Part 2: The Hotel

December 14, 2001

Once the four of us were inside our own house, all hell broke loose. My mother refused to leave, while my father kept screaming at us to pack our bags. In between his orders he argued with my mother. I noticed the higher state of panic that he had moved into since we left my grandfather’s house.

As if he was preparing us for some undercover mission, he ordered, “Clean socks, underwear, and a toothbrush! That’s all you need.”

He had already changed his mind from when he said we needed two nights’ worth of clothes. I rolled my eyes as I packed clothes and a school uniform for the next day.  Evan did exactly as my father said, packing his socks, underwear and toothbrush in a small grocery bag before he tossed it on the kitchen table. My mother, on the other hand, was furious, which meant she wasn’t going down without a fight.

As their arguing ramped up, I heard their bedroom door slam. I could hear my mother muttering forceful words in a tone low enough that I couldn’t make out what she was saying. My father made another demand for her submission, to which I heard he say, “No! Why don’t you just go on then?”

Then I heard her scream with a wail in her voice I’d never heard before.  

“Let go of me, you asshole!”

I heard stumbling before the door flew open. Out she came, ready to set the world on fire. Right then, Evan walked down the hallway. He hadn’t heard the scream I had, but when he saw how visibly upset my mother was, he rushed to her side, immediately trying to comfort her. My father walked out behind her, grasping at whatever straw he could, before he blankly looked at me and said in a quiet, monotone voice, “If you’re ready, get in the car.”

I looked at him, but I didn’t move. I knew he wouldn’t wait for me to. He walked to the kitchen and yelled back at us, “Let’s go,” then he opened the door to the garage, and slammed it behind him. He was going outside to smoke a cigarette, which meant we had time to regroup before he came back inside.

I turned and walked into my parents’ bedroom, where my mom and brother were sitting on the bed. My mom was crying and Evan was consoling her. I heard him say to her, “Mom, I know. Just trust me. It’s going to be okay. I can handle him. Let’s just go wherever he wants so he can calm down. I can talk to him. Please, Mom.”

She hated caving to the irrational demands of my father, but for Evan’s sake, she agreed. She didn’t know what else to do but hope that her first born son would somehow know what to do to save us all; the boy who spent more time with his father than anyone else in his lifetime. I think we all hoped that would be the case, including him.

By then, Evan was 21. He had seen a lot. More than anyone knew or could’ve known. Because of that, he did have a way of handling my father; a way that every book on child development says can lead to all kinds of internal problems later in life. Yet, Evan had proven to be the only one who could talk him back to a more manageable state, because he knew exactly what my father wanted to hear. My mother and I had a harder time giving him that, and I was certainly the worst at it. Evan’s resentment was deep too, though, and when he was pushed to fire back at my father for whatever reason, it was always intense and incredibly unfair. 

We drove to the hotel in one car, even though my mother wanted to drive separately. We listened exhaustively as my dad tried to convince himself—and us—that he was doing right by his family. I watched my mother sit quietly as she held her left arm, and I began to feel the volcano building inside of her. My father mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and she spit her words back at him. He said something else before she spoke up loud enough for Evan and me to hear. “Well, that hurt! My father never would have laid his hands on my mother like that.”

I felt a clinch in my throat, like I could barely breathe. I suddenly realized what had made my mother scream in the unusual way she had. I’d heard of this happening, but not by men like my father. The father I knew never could. Right?

When we got to the hotel, I jumped out of the car right away and went to my mother. 

“Did he hurt you?”

“No, not really,” she minimized as she covered her arm.

“But, Mom, did he try?”

“He just grabbed my arm really hard because I told him to come by himself.”

“Does your arm hurt now?”

“Just a little. But I’m fine. It made me mad more than anything.” 

I looked at her arm and noticed it had already started to bruise. I felt the rush of anger coming back full force.

Evan, my mother and I were still standing in the parking lot when my father crossed the street and entered the hotel lobby. Part of me hoped a bus would appear out of nowhere and end this fiasco right then and there. Instead, the night sky held an eerie silence, interrupted only by the hotel’s sliding double doors as my father marched inside. Evan, my mother, and I reluctantly followed behind, as we entered the lobby and waited for him to tell us our room number. 

***

It didn’t take long to realize that my father didn’t have much of a plan besides getting us out of our house. Little by little I began to notice how there was no ongoing communication with police; no measures were being put in place to keep me safe; and the possibility of a strange man kidnapping and raping me was never mentioned again.

What I later came to understand was that my father’s irrational response to my car accident had become intertwined with the internal reaction he was having in relation to another incident. The two events had coincided in my father’s mind as one causing the other, and I believe, when he mixed the two together, it poked a little too hard at his guilty conscience. Put differently, the grasp he held on logic and reasoning; his emotional insight; his past experiences; all combined with what he believed about himself to be true; had become criss-crossed and tangled up to the point of psychosis. What we were witnessing was not a man losing his mind, but a man who was lost inside his false perceptions of his actual reality. 

As the four of us were crammed into a small room with two queen beds, I paid close attention to my mother as she sat in the corner with her legs pulled into her chair. The heaviness in her eyes and the way the lines formed at the edges of her mouth told me that she was more irritated than usual; more furiously fed up than she’d ever been. Seeing my mother so angry, combined with my own boiling rage, fueled my innate, fierce protection of her. For years, I had watched her support and believe in this man with relentless love and devotion. I had watched her build him up when he was down. I had watched her defend him when no one else wanted to. I had watched her admire him and beam like rays of sunshine standing next to him. On that night, those rays of sunshine were gone. 

Listening to the echoes of my father’s boisterous voice, I cringed at the thought of guests in the adjacent rooms overhearing. I would plead with them in my mind, hoping they would leave us alone rather than call the manager to complain. Or worse, try and address the situation themselves, believing that was their duty. 

In between my father’s rants, he would go outside and smoke a cigarette, and Evan always went with him. My mother and I would curl up in the bed and begin to talk through everything, and we usually ended up finding a way to laugh. My father took advantage of the break from speaking to build up a new supply of thoughts and ideas. It was only a matter of time before he’d want to express the realizations he’d come to during his most recent think-fest.

When the moment arrived in the wee hours of the morning, I felt my body cringe and shut down as he began referencing situations and people, both of which I knew were in no way connected to my car accident. I felt the painful jabs as I listened to him spout about people who I happened to admire, and who he believed were at the crux of it all. It would’ve been easy to believe my father had my mother not been there to challenge and refute his wildest claims. That’s how believable he was. Still, at times my mother would roll her eyes and mutter, “Oh for goodness sake,” and quickly I began to understand that life made a lot more sense when I rejected everything my father said.