Creative Nonfiction Sample

Turning Out

—Prologue—

Whack

“What—” Mom stumbles into the kitchen in her nightgown with 12-year-old Julie trailing her.

Whack

“He’s hitting Rusty,” I say fast.

Julie starts to cry.

Mom’s mouth is open.

Whack

“Rusty wouldn’t go out. Dad threw him out there by his scruff and tail.”

Whack—yelp

We all steer clear of Dad when he’s drunk, but our dog Rusty’s not allowed in our rooms.

Whack—yelp

Mom’s crying.

“I’m going out there,” I say, about to spring.

“No!” Mom wails it, guttural, the word caught in a sob.

At 17, Student Congress champ and CA State Qualifier for Speech and Debate, I don’t shy from conflict.

Whack—yelp—howl

I throw open the garage door; mom-and-sister-protests drown as it slams. He’s got the yard stick held over his head with my dog cowering on the ground whimpering as he swings downward. The yard stick snaps in two on my dog, one piece ricocheting off Rusty toward the washer. 

Dad curses, shifts his grip, raises the stick again. I rush and grab it, grappling a second as he locks a bloodshot gaze on me in shock, letting go the stick.

I yell, “Violence solves nothing! Idiot!” He’d blow off profanity, but accusations of stupidity cut deep into his GED and college-dropout ego. 

“Get in the house!” he says through gritted teeth, spit escaping the sides of his mouth.

I lift my chin.

He grabs a handful of my shirt’s neckline, and his right fist draws back fast like an archer pulls an arrow. 

I clench my jaw, eyes locked and loaded on his. I lift my chin higher . . .

_____________________________________

—Chapter One—

“Dinner!” I call and ring the cast iron frog bell mounted on the wall.

“But . . . what’s for dinner,” Stu says, craning for a look on the stove.

“It’s good. You only have to try it, so relax,” I say. At seven, Stu frets levels deep in worry. Not just if he’ll like the meal, he worries he’ll hurt my feelings by not liking the meal. Tonight’s a new dish, Spanish rice, with myriad unidentifiable colors and textures all touching—he’ll hate it. “If you hate it, you can just have peanut butter. I’ll put it on the table with bread and jam.”

Dejected, he slinks away and nearly oozes into his dining room chair, and already I know this dinner’s in jeopardy, before kids even start filling seats. I just want one happy dinner. One. But making a new dish is risky, and last night Jackson broke curfew again.

Dan, Stu’s fraternal twin and diametric opposite, slides into his chair breathless and laughing like he stole third and slid into home plate, jarring the table and sloshing his lemonade. GRRR. I drop a napkin on the splash after setting the skillet on the table’s center. 

Stu sinks deeper into his chair opposite the Spanish rice’s rising steam.

Truman’s soccer ball bounces downstairs followed by its fourteen-year-old master herding it with a million mini-kicks, “touches,” as he calls them, and stops the ball with authority near his chair. 

“Where’s your shirt?” I say rhetorically, eyeing the Olympia, WA storm building outside the picture window. I remember the tapers I wanted to light—maybe candlelight ambiance will ensure peace? I pull them from a sideboard drawer, set them alight, and for a split second watch their flames sway in the draft.

Nine-year-old Jenna reaches the table as a gust of wind rattles the window, the pine forest swaying across the street. She throws a wad of yarn in Dan’s already compromised lemonade. 

“Hey!” He says in feigned outrage, smiling.

“That’s what you get for tying up Glowy over the edge!” Dan and Stu regularly hog-tie and hamstring Jenna’s stuffed lamb “Lamby,” glowing bear “Glowy,” and green snake “Snaky” with yarn to dangle over the staircase. She half-smiles, craving interaction despite its eventual conflict. Jenna and Dan fight like Cleopatra and Napoleon would if siblings. Stu is neutral Sweden.

I light the candles and fish out the yarn-wad as my husband Matt takes his seat unfazed, as if I always fish yarn from lemonade before dinner. He’s squinting despite the dark room. “Aww—headache?” I say and reach to knead his shoulder. Stress as a family doc with $275,000 left in med school debt and a kid leaving for college this fall promotes migraines. We sit and wait for Jackson.

And . . . wait.

Ummm . . . Is he purposely making us wait? “Maybe he didn’t hear the dinner bell,” I say. 

“Jenna, will you say the prayer?” Matt says, as Jackson slow-mos down the stairs and takes his seat.

