I stayed plugged into the outside, where the world kept moving at a pace I tried to keep up with in the bathroom. From my first years in life and a closed window to connecting to the outside through the raised window, the bathroom witnessed my developing identity. The kids’ bathroom was a private place where it was just me, the mirror, and the outside.
While my connections to home continued to grow, Tim was cultivating his talents with music and art. His expression of intelligence and creativity unfolded with each strum of steel strings on his electric guitar and continuous sweeps of his charcoal pencil or brush of oil paints on canvas. A couple of his oil paintings were good enough to show in the art exhibit at school, but Mother forbade him to enter his artwork because she thought it was dark and depressing. “What would everyone think?” she said. Her answer was in the silence of no reply; the conversation had ended before it ever started. Tim’s expressions were his avenues of coping with the noisy confusion in his head as he wrestled opposing forces—his talent and the disavowal of his special gift.
I didn’t think much of her statement at the time. But now I realize how Mom’s forbiddance negated the very opportunities Tim was awarded by showing his artwork. Her judgment told Tim if his work was bad, then he must be bad, unworthy of being among the specially chosen. I didn’t think Tim was bad. He just wanted to show himself to others and that he was like them.
Tim would announce his departures from his bedroom, the only place he occupied in the house, with the abrupt ending of the Rolling Stones, the swift opening of his bedroom door, pounding down the stairs with heavy feet, a hop over the last step, boom, with both feet landing on the hall floor, and slam, the front door shut. His actions were reversed after entering the house—pounding up the stairs, slamming his bedroom door, and blasting rock music on his stereo. The noisy drama never bothered me because, after hearing it regularly, the distraction became an additional part of the household landscape. Mom, however, had no patience. “Can you paleeese turn it dowwwn?” she’d yell while fist-pounding the wall next to the stairs leading to his bedroom. The music continued. Then it was Dad’s turn—a harder two-fisted pounding. I then looked for cracks in the wallpaper as I headed upstairs after his music-ending request, as if to discover a shift in the house’s foundation.
One fall evening, Mom and Dad were preparing to attend a fundraising dinner party. In the seventies, drinking and mingling were as popular as they had been back in the fifties, when Mom and Dad were dating, and people were still using work to get to drinking and mingling, and using partying to get work and secure clients.
While Mom remained focused on presenting herself for the evening, a priority she took seriously because she was going to be among people in a class of which she considered herself a member, I hopped on my bike for a ride down Carlisle. Nearing home, I saw the garage door open and my mother and father scurrying out of the garage as if they had seen some frightful vermin. As I rode my bike up the drive to meet them at the open garage door, I sensed something was wrong. Dad looked furious, his red face and tight jaw filling the silent air. I deferred to Mom for an explanation.
“We’re not going,” Mom said.
“What? Why not? What’s going on?” I asked. Mom’s declarative statements begged for more questioning.
“We have to cancel,” she said. It was a crisis, I thought.
“We’re not going out this evening because of your brother,” she said. I picked up her dramatic tone and wondered what was so bad that they had to stay home. When I walked into the house my eyes locked on Tim, who wore a grin and a sheepish expression on his face.
When Dad appeared in the family room, he directed Tim with a pointed finger, jabbing the air: “Go to your room.” I didn’t need to say anything because a lingering cloud of sweet, stale odor was a telltale sign of what my brother had done.
My heart pounded, and my cheeks flushed. I had never seen Dad this angry; actually I had never seen him express this much emotion. Meanwhile, Mom was walking through the garage with her long sherbet-green-and-vanilla silk-and-taffeta dress following her rapid pace. The more she glided, the more the sequins on the bodice sparkled, enriching her perfection. She was headed for the garbage cans, holding at arm’s length what looked like a long brown plastic pipe and other paraphernalia resembling parts for something. This was a picture of opposing forces: a dirty, smelly plastic thing clashing with her perfection in dress, coiffed hairdo, and made-up face that was so right. The four of us were like mice in a maze, making our turns—Tim to his bedroom, Mom out to the garage, Dad pacing the family room, and me standing in the front hall—and going nowhere.
