“She wants what?” I thought of Aunt Janet. A woman swamped by her marriage and the unkindness that had been a relentless, erosive force for decades. Mousey brown hair, blouses buttoned to her neck, plain skirts swirling around a thin figure.
“She wants to spread her wings, flap a little. That terrible friend of hers, Virginia Ross, she’s the one pushing Janet to do more, says that Janet needs to develop herself, become herself, find out who she is through travel and reading and the arts, that sort of psychobabble baloney. She’s a raving, loony, nonthinking, bleeding heart liberal, Virginia is, and I have done everything possible to keep those two apart. I have even forbidden Janet to see her, but she has defied me. Defied me! The woman lives across the street, and Janet will actually sneak over there to visit her when I’m at work. The woman divorced years ago; she travels the world with a group of women, or even on her own, and then tells Janet how wonderful it is to travel, as if Janet could handle traveling. The woman is filthy rich, and for some inexplicable reason, she and Janet have become friends.”
“But doesn’t Aunt Janet need a friend, Herbert?” She needed many friends. And a life.
“Janet is a simple woman, Stevie. You and she have much in common.”
I rolled my eyes.
“She is most comfortable at home, keeping her home in order. She enjoys her role as wife and mother and does not need more from the outside world. She knows her job is to serve the family and be my helpmate. She gets her security and her esteem from her role as my wife. It’s an important role.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, surprised I did. I blinked at my own self.
Herbert stopped mid-rant. “How do I know what?”
“How do you know she enjoys her role as wife and mother?”
He sputtered. “Because I’ve been married to her for forty years. I know my wife. Inside and out. She’s not a complicated person.”
“Maybe she’s more complicated than you think.” Sheesh. Had I said that, too?
“What on earth do you mean by that, Stevie?” he scoffed.
“I mean, Herbert, that maybe Aunt Janet isn’t happy.”
There was a stunned silence.
“Of course she’s happy,” he snapped. The notion that his wife might not be happy was clearly not something he’d thought about. Was she even a person? Nah. She was a helpmate. Did she have thoughts and dreams? No. She was A Wife.
“She’s suffered on and off from severe depression your entire married life. I remember her leaving for weeks at a time when we were growing up.”
“That’s because she was drinking.”
“Have you ever wondered why she was drinking?” Was I still asking questions?
Another stunned silence, then, “Because of her weakness!”
“Maybe she was drinking because she was lonely. Because she felt alone and lonely and you didn’t make her feel loved or important.” I slapped my hand to my forehead.
“Nonsense. You’re sounding exactly like that Virginia across the street. Janet was weak, that’s why she drank. I have strengthened her and we have put that chapter of our lives behind us. I only need to remind her of her drinking years now and then and admonish her so she does not cause more problems for me.”
“Aunt Janet hasn’t had a drink in years, Herbert, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” Was I? No, I wasn’t.
“Yes, you are. And, if this Virginia Ross would stop putting thoughts into Janet’s head, we could go back to normal.”
“Does Aunt Janet want normal still? Is normal good enough for her?”
“Young lady, I did not call you to be questioned. I certainly did not call to talk to you about my marriage. How dare you even offer an opinion. Plan my anniversary celebration, get the invitations out, and send me a report immediately.” He hung up.
The thought of planning a “celebration” of Herbert and Aunt Janet’s marriage made me feel sick.
I had to meet this Virginia person, though. That was a given.
Maybe she wanted another friend.
I don’t remember many of the details of the first five years after I came to live with Herbert, Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly. I was eleven and I was traumatized.
What I do remember is a family meeting Herbert called the third day I was there. Aunt Janet was keening on the couch over the loss of her parents. Lance and Polly sat by her, quietly crying, until Herbert accused Lance of being a “sissy,” Polly a “crybaby,” and Janet “a damn mental case—are you turning into your sister?”
“With Stevie living with us from now on, there’s bound to be questions. You all are not to tell anyone, anyone, what happened to Helen and Sunshine,” he roared. “No one. You are to tell everyone that Stevie’s parents died in a car crash and that I, out of kindness and generosity, have agreed to give her a roof over her head. Snap out of it, Janet! For God’s sake, pull yourself together, woman!”
