The Table

By Nancy Eisen

7606 words

It was a big round redwood picnic table. I hadn’t thought about it for years, until the day it was unearthed in the basement of my father’s house by my sister days after his death. I should have known she would snatch it up, just as she had so many other things of sentimental importance during this trying period of our lives. The table had no business being in his basement, it represented so much of the anger I held toward my sister and an especially painful period in my life. It was tied directly to my father’s abandonment and his disregard for his family. Symbolically, the table, safe in his basement, represented his holding and protecting something for my sister, keeping it from me, allowing her to preserve part of our life he knew nothing about, and refused to hear about. She rejoiced while it gave me pain. He was always on her side.

“Just let Cathie have it,” he said as he made my sister and I inventory every object of value in his house during is last days. He always did that, let her get her way just because he wanted to avoid one of her epic scenes. ”Nancy doesn’t care,” he said, like he knew how I was feeling. Like it was obvious. Looking at me with that oxygen tube in his nose, that mouth caked with dry saliva, saliva I’d wiped away these last two years as his health was slowly failing, those fading brown eyes looking at me, expecting me to back down. And I always did. Just like always, all my life, I did back down. Why? Was it that important? I didn’t want to make a fuss. Not so much because I was afraid of him. But because I was afraid of her.

Cathie had a mean spirit. I thought from earliest childhood that she might be a sociopath, all the terrible things she did without feeling bad. Once I came home from school to her bashing in the head of my guinea pig with a rock. In my horror she told me it had eaten aluminum foil and was going to die anyway. Or setting my hair on fire. Or attacking my father with a butchers knife. Getting expelled from school for starting a race riot. Things like that. My parents said it all spurred from a very bad case of sibling rivalry. So it my fault for being born? I suppose that made sense to them, because she was always let off the hook, no matter how gruesome or devilish her deeds.

When my father was dying she became frantically selfish. She couldn’t get here fast enough when he seemed to have only a few weeks to live. I had been his caretaker for the final years of his life, and had forgiven his many sins. And she had been made executor of the “estate” and was going to carry out her role in her own ruthless manner. And here we were, standing in front of the disassembled table where it all happened. The estate was worth nothing, everything was debt, like his relationship with us, a deep chasm of loss and unfinished business. At least I’d had time to talk about some of the stuff, Cathie tried to iron arm me while I was taking care of him, but that failed whether she knew it or not. Now I was more angry at her than I was at him, and she didn’t know that either. Maybe I finally had the upper hand. I felt like I did.

From our quaint beginnings in a cozy little brick rental near a brook, my father decided to build an enormous house in an exclusive new development of custom redwood homes. He scrambled and fought for the corner lot, and won. He’d always lived like we were rich; going to the fanciest steakhouses in the city, taking wonderful New England vacations every summer, wearing the best clothes. He thought himself a king. I remember thinking credit cards had something to do with growing up—that they were some sort of right of passage.  But my dad was so proud of that house. He spent every spare moment at the “property.” He met with the architect, the builder, the stone mason. He had his picture taken when the foundation was poured, when the framing was done.

I remember my mother being furious when he had windows moved up two inches just because he wanted to, but she hated him anyway, so whatever he did made her seithe. He complained about everything, found fault in everything. When the building was done he chose the most expensive furniture, drapes and fixtures. He bought the huge redwood picnic table to adorn the massive deck that wrapped around the back of the house, where supposedly we’d eat barbequed steak sitting on the deck during the nice weather. I don’t remember ever sitting out there. When my mother was disgusted with him, so was I. If she hated him, I hated him the best I could.

It was in the late sixties and he was already having an affair with his secretary. Even though I was only eight or nine, I knew about the affair because he would take me for rides in his car and tell me about it. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone his secret, but I knew he was going to marry another woman. He asked me how I would feel if he went to live with someone else and I always got hysterical, and the conversation ended there because he hated my tears. Because the conversation always ended there I never thought about him actually leaving. He had just built a mansion of a house! So I never thought of it.  He even took me out to dinner with her at a fancy steakhouse in the city. All I remember is her flaming red hair in one of those old fashioned movie star styles, and her nasty comment to me, “why don’t you put some roll on that butter,” something my father would say to me to make me feel guilty, fat and ugly. I hated her from that day on.

The night the marriage ended was a surprising and confusing. My mother had taken me and my sister out for a day with the carpenter who built the house to a train show. His name was Russell Begg and he was a train buff. When we got home my father was waiting by the door and immediately started screaming violently at my mother. My sister threw up all over the place and we were sent to our rooms. Before we made our way to cover my father slapped my mother hard across the face and pushed her out of the house. My sister was sick the entire night, and when my father left in the morning it would be the last time we’d see him until his wedding. He’d accused her of infidelity, even though she swore it was simply an innocent outing.

After the divorce we moved from house to house until we landed at 156 Route 59, condemned by the Board of Health, but patched up quickly by some strange men my sister wrangled up. They did just enough to make the house passable, but the Board of Health condemned signs quickly re-appeared on the screen door to the kitchen as soon as we moved in, and as they appeared my sister ripped them down, as if it was a game. It scared me because I felt she was breaking the law and we would be kicked out and have nowhere to go. My sister loved the house. My mother was at a point mentally where she didn’t give a shit anymore, and I was terrified. It was a huge house that sat back from a county highway. The big redwood table fit right into the kitchen of that dilapidated house like it was meant to be. At least eight or ten people could sit there at one time, and soon the seats were full, day and night. The first friends were the men who Cathie found to help make the house “liveable.”

Cathie was already what we’d call today an ‘at risk’ teen. At fifteen years old she was wearing halter tops showing off her buds of breasts and blue glitter eyeshadow. She was doing drugs and hanging around with a tough crowd. She’d always been tough, rebellious, a problem. She ran away to live in the woods with her best friend when she was ten and was furious when the police brought her home. I remember her whispering to me while we lived in the fancy house that she hoped it wouldn’t change her. She thought herself pretty (I couldn’t see it), dressed as minimally as possible, had thin wavy brown hair that grew slowly and didn’t do much. I had a mad head of hair, curls for miles, a source of extreme jealousy for every moment of my life. She never stood up straight, giving her a tough look. Beautiful deep brown eyes like my father. She wore tons of eye makeup, usually had a leather headband with beads around her head, and wore jean skirts and carried a walking stick. She had more confidence than anyone I knew. A scary, threatening confidence. A boldness. A lack of fear. She’s talk to anyone, I mean anyone. And she’d usually bring them home with her.

The table represented a new life for us. It sat in witness to our life of being on our own, as our mother had to enter the workforce for the first time since her marriage. My sister and I would be alone in that big old house while she worked, and then preoccupied when she returned home in the evening. After school my sister said,  “Come out back with me, I want to introduce you to the people in The Meadow.”

“No Cathie,” I replied to her, “I don’t like going down there, it’s scary.”

“Come on, Nan,” she’d plead, “it’s the coolest place. People living in cars, it’s amazing. I even saw a three year old baby smoking a cigarette!.”

The whole idea repelled me, but I went with her, and what she said was true. I was terrified. I may have been scared, but I always went with Cathie when she invited me places; I didn’t want to be alone, but mostly I wanted to be like her, I wanted her to like me, and I thought these were opportunities to gain her respect and love. But she was using me—playing me like she played everyone else. She’d never admit to being scared, and bringing was a crooked way of making me think it was a gesture of kindness while it was just another example of her hateful selfishness.

There was a field behind our house, and after that The Meadow. The field was where we went every year to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July. When it wasn’t the Fourth, it was the towns Little League field, and where the High School band practiced when we were kids. Cathie led me across the field to a trail unknown to me, carefully navigated across boards laid over swampy areas, then deep into the woods. A cluster of old rusty cars created a poverty ridden village. Old men with leathery skin and gnarly hands sat in lawn chairs smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. There was even a man with a goiter, something I hadn’t seen since I was a small child walking through town with my mother. A lot of people (it seemed to me) had goiters back then, but I hadn’t seen one for many years. We’d only lived in the 59 house a few months, but Cathie greeted them like old friends. Car parts, beer cans, fishing poles and hunting rifles made up the landscape. As an outsider I feared for my safety, and knowing my sister I knew I lacked protection should I need it. This was her turf, and I was her armour, completely alone. She expected me to hold my own.

A tiny ramshackle shack was our destination, and we went inside. A group of dirty, shabby people sat inside, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Babies were there too, dressed only in diapers wandering around freely, picking up beer cans and cigarette butts. The sight made me feel terribly frightened and empty inside. How could my sister find such joy in her discovery? How could she rejoice in people “living off the land” like this? It chilled me to the bone. But she would bring them home and they would become a part of our new life. I would try to distance myself from them because I would refuse to allow myself to feel associated. Every day my sister would bring home new “interesting people” who became her friends, welcome strange visitors into the house.

In the dingy basement light, I ran my hand over the initials, the carvings smoothed by age on that table that brought back so much pain. I ran my fingers through the thick, deep letters that spelled Scout, and remembered the night he carved them. It could have been after a drunken night and a game of chicken, where the senseless spread their fingers wide and someone else took their hunting knife and quickly stabbed at the table between the open fingers as a game. The table was pocked with these marks, and Cathie had the idea that people should start carving their names into the tabletop. The idea disturbed me, made the slumlike conditions we were living in just one step lower. This wouldn’t happen in a ‘normal’ house, in a ‘normal’ family. None of this. Eventually I would carve my initials into the table as well. Not for a long time, but I did. I have a photo of my initials carved deeply into the table and dated years almost ten years after we had moved from the 59 house. Maybe it was my stamp; my statement of survival, of ownership. I wish I remembered my thoughts. Would that late timestamp infuriate my sister?

I don’t know when it actually started, but at some point people started carving their names or initials into the tabletop. It was up to my sister who got to do it, whether they were worthy of such an honor. She’d literally wrestle a knife out of someone's hand if she didn’t want them to leave their mark.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she’s say.

“Whadya mean?” the usually drunk person would say.

If they didn’t give up easily she’d be on top of them in a minute. My anxiety level would go through the roof, I hated violence, and I knew whenever my sister got like that there was always the potential for bloodshed. But when someone was invited to carve their name in the table, they were watched carefully. And good carving was always celebrated.

Scout and my mother had fallen in love when my sister brought him over to help fix up the house. Scout was 24 to her 40, tall and bone thin, so evenly tanned you could tell he spent his days outdoors shirtless. His tattoos blended into the dark tan, and looked like natural features. He had stunning blue eyes and heavy eyelids, a mustache and bad teeth, a warm smile and a great laugh. He was always drunk; an alcoholic mourning the recent death of his infant son. He was strong as an ox and still maintained a degree of handsomeness, his hair light brown and bleached by the sun, muscular and youthful in his manner. He smoked Camel non-filters. He didn’t just smoke them, he consumed them. His already calloused hands were stained yellow with nicotine, and he spoke with one eye squinted to keep the smoke from stinging his eyes as the smoke wafted across his face when he spoke.

My mother and Scout were in a world of their own, and even though I couldn’t believe my mother was so happy with the rotten toothed, sinewy, sun-baked man, I couldn’t deny it. She drank beer with him, competed on the chin-up bar in the kitchen doorway with him, ran naked down Route 59 in drunken glee, slept with him, smoked pot with him, couldn’t seem to live without him. She was a woman I had never seen. My mother was still youthful at forty. She’d always been skinny, she never ate, and bragged about never breaking 100 pounds. I always thought she was anorexic, as she would stop eating at the slightest sign of tension, or mention of anything disagreeable to her delicate disposition.