After the prayer a chorus of “What is that?” turns Stu’s complexion green. I say to Stu, “Just a taste,” and, “It’s rice, cheese, meat, and spices—nothing weird.” I start dishing it onto plates.

Jenna, “What’s green, though? Is that a slug?”

“No, it’s green pepper and a chunk of onion. Look, there’s cheese. Pick out what you don’t like.”

Older people start eating as younger ones separate ingredients.

“Just eat it,” Matt says.

“All you have to do it try it,” I say, adding, “Wow, look at the storm out there. I wonder if we’ll lose power.” I notice our vinyl-lettered “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” wall sign is crooked. 

Matt sits across from Jackson who has seemed especially distant since 12:13 AM when we met him in the entry way; he didn’t call to tell us he’d be late, a requisite if out past curfew. He looked at us last night with slate-hard eyes, sick of our boundaries. More and more, I’m living with two grown male lions in the same pride, both intent to roar. As lioness, I see Jackson’s no cub. He’s 17, ready to roam, specifically USC’s campus this fall, whether I’m ready or not. I just want unity in the pride. Starting with this dinner.

“My debate tournament is this Friday,” Jackson says.

“Oh, what’s up for debate this time?” I say. Wait. Did I just ask that?

Stu surreptitiously spits a mouthful of Spanish rice onto his plate, then gags. At least he tried it.

“My favorite’s the abortion bill. I’ve got more prepared on the affirmative side,” he says. “I think abortion should stay legal. It’s a woman’s right to choose.”

Pause. . . 

“It’s a complicated issue,” I say.  I feel myself getting sucked into a debate. At 18, I used to be mixed, anti-abortion and pro-choice at the same time, but after having five kids with a set of twins, I feel conflicted, and he knows that.

Jackson says, “I’m not talking about late-term abortion.” 

I counter, “Jenna would kick against pressure at 14 weeks gestation. Reliably.” Moments like this spike up like unexpected roadway rumble strips. Is he baiting me? I start spreading peanut butter onto bread for Stu.

Matt shifts in his seat and says, “Well, our church doesn’t believe in abortion, so there’s that.”

“People should think for themselves,” Jackson says, testing the perimeter.

Truman leans into the table’s center for another helping—he likes it, as I see Dan peek something beige and fluffy up from the table’s edge like a periscope. Lamby.

Stu gags again, reaches for a sip of lemonade, as I hold up his almost-made-sandwich.

I say, “Of course people should think for themselves. I think a lot about this.”

“You used to be a Democrat.”

“I’m still registered as a Democrat.”

“You don’t talk like one.”

“I think for myself.”

Matt breaks in, “You didn’t clean your room before you went out last night.”

Oh no. The deal was Jackson would clean his room and come home before curfew, or risk getting grounded. I know where Matt’s going, but we can’t ground him from Friday’s debate tournament.

“The agreement was you’d clean your room before you went out, or you’d get grounded,” Matt says as he moves Spanish rice on his plate like he just conquered it. The table is silent.

Jackson’s eyes are granite.

“Maybe you don’t need to go to your debate.”

Jackson drops his spoon.

“Wait—not the debate,” I blurt.

“Lamby!” Jenna yells, pushing back her chair and rushing to circle the table as Dan stands, knocks his chair over and runs with Lamby.

“Dan!” I yell, “Drop it!”

He does and runs back to the table as Jenna strokes traumatized Lamby like a baby.

I stand up as Dan rights his chair and they both climb back into their seats, and another wind-wall buffets the windowpane. I reach over the skillet to hand Stu the sandwich, and out goes the power. I drop the sandwich in the steaming spanish rice. But I’m a quick mediator—“Ok, it’s ok—we’ve got candle light right here. Jackson, you can clean your room tonight, right? You can use a lantern if the power stays out. Let’s just finish this meal.” I brush off bits of rice and onion-slug from the sandwich and set it on Stu’s plate.

I look at Matt now shoveling abrupt spoonfuls into his mouth with a laser-gaze fixed on his lemonade, which is good, because the glare might vaporize a human. Sure, I contradicted him in front of the kids, but we’re supposed to decide punishments together, and he’s gone rogue. Maybe it’s the migraine. 

Stu stands—wobbly—takes a few steps away from the table, bends over and barfs on himself and the rug. He stands there bent and frozen as kids do post-vomit, like ten live snakes just slithered from his throat and lie writhing on the floor at his feet. He starts to cry in a wail, “I’m sorryyyyy, Mom!”

