Ch 14 Part 2 - Rumpelstiltskin Contracts

 Back to Chapter 14 part 1

Chapter Fourteen – Rumpelstiltskin Contracts Part 2

442

I was still working on the property settlement.  My life felt like Ashley had two knives held at my throat for a year.  I had to hold on, be patient and try not to make the wrong move as to avoid either losing Penelope or being put into a financial situation where I was paralyzed by a mortgage. 

Ashley was a vacuum.  All my forced remainder of a life with Ashley became a black hole fraught with gravity devoid of emotional reciprocation.  As if facing even five minutes of true eye-to-eye communication about the how’s or why’s or God forbid last year’s punch-list of what Ashley wanted in order for our marriage to survive was this pitfall trap shrouded in secrecy that could never be discussed.  It is the kind of thing that could drive a man to become a published author just to get around the roadblock preventing direct cathartic therapeutic resolution.

There were these hang nails of thought Ashley put out to the gossip populace.  Ashley pretended to attach them to her facetious anger.  The greatest Norma-Desmond was that Ashley tried; that Ashley tried some valiant effort or even the slightest to prevent something.  As if the conclusion of our separation was something Ashley ever attempted to avoid like a driver merging into on coming traffic after some level of fatigue or late night out of character behavior.  Ashley chose to slide her hands in symmetric movement and watch our headlights shatter into shards.  I sat alone in bed asking why for the three hundred and sixty-sixth time.  I was no closer.  Whiskey was still banned.

443

Saturday December 19, 2009, I picked up Penelope from Ashley’s at nine again.  Penelope hid mouse-like under the sofa.  Penelope informed the room how horrible I was and that she wanted to stay with mommy.  Ashley said, “The judge decided.” Hilton was in the kitchen.  I was on the porch listening to the three-act play.  Penelope bubbled out, “Daddy, you’re mean and we never do anything fun.”

As Penelope stretched her on-stage soliloquy, I remembered weeks after the separation.  I emailed Ashley about how we would talk to Penelope as a triad.  We never have.

444

December 26, 2009, the scheduled Christmas holiday transition transpired.  My lawyer finally gave me papers the week before on these exceptions to week A and week B.  At five forty-five p.m. I drove up to the porch house to return Penelope.  Penelope requested “Say something nice to mommy.” 

The giant Christmas tree was lit up through the second-story window.  The white lights sparkled in the garlands draped between the banisters.  The porch surrounded like arms with contracting tendons.  Jeffery and Hilton’s vehicles were mortared.  The life I thought I would live into my geriatric years kept pacing.  Part of me was despising myself for ever being part of it. 

Penelope and I had spent a splendid little Christmas week together: Christmas in the Oaks at New Orleans’ City Park, old-school Rudolf movies, scavenger hunts, pretend jaguar chases and mass.  I even got to put together a wooden castle play-set with a drawbridge and knights at two a.m. like I was a real dad.  I had this wonderful week sandwiched in between the scenes and sounds of the pick-up on the ninetieth and what was about to occur.

Penelope and I were driving back from my parents.  Ashley and Jeffery were heading towards my rental.  Cell phone drops occurred.  I headed to the wrong stop.  An unknown puppy from Santa was wagging in Ashley’s living room.  Apparently I had ruined Christmas because I misread the legal paper from last weeks’ mailbox.  Ashley had never been to the rental.  I dropped Penelope off with Lacey in the porch-house driveway and called Ashley back.

Jeffery answered the phone with another staple in my skin, “Ethan you are completely out of line.  Quit trying to hurt my sister.  She has been through enough.”  Par for the hole, there was never a conversation, no puppy-planning; no phone calls from Ashley, just daddy ruined Christmas, because I delivered my daughter down the wrong chimney.

445

January 2, 2010, a new year and the worst year of my life was technically rotated.  Eight days later an earthquake crumbled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, like a crumbled cereal box.  Hundreds of thousands were dead, injured, and a million homeless.  Ten dollar texts and two years later tent-cities ruffle next to open sewers.  New Orleans had a more-abused baby-sista shellacked under concrete, stucco, and shit.  Rubble mass graves fermented in hell-rot: squalor, crime and sister-child blue tarps.  Cholera stemmed until the next rainy season.  Death explodes like unmarked Egyptian rubble-doors. The world kept moving. 

Brother Gregory, my high school principal, was in New Orleans from his teaching life adrift in the Indian Ocean.  We went out to dinner at an oyster bar.  Brother emailed me about the divorce.  Brother Gregory was sage, contemplative and had connected with more coarse humanity than I ever will. 

We sat down for a raw and a charbroiled dozen.  At one point I mentioned reading Victor Frankl’s, “Man’s Search for Meaning” again.  Gregory talked about meeting Frankl at Sinai synagogue in New Orleans.  The story about the psychiatrist, holocaust survivor spun to Gregory meeting Anna Freud and Coretta Scott King at different intersections. 

Gregory had collected bits of perspective from living in the States, in Europe, in Australia and in Indochina.  He talked about a woman who was still a nun who he met when studying to become a Brother.  He has loved her as a human his whole life.  Gregory talked about their discussions on staying or leaving their orders prior to official installation.  They still communicate over internet video conferencing in respectful context to their individual choices.  Gregory started studying at fourteen.  He circled God.