She had a body like a teenager, skinny and fit, practically flat-chested, beautiful, full blond hair always cut in a bob. She wore tight hip-hugger jeans and blouses for leisure, and dressed smartly for work. When she was married to my father she was nervous and jittery, jumping at the slightest noise and freezing up when my father came home. She always told me (not my sister) that my sister and I were the result of marital rape. I was never sure what that meant, and it was too strange a statement to question her about, but her disgust with him, and her complete withdrawal emotionally and physically when he was around seemed to account for something. In any case, when she was around Scout, she was relaxed and happy, like a girl, showing her stuff in her chippy new style.  

During the first several months of living there I ballooned to over two hundred and thirty pounds. I’d come home from school to a lonely, empty house, fry potatoes and douse them with ketchup and salt and sit in front of the TV and watch Casper the Friendly Ghost. It was a ritual to stave off loneliness deep unhappiness. All day at school I’d creep around trying to avoid the constant bullying, most of it spurred on by my sister. I was ashamed of myself and my sister knew it, and this gave her plenty of ammunition to turn her friends against me. I couldn’t walk down a hallway without being hit by a barrage of stinging insults, or being tripped and having my books go flying, falling and having to get up, red-faced and holding back tears as people laughed and cheered at me. Some of these same people came to my house. The funny thing was, once they came to the house and discovered I lived there they backed off, had a new respect for me, even admired me.

Our house became the center of the town for parties and endless impromptu get-togethers. The door was always open. My sister became enamoured with many of the men she brought home and it was no secret she was bringing them upstairs to her bedroom at any time she felt like it.

“Mom,” I would say, “don’t you see what Cathie’s doing?”

“Oh, she can handle herself,” she would say, and go back to drinking her beer. My mother was acclimating to our new situation just as my sister was. What’s wrong with me? I would think. There were times my sister would invite me into her room when she had more than one visitor. I’d happily join her, sitting on the futon close to one of her guys, trying to mimic the seductive motions my sister was using on the fellow she was with. I wanted to be accepted like she was, but it never happened.

Her room was painted all black with dayglow stars paint all over the walls. It was the perfect den for her antics. Sex, drugs, even primitively tattooing her friends as some kind of strange ritual with a needle wrapped in thread and a bottle of india ink. I even have a small blotch of a tattoo on my left forearm; it was supposed to be a tiny heart, but it turned out like a messy splotch I’d have to explain for the rest of my life. I wonder if the botched job was done intentionally to scar me, or simply a mistake? Guys were willing to do anything to gain her favor. I was willing because I wanted to belong. Maybe I was no different than anyone else caught in her spell, only she wanted them, and I was only a pawn.

“You ever think about him?” I asked her. I was close to the table. I could almost smell the beer he drank over the dank smell of the basement. Lowenbrau.

“Yeah. I wonder if he’s still alive. Anyway, it’s mine,” Cathie said when she saw me tracing Scout’s name. An angry look forming on her face.

“Why?” I asked her, puzzled but not surprised.

“It’s always been mine,” she answered. “We’ll have to put it in the truck and put it in your storage unit until I have a place to send it,” she said.

“Why don’t I set it up in my backyard until you’re ready to take it?” I asked.

“No!,” she replied, “I want it in storage, it’s my table.”

“What makes it yours?” I asked.

“It’s just mine,” she replied in a menacing tone. “I don’t need anymore of your shit, Nancy. I’m tired, I have to get home, and the table is mine. Period. There are plenty of things you can have.”

She went about taping the long slats of the table together and carried them out to the truck. I wanted to kill her, not just because of the table, but because she was the same Cathie she’d always been. Childish and selfish as a child. Willing to do anything to get her way. I knew fighting would get me nowhere, but I finally understood she was trapped in her childhood rage and I had grown beyond it. My anger started to melt away, not from submission anymore, but more out of pity for her stuckness, for being frozen in time.

