February 9, 2018--Jack's Cri de Coeur

"Don't say a word." It was Jack. "I need to talk."

In the years I've known him he never sounded so vulnerable. He would not reveal that side of himself. 

"Of course," I said, "Anything. I have the time."

"I don't think I ever told you much about how I grew up. I know you know it wasn't a bed of roses. I think you know I didn't get much schooling. That things were such that I had to work from the time I was ten. Not the kind of fun jobs kids do these days at that age say during the summer riding around with their fathers delivering newspapers or something. I mean working to help put food on the table or during the rest of the year working at anything you can find so you can help pay for heating oil. It gets very cold here in the winters. Sometimes if I didn't make enough there was no heat. I put on every sweater I had and tried to sleep while my whole body, even under the blankets, couldn't stop shivering.

"I'm sure you're wondering about my mother and father. What was up with them. If you had a month I can tell you some stories. Not the kind of stories you like to write about. With mine there's nothing amusing or charming. Though here goes--

"The first thing I remember is when my father went to Massachusetts for work. You know there's more cranberry bogs there than any other state. It can seem like the whole state is nothing but cranberries there are so many of them. I know from first hand because some years, when I was older, with a couple of buddies I did the same thing. Rake those berries standing up to you ass in waders. Doesn't make for a happy childhood. But the money wasn't all that bad and they put you up in dormitories. Not the kind I'm sure you know from college or whatever. You did what you had to do.

"But I was telling you about the first thing I remember. About when one year when my father went to the bogs in Harwich or wherever and didn't come home. I don't mean over the weekends but didn't come home for three years. He had become a stranger to me those years when he was away. I must have been five or something like that. I didn't remember that exactly. I guess I could have been six or even seven. Though it doesn't really matter. I don't know why I'm making such a big deal about how old I was. Enough to say I was very young and he went to Massachusetts to work and didn't come home for what felt like my whole childhood.

"Somehow we managed to get by. Just barely. My mother had a friend who took me in. During the days that is. I hardly went to school. The truant officers knew me by my first name. My mother though was able to work stocking shelves at Hannifords. They let people who worked there take home food at the end of the day that was about to spoil so that helped. One year it felt like a lived on chicken salad that was about to go bad and stale rolls. But it cost so much to buy oil in the winter that my memory of that time was being so cold halfway through each month when my mother couldn't afford to have the oil tank filled up. The oil people were pretty good about extending credit so at least we didn't freeze to death. Though I remember one time when it felt as if we would. Maybe that's my first memory. Of freezing to death. Or nearly.

"During those years I forgot I had a father. But then one day he shows up with a big shit-eatin' grin on his face. When he knocked on the door I didn't recognize him and thought he was there, at our trailer, for the mortgage payment. My mom often couldn't make the payments.

"I'm sure this is sounding to you like a story I'm making up from my imagination. Right out of a bad tear-jerker of a movie or something." I was about to assure that it didn't but held back, "I have a vivid one. Imagination I mean. I wasn't much of a reader but from my imagination I made up a lot of stories. Kept me company. But these I'm telling you are all true. As best as I can remember them.

"So like I said he just appeared, wanting to be taken in. At first my mother blocked the door. She had figured out a way of life for us. But I suspect for my sake she stepped back away from the door and let him enter. That she felt a boy needs a father. Even like mine who had disappeared for three years and never been in touch. Forget a phone call. Ours had been turned off. But not even a note or letter or Christmas card. Nothing. Like he had up and died. But she let him in.

Looking back she shouldn't have. Things quickly took a turn for the worse. From it felt like the first day. I didn't know anything about him before he took off but when he came back he brought a pretty bad temper with him. Let me correct that. What he was like was much more than what I'm sure you're thinking of when I say a bad temper. It was closer to violent rages. 

"Of course, like that bad movie, he got drunk every night. Could be he was drunk all the time. He could barely keep a job, any kind of job. The best he was able to do was work for this neighbor who sold firewood. He hired my father to split logs but he wasn't much good at that. In fact, one day he had to be taken to the hospital since he sliced off two of his fingers in that log splitting machine. I'm not making this up. 

"So much for chopping wood. Or anything else for that matter. My mom kept working at Hannifords. She was doing a little better, getting promoted to manage the deli counter. It also became her refuge because after he got home from the hospital all my father did was lie around watching soap operas on TV. A grown man. That's what he did with his days. . . . His life.

"Of course his best friend was the bottle. He somehow managed to get a little disability from the government. He had been in the coast guard for about a year before they kicked him out, but he was good at working the system and got about $500 a month. All went for cigarettes and drink.

