Choose Your Battles

Choose your battles, an Alanon friend once said to me, You can't fight on every front at the same time.

I relay this to Michael – currently at war with the IRS, our former website designer, our advertising agency, the asset-grabbing company who is laying claim to his house, a dozen or so deadbeat ex-clients, four dogs and of course, two defamation of character lawsuits – and he just growls at me and changes the subject. We are hip deep in trying to make sense of deductions for his back taxes and his mood is black. He desperatley needs to get health insurance but he can't appply without knowing his income. He can't know his income until we finish going through a year's worth of shoebox receipts and bank statements. Everything he needs to do to salvage the business costs money he simply doesn't have. It makes me think of my dear friend, Tricia, and her theory about why cleaning out closets is such an impossible task. She always tells me you can't clean out the closet until you've cleaned out the drawers and you can't clean out the drawers until you've cleaned out the cabinets. You can be defeated before you even start and Michael, who has – to be kind – a kind of Scarlett O'Hara mentality about anything and everything he doesn't want to deal with, is a lost cause. He puts all his troubles neatly into tomorrow and then out of his mind. It's a fine policy until the invariable moment when they all bubble back to the surface and explode like an untended pressure cooker. Denial is a comfortable and low effort strategy but it does have its limitations, which of course, you can deny once you get really good at it. Practice does indeed make perfect.

After a few hours, we are both bleary-eyed and beginning to be bad tempered. It's a welcome distraction when the puppy breezes through – once with a Gucci dress shoe clutched in his teeth, once with a roll of half eaten paper towels – I discreetly relieve him of both and don't even scold him. On his third pass, he's dragging an obstinate doormat.

Let him have his fun, Michael says tiredly and I congratulate myself on not telling him about the Gucci loafer.

It's a choose your battles kind of world.

Puffery

The tattered copy of Webster's Pocket Dictionary was one of my most prized possessions and I kept it hidden beneath my pillow and out of the clutches of my brothers who I was sure would have ripped it spineless just for the mean thrill of it. Being a greedy reader, I constantly ran into words whose meaning I didn't know and being an adept eavesdropper, I was always hearing new words from adult conversations. I loved language and the written word, Susan Howatch's prose - oh, those msytifyingly mile long sentences punctuated with colons and semi-colons and those paragraphs that were nearly essays unto themselves - I read and re-read everything she wrote in her very British novels with her very British characters and as she herself might have written, Darling, it's just too divine! The language was a story in and of itself and though I had to turn to my little Webster's frequently, it was worth every carefully chosen and elegant word.

I was curled up on the davenport with a book and my Webster's tucked neatly into my back pocket when Aunt Jenny arrived. She and Nana immediately closeted themselves on the sunporch and it seemed to me that Aunt Jenny looked as though she'd been crying. They kept their voices very low and at one point, Nana left the sunporch and returned with the brandy bottle and one of her delicate sherry glasses. Brandy in the middle of the morning was unheard of - actually, brandy anytime was something of a shock, no one in the family except my Aunt Helen seemed to care for it and Nana only kept it for what she called medicinal purposes, like the time Aunt Vi had seen a mouse behind the cookie jar and fainted dead away – so naturally I was more than a little curious. My grandmother poured Aunt Jenny a second glass and not long after she walked her to the sidedoor, gave her a reassuring hug and watched her walk down the front path and turn toward the canteen. Jenny was neither a small nor a fragile woman but at that moment, she looked a little of both.

Nana? I ventured cautiously, What's wrong with Aunt Jenny?

Nothin' that somebody beatin' the life outta that no account husband......she began angrily then stopped abruptly, Never you mind, child. You ask too many questions. Get your jacket and we'll go pick up Ruth. She's going to spend the night.

I brightened up considerably at that and tried to put Aunt Jenny out of my mind. I was young enough and easily distracted enough that it didn't take much effort.

Ruthie was surprised to see us and Uncle Norman didn't appear thrilled at letting her go but my grandmother could be a force to be reckoned with and she ignored his grumbling and scowling, telling him in no uncertain terms that Ruthie was leaving and would be returned after church the following morning. She didn't say whether you like it or not but we heard it just the same and I had an idea he did too. He shrugged indifferently and gave us all a dark look but he didn't try to stop us.

All bullies are cowards at heart, Nana said and shooed us into the old Lincoln. There was something kind of grim about the way she said it but Ruthie and I, chattering away like a couple of monkeys, didn't pay it much mind.

