I’m waiting for Alex’s flight in the morning and not sleeping. It reminds me of the night before mom married Henry in 1976. She asked me if she was doing the right thing. What did I know? I’d just graduated high school. I had nothing better to offer her. I feel like that with Alex going to live in New York City during a pandemic with political and economic strife. It’s her decision. I have nothing better to offer her.
“What should I do? Should I marry him?”
Oh, god, I thought, how should I know? I said, “I don’t know. What would you do if you didn’t?” This was the salient point. I knew better than to ask about love. She had nothing. I knew that. I had nothing to offer her. I couldn’t give my mother my life. I couldn’t support her. We were sleeping in the same bed. Our last night together. (I’m not even talking about that now.) She married him the next day.
Henry was a loud, obnoxious man whose mission in life was to drink. He became louder and more obnoxious when drunk. He was slobbering and slovenly in a disgusting caricature of a drunk. Unfortunately, it was no act.
His family had owned a cedar lumber mill since his parents emigrated from Germany sometime in the early 1920s. He was the youngest of several children. He was the only child born in the United States. He served in World War II. I assumed his drinking was in part related to his service time.
He lived with his mother as a long term bachelor in one of several houses owned by the brothers adjacent to the mill in Tumwater. My mom met him when hired as live-in help for his mother. My mom was attractive and alluring in contrast to Henry’s shorter stature and unappealing broad face. He was pushy and opinionated. His family couldn’t understand the attraction and called her a “gold digger.” Naturally, that’s exactly what she was. An opportunist dazzled by the wealth of Henry and his family. My mom had spent her entire life chasing dreams of high society and money. She’d practiced for this role for years buying second hand clothes with designer labels. This was her best shot.
Henry satisfied his family by insisting on a prenuptial agreement. My mother happily signed. What did she have to lose? There’s just one problem with a prenup. When the divorce comes, there has to be enough money left for it to matter. Although, it didn’t work out that way for Henry. It was still one hell of a ride.
My grandparents came to the wedding. My Grandpa gave her away. I still owned a long dress. My 15 year old brother, Zack, was staying with mom and Henry. My lover and I were still in the closet. She wasn’t there. It was everything my mom could want in a marriage except for Henry. She became Mrs. Ignatz Henry Scheller. (Henry always went by his middle name.)
It was at St. Michael Parish in Olympia. Henry was a devout Catholic. My mom was born a Catholic which was a bonus. Being a divorcee required approval by the priest who insisted on multiple couple’s sessions in his office. Ultimately, they received the priest’s blessing.
I have pictures of us as I do of my participation in her next marriage. Of course, I didn’t know then that a third was in her future.
I can’t save those I love. I do my best to care for them. But, I can’t save them.
After the wedding and a reception I don’t remember (most likely because it involved food), mom and Henry flew to Hawaii for their honeymoon. It was my mother’s first flight to Hawaii. For all I know, it may have been her first flight anywhere. I’d certainly never flown with her.
During that week, I drove back and forth daily between my grandparents in Des Moines where I lived and Olympia. I’d promised my mom I would check on my brother who was staying there with Henry’s mother. Henry’s mother was under the impression that Zack and I would clean for her. Zack and I were not under that impression. I remember her dramatic displeasure at our refusal to vacuum. I say dramatic but she really only stood there looking despondent with her lower lip sticking out trembling in a comical way for an old woman. I was unmoved. I found out later my mother had said, “Of course, my children will do things around the house for you. They’re very good children.” She just forgot to tell her very good children about her commitment on their behalf. Apparently, we weren’t really that good.
After seven days, the happy couple returned with admonishments to not return drunken to that particular Hawaiian resort. Excessive drinking on the plane was also not well regarded. I escaped back to my grandparents and secret high school lover and left my mother to her life.
Over the next two years, I mainly heard about their exploits via the telephone. Trips to Las Vegas, Hawaii, Arizona, Seattle, and Los Angles to see Uncle Norman, my Grandpa’s closeted brother. As a new member of Olympia’s Valley Country Club, my mom took up golfing with Henry. If there was entertainment and booze, they attended. It was common for Henry to be half carried out of the Valley’s restaurant at closing.
I’d run into my mom at my grandparents’ very working class gas station in Des Moines showing off her collection of credit cards and jewelry to the mechanics. She had designer clothing without a previous owner. This display embarrassed me.
I heard tales of expensive drunken taxi trips home from Portland. I implored mom not to let Henry drive. They bought a cushy new Cadillac that drove like a dream. She’d had an old used Cadillac convertible in my youth. When my brother and I visited, mom entertained us by driving the new Cadillac to car dealerships pretending we were looking for a car. The Cadillac commanded first class treatment by salespeople. Such is the entertainment of the working class.
The trouble started three years after their wedding when I had my own apartment in West Olympia and worked for the state. My mom and Henry reportedly had stunning fights. I wasn’t around for them. My mom started showing up on my doorstep announcing she was leaving him. He was crass and a mean drunk. She was done. Her car was loaded with her possessions which she began unloading into my one bedroom apartment.
The first time I believed her. The second, third, and fourth time not so much. While I was at work, Henry would come wheedling, promising her anything to come back. She would fall for it every time. Probably mostly because she had no other options. It didn’t matter when I moved out of the apartment into a house with roommates. Once a month like clockwork, she was finished with him again.
The episodes increasing frequency made me finally call a halt to it. I told her she couldn’t live with me and needed to go to the women’s shelter if she didn’t feel safe. She left but didn’t speak to me for a year. It was a pretty good deal for me. I needed a break.
She and Henry moved to a mobile home near the mill on a dead end street to have their own space away from his mother. The drinking continued. Henry went to Shick Shadel Hospital in Seattle for treatment at least twice. The mill was one of the last remaining small, independent cedar mills in Washington. Business slowed with the increasing lumber market dominance of Weyerhaeuser.
One day, she drove by in a new car make-up gift that Henry could ill afford. She posed with a sick, tentative smile. I thought, really mom? The car was returned within a week.
In another year, she called my brother and I to help her fill a U-haul with her possessions. She needed Zack to tow the trailer. I drove over. I remember looking at her standing next to the half filled trailer shaking my head thinking, how many times will it take? But, the separations were getting longer.
The final act as the mill closed was moving Henry’s house to a nearby plot of land away from his brothers’ houses. She eventually left him there, the eternal drunk, with a slab of bare land, a house needing fixing, and not a drop of money left. He got his money’s worth as did she. She left Olympia for good, got an unlisted number, and implored Zack and I to never give her number out. I haven’t gotten a drunken call from Henry asking to give her a message in years. Last I checked, he was still alive as is she.
I can’t direct another person’s life. I can only hope they don’t get too hurt. I fear for my daughter as she looks for her dream life.
Joceile
1.18.21
[Pictures: Grandpa and mom; me, Henry, mom, and Zack. 7/6/76]