"So, like I told you my mother was doing pretty good on her job, but the better she did the worse he became.

"It begin from the minute she got home. By then he had drunk himself to sleep but woke right up when he heard her car on the gravel outside out place. He was hollering at her before she could even take off her coat. Raging at her at the top of his lungs--

"'You slut,' he got right into it, 'So what you been up to all day? Flirtin' around with the other salad scoopers?' His voice full of contempt, 'You still have your shape, that I'll grant you, so I guess all the pretty cheese slicers must be sniffin' after you.' He'd make disgusting sucking sounds, 'Which I'm imaginin' you're havin' a good time with. Knowin' you like I do. Slut that you are.'"

"On and on he'd go. It didn't take long for her to get hysterical. Crying and screaming at the same time. And like that bad movie again, throwing stuff around. All the dishes finally got broke and we ate off paper plates after that. She'd slam the door on the bedroom and lock it but he'd kick it in following her back there. I turned up the voices in my head to try to block out what he was raging about and, to tell the truth, so I couldn't hear her either.

"It went on like that. Day after day, month after month. It must have been only a few months before he became physically abusive. At first just--how can I just say 'just'--well after just that he began to punch and kick her. One night knocked out two teeth. Bloody noses happened all the time and all sorts of cuts and bruises. I was still a skinny kid but I tried to get between them, I mean in front of him to try to get him to stop. But he would just brush me aside. 

"One night thing got so bad, he was screaming 'whore, whore, whore' and drunkily slugging away at her that I ran over to the neighbors--the firewood people--and asked them to call the police. There was no need to tell them the whole story. They could hear the screaming and yelling through the walls of their trailer. They did call the sheriff and they came right over and took my father into custody. But after a few days he was back. And back to his familiar ways.

"My mom had had enough and one afternoon when he was dead drunk and deep asleep on the couch she loaded me in the car and drove us up state to Caribou where her mother lived, thinking she'd take us in. Which she did, but after only a few days he hitched north and found us out. I guess he knew there weren't many places where we could go and hide. 

"Rather then be killed on the spot my mother again gave into him and the three of us drove back home. Home, such as it was.

"Like I said I could go on for hours. But since I've already taken up too much of your time let me cut to the chase. And get to my point. Because I do have a point."

"It's," I began to say and again held back.

"Like I said, my life was like a cheap movie and that's how it ended. Not my life, but his. How his life ended. Simple, one of his drinking buddies who he owed about $1,000 to--who would give him money is beyond me--well, he up and shot him. Right through the chest. Killed him outright.

"Can't say my mother or me were unhappy about that. It was going to be him or us. For once things turned out. So, that's it."

He paused to take a few deep breaths. "Why am I telling you this?" Jack resumed, "That's sort of simple too. Let me read you something that'll help explain." 

On the other end of the line I could hear him shuffling papers. Then, in a monotone, he read--

The first time he called me a "fucking bitch" was on our honeymoon. (I found out years later he had kicked his first wife on theirs.) A month later he physically prevented me from leaving the house. Less than two months after that, I filed a protective order with the police because he punched in the glass on our front door while I was locked inside. We bought a house to make up for it. Just after our one year anniversary, he pulled me, naked and dripping, from the shower to yell at me. 

Everyone loved him. People commented all the time how lucky I was. Strangers complimented him to me every time we went out. But in my home, the abuse was insidious. The threats were personal. The terror was real. And yet I stayed. 

When I tried to get help, I was counseled to consider carefully how what I said might affect his career. And so I kept my mouth shut and stayed. I was told, yes, he was deeply flawed, but then again so was I. And so I worked on myself and stayed. If he was a monster all the time, perhaps it would have been easier to leave. But he could be kind and sensitive. And so I stayed. He cried and apologized. And so I stayed. He offered to get help and even went to a few counseling sessions and therapy groups. And so I stayed. He belittled my intelligence and destroyed my confidence. And so I stayed. I felt ashamed and trapped. And so I stayed. Friends and clergy didn't believe me. And so I stayed. I was pregnant. And so I stayed. I lost the pregnancy and became depressed. And so I stayed.

I knew where this was from. From disgraced White House secretary Rob Porter's second wife Jennifer Willoughby's journal entry.

Jack was silent for what seemed like five minutes, then finally said, "You know my politics" (that I do) "Well, this changes everything. I mean. To have him, this person, this animal in the White House in an office right outside the Oval Office. I mean . . . that's . . . I can't finish the words."

I held onto the phone for what seemed like another five minutes. But Jack had hung up.