Liv Unravelled

by Donna Bishop

  “There were other ‘earth angels’, like Miss Rose, my grade two teacher, who told me I was a great story writer. She entered my poetry and stories into the Fall Fair and I won first prize. Our Brownie or Scout leaders would sometimes take my brothers or me aside and ask how things were.

  “People probably don’t even realize how important it is to be kind to all children. We never know what kids might be going through. I always lied when I was asked and said things were fine, but I actually think it helped just knowing someone saw us and cared.

  “Dad never touched me sexually again after he joined AA and quit drinking when I was 12. He stopped physically hurting my mom and my brothers. He got a decent job working on a bridge building crew and worked his way up to being foreman. He did relapse occasionally. Mom told me later he quit because he had begun peeing blood, which scared the shit out of him. The doctor did some tests and told him that he would die if he didn’t stop.

  “Mom joined Al-Anon and I joined Ala-teen. It made a huge difference to me to be with people who understood — to be told that my dad’s drinking wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t control or fix it. I felt like I could be myself. The other kids were kind of cool. I remember entertaining them with my stories about secretly pouring bottles of booze down the drain, thinking it would solve the problem. All it did was cause Dad to visit the local bootlegger, get higher than ever on 150-proof alcohol and put the family even deeper in debt.

  “Mom used to make us dress up in our Sunday best for Dad’s AA birthday celebrations. You should see the awkward family photos from those times!

  “My brothers and I had grown up very fast out of necessity, and there was no way to turn back the clock, and to become regular, playful children once our problems were apparently gone. They were never really gone, I guess. They were a part of us.

  “My father came from a messed-up place, Celeste — not to give him excuses for what he did. He never talked about his childhood, but over the years my mother pieced together a vague picture of his early life from talking to other family members and from things he said during his drunken rants.

  “My dad’s aunt Bertha — she’s dead now — was able to tell me his story in far more detail, when I was a teen. She says my grandfather Jorgen, my dad’s father, emigrated from Norway to be a prairie farmer in the early 1900s with his young Lutheran bride.

  “Things didn’t go well for them — the farm was unproductive, probably because he was always drinking. Jorgen became cruel and bitter as he realized that life in Canada was no better for him than Norway had been. He beat his sons — my father, Hans, and his brothers — with barbed wire and nearly killed them on several occasions. My father has nasty, jagged scars on his back and his legs. He would never tell us how he got them.

  “When my dad was eleven, his mother died because Jorgen refused to get her medical help when she became gravely ill with mastoiditis. She might have died anyway, as there were no good antibiotics at that time, but he refused to get the doctor to even see what was wrong. He has one photograph of his mom, my grandmother, and I look exactly like her.

  “Dad’s sister Pearl ran away when she was fourteen — Aunt Bertha said some people speculated that her father had been ‘using her as a wife.’ When I first heard that I thought it meant he made her cook and clean, but now I realize what that meant.

  “The following year, Jorgen blew his own brains out with a shotgun. My dad, who was twelve at the time, found his father’s bloody, faceless body in the barn when he went to milk the cows.”

  “Oh my God,” Celeste says, wide-eyed. “The level of trauma that family experienced.”

  “I know! So, then Dad and his brothers were sent to live with an elderly aunt and uncle who had a farm south of Edmonton, where they were treated like farm hands. He and his brothers started smoking and drinking when they were twelve or thirteen. When Dad was sixteen, he and his brothers joined the army — and that was the last Aunt Bertha knew of them until now, except she heard later Pearl was a prostitute in Winnipeg until she died of a venereal disease in her twenties.

  “With this history, while not an excuse in any way, it’s not surprising that my dad became an abusive alcoholic. Mom told me he was a wonderful guy when she first met him and the first couple of years of their marriage were happy — she didn’t know what prompted him to start drinking excessively and get abusive back then. She thought it was the war. I don’t think she understood alcoholism until she went to Al-Anon.

  “We were proud of Dad for quitting drinking, and I guess we all put the violence and the poverty into the locked cupboards of our minds and left it there.”

