Those Wanton Years

Those Wanton Years

written by: Joseph Amendolare

 

The snow that year started first week of December and seemed to come every other day.
We were all suffering an abominable case of influenza.

She crawled up the stairs to where I lay on a mattress coughing up gobs.
“Please,” she begged, “for the sake of the children.”

It was enough.
Perhaps I could make up for my sordid past.
I went out to a store.
Packets of chicken soup, the kind where you add boiling water.
Bacon, eggs, marmalade, bread, orange juice, brei.
Off-the-shelf children’s flu medicine.
They could be nurtured back to health, given care and the passage of time.
I made her a cup of tea.
She looked at it.
“Just drink the tea,” I said, “and don’t hand me any bullshit.”

Before this all came to pass.

My pregnant wife took my 18-month-old son and left me for a hotel room.
They would stay for a month.
I drove to a whorehouse operated by two Filipina sisters.
Up the steps in their miniskirts and high heels.
Something was lying on the floor.
Couldn’t really tell.
Had long hair.
It eventually revealed itself as a bare-chested man in blue pantyhose.
“What,” I asked sister #2, “the hell is that?”
“Oh,” she whispered back, “it’s a slave. We beat him and in return he cuts the grass and does work on the house for us.”
Cages, whips, candles, an X-shaped cross.
Good clean fun.
They let me take a shower.
Got home, I took the wedding rings, cut them up with a pair of diagonals.

Much later, they had to stop the contractions.
It was far too early.
They admitted her.
On a weeknight I put my son in the car.
Drove over to visit her.
A woman from my insurance showed up.
Long murmuring conversation outside in the hallway.
Don’t worry. She’ll have her own room. Everything is covered.
Then she left.

I went back in to my wife and son.
“You really,” she told me, “don’t want to be here, do you.”
“That’s not true,” I told her.
“No,” she said, “I had a dream. You were cutting up bodies and burying them.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, “and you know it.”
“It’s not,” she replied, “that you’d actually do something like that. It’s a revelation. Your tools, your methods. How you manipulate others.”
I wanted to leave.
I told her we’d be back tomorrow.
Took my son home, let him watch Finding Nemo.
Then I put him to bed.
At 4 AM he woke me up.
“Mommy,” he was calling out, “Mommy.”
I held him in my arms.
“Mommy’s not here,” I told him. “You can see her tomorrow.”
I got him back to sleep.
I lay there myself.
Weeping hot, bitter tears.
I can still be saved.
I told God.
We can still be saved.

Our daughter came the first week of February.
I was called at work.
“It’s time,” I was told. “Come as soon as possible.”
Walking the floors of the hospital together.
Darkness gathering outside.
The baby arrived at about 7:30 in the evening.
I almost fainted in the delivery room.
“What color,” I asked the nurse, “is her hair?”
“Black,” she said.
I felt relief.
A week earlier I’d seen a little girl with red hair.
She’d had Down’s syndrome.
She’d smiled at me.
I went downstairs.
Outside in the rain smoking a cigarette.
We named her Hannah.
Which means “favor,” or “grace.”

There followed a few years of peace and stability.

One summer she stopped talking to me.
Suddenly.
It went on for a few months.
She’d have the kids in the stroller.
I’d pull in from work.
As soon as she saw the car, she left the kids and ran away down the block.

Maybe it was the receipt I’d left in the glove compartment.
Had my credit card number on it and I was afraid to throw it away.
Moonlight Bar.
No matter how much persuasion a 300 Euro bill could not be explained.
The email she’d come across where I was negotiating with an escort.
For sexual services.
The history of porn in the computer browser.

On Labor Day weekend I cornered her in the kitchen.
“Neither of us is leaving this room,” I said, “until you tell me what’s going on.”
She smiled back at me.
She somehow finds this amusing, I thought.
“I don’t,” she started, “even know his name.”
I smashed my coffee cup on the tile floor.
“You know what, I’ve tried hard,” I said, “to make up for the wrong I’ve done.”
“Yes,” she said, “you have.” She smiled again. “Yes. I know you love us. I know that.”
“What, then,” I asked her.
“It’s not that you don’t love me,” she said. “It’s that I don’t want to be loved by you.”

For weeks afterward I stood before a crucifix.
Reciting Psalms aloud.
Repentance.
Forgiveness. Mercy. Compassion.
Pleading.

A few months later she took them and left.
They boarded a plane for her home country.
On a cold, almost freezing day, a taxi came for them.
To the airport.
It was the last I saw of my children.
Tiny faces behind the windows of an SUV.

I looked around at the vacuum they left.
Plastic drinking cups in the shape of cute animals.
Piles of children’s books.
The empty playpen.

It’s been almost 20 years now.
I’ve not seen nor heard from my family ever again.