Dewey (10 page)

Most of the kids left just after five when their parents got off work. A few stayed as late as eight. Spencer wasn’t immune to problems—alcoholism, neglect, abuse—but our regulars were the children of blue-collar parents. They loved their kids but had to work extra jobs or extra shifts to make ends meet.

These parents, who came in for only a moment, rarely had time to pet Dewey. They worked long days, and they had meals to prepare and houses to clean before falling into bed. But their children spent hours with Dewey; he entertained and loved them. I never realized how much that meant, or how deep those bonds were, until I saw the mother of one of our boys bend down and whisper, “Thank you, Dewey,” as she tenderly stroked his head.

I figured she was thanking him for spending time with her son, for filling up what could have been an awkward and lonely time for him.

She stood up and put her arm around her son. Then, as they were walking out the door, I heard her ask him, “How was Dewey today?” Suddenly, I knew exactly how she felt. Dewey had turned a difficult time apart into common ground; he was her road back to so much of what she had left behind. I never considered this boy one of Dewey’s close companions—he spent most of his time goofing off with friends or playing games on the computer—but clearly Dewey was having an impact on his life beyond the library walls. And it wasn’t just this boy. The more I looked, the more I noticed that the ember that had ignited my relationship with Jodi was felt by other families, too. Like me, parents all over Spencer were spending their one hour a day with their teenagers talking about Dewey.

The staff didn’t understand. They saw Jodi and Dewey together and thought I’d be offended that Dewey loved someone more than me. After Jodi left, someone would usually say, “Her voice sounds just like yours. That’s why he loves her so much.”

But I didn’t feel jealous at all. Dewey and I had a complex relationship, one that involved baths, brushings, veterinary visits, and other unpleasant experiences. Dewey’s relationship with Jodi was pure and innocent. It was fun and good times, uncomplicated by responsibility. If I wanted to put a Vicki spin on their relationship, I could say Dewey realized how important Jodi was to me, and that made her important to him. I could even stretch to say that maybe, just maybe, Dewey understood the significance of those moments the three of us shared, how much I missed laughing with my daughter, and he was therefore happy to throw himself over the chasm and serve as the bridge between us.

But I don’t think that was it at all. Dewey loved Jodi because she was Jodi—warm, friendly, wonderful Jodi. And I loved him for loving my daughter.

Chapter 10

A Long Way from Home

I
n Hartley, Iowa, where my family moved when I was fourteen, I was a straight arrow, the head student librarian, and the second smartest girl in my grade, after Karen Watts. It was all As for Vicki Jipson, except in typing, where I got a C. But that didn’t keep me from having a reputation. One night I went with my parents to a dance in Sanborn, a little town nine miles from Hartley. When the dance hall closed at eleven, we went to the restaurant next door, where I promptly passed out. Dad took me outside for some fresh air, and I threw up. The next morning at eight thirty, my grandfather called the house and said, “What the hell is going on over there? I heard Vicki was drunk in Sanborn last night.” The cause turned out to be an abscessed tooth, but there was no beating a bad reputation in a small town like Hartley.

My older brother, meanwhile, was considered one of the smartest kids ever to attend Hartley High School. Everyone called him the Professor. David graduated a year ahead of me and went to college a hundred miles away in Mankato, Minnesota. I figured I’d follow him there. When I mentioned my plans to my guidance counselor, he said, “You don’t need to worry about college. You’re just going to get married, have kids, and let a man take care of you.” What a jerk. But it was 1966. This was rural Iowa. I didn’t get any other advice.

After graduation from high school, I got engaged to the third boy I’d ever dated. We’d been going out for two years, and he adored me. But I needed to get away from the microscope of small-town Iowa; I needed to be out on my own. So I broke off the engagement, which was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and moved to Mankato with my best friend, Sharon.

