WHEN MY SIBLINGS AND I were little, before the divorce that brought us a sliver of safety, we didn’t have the words to talk about our father. The language we needed came later: physical abuse, attacks without warning. He was always the victor in those battles, we the defeated, until our mother got a job and pushed him out.
Morty had only worked intermittently before the divorce; afterwards, he refused to pay child support. Our mother had a good job, but it wasn’t enough to raise three kids on her own, and she was lonely. She was beautiful and smart, but no man wanted to take on three kids. She came home in the evenings and drank and cried.
As children we told each other we hated our father. As adults we said he robbed us of our childhood. Those were the things we told ourselves, and each other, when we spoke of him. But mostly we tried to forget he existed.
My brother cut off all contact with him very early on. My sister lasted a little longer before she gave up. For reasons I can’t explain, I stayed in touch, although I kept him at a distance. I moved from New York to California; I saw him on trips back to New York, about once every two or three years. Of my three children, he met only my first-born, but she was an infant then. She has no memories of him.
By the time he was seventy, he’d succeeded in alienating everyone in the family, including his closest sister, our Aunt Elaine. That was a real feat of alienation, because Elaine was a devoted sister. I knew, because he’d told me, how important Elaine was to him.’s West Egg, but it couldn’t have been a happy home. It was Elaine and Morty against the world until my dad enlisted in the Air Force right out of high school in 1943.
