MaryBeth and her parents - continuation of MaryBeth, a beautiful soul; and a girl, seriously interrupted

MaryBeth tugged at the rip in her father's tattered denim jacket and remembered the last time she wore it - it was a year before her father died, when she wore a sailor's cap and blue jeans and raced her motorbike through cobblestone streets and lone country roads, singing and remembering when she was a little girl who camped in the mountains with her father.

That was before her father married Mother, as MaryBeth called her father's second wife. Stepmother, Mother, Mother, Stepmother. MaryBeth repeated these names to herself in a singsong fashion, trying on the words for size one more time, as if that would make an iota of difference in hell. It didn't.

MaryBeth tugged at the rip on the right sleeve of her father's denim jacket, tug, tug, tugging, as if tugging could bring him back from the dead, could change her relationship with Mother, could change her life or anything at all. Nothing.  The rip only grew bigger.

MaryBeth and her father camped under the night sky and pointed to shooting stars as they arc'd across the sky. MaryBeth sang, "My Dog Blue" while her father played the guitar, and together, they roasted marshmallows until they were black and then peeled back the blackened skin to eat the tender mallow inside, licking their fingers and laughing. This was how life existed before Mother, when MaryBeth was free to be herself. All that changed when MaryBeth's father remarried.

MaryBeth's father was the son of a prominent sheep rancher in a small dry town in the arid desert of the West. Sagebrush rolled down dusty streets on hot afternoons when there was no rain. MaryBeth's grandfather owned a livestock feed store and it was her father's job to mind the store. He hated sweeping the corn flour off the floor, as the smell made him ill. He kept business lively with tales he told customers, embellished tales about catching bobcats or shooting coyote that were about to take down a pen of 100 head of sheep. Customers laughed.

He had deep-set, blue eyes and black brows, but more so than his good looks was his ability to make people laugh that led to his rise in social status - that and his beautiful second wife, MaryBeth's stepmother, whom she called Mother.

Parties with MaryBeth's parents were legendary in their social circle. If MaryBeth's father was the life of the party, Mother was the trophy. Men drank Scotch and women sipped white wine. Men too drunk to care let their hands wander under the blouses of single women as they kissed them in full view of everyone, and the wives of these men fled in tears to the host's bedroom, crying unheard sorrows into cold bed sheets.

In a darkened corner, people stood in a tight circle and gossiped about who slept with whom, as men lusted after women they fancied and then put their arms around them and gave them a pat on the rump. MaryBeth's mother received this attention more than most women. 

The men Mother had slept with before she married still called or sent flowers, perhaps hoping for love that had never been returned. This attention from other men did not make MaryBeth's father jealous as much as it assuaged his insecure ego - he was proud to know Mother's figure was still a man-killer; he often called her "Doll" and ran his arm up and down her back, kissing her passionately in the kitchen. Too much love between each other and not enough focus on the family, MaryBeth thought.

At parties, as MaryBeth's father became besotted with alcohol, his guests thought him increasingly clever. The cheers of the audience he garnered only encouraged him to engage in more foolishness: he would dance like a Cossack, tell jokes like a longshoreman, and play violin and piano like a virtuoso. People ate it up; they were putty in his hands.

MaryBeth's mother had grown up with privilege and wealth; she was a beauty who sought attention more than anything: in MaryBeth's father she found a small-town boy enamored of her elegant sophistication who would worship her to her dying day. It was a match made in heaven, these two people from exotically different worlds. 

MaryBeth's father believed Mother to be the most beautiful, most desired woman on the planet; he believed he was luckier than any man. Mother believed MaryBeth's father to be the most fascinating man she'd ever met - his honesty was a refreshing change from entitled world in which she grew up. Nobody could disabuse either that their view of the other was based solely on their projections and not on reality. Mother was nothing if not a selfish, cold-hearted but beautiful woman, and MaryBeth's father was nothing if not a naïve, but doting father.

Eventually, the insecurities in each of them about their own self-worth had the better of them, and they tried to drown their fears with sleeping pills, highballs of Scotch and nightly tirades. The all-night shouting matches took place in all rooms of the house as MaryBeth tried to sleep; they were a contest of wills that would only be won over by too much alcohol and sleeping pills, make up sex and eventual peace.

One night, MaryBeth awoke to Mother's yelling:

 "Get up, get up!" MaryBeth's father lay on the kitchen floor, stone cold drunk. MaryBeth clapped her hand to her mouth and let out a piercing scream. She was about to vomit. "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God," MaryBeth thought. "This is how it will all end.. Please do not let it be too soon, please do not let it be too soon."

Her premonition that her father would die and that the family would be left without his great, but foolish love proved real a few years later.

Tucked away among the perfect alabaster walls of MaryBeth's expensive home were problems no one talked about, ever -  psychological needs that went uncared for. Emotional needs were pressed down as if they didn't exist.  For this, there would be hell to pay. MaryBeth had no way of knowing that she'd be that hell.

As MaryBeth told her story, I was stunned by how different her world was from mine. Her chaotic family was melded together by love but torn apart by its problems. My simple life was with my sweet, sweet Mama who gave me all until she was destroyed by schizophrenia.

I suspected that MaryBeth survived as I did: day-by-day, a promise to do better and a hope that life would be better. I never knew if this would come to pass, but I hoped it would. I hoped MaryBeth would find peace within herself and peace with her Mother, now that her father was gone.

I had no way of knowing then that at the hospital where MaryBeth lay recovering from grief and a suicide gesture, that our lives would become intertwined. I knew only that Mama was ill and babbling, and that MaryBeth was mistreated but not ill in a system that could barely tell the difference between the two.

Remembering back to when I was three, on Saturday afternoons after Mama was done ironing, I would curl up in Mama's lap, with my head resting against her breast, nestled against the soft silk of her blue robe, while she stroked my hair and cooed. I drowned happily in her love. I was cradled in the comfort and safety of her love, against outside influence, much as the Salt Lake Valley -- surrounded by mountain ranges on three sides -- is cradled in comfort and safety against outside influence.  There is no view of a world beyond the horizon. As a girl of three, I wished for no greater happiness than to be with Mama the rest of my days.

I had no way of knowing then that years later I'd be sitting with Mama's head in my lap, cradling her and cooing, stroking her soft, white hair, as she lay dying, quietly but surely, resolutely, dying.

***

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MaryBeth, a beautiful soul and a girl, seriously interrupted

Sego Lillies for Breakfast

No Jonquils for Mama

Gnarled Trees

Grandmother's cellar door

Sunny Lemon Tina

Copyright: © 20007, 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski