Chapter 10
A Long Way from Home
In Hartley, Iowa, where my family moved when I was fourteen, I was a straight arrow, the head student librarian, and the second smartest girl in my grade, after Karen Watts. It was all As for Vicki Jipson, except in typing, where I got a C. But that didn’t keep me from having a reputation. One night I went with my parents to a dance in Sanborn, a little town nine miles from Hartley. When the dance hall closed at eleven, we went to the restaurant next door, where I promptly passed out. Dad took me outside for some fresh air, and I threw up. The next morning at eight thirty, my grandfather called the house and said, “What the hell is going on over there? I heard Vicki was drunk in Sanborn last night.” The cause turned out to be an abscessed tooth, but there was no beating a bad reputation in a small town like Hartley.
My older brother, meanwhile, was considered one of the smartest kids ever to attend Hartley High School. Everyone called him the Professor. David graduated a year ahead of me and went to college a hundred miles away in Mankato, Minnesota. I figured I’d follow him there. When I mentioned my plans to my guidance counselor, he said, “You don’t need to worry about college. You’re just going to get married, have kids, and let a man take care of you.” What a jerk. But it was 1966. This was rural Iowa. I didn’t get any other advice.
After graduation from high school, I got engaged to the third boy I’d ever dated. We’d been going out for two years, and he adored me. But I needed to get away from the microscope of small-town Iowa; I needed to be out on my own. So I broke off the engagement, which was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and moved to Mankato with my best friend, Sharon.
While David went to college on the other side of town, Sharon and I worked at the Mankato Box Company. Mankato Box packaged products like Jet-Dry, the dishwashing liquid, and Gumby, who was a star at the time. I worked mostly on Punch and Grow, a container of potting soil with seeds attached to the lid. My job was to grab potting soil containers off a conveyor belt, snap on the plastic lid, slide them into a cardboard sleeve, and put them in a box. Sharon and I worked side by side, and we were always singing goofy lyrics about Punch and Grow to the tune of popular songs. We would get the whole line laughing, the Laverne and Shirley of Mankato Box. After three years, I worked my way up to feeding the empty plastic cups into the machine. The job was more isolated, so I didn’t get to sing as much, but at least I didn’t get filthy from all the potting soil.
Sharon and I developed a routine, which happens with line work. We would get off work exactly at five, ride the bus to our apartment for a quick dinner, then hit the dance clubs. We’d stay out, dancing our toes off, until they shut the dance halls down. If I wasn’t dancing, I was usually out with my brother David and his friends. David was more than my brother, he was my best friend, and I can’t count the number of times we stayed up talking about our lives. If I stayed home, which was rare, I’d put on a record and dance, all alone in my bedroom. I just had to dance. I loved to dance.
I met Wally Myron at a dance club, but he wasn’t like the other guys I’d dated. He was very smart and very well-read, which impressed me immediately. And he had personality. Wally was always smiling, and everyone with him was always smiling, too. He was the kind of person who would go down to the corner store for milk and talk to the clerk for two hours. Wally could talk with anyone about anything. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. I say it to this day: Wally was incapable of intentionally hurting anyone.
We dated for a year and a half before getting married in July 1970. I was twenty-two, and I got pregnant right away. It was a tough pregnancy, with sickness morning, noon, and night. Wally spent evenings after work out with his friends, usually riding motorcycles, but he was always home by seven thirty. He wanted a social wife, but he would take a sick wife if that meant a baby on the way.
Sometimes one decision changes your life, and it doesn’t have to be one you make yourself—or even know about. When I went into labor, the doctor decided to speed the process with two massive doses of Pitocin. I found out later he had a party to attend, and he wanted to get this darn procedure over with. I went from three centimeters dilated to crowning in two hours. The shock broke my afterbirth, so they put me back into labor. They didn’t get all the pieces. Six weeks later I hemorrhaged, and they rushed me back to the hospital for emergency surgery.
I had always wanted a daughter named Jodi Marie. I had dreamed about it from a young age. Now I had that daughter, Jodi Marie Myron, and I was dying to spend time with her, to hug her and talk to her and look into her eyes. But the surgery knocked me flat on my back. My hormones went haywire, and I was racked with headaches, insomnia, and cold sweats. Two years and six operations later my health hadn’t improved, so my doctor suggested exploratory surgery. I woke up in the hospital bed to discover he’d taken both ovaries and my uterus. The physical pain was intense, but worse was the knowledge that I couldn’t have any more children. I had expected a peek inside; I wasn’t prepared to be hollowed out. And I wasn’t prepared to enter sudden and severe menopause. I was twenty-four going on sixty, with scarring through my gut, regret in my heart, and a daughter I couldn’t hold. The curtain came down and everything went black.
When I came around a few months later, Wally wasn’t there. Not like he used to be, anyway. That’s when I noticed, suddenly, that everything meant drinking to Wally. If he went fishing, it meant drinking. If he went hunting, it meant drinking. Even motorcycle riding meant drinking. Before long, he wasn’t showing up when he promised. He would be out late and never call. He’d come home drunk, and I’d say, “What are you doing? You have a sick wife and a two-year-old child!”
“We just went fishing,” he’d say. “I had a couple too many. It’s no big deal.”
I’d wake up the next morning, and he’d be gone to work. I’d find a note on the kitchen table. I love you. I don’t want to fight. I’m sorry. Wally could never sleep, and he would stay up all night writing me long letters. The man was smart. He could write beautifully. And every morning, when I saw those letters, I loved him.
The realization that your husband is a problem drinker comes suddenly, but the admission takes a long, long time. Your insides tie themselves in knots, but your heart refuses to understand. You make explanations, then excuses. You dread the ringing of the telephone. Then you dread the silence when it doesn’t ring. Instead of talking, you throw out the beer. You pretend not to notice things, like money. He always comes through, but only when the cupboard is bare. But you’re scared to complain. What are the chances, you think, that it will get worse instead of better?
“I understand,” he says when you mention it. “It’s not a problem. But I’ll quit. For you. I promise.” But neither of you believes it.
Day by day, your world gets smaller. You don’t want to open cabinets for fear of what you’ll find. You don’t want to search the pockets of his pants. You don’t want to go anywhere. Where’s he going to take you that doesn’t involve drinking?
Many mornings I found beer bottles in the oven. Jodi found beer cans in her toy box. Wally was waking up early every morning, and if I dared to look out the window, I could see him sitting in his van drinking warm beer. He didn’t even bother driving around the corner.