Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  “There’s another thing I need to say.” I knew this tone of voice. It had that edge that signaled he was going to try to convince me of something I was going to disagree with. “I’ve made it too easy for you to think too highly of me, especially in relation to your mother.”

  I wanted to stop him there. Dad hadn’t a clue, when it came to the honest history between Mom and me. After we moved to Laurens, her physical violence stopped but her oppression didn’t. Her drinking moved to a whole different level. I couldn’t count the number of times I had been forced to pour her drinks, join her as she spent hours talking into the night, get her out of bed in the mornings for work when she was hungover, deal with the embarrassment of hearing from my classmates about the stories she was telling while drinking at the town bar, clean her up after she’d been sick. And it didn’t stop her personal attacks on me. But the worst was having to witness her relationships with a few men outside their marriage. And they were repugnant. And I don’t know why we never told Dad, except for Mom’s threats that he’d hate us, not her.

  And so, I could almost predict where this conversation we were having was going to go. I heard him say it before—that it was his fault she was so miserable. His fault she tried to kill him. That if he had been a better husband, she would have been able to be a better mother. And I could tell he really thought he could convince me of it. And then sure enough . . .

  “I was having an affair with someone the last year we lived in Omaha. She was in Laurens. You may remember your mom was drinking a lot and I wasn’t around.”

  I definitely hadn’t expected that one and wanted to say bravo. And then the conversation took yet another unexpected turn. Dad mentioned he joined a men-only Christian group called Promise Keepers, a fellowship started by Bill McCartney, who was the coach for the University of Colorado football team.

  “What, you get together like Boy Scouts?” I asked him, as we walked into the kitchen.

  “No. We meet in large gatherings and have speakers that address the brotherhood.”

  I asked him how many met, as I opened myself a can of A&W Root Beer. He said the last one he had attended was at the civic auditorium in Indianapolis, and there had been ten thousand men. They’d get together to talk about their shared family values, their roles as husbands and fathers. Looking at my face, he assured me this was a good thing, said he could already tell I was overthinking it.

  I told him I was interested. Really. I had heard about these men’s groups in London started by the poet Robert Bly, where they’d get together to beat on drums and pass around a talking stick. I asked him if Promise Keepers was like that.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “You’re getting closer. Except my group knows a woman’s place is at home. We’re fighting those Feminazis for men’s rights.” Then he chortled.

  “That’s incredibly offensive, Dad, not funny.”

  “Oh, I’m just teasing you. You want a fried egg sandwich?”

  “Well, it’s not funny, equating feminists to Nazis is not funny. And it makes me sad when you act like we’re a different species.”

  He apologized as though he meant it, as if he were troubled by what made him say it. But it was the first of a series of jokes that I noticed increasingly being slipped into conversations—dumb blonde jokes, and more offensive racist cracks, even though he lived in what had become a predominantly black neighborhood and was granddad to every kid on the block.

  He’d tell me I was being too sensitive. I couldn’t help but think this had something to do with the fact that all his self-help cassettes had disappeared—the Dale Carnegie Library that used to sit in the back seat was no longer there. Norman Vincent Peale and his positive thinking, gone, replaced by talk radio shows in all the hours he spent on the road with his sales calls. He denied these folks had political agendas. He said they were closer to comic motivational speakers, would exaggerate things, but they didn’t mean anything they really said. And it occurred to me that in the same way he had picked up the coaching techniques of his self-help tapes, he was internalizing the humor of Rush Limbaugh.

  And then he suggested maybe I’d like to take my mother out for lunch, which we both knew I’d like to do about as much as having my front tooth pulled out, even at the age of thirty-seven. But I agreed to do it in the interest of our newfound family equilibrium.

  In Which I Take Mom Out for a Heart-to-Heart

  Indianapolis, 2001—Mom wanted to go for lunch at Applebee’s. So many new chain restaurants had sprung up in America during my ten years away, I could hardly keep track. Once we were seated, I asked for waffles with a side of bacon. Mom ordered a Cobb salad. Several minutes later, the waitress set a glass of wine down in front of my mother. Just a little lunchtime Chardonnay to complement the meal.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, noticing my look. “I haven’t had any problem managing my alcohol since you kids left home.” She picked up her glass and took a sip to reassure me there would be no discussion, then glided right into conversation.

  “So your father mentioned you’re having a difficult time.” She took a bite of breadstick, giving me a chance to open up, though it wasn’t a question. I couldn’t remember a time I had ever felt safe enough to willingly share my inner world with my mother, and it left me uneasy. Why would Dad tell her? When I appeared more interested in her passing the butter, she filled in the space. “Of course, I’ve had some experience in that realm,” she joked, as if we had something to bond over. “Parenting isn’t so easy, is it?”

  When I told her I’d been more tired than usual, she dove straight into the details of her unfortunate altercation with my father. I tried to stop her but didn’t stand a chance. She was well out of the gate.

  I don’t know what I was thinking when I brought up the next topic—perhaps if she could so openly discuss going after Dad with a knife with such light-hearted verve, I might be able to counsel her into acknowledging it as part of a chain of behavior. Maybe even claiming some culpability.

  I put my fork down. I explained that I was having curious memories, not really memories, more hints, never clear. In other words, coward that I was, I supplicated myself in front of her as best I possibly could, suggesting it might be my own mixed-up mind, but was there any chance she might have experienced similar outbursts of rage when we were growing up? I didn’t use those words exactly, but there was no mistaking what I was raising. I picked my fork back up and shoveled in a huge bite of waffle, signaling it was her turn.

  “If I was tough on you girls,” she said, “it was only because I was scared for you. Certainly not out of malice. Your sister Gayle, now I might owe her an apology.”

  I raised my eyebrows and chewed.

  “You remember that time you came home from school and told me about that girl who said she had been molested by her father?” Of course I remembered it—how could I forget? “Well, I called the school and reported him. And then your sister went and told his daughter the next day. It scared me to death. I thought for sure he was going to show up at our doorstep. I definitely let her have it that time. In fact, someone called the social worker on me. I think it was that girl’s father.” She picked up her glass and took a sip. “Can you believe that?”

  “Wow, Mom,” I said carefully.

  And then I saw it, the instant flash of a look, enough to signal I’d given too much away, that the minute she wanted to become my oppressor, she could, that she was making an effort and I best not upset that.

  “If you want to talk about history, why don’t you just say you want to talk about history,” she said fiercely.

  It was a warning, against having the conversation with my father. That she didn’t want me shaking up the newfound family equilibrium.

  “Mom, I’m not angry. I’m just trying to understand.” What was I thinking? That she’d use this as an opportunity to bring us closer, heal our relationship a little, even? Admit she enjoyed beating us as kids, but she understood now how she had been wrong. What hurt the mo
st—I still wanted that mother hole she had left in me to be filled by her and was looking for any small thing she might give me.

  Feeling far worse about myself than before I arrived, I checked my watch and suggested we’d better head back. The kids would be waiting, and I had a long drive ahead. I caught the waitress’s attention and let Mom know the mother-daughter meal was on me.

  In Which Charles Gets a Promotion

  Lincoln, 1986—Early in the morning, Charles was escorted into a small meeting room at the Release Center. Kim was sitting in a chair next to Mike. Even though Charles expected to see her, it threw him. He still had a crush on her and it unnerved him.

  His caseworker and counselor were standing behind Mike and Kim, and for some reason there was a security guard stationed by the door. No one was looking too friendly. And the room was a little crowded with six folks. But that didn’t stop Charles from displaying his own cordial manners. He asked them how they all were doing, as he took his seat. Mike then started the conversation.

  “I understand, Charles, that you’ve been working with Kim? And that you gave her permission to go into your folder?”

  “Yes, she wanted to do a report.” Charles flashed Mike one of those smiles that usually squares trust between two people, then added, “I thought I’d be helpful.” But Mike clearly wasn’t interested in establishing a rapport.

  “You know, Charles, the reason we’re meeting today is because Kim found a very odd, loose hand-written note in your file. It had the name and address of her best friend at school—the victim of your crime. Can you tell us why this girl’s name is in your folder, Charles?”

  Charles glanced at his caseworker and counselor, but neither responded. “I’m not sure.” He could see that this conversation wasn’t going in a good direction. But there’s no way Kim was the girl’s best friend; that would be too weird, like, statistically impossible.

  “Did you ask someone to obtain the address for you, Charles?”

  “Well, my previous counselor told me he’d get it for me because I was worried about her.”

  “You were worried about your victim, Charles? So you thought you’d write to her?”

  “It’s complicated.” Charles looked at Kim, who seemed angry.

  “It’s not complicated. This is the victim’s address. Why don’t we give you a chance to tell us about the violent crime that put you in here, Charles.”

  He looked at them all. “I don’t understand.”

  Mike stopped to look at Kim, who was no longer disguising her fury. “Maybe I can help you,” Kim said. “You know that story you told me, the one you’ve been telling everyone else in here for years? That the charges against you are cooked up? That you were dating my girlfriend and it was her father who brought the charges against you? Well, it’s gross. I know every detail of your crime, including the fact that you forced my friend to call her father while you had a knife at her throat. And that my friend talked to you about God.”

  Charles felt jolted, like someone had just punched the air out of him. He put his head down on his arms and began to sob, overwhelmed with shame. He couldn’t control himself. He never felt more humiliated, or terrified. What were the chances? How the hell was he supposed to lift his head?

  “I’m going to ask you again,” said Mike. “Would you like to tell us what happened that day?”

  Charles nodded. “Yes, please just give me a minute.”

  “I can’t imagine this is easy,” added Mike.

  “No, sir, it’s not.” He couldn’t bring himself to even look at Kim.

  The group waited another couple of minutes while he collected himself. And then Kim began. She recounted what he had been wearing that day. She knew he had been arrested eleven days after the crime; she remembered because everyone, parents and students, were living in terror, waiting for him to victimize someone again. Then she talked about a sledding party they had for the girl a week later, and said that none of them could believe how strong she was being. And finally there was the party, when the girl had been hauled away in an ambulance after she almost killed herself with alcohol poisoning. Kim paused and then said, “In fact, you’re the monster I’ve always been afraid of, the reason I decided to study criminal psychology.”

