When I came back from Korea I didn’t see anything wrong, I thought that everything at our house was okay. The very next day my aunt rang me up and invited me for coffee. My uncle came too and we sat at the counter in a café that was all wrong while they told me about my mother and father.
My aunt said: “After you left for over there they had an argument about you and he knocked her down. Did you know he hasn’t spoken to her in all the time you were away?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
My aunt said: “Imagine living in the same house and not speaking with someone for eight months. Why, it’s just crazy.”
I didn’t say anything.
“After you went away and they had the fight he wouldn’t ride in the same car with her so she’s had to take the bus back and forth to work all the time.”
I was wishing they hadn’t chosen this particular place to tell me about mother and father. Anyone could see that it was all wrong with its neon lights and the aluminum cooking area and the white plastic covered stools.
“Your mother cooks breakfast and supper just like always,” My aunt was saying, “but he won’t eat with her. He walks up to the corner and eats at that Jakes Café. It’s nothing but a greasy spoon that place.”
My uncle said: “Your father always had an ungovernable temper but now it’s worse than ever. No one can talk sense to him.”
He paused, for me to say something I believe, but I remained silent.
“Do you remember the time at the supper table when he knocked you out of your chair on the floor because he said you were eating too fast? I don’t think you were ten years old.”
“He used to swear at you,” my uncle said, “just like you were a man.”
“I remember that,” I said. It made me grin, remembering it. “Wasn’t that something? I thought I could get away with it because we had company. It’s sort of funny when you look back on it. I mean eating too fast.”
“He used to swear at you,” my uncle said, “just like you were a man.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“He called you names that even now I wouldn’t say in front of your aunt.”
I waited for him to go on.
“One night I told him: Henry, you’re crazy, I said. No one talks to his boy that way. You must be crazy.”
My aunt said: “he just wasn’t much of a father to you sometimes. I know that must sound like a terrible thing to say.”
She put her hand over mine where it rested on the bright white counter alongside my coffee cup. “We’ve never had children, your uncle and I, but if we had, we couldn’t have asked for a son any nicer than you.”
I was very careful to make my hand lie absolutely still on the counter underneath my aunts hand.
My uncle said: “We’re telling you this because were afraid for you mother. We don’t know how much longer she’s going to be able to go on with him.”
My aunt said now that you’re back it will be better for her. She’ll be able to count on you.”
She paused as if she wanted me to say something again, and I didn’t say anything she went on.
“You know, after you left your mother was very sick. The doctor told her she was passing blood even puss. There wasn’t anything he could do to help. It was just worry over what might happen to you. As soon as she got the telegram saying you were in the hospital and out of danger, she got better.”
I knew especially I should say something about how mother had been but I couldn’t think of anything to say. What came to my mind just then was how one night when I was a very young child, mother and father took me with them to visit my aunt and uncle: “If it wasn’t for the kid, I would have left her a long time ago.
I said goodbye to my aunt and uncle and when I got home, mother was standing in the kitchen sink crying.
“You’re the most selfish kid I’ve ever seen in my life.” She said.
“What’s the matter mother?”
“Where have you been, will you tell me that?”
“Just driving around. I didn’t know anything was wrong.”
“Why didn’t you telephone? You’ve only been back one day and you can’t be home for supper. I don’t know how you can be so selfish.”
“Why did he hit you?”
“I didn’t think, I guess.”
“You didn’t think,” mother said. “And now your father has hit me again. I’m not going to take very much more.”
“Why did he hit you?”
“It doesn’t matter why. If you had been home when you should have been, it wouldn’t have happened.”
She tried to stop crying but she kept crying and sort of choking. I didn’t know what to do. In all my life I had hardly seen her cry. I was very uncomfortable because I could see how she was trying not to but that she couldn’t make herself stop.
“Just once in your life,” she said try to think of someone besides yourself.”
“Where’s father now?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Did he say when he was coming home?”
“No he didn’t. And when he comes back I don’t want you to say anything to him.”
“I don’t understand why he should hit you.” I felt myself growing angry. Some of my anger came out in my voice.
“Now I’m telling you, Tom. When your father comes in I don’t want you to interfere.”
I was really angry. I watched television a while then went to bed to wait. Gradually my anger slipped away into darkness. When I had been a child I had hated my father but that had been when I was a child. When you’re grown up, it seems, your father is simply your father and there are things you want to talk to him about.
When father came back I waited half an hour then went to the back bedroom. There was smoke in the air and the glow of a cigarette. At first I thought that perhaps I would hit him, but when I got there I knew for sure I just wanted to talk.
Father said: “What do you want?”
Before I could answer I heard mother call out from her bedroom: “Tom, I told you I didn’t want you to interfere.”
“What do you want?” father said.
Mother said: “Get out of there Tom. Now I mean it.”
Father said very quietly: “What were you going to do when you came in here, Tom?”
“Tom,” mother said from her bedroom, “it’s none of your business. Get back in your own room.”
I went to my room and got back into bed. There had been something wrong in our house all my life. I never knew what it was, but there had always been something. Nobody ever talked about it. There were things tonight that I wanted to say to her as well as to father. But now I guessed I wasn’t going to say them. I guess I suspected all along.