by Sam Westland
When I wasn't out celebrating, however, I was constantly being plagued by the details coming from my parents and their friends, however. Among my circle of friends, only Claire knew about what was happening with my parents, and she did her best to keep me distracted and focused on my own life. At work each morning, however, I would open up my email and find that one of my parents' friends had sent me new and horrifying details of their divorce as it unfolded. I would get to work, feeling somewhat happy and awake thanks to my warm, fresh cup of coffee, and then my head would sink as I read each new email until my forehead was pressed against the cool wood of my desk. And some of the details were staggering.
Once my parents had announced the initial decision to get a divorce, things had snowballed, rolling faster and faster. Both my mother and my father had hired lawyers, and the two were now in a bitter court battle over everything from their wedding rings to the old clothes and Halloween costumes in the back of their closets. (No joke - one of my friends from my hometown worked at one of the law firms, and he forwarded me some of the submitted claims. They were ridiculous.) My mother had apparently gotten the drop on my mother with the divorce filings, and had managed to retain control of their house, while my father moved out.
A few days later, however, I was rocked by a new revelation. My father, now homeless, had moved in with a younger woman who was described to me breathlessly on the phone by one of my friends as "the flower child from Woodstock, twenty years later and with a high school dropout of a son." This friend insisted that the woman was known only as Blossom, even on her driver's license. One of my old high school acquaintances lived in the same apartment building as Blossom, and told me the next day that he had seen my dad coming and going from Blossom's apartment fairly regularly, even before the divorce. I had now discovered where my father had disappeared off to every night, and why he would come back so late that he would end up sleeping in the guest bedroom. He had apparently been engaged in this affair for several months before that Christmas Eve.
When my mother, already blaming my father for the collapse of their marriage, learned about this affair, she was incensed. I knew that she had found out when, one afternoon, I had received a phone call from her that turned into an hour-long blistering tirade against all men and how they "were nothing more than shallow pigs, blindly following their dicks and not even good for bacon at the slaughterhouse." Since my mother chose to call me at work, I ended up plugging headphones into my phone jack, muting my microphone, and continuing to try to work while her voice screamed at the lowest volume setting in one of my ears. Every ten minutes or so, I would un-mute the microphone to make a few soothing noises, hoping that sooner or later she would run out of steam. She gave no sign of slowing, however, and I ended up hanging up on her when I had to drive home. I still don't know how much longer she ranted into the phone before she realized that I had disconnected.
Upon her discovery of my dad's affair, my mom decided that her new mission in life was to destroy my dad at every opportunity in this divorce. In one spectacularly disturbing tale, relayed to me by phone in hushed tones by one of my parents' next door neighbors, she dragged my father's favorite armchair from the living room out onto the front lawn, doused it in gasoline, and set the entire thing ablaze. It burned for nearly half an hour before the fire department arrived, put the sorry sight out with a hose, and then gave my mother a stern talking to. She, of course, immediately forgot about their visit and set my father's dresser on fire on the lawn the next night. I still don't know how she managed to avoid being arrested.
When he learned about the systematic destruction by fire of his belongings, my father, instead of backing down, decided that for once, he was going to up the stakes. The next day, he was at the courthouse, Blossom's arm looped through his, requesting a marriage license. Of course, since the current divorce proceedings hadn't even been finalized yet, he was denied, but this still served its purpose of sending my mother's rage to new, stratospheric heights.
I received so many phone calls from my mother, often late in the evening after she had finished off a bottle of wine, that I began intentionally letting them go to voicemail. My mother had settled into a permanently angry mindset, and she didn't seem to grow any more or less upset if I answered the phone or ignored it. I would fast-forward through her messages, only listening to snippets here and there to see if anything she said concerned me. Almost invariably, nothing really did.
My father, on the other hand, had become much tougher to contact. My mother had removed him from the family's phone plan almost immediately, and had somehow convinced the poor employee at the phone store to remotely wipe and disable his phone. Blossom apparently had neither a cell phone nor a land line, and so the only time I was able to talk to my father was when my high school acquaintance who lived next to Blossom managed to catch him entering her apartment and pass him the phone so that I could talk to him. In that brief conversation, my father assured me that "everything was fine," that this divorce "was just a small hiccup," and that "nothing would get in the way of my special day." I truly wanted to believe him, but I wasn't sure that he still had much of a grip on reality left. He also told me that I should be happy that "our family has grown; Blossom's son may not be a blood relation, but we should welcome dear Bryan into our family as if he was one of us. And once Janice and I are divorced, he will become your new brother, so you should try and make friends right away." This same Bryan, I learned from my high school acquaintance, had left high school at age sixteen and currently worked part-time in various menial jobs, including brief stints as a supermarket bagger, a busboy at a restaurant, slinging luggage at an airport, garbageman, and telemarketer. He would lose his job fairly regularly due to showing up stoned, intoxicated, or not showing up at all, but would manage to find something else that paid minimum wage with just enough time to cover his share of the rent on the apartment he shared with Blossom - and now with Rick, my father.
