the winter of our discontent.

XXV.
Later on we discovered that I'd given my father a heart attack, literally. We went running together, and he insisted on keeping up with me for the whole three miles. I held my pace back, but it was still too much, and he spent the rest of the evening slumped over in his recliner, pale and huffing and insisting he was okay.

But that's not when it started. It was a little over a year later, and my father was unemployed, which was not unusual. He was driving and his left side started tingling and he got to a pay phone and started calling phone numbers. He got my brother Jim, who drove him to the hospital.

It turned out that my father wasn't having a heart attack right then, but an examination showed that he'd had a good-sized heart attack in the past and that he was due for another, fatal one, if he didn't have open heart surgery soon.

The operation went smoothly, and my father was discharged with instructions to eat well, exercise moderately, and return to work in three months. And this is where the trouble started, because my father had some idea that having had his life flash before his eyes should excuse him from the working world forever. The three months' disability ran out, and my father continued to sit, sodden and slightly grumpy, in his recliner.

My mother explained that he had to get another job. And then she nagged, pleaded, cajoled, threatened, and none of it did any good. He'd sit, making excuses: this job was too far away, he didn't want to work for this company, no one would be in the office in the morning/ at lunchtime/ in the afternoon/ on Mondays/on Fridays. She wrote down phone numbers in a loose-leaf notebook and sent him out. He'd come back early, with excuses, and sit in front of the TV. Finally she made the rule that he had to be out of the house between 9 and 5.

I think he just drove around for 8 hours.

At night we were all at home and the tension was everywhere. I started to understand what my mother meant when she said that money doesn't solve your problems, but not having it sure amplifies them. Our small house suddenly felt constricting. My father would stand in front of the heater -- it was southern California, but lately he always insisted on having the heat -- and scratch his chest (claiming that the scar from his surgery still itched) and complain. If my mother or I were late coming home, he'd ask where we'd been. Make insinuations.

I've read before that most children form their idea of what a marriage should be, by watching their parents. I think I did just the opposite. Watching my mother try to explain that my father needed to get a job or else they couldn't afford their mortgage payments, watching my father make excuses about why he couldn't get a job (with a clean bill of health), I was making a checklist of all the criteria my future husband should not have.

The easiest thing to do was to try and ignore him, and that's what I did. Luckily this coincided with the college application time, so it made sense to pack on the activities. At night, my mother and I would go for walks -- no danger of my father wanting to join us and actually get up (horrors!) from the TV -- and stay out for hours. We'd scavenge the couch cushions for change, and end up at a Taco Bell or a McDonald's, sharing a free-refills drink and killing time until we had to face our home again.

Wednesday 20 February, 03:00 PM