I shrunk into an even tighter ball on the couch by Lance.
“If you tell anyone our family secret,” he thundered, “you will leave my home. Janet, you will be committed, unwillingly, if I have to, to a hospital. Lance, I will shuttle you off to reform school. Polly and Stevie, you will go to a home for wayward girls. These are not places you want to be. You will have to fight off violent people, blacks and Mexicans and immigrants, every time you turn around. You will have to work all day under exhausting conditions. You will be punished there for the slightest infraction. This is our family secret. Never,” he thundered again. “Never talk about this embarrassment, this humiliation, this shame!”
“What are we supposed to be ashamed about?” I whispered. We were probably supposed to be ashamed that I hadn’t saved Sunshine. I already felt so much guilt about that I could barely function.
Herbert gawked at me, shocked that anyone had even offered up a question in the middle of his tirade. “You are supposed to be ashamed, Stevie, that your mother was a psycho and murdered your sister and tried to murder you! She was a murderer! Your mother was a murderer! That’s why you should be ashamed, Stevie.”
I started to feel dizzy and sick and angry, too, and I wanted to eat.
“Now you listen to me, young woman. Your name is Stevie Barrett from now on. We’re hiding the sordid realities of your life. Never, never, tell anyone your other name. That name can link us to that scandal through the newspapers, and I won’t have it! Your other name is gone, dead. That life is gone. Dead. Dead! You are Stevie Barrett. Your name is Stevie Barrett!”
I saw him through a haze of devastation, the room starting to spin. I didn’t like that name. I wanted my name.
“Your name is Stevie Barrett! Say it!”
I shook my head, my curls swaying against my cheeks.
“Your name is Stevie Barrett!” He stuck his face three inches from mine and shook my shoulders, hard, my head flopping back and forth. Aunt Janet leaped to my defense; Lance tried to pry his fingers off, as did Polly. He shoved Lance to the floor, “you sissy,” then lifted Polly, “you crybaby,” and Aunt Janet, “you mental case,” and threw them to the couch. Aunt Janet’s head smashed into the wall.
“You say it right this minute, young woman, or you’ll go to your room with no food.” Uncle Herbert’s breath was foul, enveloping me.
“No.”
He shook me again, pain splitting up my back and neck.
“Say your new name!” He was purple with rage.
“No.”
“You will not win, I will win! I will win, Stevie Barrett!”
That night, he won a slew of vomit down his suit and tie from me.
I was locked in my room, only allowed out for school, despite Aunt Janet’s defense on my behalf, for which she was slapped. Each night Herbert came upstairs and shook me. “Say your name is Stevie Barrett! Say it! You’re your sick mother, aren’t you, in younger form…argumentative, stubborn, difficult, emotional! Say your new name!”
&nb
sp; After three months, exhausted, grief stricken, scared to death of Uncle Herbert, who shook me so hard my neck constantly hurt, I gave in.
“What is your name?” he roared, slamming his hands on the wall above my head, as usual. “What is it?”
“Stevie Barrett,” I whispered, feeling this broken horror invade my heart.
“Say it again,” he shouted. “Say, ‘My name is Stevie Barrett!’”
I paused, and again he shook me until I thought my head would fling off.
“My name is Stevie Barrett,” I whispered, the sobs coming up in my throat.
“Say it louder!”
“My name is Stevie Barrett,” I said, the sobs rocking my body.
“Louder!”
I didn’t say it louder, I couldn’t, the sobs making mincemeat out of my words.
He stood back. “I am the head of this household. I have taken you in as my duty. You will not defy me again. You will do what I say, when I say. Do you understand me? Do you understand me?”
I did.
I understood.
I understood I wanted to die.
If you could line up the family secrets in this country, word by word, undoubtedly the words would wrap themselves at least twice around the entire galaxy. Most families have them. But here’s what I know now: Family secrets rot and destroy. They become living, breathing, black, infected, seeping messes.
