One day, Gerald arrived for his regular shift to pollute the place, and Adrienne tagged along. She explained that the two of them knew each other, but didn’t specify how and I didn’t ask. I suddenly didn’t feel like running for fresh air because it stood right in front of me. We talked. We laughed. We eyed each other.
She was about five-four, with long dark brown hair that matched her eyes. A serious face—probably from being a single, teenage mother, but a pretty smile that would come out to play once in a while.
Adrienne invited me over to her place for dinner. In spite of my better judgement to spare her, I accepted.
When I arrived, I realized Adrienne shared the same house with Gerald, Marie and her brother-in-law Jack. I met Adrienne’s daughter, Katie. Also Marie and Jack’s sons, Dickie and his older brother, Daryl.
Katie was cute and sweet at age two. Dickie was just learning to walk and quite shy. Daryl was a three-year-old asshole.
Yeah, yeah, toddlers are trouble, but it was worse than that. Daryl was mean. The family cat had a new litter of kittens upstairs. After dinner, Adrienne and I were on the couch watching TV. I heard a soft thump-thump … thump … thump … thump-thump, coming from the stairs.
I got up from the couch to investigate and that’s when I found four kittens, eyes still shut, crawling on different steps. Before I could make this compute, another kitten came flying down the stairwell and landed with another thump-thump, as it hit one step and toppled down to the next. I looked up and there was Daryl, perpetual pacifier in his mouth, grinning. I wanted to strangle that little bastard.
I spent a lot of time at that house. Evenings became overnights which became weekends, which became weeks on end. I saw everything.
Everyone in that house drank and smoked pot, except me and the kids. Well, sort of. Marie and Jack thought it was just downright hilarious whenever they would take a huuuuuge drag on a pipe and then blow the smoke in Daryl’s face.
I don’t personally give a damn if someone drinks or does drugs. That’s their choice and if it becomes a problem, then they will either deal with it or they won’t. But blowing pot smoke into the face of a toddler is fucking abhorrent and I told them so. They said I was a prude and told me to mind my own business.
Marie and Jack fought a lot. Like, a lot. Jack was maybe five-foot-four, and 110 pounds wearing lead boots. Marie towered over Jack by at least four inches and had a good thirty pounds on him. But Jack fancied himself a tough guy so he’d talk all this shit about fights he’d been in and his stint as a paratrooper. My best friend then was a former Army Ranger and he informed me that no way in hell would the military let Jack strap on a parachute and jump out of a plane. He’d wind up in Antarctica by the time gravity finally brought him down.
Marie would put up with his antics until she’d had enough, and tell him to shut up. Jack, of course, didn’t take kindly to that. Particularly when he was drunk.
“Make me.”
“That’s real mature, Jack. I don’t need to raise a third kid. Just shut up already.”
“I said make me. Unless you’re chicken.”
Marie would sigh, wrestle him to the floor, and sit on him. He’d call her a fat cow, she’d call him a pussy, and the kids, Adrienne and I would try to ignore them while watching a VHS tape of Beauty and the Beast.
Basically, Daryl was raised by wolves and he acted like it. He would beat the shit out of his brother, which really set me off. Seeing Dickie get punched and slapped and hit in the face with The Cat In The Hat brought me right back to my own abuse at the hands of my brother.
One evening, as I was spewing my judgement everywhere at how the boys were being raised, Marie and Adrienne decided to tag team me.
“You know, I’m not interested in taking parenting advice from an ice-cold asshole,” said Marie.
I scrunched my face and shook my head in confusion. “I’m sorry, what? What the hell does that mean?”
Adrienne joined in. “She’s right. You’re cold. Emotionless. Like a goddamned robot.”
“No, I’m not!”
I got a solid, “Yes, you are!” in stereo.
Adrienne continued. “You’re distant. Don’t tell my sister how to raise her kids. At least she loves them.”
I was stunned, but it’s not like I hadn’t heard this complaint from girlfriends before. Even in those rare circumstances when I would get together with someone, my terror at being rejected kept me from being physically affectionate. I wouldn’t hold hands, or stroke their hair or anything. I’d just keep myself to myself, whether in public or private. I didn’t want to risk offending my girlfriend by touching her.
Plus, after three years with Carina, I’d learned that my emotions, and my self-respect, were best kept locked down.