For some reason that I can't remember, we were just us three for supper and Nana outdid herself. There were scallops - pan fried in butter and melt in your mouth good – fresh sweet corn and perfectly ripened, garden grown tomatoes. Dessert was still warm gingerbread with real whipped cream. It was, in the vernacular, to die for. Afterwards, my grandmother pulled out her knitting and against my better judgement (I wanted to play dominoes but Ruthie wanted to play scrabble and Nana pointed out that she was the guest so scrabble it was) we set up the board and she creamed me. I made “horizon” and was feeling prouder than a barnyard rooster for the double word score plus the 50 points for using all my letters. Ruthie thought for a moment then calmly added "t-a-l” on a triple word score. I made “puff” with my next move and Ruthie added “e-r-y” which I immediately challenged by pulling out my little dictionary. And lost.

And the fat lady sings! Nana laughed, which was a peculiarly nonsensical remark that she said we'd understand when we older. Then she packed us off to bed.

Lotta help you were, I snapped at my little Webster's and threw it under the bed instead of beneath my pillow. Before Sunday School the next morning though, we had just enough time for a forbidden-on-Sunday game of rummy and I buried her in three hands. Between Ruthie and me, that was the way things were.

That was the week that Aunt Jenny left Uncle Norman for the first time. Of course she went back after three days, earning a black eye in the bargain which she tried to conceal with makeup and dark glasses.

I was beginning to think that the whole adult world was puffery.

Small Slights

In my family, there were no small slights. Molehills were routinely made into mountains and fiercely – if not always fairly – defended.

On Saturday mornings, my pale and shaky mother sat at the kitchen table to smoke, drink, and make her shopping list.

I want Cheerios, my brother announced loudly and pinched my arm.

I want cornflakes, I said louder and gave him a rough shove.

Snap, crackle, pop! my youngest brother shouted, drowning us both out and running off before either of us could turn on him.

My mother sighed audibly, reminded us that we were a great trial to her. When it came to her children, “Not what I bargained for” was one of her favorite phrases. More than once, one of us would suggest that she trade one for another. “Don't tempt me” was her standard response. It was never said with a smile.

That afternoon when I got home from the library, her car was not in the driveway and the house was, though I didn't realize it at first, suspiciously quiet. Hoping that she might've made egg tarts – or even better, brownies – I crept through the dining room and into the kitchen.

When I turned the corner, it took several seconds for what I was seeing to register. The water in the sink was running full force and had overflowed onto the floor. The refrigerator door was hanging crookedly open, off its hinges, its contents in shambles. Drawers has been pulled out and ransacked, both the upper and lower cabinet doors smashed and brutally dented. The windows on the back door were smeared in what I was sure was blood but turned out to be nail polish. The wall mounted telephone had been ripped from it's moorings and lay forlornly in a heap of cords and wires on the kitchen table. I took a dazed step and heard crunching sounds under my feet – two boxes of Raisin Bran had been slashed open and emptied over everything – the knife was still sticking out of one empty box impaled on the table. Discovering I suddenly couldn't breathe and positive I was about to throw up, I turned and ran.

There were three things I knew.

The first was that there was no doubt who was responsible. The only person in the household capable of this level of wanton violence and destruction was my brother.

The second was that the farther away I was when it was discovered, the safer I'd be.

The third was that there would be dire consequences, not just for my unhinged sibling, but for the entire family.

I mounted my old bike and rode the two miles to the refuge of my grandmother's house, looking over my shoulder at every light and intersection. I stayed two days, missed school that Monday and earned an afternoon of detention but I'd have gladly spent the rest of the school year there than risk going home. On Monday evening, my daddy pulled up in the wheezing old station wagon and brought me back. The kitchen had been cleaned up and there was no sign of the damage I'd seen. My mother had taken to her bed and my brother, so my daddy told me with a deep sigh, was staying with friends.

For how long? I wanted to know, unable to keep the hope out of my voice.

Indefinitely, he finally said wearily, Best not to mention it again.

And in the best traditions of denial and secrecy, I never did.

Kill Fridays

I've been happily divorced for years and still I sometimes get nightmares, not so much about my ex-husband but about some of the things he did.

We killed the shelter animals on Fridays. Young and old, puppies and kittens, full grown dogs and cats, sick and healthy, stray and owner surrendered. Some were injured or maimed, all were unclaimed or unwanted. They were too much trouble, barked too much, kept having litters, wouldn't housebreak, were destructive, demanded too much time or attention, didn't get along with the other pets, were too small or had grown too large. It was wholesale slaughter.

I watched my husband inject them without the slightest hesitation, without the slightest hint of any emotion at all – no pity, no regret, no anger or sadness – and then toss the bodies into a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow was emptied into a truck and the truck was emptied into a landfill. It tore my heart out. Thinking about it still does. What was almost as bad was that the man I'd married was unmoved, cold as ice, before, during and after. I didn't wonder that he got knee-walking drunk on Fridays, I thought in his place I might very well drink my own self blind, but then I remembered there were six other days of the week when he didn't kill animals and still drank himself sloppy and stupid.

