When I started writing this letter, my intention was to just say howdy, and introduce myself and invite you to listen to the spoken word/music project I produced which was a result of the influence your writing has had on my life. That’s all I had in mind. Even though most people write to you for advice, I didn’t think I needed any, at least at present.
Then, a strange thing happened.
A few weeks ago, I had to leave a place where I’d been living for a couple of years, as a caretaker on a wildlife refuge. I had to leave because it had gotten weird and not very healthy anymore and not really very safe either. And even though I’d known that for a year or so, I hadn’t been able to rouse myself enough to move. And I couldn’t figure out why either. Then, it finally got messed up enough that I got scared, and ultimately had to ask some friends to help me out. That was all okay, except the question came up about why I’d stayed so long and put up with it. Legitimate question. But I didn’t have an answer.
Once I moved, I had some time to think. I’d been trying to find some time to think for six years but it had never worked out. I’d been living in dingy basements or converted garages that flooded all winter or with roommates that broke wine bottles off on the kitchen counter and went after each other. In other words, not environments that did much to foster introspectiveness.
While I was thinking these past few weeks, I felt like I was circling and circling around something, something that might hold the key, so to speak, for what was up with me. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a long time and wasn’t expecting any sure-fired solution.
But I was surprised this time. It was something simple.
I got up one morning after a night of vivid, lucid dreams like always, and just sort of knew I was going to figure it out. And I sat down to work on this letter, like I said, expecting to write something entirely different. All of a sudden I realized, that I needed to tell someone about something that happened, something I’ve never had the courage to tell anyone before because it’s a horrible thing that happened. Then I thought, well tell CT. He gets letters like that all the time. He’s a keeper of secrets. He obviously has somewhere to stash them.
When my older boy came home from the Marines in ’02, all of us, my whole family, met up for a reunion at a big old lodge outside of the city. On one of the evenings when my son and I sat up after everyone else had gone to bed he told me this: One night, fifteen years or so before, while I was at work, my husband, his stepfather, held him by his feet out of the upstairs window. He was about twelve and my younger boy, who saw it, was seven.
I worked evening shifts and that year I think I was waitressing. So I got home around 10 and the boys were in bed like always but maybe, I realize now, not asleep like I would have assumed.
I try and figure out how I missed it, how I didn’t know. Because I never, ever thought he was hurting the children. How does a mother miss something like that?
I asked my boys why they didn’t tell me, and they said it’s because there was nothing I could have done. Or that I would have killed him. Or maybe myself. Or that I would have just gone crazy. And I suppose, in a lot of ways, they’re probably right about that. I don’t know. And then our lives would have undoubtedly been even worse.
There’s some obvious holes in this story. Like why wouldn’t I have called the police, for one. Well, I would have. And they would have come over, and they would have listened to the kids and they would have listened to him and they may or may not have arrested him.
Not too long after I finally did leave him, after the boys were nearly grown, they told me I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off any earlier. They’re adamant about that and from time to time I ask them if they’re still sure and they say absolutely and it helps me feel better to hear it. They surprised me when they first told me this. I hadn’t ever considered it that way, as any sort of triumph. I’d always seen it as the end of years of failing.
It’s complicated.
But this is the tricky part for me. Even though I have to, I can’t leave it there. Instead I think, as intuitive as they are, as close as we are, my boys don’t really know me. Because I would never have stayed, had I known, would never have not called the cops. And while he was in jail, or not, I would have sold my guitar and my grandmother’s quilts for cash and I would have left my best dog with a friend and the other dogs behind, and I would have gone to one of those organizations that helps people like we were and rented a place in a different name in a town he wouldn’t think of finding us in. And I would have gotten us counseling and the kids in new schools while I worked and we would live jittery and looking over our shoulders all the time but eventually enough time would pass and we would start living less scared all the time.
Which is, basically, what did happen. Just not that particular night.
But then this whole thing starts looping and it’s infinite. Because there was a point when the cops did take him to jail. And he was out in hours. And then my best dog disappeared, and somebody picked her up seventy five miles away on the interstate. And the way I realized he’d broken the restraining order was when he slammed open my closet door where he’d been hiding all night and woke me up. There were several rooms in the upstairs of that house that were bad ones to get cornered in because the windows were the only way out and it was a straight drop to the ground. My bedroom was one of them.
Now the loops starts over at the window.
I don’t know which window he hung my son out of. He didn’t say.
And then I’m back to that night again, and I have called the cops and they either took him or they didn’t and if they did he’s already out of jail and maybe there hasn’t been enough time to get the kids in the car or maybe he intercepts us at my friend’s when I’m dropping off the dog, or maybe it’s months later, years. And any of these scenes may or may not involve his .30-06.
It’s not like I go over it and over it in my head. I don’t think about it. I don’t let myself think about. I’d go crazy. But it’s still always there, anyway.
We came through it, though. And I’ve been keeping a close eye on my boys ever since, because even though we are out of that danger I wasn’t sure how they’d process it, whether they’d process it at all. But they did. They’re all right. Their lives are full of love and good people. They’re kind and have integrity.
But me? I would have said, had been saying, that I was doing okay even though I was living with horrible anxiety and panic attacks and nightmares and other weird, subversive obstacles; I was working through it, getting better, I was managing, trying to. Then, when I started writing this letter it all became more clear: I keep trying to pay for that mistake, and for all the others that I assume my sons haven’t told me about yet. Ever since that night we sat up talking and he told me that, it’s like part of me just shut down. And I started living out this, well destiny almost, believing that when anything bad happened, it was because I deserved it, payback I guess. When my stupid roommates got drunk and got in fights I didn’t move because I didn’t value myself enough; my safety wasn’t important because I had failed to keep my children safe.
Maybe now that I’ve realized all of this I’ll stop those things, stop living that way. Maybe now I’ll have an answer when people ask me what (the hell) is wrong with me. People like my brother, my sister-in-law, friends; I’ve felt them shaking their heads for years now, not out of disgust or even a whole lot of frustration I don’t think, just concern. I’d just shrug and say I don’t know. But I can already imagine it, living without dragging this secret around with me everywhere I go.
The other night I helped a friend with a house concert. The musician had her family with her and her youngest son had turned six that day. When she started playing, her little boy walked past me where I was sitting on the stairs and sat at the kitchen table and put his head down in his arms. I think he was probably about to start to cry. I caught the eye of my friend’s son and nodded toward the table and he went over and cheered the kid up right away. I always notice stuff like that. Maybe I believe I can’t afford to ever take my eyes off a kid again. Maybe it’s because I’m hoping it will aid in my redemption.
So that’s the letter I didn’t set out to write you and now the one I did: I read your writing each day because it gives me ideas, it makes me feel better about myself and it gives me courage and hope. “Behold California, the New Jerusalem!” The title to one of my stories is “Banishment” which I snagged directly from something you wrote. I would like to tell you fully how important you’ve been, and I think you’d get it because you’re a writer and you spend time alone and you may have “friends” yourself you’ve never actually met but I can’t. I’ve tried. But every time, it creeps towards sentimentality which is yucky and turns the page all gooey and then my mind gets mushy and I click on The Carpenters and my writing day is ruined. So instead, I hope you’ll believe me: You’ve helped me turn my life around.
I wrote several other letters before this one, to friends, all of whom know me from the life I was living during the time this project was incubating. And while writing those letters, I realized that they are, in some ways, a part of the project also, that the letters ended up being an extension of the story. I’ve included some here.
Thanks Cary.