes and food. Family lore held that little Liam refused to wear jeans and would only wear “soft slacks,” no matter how small or how short they got.
He said he used to save the empty generic breakfast cereal boxes—he said with four children they’d go through three or four a week—and meticulously take them apart, turn them inside out, and use the back side to draw elaborate cartoons. In the cartoons, squat, happy, well-fed children lived in a jungle paradise where hams grew on trees and flowers were made from every kind of candy you’d imagine. I guess he thought to draw himself out of his real life and into something sweet.
In high school, Liam’s daddy, Wayne, got thinking he could make some folding money off that skill for drawing and set up Liam in one of those drive-through Fotomat parking lot booths, giving tattoos for cash. People would drive on up to the Fotomat, stick out their arm or leg, and Liam would give a tattoo through the window.
People came from all the other towns around, and for a good while, Wayne tried to convince Liam to quit high school and “franchise” the TattooMat. But Liam kept on going to school and would usually find Wayne dead drunk, slumped on the high red stool, by the time he arrived at the TattooMat after school. Finding his daddy drunk was a theme in Liam’s stories.
Why did I never see, even for an instant, that those stories could become my story?
Liam told this one story about how he and Huck went out to the country with Wayne and his buddies, and they somehow were all so drunk Liam had to drive back and he was only maybe ten or eleven. Somebody in the back seat had a gun that went off, and the men thought it was hilarious, and Liam said he just kept on driving. I always thought of that, of Liam, how small he must have been, peering over the wheel, the smell of gunshot in the car, rocking along, soaring through the night, toward another shitty basement they’d back out of before the rent was due, and how he came all the way from there to here. And yeah, maybe he was a drunk. But he was not the same kind of drunk. He was a doctor, and he was trying to help people, and even his OCD? That was a kind of sad way his brain had of trying to gather up the chaos of his childhood, scoop it all up in a neat pile and make it less ugly, less wild. Liam could put on a white coat and walk away from that car where Wayne’s buddy pissed the seat and shot off his gun. Every morning he could put on a white coat and walk away from a thousand nights like that. He might be hungover, and he might have called his wife a fucking cunt through snarled teeth, but it was something, this white coat and this disease: it was all he had.
And I could love him for it. One more day. And the day after that. And I could see him looking over that dash and driving any way, each time he fucked up, and each time he was cruel to me.
That story was one of the reasons I loved him. He had a million of them. They were like party favors he handed out to me each time he struck a blow. And the blows came harder. First they were just demands, then obsessions, then jealousies, then insults. All of it smoothed over with more and more perfection—nicer house, nicer clothes, nicer cars. The ante was constantly upped.
But no amount of pretty or money could erase the heart-heavy disarray of his violent, vagabond childhood. It became a kind of fanatical pastime, erasing this past and proving his worth. Likewise, erasing everything about me that didn’t relate to him would become a ruthless, dreadful necessity.
Every day, after he shined the tires, he’d walk in the side door to the kitchen. I’d be there waiting for him, everything ready for dinner, in order.
“Didn’t finish that grout yet, sweets?” he’d ask, tiptoeing from one tile to another.
And we’d start dinner—the same level of formality night after night, lemons on the water glasses, linen napkins, bubble bath–sweet kids in their starched pajamas silent until spoken to, the courses all of an ethnic theme, cuisine-specific background music lilting from the great room, and drinks to match.
There were a lot of drinks, once they started. At least for Liam. He’d pour me a drink to equal his every one, but I am a miserable drinker. No, miserable isn’t the word. Failed. I can’t even finish half a beer without getting a headache. I’d pour each of mine down the sink drain while he was talking. It’s not that I was secretly disposing of them, but by eight or so he’d be drunk enough and so stuck on the merry-go-round of his obsessive thoughts about who’d crossed him or one of my myriad failings that I could pour the drinks out right in front of him.
Our nights consisted of the dignified dinner, a few hours of the drinking-and-rehashing session, and then early to bed. In the world according to Liam, only “trashy, lazy” people woke up after five, and so bedtime was never past nine, no matter what I wanted. Despite the drunkenness and early to bed, there was sex. Lots of sex.
My papa was this kind of drunk—the professionals call it “high functioning,” but I’m more partial to “high miserable.”
No break allowed by a passed-out husband. Ever the overachiever, Liam managed to be sexually insatiable. I didn’t get pregnant four times in five years by coincidence, I’ll tell you that. Part of my “job” as perfect wife included a huge lingerie and high-heels collection, mixed in with elbow-length gloves and leather collars and Mardi Gras masks and various wigs—his favorite being a severe black Pulp Fiction bob. He had what can only be described as cruel intentions in bed. Rough sex was easy for me; I could meet him in that, match him in that. Sometimes I could even beat him in that. Sometimes I enjoyed it; more often it disgusted me. When it was playful and sexy, I liked it. When it was a requirement demanded by a drunken husband, I loathed it.
