They
buried my stepfather, Chester, Saturday. I did not attend. Nor did I see him in
the hospital before he died. Those two decisions haunt me. I felt I was doing
the right thing, but now it feels like I broke some moral code that may cause
bad karma to come my way. But to acknowledge that thought is to recognize that
I'm really only worried about me, and not his death, nor the damage my absence
might cause to my son and daughter, who were with him in the hospital when he
passed, and stood shivering at the gravesite on that cold, gray January day.
I suppose
I should've been there. It would've been the right thing to do. But I could not
make myself go because of my stepsister, Maggie. I could not bear the thought
of dealing with her again. There was actually a short, brief window of time
when I could've seen Chester in the hospital without the worry of seeing her.
Before she left the hospital that night, she even told my son that Chester was
my step-father just as much was he was hers, and that I could come see him if I
wanted to. But there's the rub, isn't it? In our family, or our family's
business, she always felt that she had the right to call the shots.
Odd that
she didn't know he was going to die that night. I knew it and I wasn't even
there. My son knew it. Obviously, my daughter knew it: she drove more than an
hour to be by his side during his final moments. Perhaps my sister did know it
and didn't care to be there: she went home the night our mother died. She had
to tend her cats. Or maybe she left the hospital in hopes that I could see Chester
before he passed. For I had spoken to Chester a couple of times in the last few
years, but it's been six or seven years since Maggie and I spoke. We had
another one of our endless family arguments over the phone while I was on
vacation in Florida. I don’t even recall the details. I do remember saying
that’d be the last goddamn time she’d ever talk to me like that. I haven’t
talked to her since. Nor has she talked to me. Upon the few occasions that I
had to dial their house, Chester answered the phone.
To say
the three of us had a troubled history is like saying the Vietnam War was
only a skirmish. My mother was the fabric that held us together. She owned the
business, and we were all dependent upon it. While my mother was alive, all the
fights were generally quieted by her begging, moaning, crying, screaming and wringing
her hands in torment until we all retreated and hid behind the mask called
family. That shroud ripped to shreds when she died; the canker busted and the stench
of decay still burns my nostrils.
In my
opinion, Maggie always hated me, and Chester just wanted me gone. He was eight
years younger than my mother. She'd been married four times before he put a
ring on her finger. She was herself only a teenager and married to her
first husband, Jay Lawrence, when she adopted Maggie. The reason, or reasons,
for that adoption were, and are, shrouded in mystery: my mother took them with
her to her grave.
I was
four or five years old, and Maggie 11 or 12, when my mother married Chester. The
first night I met him, he ran over my puppy, Pongo. I shouted out, over and
over that I hated Chester. Not a good start to a relationship.
My
memories of Maggie are strange and cloudy. I really don't recall her being
there much when I was a toddler, although she is in family pictures. There was
a brief period of time when I lived apart from her in Indianapolis, with my
mother and my real father. During that stint, Maggie lived in Kentucky with my
grandparents, who ran the family business. Maybe this is where her hatred for
me began. No matter how you paint the picture, her adopted mother left her and took
me, her actual son, with her. My mother and father were too quick tempered and
too strong-willed to stay together, so our stay in Indianapolis did not last
long.
My first
vivid memory of Maggie came sometime after my mother and I returned to Kentucky
and moved back into my grandparent’s house. Maggie and I were in the living
room. I have a vague recollection of looking out at the snow, which was plentiful
during those harsh winters of the early 1960s. Maggie somehow tricked me into
going outside on the front porch. When I did so, she locked the door behind me.
The world was frozen, still and silent; it glowed with a soft, beautiful dull,
blue hue. I was cold and shaking and had no coat or shoes. Our house was built
like a duplex and had two front doors. I tried to open the other door, but it,
too, was locked. I trudged through the snow and walked down our driveway to the
back porch. My feet were frozen by then. The backdoors were also locked, so I
returned to the front of the house. With each step, the snow swallowed the
bottom half of my legs as I made my way back to the door Maggie had locked
behind me. The door had a huge, rectangle glass pane in the center, surrounded by
small, three-inch wide panes around its outer exterior. I could see her though
the glass. She sat in the living room writing in her notebook, as if she'd done
nothing wrong. I begged her to let me in. She sat unconcerned, never once acknowledging
my presence, as if I did not exist at all. Finally, in desperation, I broke the
outer pane with my bare fist, reached my hand through to the inside and
unlocked the door. She pressed against it, trying to keep me out, but I shoved
my way inside. She came at me with a pencil. In my anger and rage, I snatched
it from her and jabbed it at her. She held up her hand to defend herself. I stabbed
it with one, quick stroke. To this day, she still carries a mark the lead on the
palm of her hand.
