Late Night Maudlin Street, Part 2

Late Night Maudlin Street is an ongoing series about the dissolution of my nuclear family. it might help if you read part 1, the day the bomb was dropped.

So it was done and there was much silence, though people actually lived in the house you wouldn't know it, my father took to the basement and my mother to the bedroom and my sister would storm in and out and glare at me or my mother but mostly it was me sitting at the kitchen table listening to the clock tick, waiting to go back to school, it was as if suddenly we were all apparitions moving stealthily about in order not to wake the living, it was odd and confusing and lonely and on one my last nights at home, a home i would not return to for quite some time, i came in from another night out with the girlfriend, she had dragged me to a fucking karaoke bar and proceeded to do her Kate Pierson impersonation and sing nothing but B-52 songs while throwing her long mane of red hair around, i downed scotch and possibly prayed for death to come swift and painless or at least for one of my friends to show up and get me out of this place, i walked outside instead of listening to her and her sexually confused male friend crank out Rock Lobster and stared up into the stars, when i thought about my house i went numb, it was like a husk, like those dead spiders i used to find in the garage, the ones that had been dead all winter and now were just a shell with withered legs and nothing inside, it's what it felt like every time i turned the key in the lock...

On this night i walked back through the door glad to be away from the noise and the woman and humanity, i walked in to the eerie quiet, the only light on the one above the kitchen sink, like a drunk moth i moved toward it and stopped, i listened, i heard nothing but something wasn't right, i knew this wasn't the old days where my mother would instinctively rise to check on me, to make sure her wild child had made it home alive for one more night, the war between me and her had just begun and in her mind she wanted to give me space when what i needed was answers to questions, no something was fucking not right, i began to search through the house or at least the rooms i still had access to, the rooms that weren't locked to protect people from the people they'd lived with for the last 20 plus years, i couldn't find my dad, it was a one story house with a basement and suddenly i felt like the 4yr old boy with the wind howling and the branches making shadows on the wall and i was afraid, where was my father? i walked around and opened the door to the dark basement and began creeping down the steps, Dad? i whispered but heard nothing i walked back towards the makeshift office he had in the back of the house, i heard a space heater and knocked, a voice whispered to come in and my dad was laying on the floor, he had made a makeshift bed and was laying on the carpet, you alright i said, i could barely see him in the glow of the space heater, yes son, go to bed, and even though i was a grown man i turned and walked up the steps and into my room...

I flipped the switch in my room and stood there, a rage swelling up from my stomach to my chest, here was my father, a guy who had worked his whole life to provide for his wife and kids sleeping on the fucking floor cuz he had lost his job and his wife decided to leave him for reasons that we shall soon discuss, there was a villain in this, at least in my mind and she slept across the hall behind a locked door refusing to answer my questions, while my father who had worked full time and put himself through college, a man i didn't know until i was 6 because he came home from work, ate dinner and left for school, a man who had tried to do everything right, was sleeping on a cement floor with a couple of musty blankets, instinctively my hand clenched and i began punching holes in my bedroom wall, one-two-three-four, and i turned and walked back down the stairs, i opened the door and said Dad get up, he blinked and said what and i said get up please and sleep in my room, in fact it's not my room anymore it's your room i mean you paid for the fucking place the least i could do is give up my bed, and my old man sat there staring, he stammered but you need a place... and i cut him off, look at me dad, i said, you don't even want to know the kinds of places i've slept and for the first time since the bomb dropped my father cracked a smile knowing that he most likely didn't want to know some of the places his young son had slept or more correctly passed out and i held out my hand and helped him up, i put my arm around his shoulder (i'm about 6 inches taller than my dad) and walked him up the stairs and into his new room, lucky fucker had just inherited a water bed, the next morning we would move in a television and run a cable hook up so he could have his own little enclave just like my mother, i even clued him into my stash of porno mags (see the post X-mas with my father) but that night i helped him into bed, told him i loved him, turned off the light and shut the door.

I walked back into the kitchen, to that same light and leaned up against the sink, it was cold and i stood there for a long time, listening to that same clock, thinking, trying to take it all in, the creak of the floor, the sound of the furnace, the way the streetlights shown through the front window, knowing my days here were numbered, knowing that my mother would have to face me at some point and sharpening my knives because i knew that though she had put up an icy veneer, that her boy, her baby boy was the one person that could hurt her. I thought of her locked in her room. I thought of my dad on the basement floor. I could feel the warmth of my tears as they rolled down my face.