While David went to college on the other side of town, Sharon and I worked at the Mankato Box Company. Mankato Box packaged products like Jet-Dry, the dishwashing liquid, and Gumby, who was a star at the time. I worked mostly on Punch and Grow, a container of potting soil with seeds attached to the lid. My job was to grab potting soil containers off a conveyor belt, snap on the plastic lid, slide them into a cardboard sleeve, and put them in a box. Sharon and I worked side by side, and we were always singing goofy lyrics about Punch and Grow to the tune of popular songs. We would get the whole line laughing, the Laverne and Shirley of Mankato Box. After three years, I worked my way up to feeding the empty plastic cups into the machine. The job was more isolated, so I didn’t get to sing as much, but at least I didn’t get filthy from all the potting soil.

Sharon and I developed a routine, which happens with line work. We would get off work exactly at five, ride the bus to our apartment for a quick dinner, then hit the dance clubs. We’d stay out, dancing our toes off, until they shut the dance halls down. If I wasn’t dancing, I was usually out with my brother David and his friends. David was more than my brother, he was my best friend, and I can’t count the number of times we stayed up talking about our lives. If I stayed home, which was rare, I’d put on a record and dance, all alone in my bedroom. I just had to dance. I loved to dance.

I met Wally Myron at a dance club, but he wasn’t like the other guys I’d dated. He was very smart and very well-read, which impressed me immediately. And he had personality. Wally was always smiling, and everyone with him was always smiling, too. He was the kind of person who would go down to the corner store for milk and talk to the clerk for two hours. Wally could talk with anyone about anything. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. I say it to this day: Wally was incapable of intentionally hurting anyone.

We dated for a year and a half before getting married in July 1970. I was twenty-two, and I got pregnant right away. It was a tough pregnancy, with sickness morning, noon, and night. Wally spent evenings after work out with his friends, usually riding motorcycles, but he was always home by seven thirty. He wanted a social wife, but he would take a sick wife if that meant a baby on the way.

Sometimes one decision changes your life, and it doesn’t have to be one you make yourself—or even know about. When I went into labor, the doctor decided to speed the process with two massive doses of Pitocin. I found out later he had a party to attend, and he wanted to get this darn procedure over with. I went from three centimeters dilated to crowning in two hours. The shock broke my afterbirth, so they put me back into labor. They didn’t get all the pieces. Six weeks later I hemorrhaged, and they rushed me back to the hospital for emergency surgery.

I had always wanted a daughter named Jodi Marie. I had dreamed about it from a young age. Now I had that daughter, Jodi Marie Myron, and I was dying to spend time with her, to hug her and talk to her and look into her eyes. But the surgery knocked me flat on my back. My hormones went haywire, and I was racked with headaches, insomnia, and cold sweats. Two years and six operations later my health hadn’t improved, so my doctor suggested exploratory surgery. I woke up in the hospital bed to discover he’d taken both ovaries and my uterus. The physical pain was intense, but worse was the knowledge that I couldn’t have any more children. I had expected a peek inside; I wasn’t prepared to be hollowed out. And I wasn’t prepared to enter sudden and severe menopause. I was twenty-four going on sixty, with scarring through my gut, regret in my heart, and a daughter I couldn’t hold. The curtain came down and everything went black.

When I came around a few months later, Wally wasn’t there. Not like he used to be, anyway. That’s when I noticed, suddenly, that everything meant drinking to Wally. If he went fishing, it meant drinking. If he went hunting, it meant drinking. Even motorcycle riding meant drinking. Before long, he wasn’t showing up when he promised. He would be out late and never call. He’d come home drunk, and I’d say, “What are you doing? You have a sick wife and a two-year-old child!”

“We just went fishing,” he’d say. “I had a couple too many. It’s no big deal.”

I’d wake up the next morning, and he’d be gone to work. I’d find a note on the kitchen table.
I love you
.
I don’t want to fight. I’m sorry
. Wally could never sleep, and he would stay up all night writing me long letters. The man was smart. He could write beautifully. And every morning, when I saw those letters, I loved him.