Maggie
denied locking me out of the house. She told my mother and grandmother that I
had gone berserk, broke the window and stabbed her for no reason whatsoever.
I'm not sure if Chester was there that night, but he tended to always believe Maggie.
I'm sure her accounts of that night might be somewhat different; but
nonetheless, in my opinion, that night set the pattern for our
relationship.
For the
next 40-some-odd years, we all endured one another. There were countless fights
with Chester’s usual threats: "I'm gonna call the law on you." And
the police were called. They always left, shaking their heads, thankful they
did not belong to this war-torn tragedy. There are so many battle stories to
tell, such as the time I was playing drums with my eyes closed and Chester backhanded
me off the drum stool, and the time he thought he was going to get on top of me
and beat me, but I broke his arm when he went to hit me, or the time he slashed
my head open with a belt buckle, requiring several stitches. I can't remember
the lie my mother made me tell the doctors at the hospital. And then there was
the night that he hit my mother; I didn't say a word to him, I just picked up a
kitchen knife and threw it at his head. He ducked and it stuck in the wall directly
behind him. I was impressed with my accuracy. He was not. “That goddamn crazy
son of yours could’ve killed me,” he shouted to my mother. “He needs to be
locked up in the damn loony bin.” That was always the line: I was crazy. But …
he never hit my mother again.
I’m sure
there were fights I started, too. Especially during my amphetamine laced years.
My mother had a “diet doctor” in Louisville who supplied the best speed I’ve
ever taken. Chester rightfully called me out on stealing her pills. So I, too,
was no saint.
Maggie,
at times, was helpful. I remember her loaning me money to go on vacation once.
I never had any money to speak of. I was paid only a pittance from the family
business. I often felt like a beggar. And there were times when I was married
to my first wife that Chester would bring several boxes of groceries to my
house at Christmas. That was nice, but it never escaped my attention that I
worked just as much as he did and that he and Maggie and my mother had the
money to buy groceries, and I did not! My mother always insisted on big
birthday dinners, so whenever any of us blew out the candles, we put on the
façade of a family. And I worked in the wrought-iron shop daily with Chester for
years. But everything that was done was damn sure done his way. He always made
it crystal clear that he was in charge. But in actuality, he wasn't. My mother
owned the business. She inherited it from her mother and father, who had
started it. Neither Chester nor Maggie had any blood connection to it, but I
did. Anytime I tried to discuss the legalities of business, such as
suggesting that my name should be included in the ownership, or how I should be
able to buy health insurance through the business, or expand the business, I
always got the same reply: “Don’t you come up here starting that shit,” Chester
shouted, sometimes slobbering at the mouth. “I’ll call the law on you, you
goddamn crazy little son-of-a-bitch. You get the fuck out of here or I’m gonna
have your ass arrested.”
I’d go
home. My mother would cry. Then the next day a job had to be put up, and I’d go
back to the shop.
As soon
as my mother died, the fake facade of family immediately fell away. She left
the business to all three of us. Before my mother was buried, while she lay
inside the funeral home, Chester came up to the car as I was pulling out of the
parking lot. Maggie stood directly behind him while he informed me that he and Maggie
were not going to abide by my mother's will, and that they were not going to
share the business with me.
I think that was the breaking point. I'd had it with them then. I
should've fought 'em. As a matter of fact, my attorney later told me that their
attorney had not correctly interpreted the will. It actually read that they had
to pay me a percentage even if I opted not to work in the business. But after
one of the meetings in the law office, the two of them gave me a ride home in
their truck. Maggie spoke in a soft, smooth drawl, insisting that they were
doing what was best for me. That was
always their line when they wanted to shut me up. They offered to buy me out. I
sold my part of the business to them for a song. Some five or six years later,
the business that had worked several employees, fed and clothed us, and sent us
on countless vacations finally closed its doors. Now the old shop stands as a
tomb, a monument to a forgotten and useless war.
I suppose I should have gone to the hospital and the graveyard and bid
farewell to my old enemy, but I could not make myself do so. For that I still
feel saddened and troubled and heartbroken. Perhaps someday Maggie and I will
speak. Perhaps not.
Bernard
M. Plumlee, Jr.
January,
22, 2014
Mate... Your writing is very, very good. Missing a few relatives funerals of my own, I was totally absorbed in your story. You should really consider a book of some type either fact or fiction.. I'm sure it would sell well. Hell.. you should see some of the kids books I read that are total crap and if those abominations sell, you'd really be able to cash in. Just my 2 cents.
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