Scout was a package deal. He came with his younger brother, Gerald. At 20 Gerald was uglier than Scout. He lacked the blue eyes and the sadness his brother carried around. He was small and wiry and lacked any charm. There was nothing I could find to like about him, but my sister slept with him, probably because my mother had taken Scout already. Gerald was a drunk too, but not as bad as his brother. My sister tired of him quickly, as she found more interesting men. Gerald ended up taking pleasure in me, coming into my room when he pleased and having sex with me. I was 14 and he was 20. This happened with some frequency, and when I told my sister she told me to “deal with it,” and when she asked Gerald about it he denied it, so according to Cathie, it never happened. How could I argue with that? I shut my mouth and withdrew more.

Life went on. Within weeks there was a steady stream of people coming to the house to party. There was a “regular” crowd who became more like family than visitors. There were always six or seven people around the table talking, drinking and smoking. My sister and I were already smoking cigarettes and pot by that time, and doing so right alongside my mother. My father would call occasionally and we weren’t allowed to tell him where we were. Just as well, because my sister would have waited for his arrival and murdered him if he tried to intrude no doubt. I wonder what he would have done if he had seen the way we were living. He probably would have driven up to the address, taken a look and kept on going. But, that wouldn’t have ever happened. He was too gone, too caught up in his life.

Jimmy Flannigan was a regular at the house. We’d met him at the house we lived in right before we moved to the 59 house. My only memory of him from before was a night he came over, extremely drunk, and as he was getting ready to leave he had his arm around my shoulders and passed out cold. I went down with him and hit my nose on the moulding of the wall in front of us. I must have been twelve years old and didn’t really understand what had happened. Everyone laughed at the slapstick comedy, except me. I was traumatized and embarrassed. He was a real Irishman, at least that’s what my mother would say. He was one of the few people who came around who my mother didn’t take an instant liking to. He was a smallish wiry guy with blond curly hair and light green eyes.

Jimmy was loyal, and seemed to need a family. He was protective of us, it seemed, not because we deserved it, but because he seemed to feel it was his duty. I don’t remember a time he wasn’t there when we needed him. Jimmy worked on cars and was always available when my mothers car, or anyone’s car needed work. Of course my sister had a fling with him, but he stayed friends with us. I remember him helping to carry the refrigerator down the narrow steps of the old house when we made the move to Route 59. That’s what made him a member of the family. I don’t remember him sitting around the table much, but he was close by, a part of things. I have the feeling he didn’t sit down very often, unless he was laid flat out after a serious drunk.

My sister had been in love with Pete Graziano for quite awhile. He was the sweetest guy. Rode a motorcycle, played a mean guitar, and spent many a night playing songs and singing. He was missing half of his right index finger, lost while slicing meat at his deli job days before he was set to record a song for a big recording studio. His motorcycle glove had the index finger neatly tailored to fit the remaining stub. I always felt safe when Pete was around, he was a calm and loving presence, and an admirer of my artwork. I drew all the time. I sat at the table with a sketchbook in front of me at all times. He loved my work.

Pete was adorable. He had to be in his twenties, but it’s hard for me to judge that now. He was a man. He had dark curly hair, a round face, a sweet smile and dimples. He was very kind to me, talking to me and making eye contact when he sang. He wore a tattered leather jacket, worn jeans and rode an old, deeply loved motorcycle, set up so he could strap his guitar to the back. One day he came to the house with a little baby racoon in his jacket pocket and gave it to us. He found it on a ride upstate in the middle of a highway trying to nurse from it’s dead mother. “Rocky” became a family pet until it reached maturity. Living in a drunk house the little creature was given “shotguns” from a bong, getting it stoned, givin near empty milkshake cups it would get it’s head stuck in so it would walk off the table, and lots of love. Pete was one of the good guys. My sister really loved him and they dated for a long time. Pete’s carving on the table read “Git Mo-Mo Sissy.” It was something he used to say.

