We’re Just An Ordinary Family…..or Are We?

I wait for the horror to begin.

I wait for the spider to attack its prey. I wait for the sky to fall. I wait for something to happen. Anything that will alleviate this dreadful feeling I have. I’d like some relief from this horrible sensation that possesses my body. Something is about to happen here but I can’t imagine what it will be. All I know is I can feel it in my bones. Wait – forget all that. I know what’s going to happen; it happens every night around this time. It’s the feeling that I’ll once again be part of a weather disturbance that seems to accumulate around our dining room table.

Perhaps you’ve guessed –  it’s dinner time at our house. We live in a tiny little town called Hone (not to be confused with ‘home’). Dinner is always eaten together around our little oak table in the dining room, and no doubt, like every other night before this one, the temperature will rise and you just never know what’s next. I wait for tonight’s climatic changes. It usually starts with my brother Francis. Mom says he’s different. He sure is different, just ask anyone. Sometimes I wish something really horrible would happen, like my brother would choke on his broccoli and die. Or my dad would tell my mom he’s leaving her for Mrs. Bensmold next door. Or that my other brother Benjamin would turn into a frog or something. But nothing thrilling like that ever happens around here. It’s usually just another meal we all eat together – my parents, my brothers and my Aunt Gabby. Yet for some reason, it seems to me, there’s always some kind of charge in the air that causes everyone at the table to go crazy. It seems we can’t eat one meal together without some sort of fight.

The dinner is always prepared by my mother; she’s the Queen of The Kitchen. My mother mostly talks on the phone while she’s cooking, helping some poor soul, as she’d put it. She helps people who have problems. My Mom is like the town shrink. I wish she would shrink Francis. We should have a sign on our front door like that Peanuts character Lucy. My mom’s kinda like her.

My Dad sits in the living room while Mom talks on the phone and gets the dinner ready. He doesn’t mind though, he has his drink and his newspaper to preoccupy him until we’re ready to sit at the table. My dad is home from a long day on the road. That’s what he does, he sells stuff on the road. Not literally, you know, but he travels to different places selling things. I really don’t know what he sells but I’m pretty sure it’s important. My brothers are in their rooms probably listening to the radio. That’s their favorite thing to do. I help my mom with the setting of the table because, well, nobody else will and I worry that I’ll be evicted from my room if I don’t help around the house.

My mother hangs up the phone and grabs a drink as well and makes her way into the living room where my father is relaxing. Her apron flaps as she walks and her nylons make that swish-swish sound. Cigarette smoke, like a shroud, engulfs her as she moves, following alongside her like a constant companion. I hear her trying to get my father’s attention but he’s engrossed in his newspaper. Then I hear them discussing the day’s events – who said what, who went where, that sort of stuff. I listen but usually don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t say anything, I just do my job and keep quiet while they talk. I’m sorta like the maid.

Eventually my father calls everyone for dinner. Nobody moves. Everyone ignores the call, ensconced in their own little projects. My father doesn’t respond well to this reaction from his children so he yells at them to hurry up and get downstairs for dinner. He yells very loud, and then my mother yells at him to stop yelling. At this point I know that the temperature is going to change. I try to ignore my parents’ arguing. I can’t though, it’s too hard. And like I said, the temperature’s rising. My brothers are younger than I am and they forget sometimes that there are rules. I wish my dad would take that into consideration, the fact that they’re young and immature. One of my brothers is also autistic which really adds some heat to the scene. But Dad is a stickler for rules, no matter what. Rule number one is always listen to your father. When he calls you, you’d better be standing in front of him within seconds.

Everyone is at the table. I wish I were somewhere else, frankly. I wish I were dancing with a movie star in the house we own in the Hollywood hills. Dinner always begins with grace. We take turns saying grace and tonight it’s my brother Ben’s turn. He’s ready for the assignment and we manage to get through grace without a scene. It’s not the same when Francis has his turn, believe me, but that’s another story. We listen to the conversation my parents and my Aunt Gabby are having. We’re not to participate. We’re only kids after all. We aren’t asked any questions about our day or what we did in school. Children are to be seen and not heard and sometimes it’s better if they’re not even seen. That would be rule number two I suppose.

Like a tennis tournament, our heads bob back and forth from Mother to Father as their conversation begins to heat up again. I try to ignore it. I try to fantasize about my house in Hollywood but to no avail. The tournament is now in full swing. “Get your elbows off the table, Francis.” “Boys, please don’t chew with your mouth open.” “Benjamin, elbows! How often do I have to say this?”

My brothers are oblivious to what they’re saying. Am I the only one that can hear them?

“Francis, stop that, it’s disgusting. Rita, are you paying attention to how your boys are behaving at the table?”

“Oh James, stop pestering the boys, they’re trying to eat their supper.” Francis and Benjamin have my mother wrapped around their little fingers.

