In the provincial Pennsylvania town where I grew up, no one had divorced parents. The parents might be alcoholics; they might beat their children; their children might sell methamphetamine to neighborhood kids, but the parents stayed married. Only my friend Sue's parents were divorced, but they had been since before they came to that town, and her mother was ignored by the other parents, as if she didn't exist, in her modest house that was like all the others.
Later, Sue, who had a powerful voice, who was a promising musician, became a drug addict and then severely anorexic. I hope she is ok now. I don't know. When I went away to college, I left that place, and almost all the people, behind, fleeing for my life. And after my mother died I did not return there, but for a few times, and then with dread. My memories of it all are too sad, too anguished, for their to be any happy returns.
After my father left, my mother too became a pariah. It was bad enough that she had a college education and was Jewish: she already was an oddball. Now she was a divorcée. Some of my friends were no longer permitted to come to our house, as association with the likes of our family might taint them. But many of my friends loved my mother, and sometimes I would come home to find Cristi hanging out in our kitchen, talking to Mom and smoking, because that's what my mother did. When she wasn't crippled by depression she was a great talker, charming and vivacious and smart, and she smoked like a chimney.
So from that point on, everything changed. I was afraid to go to school because I did not want to tell anyone what happened. Because if I opened my mouth to speak, no words would come out and I would fall apart. I begged my mother to let me stay home, but she said no. "You must be strong and not let this change our lives." She, however, could not live by those words, and she fell into a deep depression; I would come home from school to find her lying in the dark on the sofa, the curtains drawn, in mid-afternoon. My father did not give us enough money. No more piano lessons for me; no vacations. I went to school, swam on the swimming team, and worked at whatever jobs I could get. I gave money I earned to my mother to help with the expenses.
I remember staring out the window that day, while my father told us that he was leaving. We all sat at our long dining table, as if we were about to have a meal. The rain dripped onto the broad panes of glass, obscuring the trees and grass outside. All I could see was the tangled web of my mother's numerous houseplants; the window was wide and deep, a bay window, and it was filled with plants, crawling over each other to get the sun. As my father told us he was leaving the rain turned the yard to mud and soaked the brown winter grass.
I realize now that I was already suffering from chronic depression at that point--I had been ever since early childhood--but it got worse. My behavior became more wild and my drug use increased. My mother could not manage being a parent, and she left us to our own devices. My father got married again and started a new family, leaving us behind. I wish that now, as an adult, I were recovered from all of this, that I could simply look back on it and think of it as over and done. But I blame so much on him. My mother would not have gotten sick and died so young if her spirit had not been broken. My family would not have been splintered apart, each of us drifting apart from each other like wounded animals. I would not flee as soon as I was able, first to college, then far away to Chicago for more school. I might be happier; I might have recovered from my depression. I might not feel abandoned.
I am glad that I am able to write this, because it shows that I understand the past, at least in part; but I will never understand what leads a parent to abandon his own children and start over, with no word of explanation. I will never understand why my mother had to die so young and suffer so terribly in the process. But maybe I will understand myself.
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