Brother Gregory showed me a human man, who had made mistakes and questions the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church.  He even had insider information on the conservative politics of the current pope, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger from knowing who he was during the pope’s training. 

Aside from all of that Gregory was a friend wanting to know how I was doing.  We had talked before the trial.  I emailed how the case turned out.  I was comforted by having someone want to listen to me.  Gregory had been praying for Penelope, Ashley and I.

Gregory offered this analogy about the ego from his experiences with Freudianism about how Ashley had who she was at her core in her ego and how it must have been a difficult evolving process to come to her decision to leave her marriage.  All these actions after the fact may be coping mechanisms like walls and layers of an onion surrounding her ego to protect that fetal-core of who she is.

We talked about education, God, the Church, funny things that have happened to us and also at the end of the night about me possibly getting an annulment.  Brother talked to me frankly how the annulment process is all bullshit anyway, “You need to get it done and just go along with whatever hoop to get it done, because the truth is the “sacrament” of marriage is between the husband and the wife.  They are the ministers of the sacrament, not the priest, that God would not want someone to be unhappy.  God is love and he wants love to expand.  People evolve and change in this world.  A person should not be constrained when that evolution occurs and be able to move on to love.”

I felt properly parented in a way to hear someone with so much knowledge of the Catholic Church converse with me without a politically-correct filter.  We also discussed during the night how we both disagree with the church’s sad hypocrisy judging homosexuals and agreed about how women should be allowed to be priests.  Gregory even told me, “In the early church women were priests.  It was not until later that it changed.  The rules in this world are created by man.  You have to use your judgment about why you may be being asked to comply.”  I thought if nothing else, always find out the history to separate purpose from tradition.” 

After talking with Brother Gregory, the next day I called Ashley.  I tried to olive-branch out to Ashley to communicate more effectively.  We had to coordinate Penelope’s back to school schedule.  The property segregation hung like soaking-wet close on a wire. Could we tone down?  Was occasional lunch in a trio with Penelope possible?  Maybe the confusion would prove problematic for Penelope, but it could be helpful.  

446

Ashley wanted only to email.  Ashley indicated she did not trust me since the day of the house appraisal back in March.  Phones were contraband.  Lawyers were needed.  We were still deemed September-never-ends adversaries.

A March 2009 appraisal was the first time Ashley and I had been back in the house together since Christmas morning 2008.  I was still living there.  I got a ten minute warning.  I jetted over from work.  The yokel appraiser measured and left.  Ashley was about to head back to the Winfield’s.

I stood in the study thinking how much I wanted to come to an agreement.  I felt hurt.  I wanted all of it to go away and on some subconscious level to please Ashley again.

I moved over the honey-oak floor into the den.  I asked Ashley for a minute.  I said, “When Penelope is older around eight or ten, if Penelope could say I want to live with my dad every other week or something fifty-fifty and we could change to that; then I would be willing to have less than fifty-fifty right now so we would not have to go to court.”  Ashley and I hugged on it and she left.

I felt relieved.  I found out later that week from my attorney Martha that kind of agreement was not legally enforceable.  A child can not change or have a defining say on a custody arrangement.  It is up to the judge.  After the judge’s decision the parent requesting more custody has to go back to court and get approval from the judge.  I explained this in an email to Ashley; I felt like a scientist on Fox news.

Ashley felt we hugged on it like a Rumpelstiltskin fairy-tale contract.  I was cast as Judas in that den.  Now Ashley could not trust me.  My road to faith got bricked through court. 

January 13, 2010, Penelope told me about her new puppy Bella at mommy’s house.  Bella bit her, but “that is what puppies do.”  The “bite” was probably more of active puppy excitement.  Penelope told me, “Bella sleeps in a cage in mommy’s room.”

447

February 7, 2010, the Saints won the Superbowl.  Holy Shit, there is a God after all.  The whole season Tim and I followed along with Drew Brees and Coach Payton.  Tim came up from New Orleans to my rental.  The drive meant a lot for him to share that moment.  The Saints had been a constant pick-me-up with the maelstrom of the rest of my life all year.  When Tracey Porter intercepted Peyton Manning, Tim and I jumped off the sofa and leaped into each other’s arms with a constant “I can’t believe this is happening Oh-my-God primal scream.”  Language was usurped by guttural man-grunts at the realization our city had just won the Superbowl.

Katrina shit-fisted New Orleans in a colostomy fuck-you.  Five years later the Saints picked up an entire people wherever we were on this globe.  We were better for it in a resonating way that connected every part of the Who Dat Nation.  I wrote this poem on what it felt like to be America’s runt and some how find our selves on top the dog-pile, at least for one day.

Super Sunday in New Orleans

There is a line between earning and deserving, of choice and reluctant acceptance of inevitable baggage, carried in consolation to know the lagniappe of grime, to be under the microscope of one’s own country and be talked about like a gangrenous limb, an optional appendage stunted below sea level.

The handicap of geography and a mutt-culture bred out in Creole and Cajun, Spaniards and Frenchman, Haitian and Honduran, Irish and Nigerian and with all our tattoos, are we not Americans?  Crimson washed faces at Normandy on Higgins stern, Armstrong’s trumpet, Tennessee’s pen, a Confederacy of Dunces penned in a second-line of Fats, Fountain, and Frogman and Mahalia’s howl radiating upwards from a swamp and muck, clean in soul, but still the dark face of a mutt.