Now the climatic change is about to shift once again. My father slams his hands on the table to show us who’s boss. It usually works too. We usually get it when he does that; the message is loud and clear.

“Oh sure Rita, we’ll just let our kids go out into the world and be pigs. That’s fine with you, is it?”

“Oh James, just stop it, please.” She’s about to start crying. My mother has my father wrapped around her finger. “You see the pattern here, don’t you? I can’t take this every night, I just can’t. Can we not have just one night without this sort of chaos going on? Just stop it, all of you!”

My mother’s screaming at my father, and the rest of us, for that matter. You’re included even though you had nothing to do with it, with what just transpired. It’s your fault that Francis and Ben are pigs, though you played no part in the drama. You may as well have because one wrong look and you can have wrath fall upon you. Apparently everyone sitting at the table is guilty of making Mom cry. Even Aunt Gabby. Does Mom not know that I was sitting perfectly still, minding my own business the whole time? Sitting quietly, making friends with the potatoes and carrots? I didn’t want to be part of this so-called human hurricane in the dining room.

The atmosphere is heavy now and I just want to run and hide. There’s no way out though. You’re stuck in your chair until you’re excused. My mother is still crying. Finally she gets up and leaves the table. By the time dinner is over my body is so tense it feels like a cement block. I’m afraid to look up. I don’t want to catch anyone’s attention, if you know what I mean. What transpires at supper time is enough to make me cringe. I’d like to have a fit like Mom but she’d probably kill me if I did.

“Alright children, you may leave the table. Elly, you’re in charge. Make sure the dishes are done. Aunt Gabby, will you supervise please?” Having given instructions, my father leaves the table and goes upstairs to see if my mother is still crying. I can hear whimpers coming from her room. If I were a weather person I would have called what I just witnessed a substantial hurricane, the atmosphere heavy and tense enough to qualify as a level ten. The storm subsides just as it always does.

“Always rinse before washing, Elly,” my aunt tells me in no uncertain terms. I mean, how hard can it be to wash dishes? Yet every night I get step-by-step instructions on how to wash dishes by my ninety-something-year-old aunt. I can’t bring myself to tell her she’s given this lesson to me a hundred times before.

Aunt Gabby lives with us. She has a small room at the back of the house. She has everything she needs in that room and could manage her own dinners if she wanted to, but she chooses to join the chaos at five o’clock every night. I often wonder why she chooses to eat with us amidst all the fighting and carrying on? I would gladly give up my place if I could. Sometimes I think she enjoys the entertainment every evening. Other than that she pretty much sticks to herself. My friends are afraid of her and so am I, for that matter. She’s like really old. I feel like Cinderella in the house. I seem to be doing all the cleaning and looking after things.

My aunt joins my parents, who are now in the living room watching the news. My parents have made up and I suppose the boys are safely tucked away in their rooms. I embrace the peace and quiet. I find my way up to my room to do my homework.
Often I find myself daydreaming about living a different life, the kind of life that wouldn’t include my wicked brothers Francis and Benjamin. Maybe my parents wouldn’t fight so much if they weren’t around. Life would definitely be simpler without them.
It would be so amazing to be the only child. I wouldn’t have to worry about those kind of fights breaking out all the time. I know if my parents knew what I was thinking about my brothers and about them, they’d kill me. I try to put those thoughts out of my mind. I often wonder if my parents can read my mind.

“Elly, what are you doing?” my mom yells from downstairs.

“Nothing Mom, why?” I didn’t say anything. They CAN read my mind, I knew it.

“Elly, have you done your homework? What are those brothers of yours up to?”

“I’m doing my homework now Mom, and they’re both asleep.”

“Alright, well your father and I are going out for a while. Good night, dear.”

“G’night Mom.” No kiss, no hug, just a ‘good night dear’. Well, it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. 

I feel bad about all the stuff I was thinking about, especially the stuff about Francis and Ben. They’re pretty much dead to the world now, they will have forgotten the storm that passed through this house, that passes through on a regular basis. I haven’t though. That’s why I’m telling you, I guess. I could be considered some kind of family weather-person, predicting disturbances in the family a part of my job. It’s just too bad nobody listens. They don’t understand that unlike the weather channel, I can usually predict with a one hundred percent accuracy when and where the storm will hit. Like tonight, right here in Hone. A hurricane passed through and nobody noticed. Another such storm will pass though here again, and no doubt I will predict the outcome of that one as well. I’m getting pretty good at storm watching. I’d prefer to not have this super power but what can you do. If you have it, you have it.

I keep looking ahead for what will happen next – in a little house, on a little street, in a little town called Hone.

Photo Credit

Photo is by Martha Farley – All Rights Reserved

Recent Martha Farley Articles:

• We're Just An Ordinary Family.....or Are We?
• What's Love Got to Do With It?
• Sunflower
• Where Did My Mom Go?
• A Little Magic