I knew better than to go fifteen rounds with them, so I just watched Aladdin in sullen silence.
***
One brutally cold night, shit got real between Marie and Jack. They started arguing about nothing like usual. But this time felt different. Maybe it was the fact that Jack was drunker than normal. Maybe Marie wanted to shut him down for good. Doesn’t matter. What does is that this time actual punches were thrown.
In the middle of another round of “Shut up,” and “Make me,” Marie had enough and put on her coat and left. Jack was right on her heels, still in a t-shirt.
A minute later, Marie came inside, slammed the front door behind her and ran upstairs. The open coat showed her shirt covered in blood.
I yelled after her, “What the fuck? Are you okay?”
“It’s not mine!”
Jack followed her through the door and up the stairs. His face was ruined and blood flowed freely from his nose and mouth.
“Jack, what the fuck, man?”
He ignored me.
Gerald decided he’d had all the fun he could stand and left.
Adrienne jumped off the couch and ran upstairs, leaving me with three toddlers.
The kids reacted the way they typically did: by zoning out. It made perfect sense to me because that’s what I did when those two fought. I had learned how to dissociate at a very young age—probably as young as Katie or Daryl—so I decided to let them be. If they were calm, then I had the situation under control.
The screaming upstairs, unfortunately, didn’t stay there. Marie came back down, with Jack and Adrienne close behind.
I stood in the middle of the living room, frozen in panic. I could never handle people screaming. Not at me, not at each other, not at all. Adding violence to the mix sent me into the void where I could see and hear what was happening around me, but I couldn’t move or speak.
Bringing the fight to the living room created a new complication. Dickie and Katie’s thousand-yard stares glazed over. But Daryl got up and tried to get between his parents. Jack backhanded him, sending the kid into the couch. The pacifier bounced and spun on the hardwood floor.
“AAAAAHHHHH!”
Daryl’s shriek broke me loose from my petrified state.
“Oh, hell no, we are not doing this.” I scooped Daryl up and carried him into the kitchen, closing the door behind me as he did his best to make my right eardrum bleed.
I leaned against the stove, gently stroked Daryl’s back, and whispered in his ear.
“It’s not your fault.”
The screaming in the living room droned on, while the shrieking in my ear continued.
“It’s not your fault.”
Finally, I could feel him start to relax with each whisper, as his shrieks became screams, then hoarse cries, until finally he was silent.
“It’s not your fault.”
I don’t know how long this went on. It could have been fifteen minutes or an hour. I’d slipped into a space where I could be conscious, try to comfort this broken child, and hope I could take my own advice. But time stopped.
“It’s not your fault.”
Daryl put his arms around my neck. I could hear his wet breath in my ear and feel his tears as they transferred from his face to mine.
“It’s not your fault.”
This kid. I hated him. All I could see in his casual cruelty was my brother. Daryl’s only point of reference in his three years of life taught him that violence was as normal as his Winnie the Pooh pajamas. When people talk about adults who behave badly, sometimes the more charitably disposed break out that tired old expression: They did the best they could. I’ve never subscribed to that idea. But, in Daryl’s case, he really was doing the best he could. He was three fucking years old. How could he possibly do any better?
“It’s not your fault.”
The kitchen door flew open and slammed against the wall. Marie broke the spell as she came storming in.
“AAAAAHHHHH!”
“Give me my baby!”
I handed him over without a word, grabbed my coat and went back to my place. Then I wept until exhaustion took me.
I avoided that house for a week. Adrienne found me at the radio station.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Where do you think? Not in that fucking house.”
“It’s fine! They made up and it’s cool now. If you were there, you’d know that.”
“Uh huh. It’s ‘fine’ until the next time. They’re escalating.”
“No, they’re not. Jack stopped drinking and they’re going to couples’ therapy.”
“Great. I don’t suppose they stopped smoking pot, though, did they?”
“Jesus Christ, you are such a fucking prude.”
I broke up with Adrienne a few months later when I discovered she’d been cheating on me. Well, actually, I didn’t break up with her. I ghosted her. I just couldn’t bring myself to wade into another conflict.
If Daryl is still alive, then he’s thirty-five years old. I’d like to think that he remembered what I said to him that night. I’d like to believe that something grew in his mind which allowed him to see a different way to live.
But I’ve never believed in Disney endings.