And myself.
Like most women, I would have liked a little bit of sweetness here and there, a little kindness. I found myself begging, to his delight, for even one tiny scrap of tender. Instead, he’d whisper all kind of nastiness in my ear as if it were a love poem.
As he got closer to finishing, slapping my skin in places generally saved for street fights and not sex, he’d whisper, “You’re a good wife who will do whatever I say. Now, come.”
And I would. There were serious repercussions for disobedience, and it was easier to comply. In the final tw
o years, if I said no, I paid. He had access to drugs and wasn’t afraid to use them.
I can’t count the number of nights I lay, drugged and lifeless on our bed, while he fucked me. The next day, he’d accuse me of drinking too much. One time I was bleeding so much, he dragged me to the shower, pushed me in, and turned it on. Problem was, he went to bed while I was passed out on the shower floor. I woke up several hours later—half in the shower, half out—with ice-cold water raining down on my aching thighs.
I learned that saying yes was preferable to rape. Over the years, I rewrote this story to believe this sick, sexual dance was something we did together, and I tried to push deep down in my soul the idea I was being abused. I had written a book on abuse. I led survivor support groups for years. How could this happen to me? But it did, the way it can. To anyone.
Sometimes after sex, I’d forget, and think I might be allowed to drift off to sleep next to my man, legs entwined. And even though what happened next was part of the nightly ritual, I was never prepared for it. I must have been in a post-sex delusional haze to think that I was living in some kingdom of normal. I was not.
“Going to sleep all filthy like that, sweets?” he’d sneer, yanking my hair to wake me, rolling away.
I’d step into the shower, grateful at least to be there on my own accord, the water hot as I could stand, without turning on the light. I’d twist my hair into a bun atop my head, running my wet hands over it to make it seem as if I’d washed it. There was a big window in the shower, with a view of treetops stretching out over the Davis Bayou that backed up to our land. Those were lonely, pain-drenched showers.
After, I’d turn on my blow-dryer, setting it on a towel in the sink and slinking down to sit on the cool hardwood of the moonlit bathroom, back against the custom-made Shaker cabinets, rivulets of tears coursing down my stinging cheeks.
The children slept in their rooms down the hall, baby scrunched as usual into the corner of his crib, quiet and content. From the window, I watched sandhill cranes rise off the bayou surface, their lissome wings clattering in the damp air. I didn’t allow myself to cry in front of Liam—he despised it and mocked me on the few occasions that I did break down. But every night, as the blow-dryer droned away in the sink, the sobs sprang up in me, cresting in soundless, salty surges.
When I returned to bed, Liam snored and reeked of Belgian ale.
And each morning dawned anew, as if life were ordered the way it was meant to be. But I was the duchess of hidden despair. I’d wake up before five, shower again, dress, apply makeup, good clothes, good Southern lady jewels. In the kitchen, I’d make Liam’s coffee and breakfast, begin again.
Every night, the sick ritual.
Every day, begin again.
Bathrooms needed to be stocked with folded white hand towels, fifty or so in a basket on the counter, because one could not be expected to use a towel to dry one’s hands more than once. Leather couches needed to be conditioned. Tables oiled. Windows shined. Pantries alphabetized. Flowers arranged. Floors hand-scrubbed. Groceries transferred into more acceptable receptacles—glass bottles for the milk, Fire-King containers of fresh fruit, yogurt parceled into individual tiny vintage Ball jars with silver lids.
Where the kids had thrown an impromptu picnic the day before, dragging a velvet throw out onto the lawn, the grass had to be raked upright again. The yard-sullied throw already turned in the dryer.
These were the details I ticked off one by one in my mind, staring up at the paneled ceiling of the little trailer as raccoons hissed and whinnied in Mac and Daddy’s compost ditch. I could make a list a mile long of everything I did to be a good wife, assuring myself the court would be on my side. The court was there to help me, to keep me safe, or so I thought. In my mind, the court would force Liam to get the help he needed, even against his will. I believed swift and firm justice would soon provide. Like I said, it was early in the process.
Very early.
Behind the FEMA trailer was Lana’s brother’s house. He’d stop over, very gently rap the “code” knock at our door, make sure we had all that we needed, that the power was still running and whatnot. On the other side of the trailer was Lana’s sister’s house.
Lana’s parents bought this big plot of land forty-odd years ago, and as their kids had grown and married and had babies, they’d parceled it out and given it away. Pretty much the whole of Poticaw Bayou Road was all Mannings’, save a few lots where maybe someone might’ve split part of their land and sold a lot to outsiders when times was thin and wallets was flat. But there at the end of Poticaw Bayou was Mac and Daddy’s white house, and that was something to be counted upon.
