My Father Before Me (3 page)

6

Ange had swiftly completed her required high school courses and, when she reunited with Eddie, was already taking classes at the University of Washington. She and my father picked up where they had left off, seeing each other regularly throughout the autumn and winter. In February, they attended a university dance; afterward, Eddie, nineteen, and two years a marine, was ready to do something other than stop by Triple XXX or drive his virgin girlfriend back to her home and give her a good-night peck at the door.

“I remember the night,” my mother says over sixty years later. “I didn't want to do it. I just didn't think it was right.” She looks at me directly, with the hint of a shrug. “But he was young and randy.

“I remember the dress I was wearing.”

In her eighties, my mother is a proud and dignified woman; people speak admiringly of her regal bearing. In response to my desire to learn more about my father, she has been kind and candid. After she tells me about the first time she had sex, I report the conversation to my wife, a poet, a woman of great psychological insight and sensitivity. She says, “Did you ask about the dress?”

No, I did not ask. Sitting beside my mother, listening to her speak thoughtfully, deliberately, of a night whose details remain vivid to her, I felt myself deciding I would not ask about the dress. And I would not ask about
the location—the back of a car parked discreetly at the lakeside? A friend's vacant basement? I am, finally, my parents' child. Out of politeness, or fear, or a sense of how easily interest becomes intrusiveness and a thirst for the truth becomes a hunger for the sensational, I will not ask everything.

By the end of March, as my mother was preparing for the third quarter of her freshman year, she could not ignore the obvious: she was pregnant. “I know that every pregnant woman says this,” she tells me, “but we did it only once!”

Abruptly, her fate was altered. She would not spend the next years strolling the university quad, books cradled in her arm. Her fate was now the common one for girls of her generation: to be a mother—which, in 1949, meant to be a wife, even if she was not fully conscious of who she was, of who she might become, or of how she might find a way to exist in this world as that person.

She dropped out of school. She would have this baby. She did not doubt that. She would not be the type to leave town unnoticed and then return months later, alone, sad, and silently knowing.

Ed—old enough not to be referred to by the boyish name Eddie anymore—and Ange could see their future distinctly. They would be husband and wife. Ed would finish college and start a career. Ange would tend to their home and to the baby—or babies. First, though, they had to break the news to their families.

“We want to get married,” they told Ange's mother, Esther, and her stepfather, Lee.

“But why?” asked Esther.

“Well, because—” Ange answered.

“Oh my God!” her mother said.

Lee leaped up, grinning, pumped Ed's hand, and said, “Congratulations!”

Then they went to Ed's house to sit down with his grandparents and repeat the conversation.

His grandfather, nearly seventy, bald, compact, and craggy, leaned back and said, “Uh-huh. And what are you going to live on—love?”

Like generations of Forhans before him, Ed was Catholic; he would be married in the church. Ange, however, was not Catholic; if a priest were to perform the ceremony, she would need first to receive instruction about the faith and about what it meant to be married to a Catholic. This would have to happen quickly—all of the wedding arrangements would need to be made in a flurry, before Ange began to show. A date for the ceremony, only a couple of weeks away, was chosen. In advance of the big day, Ange met with a priest. In an office in the church's priory, she listened carefully as she was told of the tenets of the faith, its sacraments and rituals, and its implications for the life of a husband and wife. Marriage, she was instructed, was a lifelong union of a man and a woman who vowed before God to remain absolutely faithful to each other; as for sex, its sole purpose was the begetting of children, and those children were to be educated in the faith of their parents. I imagine my mother, that surprise of a new life stirring within her, nodding as she listened, glancing occasionally over the priest's shoulder at the crucifix on the wall. I imagine her telling herself that she had no choice but to be ready.

They would be married on a Friday night—an odd time for the pastor to choose, as the church didn't typically hold weddings at night—but my parents didn't question it. They invited more than a hundred people. Though few of the guests would have been unaware of the reason for the abrupt wedding, my parents wanted to celebrate their marriage openly, in front of family and friends. They were not ashamed. Not much.

When they arrived in the afternoon for the rehearsal, they found the church dim and empty. They were summoned to the priory, the small redbrick building in the church's shadow. It was there, they were told, that the ceremony would take place: it would be unlawful to celebrate the wedding in the church, since the bride was not a Catholic.

