The same words February 28, 1985
Here again.
Debating the chance of taking Ritchie out of the hospital,
knowing deep down it is fundamentally a mistake, compressing my life into a
single room and responsibility for a man I have largely come to hate.
Maybe hate is the wrong word.
Yet, looking at him I struggle to avoid seeing the past open
up, a psychologically bloody past where I hid in my room in the old house day
and night to avoid seeing or hearing his drunken lectures, and from our mutual
madness.
Not just his, mine, too, the whole house had it.
My mother had it worst; she couldn’t function at all. But
the whole family struggled to survive in society, seeking a place where we
could fit in.
Early on, Ritchie did best (even if it took alcohol to
achieve it) because he could set his own agenda, working at his own pace,
isolated from society with his tape measure, hammer & nails and saw.
The rest of the family hated him for it, and perhaps still
do. They envied him and his life style, criticizing him for his drinking and
other bad habits, how he came in late at night, raided the refrigerator for
leftovers like a scavenging rat, the frying pan spurting with cooking of spaghetti
or previously cooked chicken, dishes, pots and utensils left in the sink for
Grandma or someone else to clear in the morning.
Anyone could follow his trail of cigarette ashes through the
house so as to know where he went first, next and last, and how he left piles
of work-stained laundry in various places for grandma to collect.
Most of these complaints, made under their breath, each –
perhaps with the exception of Frank – nowhere near tough enough to confront
him to his face.
When things went too far and a fight broke out, he would
growl back that he paid more into the family kitty than anyone else did to live
there, and that he’d been paying since he started work at 15 when most of the
others didn’t start paying until grandpa died, and not regularly either.
Ritchie assumed money could make up for all the
inconvenience he caused, the use of phone, the messages other people had to
take, the threats from angry husbands of the wives Ritchie violated while
working alone with them as a carpenter.
Ted and Harold complained that the phone was for the boat
store, not Ritchie’s business.
The whole thing hurt Ritchie, hitting that part of him
nobody saw but me, that need to remain a part of the family, and how different
things were back when the old man (grandpa) was still alive.
Yet none of these things bothered me.
I hated those late nights when Ritchie came home drunk and
found me sitting in the living room watching TV or playing records on Frank’s victrola
in the dinning room, those times when he insisted I wasted my life and wanted
to know how I could be more productive. This lecture leading into some other
lecture until all the angry words piled together into a single feeling of rage
inside of me.
I could not get up and leave. I had to sit and endure,
struggling to turn my attention to something else in the room, the feel of the chair fabric against my skin, the smell of boat
motor exhaust left over from testing in the afternoon, the sound of my
grandmother stirring in the master bedroom above as she got ready for bed, the chill air from the inquinate oil heat
working its way up from the boiler below,
the hateful thoughts echoing in my head I knew I would regret later when he was
gone.
I felt cramped inside, part of me tightening with guilt as I
accepted his judgments as real. Maybe I should have been doing something
useful, productive, maybe I was as worthless a person as he claimed me to be.
I didn’t realize until much later that he was only repeating
words his old man (grandpa) had once said to him, and strangely words similar
to those I use whenever he is here with me, as I struggle to keep him from leaping
into the river again.
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