*
After the new year, Alex announced that, now that we were officially engaged, we would have to sit down with his parents as well. I was never quite clear on why we had to do this - were they going to finally determine whether I was worthy of their son? Did they have presents already prepared for us? Wasn't it a little too late for them to get involved in the screening process?
Despite my confusion, however, we made plans to join my dear fiance's family the next weekend for a lunch at their house. Alex's folks lived closer than mine, fortunately, so the drive was only about a half hour. Unsure of whether I should be looking classy, like a girlfriend meeting her boyfriend's parents, or relaxed, like I usually dressed on Sunday mornings, I ended up with some strange combination of casual sweatpants and a rather nice, well-fitting blouse that I liked. I sat in the passenger seat of the car as Alex drove, staring down at myself, aghast, trying to figure out how I had managed to dress myself this way.
When we pulled up at Alex's parents' house, however, he reached over and patted me on the shoulder. "Relax, honey," Alex consoled. "They already love you - you'll be fine!"
I nodded, and tried to force down the nervousness in the pit of my stomach. We climbed out of the car, and headed up to the front door. I tried to smooth down my sweatpants to make them look slightly more presentable as Alex rang the bell.
A minute later, Alex's parents, Jeff and Mary, opened the door and smiled out at us, Jeff's arm on Mary's shoulder while her arm was wrapped around his waist. "Hello!" they both enthused, looking radiant and perfectly composed.
"Hi Mom! Hi Dad!" Alex greeted them back, immediately moving forward into the house to embrace them. I followed behind, pulling the door shut behind me.
Inside the house, after Alex had finished with his enthusiastic greeting, his parents turned on me. "Danielle, we were so happy to hear that you said yes to our son!" Mary enthused, grabbing me and pulling me in for a hug as well. Her embrace was surprisingly strong, and by the time she finally released me, I barely had the opportunity to suck in a
breath before Jeff had also engulfed me with his arms.
Not stopping in their compliments of me and loud comments on how happy they were that I had agreed to marry their son, Jeff and Mary led the two of us into their dining room, where plates, cups, and silverware was already set on the table. Also at the table was Danny, who I vaguely remembered as Alex's younger brother. He was three or four years younger, I remembered, just finishing up college, but I had only met him a couple times - and both times had been when we were out at bars. This would be my first time sitting down with him when either he - or I - was sober.
Jeff and Mary took their seats at either end of the table, smiling happily at us and waiting for us to find our seats. "So, once again, congratulations!" Jeff began, as we began passing around the plates of food. "Have you begun planning the wedding yet, Danielle?"
Totally unprepared for this direct question, I nearly choked on the bite of egg that I had just inserted into my mouth. "No, not yet," I wheezed, as Alex reached over and patted me on the back. "To be honest, I haven't even gotten used to referring to your son as my fiance yet!" I tried to make the comment into an offhanded joke, but Mary merely looked back at me.
"Way to go, Alex!" Danny spoke up, from the other side of the table. "You totally managed to land a babe, here!" Alex smiled back at him, but I shrugged a little, uncomfortable from how the compliment was phrased.
"Danielle, are you thinking of an outdoor wedding? I happen to know of a lovely park that would make a wonderful place for a wedding!" Mary commented. "I walk past it every day, and could totally see you two kids getting married there!"
The rest of the meal passed in a similar fashion, with the parents constantly making wedding suggestions, which I did my best to fend off, while Danny stared at me from across the table and occasionally commented on how his brother was a "lucky guy." By the end of the meal, I felt exhausted from dodging wedding ideas and slightly dirty from Alex's younger brother's gaze.
"You know," I told Alex, as we finally walked out of the house and headed back to our car to make our escape, "I may always talk about how my parents are crazy, but yours aren't too sane either."
"What are you talking about? Mine love you!" Alex insisted, holding up the remote to unlock our vehicle.
"Mine don't care about our wedding, because they're too wrapped up in themselves," I pointed out. "Yours, on the other hand, seem even more excited about our wedding than we are."
Alex shook his head. "They're just being enthusiastic, trying to help," he said.
"I didn't ask for their help! And what was up with your brother? Why was he always staring at me like that?"
"Look, Danny has always had a bit of a crush on you," Alex explained. "It's nothing - I'm actually a little flattered by it. He totally looks up to me because I'm dating someone as amazing as you." With those words, he leaned in across the center column of the car for a kiss.
I returned the kiss, but for the whole ride home, I couldn't quite lose the slightly dirty feeling from Danny's eyes on me, or shake the hint of guilt I felt because I wasn't diving head-over-heels into this wedding planning as much as Alex's folks were. It hadn't even been a month since Alex had engaged, but I already felt as though this new aspect of our relationship was beginning to lose its shine.
Susan's Discovery
*
In all of the messages and conversations about my parents' divorce, the one person whom I never heard mention of was my younger sister. Susan, ever since taking off on winter vacation for parts unknown, had apparently dropped off the map completely. Calls to her phone went straight to voicemail, and she hadn't contacted any of her roommates recently - or given any indication of whether she would be paying her next month's share of the rent.