We left Florida under a cloud - a considerable amount of cash had gone missing from the shelter and the man I married was the only suspect - I defended him blindly and violently but in my heart, I knew.  I don't remember how I made restitution but  I did and we fled.  In those days, I still believed in the idea of a geographic cure - mixed with a fatal fear and a powerful dose of denial - and I told myself another fresh start was all we needed.  What I knew in my heart was slowly making its way to the surface but it would take several more years before I came to face to face with it.  I flinched at what it looked like fully grown, at what I had allowed it to become.

In unguarded moments, I think back to those killing days.  The wheelbarrow, the bulging truck, the landfill and the casual, blank and unmoved expression on my husband's face.  It was a long time before I understood that I was thinking about death and he was thinking about his next drink.

Beware of the temptation to look into the dark corners of your soul, I remind myself. Sometimes something looks back.

And then here I was all these years later, half heartedly looking for an old friend from New England, playing with the idea of maybe reconnecting and catching up, when I came across the name of my second ex-husband.  Curiosity, a troublesome little gremlin in the best of times, reared it's seductive head and before I could change my mind, I'd tapped the search button. Happenstance, I told myself, nothing more, just an unfortunate misstep on the keyboard.

There weren't any details, sordid or otherwise, just a five year old death notice with the dates of his beginning and end and the name of a small Kentucky town I'd never heard of. To be sure, it made me wonder and for a fractious second or three, I even considered shelling out a fee to dig a little deeper. Had he gone back to his first wife? Did he finally drink himself to death? Had he managed to reconcile with his children? Did he suffer? Was he, at the end, sorry for the pain he'd caused or the endless broken promises? Had he been forgiven? Did I care enough to want to know?

It turned out I didn't. The bad years are still fresher in my mind and sometimes I think that the good ones were an illusion.

I haven't seen or heard from since the day in the courthouse when the divorce decree was granted. He passed me in the corridor and for just an uncomfortable second or two, our eyes locked then he turned away. I wasn't so full of hate that I didn't notice how shockingly thin he had become, how there was so much more grey in his hair and how his face was hollow, his eyes sunken and sad. My first thought was he was ill, grievously so. My second was he still had no more affect than a corpse. I shuddered at the thought and left the courthouse. Neither mercy nor forgiveness were in my vocabulary that particular day.

Then, just as now when I tapped the delete button, I wasn't in the mood to celebrate exactly. But I wasn't in the mood to mourn either.

Conrad's Cat

Conrad's cat, a lanky, striped old tom with a bob tail and six toes on each paw, was the primary reason he lived alone. The cat, who went by the unlikely name of Roger, was as ill tempered as he was battle scarred, and not known for his affability. Over the years he had learned self sufficiency and while his main target was the drying racks of salt fish the factory workers laid out, he was a proficient scrounger. He prowled the fishing boats and the general store for scraps and was often seen stalking the gulls. No matter whether it slithered or skittered or took wing, Roger had become a lethal and non-discriminating hunter. He had driven off not only Conrad's dogs but two common law wives and it was widely believed that he was possessed of some sort of truly nasty tempered demon. It wasn't until after the incident with the Sullivan boy though that the real rumors started. Conrad had conjured the old cat, so the whispers went, he was gifted with eternal life, couldn't be killed and was too mean to die.

The Sullivans were a roughish, fatherless clan known for cruel pranks and petty crime. They tended to travel in a pack and were generally given a wide berth by islanders. One of the youngest, a cross eyed and hostile boy named Harry, was a well known bully, infamous for his underhanded fighting tactics and inability to hold his liquor. Apart from sheer meaness, nobody knew what made him take a notion to throw the rock at Roger but throw it he did, catching the sleeping cat square in the face and tearing fatally at his eye socket.

That cat was bloodied and madder'n a hornet, Uncle Shad reported gleefully, But he come at Harry like three kinds of hell and opened up the side of this face like a tin of sardines and then like to bit half his ear off. Ol' Harry took off runnin' anad caterwaulin' like the devil hisself was on his shirttail!

Dumb as dirt, that boy, Nana sighed, Only a Sullivan would pick a fight with a damn cat.

Another inch one way or the other and the ignorant fool'd be seein' outta one side of his face the rest of his miserable life, Rowena complained, Damn shame I could save his eye and not Roger's.

Harry licked his wounds for a few days, laying low til the talk died down and the swelling in his face eased. Meanwhile, Conrad and Rowena fashioned a black eyepatch for Roger and to their surprise, the old tom accepted it.

Don't he look like a right smart pirate, Conrad laughed.

