Everything started because Dad loved his brother.
Aunt Helen ran off with the gardener and Uncle M went off the deep end, just a little bit, because it turned out Paris Whatshisface wasn’t just a gardener, but some long-lost son of Troy Industries, old Priam’s kid slumming it in a post-college haze of indecision and adultery. Paris was young, younger than Uncle M, and he had money and looks and Aunt Helen didn’t need the family anymore, just left Hermione with her dad and packed up the Jag and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. Uncle M drank a lot, after that. Dad helped.
Mom stayed in the background during all of this, helping with this charity and that auxiliary function and generally ignoring Dad’s drunken call for war in the kitchen, sitting at the center island with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows while they drank whiskey out of heavy-bottomed glasses. They were going to steal Troy Industries’ best people, their best clients, all as payback for what Paris did to my uncle. “Sparta won’t take this shit,” Dad slurred, “Sparta – Sparta’s made of fucking warriors. Troy won’t even see it coming.”
Mom brushed past him on her way out the door and didn’t object when he rested his hand on her hip. She was wearing lipstick again, dressing nice, wearing heels. We thought our parents were working things out; we didn’t know that our father’s ridiculous plans for a hostile takeover would actually be put to use, we didn’t know how our mother would react to any of what was to come. We didn’t know she was already drifting away.
Continue reading “my mother, she killed me; my father, he ate me”
Rach (Out Loud) 