My father left us when I was ten, remarried and made a new life that did not include me and my sister. After being absent from our lives for forty years I began travelling eighty miles several days a week to spend time with him after his wife died and his health started declining. I’d take him shopping, on errands, to doctors appointments, being the “good daughter” I had always been. I started going not so much out of love or obligation, but out of duty, I think. He was old and alone, and knowing his story, I felt I would have done the same for any old person in his situation. He adored the company and being catered to. It could have been anyone, as his selfishness during my visits showed me, but I remained loyal to the end. Cathie insisted he didn’t deserve my visits, that he should be left to his misery. I couldn’t stand to hear that, even though I knew in some sense it was true. But I stopped looking at myself as his daughter and more as a friendly volunteer.

I didn’t get angry until Cathie started interfering when he became very sick and unable to care for himself. Cathie said it was an act he was putting on to manipulate me. She said to leave him alone and let him suffer until he figured out no one was going to wait on him. That was her theory, cruel and heartless, like he was a dog. Still, he left her in charge because I was the weak one, the one who cried, the sensitive one, the less able of the two. She withheld her love from him in order to gain power and control over him, over everyone. It wasn’t until she saw him just before he died that she understood his condition and gave me some validation, which meant nothing to me. Even in his severely weakened state she made him discuss legal matters, and pressured him to go to a home. He fell right into his old pattern of submission to her harsh orders and manipulation, and I became invisible to him. It was an affirmation I had waited for my entire life, yet it felt like a dream. I could finally see my suspicions were true. I disappeared when she appeared. She didn’t know it, but he had begged me to make her cancel her visit. He was afraid of her, he knew she’d upset him and that he couldn’t stand up to her strong will.

Cathie was quite a character, and in retrospect gave me experiences and brought me places, and introduced me to people I never would have been privy to in a normal life. My life was not normal. The people I was surrounded by and my living environments were not normal. My sister would vehemently disagree. She might agree that our parents weren’t normal, but she would say that was the gateway to the “fantastic” life she has led. I, on the other hand, sought the normal, the conventional, the safe and loving. She enjoyed chaos because it gave her freedom. The picnic table explains a lot. It was a constant in a world of crazy. It absorbed the living cells of the people who sat around it, the wine and beer spilled on it, the candle wax from the dark witchy nights. It developed deep wounds where lighter fluid was poured and  burned by tripping travelers who sat transfixed by the flames. It was a constant in a world of chaos.

There’s no way I could have seen it then, but the table had changed character in the years since it sat on that redwood porch. It had lost its pristine coat, and was now a dull brown color, blending into the surroundings. It took whatever blows were dealt to it, maintaining its strength and integrity. It was a real conversation piece; an ice breaker when unsuspecting newcomers walked through the door, stunned when they saw the kitchen, the walls covered with pelts of every animal my sister had skinned and salted hanging there. The table became their focus, their safe place.

“What a cool table,” they’d say.

“Yup,” my sister might answer with a grin, secretly enjoying their shock. “Wanna carve your name in it?” she’d ask if the person was someone she valued. No one ever refused that offer, and once they were handed a pocket knife they’d be lost in their own world, first hunting for a space to leave their mark, and then carving in silence. Sometimes they’d leave an artistic stamp, other times a poorly executed bunch of scrapes.

One of my favorite people was Pete Berkowitz, who was an amazing artist who admired me as much as I did him. Even though he wasn’t balanced emotionally, I seemed to understand him, and we developed a close friendship. At some point we started devising a plan to run away to the Yukon Territory of Alaska together. I was really considering going with him, and believe I would have gone if he had.

Pete was a big guy, probably over six feet tall. He lived in a well to do neighborhood with his parents, and gave them a hard time. He struggled with some kind of mental illness, and turned to drugs and alcohol to get away from his demons, as well as carving great artistic pieces out of bone and creating fantastical drawings. He was big all around and my mother called him a gentle giant. He carved his name into the table, and other designs containing flames and dragons; that sort of thing. Our house was a refuge to him, and he frequently drank himself to sleep. He could be very loud or very serious. One night Pete went home in a rage and started breaking up his parents house, screaming he was going to kill himself. His father shot him in the stomach and he spent the next six months in a fancy mental hospital. I visited him every day, and then we lost touch.