  Charles sat stunned.

  He had worked so damn hard to put it all behind him. The crime was almost eight years ago. He wasn’t the same person. He was almost twenty-five years old now. He’d done loads of personal work since then. “All I can say is I am so thankful that this is finally out in the open. So I can stop lying about it.” He continued, “You might imagine, as hard as it is for you to be meeting the monster, it isn’t easier being the monster.”

  He took some deep breaths. He needed to bring them around, to make sense of it for them. Why he had done all those terrible things.

  It had all begun after he and his friends were bused to Norris Junior High School. He’d never known anything about racism until then. Soon after, four white kids attacked him—for no reason other than he was black. One of the bullies even went at him with a baseball bat. It made him so mad. Shortly after that he was arrested for carjacking. While he waited for his trial, they kept him in a holding cell at the Douglas County Jail, age fifteen, where he became the target for another racist attack. This time a guy choked him until he went unconscious. When he woke, he discovered his teeth were loose and had to hold them in place with his tongue. He finally saw a prison dentist, four months later, and the guy told him his jaw had been broken.

  Then, a few days after he’d been let out of Kearney, he drove over to one of the kids’ houses to get revenge, but a cop car pulled in. So he headed over to see if he could pick up his cousin Crystal at school. And that’s when he saw the girl, in the church parking lot. Charles looked at Kim and said, “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I was stupid and angry.”

  After things spiraled so out of control, he was going to kill the girl and then kill himself. He drove her to the railway line near the stockyards. But by then, the two of them had spent so much time talking about God, that he couldn’t bring himself to do it. She actually felt like a friend. So he just left her there.

  His first six months in prison he felt so awful about what he’d done that he was suicidal. And that’s why he had asked his counselor to get the girl’s address. To see if she was okay. To apologize.

  He looked at them all.

  “You might be scared of me, but now I’m scared of you because you know me.”

  Well, he meant it to sound like shame.

  Six months later, he was paroled.

  In Which I Ponder a Disorder of Nerves

  Shepherdstown, 2001—Though picking up the RV had been a great idea, the trip to my parents’ home triggered something. My depression grew worse. Much worse. One evening as I lay on the couch, my pillow over my head, groaning about being me, Thomas brought up the fact that I was no longer working out. In the fifteen years he had known me, my fitness had been a critical part of my mental health. He was right. I couldn’t bear to think about doing anything. And that was it, the floodgates opened. I told him I had no idea what was happening to me and why I couldn’t pull myself together. I knew what it was like to be depressed, but this was different, and it felt overwhelming.

  It had kicked off at the time of 9/11. I hadn’t been able to rid myself of the feeling that Thomas and the kids were going to be taken from me, in some tragic happenstance. But my biggest fear wasn’t that an outside threat was about to land. I couldn’t bear being inside my own head. I was starting to fear all I had ahead of me was a lifetime of fighting these mental cycles. And it was becoming all-consuming, scary. At what point did we have to seriously talk about options?

  “Options?” Thomas asked.

  “Like checking me in somewhere. What if I hurt someone? Jesus, what if I lose control and hurt the kids? . . . Like Mom. If it was the 1920s, you would have had me committed to an asylum a long time ago.”

  “Wel
l, aren’t you lucky it’s not the 1920s, then,” Thomas said, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close. Teasing me usually pulled me out of myself, but this time it triggered a further dip of insecurity. I said with all seriousness that I would understand if Thomas wanted to leave me.

  “You’re just depressed, it will pass.” He suggested we could get more help in, so I could catch up on sleep. He’d take the morning shift with the kids instead of the afternoon. He jostled me with a smile, then saw the tears well up in my eyes.

  “Hey, I’m serious,” he said. He pointed out that though my inner world was really scary for me, the reality for him and the kids was very different. If I hadn’t told him what was going on in my mind, he wouldn’t have been able to tell. It’s not how I appeared when I was with them. They’d be lost without me, devastated if I wasn’t with them. I was an amazing mother he reassured me. We just needed to find a good doctor, a good therapist. I took a deep breath. Laid my head on his chest. And then, oddly, like he knew something I didn’t, he suggested we dial down the frequency of contact with my parents for a while.

  After all the work I had done in learning to manage the seizures, and then the medication, it was disappointing to find myself needing to ask for help again. Especially after the happiness I experienced since having my children, in becoming a mother. I thought my love for them would protect me from anything, would give me superpowers over anything that might come between us that would threaten their welfare, even depression—especially depression. I had never been comfortable sharing my inner world without it causing extreme anxiety. Half the time, I didn’t know what I was feeling, let alone have the ability to articulate it. I reminded myself the best decision of my life—the decision to get married—had been made because of a positive therapeutic relationship. Unfortunately, Sheldon passed away in 1999. His skepticism of psychiatry in general, and his humor in particular, were perfect for me at that time. But the existential approach to treatment might have been too generalized, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it also helped further sublimate the emotional load I had been carrying.