We had a seeping mess on our hands in that house that stretched into our adulthood. Me, Lance, Polly, and Aunt Janet rarely mentioned what had happened on that bridge, that night, under that eerie red-gold haze.
I almost died that night on the bridge, physically and emotionally, and then this secret, clinging to our family like mildew, darn well did me in. There was no one to talk to, no one to heal with, and no one to cry with, so the darkness was able to wrap me up tight. I shut down and out in that mausoleum/home.
I hardly spoke at all, but I did eat.
In Herbert’s cold, controlled, dark mansion, in the midst of a sweeping expanse of lawn trimmed to almost psychotic perfection, groomed trees, and bushes whacked into submission, I ate my grief.
On my walk the next morning through the rain, I noticed Jake’s truck leaving his house. He always drove the other way down the street, the opposite way I was walking, so I let myself daydream about how gorgeous he was. Shoulders like a tractor, huge smile and white teeth, lanky build, lanky walk. My breath caught thinking about him, a flutter in my breasts.
He pulled out of his drive, started to turn in the opposite direction as usual, stopped, and then, and then, he drove straight toward me.
What?
What?
This was breaking the expected rules!
I glanced around for a hedge to jump over, a trash can to leap into, a wheelbarrow to crouch behind. Rain was dripping off my rain hat, I had no makeup on, my rain pants were soaked, and I resembled a drowned muskrat. He came closer and closer, and I tried not to stare at his truck, tried to walk, as if I was a normal person, not half in love with a neighbor I wanted to stalk but didn’t because it was creepy.
“Hi.”
Oh. My. Goodness. There he was, leaning out of his truck, blond and friendly.
I tried to speak. Speak, throat! Speak!
“How are you?”
Speak, throat! Speak!
“It’s a little wet today, isn’t it, Stevie?”
Ha. Whenever he said my name I thought of sex. Then I thought of him naked. In his truck, naked with sex. I coughed. Please speak, throat! Please speak!
“Yes, it’s wet.” Ahhh, brilliant. I was so brilliant.
“Want a ride back to your house?” He grinned. I could get lost in that grin. It was open and gentle, not scary.
“Well, it’s wet.” Ahhh, more brilliance! Once again, I stunned myself.
His green eyes looked a mite confused, but he didn’t stop smiling. “Yes, it’s wet. Do you want a ride?”
Did I want to ride him? Naked? In the truck? Yes, I did. If I wasn’t bad in bed and if I didn’t have a scar in an anchor shape across my front, I would leap with joy to ride him. I was a boat, without the boat. A graphic image of naked Jake filled my rattled brain, rattling it more.
“A ride?” Where did he want to ride to? “You mean because it’s wet?” My. I could strangle myself. I could reach up with my own bare hands, wrap them around my neck, and squeeze….
“Yes, hop in. I’ll drive you back to your house.”
I wanted to hop on him. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. Is it sexist to be this overcome with passion whilst gazing upon a man? Was I reducing him to a sex object, not a person? Did it matter?
“No?” he asked.
“No. Yes. No.” Please, my hands, do your work on my neck. “Yes.”
“Okay, then.” And then, Jake, huge Jake, with shoulders the size of a tractor, got out of his truck, smiled at me, the drowned muskrat, and waited.
Move, feet. Move! My feet shuffled along, and I walked around to the passenger side of his blue truck, my head down. If our gazes caught, would he know that I was thinking of him naked? If yes, would that sicken him?
He opened the door for me.
“I’m wet,” I said, before climbing into the truck. My brain was fuzzy, filled with Jake heat.
“I can see that.” He was so close to me, so close, and he smelled like soap and mint and musky aftershave.
“I’ll get your seat wet.”
“Stevie,” he said, his voice quieter, “I don’t care at all.”
“You don’t care?”
“I do care,” he said, his voice still quiet. “But I don’t care about my truck getting wet.”
I took a deep breath, peered inside that truck, then at him, and I saw that he had hazel flecks in his green eyes and they were rimmed by dark green, and I swear I saw gentleness in them, and humor, and I smiled. I did. I smiled at him.
