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Had I mentioned before? Roberta was the 'It Girl' in my
father's High School years? He went to High School in the small city
near the town where I mostly grew up. I had actually been born in
that city before its hospital had been closed down. Can you still
be called a city if you no longer have a hospital?
Anyhow, back to what I was saying, Roberta was the girl,
according to my father, that all the boys pined for in school. Of
course my father didn't have a chance with her as he was a stutterer
himself, so he broken-heartedly watched the jocks woo her and take
her. Now at the cusp of sixty, my father found out she was
available. Having fallen on hard times, she had recently been
getting by as a live-in companion and housekeeper for senior citizens
nearing the end of their lives. Once they expired, they would leave
their money to her in their Will, and she would find a new senior in
need. One of those seniors happened to live at the retirement
complex not far from the family home and dad had bumped into her at
the grocery store across the hayfield one day.
He then started to look her up and visit, but she played hard to get.
After all she was living with the senior she was supposed to be
taking care of. Still she could get an hour or two, here and
there, for them to secretly date. After my older brother's wedding,
my father let the secret out and introduced me to Roberta and we'd
once in a while go out to dinner with her, Pappy, dad and myself to
her favorite greasy-spoon restaurant several miles away.
Now you might think I'm using these adjectives and calling her a 'Red
Neck Wife' due to some resentment I had toward her, but actually,
not. She was proud of having been the girl all the boys had
wanted in rural New England at the time and she embraced the image of
the back woods culture. She had a son and as part of gaining her
acceptance, my father put a horse shoe pit into the back yard of our
house, roping me into helping him track down a source of free clay at
an abandoned quarry. As her single son lived at an apartment, he now
had an excuse to come out to play horseshoes at our house and in
return have his mother join him to visit my dad. When over, Pappy
had to make time in his T.V. watching routine at night to including
any Stock Car Racing or Demolition Derbies that might be on that
Roberta would want to watch. But seeing his son perk up with a new
love interest after the years since my mother had left him, I'm sure
he didn't mind.
Soon after the start of Nineteen Eighty, Roberta's latest senior
to help passed on and Roberta was available full-time for my
father to dote on and find things to do with. She had become a
fixture at the family home by Spring and they decided to marry over
the Summer with her officially moving in. Unfortunately, I was in
Colorado at the time and missed the wedding, though I did get an
invitation.
Thus when I returned to New England to start my Junior year of High
School, Roberta was there. While I knew she was 'my step mother' I
assumed she would be a hands-offish parental figure like my parents
had been. But this was not the case. While I had been away,
she convinced my father that I was too young to be in the half of the
basement where the tools were kept. So my father had a steel fence
built dividing the shop portion of the basement from the storage
side. It was locked with a door and a pad lock. This was
particularly galling as I had spent some of my free time the previous
year cleaning-up the basement after a decade of neglect. The door
with the pad lock barring me I had hung myself, though
obviously not with the lock in mind. Behind that door and
the length of fencing were not only dad's power tools and hand tools,
but my own tools as well. During the years at the apartment town
building myself a tree house, my eldest brother had bought me a
selection of tools to use on the project. Six years later, I was now
deemed to be 'too young' to use those tools without adult
supervision. Needless to say, if I had wanted to use them, my father
would never have made the time to 'supervise' me anyhow.
And yet, this was a game by Roberta as the very first week I was
home, she told me where the key was hidden so I could have access
when she needed something. After telling me where the key was, she
then told my father that I had found out where the key was,
neglecting to tell him that she had told me, thus there was this
quick row as my father accused me of having searched the house high
and low for the key, even though I hadn't. Once dad moved the key
elsewhere, Roberta wanted to tell me where that was as well but I
told her I wasn't interested, putting that game to rest. With that
trick no longer fun, Roberta convinced dad that Pappy had grown too
old to pick up his own Sunday paper at the drug store anymore and
that I should do it for him. She then told him she had let me know.
But as she hadn't, I didn't pick up the paper even though I could
have all day; Roberta spent the day brimming with a big smile on her
face and she wouldn't tell me why. When father came home from work,
Pappy caught him on the way in and asked where his Sunday paper was.
This lead my father to have a shout fest at me while I stood there
dumbfounded without a clue and Roberta smirking in the background.
