Last week, I mentioned to my therapist (who is actually a psychoanalyst) that our family therapist has made the comment a couple of times that I exhibit a lot of signs of someone who has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that she had asked if I'd ever talked to him (my regular therapist) about it. My therapist replied that, yes, indeed, he thinks I do. All of this stems from my first marriage to C. (Remember him? If not, you need to go here. And here. And here.) Honestly, that thought had never crossed my mind. I never really think of myself as a "victim" of anything, only sometimes an unwilling accomplice in some things; I believe in accountability, and I take responsibility for a lot, even things for which others would say I am not to blame. Things like Frisco.
C. came home one day with a surprise for the kids. (I don't know where he had been, but it couldn't have been a job; I didn't ask a lot of questions before we got married, and now I realize it was because I knew on some level I wouldn't like the answers.) As he pulled out this minuscule gray fluffball of a tabby kitten, tiny enough to fit in my two small-ish palms. Eldest's eyes sparkled like a diamond in sunlight. "His name is Frisco," she declared. We spent the next several hours playing with Frisco at my parents' house.
Then I had to leave for work. Oh, how I wish I'd never left. I tell myself, even today, that hearing about an atrocious act is different than seeing it happen, and that if I'd seen it happen, maybe my life would have changed for the better.
It was a weekend, I think, because I remember being able to talk for a while when my mother called me at work to tell me that Frisco was dead.
"How?"
"C. killed him." She was, understandably, distraught.
"What happened?"
And this is what she told me:
C. was watching the kids in the living room. All the other adults were in other rooms of the house.
Middle (again, at that time he was Youngest, but you know him here as Middle) was in his playpen, one of those contraptions with fabric mesh for walls. He had a particularly endearing habit of leaning his weight, face-first, into the mesh, contorting his cherubic little face into all sorts of hideous but adorable shapes.
Eldest was still playing with Frisco. She was in love. Frisco was digging Middle's playpen, a vehicle on which to propel himself with his little kitten claws.
What happened next will never be completely known, since the only three people in the room were C. and two toddlers, and a 6-to-8-week-old kitten. What we do know is that within seconds, this picture-perfect Norman Rockwell scene would transform forever. Frisco would lay bleeding and convulsing at the base of a nearby wall, where C. had thrown him.
C. insisted that Frisco had attacked Middle, and that Middle was crying and bleeding. (For the record,
Middle had a scratch on his cheek that was one quarter of an inch long, and my parents said that when they walked in, he was not crying.) C. reacted quickly, simply wanting to save Middle and get the cat off of him. He didn't mean to slam it into a wall.
What I believe to have happened is another story. I've played this scene out so many times in my head, I feel like I was there, and sometimes I have to stop myself from actually thinking that I was. I suspect that Middle had mashed his face into the side of his playpen at the very same time that Frisco decided to climb up the very same place. C., who was probably not watching very closely, heard a commotion, grabbed the vile, vicious kitten, and hurled him into the wall, killing him.
As with some of the other things I've related about C., I wish I could tell you this was the end. But it wasn't. It was only the beginning; we hadn't even married at this point. Why did I stay? Because I thought I was damaged goods, a young woman with two small children, and I thought my possibilities for a mate had diminished to the point that maybe this was the best I could expect. Why do any of us do things at the ripe old age of twenty that will later cause us to cringe with remorse? My fuck-up was just more grand than others.
See how blurred lines can become? Will we ever know C.'s reason for throwing that kitten? No. I've tried to tell myself time and time again that C. hadn't grown up with cats as I had, that he really thought the kitten was hurting Middle. I told myself that because the alternative was too painful to consider. What I do know is that I was expecting more than one tiny scratch on Middle, and that I was expecting some remorseful behavior. I got neither. To the bitter end, C. insisted he'd acted as a hero with quick instincts.
They were killer instincts, anyway.
Just remember we all make mistakes, but that the important part is to learn from them. I as so glad that C is over and done with....just know that you are not to blame for his actions, that my dear is his alone. You were a young mother who was trying to make the best of a situation.....your family loves you and will forever be beside you.....Hugs and Kisses....Mimi
Posted by: Mimi | March 20, 2008 at 03:00 PM