We see pity like a prerequisite of the angle of a forehead tilted forward and a chin withdrawn eyes peering downward at a puppy lost and gone, scavenging in street drums for some Laveau cure and inherent faith endures the constant external explanation of every condescending outsider of why wallow down in the town of the three-legged dog, the blind piano player or the prince in the frog?

With the interception of our native son we have found redemption in the caress of a leather ellipse under the purview of the world, zealous and joyful with the exuberant release of a Catahoula wail.  We parade in mass, priests and pirates, royalty and roustabouts Hannon and Lafitte, Zulu and Challmettian, all on the shoulder of a Texan, reconstructed and doubted, more New Orleans than a thoroughbred Manning displaying optional faith to choose us, to throw red shells on the newspaper to bare beads and look us straight in the eye, and see us as a human standing in full.

Uncompromised, sanitary, and smiling in one church of the Saints

448

February 20, 2010, Penelope had her first soccer game.  I sat alone, Ashley’s six to my one foldout chair full of red cards, with Hilton, Lacey, Ashley, Jeffery and his wife and daughter.  It was Ashley’s weekend.  Penelope smiled at me from a distance, but did not say much of anything.  I saw the confusion in Penelope when she felt the gravitational pull towards her mother.  Penelope did not leave Ashley to venture onward to me.  Even speaking would be a divisive action.  The world of mom would be truncated by wandering into the realm of dad.  Penelope was the only girl on the team.

On our property settlement, Ashley was basing her offer on how much Ashley claimed the bank would let her borrow, not on what the house was worth.  Where was America’s indulgently-devious over-leveraged irresponsible trove of mortgaged-liquidity?  CPA Ashley was ignoring depreciation and equity on our furniture and electronics inflating the value of the furniture I retained.  Ashley was determined to get us back in a courtroom.  Ashley was beset on more lawyers, more rubbing alcohol blood withdrawals, and more months.  Out of the last five years I had only slept under my own roof for six months; Katrina, Dallas, Hingle-land, a brief reprieve and now rental house.  I was a semi-professional vagabond.

449

February 23^, 2010, I picked Penelope up from school.  Upon entering the car Penelope said, “Yea! Only a couple of days and Oma will pick me up and I get to see mommy again.”  I contemplated Ashley sabotaging Penelope’s role with me through little pre-departure pep-talks, “Well you only have to spend two nights with daddy.  Then you get to come back to MOMMY!!!!!!” or “Ok this is what is going to happen you have to go with daddy for a couple of days, because the judge is making you and then Oma is going to pick you up.”  Ashley set up Penelope’s bowling-pin soul to view her time with me as something negative and separate, as not part of Penelope’s regular life.  Maybe Penelope just loved her mother that much.  Maybe I was boring and dad.  The words smelled like Denmark.

450

The next morning I woke Penelope for school.  Penelope wanted to continue to act like wolves in a howling game.  We pretended to capture the penguin dolls we caught at the Endymion parade last Mardi Gras in our mouths.  We ate our breakfast cereal.  I finished first because Penelope always chatted.  I went to brush my teeth and set out Penelope’s clothes.  It started.

Penelope refused to pick up her bowl and cup.  Penelope tried to negotiate only picking up one.  Penelope flopped on the ground and wailed.  Penelope bumped her knee on the chair in the act.  I tried to talk to her.  I could feel Penelope’s chest heaving over Cheerios.  We had made a pact that Penelope would always pick her dishes up to avoid such optional tirades.  Penelope needed stability and predictability, not choices in the equation.

I asked about school and mommy’s house.  Penelope said, “I would never do that there,” only with me.  I got Penelope to calm.  I told her, “You will lose your Littlest Pet Shop if you don’t pick it up.”  Time was ticking.  We left the cup and bowl on the table and moved to Penelope’s room.

Penelope refused to wear her standard uniform because the tights under the jumper were an unacceptable color.  I took Penelope’s pajama-top off to put on her shirt.  Penelope started squirming and tried to scurry away.  In the movement, one of my fingernails scratched her back.  Penelope lost the remainder of her composure. 

Penelope accused me of slicing her on purpose.  I stood breathing slowly.  I gave Penelope a second.  Penelope stood inside her bedroom with her back to the door, arms crossed and foot stomping.  Penelope let out, “I don’t like you.  I’m going to tell mommy.”  I tried to explain, “It was an accident. I am just trying to help you get dressed.  It is ok to be confused.  I love you.”

Penelope frumpily sat in the corner after kicking me to vent anger.  I told her, “I love you.”  I got a pair of the Endymion Penguins and a bear I got Penelope for Valentines in my lap.  I tossed a penguin and then the bear over to Penelope to hug like stuffed-animal peace offerings.  I tried to talk to Penelope about the feelings she was having. 

Penelope calmed, but still spurned dressing, “I’m not going to go to school today.”  I told her, “Then you can get dressed in the car because it is past time to go.  Penelope was sheepishly quiet.  I put the uniform in the backseat and cranked the ignition for heat in the February temperatures.  I made a second trip with Penelope in her pajamas.  The rental house did not have a useable garage.  I got Penelope dressed with her jacket and fixed her hair. 