Ayuh, Rowena nodded and grinned, Looks a damn sight better'n Harry Sullivan, I'd say. You watch yer back, Connie. Harry's meaner'n a snake and I got me a feelin' he ain't done with this yet. Mebbe keep Roger in for a spell.

It didn't take long.

Harry's first attempts at retribution were clumsy, almost laughable. He left a trail of mousetraps across the yard and Roger walked and twined through them with the precision and grace of a ballet dancer.

He set a snare baited with mackerel and then fell asleep waiting. Roger effortlessly stole the fish and left the bones.

He stole a frozen venison steak, coated it with rat poison and threw it in the yard. Roger walked by it, sniffed delicately and then turned his back and sprayed it copiously.

His last attempt was creeping through the yard with an ancient Colt revolver tucked in his pants. Roger watched impassively until Conrad appeared in the front window with a double barreled shotgun.

Boy, Conrad rumbled, You take one more step and I reckon I'll blow your kneecaps off in so many pieces you ain't never gon' walk again. And I'll feed what's left to the cat. Now git your sorry ass off my property and don't you ever bring it back!

That was the moment, so Uncle Shad later told Nana, that he learned the meaning of the word “skulk”. Harry Sullivan crawled away and disappeared into the warm summer darkness but by then, Conrad had had all he was going to take. Shotgun in tow, he paid a visit to the entire Sullivan clan and made it unmistakably clear that Roger was off limits.

Lemme put it this way, boys, he told the startled family, This is done. If'n that cat gets as much as a hangnail, I'll be acomin' after each and every last one of you. Harry done started all this nonsense, but I'll be the one to finish it. Don't care much how you rein him in, but rein him in you'd better. I don't take kindly to folks interferin' with what's mine.

To Ruthie and I, listening intently from Uncle Len's front porch across the road, it was as if we'd stumbled into a dusty old western movie. Conrad had become an instant hero and we hung on his every word, knowing instinctively that as witnesses, we might be called upon to recount the details of the showdown. We wanted to be accurate. We were also, I'm ashamed to admit, hoping for some fireworks, hoping that maybe it was the day Harry Sullivan got some of his own back. As is happened though, Harry's brothers found his feud with a cat – Sweet Jesus, a cat? one of the elders sneered scornfully - laughable and a little shameful.

Boy's a hothead, Connie, he said calmly, but we'll tend to him. You ain't gon' have no more bother 'bout it.

Conrad nodded agreeably and shouldered his gun.

Sorry to have troubled you, boys, he smiled, 'Preciate your time.

Whatever happened to Harry after that stayed locked up behind the walls of the Sullivan house but the clan was true to their word and Roger soon resumed his travels uninterruptedly. After some discussion with Uncle Len, Ruthie and I were persuaded to keep what we had seen to ourselves.

Ain't no need to fuel the fire, he told us firmly, and I reckon your grandmother'd be tannin' both your hides if she was to know how close you come to a man carryin' a gun. Don't 'pect it would do me much good neither, come to think of it.

We protested the unfairness of having such a good story and not being able to tell it but Nana's wrath would be nothing to sneeze at, we knew, and sometimes you have to cut your losses. We took a step toward the adult word and let deception and discretion carry the day.

Zero to Apocalypse in Three Seconds Flat

One minute I'm having a perfectly civilized conversation with a client and the next I'm in the middle of the apocalypse. A woman with a chubby little weiner dog on a leash has actually dared walk down the sidewalk in front of the house and all four dogs go mad and mindless, overturning furniture, charging panic-stricken at the doors and windows, furiously tearing down the curtains and barking as if the end of the world is on their doorstep. The poor – and until this point, unsuspecting - telephone repairman innocently at work in the other room cowers behind Michael's desk. He's brandishing an industrial sized flashlight protectively in front of him and his eyes are as big as saucers.

Don't panic! I shout at him as I pass, It won't last long!

He doesn't look reassured so I backtrack and shut the connecting door before heading down the hall to break up the riot. At first, it's a little like wading into a swamp of defiant alligators but once the little weiner dog is out of sight, the dust settles and with another deadly threat neutralized, all four dogs crowd around me looking proud and self-satisfied. I herd the two little ones and the old pit upstairs, right and re-attach the crashed gate, and then lead the cur dog back into my office. It's several more minutes before I remember the telephone repairman and by the time I give him the all clear, he's aged a bit.

Does that happen often? he wants to know, peering out at me apprehensively.

It sounds worse than it is, I tell him and shrug, You get used to it.

He shudders and shakes his head, nervously re-attaches the flashlight to his toolbelt and after several over the shoulder backward glances, resumes his inspection of the junction box. I have the distinct feeling this minor brush with the dark side has made him anxious to finish and make his escape and I can't say as I blame him. I often have the very same feelings.