In many ways, really, Harry only had himself to blame. He’d been a good man, most of the time. He’d been there for Phyllis when her husband died years earlier, had comforted her, helped her settle the estate, taken her to dinner, invited her, and her son, to join him on trips to California and Mexico. He’d treated Richard like he was his own son. Harry loved the boy, there was nothing fake about it, and Richard, who so desperately needed a father figure, loved him right back. If anything, it was the bond between them that persuaded Phyllis to let Harry move in with her, and eventually accept his proposal to let him be her second husband.
She should have paid more attention to the signs. There was something not quite right about Harry. Before their marriage, his obsession with record-keeping, with saving every receipt — he had six-year-old receipts from donut shops, for crying out loud — seemed like nothing more than charming eccentricities. In fact, he’d be a real asset at the bar, making sure the books balanced. But there were other things. Those books where he recorded everything he ate, in that small, precise handwriting of his, always making note of the date. Didn’t matter how often folks at Patchett’s teased him about it. It hadn’t occurred to Phyllis back then that maybe Harry was obsessive-compulsive.
Maybe, if that had been it, things would have been manageable. But there were the mood swings. One day he’d want to take her and Richard to the movies or the outlet mall to spend some cash, and then the next he’d be plunged into the depths of depression. And with the depression, there was often anger. And drinking. He refused to see a doctor — let alone a psychiatrist or psychologist — but Phyllis figured that in addition to his OCD tendencies, he might be bipolar, or manic-depressive. As time went on, he became a compendium of psychiatric tics.
At his low points, nothing was too trivial to find fault with. Lights needlessly left on, getting in the car after Phyllis or Richard had used it and finding less than a quarter tank of gas. Phyllis had to make sure the spoons stood up in the drying rack so water wasn’t trapped in them. Made Harry crazy when that happened. He believed Phyllis and her son discussed him behind his back, which, of course, was true.
On rare occasions, there was violence.
Like the time Phyllis lost the phone bill. Harry, who paid the bills every two weeks, couldn’t understand why it wasn’t with all the others. He searched the trash and determined that Phyllis had inadvertently pitched it with the junk mail. Harry was apoplectic. In a fit of rage, he grabbed her by the wrist, held her hand flat on the kitchen table, and slammed a mug down on it.
No broken bones, but she couldn’t move her hand for a week. Harry was instantly remorseful. Became the world’s most attentive husband. Made all the meals for days. Bought Phyllis flowers. Took Richard to a Bills game to prove he was a solid stepfather.
But he couldn’t hold it together indefinitely, especially if he’d had too much to drink. Sometimes it’d just be a slap. And there was that time, while behind the wheel, he punched her thigh when she thought she’d left an iron plugged in. (She hadn’t, which only further exasperated him.)
And yet, in spite of everything, Phyllis and Richard did not hate the man. Phyllis made apologies for him, said they had to cut him some slack. He was a tormented person. He’d served in Vietnam, seen things no one should have to see, done things no one should have to do. Often, in the middle of the night, he’d wake up screaming, the mattress soaked with perspiration, as he relived some horror from over there in the late sixties.
“Harry served his country,” Phyllis often said, “and it left him scarred.”
Phyllis had her hands full with Richard, too. Maybe, when your real father dies and you’re just a boy, it messes up your head. Or when you get a new dad who’s got a slew of problems, you find a way to inherit them, even though there’s no genetic link. Who knew? But as Richard moved through his teens, he showed signs of not being able to control certain impulses. There were those two incidents — at least two that Phyllis knew about — where he inappropriately touched some girls at school. Okay, call it what it was: fondled. There were meetings with the principal, apologies, a suspension. Luckily, nothing more than that. And then there was his propensity to erupt in anger. Calm and serene on the surface, but simmering underneath, like lava bubbling in a dormant volcano. Then, boom. Phyllis wanted to take him to see someone, too, but Harry wouldn’t hear of it. “He’s just a boy,” he said. “He’s burning off steam.”
That’s certainly what happened that night, seven years ago.
Harry was in the grips of the black dog, as Winston Churchill had famously said, and had been that way for the better part of a week. Phyllis and Richard had tried their best to steer clear of him. Phyllis was looking after Patchett’s on her own, insisting that her husband stay home until he was feeling more up to it.
One Monday night, when the staff were trusted to run Patchett’s so that the Pearces could have a night off, after Harry had recorded in his notebook what Phyllis had served for dinner — pork chops, macaroni and cheese, and canned peas, as it turned out — he announced he wanted ice cream.
Phyllis said they had no ice cream. Harry wanted to know how this was possible, since he had prepared a shopping list for Phyllis and he knew he had written ice cream on it.
“I missed it,” she said. “I’ll get some next time.”
“What is the point,” he wanted to know, “of my writing things on your shopping list, if you’re not going to look at it and read what’s on it? Maybe you got it and forgot.” He rooted around in the freezer atop the refrigerator, knocking frozen steaks and containers of Minute Maid orange juice onto the floor. “Goddamn it.”
“Harry,” Phyllis said.
Richard watched this play out, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, arms folded across his chest. A member of the Griffon police department for only a few months but still living at home, he hadn’t yet changed out of his uniform after a day of writing tickets and directing traffic at an accident scene.
“Is it too fucking much to ask that we always have some ice cream in here?” Harry asked, tossing out more items. An ice cube tray hit the floor, scattering tiny blocks of ice across the linoleum. “What about the downstairs freezer?” he asked. “We have any down there?”
“No,” Phyllis said.
He flung open the door to the basement anyway.
Richard, up till now, hadn’t moved an inch.
Harry spun around, took a step in her direction, pointed a finger, holding it three inches from her nose. “After all I’ve done, helping you and your boy all these bloody years, do I ask for that much? Do I? I swear to God, if I—”
It all happened in less than ten seconds.
“Shut up!” Richard said, storming into the room, grabbing one of the wooden kitchen table chairs, holding it by the back with both hands, swinging it like a bat toward his stepfather.