Penelope did not like the car dressing room.  Penelope said, “I want to go back inside.”  I told her, “It is a lot better to get dressed inside and maybe next time you won’t throw a fit and we can do that.”  We rode to school and listened to some Avett Brothers. 

“Go read the letter in my desk. Make sure my daughter knows that I love her.  Always remember there is nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name.”

I picked Penelope up from school.  Penelope had a pile of artwork to bring home in her cubby.  She flitted to retrieve the creations herself.  Penelope sorted her snake-tracing picture with a mouse digesting in the stomach to stay at school and others to come home. 

Today was not a mommy day.  Certain pictures were for certain houses.  Penelope worried about me seeing her artwork destined for her mother as if Penelope had to keep secrets.  This was exactly the world I had tried to avoid.  Equality did not require a picture of mathematical balance, but here a five-year-old was attempting to divide the ark by chromosomes.

451

At breakfast the next day Penelope and I talked about, “The Sword in the Stone” movie.  Penelope watched the pint-sized King Arthur Wart DVD at either Ashley’s or Lacey’s house.  I had not seen the sword pulled in years, but Penelope talked about the wizard’s duel.  Penelope pronounced, “The witch breaks all the rules.”  I mentioned, “The wizard changes into a germ and hides.  He was small and smarter.” 

As I was picking up the dishes, Penelope mentioned that she had watched the movie with Mr. Ben.  Mr. Ben’s name had popped up in a few too many of Penelope’s casual accounts of transpiring events.  The name of the man who would never come when Ashley “invited” him to dinner was a repeating blip.  The name was surfacing like a precursor bubble of crude from a deep-well blowout that had already occurred.  The name reverberated like an alarming crescendo booming of what I should have known.  My curiosity was mosquito bitten.  The only thing I asked Penelope was, “Is Mr. Ben nice to you?”  Penelope said he was and I left it at that, but the coffee percolated.

At lunch I drove on the interstate to my lawyer Martha’s office to sign legal papers to force Ashley to go to court to finally settle our property and to make our divorce legal, because technically Ashley and I were still legally married.  As I was driving I saw Tracer Richardson’s billboard lawyer face starting at me at the intersection of interstates. 

The number for the office Ashley and Ben helped set up was right there on the roadside, but I had Tracer’s cell in my cell from other days.  I felt like there was no way I would ever get an honest answer out of Ashley or Ben.  Even if it was, I probably would not believe it.  I knew Tracer before I knew Ashley.  I figured why not.  I called Tracer and straight up asked him, “Is there anything that you think I should know about going on between Ben and Ashley with those Tuesday nights?”  Tracer replied, “Well they’re dating.  They have been dating since December.”

I was stuttered like a pat of butter left too long on the skillet unaware that it was all but burning.  I really did not know and responded with a totally lie, of, “Well, I knew that, but was anything going on then?”  Tracer kept on his lawyer cufflinks and assured no knowledge of salacious adulterous behavior in a simple, “No.”  I thanked Tracer for his legal-eagle candor.  I continued on that scurried drive to my attorney.

Thoughts fed the speedometer.  Maybe Ashley and Ben hid an affair from Tracer and me. Maybe Tracer was more billboard lawyer or Nottoway legacy, to hedge with his two best friends.  Maybe Ben, who Tracer said came from a broken home, felt like he could not accelerate an emotional affair kindled until assurances inoculated legal fonts of incrimination.

Maybe fireside stories were told to keep the wings on Ashley’s fairytale.  Maybe a woman had to escape and ogre-troll and Ben found his knighthood.  Maybe day three hundred and sixty-six was the opening of legal hunting season for fresh meat during daylight hours.  Day counts started before the snow melted.  Maybe it was that simple.  Second guessing was pointless. 

452

February 27, 2010, I picked up Penelope in our Saturday extraction.  I rang the bell.  Penelope came out smiling.  I had my fedora on.  Penelope said, “Oh, not the hat.  I don’t like the hat.”  I said, “Hello, are you ready for a fun day?”  Ashley had Penelope pasted to her leg and said, “The judge says you have to go.  It will just be a couple of days.” 

In one swoop of judicial-culpability Ashley was imprinting a five-year-old’s mind that being with me was equivalent to a prison sentence.  Mommy is the safe and wonderful place.  Daddy’s is an internment.  At Penelope’s request Ashley buckled Penelope in her car seat.  Ashley gave Penelope six kinds of kisses in this ritual of Eskimo, butterfly, and Neapolitan affection chocolate sauce coat of “well the judge says” in a ten minute drawn out exchange. 

At around minute seven, while Ashley was still buckling Penelope up, Penelope said, “I wish you and daddy weren’t separated.”  Ashley responded with, “Penelope, you don’t mean that.”  I told Penelope in a slow sensitive, but firm tone, “Mommy and Daddy are separated and that is not going to change.”  I just stood there and waited, not saying much else.  I got in the front seat and played some Rafi and we went on our day. .

Single fatherhood survival proved nothing.  I would rather Ashley encourage the joys of Penelope having a father available at minimum due to the mandate given the decision of the judge she referenced so frequently, but that would shatter the slipper.