The three of us stood outside Tim’s room, regarding the violator and his accomplice, his bedroom where it was dark and cocoon-like with shades and drapes drawn. Dad and Mom didn’t step into the unknown but instead shook their heads and retreated in surrender. I, however, never hesitated to step into my brother’s domain, a dark abyss that did not appear to have a clear way out. But Tim had a way out through an open window atop the sloping roof that overlooked the backyard and beyond. This was his perch, his silent place where he could step out of life and away from the perils of being a teenager. Maybe sitting on top of it all made him feel in control when something out of control ignited in the house. I would walk into his room and scan his setup, touching nothing so as to not leave clues I had been there. Tim had a CB radio sitting on his desk, dusty from lack of use, with parts scattered around it. Record stacks bookended the record player, and speakers were strategically placed on opposing walls for maximum sound output. He had a desk that wasn’t used for studying but provided more space for a collectible he thought was popular. And then there was some stuff I had never seen. It looked like something dirty from outside. They smelled bad.
“What did you get yourself into?” I asked.
Tim laughed. “Just got caught.”
“I guess you’ve been doing this for a while, huh? Smokin’ this stuff?” I said. My question wasn’t accusatory but curious.
I had nothing more to say. I walked to my room and shut the door. The silence of the house seized my attention just like the familiarity of silence among us.
I sought comfort lying on my bed. The silence was cracking, and I became unsettled and insecure at the numbing the silence evoked. My parents’ choice to stay home was not punishment for Tim but a dramatic act to instill guilt and fault because their evening had been canceled. Tim didn’t think much about how his pot smoking was no longer a suspicion, especially for Mom, as she would notice the sometimes-putrid smell hanging in the air of Tim’s bedroom, the crumb-like debris embedded in the carpet, and dirty sandwich bags hanging out of his nightstand drawer. Now her inkling had been confirmed. Tim’s lighthearted admission and chuckling told me he’d simply gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t think his transgression was as serious as the anger Mom and Dad were displaying. Perhaps Tim’s offenses—unworthy artwork, smoking, and playing loud music—were adding up to be about a person our parents did not like.
Now I realize that the anger I saw in our parents was really a reflection of their disappointment in Tim. This bad thing that he had done added to his reclusive habit of staying in his bedroom with the door closed. Our parents were powerless as they saw Tim becoming not so perfect and clean-cut anymore. He wasn’t becoming the person they wanted him to be as his hair grew from crew cut to shaggy lengths, and he exchanged his starched button-down shirts for outstretched novelty T-shirts, his ironed trousers for crumpled blue jeans.
When Tim and I were younger, our parents could control our veneer of perfection, well-dressed in a respectable image to match our well-behaved deportment as a reflection of their exceptional parental skills. But now the perfection was backfiring, and the resulting silence among us spoke volumes.
One Saturday afternoon, Mom and Dad were preparing lunch at the kitchen counter when I walked in. I blurted out my curiosity to break their lack of acknowle
dging me.
“Is Tim working today?”
“Yes,” Mom said. My question did not distract her.
“Really? Well, I was riding my bike …” I lowered my voice and finished in soft words. “And I saw Tim’s bike at Jackie’s house.” I realized what I had said was none of my business.
“You did?” Dad said, turning to my mother. “Just what in the hell is he doing at his girlfriend’s when he’s supposed to be at work?” Dad’s anger erupted. “You get back on your bike and go to Jackie’s and tell your brother to get home, right now,” he yelled at me while pointing to the door. I blasted through the door. The sense of urgency made me ride my bike hard and strong, but my sense of protecting my brother held me back. As I rounded the corner approaching Jackie’s house, I saw Tim’s bike was gone. I rode in circles deciding what to do. I believed there would be a simple explanation.