  “Liv, I wish I didn’t have to ask this, but do you want to press charges against him? As your therapist, my main concern is you, but I also need to consider whether any other children are at risk from your dad now.”

  Liv shakes her head. “At this point, as you know, he’s dying from lung and liver cancer. He’s at home, but in a hospital bed and not even able to get up to the bathroom. He has to wear a diaper. He can’t drink alcohol and he can’t hurt anyone. I can’t muster up the strength, the anger or the need for justice twenty years later. I would never leave my kids alone with him, though, ever!”

  Liv is silent for several minutes, aside from deep, wracking breaths. She looks up and sees Celeste gazing at her, her amber eyes red and puffy. Liv realizes her friend has been absorbing all the emotion seeping through her words.

  Celeste gently touches Liv’s arm and speaks softly, “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

  “Does this help us figure out where we need to go with the therapy, or am I completely lost, damaged beyond help?”

  “Oh, my incredible friend, you are not beyond help at all! I am so sorry for your family’s tragedy and pain — and also so impressed that you’ve had the courage to unearth this abuse at a time when you’re dealing with so much. I need you to know that I believe you and I believe in you. Imagine bringing the raw trauma of so many past generations into your lifetime, and still being able to give your children healthy, happy lives and be the kind of friend, neighbour and human you are! You are not only amazing, you are healing from this and you’re breaking this terrible cycle of abuse.

  “We can’t leave off like this, with such an emotionally wrenching experience. I’d like to hypnotize you again, but this time I’m going to help you restore that piece of yourself that was lost. Can I do that for you?”. She knows her friend is likely to gloss over her inner thoughts and feelings if she’s not encouraged to process it now.

  “Okay,” says Liv. "I’ve come this far, there’s no point putting off the healing part!”

  This time the hypnosis session has a dreamlike quality — the sensations are peaceful and there are no encounters with demons from her past. There is warmth and comfort. When Celeste calls her back, Liv awakens effortlessly, refreshed. She takes a huge breath and releases it.

  “I feel like you’ve taken out poison and replaced it with calm. I feel so much lighter and stronger. All this turmoil is better out than in.”

  “I'm so glad,” Celeste smiles. “My adopted grandmother, who lived to be ninety-nine, used to say, ‘Handing someone a cheese sandwich does a lot more good than offering up words of pity or advice.’ She volunteered helping the homeless and hungry during the Great Depression. Sometimes words just don’t cut it, Liv. Before you go, help me eat some of the banana cranberry muffins I made this morning?”

  7

  ~ Dissonance ~

  Walking home, Liv has lots of time, so she stops at the paddock to visit Majic, her gentle grey gelding. He sees her coming and canters toward her, chuffing. He sidles in and places his velvet muzzle into her hands, looking for treats. She brushes her cheek against his smooth head, breathing in that deeply herbal horsey smell. He’s getting fat, she notices, and feels a flush of guilt. Nobody has ridden him for weeks, so it might be challenging to get a saddle on his back. She makes a mental note to not allow the children to try to m
ount him until she rides him a few times first, to remind him of his manners. Majic follows her to the paddock gate. She scoops up a handful of the succulent alfalfa growing wild along the fence and feeds it to him. He nickers in appreciation.

  As she negotiates the path through the trees, she finds it blocked by dead birch branches that have fallen from a mature clump. She begins gathering them up — the mornings are growing colder, and there hasn’t been any kindling to start a fire to take the chill off. As she nears the house she becomes aware of the rhythmic thump of music from within, growing louder. She recognizes the jarring, jazzy dissonance of Dave Brubeck. That music is always unsettling to her. Ross is home. She’d gotten used to not expecting him, and now he’s here. Her heart begins to thud and she stops.

  There’s no alternative. She has to go home because the school bus will drop off the kids in about half an hour. Be brave, she tells herself.

  Then she sees him, sitting on the rocking chair on the porch with his rifle. What the hell is he doing? Has he completely lost his mind?