As the local pharmacy had closed by the time my father found out, he
drove all the way to the small city to finally find a store that was
still open and had a spare copy of the paper.
While this was perplexing, I had many more positive things going on
in my life: A new official job at the grocery store, ever more
notoriety in my computer programing prowess, and what was rapidly
becoming the best year of school in my life, so I just disregarded
these little games Roberta would try to play to pit me and dad
against each other. So she instead decided to take an 'active role'
in my life by letting me know which friends I should have and
which friends I couldn't have anymore. This was so she could
make sure I knew all the 'right people' while no longer having my
reputation sullied by being around the 'wrong people'. As these were
friends I had known for years versus knowing her for months, I took
these suggestions with humor but otherwise didn't worry about it.
After having retained its original layout since my eldest brother
first moved out, his original bedroom somehow felt exposed with
Roberta living in the house. My not as older brother had lived in it
for several years after my eldest brother's move. Then it had simply
become his, and then my relaxation room where one could lie on the
bed and listen to music on the left behind component stereo system,
including some of the left behind records and tapes. I had also used
it as a reading room from time to time as I poured through a recently
purchased science fiction book. But now, it was just there and she
was in the house and I was afraid that either, she might junk
everything in it one day, or maybe even perhaps her own adult son
might move into it and make it his own. While the last thought was
far fetched, I still didn't like the room's contents being exposed
and decided it was time to break up the room and merge its contents
into my room. The stereo and block & board shelves were easily
transferred, but the bed had a wooden base custom made by my eldest
brother over a decade earlier. As his bed was a single bed and the
one I was using in my bedroom a queen sized bed, I decided to split
the frame in half and then recreate it as a queen sized base for my
mattress. All other posters and light shades adopted into my own
room, the old queen bed frame was left behind in the now empty
bedroom. No one made any comment on my doing this once they noticed
and the bedroom my father had assigned to me a year earlier was now
more than just a bed, bureau and desk. It
was mine.
By Winter, Roberta had to make do having her fun by prodding my
father to belittle me and make fun of me at the dinner table. After
a few weeks of this, as I was working again and had my own source of
money for food, I just stopped attending family dinner time and would
grab a bite at work at the close of the day, or occasionally go to
the local pizza place with my friends.
The nice thing about having Roberta there, at the house, was it had
been cleaned and was being actively maintained for the first time
since my mother had left. It was also warm during the winter. In
the previous year, my father had complained that I was using too much
oil to heat the house, but in reality he had meant that I was
heating the house when he wasn't there, so I had gotten use to
having a cold house on the weekends and afternoons and even sometimes
wore my coat indoors, but this year, as it was for Roberta,
the house was now kept in the low seventies all day long.
By Christmas time, I found out I wouldn't be going to Colorado again
as my mother couldn't afford it. So I prepared for a Christmas at
the family home and went out into the woods surrounding the house
until I found a good tree, cut it down and brought it back. I pulled
the long disused decorations and lights out of the attic and dressed
the tree up as well as the living room and got the usual gifts for my
father, Pappy, and even some things Roberta had asked for.
Apparently, at some point during her life, the french doors at
Roberta's parents house had been broken and thrown away rather than
repaired. Roberta had felt guilty about that for all these years
and, for Christmas, she had talked dad into taking down the french
doors in our house, which divided the living room from the dining
room, and install them into her parent's home as her Christmas
present to them. My father agreed and soon the doors which had been
in the house all my life were gone by Christmas week.
As were Roberta and my father on Christmas Day. As I woke up
Christmas morning and came down the stairs, I found my father and
Roberta getting ready to leave with the presents I'd gotten them
tucked under their arms. Hadn't I known? They were
going to spend the day at Roberta's parent's house. They were taking
the presents for themselves to open there and, as 'they never knew
what to get me', they had decided not to get me anything this year.
Also including Pappy as part of their Christmas day plans, I was soon
alone at the house to find the solitary remaining present under the
tree. It was for me, from my eldest brother.
Pink Floyd's double album 'The Wall' was just what I wanted and I
took it upstairs to my bedroom so I could listen to it on the stereo
player that same brother had left at the house when he had abruptly
gone all those years earlier. Putting on the headphones to get the
best sound quality, I lay in bed and listened to the album again and
again and again for the next eight hours...
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