AT LEAST I DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE...

When I was twenty, I went to California to spend two weeks with my father and his wife of three years.

It was the second such visit, and she and I had formed our bond, both of us quite pleased to have someone new in our lives to smile at and be familiar with.

I was not the obnoxious stepdaughter, and she had not turned out to be the wicked stepmother.

Five years earlier, my father had kicked off every resented restraint of my mother’s Baptist family and his own loose ends that would never be tied, and began living life as long as his longings in northern California.

Jack and Flo found each other.

She was a spunky widow from New Jersey who owned a ladies’ wear store, and dressed in leopard skin prints whenever possible. After a few years of delicious second chancing, Flo had been diagnosed with cancer for the second time and was given a year and a half to live.

I remember so clearly the day they told me.

They had picked me up at the Oakland airport and drove the 45 minutes home with Flo in the front, turning to smile and chat all the way. Once home and freshened up, we sat with our gin and tonics in the living room; they on the new couch, I on the new loveseat. Flo was wearing a very feminine long lounging dress in aqua and pink. She smiled at me and said she had something to tell me. Still smiling, she told me of her diagnosis and prognosis.

Let’s see now, that pretty dress, big smile, nice furniture, and death.

Incongruous. I would believe it when I had to.

These were dangerous people.

They were on their last lap and were determined to make it a good one. I was swept into their plan to do everything that might cross ones’ mind during the next 25 years—right now.

I often found cause to take solace in the thought that occurred to me too frequently on my visits to Jack and Flo, “At least I don’t live here.”

Sometimes I think its best to tell yourself you don’t live where you live.

You have more adventures that way, and you can always leave town.

During that visit, I met a young man with long California vowels, blonde hair, bronze tan, motorcycle, the perfect swimming pool, and best of all, parents who were in Europe. An insecure girl from Esquimalt becomes Gidget. I photographed the entire scene in my head, and it almost made up for grade nine.

All good things…

Andrew’s parents returned home, and “who’s been swimming in my pool?” became a dinner invitation to my father Jack, my stepmother Flo, and me. Such a good and right gesture. I was struck with pure, cold dread.

Flo’s chemo treatments had left her weak, and she was unable to come. Oh no. Without her smoothing charm, the loose cannon aspect of Jack was a genuine threat, but I had no choice.

We were going to dinner.

At 20, you can pull on any long dress and look good. That might help. Jack had been building a gazebo for Flo that hot afternoon. After his shower, shirtless and shaving, wearing his good seersucker suit pants, he absentmindedly whisked from his cheek a drop of blood and wiped the red finger on what had, 20 minutes before, been his old work pants. “SHIT! Oh well, I’ll just keep my jacket on.” It was not jacket weather.

Here we go, I thought. Not a good start.

Jack and I drove to the better part of town, the bedroom community in which the houses grew large and lush on curving cul-de-sacs. One look at their house and I could feel my father’s discomfort. It prickled the air all around him. Although he had a quick mind, many talents, and looked like Robert Mitchum (a macho movie star). Jack’s lack of monetary success weighed heavily on him at times like this.

Andrew’s mother greeted us with a huge smile, and the words, “Isn’t this fun?” She reeked of arty. Very natural in an affluent way; no makeup, no teased hair or dark roots, and the body beneath the hand-woven caftan gave no hint of itself. No sexuality here.

This was not Jack’s kind of woman.

Andrew’s father looked annoyed. It seemed to me that all very accomplished and clever people looked like superior souls trying hard to be patient with the rest of us. Here was the proof.

We were all seated at the mission style dining table: Andrew, his parents, his two older brothers, Jack, and me. It was set with the chunky flatware and dark ironstone plates that were the style of the day. There was no music and no conversation. Just the austere clink of metal on stone. The silence was more than uncomfortable. I concentrated on eating nicely.

Yes, a small goal for each moment.

What happened next was unbelievable and horrific. (I judge how bad things are by how long it takes until they’re funny. This one has taken 38 years, and even now it’s only funny sometimes.)

With no provocation or warning, the deep, booming, assured male voice of my father let loose the words, “I’m a BOOB man myself!”

He would have been happy if the guy across the table had exclaimed, “I’m an ASS man!” and someone to his left had piped up, “Me? I’m a LEG man!” Then everyone would laugh.

Camaraderie established. Mission accomplished.

But Jack’s words just hung in the air, right over the table. He had cast his cloak of crudeness over me, over my soft 20 year old skin, over the pretty dress I had thought might save me.

He had been tall and slender, fit and fine, a champion gymnast, a race car builder and driver, handsome, well spoken and very funny. Now, with all of his wins decades behind him, he had replaced his confidence with an x-rated stand up routine.

Sometimes it worked. Not this time.

I’m here to tell you that floors don’t open, because God knows, I begged.

In the awfulness of the silence that followed his declaration, “at least I don’t live here” was little comfort. Now he was giggling beside me, eyes wide, brows up, looking for me to support him in this move to ‘get things rolling’.

Keep in mind that at this point we were on the salad, and the evening stretched out before us like a vast, treeless landscape of doom.

It was a train wreck, folks.

From there on in it was bad, but not worth writing down or reading about. I honestly don’t remember if I saw Andrew again. Life with him would probably have included a perfect swimming pool, but not one story worth telling.

Gidget returns to Esquimalt, leaving behind the sunshine, the swimming pool, the young man, and the dinner from hell.

It is more than a memory. More than a story.

It is a one-liner that takes ten minutes to tell. It is a part of my history that I had no control over.

I was just there.

It’s about the man I loved and longed to respect. I cringed at his crudeness while wanting to support and protect him. There are many other stories that I have tried to see as potential stand-up material because, well, what else do you do with it?

Many special occasions cheapened, and oh yes, the ubiquitous brandy snifter resting comfortably in his palm.

This story is a part of me; a part that struggles to coexist with the clean beauty of word and image that is my Stonehenge of choice.

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It is funny, isn’t it?

Sometimes I can’t remember if it is very funny

or very sad.

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By Catherine Moffatt . First Published in Island Gals Magazine . 2012 . Volume 2 . Issue 4 .

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