on their own. A year later my friend left her husband for good. She didn’t need help from any of us.
I learned that lesson for myself, too, because a marriage unwraps slowly. Maybe it’s not the slowness but the consistency that crushes you. Every day is a little bit worse, a little less predictable, until finally you’re doing things you never, ever thought you’d do. I was looking for food in the kitchen one night, and I found a checkbook. It was for a secret banking account Wally had set up for himself. I turned on the grill at two in the morning, ripped out the checks one by one, and burned them. Halfway through I thought, “Sane people don’t live like this.”
But I stayed. I was worn out. I was emotionally drained. My confidence was crippled. I was physically weak from the surgeries. And I was scared. But not scared enough to make a change.
The last year was the worst. It was so bad, I can’t even remember the details. The whole year was black. Wally had stopped coming home before three in the morning, and since we were sleeping in different rooms, I never saw him. He left the house early every morning, but I didn’t know where he went. He had been pushed out of the family business, and our money situation was drifting from bad to unbearable. Mom and Dad sent me what they could. Then they went to the rest of the family and collected several hundred dollars more. When that ran out, Jodi and I had nothing to eat. We lived on oatmeal, nothing but oatmeal, for two weeks. I finally went to Wally’s mother, who I knew blamed me for her son’s condition.
“Don’t do it for me,” I said. “Do it for your granddaughter.” She bought one bag of groceries, set it on the kitchen table, and left.
A few nights later Wally came home. Jodi was asleep. I was in the living room reading
One Day at a Time
, the bible of Al-Anon, a support group for people affected by alcoholics. I didn’t yell or hit him or anything like that. We both acted as if Wally came home all the time. I hadn’t seen him in a year, and I was surprised how bad he looked. He was thin. He was sickly. He clearly wasn’t eating. I could smell alcohol, and he still had the shakes. He sat down on the other side of the room without a word, this man who used to talk for hours to anyone, and watched me read. Eventually he dozed off, so it surprised me when he said, “What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing,” I told him, but when he asked I knew. I had reached ten. No fireworks. No final injustice. The moment had slipped in as quiet as a stranger coming home.
I went to a lawyer the next day and started divorce proceedings. That’s when I discovered we were six months behind on house payments, six months behind on car payments, and $6,000 in debt. Wally had even taken out a home-improvement loan, but of course no work had been done. The Blue Coffin was falling apart.
Grandma Stephenson—Mom’s mother, who had divorced her own alcoholic husband—gave me the money to save the house. We let the bank repossess the car. It wasn’t worth saving. My dad passed the hat in Hartley and came up with $800 to buy me a 1962 Chevy an old lady didn’t even drive in the rain. I had never driven a car in my life. I took driving lessons for a month and passed my driver’s test. I was twenty-eight years old.
The first place I drove that car was to the welfare office. I had a six-year-old daughter, a high school diploma, a medical history that can only be called a disaster, and a pile of debt. I didn’t have a choice. I told them, “I need help, but I’m only going to take it if you let me go to college.”
Thank goodness, welfare was different in those days. They agreed. I went straight to Mankato State and registered for the upcoming semester. Four years later, in 1981, I graduated summa cum laude, the highest level of honors, with a general studies degree, double majors in psychology and women’s studies, and minors in anthropology and library
I learned that lesson for myself, too, because a marriage unwraps slowly. Maybe it’s not the slowness but the consistency that crushes you. Every day is a little bit worse, a little less predictable, until finally you’re doing things you never, ever thought you’d do. I was looking for food in the kitchen one night, and I found a checkbook. It was for a secret banking account Wally had set up for himself. I turned on the grill at two in the morning, ripped out the checks one by one, and burned them. Halfway through I thought, “Sane people don’t live like this.”
But I stayed. I was worn out. I was emotionally drained. My confidence was crippled. I was physically weak from the surgeries. And I was scared. But not scared enough to make a change.
The last year was the worst. It was so bad, I can’t even remember the details. The whole year was black. Wally had stopped coming home before three in the morning, and since we were sleeping in different rooms, I never saw him. He left the house early every morning, but I didn’t know where he went. He had been pushed out of the family business, and our money situation was drifting from bad to unbearable. Mom and Dad sent me what they could. Then they went to the rest of the family and collected several hundred dollars more. When that ran out, Jodi and I had nothing to eat. We lived on oatmeal, nothing but oatmeal, for two weeks. I finally went to Wally’s mother, who I knew blamed me for her son’s condition.
“Don’t do it for me,” I said. “Do it for your granddaughter.” She bought one bag of groceries, set it on the kitchen table, and left.
A few nights later Wally came home. Jodi was asleep. I was in the living room reading
One Day at a Time
, the bible of Al-Anon, a support group for people affected by alcoholics. I didn’t yell or hit him or anything like that. We both acted as if Wally came home all the time. I hadn’t seen him in a year, and I was surprised how bad he looked. He was thin. He was sickly. He clearly wasn’t eating. I could smell alcohol, and he still had the shakes. He sat down on the other side of the room without a word, this man who used to talk for hours to anyone, and watched me read. Eventually he dozed off, so it surprised me when he said, “What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing,” I told him, but when he asked I knew. I had reached ten. No fireworks. No final injustice. The moment had slipped in as quiet as a stranger coming home.
I went to a lawyer the next day and started divorce proceedings. That’s when I discovered we were six months behind on house payments, six months behind on car payments, and $6,000 in debt. Wally had even taken out a home-improvement loan, but of course no work had been done. The Blue Coffin was falling apart.
Grandma Stephenson—Mom’s mother, who had divorced her own alcoholic husband—gave me the money to save the house. We let the bank repossess the car. It wasn’t worth saving. My dad passed the hat in Hartley and came up with $800 to buy me a 1962 Chevy an old lady didn’t even drive in the rain. I had never driven a car in my life. I took driving lessons for a month and passed my driver’s test. I was twenty-eight years old.
The first place I drove that car was to the welfare office. I had a six-year-old daughter, a high school diploma, a medical history that can only be called a disaster, and a pile of debt. I didn’t have a choice. I told them, “I need help, but I’m only going to take it if you let me go to college.”
Thank goodness, welfare was different in those days. They agreed. I went straight to Mankato State and registered for the upcoming semester. Four years later, in 1981, I graduated summa cum laude, the highest level of honors, with a general studies degree, double majors in psychology and women’s studies, and minors in anthropology and library
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