The judge spent six hours listening to Ashley, her parents and desperate salvos to defame me as unfit.  After nine and a half months of waiting and worrying, this judge gave me more time with Penelope.  Ashley was in complete denial.  The words, “but the judge says,” could be mercury for Penelope’s small psyche.  Scapegoats taste good in drive-through value meals.

Martin Luther King once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”  I could only hope to emulate Dr. King with my pittance of a lily problem.

453

I was sick for a week.  Accumulating sleep was a Sisyphus boulder.  I missed a day of work. 

On Saturday Penelope had a play date with her friend from down the street.  Having her friend over was a bit of a reprieve, because Penelope had still yet to learn how to play well alone, for being an only child Penelope always had premium adult access from someone. 

We watched the Swan Princess DVD Saturday and Sunday morning.  Penelope wanted to watch the same movie again.  I suggested we watch a different movie.  Penelope lost it.

Penelope hit and scolded me.  I was still.  I told Penelope, “Hitting is not acceptable and you need to go in time-out for hitting a parent.”  Penelope refused and said, “I’m sorry,” but kept screaming and whacking.

Penelope was by the kitchen table and said, “I want to bring a chair to go in time out.”  I said, “That’s fine you can bring a chair.”  Penelope dragged an adult-size wooden ultimate-challenge chair into her room and tried to slam the door on me. I told her, “We made a pinky-promise to never close the door during time out.”  Penelope said, “I want to break the promise.”  I said, “Daddy doesn’t break promises no matter what.” 

Penelope started pushing on the door.  Penelope picked up the chair and tried to thrust the wooden legs at me like a miniature lion tamer.  Penelope tried to bite me and flail her fists.  Penelope hurled books and toys.  I did not say anything but, “Hitting is wrong.”  I stood like an inert hallway-statue. 

I held my flaccid arms out.  Penelope kept raging.  Eventually after picking Penelope up and putting her back near her bed several times without saying a word, I tried hugging Penelope.  She screamed at me.  Penelope sat in the corner.  I tried talking.  The egg timer had long since expired from function.

I was exhausted from what felt like the flu.  I suggested Penelope and I each help pick-up her scattered toys.  I started to scavenge for Barbie dolls and wooden blocks.  I tried speaking.  Penelope refused. 

After a while Penelope came out her room on her own and started helping.  Later I was doing the dishes.  I asked if Penelope wanted to help.  She did.  I took the gesture as Penelope’s way of apologizing with what she had in her toolbox for now. 

454

Days like that scraped a match of magnesium-flint memory.  There is an abandoned temper and a magma-rage that smolders in Penelope, an accompaniment to her raw creative and festive energies.  The diminutive fury reminded me of her mother.  There were times in our marriage when Ashley would explode.  

(I do not write this to blame Penelope’s mother, only to remind myself that we are both natural and systematic beings, of who we are biologically and who we are trained to become.  Every human is bestowed the traits in a pairing of flawed, yet humble individuals and I and my daughter are no exception.)

I can remember a few times of Ashley pounding me on my chest, cursing at me, or throwing her wedding ring in my face.  I saw this parallel in Penelope.  I was worried, sympathetic, concerned in what I could do to help Penelope through this and at the same time aware that Penelope had thrown fits like this when her parents’ were still “together.”

I knew Penelope’s fiery angst was a part she may always struggle to stem.  Maybe the rage was a byproduct of Penelope’s total environment, which time would dismantle into a balanced serenity.  Either way I needed to provide Penelope instruments she could wield to address her feelings of anger in a productive and controlled manner. 

Ashley appeared resolute on blaming this tsunami on me.  I worried about Penelope partitioning her behavior as one way for Ashley and one way for me.  Such a split inevitably would lead to Richter-registering outbursts throughout Penelope’s life unless she could process these feelings in a healthy encompassing manner. 

For that night, I made us grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  We watched Dahl’s Matilda.  I was still sick, but I made it into work the next day.  We could weld in the fabrication shop at our own pace.

455

I volunteered at the Pine Montessori fair fundraiser.  I helped set up at seven a.m.  I worked the rock-climbing wall until tear down at four-thirty.  It felt good to feel appreciated.  Around two-thirty, I called Ashley trying to find out if Penelope was coming to sing with her class as she was scheduled.

I got this email from Ashley three days later in response to my query.

I had every intention of attending the event on Saturday with Penelope.  I even made plans to meet up with several other parents and children.  We had her soccer game at noon, got home and changed.  Penelope was excited.  Just before we were ready to leave, I received your voicemail.  When I told Penelope that you would be there, she started to cry and said she did not want to go.  I assured her that she was not going with you, but we would just see you and say hello.

Penelope was still so upset that she cried and went into her playroom.  Penelope would not leave the playroom until I assured her that I was not going to force her to go.  I then had to call and cancel my plans with the other families.  Trust me.  I understood that you would be angry when we didn't come.  I wanted to come and have her tell you hello, because I want her to like her dad.  I want to be able to see her on your weekend and tell her hello, too.  In every respect, I wanted to be there...she did not.

This is the same issue as every weekend when you pick her up.  I did not want to call, because of your temper.  I knew you would be angry and hurt.  I know you think this is all my fault that she feels this way, but you are wrong.