Matt goes for paper towels as I shepherd Stu toward the stairs, reassuring him he hasn’t hurt my feelings. 

I touch Jackson’s shoulder as I pass, but he doesn’t respond. Now I’ve got both grown male lions mad at me.

Truman gulps his lemonade, oblivious to the table’s tension, as Jenna holds up Lamby toward Dan and says, “Nana nana booboo.”

Upstairs, I draw a bath and work to peel off Stu’s barfy clothes to avoid barf in his hair, and get him in the water for instant calm. Why do I debate Jackson, when my biggest fear is our fractured rapport? I just wish he’d snap back into the compliant, agreeable kid my friends dubbed “prophet- boy.” Lately he’s defying us at every turn like we’re fascists and he’s the lone resistance force, right down to refusal to make his bed or come down for dinner when we call. Bed-making isn’t fascism. He refused to go on this summer’s church youth conference trip, preventing Truman from also going by planning their summer visit with their biological dad to coincide. Jackson never wants to go to church, but do any teenagers ever want to go to church? 

I soap up Stu’s hair that did get slimed by his shirt and choke down the thought that Jackson might leave the church, that he’s biding his time and once at USC, will quit it all together. Our family line is so highlighted with alcohol and drug abuse that I feel like the only safeguard is our church. I flash back to my dad’s alcoholism too often—can’t think about that now. I’ve got to figure out how to manage Matt tonight, who already thinks I always side with kids, and I’m inconsistent, and let too much slide. But there’s the migraine at work, and timing is key. I’ll have to gently press the thing about collaborating on punishments, how school events are off the table.

I dry off Stu and ask, “You want yogurt?” If he barfs again, yogurt’s easier to clean than peanut butter. I’m a vomit-veteran, pretty much work my art in mediums of bodily fluids and solids of all sorts. I remember one thing about Matt, though: he always willingly cleans up the vomit splat, whether at midnight waking from sleep or midday mowing the lawn, he takes charge of vomit while I clean up kids. I smile about that just a second, then sink inside with a  resolve to reconnect tonight. From where we are upstairs in the loft I can hear Dan down there chasing Jenna for a grab at Lamby, Jackson and Truman scraping dinner plates in the sink and clinking them into the dishwasher, and Matt spraying Lysol on the rug. He’s not yelling at the kids to stop running—so, he’s fuming. 

____________________________________________

[Later in the work]

“You see what he posted?” Matt says. Uh oh. This is the kind of thing people say about Facebook posts either salacious or horrific. Instinctively, I know he means Jackson.

“Um . . . No; I thought you were signing charts and I was scanning lab results.” Since I took over as our family medicine practice’s unpaid Office Manager, evenings have hog-tied me to feed medical documents into this machine that digitizes them, so I can spend additional time electronically filing them into online charts in the newly paperless, streamlined world of digital medical records—only not so paperless, and not so streamlined. I do this for three hours every night after putting the velociraptors to bed.

“I was taking a break.” He says “break” like it’s a snapping femur. 

I quickly realize I’ll need to set this bone and cast it up before scanning more, so I say, “Ok, let’s work through it,” while I push the scanner outside my sprawled legs on the chewed-up carpet and lift my computer onto the coffee table. I wince realizing the last two hours crouching on the floor have strained my back, then stretch to one side and the other, as if warming up for a tennis match. Working through it means coming to terms with new and alarming revelations of Jackson’s college life, Matt’s and my new shared pastime. We line up our deceased or struggling family members along the court’s edge to call it when we lob an info-ball outside the lines; they know the game. We’re genetically loaded for addiction.

Matt rises from the floor and sets his laptop onto the recliner’s seat behind him like the keyboard just bit him, and trudges out of the room. This is gonna be great—I can already tell, because I’m thinking in sarcasm before I even know what’s coming. 

I log in to Facebook and find the post filled with pics of Jackson and friends with red Solo cups, beer bottles, the usual. So we’re gonna do this every time there’s a beer bottle pic? I have cried out my allotment of tears over Jackson drinking, that the years of cryptic tales from my alcoholic family lore haven’t safeguarded him from flirting with substance abuse. My stories, family stories, family deaths—that’s all mythology to millennials, I guess, but on my good days, I can see the pics and manage.  I’ll smooth this out with Matt today—easy.

And then I see it. That’s new. My heart drops with centrifugal force like roaring down the DEMON coaster at Great America, only . . . I don’t feel my heart rise again (has it actually stopped beating?), because there’s more here. It’s not just the new cigarette between his fingers so casually held in the same hand as the Solo cup, not carefully held like it’s a new thing, or like it’s a thing that could ignite what’s in the Solo cup. 

