When Jodi was three, we went to Hartley for my brother Mike’s wedding. Jodi and I were in the ceremony, so Wally had free time on his hands. He would disappear and not show up until late at night, when everyone was asleep.
“Are you trying to avoid us?” I asked him.
“No, I love your family. You know that.”
The family was sitting around Mom’s kitchen table one night, and as usual Wally was nowhere to be found. We ran out of beer, so Mom went to the cabinet where she was keeping extra beer for all the friends and relatives in town. Most of it was gone.
“What were you thinking, taking Mom’s beer?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“How do you think I feel? How do you think Jodi feels?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“She’s old enough to know. You just don’t know her.”
Afraid to ask. Afraid not to ask. “Are you even working?”
“Of course I am. You see the paychecks, don’t you?”
Wally’s father had given him part ownership of the family construction business, which meant Wally didn’t get a steady paycheck. I couldn’t tell if the company was between projects or if the whole world was crashing down around us.
“It’s not just money, Wally.”
“I know. I’ll spend more time at home.”
“Quit drinking for one week.”
“Why?”
“Wally.”
“Okay, one week. I’ll quit.”
But again, neither of us believed it.
After Mike’s wedding, I finally admitted to myself that Wally had a problem. That he was coming home less and less. That I almost never saw him sober. He wasn’t a mean drunk, but he wasn’t a functioning drunk, either. And yet he ran our lives. He drove our only car. I had to take the bus or ride with a friend to buy groceries. He cashed the paychecks. He paid the bills. Often I was too sick to follow the finances, much less raise a child on my own. I called our house the Blue Coffin because it was painted a hideous shade of blue and shaped like a casket. It started out as a joke—it was actually a fine house in a nice neighborhood—but within two years it felt like the truth. Jodi and I were stuck in that house, being buried alive.
My family came through for me. They never blamed me. They never lectured me. My parents didn’t have money, but they took Jodi in, two weeks at a time, and raised her like their daughter. Whenever life smothered me, they gave me room to breathe.
Then there were my friends. If that delivery room doctor ruined my body, another stranger saved my mind. When Jodi was six months old, a woman knocked on my door. She had a daughter about Jodi’s age in a stroller. She said, “I’m Faith Landwer. My husband has been friends with your husband since high school, so let’s have coffee and get to know each other.”
Thank goodness I agreed.
Faith got me involved in a newcomer’s club that played cards once a month. I met Trudy over our regular game of Five Hundred, then met Barb, Pauli, Rita, and Idelle. Soon we were having coffee together at Trudy’s house a couple days a week. We were all young mothers, and Trudy’s house was the only one big enough to hold us. We would shove the children into her enormous playroom, sit at the kitchen table, and keep one another sane. I confided in them about Wally, and they didn’t blink. Trudy just came around the table and gave me a hug.
What did my friends do for me in those years? What didn’t they do for me? When I needed to run an errand, they drove me. When I was sick, they cared for me. When I needed someone to watch Jodi, they picked her up. I don’t know how many times one of them dropped by with a plate of hot food just when I needed it.
“I just cooked a little extra casserole. Do you want it?”
And yet it wasn’t my family or my friends who saved my life. Not really. My real motivation, my real reason for picking myself up every morning and struggling on, was my daughter, Jodi. She needed me to be her mother, to teach by example. We didn’t have money, but we had each other. When I was confined to my bed, Jodi and I spent hours talking. When I was physically able, we walked in the park with the real third member of our family. Brandy and Jodi looked up to me; they adored me without question or doubt; they gave me unconditional love, which is the secret power of children and dogs. Every night when I put Jodi to bed, I kissed her, and that touch, that skin on my skin, sustained me.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too. Good night.”
A hero of mine, Dr. Charlene Bell, says everyone has a pain thermometer that goes from zero to ten. No one will make a change until they reach ten. Nine won’t do it. At nine, you are still afraid. Only ten will move you, and when you’re there, you’ll know. No one can make that decision for you.
I saw that firsthand with one of my friends. She was pregnant, and her abusive husband was still beating her every day. We decided we had to get her out of there before it was too late, so we talked her into leaving him. We set her up in a trailer with her kids. Her parents came by every day. She had everything she needed. Two weeks later she went back to her husband. I realized then you can’t make people do what you know is right. They have to come to it on their own. A year later my friend left her husband for good. She didn’t need help from any of us.
I learned that lesson for myself, too, because a marriage unwraps slowly. Maybe it’s not the slowness but the consistency that crushes you. Every day is a little bit worse, a little less predictable, until finally you’re doing things you never, ever thought you’d do. I was looking for food in the kitchen one night, and I found a checkbook. It was for a secret banking account Wally had set up for himself. I turned on the grill at two in the morning, ripped out the checks one by one, and burned them. Halfway through I thought, “Sane people don’t live like this.”
But I stayed. I was worn out. I was emotionally drained. My confidence was crippled. I was physically weak from the surgeries. And I was scared. But not scared enough to make a change.
The last year was the worst. It was so bad, I can’t even remember the details. The whole year was black. Wally had stopped coming home before three in the morning, and since we were sleeping in different rooms, I never saw him. He left the house early every morning, but I didn’t know where he went. He had been pushed out of the family business, and our money situation was drifting from bad to unbearable. Mom and Dad sent me what they could. Then they went to the rest of the family and collected several hundred dollars more. When that ran out, Jodi and I had nothing to eat. We lived on oatmeal, nothing but oatmeal, for two weeks. I finally went to Wally’s mother, who I knew blamed me for her son’s condition.
“Don’t do it for me,” I said. “Do it for your granddaughter.” She bought one bag of groceries, set it on the kitchen table, and left.
A few nights later Wally came home. Jodi was asleep. I was in the living room reading One Day at a Time, the bible of Al-Anon, a support group for people affected by alcoholics. I didn’t yell or hit him or anything like that. We both acted as if Wally came home all the time. I hadn’t seen him in a year, and I was surprised how bad he looked. He was thin. He was sickly. He clearly wasn’t eating. I could smell alcohol, and he still had the shakes. He sat down on the other side of the room without a word, this man who used to talk for hours to anyone, and watched me read. Eventually he dozed off, so it surprised me when he said, “What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing,” I told him, but when he asked I knew. I had reached ten. No fireworks. No final injustice. The moment had slipped in as quiet as a stranger coming home.
I went to a lawyer the next day and started divorce proceedings. That’s when I discovered we were six months behind on house payments, six months behind on car payments, and $6,000 in debt. Wally had even taken out a home-improvement loan, but of course no work had been done. The Blue Coffin was falling apart.