Revisionist History - Late Night Maudlin St. pt. 1

17 years have gone by and i still think about it quite a bit, that day and the days that followed it, the years that followed it and though the saying goes time heals all wounds i think it's more that time just dulls the pain and we learn to live with it, that day was January 3, 1992, the time was 7:04 pm. I had walked into the basement to see if we were going to order a pizza or something cuz a girl was coming to pick me up and take me out, a new girlfriend to be exact and i was hoping to expedite the process of getting fed, all of 20 years old, home on x-mas break, one of the rare times i had been home since i left for Wyoming at the ripe old age of 17...

I remember the look of my parents, my mother in a yellow robe, nervous and glassy eyed and i remember the look of my father, for the first time in my life he looked scared, defeated, confused, he looked at a loss and as they told me to go upstairs and order i had a very uneasy feeling, a feeling that everything was fucked, a feeling i'd first gotten at Thanksgiving were i looked around my house and felt as if i was looking at strangers, on that day i had grabbed my notebook and made for the patch of woods behind my house as my sister made some sort of disparaging remark about not be able to take the living conditions, had i not been so out of sorts i'm sure i would've told her to shut the fuck up and move out and mentioned the fact that at 26 she should be capable of living on her own but instead i ran for some solitude, years later i would find that notebook and read what i wrote, the first line being "i saw my family disintegrate right in front of my eyes"...

When my mother and father came upstairs my dad called us into the kitchen and said they had something to tell us, this in itself was strange cuz we didn't have these little family meetings and the last time i had seen my father look like this was when he sat me down to tell me my grandfather, his father, had died, only today he looked a bit worse and the old man not being one to mince words just let it fly, this family was officially dissolved, they were getting a divorce and that was all they had to say in the matter, my sister immediately flew off the handle and started screaming at our mother that this was just another way of her trying to fuck up her life, sis had planned to get married in the next year or two and of course this would throw a monkey wrench into all of it, my mother sat and whimpered that she didn't want us to hate her and then retired to her her room, i was leaning up against the counter and basically went numb, i just looked at my dad who was looking at me, my mouth open but nothing coming out, i can tell you that the living room lights were off and the dining room lights were off and the two kitchen lights were on and it was 7:04 pm on a friday night "i was born here and i was raised here and i took some stick here"...

I sorta stumbled around from there, went to my room to change my clothes, my mom stopping in to once again lobby for me not to hate her and i told i didn't but really didn't understand why i should, there weren't many details given and as she sat there crying i saw my dad go into my sister's room and heard her screaming about that bitch and how she fucked up his life and hers and how all she was worried about was her precious son, of course i hadn't really lived there and wasn't privy to the skirmishes that would lead to the battles that would lead to the war, i was still trying to wrap my head around what i was just told and what it meant and reassure this woman in front of me that i was okay and asked if she was okay and when she said she was she rose, went to her room and locked the door, my father was still trying to calm my sister down, his firstborn, his baby girl, the only time i could really truly piss off my dad was when i had a go at his daughter, we were six years apart and for years the girl resented me, was of the opinion that her mother favored me and for all i know she may have, mom's dad always wanted a son, she was named after him and he had 3 daughters who all had baby girls until i came bouncing along and yes over the years i knew i could work mom over pretty good for whatever i wanted but having not been around much for the last three i had grown up fast and didn't rely on anybody for much anymore...

i put on a clean shirt and walked to the front porch and waited for the girlfriend to show up, i didn't say goodbye, i sat and listened to the traffic from the main road and watched my breath in front of me and it wasn't til i sat in her front seat and told her what had just happened that i began to cry like a fucking baby, that maybe what i had just heard and felt and seen began to sink in, we drove around and i drank beer in her car which she bought for me and then we went to a movie which i don't remember, i mainly remember tears rolling down my face the whole time, when it was over i sat against a cement pole in a strip mall drinking beer and smoking a cigarette and then i told her i needed to go home, somehow it was after midnight and the house was dark, she cranked up the heat and dragged me into the back seat and proceeded to fuck me and for a bit i almost forgot but then it was over and i crawled out of the backseat of her Mercury Cougar and watched her pull away, i stood for a long time looking at the house and it didn't seem like a home anymore... i am moving house, a half life disappears today.

I opened the door and walked into the kitchen and saw my dad sitting on the couch in the dark, we hadn't talked since he told us and he got up and walked toward me, i stood in the kitchen, head down while my mind buzzed, i gave him a hug and as my voiced cracked with sadness said, I don't understand, he looked at me and said son, neither do i.