  She’s approaching from the side, so he hasn’t seen her yet. She stops in her tracks, puts down her bundle of twigs and watches for a moment as he points the rifle toward something in the field. A wild animal? She realizes he’s set up some sort of target and that’s what he is aiming at. She approaches a little closer, but carefully, as she finds the look on Ross’ face disturbing. His face is intensely scrunched and his chin is down, his wire framed glasses near the tip of his nose. She tries to make out what he’s using for a target and realizes it’s a photo of Chairman Mao Tse Tung — the cover of an old Macleans Magazine. Ross fires and hits the dictator right between the eyes. Liv jumps at the sudden BOOM and the visual of the paper target exploding into the air. She’s conflicted — should she run, or try to confront him? Then there’s a whirl of blue in her mind and a sense of calm settles over her. She needs to manage Ross and somehow divert the kids away from this scene.

  “Ross, what are you doing?” His head snaps in her direction. His eyes are strangely unfocused. He doesn’t answer. She climbs the steps onto the porch. Ruby sits in attendance at his side, her ears perked, tongue lolling.

  “I see you got her a new bike,” he says, smiling oddly. Liv can’t tell if it’s an apologetic gesture or a sneery one. “I was trying to teach her something, you know.”

  “I thought she’d learned enough from the experience. What are you doing?”

  He jumps up, leaving the gun on the porch, takes her arm and hustles her inside. He brings his face very close to hers. She has to force herself not to draw away — she doesn’t want to spook him by seeming not to trust him. Liv sees true concern in his eyes.

  “I need to practice,” he says, “In case they come.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, you know who I mean. They’ve been here before and this time they could really hurt us and the kids, Liv.”

  “I don’t know who you mean, Ross.”

  “Those men — they’re from the government, the other government that’s really in charge. The Nazis of the New Age. They’ve been following me since college. They’re the antithesis of everything I believe in. They know I’m a sociologist, and they think that means I’m a communist. They’ve been trying to get to me for months now. “

  Liv’s head pounds with alarm and mixed emotions — she feels sympathy for him, and yet she’s repulsed and nervous, which makes her feel guilty. Most of all, she fears for the kids’ safety. The bus will be here in fifteen minutes, she calculates. If she can get away and intercept it she can take the kids somewhere else.

  “Ross, I’m worried about you. I don’t think there are spies after you. I think you should go lie down. Ruby will bark if anyone comes.”

  He wavers on his feet and his eyes close briefly — he seems to respond to the idea of rest — so she puts her arm around his shoulders and guides him to the sofa. He’s suddenly passive. She calls Ruby and makes her lie on the floor beside him.

  “You rest. Everything’s fine. But just in case I’m going to go get the kids so I know they’re safe.”

  There’s a flicker of belligerence in his eyes — is he wondering if she’s tricking him? He looks at her closely — she can smell whiskey and body odor and his pupils are dilated.

  “Yeah, you go get the kids. I can protect you better when we’re all together.” He’s absolutely serious.

  Driving away, she knows she won’t be returning home tonight with the kids. She’ll phone later with an excuse as to why they’re staying at a friend’s house. Maybe she’ll play along with his delusion that the government men are after him and tell him it’s for the children’s safety. As disturbing as this realization is for Liv, it sets her on a clear path.

  Ross is mentally ill. It explains his decline, his lethargy and his rapid swings of temper, even the affair. It’s up to me now.

  8

  ~ Regret ~

  The next morning, Liv wakes pinned down by the soggy weight of a five-year-old’s leg across her chest. She had tossed and turned all night, trying to get comfortable, unaccustomed to sharing a king-sized bed with her three restless and upset children. They’re at the home of a good friend, Mo, who happens to be the doctor in the nearby town of Cutter’s Gorge. She’d gone to Celeste’s first, but she wasn’t home and Liv thought that would be the first place Ross would look for her anyway.

