My Father’s Keeper. Julie Gregory

love you both,” I plead.

      We emerge from the shadows; Danny latches onto the seam running down my father’s jean leg, I slip in against my mother’s hip, placing myself between them. Mom sneers like a heckler in his face, Dad holds his head in his hands inches from her spitting mouth. Pressed against Mom, I can feel my father’s rage building. With a sudden flare his head jerks upright. His fists shoot out of nowhere and he rushes, tangling his hands in her hair, smacking her gutted mouth. He catches her jaw in the crook of his palm, gripping her cheeks. She folds her chin to her chest like a child being tickled.

      My father squeezes.

      “Helllp! Heeelp me Juwelly, Denny.” Mom’s eyes are as wide as golf balls, pleading over the top of my father’s hand.

      “Let her go!” I screech.

      “Call her off, Julie,” Dad screams, “Make her leave me alone!”

      “I will, Dad, I promise, I’ll make her stop!”

      Dad shoves her from his grip; she crashes into the crevice of the couch, separating it from the wall. The pretzel barrel tips and coins spill like a jackpot over my father’s feet. He heaves his foot out of the pile to haul back and kick her and I desperately tug the belt loops of my mother’s Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, trying to pull her from the slit of the sofa. Dad’s drawn boot hits the wall, tangling in the chains of the clock, a pine cone whips around his ankle. He catches himself against the hutch as heirloom mail-order plates crash from their plastic holders. The clock flies off the wall, crashing at my mother’s feet. My brother rips from his death grip on the seam of my father’s pants and crumples to the floor, crying. We break in the swirling vortex of the trailer, catching our breath. The jostled hands strike the hour and the little birds pop out the door of the clock, lying on its side, Cuckoo! Cuckoo!, they circle on the track.

      School was full of kids whose parents were divorced and returned to class with stories of fun-filled weekends spent with either their mom or dad. I envied them. The only reason my parents fought was because they were together. Instead of getting the best of them like the kids of divorced parents, we got the worst of both. We could handle being with one or the other so the only thing stopping the harmony was the fact that they would not split. But while together, Danny and I lived each day with antennas tuned to the brewing of fights that ran in cycles day by day. And they always ended by the same formula; Dad taking off in the car with Mom in hot pursuit, or Dad pummelling Mom until she finally grew silent.

      Despite us begging and pleading, cornering them separately or tag teaming them together, the sweet relief of divorce never came. My brother and I sat in one bedroom or the other, secretly plotting how happy our lives would be if only for the love of God they would just separate. Danny cries bitter tears, his lip buckling under the weight. He cannot stand the fighting, the shuffling back and forth between Mom and Dad to smooth them out, the way they pit us against each other and force us to take sides. We focus instead on the future and talk with excitement about the good times to be had once we are with just one of them. Mom or Dad, but never them both. Please, God, we pray together in our pyjamas on the floor in the dark, please never them both.