The Truth About Death by Robert Hellenga

Author:Robert Hellenga [Hellenga, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632862921
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

When I first heard of the Oedipus complex at the University of Michigan—we were reading Oedipus in a “Great Books” course—I knew exactly what Freud was talking about. Dad had become more and more abusive toward my mother, who suffered from tic douloureux. She was a lovely woman, small in stature, but bighearted, generous-spirited, deeply religious. She played the organ and directed the choir at Methodist church. You just married me for the money, he’d say to her. Drunk. For a free ride. It would have been a blessing if he’d died first. She could have lived out her last years in peace instead of in a nightmare.

And where was I? I’d run away. To Ann Arbor. And then Chicago. It was my sister who bore the brunt of my father’s anger during the last years of my mother’s life, and beyond. I was afraid of my father—most people were—and my only attempt to intervene was a disaster: It’s Christmas Eve. I’m a wise fool, just home from Ann Arbor for Christmas vacation. My sister has taken Mom out on a last-minute shopping trip. They’re not home by five o’clock and Dad is working himself up into a rage. Every fifteen minutes or so he goes out to his gun room at the back of the garage for a nip of Jack Daniel’s, which he has to do because drinking is not allowed in our house. “I try to be a good husband …” he says, over and over. “I do everything I can … And now look at this …” He shrugs helplessly. “She’ll be overtired.” He’s indulging in his favorite fantasy, which is that everything he does is for my mother’s sake. He calls me in Ann Arbor, for example, on Sunday mornings. If I’m at home, in my dorm room in Adams House in the West Quad, which I usually am, he’ll want to know why I’m not in church. “Your mother wants you to go to church—And you’ll go. Next Sunday you’ll attend the Methodist Church or I’ll come up there and find out the reason why.”

It’s late when my mother and sister get home—after six o’clock. They’ve had a wonderful time, but Dad blows a gasket, is in a towering rage. I can hear him chewing out my mother in the bedroom. “You know better than to get overtired. I try to be a good husband; I try to do the best I can, and now look at you. You’ve been gone for four hours … You’ve tired yourself out. You know better …” And so on.

The bedroom door is not locked. Mom is sitting on the bed. Dad is shouting at her, repeating himself. “What were you thinking? … How could you? … I do everything I can … I try to be a good husband, but …”

“Leave her alone,” I say. “She had a good time. Why do you have to ruin it?”

Dad gives me a look of contempt. “Get out.”

“Leave her alone,” I say.

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