WAIT TILL YOUR FATHER GETS HOME

1:02 AM, Feb. 21, l996

I'm desperately trying to come to terms with who I am and what I've done. Me and Spike were coming home from his therapist appointment tonight. (Does he think all children have therapists? I heard him discussing it with Jyoti, our three year old neighbor; she mentioned a doctor, and Spike responded "well, it's not a therapist, like Amy or Lynn." He still, at the grand old age of 5 and a half, retains at least some of that childhood belief that everyone knows everyone.)

I tried to tell him how we BOTH ended up in therapy, it wasn't just him, it was me, I didn't always know the answers, the right way, even if I was a "grownup". "It's hard for me too," I began, floundering my way through uncharted territory with my son, "this whole thing...." "How?," contended Spike. I began talking, as usual without thinking. "Well, if you and Coco are acting out, I can't say, "Wait till your Daddy gets home, 'cause Daddy's not coming home anymore."

Completely unintentional, however melodramatic, but true. Tears streamed in a sudden hot wave down my face, Spike started talking in goofy non-sentences as he does when masking his own tears that were crushed down like pepper, too deep to exit his clear blue eyes. (I felt a surge of communality and love for him, as I did when I showed him on paper how to write out addition problems of two and three figures that he had been doing in his head. He immediately got it, and his eyes blinked and reflected comprehension. "That's a good trick," he said matter of factly.) These were not tears that carried germs of anger or misunderstanding, but a pure rush of tears that simply felt sadness for lost, shattered hopes. "He's not coming home anymore," I repeated softly. For a short time, it seemed like their father had been hit by a train, he had never hated me, tried to destroy me, collaborated with another to love and hurt the family he swore to cherish and protect forever.

In a way, he had been hit by a train bound for nowhere, speeding into darkness, its engines whistling and spinning, motivated, churned by his lost, intense and misguided love that went bad, so bad, like cream cheese turned dark green and moldy; only even more rotten, like a quart of milk you find while tending to the bi-annual cleaning of the refrigerator -- there it is way in the back, its milk curdled like cottage cheese, and algae colored; its stench almost visible, causing you to jerk back inadvertently, quickly, and suddenly realize, however briefly, the ultimate decay of us all.

We looked at pictures over the weekend, Spike, his sister Coco, age 4, and I. There he was in so many, the same smile frozen on his face like a cartoon or like the owner of a downtown restaurant who poses with all the celebrities that ever dined there, each picture of him looking just like the last, throughout the years, only the faces with him changing, like a timeless rock presented with ever changing reality -- that is what Tim was like; the same face, expression in all pictures of him, with wife #1, set of children #1&2, me, and now undoubtedly, the new girlfriend. The faces with him sometimes look at the camera, sometimes not, sometimes they blink, sometimes there is food on their chin, sometimes their eyes shine red, sometimes they are blurred from movement, they age with the years. But Tim is a constant; always in focus, scrubbed and clean, seemingly made of a nonmalleable scientific solution, ever youthful, eyes open and gazing, pretending to be real, like the cardboard mannequins of presidents that tourists pay two dollars to pose with.

I thought of the Carson McCullers novel "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" -- the story of the deaf person who was the passive protagonist becoming the essence of peoples stories, becoming whatever they wanted him to be. Flash to "Zelig," the Woody Allen black and white movie of the colorful chameleon able to play for a major league baseball team and suddenly disappear from the roster... the chameleon and my soon to be ex-husband, entering and exiting people's lives effortlessly, unaware of the impact that his presence and subsequent betrayals have made on those he professed to love and remain loyal to.

Tim, that unrecognizable charade character, one of those people who looked so familiar, yet you could never quite place him. Friendly but friendless.

He's not coming home anymore.

He has a new home and he comes back to this strange home every night; "Hi honey, I'm home," he announces upon arrival just like he did with the others; he marks off on the calendar the days that he will be away that month with the same pen he marked the days off with his other families, all those years ago. The same expression is frozen on his face, like an ice age man, yet it never thawed or moved or changed, only the people in front of it did.

"I sleep next to no one," I say to Jyoti, the curious girl from next door. I have no side of the bed. Somewhere a man puts his right arm out over the shoulders of a woman, whispers, "are you alright, honey, I love you", shifts, and puts his left leg over hers in a symbolic, symbiotic solidarity, us against the world, it silently vows.

The train moves to another station, its faraway whistle getting dimmer and dimmer, the Doppler effect in reverse, until it finally manages an auditory disintegration.

Silence at this home, the family home where once disguised love and violence and passion and hatred co-existed.

"Be good my sweet children, be good," I whispered to myself, as the car pulled up next to our home and Spike wrangled out of his seatbelt and relievedly ran off to play with Coco and Jyoti. Be good, because I can't say "wait till your father gets home."

Because when he does it won't be a recognizable place.

The train hit him and he's gone.