Arriving at home, I parked my bike next to Tim’s at the top of the driveway. I walked into the house to see Mom at attention with a hand on one hip and her other hand over her mouth. Tim and Dad stood close together. This pairing was unusual because no one in the house had stood together like this before. And I don’t remember Dad ever looking directly into anyone’s face the way he looked into Tim’s. Our closeness felt contradictory. After we had learned to spend time in our own corners of the house, here we were in the same corner. The closeness said we were communicating, but the circumstances and their emotions broke us. We could no longer be close without being divided.
“Just what do you think you are doing? You were supposed to be working, and you were at your girlfriend’s house.”
Dad’s face bloomed red, and he breathed so fast that when he forced the air out of his hairy nostrils, it sounded like horses nearing the finish at the Kentucky Derby. His jaw clenched; his eyes widened; I had never seen him so explosive. I thought he was going to have a heart attack, and he would have blamed it on Tim. As I watched his face, I spotted his hands forming fists. The louvered doors shuddered and banged from the force of Tim’s body being pushed into them. Tim fell back, and the give of the doors cushioned him.
Tim remained silent.
“And … what … were you doing over there? Why … weren’t … you … at … work?” Dad continued.
I didn’t care about Dad, I cared about Tim, who had cowered and rolled his shoulders inward. His head was down, his arms bent, protecting his chest and stomach. He froze.
“Stop, Tom, just stop right now! No, no, don’t do this, just stop it, that’s enough of this!” Mom shouted.
“Young lady, you go right upstairs, right now, get to your room,” Dad said to me. I couldn’t leave. I needed to yell, to demand that Dad stop. But he didn’t. Nothing stopped the flow of the anger that seemed to pour out of him easily, erupting with unrestrained punches. I did this to Tim; I made this happen, I thought.
I didn’t go upstairs. Dad’s reaction paralyzed me as I questioned whether this was really happening. His assaults subsided only after the yelling between his punches ceased.
I couldn’t take my eyes from Tim’s face as it bloomed red with fear, hurt, and sadness in his welling eyes. He succumbed to Dad’s anger in fist and mouth while remaining hunched to protect himself. How could a father hit his child in such a rage? How could Dad have so much anger? I wanted the silence to blanket us, warming the chill on that heated day.
We were together in a strange way. When we tried to communicate with one another, we couldn’t. Forceful emotions spoke louder than any usual chatter.
Tim and I retreated to the top of the stairs, where we separated to our rooms at opposite ends of the hall. The cloistered upstairs kept out the bad that had happened with the closing of bedroom doors. I didn’t know what my parents were doing or where they were in the house. It was silent again, and the silence meant everything was okay.
Whether it was silence of the house or silence of the lips, the underlying noise that preceded the clashes still buzzed in my head. Tim and I stumbled into separate worlds, letting the silence push out intrinsic family connections. We became more fragmented, sliding in opposite directions. Disconnections remained steadfast.
a shift in the ground
“When’s Dad coming home?” I repeatedly asked Mom.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’d have to look. Another ten days or so,” she’d say. I think my question annoyed her because she was reminded of his absence and her being a single parent. Dad’s itinerary governed us. His schedule, grouped by hard black horizontal lines on yellow lined paper, was organized by days and indicated flight arrival and departure information, the hotels he’d be staying in, and the cities he’d visit. Dad was prompt and thorough with his itinerary sheets. It was as if he were bestowing comfort to my mother that his whereabouts would always be known on any day. Looking back at this, I found that yellow paper was his permission slip, his alibi, his okay to be somewhere with someone else, other than where he should be—at home. It represented a way of life that we accepted as normal. Dad just about walked in the door when he needed to prepare for another business trip. “Hey, Nancy, can you please do some folding for me again? I’ve got the shirts stacked on the bed, ready to go,” he’d say. He seemed happy about leaving, almost excited, but when he was home between trips, his mind was elsewhere, his lack of connection marked by his limited conversation. I hated folding those shirts, but I did it anyway; I felt obligated.