I think it is important for her to have a relationship with you, but it needs to be a healthy one.  Penelope is suffering here.  This is too much time with you and it is forced upon her by the judge and you.  If I didn't tell her the judge is doing it, the only person left forcing this schedule on her is you.  I don't think blaming you is healthy for your relationship either.

I just don't understand why you feel the need to keep pushing her and forcing this upon her.  I NEVER say anything negative about you to her or to other people.  I always try to be positive and mention the fun/happy things you may share.  I have been told by many others that you do not do the same.  When you say negative things about me to other people, it doesn't hurt me, it only hurts Penelope.

I will continue to do what is in HER best interest, not yours. I would love it if we could have a peaceful relationship, but ultimately Penelope comes first in my life, and I cannot support the decisions you are making towards her.  If you want a peaceful relationship, then make a step in the right direction.

If we work together, and stop forcing a situation on her that is not comfortable, we may be able to get to a positive place.  Your path will not get us there.

456

I was lost and forwarded Ashley’s email to my mother and wrote to my mom,

I am so lost, hurt and confused.  One minute Penelope treats me like the best dad.  The next she lashes out like I am the worst person on Earth.  Ashley sent me this message about last Saturday.  I am exhausted.  I feel like no matter what I do my kid is going to end up hating me.  I feel like a horrible father.  I want to help my kid.  I feel like all she wants to do is punch and kick me.

Maybe the worst futility in the world is to see your child suffering and feeling incapable of helping.  There probably is not much you can do but pray for me. 

Saturday mornings are like wrenching my guts through a pride-sucking press.  I am compressed aluminum-foil thin hearing Penelope tell me and her mom she does not want to go with me. 

Penelope’s symptomatic fear of me shivers behind Ashley’s oblivious tyrannical passive-aggressive violence.  Ashley uses Penelope as armor from truths reaching her own clan.  I prompt Penelope’s time-outs to her hurls and hits of preschool fists fueled by a genetic oath to her mother’s perfection and utter cataclysmic confusion. 

Penelope does not want her time with mommy to intersect with her time with daddy like at the soccer game when Penelope would not even say hello.  (It probably triggers memories.) With last Saturday there has to be some truth to Penelope’s reaction under all the other shit Ashley is piling on top of it.  

I don't need answers mom.  All I can do is keep moving forward, get the final divorce and hope.  I just wanted someone to vent to.

I saw Penelope’s cat-face-painted best friend Annabelle with her mother Molly at the school fundraiser.  Earlier in the day I asked Molly in between me latching kids up and down a rented rock-climbing wall to let me know if Molly spotted Penelope.  Molly never mentioned a phone call or cancelled plans.  The population of crossover people still left in Nottoway that I still talked to that could possibly triangulate paths with Ashley was such a statistical anomaly that even if I did disparage Ashley, how could such nonsense get back to her?  It was as if Ashley never walked out of the courtroom.  Sometimes my life felt like I was a man in an uncontrollable shaking airplane.

457

Penelope and I had a wonderful time in the next series of days.  Our time together padded an insulating perspective from indefensible conjecture.  I could better see real and ridiculous inconsequential drama. 

Penelope and I were on the sofa reading, a kid’s version of Heidi.  I asked Penelope about Saturday, Penelope said, “I did not want to go, it had nothing to do with you.  I would always want to see you Daddy.”  I asked her, “How do you feel about going back and forth between mommy and daddy?  Would you rather just stay in one place?”  Penelope said, “I like spending time with each of you.  I like some time with you and some time with mommy.”

When I was getting Penelope ready for bed, Penelope sat in my lap and grabbed this framed picture on her bookshelf.  The photograph was in a silver Hallmark frame with the words family and love commercially inscribed.  The picture was of the morning after Penelope was born with her mother, Penelope and I in the hospital room.  Ashley and I had not gone to sleep.  Penelope was swaddled in the iconic white with pink and blue striped blanket every hospital-birthed American youth receives.  I think the blanket is code 407b on the invoice to the health insurance company. 

Penelope smiled at the photograph.  I told her, “We are still a family.  We might live in different houses, but we will always be a family.  I will always be your dad and your mom will always be your mom.” 

458

Sunday after church Penelope sat at the breakfast table doing math in a first-grade workbook we got from the educational-supply store.  Penelope told me, “Dad you are the best.”  Penelope was sequencing numbers in groups of three with one number missing in a series.  Penelope’s friend from down the street knocked on the front door again.  I walked Penelope down to play. 

While Penelope was gone I wrote in my diary about the day before.  Yesterday I picked up Penelope in our nine a.m. Saturday appointment.  Ashley was not there.  Lacey was.  Three gargoyles were in the driveway: Lacey’s Ford Expedition, Jeffery’s F-150 and Ben Bastion’s green compact Chevy S-10 with a Counting Crows sticker on the rear window. 

I knocked on the Dutch door.  I stared at the empty bird feeders hovering over purple globs.  Lacey and Jeffery came.  At this point I did not realize Ashley was absent, an explanation was never offered.  I assume Ashley was out of town on work.  Penelope whimpered at the heel of her Oma.   