There’s a comment. 

From my dad. “Oh yeah, baby live it up I’m feeling that.” And then, as if that doesn’t hit the ball home, “Oooh yeah.” 

I stare. I remember to breathe. I breathe again.

Oh yeah, baby live it up I’m feeling that.

Oooh yeah.

For a second I wonder if in this comment my dad is feeling the drunkenness of the USC party, or is it the cig which he can’t smoke with his COPD, or is it that he’s feeling the really fun-looking college girls crowding in the pic to flash a contortion of fingers in a sign that means something? 

Matt plods in and stoops to gather and stack papers and charts from our paperless clinic into a ten-inch tower of manilla folders, and pivots to plop them into the rolling milk-crate we use to transport our paperless clinic work to and from home. But hastily-built towers tend to slide and topple, and this one flops out in a landslide of manilla that flows across the matted family room carpet like a mudflow before hitting scooter or soccer ball. 

“I’ll get it,” I say, forgetting my back as I scramble to gather files, neither one of us laughing at this slapstick. The last thing we need right now with the IRS huffing for backlogged payroll taxes is our descent down another depressing level of Dante’s Circle of Parenting Hell, but here we stand; each of Jackson’s revelations weighs on us until we harden to it, and this one’s a double load, because it shows Jackson’s trajectory toward addictive substance use with the added bonus of his alcoholic grandfather’s blessing and encouragement to underscore its appeal. I carefully bend to gather charts as Matt goes for stray papers, and then as I set my pile into the rolling milk crate, I look up and open my mouth to speak, but . . . I’ve got nothing. 

He sits down with his stray papers and says, “So he’s smoking now.” I can tell he’s not mad anymore. He’s scared. He’s thinking about his little brother Ben who died five years ago at 27 in his third overdose, this one cocaine. Substance abuse was Ben’s Angel of Death. Understandably, Matt is haunted by his lost brother.

I’m haunted by my lost dad.  Still slack-jawed, I can’t even see the cig anymore; as I look over at my dad’s Facebook comments on the laptop, they suddenly seem to italicize, then to bold, and then I feel like they lift off the screen and shoot forward to hit like a hurled shot glass between my eyes. 

How. Dare. He. My alky dad, who revels in praise of how his kids turned out, as if our sobriety, church activity and college graduations are his accomplishments. His reaction if I had ever partied in college? Aneurism after disowning me, because he bases his success as a parent on how his kids have turned out, and his church-going sister and family would tsk-tsk him even more. I feel a second of pure rage, but with its familiarity, it morphs quickly to disgust.

And suddenly, bending over the rolling milk crate with my back spasming and my words gone, I get it. I understand. My dad will never realize the wake of destruction behind his vodka and his cheating and his “feeling it.” He will never understand that it’s not the partier’s crowded group pic, or the girl sidled up under your armpit, or the sweet cig so delicately wedged between fingers deft enough to simultaneously hold a cup, that destroys. The destruction settles in next morning, after years of vodka, when you stumble from your dark room, hungover and stooped in your saggy white briefs as you lope toward the kitchen, as kids and wife scatter away from the coffeemaker, as you swear under your breath at them. It’s when you come home that night sour because you have to come home, so you’ve drunk from the gallon jug of Smirnoff secured under your truck bed’s shell, and you line us up at attention like the accused stand before a firing squad, and then you yell. Or you beat the dog. The destruction comes years after college fun transitions to midlife addiction. Derailment.

And suddenly I’m done. No more broader online world if my dad’s the commentator there. I’m safeguarding us from him. 

“We’re going off Facebook. Both of us.” I shake my head. “It’s too hard, watching all this in Real Time.” Uhhhmm . . . Did I just tell Matt he’s going off Facebook? I clarify, “I mean I’m going off Facebook. I think it would be good if we both do. Every time we see crap like this, it wrecks us, and then we get depressed about Jackson.”  We may have both failed to keep Jackson sober, but secretly I mean you get depressed about Jackson. As for me in my house, I will resent my dad. 

Matt nods, leaves his laptop downstairs, and heads up to sleep with feet shuffling and shoulders curled like he’s been sleepwalking, not like we’ve been volleying an info-ball in a family-sponsored sobriety match. He’s missing Ben. I can’t even see past my dad, so I’m not present for Matt. So much for me working us through this. Yeah, I saw what he posted.