The realization that your husband is a problem drinker comes suddenly, but the admission takes a long, long time. Your insides tie themselves in knots, but your heart refuses to understand. You make explanations, then excuses. You dread the ringing of the telephone. Then you dread the silence when it doesn’t ring. Instead of talking, you throw out the beer. You pretend not to notice things, like money. He always comes through, but only when the cupboard is bare. But you’re scared to complain. What are the chances, you think, that it will get worse instead of better?

“I understand,” he says when you mention it. “It’s not a problem. But I’ll quit. For you. I promise.” But neither of you believes it.

Day by day, your world gets smaller. You don’t want to open cabinets for fear of what you’ll find. You don’t want to search the pockets of his pants. You don’t want to go anywhere. Where’s he going to take you that doesn’t involve drinking?

Many mornings I found beer bottles in the oven. Jodi found beer cans in her toy box. Wally was waking up early every morning, and if I dared to look out the window, I could see him sitting in his van drinking warm beer. He didn’t even bother driving around the corner.

When Jodi was three, we went to Hartley for my brother Mike’s wedding. Jodi and I were in the ceremony, so Wally had free time on his hands. He would disappear and not show up until late at night, when everyone was asleep.

“Are you trying to avoid us?” I asked him.

“No, I love your family. You know that.”

The family was sitting around Mom’s kitchen table one night, and as usual Wally was nowhere to be found. We ran out of beer, so Mom went to the cabinet where she was keeping extra beer for all the friends and relatives in town. Most of it was gone.

“What were you thinking, taking Mom’s beer?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“How do you think I feel? How do you think Jodi feels?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“She’s old enough to know. You just don’t know her.”

Afraid to ask. Afraid not to ask. “Are you even working?”

“Of course I am. You see the paychecks, don’t you?”

Wally’s father had given him part ownership of the family construction business, which meant Wally didn’t get a steady paycheck. I couldn’t tell if the company was between projects or if the whole world was crashing down around us.

“It’s not just money, Wally.”

“I know. I’ll spend more time at home.”

“Quit drinking for one week.”

“Why?”

“Wally.”

“Okay, one week. I’ll quit.”

But again, neither of us believed it.

After Mike’s wedding, I finally admitted to myself that Wally had a problem. That he was coming home less and less. That I almost never saw him sober. He wasn’t a mean drunk, but he wasn’t a functioning drunk, either. And yet he ran our lives. He drove our only car. I had to take the bus or ride with a friend to buy groceries. He cashed the paychecks. He paid the bills. Often I was too sick to follow the finances, much less raise a child on my own. I called our house the Blue Coffin because it was painted a hideous shade of blue and shaped like a casket. It started out as a joke—it was actually a fine house in a nice neighborhood—but within two years it felt like the truth. Jodi and I were stuck in that house, being buried alive.

My family came through for me. They never blamed me. They never lectured me. My parents didn’t have money, but they took Jodi in, two weeks at a time, and raised her like their daughter. Whenever life smothered me, they gave me room to breathe.

Then there were my friends. If that delivery room doctor ruined my body, another stranger saved my mind. When Jodi was six months old, a woman knocked on my door. She had a daughter about Jodi’s age in a stroller. She said, “I’m Faith Landwer. My husband has been friends with your husband since high school, so let’s have coffee and get to know each other.”

Thank goodness I agreed.

Faith got me involved in a newcomer’s club that played cards once a month. I met Trudy over our regular game of Five Hundred, then met Barb, Pauli, Rita, and Idelle. Soon we were having coffee together at Trudy’s house a couple days a week. We were all young mothers, and Trudy’s house was the only one big enough to hold us. We would shove the children into her enormous playroom, sit at the kitchen table, and keep one another sane. I confided in them about Wally, and they didn’t blink. Trudy just came around the table and gave me a hug.