Penelope cowered from me and clung to her Oma.  Penelope ran off behind the garage.  Penelope said, “I don’t want you to touch me,” when I tried to give Penelope a hug.  I said, “There is no reason to be afraid.  Everything is going to be ok.”  I picked Penelope up because she was refusing to move towards the car.  Penelope proceeded to punch me in the face and claw at my hair.  I did not say a word. 

Jeffery was in the background watching, “Penelope don’t hit.”  We moved towards the car seat.  Penelope thrashed and decided she wanted to give this little-victory bracelet she left in the backseat to her Oma.  So Penelope gave the beaded circle to Jeffery. 

Jeffery helped Penelope walk back to the car.  Penelope was calm.  I buckled her.  We drove off.  Penelope started to be friendly like a Jekyll and Hyde transformation.  I asked Penelope about the exchange later and she told me, “I didn’t get to say goodbye to mom.”

459

March 20, 2010, a week later at Penelope’s soccer game, Ben Bastion rode with Ashley.  Ashley walked up to me and said, “You remember Ben, right?” as if I was naïve enough not to realize or recognize the “insert cock here” sign. 

I asked Penelope if I could give Penelope a hug.  She said, “After the game.”  I respected Penelope’s wishes and waited until after making a post-game hand-tunnel with some other child’s parent.  Penelope walked over to me with her snack and gave me a hug without prompt.  I gave Penelope a kiss.  The action meant the world for me to see Penelope walk freely back and forth across the picket line.

460

At church the next morning I had to go to an earlier mass to drive to New Orleans for Tim’s birthday.  When I was driving into the church parking lot Penelope was getting out of Ashley’s van.  I tried to wait around back, but Penelope saw me enter like a child listening at the doorframe for the Easter Bunny.  Penelope gave me a big hug and asked, “Can we sit together?”

I appeased Penelope’s request, after Ashley’s “doe in the headlights” response.  Penelope led the three of us to the same white Catholic-wafer pew we always use to sit in with Penelope in the crunchy middle.  The parishioners at the eight o’clock mass had not seen me since I switched to the ten-thirty iteration. 

Ashley clung to Penelope the whole mass, kissing her, draping over her like a Linus blanket, picking Peanut up like a toddler.  The dichotomy of mass with mom and mass with dad amounted to an elevated perch versus a self-responsible appeasement dominion.  External versus internal nexus of control hung with Jesus and his six pack abs in the foreground. 

After church I checked my mailbox from Saturday.  I got a letter from my attorney informing me that Ashley wanted to put the house on the market.  Fifteen months later and two CPA’s were back to the starting block. 

461

March 27, 2010, I picked Penelope up from Ashley’s house without a hint of a fit or hide, just happy.  The soccer-hug appeared to have turned a curve.  Penelope got in the car without aid of mom.  Penelope and I kicked the soccer ball together after her afternoon game.  We read a library dinosaur book about Archaeopteryx. 

We went to a Pied-Piper play Molly invited us to that her daughters were in as children slash rats.  We visited a local pastry shop after the piper stole the kids.  Penelope and Annabelle put stickers all over each other, ate pink donuts with a monogrammed P and A with bottles of chocolate milk.  Otis Redding played on the radio.  We stayed late.  I enjoyed hanging out with David and Molly like I was in the official parents club. 

On Sunday Penelope and I did yoga from our book and practiced the breathing.  We did the mountain, tree, flower, bending tree and pigeon poses before bed time.  Penelope liked the flower the best.  I was more the pigeon.

When I was at the library I got an adolescent-audience-focused book on menstruation and female puberty.  I wanted to be prepared.  Adolescence was one day.  I never had a sister, my mother, Ashley; no woman in my life had ever talked about such subjects.  Reading up on the most un-masculine of systematic engineering was a liberating “there is nothing I can not do on my own” dad kind of Marine boo-rah.  Conquer Iwo Jima “bring it on.”  Discuss menstruation alone with your eleven-year-old daughter, “get the fuck out.” 

I wanted Penelope to be able to talk to me about anything.  Who knows what is discussed in other realms and when certain events would come.  Maybe Penelope might actually appreciate a man’s perspective in her maturation one day after talking with her mom.  Probably not on menstruation, but on the inevitable connections such a path brings a young woman to encounter. 

One thing the book did suggest is that sometimes it is easier to write down your questions than having to face a conversation.  The precipice of that subject is natively the arena of mothers and may never cross my path, which in some ways is relief; however one can never be assured of what animals may approach and at what moment; a Gen X father should avail himself an education, despite the historical stigmas of gender.

462

The lawyer bills amounted to fifteen thousand so far.  Eventually the mountain made it to twenty-five.  I was hoping to hold off paying until the property was settled, but that was a no go.  I had to borrow some money from family in the interim.

April 5, 2010, I sent this email in one last attempt at a cordial relationship for Penelope.  Hope was still awaiting Pentobarbital.

Ashley,

In this season of Easter some part of me is drowning in faith.  I am searching to speak with the you with a knee scar, magazine cut-out wall furniture taped-up and dreaming; the you giddy about Christmas trees, the you that would sit with me and open up her soul in a way she had never allowed herself the vulnerability. 