Mac was a petite lady, tough as nails, with a drawl more N’Awlins than Delta. Everyone calls her Mac, even her children. Ms. Mac, if she’s your elder. She’s the kind of lady, if you were to meet her on a train, you’d assume she’d just been living in her house in the small town of Latimer since the day before infinity, doing small-town stuff like getting married young and running fund-raisers down to the Catholic church and carrying her children to and from school and growing a garden. Hell, even I might have thought that (for a minute or two) when we first met. And then someone mentioned to Ms. Mac that I have a graduate degree in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
After that, she asked for my e-mail address. Soon after, she’d fire off daily drafts of her frequent letters to the editor of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, supposedly for my “proofing.” If anything, her letters needed only a little watering down. Whatever was the issue du jour—floating versus landlocked casinos, crooked judges with fat pockets, corporal punishment in the public schools, wetland redirection in the name of progress—Mac had an opinion. Her letters were full of fire and fiercely fluent. She’d traveled the world and back, knew history like a tenured professor, and did not set her opinion upon flighty whims but within the wingspan of history and wisdom.
We could tramp through the back of Lana’s lot into her, Mac, and Daddy’s vegetable garden and come out the other side at their house.
“Hey, y’all! Purdy day, ain’t it?”
Mac more than likely would be inside but at the kitchen window, putting up some canning or cooking a covered dish to deliver to someone whose kin had passed away.
Daddy would be sitting on the porch swing more often than not. If he wasn’t on the porch swing, he was gone—in his shed, out fishing on the pond or in the creek, gone shooting, down the road visiting, helping someone mend a fence. I never once saw him in the house. But the sight of that house—oh, my. I’ll never forget the first time I saw that house.
MAC DADDY
Of course I’d met Mac and Daddy before, being friends with Lana for years. But it’d always been at Lana’s house, or at St. Alphonsus Catholic School, or in the hardware department down at the Walmart, or what have you. I’d never been invited to their home. Sweet bucket of peas, I’d never even seen their home until that morning we left the Gulf Coast Women’s Center for Nonviolence and drove all the way to the end of Old Northwood Road.
There it was, at the end of the lane—the kind of modest square place you see in a Grandma Moses painting. It had no wraparound porch or tall, stately columns or any of the usual hallmarks that brand a house “Southern.”
In fact, the Manning homestead house boasted nothing at all.
But it was a Southern house if there ever was one. First, there was no front door. Forget about “friends come in the side door.” The side door was the only door. And the side door was off the porch—a square ten-by-ten-foot slab of home-mixed concrete with a corrugated tin cover atop; a porch swing made from slats of wood and ordinary metal chain; a whole lot of broken-in, muddy boots; old rusty Community Coffee cans full of growing herbs and whatnot; and a cooler that could just as easily be full of ice and Barq’s or a mess a’ crawfish.
If he had been there, Daddy would have been sitting on the swing, his long legs stretched out, knees up high and feet planted on the porch, swinging sligh
tly as a dawn breeze, his back to you. He needn’t turn around to know who was there.
When we drove up that first day, after springing ourselves from the lice-infested shelter, I followed Lana’s instructions to the very tea and cucumber square detail (turn left at the burnt-up tree trunk shaped like a vagina, right when the gravel turns red) and drove up to the house.
There was no mistaking I’d found the place.
About a year before Katrina, Mac and Daddy’s house caught fire. All the kids in the family, the volunteer fire squad of Latimer, and just about every other able-bodied Jackson County South Mississippian of sound mind had come to put the fire out. But a good ten acres of salt pine savanna woods surrounding went up in flames, and Mac and Daddy’s house burned not to the ground but pretty good straight through inside. After the fire, everyone got organized in shifts, stripped the place down to the studs and rebuilt the inside entire in just a few weeks (good practice, as it would turn out, for the coming storm). When we pulled up to it the first time, we saw a white house with dark green trim and smoke stains above each window same as above a hearth that’s been collecting soot for about forty seasons without a good scrub. There were these great oval arcs of gray smoke stains above every window and that little side door, too, just in case you thought you were about to forget how close the place came to burning down. Once you stepped in off the little porch, you’d never know—save for a slight smoky scent—the house had been afire. But life is busy and Mac and Daddy had more pressing things, and no one ever got around to repainting the outside of the place.
* * *
We pulled around to the right of the house and, behind it, tucked our shiny white Land Rover in between the charbroiled homestead and a brand-spanking-new doublewide trailer.
In the storm, Meemaw’s house flat-out floated away, and everyone agreed she was too old to tolerate the time and sweat it would take to haul it back from where it drifted or rebuild from scratch. At a post-storm family meeting, Meemaw herself made it clear that along with being too old to rebuild, she had too little time left on God’s green earth to tolerate the dignity it would drain from her to have to live in the guest bedroom of someone else’s home, even if they were family. So the family had gone in together and purchased outright the honkin’, brand-new trailer that sat next door to Mac and Daddy’s place.
Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away Page 9