  As soon as the kids were settled in having supper, she called one of her neighbours, Rob, and quickly explained what had happened with Ross. Rob was a friend — he and Ross were actually partners in adventure at times, going off on fishing and ATV trips, always with plenty of alcohol.

  All Rob said was, “Oh man,” several times. She asked him to go check to see if Ross was okay.

  “But don’t tell him where we are. If he asks, just tell him I had to go into the city because one of the kids is sick — tell him Micah has another really bad ear infection. And Rob? Can you call me back at Mo’s and let me know?”

  Several hours later, Rob called to report that he’d found Ross asleep on the sofa.

  “He said he just had a bad headache. I talked him into locking the gun up. We had a few drinks. He didn’t talk much. Then he passed out again, so I came home.”

  “Thanks for doing that. Just so we have our stories straight, did you tell him we’d gone into Cutter’s Gorge?”

  “He didn’t ask.”

  The morning routine is totally thrown off. The kids are cranky and confused to be at Dr. Mo’s. No one has slept well. “Come on, my bunnies. Gotta get ready for school.” Liv hears the forced gaiety in her own voice.

  “What about my birds, Mom?” cries Leah. Part of her morning routine is lifting the cover and feeding the cheerful little finches in their wicker cage.

  “I’ll go home and look after everybody once you get on the bus, don’t worry.”

  “I don’t have any clean clothes to wear,” pouts Molly. Mo comes to the rescue with a creative wardrobe fix — a fine pink cashmere sweater she never wears fits Molly as a dress, with the sleeves rolled up. Molly is thrilled, as she loves the softness and the colour.

  Micah is outside playing with an axe by the time Liv gets the girls dressed and downstairs. She strides out and takes the axe away, then in one motion swings it and buries it deep into the chopping block with a force that surprises her and impresses her feisty son so much that he forgets to protest.

  With Mo’s help, she gets the kids fed a pancake breakfast and ready for school, lunches in hand. Mo has also contacted the bus driver to pick the children up at her house. She’ll call later about where to drop them off.

  Though she is trying hard to be happy and reassuring with them, Liv is certain that Leah and Molly can see right through her. Micah probably can as well. His behaviour has always been sort of an emotional thermometer in their family. The more out of sorts everyone else is, the more out of control he will be. Walking to the bus, Micah falls on a wooden plank cattle bridge, gets a giant sliver in his knee
and has a complete meltdown when Liv pulls it out, screaming, “I want my Daddy.” She raises her voice in frustration, “Your Daddy is crazy,” and instantly regret pounds in her head. She’s able to soothe Micah with a Batman Band-Aid Mo has on hand to cover his splinter wound, as well as the promise of an afterschool trip to the candy store.

  Liv is near collapsing and feeling like the shittiest parent ever when the bus finally roars off. But now she can pick Mo’s doctor brain.

  She had told Mo some of what had happened the night before, but now her friend wants to hear the full story. Coincidentally, she’s been studying to specialize in psychiatry and recognizes the earmarks of paranoia immediately.

  “Aw, Liv. I knew from talking to you that he was struggling. I don’t want to alarm you, but his behaviour indicates serious mental illness — it sounds like bipolar disorder to me. And if he’s been self-medicating with alcohol and drugs to try to deal with the headaches, that’s probably contributed to the problem.”

  “Bipolar disorder? That sounds pretty heavy. You don’t think he’s just an arrogant, alcoholic A-hole going through a mid-life crisis?”

  Mo smiles, “Sounds like more than that to me.”

  “You know, it’s weird. His headaches were always manageable until he lost that damn nomination last fall.”

  “I heard he campaigned for that and I was surprised he didn't win. I would have thought he'd be a great candidate.”

  “He was! He's an amazing speaker and he can really rouse a crowd. He even convinced me that we could move to Ottawa for a few years. As the campaign went on it seemed like he got higher and higher with the idea of being a politician — it scared me. He was so invested in winning. He was devastated when he lost. That’s when he crashed — but who could blame him? The headaches got out of control, and his drinking and dependence on prescription pills got way worse.”