I have come to the resolution that for you to face me in a frank discussion of the processes that generated and expounded out into your decision to dissolve our marriage is a pain tantamount to self-implosion.  Every element of actual discourse to resolve the remnants of our covenant whether custodial of financial have been tainted by this magnetic reservation to reverse the polarity of what your conscious is drawing you towards and from which your fears are pulling away.

Despite the rhetoric of divorce proceedings, there are truths of your core identity I do not waver in my conceptual understanding.  This visage of indestructibility with a foundation of insecurity, awash in guilt and thirsting for reassurance to satiate this inherent quest for the appearance of perfection hungers for peace. 

I may have been another one of your lost puppies.  I may have had mud under my ears, naïve, with my own anxieties, but my faith in us to overcome this world’s obstacles together was absolute.  I thanked God for you.

I am at peace with us being divorced.  I truly wish you to move on and have a happy life.  However, I can not see how you will ever be at a true peace without some form of reconciliation.  I remember green sofas and uptown brick steps.  

I am not seeking an allocution so I can allocate blame.  I am seeking an interview with the humanity of the girl I knew to give her a hug and tell her it is ok.  I do not want to be married to you anymore.  I do want us to be friendly enough to be in the same room or soccer field without this lost peace lurking behind this stoic army of clay soldiers.

I have tried to make amends, defying logic and pride.  Facing me is facing your self.  The fear of confrontation from our marriage: me wanting to talk, you wanting to run.  Is this not the same?

You know me.  Despite all that you have slandered, I understand the deepest part of why you have chosen to pursue such actions.  There is a kindness in you that I have not forgotten.  There is a warmth in you that brings me joy that you are Penelope’s mother.  If you can not take these steps across this bridge of faith to move beyond these roads of napalm and shrapnel, we will die.  This faith I have in you will die, for what?  Your friend, Ethan

Despite my Luke Skywalker Jedi-speech, the only response I got from Ashley was an iPhone snippet about tax filings and realtors.  The message was void of anything in context to my appeal.  Vader was still Vader.  Lacey did not get thrown down the big tube and the lighting-hand shots stayed aimed at me.  There would be no revisionist-publicist prequels.

The Ashley I knew was officially dead to me.  Her remaining enigma was determined to perpetuate a game of masked hide and seek, with no conception of a midnight hour.  The frozen expanse Ashley chose between us was clear.  That boundless silence murdered the last hope I had in Ashley.  A part of me was now dead.

463

April 7, 2010, I sent an email to my attorney to make a formal offer for a hundred thousand dollars to settle everything.  Ashley could keep what she had.  I would keep what I had.  Ashley could pay me the “why the fuck not” difference and let’s just be done.  Even Chalmatians eventually have to shake hands with Allstate.

Fuck math.  Fuck fair.  Fair was dead to me too.  Discussion and compromise were futile.  Ashley was trying to bleed me out of town.  Ashley was in a game of chicken with my self-respect.  Ashley used her ability to threaten to live at her parent’s house for free and pin half the mortgage on me as a trump.  Fuck my self-respect.  Fuck her lawyer that I helped fund through our account along with the new wardrobe Ashley charged on our Discover card.  Fuck fair, this was divorce. 

I spent my whole life staring at game show audience members: the Price is Right, Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune.  I can not un-see the congregation’s mouths munching on curds of lies and ignorant garbage.  I can not revert my respiration.  The fecal molecules are forever unfiltered.  Every dawn is a struggle to regain obliviousness.  I am so sick of repressing the urge to bullhorn the gawk-sheep, “What the fuck are you thinking?” 

Life is dual; beautiful and ugly.  I see both.  Bob Barker’s minions only want to see the pretty.  The herd startles to stark speech, runs in the opposing direction.  I can’t turn this off.  I can’t put a rug over or add an air freshener plug-in.  Bodies are decomposing in living-rooms.  I cook gumbo, relish the trinity vegetables, the roux, and the andouille sausage.  I eat knowing both.

Winners, losers, prizes, penalties, my dad was right, “It’s all Bull Shit.  Taboos become toilet paper for a man with nothing to lose.  Kid died, wife gone, cancer riddled, murdered some fucker; soon enough we become the toilet paper.  Bukowski said, “Even the most horrible being on earth deserves to wipe his own ass.”  Where we end up no longer matters; Penelope was my reason not to flush. 

464

Penelope and I were reading about Stegosaurus and the human body.  We read about white and red blood cells and platelets for scabs.  We read about where poop comes from; important issues for a five-year-old.  We read about the balance of good and bad bacteria in a digestive system.  I wanted to try to teach Penelope how to stay healthy.  We also practiced kicking our shadows on the fence with the soccer ball in the backyard as silhouette Pele’s in the afternoon sun.

April 10, 2010, Penelope graduated to a booster-seat in my car.  We held a toy horse wedding, an epic game of Chutes and Ladders, and made pinecone castles in the driveway.  We had a stick-duel with ancient Chinese sword techniques that Penelope named: the shark, the wolf and the unstoppable snake that dealt me the deadly blow.  Then my little Beatrix Kiddo taught me the guinea pig where she dropped her sword, crawled around in a circle like a guinea pig, grabbed her stick again and really quickly said, “Tricked you.  You’re dead.”  I love being a dad.  Peanut and I were doing great. 

Continue to Chapter 15