Penny Candy

After church we used to stop at a small candy store. It had been converted from a railroad depot and sat by the train tracks in what was otherwise an open field. It was dark and musty and wall to wall penny candy. And it had no name, it was just "The Station". Dad would let us buy gumdrops, licorice whips, peppermints, root beer barrels, up to a quarter's worth and the old man behind the counter would carefully put everything into individual small paper bags, give the tops a firm twist and hand them to us. It was our reward for going to church.

After we got home and changed out of chuch clothes, we would go driving in the old black Mercury station wagon. Dad would lower the seats and spread a couple of old blankets out, we took toys and books and games, and sometimes would pick up one of each of our friends. We went to Walden Pond, or Cedar Hill, or just drove aimlessly. Late in the day he'd stop and buy us all ice cream - it was all on the condition that we not tell our mother what we had done or where we had gone and especially not who we had taken.

Conspiracy is a hard burden for children to carry but somehow we knew and understood all the things that were never said aloud or explained. We treasured those Sunday afternoon drives and silence was a small price for them. But conspiracies have a way of growing and when Dad found himself a girlfriend, it was the most natural thing in the world to keep his secret. I was married by that time and he would bring her by to play bridge - she was a widow - or we would have dinner or drive to her summer house in Maine for the weekend. By careful design, my brothers were both excluded from knowing about this relationship. She was a lovely lady - slim and pretty, soft spoken and well dressed. She shared his love of music and books and was always very kind. It seemed to me that he finally found someone he could talk to and be with, without conflict or humilation, and he was always relaxed and smiling when he was with her. I thought his happiness was worth the sin and even dared to hope that it might be enough to motivate him to finally leave my mother. It was not to be and after the lovely lady died, he stayed the course to the bitter end.

There'a a fine line between loyalty and enabling and he was never able to see the difference.