Pamela Gay - Im So Glad Youre Here

Copyright 2020 Pamela Gay

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-874-3

ISBN: 978-1-63152-875-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019920289

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She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

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For my beloved parents,
Helen Julia (Carr) and Charles Channing Gay,
and my children Raphael and Angela

We never tell the story whole because a life isnt a story; its a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.

Rebecca Solnit

I want to make clear from the start that I am telling this story. I am also part of the story, but the act of storytelling allows me to separate myself. I am seefin, as my mother said as a child. Seeing how things are, she explained to methats seefin.

Pamela Gay

A memoir proceeds perhaps more as memory does, in brief, episodic flashes illuminated by an overall picture of a central consciousness.

Robin Hemley

I WAS EIGHTEEN and home from college on Thanksgiving break. It was my mothers birthday. John F. Kennedy had just been shot. And my father was being carried out on a stretcher.

Dont-let-her-see, keep-her-away, I heard my two brothers shush as they lifted the stretcher. I froze, as if by remaining still, they would not see me see him: his arms strapped to his side, his elbows locked; his body bound in a straitjacket, then sunk in a stretcher like a furrow in a field; his eyes, the only part of his body not restrained. They couldnt restrain his eyes: two black dots flickering in the light, darting wildly back and forth.

They carried him out the door and my mother followed, pausing in the doorframe. I watched her fling a kerchief over her head, tie a knot under her chin, then turn and ask me would-I-watch-the-turkey.

I nodded yes; I would watch the turkey, not TV.

A simple request, as if my mother were going on a quick run to the grocery store and would be right back, as if there would be a dinner, a feast, a celebration, as if the turkey would be eaten. But above her words, my mothers eyes stared blankly. She couldnt do a thing about it, none of it: Kennedys death right on TV for all the world to see or her husbands breakdown for our eyes only.

I entered the doorframe and stood still as a still life, listening to the ambulance taking them away, no siren, the sound of tires rolling down the gravel driveway, fading into the distance.

I walked toward the muffled sound of the TV in the living room, turned the sound off, and watched images of Kennedys body being carried into an ambulance played over and over as if no one could believe it.

The house fell silent except for an occasional hiss from the turkey roasting in the oven.

I sat on the gray kitchen linoleum, propped up against a cupboard next to the oven and waited.

I listened.

The turkey hissed and hissed.

When darkness fell suddenly like a curtain,

I tensed, lost in the dark,

frightened by the sizzling turkey sounding

closer and closer.

I must stay very still.

My breathing was too loud.

The doorbell rang, sending me into a state of alarm.

Who? Who? would come here now?

I hesitated, then decided I had better open the door. Perhaps it was important.

My friend Bob stood facing me. What are you doing? I didnt think anyone was home. Your house is all dark, no car in the drive. Where is everyone?

Something came up. They had to go out, I said, keeping him in the doorframe.

I just wanted to tell you that Tommy was coming for Christmas break.

I looked at him blankly. The turkey hissed.

Tommy, the guy from Maine you spent all summer with. Instead of me, he didnt say.

Oh, thats nice.

Nice?

I nodded blankly. Ive-gotta-go-watch-the-turkey, I blurted, easing the door toward him.

Can I call you later?

Sure, I replied, shutting the door, leaving him in the dark.

I heard the porch door shut, then turned and walked across the small kitchen past the gateleg table and sat back down on the gray linoleum floor in front of the oven. I hugged my knees and listened to the turkey hissing, hissing in the dark, hot oven, fat dripping like sweat from its headless body. Memory of my mother sewing a flap of skin over its neck cavity to keep the stuffing in. This dead turkey this day, my only companion.

My mother had asked me to watch the turkey, but I couldnt see the turkey. I sat in the dark alone, so alone. There was no window for viewing. I opened the oven door and sat cross-legged, watching the turkey. Then I turned off the oven. After a while, the turkey stopped hissing.

I remembered the turkey I had colored in second grade, each feather a different color, all its feathers spread like a peacock. A happy turkey. Not a turkey beheaded for the oven. And then I grew sad, so sad: my father, my mother, JFK, and the turkey, Turkey Day.

My father had planned to work until he was sixty-five, but his long-time employer forced him to retire at age sixty-two. He was devastated by this news. The depression that had been lurking throughout his life accelerated, and he experienced several psychotic episodes.

Age Seventeen: Memory of my father in our two-toned blue DeSoto, my mother driving, me in the back seat.

Theyre coming after me! my father shouted. Hurry, hurry! He turned toward my mother, then round to the rear window, his eyes wide, looking through me to somewhere beyond.

Who? Who, Dad? I shouted as I turned to look out the rear window, half expecting gangsters with guns.

The IRS! he screamed, opening the door to try to jump out.

Picture my mother: one hand on the steering wheel, her other hand reaching to pull the door shut, the car screeching to a halt on the roadside.

I WENT TO visit my father at Northampton State Hospital. I stood in the doorway of a bare, white-walled room and stared at my ghost of a father flat out in bed, his body tied down by some kind of physical restraint around his waist. His eyes, fixed in a permanent gaze, stared at the ceiling. I drew a deep, shuddering breath at the unspeakable sight of my father. I tried to say Dad, again, Dad, but the word wouldnt come out. Tears swelled inside but wouldnt release. I stood still, locked in the doorframe by an invisible emotional restraint, a transistor radio tucked under an arm.

A voice from behind: You cant bring that in. I slowly turned my head. No stim-u-la-tion allowed, a white-coated psychiatrist enunciated, to be sure I understood. I held the radio tight, lowering my eyelids, trying to process what was happening. I had no words. Ill walk out with you, he said.