Target shooting was a popular pastime at Route 59, so learning how to shoot a gun was a sort of right of passage. When we lived at the fancy house my father bought my mother a fancy little Fiat sports car she probably would have killed herself in if we had stayed with him. By the time we moved to Route 59 the car was rotting with cancer and barely roadworthy. By the time my mother found a job across the river Scout found her a green Gremlin to drive. The Fiat was pushed down the hill onto the old tennis court where it was used for target practice, and occasionally as a metal trampoline for Pete Berkowitz during one of his acid induced psychotic breakdowns. The car was crushed and full of bullet holes. We lined up empty beer cans and shot at them as a pastime. I joined in the fun, and had innate skill and aim. I guess the car was synonymous with the table in many ways, just more destructible. It was more like me.

There were intimate nights spent around that table too. It all depended on the people who showed up on a particular night. Or maybe it was nights when there was more pot than alcohol. Whatever the variables, nights when Pete was singing were so peaceful, especially when my sister was in love with him. Cathie was probably the happiest and most normal she’d ever been when she was with Pete. He even invited the three of us to his mother’s house for an authentic Italian dinner. So normal. That might have been why the relationship didn’t last. My sister was hellbent on hitting the road and living like a gypsy for the rest of her life. The idea of doing anything conventional scared her to death.

There was an equally dilapidated house right next door to us where a large family lived in the same squalid conditions we did. The father was a large Irishman we called Mr. Mack, and his wife Mrs. Mack, a Native American. They had five children who shared our driveway and property and were kind of like family to us. The oldest, Donald was our friend, and his sister Mary was closest to me, bringing me into her house, but rarely coming into ours. Donald was a part of a group of “bad boys” at the high school, frequently getting into trouble, yet incredibly handsome (as well as the other boys in the group), and very popular. Donald had light brown skin, a muscular build, and a tough persona. He was quiet, often sitting at the table listening carefully to the conversations, but rarely joining in.

One day Donald brought a girl to the house with him, which caused quite a commotion. Her name was Sue Birish. She was a cheerleader from school and stood out like a sore thumb. Looks came from every person at the table. She was very white, her hair pulled into a tight ponytail at the top of her head. She wore bright nail polish and plenty of makeup. She wore a tight sweater, had big boobs and we all judged her as a floozy. She squirmed with nerves as she sat on Donald’s lap. She didn’t drink or smoke pot. All of us thought the match was very funny and strange. She was from a different crowd and everyone knew it. When they left for their ‘date’ a great conversation ensued about how long the relationship would last.

The next day Sue came to the house in tears and chose me to talk to. She and Donald had gone down to the tracks when they left the house and spent the night there. In the morning they were caught by the police and arrested for possession of marijuana. She was deathly afraid of her parents and swore she had never gotten in any trouble before. She had probably left our house a virgin, a perfect girl, a perfect Catholic. She cried as she told me she had been forbidden to come back to the house or see Donald again. From that point forward Sue was my best friend. She continued to see Donald on the sly, but also started taking me with her to visit her friends, and I even got to know her parents, although I wasn’t allowed to talk about where I came from.

She was soon a regular at the house, and her carving on the table might have been the most spectacular. She wrote her name in witch. Whether she was a witch before she met Donald I can’t say, but she claimed to be one for as long as I knew her. Sue was the first person I was able to talk to since we had moved in, and the fact that she took me out and considered me a friend made living there easier. She also seemed to enjoy the strangeness of the house in a way that reassured me. She eventually started partying with us, but it stayed a novelty. She stared in awe when there were chin-up contests and my mother would win. She was scared and amazed when Scout took a dry cleaner bag, stretched it into a long thread, tied knots in it, hung it from the chin-up bar in the doorway with a metal pan under it, turned out the lights and set the lowest end on fire. As the plastic slowly melted the dripping pieces fell through the air and as they hit the water they made a ‘zilch’ sound. What used to scare me became more entertaining when she was around.  