On the rare occasions when Dad was home, his presence was a distraction, when one would think it would be a welcome complement. Dad’s snores and restlessness drove Mom to her own quiet spot—the guest bedroom. I didn’t blame her. His snoring acoustics woke me up, too. A dividing wall was all that separated Dad’s headboard from mine. I don’t remember Mom and Dad ever being alone together in the same room. I’m sure they were, they must have been, but I never perceived them as ever being alone—together. Displays of togetherness—dinners out, anniversary or birthday celebrations, alone time—were not there. They didn’t even appear to be good friends because laughter, flirty cajoling, and teasing between them were noticeably absent. I thought their behavior with each other and with Tim and me was similar to the behavior of other parents. We just existed, really, never pausing to question how we connected with each other or whether the relationships among us were normal. We really had no basis of comparison because we didn’t know anything different.
By now, I had finished junior high, and Tim was going to be a senior in high school. One autumn night, Dad asked me to come with him in the car to pick up dinner. I sprung to my feet, ready to head out the door in anticipation of being alone with Dad, a chance to have his undivided attention. How dark the night looked. Rain sprinkles on the car windshield obscured my vision, making it difficult to spot familiar sights along the route we had taken many times before. The night of darkness turned to the night of foreboding on the return trip. Dad pulled into the garage. He shifted the car to park and turned to me with a somber face. My thumping heart, echoing in my ears, cracked the silence. I stared ahead and braced for … something. Oddly, I was uncomfortable with the alone time with Dad when I should have been excited at the possible connection, a chance to be one-on-one with him.
“Your mother and I are getting a divorce,” Dad said. I repeated his words in my head—his clear, succinct voice, as if he were getting ready to make a speech and testing the audio on the mike: “Testing, one, two, three, testing, one, two.” I think he thought this was another exercise in public speaking, as he often did when making advertising pitches to clients for work. The words flowed out of his mouth in a strong, declarative manner without effort and without so much as a glance my way, a touch of my hand, or any other comforting, intimate gesture.
Oddly, I sat quiet and still, void of emotion, like when we first got in the car—just like him. My eyes remained focused on my knees. I didn’t feel the need to cry or yell or express words of anger toward him. He had a paralyzing effect on me, as I recalled my numbness when Dad’s anger had
once spoken through his swinging fists at Tim. What was happening? Was this real? Though I had these questions firing in my mind, I couldn’t shoot them out of my mouth. Silence won out over any chance of conversation.
I wish I could say that I saw a personal side of Dad in that moment when he had to be honest, that I saw an openness in him because the divorce had finally forced him to make his feelings public. But the real truth I had hoped from him, beyond the quick declaration, “Your mother and I are getting a divorce,” never came. There were no more words or actions to show me his sadness, compassion, or regret as he uttered those few words.
Despite the lack of intimacy I shared with my father in that moment, I realized something else: this declaration meant that the “wrongness” of our family was coming to an end—an end that had a name. Though the mention of the word divorce sounded bad, the consequences of that word weren’t. Indeed, I was relieved by the announcement, because an official declaration had been made, a final action that told me nothing had really been right about us all along. It validated that we weren’t normal.
When Dad and I returned home that evening, Dad followed me through the door. I saw Mom and Tim seated in the den, their stiffened bodies capped by dark faces where the lamplight glowed from behind their heads.
The night carried on as it had started: in silence. We resumed that which we knew. All four of us sat in our usual chairs at the table, where dinner was served from brown paper bags. Mom picked at her food. The rest of us ate as if nothing happened. Dad’s back was to the counter; Mom sat to Dad’s left. I was seated on Mom’s left, and Tim was next to me with his back to the sliding glass doors. I had peripheral vision—I could see the entire kitchen, outside to the backyard, and both doorways that led to the dining room and the front hall. I could see everything. And I did that night. It was the last time we would be sitting in a circle, together.
Under the Birch Tree Page 4