This wasn't the first time that my sister had decided to pull a disappearing act, and she was often surprisingly good at taking care of herself, as long as I didn't question her methods too closely. I figured that I would hear from her sooner or later, and would likely need to fill her in on what had happened. When she did finally contact me, however, it was nothing like how I expected.
About two weeks later, I was finishing up work, and had just climbed into my car to head back to my apartment when my phone rang. Digging it out of my pocket, I glanced at the screen - the number didn't look familiar. Despite not recognizing the number, I pressed 'answer', and then cursed and tugged off one of my gloves with my teeth so that my fingers could activate the touch screen. Sometimes, the future didn't think about dealing with January cold, I thought to myself. I lifted the phone up to my ear. "Hello?"
"How dare you!?" came an impassioned scream from the other end of the line, so loud that, wincing, I had to hold the phone six inches away from my ear.
As the scream faded slightly, I moved the receiver of my phone close enough to pick up my voice. "Um, who is this?" I asked.
"Ugh," came a loud groan from the phone. "God, Danielle, don't you recognize your own sister? It's really like you don't care at all any more."
"Suzy? That's you? Why aren't you calling me with your phone?" I exclaimed. I hadn't heard a single word from my sister in months; it had felt as though, even before Christmas, she had dropped off the face of the earth.
This question was met by another groan. "Look, it's a long story," my sister grumbled. "I was seeing this guy, and things were great, but I just wasn't feeling things, so I called it off."
I nodded as I listened to this. Stories like this were pretty standard fare for my sister. I fished out my keys as I held the phone to my ear, starting the ignition so that the heater would keep me from freezing in the car. "You're still not explaining why you're not calling with your usual number," I cut in, as soon as my sister paused for breath.
"Oh, my ex-boyfriend kept on trying to get in contact with me, so I had to change my phone number," my sister said offhandedly. "Haven't you been listening?"
I sighed with frustration. "Suzy, why are you calling me?" I asked.
"I heard about what happened to you on Christmas," Suzy said.
"Oh, and you want to congratulate me? Thank-"
"And I can't believe that you would dare upstage me like that!" my sister continued, cutting in over my words. "How dare you try and steal all the limelight from me by making up all this drama!"
My jaw dropped open. "Sis, what are you talking about?"
"You, and your stupid proposal!" Suzy huffed. "Just because I wasn't there, you had to go and steal all of the credit, and now, whenever Mom calls me, all she can talk about is how amazing you are, and how you've managed to find love, and why haven't I done the same? It's so annoying!"
"She isn't complaining to you about the divorce?" I asked, astounded. "That's all she yells at me about."
"Oh, no, she whines about that too, how unfair it is that our dad is getting away with all this. I pretty much ignore that stuff," my sister replied. I couldn't believe how uncaring she sounded. Wait a minute - yes, I could. My sister always tended to brush off anything that wasn't directly about her. "But now, thanks to you, all I hear about is how I need to find a man for the rest of my life! My boyfriend was just as good as yours - just because my boyfriend ended up being married to somebody else doesn't mean that you're better than me!"
For a moment, I couldn't muster up any words to respond. "Wait a minute, Susan," I said. I was definitely angry now; I never used my sister's full name unless I was furious. "I didn't choose to get proposed to! It was all Alex's idea, and I would have said yes, no matter when he had asked me. Besides, you weren't even there! Our parents are getting divorced, and you weren't even around to be present!"
"I still can't believe you would do this to me," my sister went on after a moment, clearly not hearing a single word that I'd said. "Just you wait, Danielle. I'll have my revenge on you!"
I opened my mouth to reply, but Susan's voice was replaced by a dial tone before I could get out the words. Lowering the phone from my ear, I stared at it for a minute before tucking it away, trying to m
ake sense of what had just happened.
Sadly, this was pretty common for my sister. She tended to fly off the handle whenever she wasn't the center of attention, and would throw minor temper tantrums until people started paying attention to her again. Over the years, as I watched my parents and an ever-rotating series of boyfriends try and deal with these outbursts, I had grown adept at simply ignoring her. She would inevitably calm down, or be distracted by the next shiny object or cute boy that happened to pass her way, and would move on like the temper tantrum had never happened. I excelled at waiting her out.
With a shrug, I tucked the phone back into my jacket pocket. By this point, the car's heaters had raised the temperature up from below freezing to a level where I could shed my gloves and drive with my bare hands on the steering wheel. Putting the call from my sister out of my mind, I began to make my way back home to my apartment. I had a wedding to plan!
Bryan
*
That same evening, after Alex and I had enjoyed a lovely dinner of chicken breasts roasted and served over a bed of wilted spinach, prepared by yours truly, we retired to the couch and turned on the television. We were both avid watchers of several culinary competition programs, and one of them was about to air the new episode in a few minutes.
"So," Alex asked, his arm around me on the couch, "How was work today? Anything exciting happen in the world of non-profit construction for the homeless and the needy?"
I shifted back and forth slightly, getting into a more comfortable position nestled against him on the couch. Alex somehow always managed to stay thin and trim, no matter what he ate, and this meant that I occasionally found myself being poked by his ribs. "Work was pretty dull," I began. "But I did get an interesting call after work today, from my sister."