And in that rain we smiled at each other.
“Please?” he said.
And then, more brilliance, I said, “Please.”
He nodded, a mite confused once again and I don’t know why I said these next two words, but I did.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “I mean, thank you, I mean. Yes. You’re welcome.” Oh, I could die. I got up on the seat and he leaned in and said, “You’re welcome, too,” and sort of chuckled, and closed the door.
And while he walked around to his side, his lips still smiling, I said to myself: Strangle your neck before you make a fool of yourself.
I have an obsession in my garage.
A garage is not a bad place to hide an obsession.
It’s rather dark, you don’t invite friends over to hang out in it unless you’re a beer-slugging guy, no one wants to peer inside at your rakes, and you can lock the door and keep people away.
My obsession is not something I relish showing to other people, as it is a close-up examination of the inside of my brain, which, it seems to me, is a labyrinth of near-boiling emotions, my tenuous hold on sanity, sticky memories, swirling hopes, and eerie creative rants. I envision sometimes a man followed by a mob of cameramen and an uncontrollable crowd gathering in front of my garage doors. They’re laughing, voyeuristic, nauseatingly nosy. The goof points to the doors and shouts, “Who wants to see those doors open?” The crowd roars.
He shouts again, taunting them. “Who wants to see those doors open?” The crowd roars even louder.
I am off hiding behind my pink cherry tree, cowering, begging them not to open it, gnawing at my nails and slobbering in fear.
The doors open. There’s a loaded silence, and then…laughter. Gut-wrenching, rocking-back-and-forth, leaning-on-each-other-for-support kind of laughter as my obsession is revealed.
So what’s in there?
Chairs.
Chairs piled up, chairs hanging, chairs at odd angles. Chairs in pieces. Chair legs stacked in a corner, and chair seats propped against a wall. In the center of this mess are my heavy work tables, a reciprocating saw,
a band saw, a jigsaw, a scroll saw for my detail work, clamps, a lathe, wood glues and gorilla glue for problem joints, wood pegs, and battered furniture that I take apart. There are chisels, hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools scattered about.
Odd, isn’t it?
I rebuild and repaint battered chairs. That is my obsession.
I scour garage sales here and in other cities and towns for old wood chairs, benches, and rocking chairs. I am especially fond of antique school chairs and the chairs and desks that are attached together for students. I do not do high chairs. Too painful.
I haul them home, strip them down, and clean them up, or I build them completely from scratch with odd angles, swirls, and waving designs.
When the chair is, what I consider, naked, I sit down and talk to it. Thankfully, I still realize this is crazy. I am hoping I always realize this is crazy, but my genetics may not favor that end result.
I ask this type of question: What makes you cry? What was the worst thing that happened to you in your childhood? What have you become? What did you hope you would become? How has life surpassed your expectations? What are you disappointed about? How do you see yourself? How do you think others see you? Who’s right on that? What do you feel guilty about? What’s your worst flaw? What makes you laugh? What do you daydream about?
Pretty soon I get an idea of the chair’s personality, its desires and quirks, that sort of weird thing. That’s when I name the chair, as if it’s a person, based on its physical characteristics. I’ve had a Priscilla, Big Dwayne, Happy Flower, Mr. Stud, Russel, Yao, Enrique, Dr. Maya, Queen Clementine, Blaire, Bear, and Pole Swinger. At night, I think, I plan, I twist and turn that baby in my head. With my insomnia, I have plenty of time.
If thoughts of a woman in a yellow floppy hat, a bridge, churning clouds, drowning, or an impish face with an upturned nose and freckles intrude, I force myself to think harder about that chair.
For example, Tammy Q, a wood chair that came to me black and peeling, was lonely—starkly, utterly lonely—and alone. She never felt truly connected to anyone. She was always the one who didn’t fit in. So, I decided the chair should embrace that part of herself, the not-fitting-in part. I painted the whole thing purple, then took off the old, squarish seat and used a jigsaw to cut a piece of wood into a jellyfish shape and painted it neon pink. To the back I added green wings with rainbow feathers and painted the legs black and white checked.