Ange was crestfallen. Furious. But what could she do? And what could her mother do? Nothing—except allow her indignation to turn her against the Catholic Church forever. Ed's grandparents said nothing, and Ed said nothing, although it must have begun to dawn on everyone that the pastor, in planning a night wedding in a small building without altar or spire, was intent on marrying these two children only technically: surreptitiously, without immodest pomp.

The sky darkened, a light rain fell, and the arriving guests were directed away from the huge church entry doors and toward the narrow walkway to the priory. A couple dozen people were allowed inside the building, but no more than that would fit. The rest of the guests, with little to look at but one another's bewildered faces, gathered in the drizzle on the walkway and on the priory's concrete steps. Those nearest the door might have strained to catch a few words of what was happening inside.

And then it was over. The teenage newlyweds emerged. The guests stepped aside to let them pass.

7

The honeymoon, at least, would go well. True, the vacation would be short—just the weekend—because Ed had to be back to work on Monday; he was planning to enroll in the university in the fall, but, in the meantime, like many other Seattleites, he had signed on at Boeing, the airplane manufacturer that was the city's biggest employer. Still, for the next two days, Ed and Ange would be on their own, accountable only to themselves, free to breathe easily, to follow their whims, and to begin to grow accustomed to each other as what they now were: Mr. and Mrs. Forhan.

They would spend the weekend in Victoria, British Columbia, a harbor town named after the great queen, a place of genteel manners, handsome Victorian- and Edwardian-era architecture, and luxuriant, well-tended flower gardens. Victoria would supply the splendor and pageantry that had been missing from the wedding.

Around midnight, after the reception, the newlyweds boarded the grand steamship
Princess Kathleen,
which would travel unhurriedly through the night to the southern tip of Vancouver Island. In the morning, they would awake, disembark, and check in to their hotel; they would devote the long day to seeing the sights—and each other.

They would stay in the opulent Empress Hotel, an imposing château-­style building surrounded by gardens and courtyards, abun
dant ivy climbing its outside walls. The hotel had played host to Rudyard Kipling and kings and queens. Edward, prince of Wales, had waltzed in its ballroom till dawn. Now Ed and Ange could waltz in that room. In the afternoon, they would dress in their best duds and partake in the hotel's famously posh English tea service. The tea was dauntingly pricey, but this was special, said Ed: this was their honeymoon. As soon as they arrived at the Empress, he made sure to secure two tickets for tea, as well as for an evening dinner dance. Beyond those events, there would be gardens to meander through and carriage rides to take. The day was set—and afterward, after dining, after dancing, they would wander, blissfully weary, down wide carpeted halls, beneath extravagant chandeliers, back to their room. They would do what honeymooners do in private.

First, though, Ed said, he felt a little tired. He wouldn't mind resting for a bit before they started their day. He lay down, pulled the covers up, and fell swiftly asleep.

An hour passed. Then another. He showed no sign of rising. Ange nudged him. No response.

Later, she nudged him again. Teatime was approaching. “Yes, okay,” Ed mumbled. “Just a little longer. I'll be up.”

But he wasn't. He slept through the tea, and Ange decided not to go to it alone—she dropped the tickets into the trash.

Through the afternoon, through the evening, as the dinner dance came and went, he dozed. PFC Forhan had fallen asleep at his post.

Ange was baffled, exasperated. How could this make sense? Was he weary from work, from the frenzied preparations for the wedding? Maybe. But a person doesn't sleep through his honeymoon.

Ange was starving. She sat on the bed. She told Ed it was time; he needed to wake up, really. They both should eat something. He lay still, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Ange rose, found his wallet, slipped a few bills out of it, and left the room to buy herself a hamburger.

When she returned, Ed was sleeping.

Finally, Ange, too, lay down in the dark and closed her eyes. In the morning, she woke, but he did not. She waited. She dressed. She left the room and wandered around, then returned. Just in time for them to leave and catch the afternoon boat back to Seattle, Ed woke. He rose slowly. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sleep so long.”

