For better and for worse, till infidelity do us part - Part Three

Near the end of the marriage, Dad began to suspect that my mother was being unfaithful. His sense of unease intensified one Friday, late in 1984, when he received a strange call from her while he was at work. “You better not be home late tonight”, she warned, “I’m going away for the weekend. I won’t be here when you get home.”

Dad returned home to find Rae gone, and Melissa and I looking after our baby sister. It wasn’t the last time she would leave us alone together, and I never ceased to find it terrifying. The weekend passed without Dad knowing where his wife was, until she phoned him on Sunday night. She said she had had car problems, was stuck in Wellsford, and would have to stay in a motel. Dad then discovered (by means he cannot remember) that Rae had been away with one of Rhys’ friends, Peter. Although Dad did not know it, Melissa had previously discovered our mother and Peter on the couch in an embrace. Rae paid Melissa ten dollars to keep her mouth shut. While Melissa didn't get paid the second time she caught them, she still kept it to herself.

Rae returned on Monday morning, as Dad rushed out for work, with no time to confront her. But that night he told her that he had made an appointment with a lawyer for Thursday - the marriage was over. The day before the appointment, Dad was at work in a boardroom meeting when he heard a commotion in the office. Dad walked out to find two suitcases full of his clothes on the floor. A secretary told him Rae had stormed in and dumped the cases, shouting “Tell that fucking asshole not to come home!” In a masterful move, my mother took the high ground, creating ambiguity around the real reasons for the separation. But my father’s colleagues probably knew enough for Dad to not be in danger of losing friends and support.

As of that moment, my father had moved out for good. When my mother announced that Dad had left ‘us’, not her, but ‘us’, I felt abandoned and deeply hurt. “What had I done”, I wondered, “to make him want to leave?” I struggled with chest pangs that I now identify as grief. At school I burned with the shame of a child who came from a ‘broken home’. I had been demoted, in my own mind, to a lower rank of child, just above the bastards, but well below the legions of children from stable homes.

My mother must have had regrets. Soon after the suitcase debacle, she called Dad. There was a prowler at night, she told him, and the girls were scared. (Over the years, she repeated the prowler story. She was unfortunately frank with us about her fears that somewhere out there lurked a man, waiting to peep through our window, or break in and harm us and I was often paralysed by the fear of what stirred outside the window.) Dad agreed to come and stay a couple of nights. What she told her children was, “Daddy’s coming home”. I was buoyed, hopeful, cautiously elated.

When Dad came home, Rae tried to seduce him. What ensued was heated, but not reconciliation - they argued vociferously over a phone call Rae had made to Dad’s cousin, accusing the man of meddling in her marriage. Dad left.

Oblivious to what had just passed, I ran home from school that day, desperate not to waste precious time that could be spent welcoming him. Dad’s car was not in the driveway. I ran a bit faster. The front door was wide open. I tore up the stairs, calling out to him, and paused. It was quiet. Why hadn’t he called back? Where was he? A sense of dread crept up from my stomach. I searched every room. I found my mother in a bedroom in the far reaches of the house, draped over some cushions on the floor, sobbing.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s not coming home.”

“Why?”

“We had a fight about your uncle.”

For a long time I believed it was that argument that ended their marriage, and I would go over it again and again in my mind. Everything was going great, why give up after one silly argument? What about my uncle could they possibly have to argue about? I found it intensely frustrating. I felt powerless and useless. When they were together, Melissa would always attempt to play peacemaker when they quarreled. She bargained and pleaded with them. She inserted herself to remind them that there were children to consider. I always felt a bit useless then too. I didn’t have her words or confidence. The best I could do was attempt to cry like she did, but I had to fight for those tears. I felt like a spectator. I was remote, and my parents seemed far away. The space around me shrank and pressed against me.

When my mother told me there was not going to be a happy ending, I felt numb, and mildly sick. I can’t remember whether I cried, I probably did, but I do remember thinking that my happy life was over. I had a sense that life was going to get particularly hard from that moment. And it did.