On extremely inebriated nights the call “bonfire” would be called out and everyone would run outside and start gathering dry sticks from the woods. Soon a giant fire would be burning in the backyard and drunken people would be gathered around it, stumbling and falling, drinking and being rowdy. This was one activity I couldn’t bring myself to join, as the fear of someone falling into the fire, or the fire spreading to the house terrified me. The police never came. There was never an emergency. But for all the recklessness that took place at the house those bonfires were probably the scariest for me. My mother joined in, of course, so I would be in the house alone, worrying.

Certain nights were spent mostly in the kitchen, or at least I would be one of the people at the full table, while others were in the living room listening to music, or upstairs having sex or doing drugs. There was always pot and alcohol. The alcohol was cheap, Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and Mad Dog Twenty Twenty. I remember Scout in particular getting so drunk his speech would slur. I don’t know why people thought that was funny, but it seemed to entertain people. Watching people stagger around just isn’t entertaining to me. Cathie called me a prude. She called me uptight. My mother ignored me until the night I called her a whore, and she hit me. That was the only time I ever called her a whore, and the only time I ever got a rise out of her.

Much to my surprise my mother decided to leave us alone one New year’s Eve so she could go out with Scout. Leaving me alone with Cathie was not a good idea. Cathie was so excited to have the house to “herself” she decided to plan a party of her own. She announced the event to the high school and to her usual friends and when the night came there was a steady stream of visitors, all with beer or some sort of beverage or drug. The house was packed and everyone was very messed up. As midnight approached a group of “rivals” showed up to crash the party. I don’t know exactly how it started, but all of a sudden everyone was fighting. People were getting punched and thrown around. “I’m calling the police,” I said to my sister. “Don’t you dare,” she screamed at me, as a girl practically clawed some guys eyes out.

Next thing I know some guy punched another guy so hard he went flying backwards and hit his head on the edge of the piano. He lay unconscious on the floor. It was probably the sight of his body on the floor that cleared the crowd, and within minutes everyone was gone. As soon as he regained consciousness my sister got him out of the house and she and our regular friends started cleaning up the house and yard. She made me swear not to tell my mother anything about it. It was absolutely terrifying, I think even for Cathie. But she lived on that kind of energy, and she would probably say it was thrilling.

For years after we moved out of that house I looked back on it as the worst period of my life. I still do. I tried to talk to my father about it during his last years, but he refused to talk about it. “It’s too much for me, Nan,” he said. He would only talk about some things that happened during the time he was absent from our lives, and the rest he chose not to know. When Cathie took the table I was angry. I didn’t really want it, it held only bad memories, but her taking it the way she did was just another act of selfish disregard for my feelings. She called me materialistic, huh. The bitch. But things changed once the table was mailed to her. It became sentimental.

“What the hell?’ I thought. How could something filled with all these terrible memories suddenly become sentimental. The names. The names covering all six feet of that round redwood picnic table. They’re all real people who came in and out of my life. The carvings are unique and specific to each individual. Some people had mad skill and left artful markings to be remembered by. Others could barely be made out, but with careful studying you’d make out their name and the memories would come back. Donald Mack was killed by a drunk driver before we moved out. I remember his sister Mary saying “They called him a man,” in the newspaper even though he was only 16. Donald taught me how to kiss, and boy could he kiss.

And the countless others who passed through that house, leaving their mark on that table. They’re all grown up now. I don’t know where most of them are. The ones I do know are mostly married with children. Super normal. Except my sister. She’s continued on her quest for that kind of commune or community. She hasn’t found it yet, some forty five years later. I can actually look back and appreciate her taking me to The Meadow. It’s become an important part of history for that part of the state and not many people have heard of it, let alone witnessed it. The table is like a bible, a journal of a time past that can never happen again. That entire period of time couldn’t happen again if you tried. It formed out of the times. It attracted the people it did. Many of the people were very kind and good.

They didn’t know I was suffering, or that my mother was neglecting me. They thought she was the coolest mother in the world. They wanted that. She made a lot of people very happy. She was very happy. I can look back now and be grateful for the experience, because no one else could ever have what I had, and I survived to tell the tale.