They hardly said a word about it; they certainly did not argue. Ange was despondent, but she would not confront her husband. She was dumbfounded and too unknowing about people, especially this person she had married. Decades later, she wondered whether Ed wasn't depressed, but, at seventeen, she didn't think about such things. Nor did she yet understand how sleep can be a means of avoidance. If you're still in bed, there's no telling what you might not have to do.

On Sunday afternoon, they steamed south to Seattle on the long, luxurious
Princess Kathleen,
the gleaming ship that, three years later, in the fog of night, would run aground in Alaska, jarring its passengers awake, and then, as the tide rose—everyone having scurried off safely—slide gradually, serenely, permanently into the deep.

8

On their return from Victoria, the newlyweds settled into their first home: the top floor of a house lived in by a woman whose husband had died; she had space and could use the rent money. She cleared a shelf in her refrigerator for them. Eddie and Ange examined the gifts they'd received: a set of silver, a singing teakettle, an electric kitchen clock, a lace tablecloth, a set of Revere ware, a crystal relish dish, a Toastmaster toaster, a gravy ladle, a
Better Homes & Gardens
cookbook. They were set.

On the Monday after the honeymoon, Ange surprised herself by cooking, on a two-burner hot plate, a complete meal—pork chops and gravy, mashed potatoes, peas, and applesauce—and doing a serviceable job of it. She'd had no idea she could pass herself off so quickly and easily as a homemaker, but, in the widow's home, as if fated to it, she did.

Pork chops. Pot roast. Chicken potpie. Ange and Ed were young, deeply intelligent, and willing to work hard; in a later era, they might have been anything—or tried to be. But it was 1949, boom time in America, boom time for the family, boom time for young husbands in flannel suits snapping shut the golden clasps of their briefcases, boom time for young wives in the bathroom, scouring clean that bowl, that sink, that floor, boom time in the kitchen. Spaghetti and meatballs. Swedish meatballs. Meat loaf with bread crumbs. A gravy
ladle, a relish dish. Ed and Ange had both come from brokenness and patched-together families. Now they would be making a family together, although only two months before they had not planned to do so, at least not so quickly, not now. They each must have needed mending, in essential ways. They must have had secrets, even to themselves. But did they sense that this was so? People did not talk about the self much then. Melon balls. Deviled eggs. Tuna noodle casserole. My parents believed in what they had been taught by example: reticence, discipline, duty, pleasantness, courtesy, self-denial, and elbow grease, elbow grease. The newest cleanser for unsightly stains. And disinfectant. Tide, so he can wear the cleanest shirts in town. Lux soap to prevent runs in stockings because “husbands admire wives who keep their stockings perfect.” For the kids, to improve their marks in school, a Motorola television.

They were a team now, Ed and Ange, a team of two, relying solely on themselves to make a life of purposefulness and joy. But how much did they know about what might give them joy and whether such joy was possible in the world in which they lived, a world that offered a few narrowly defined, cramped structures to inhabit: marriage, family, church? Or maybe joy wasn't the objective; maybe success was—or mere contentedness—which, for Ed, would mean a professional career with potential for advancement and, for Ange, an orderly household, a cozy home.

Turning that smile upside down, that's what it would take, and, if the advertisements were right, a Hoover vacuum and a Kelvinator refrigerator and heels and earrings and a pinched-waist dress and a dainty apron to waltz through rooms in and giddiness about that spick-and-span frying pan. Mop, wax, and buff. Mop, wax, and buff. And to make yourself pretty for him and keep that zip in your step, a trip to the beauty parlor to sit with your head in a metal cone. And he? He needs a close shave and cuff links and a stiff-bristled brush to
maintain that mirror shine in his shoes and someone to happily hand him a highball when he comes home. He needs to loosen his tie, ease his slippers on, light a pipe, bury his nose in the newspaper. Daddy's home—
shhh
. Weekends he keeps the lawn trim and the whitewalls white. He writes checks for the mortgage and utilities and writes one to his wife—her allowance to run the household: to pay for the groceries, the children's clothes and shoes, the schoolbooks and fees, the birthday parties, the Christmas presents. What might she want for Christmas? Wow her with Pyrex ovenware or a Rid-Jid ironing table—she'll want to marry you all over again. In the meantime, Pep vitamins to keep her going, because “the harder a wife works, the cuter she looks.”

His nose in the newspaper. Her head in a metal cone.