So, You Thought YOU Had a Bad Day

                                                                                 PROLOGUE

         When I opened my eyes, I was face to face with a large, teary-eyed woman. Her puffy cheeks, and too full face, drew full attention to her lifeless eyes: seemingly dulled by a hard life. The lines etched deep into her forehead mimicked those found on the fingers caressing my cheek; as if food had become a cruel substitute for the gratitude she sought from life, but seldom found. She kissed my forehead and told me she loved me. 

         To my right, a bearded man sat on a stool, reading a book, sighing. His unkempt appearance, and lack of personal grooming, implied an apathetic attitude toward any situation that did not concern him directly. His disinterest was obvious - he had better things to do.

         The big toe on my right foot hurt terribly. My head hurt worse. My mouth was dry and I had trouble thinking. I did not know who, or where, I was. I did not know why I was there. The only property of this situation that I recognized was that I wanted to go home. That is, if I had a home. I was scared and growing irritable. I wanted the kissing woman to leave. I pretended to pass out. I sensed the panicked tension and fear in the hands cradling my head, and the lips too close to my ears.

         “He’s gone unconscious! Do something!”

         The bearded man, irritated by the interruption, replied angrily.

         “Jesus Christ! Then, go get somebody.”

         The kissing woman quickly obeyed.

         The room grew suddenly silent. I carefully surveyed my surroundings through the slit of a single eyelid, careful not to show movement. The room seemed now to be empty except for myself. I saw an opened door a mere five feet to the right of my feet. 

                                                                                        [1]  

        In the hallway, people moved about quickly attending to matters not concerning me. I could see, from my position on the table, a long hallway filled with many people wearing white smocks and blue shirts with matching elastic caps. Realizing the medical implications of this facility caused me to sweat, and the temperature dove sharply. 

Remaining prone on the table was no longer an option I wished to exercise. My instincts told me to get out of there. FAST. I decided to make a dash for.... somewhere. The hair on my arms prickled when I realized I had no idea where to go. I panicked. 

         I opened both eyes, bolted upright, and jumped off the table. The sound of my bare feet slapping the floor made me realize that the only clothing I wore had two sets of strings which tied in the back and did nothing to prevent my ass from slipping through.

           Standing now, with the open door directly in front of me, I steadied myself against a metal shelving unit stuffed with sterile packaging, and a tall, narrow, wooden closet filled with various medications and boxes labeled with content and handling procedures. From the hallway, I heard machines beeping and monitors buzzing. Instrument indicators glowed throughout the room. Below, to my right, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of movement, heard a rustling of paper, and a voice.

         “Do you know who I am?”

         In my confused state, I had originally mistakenly taken the silence in the room for solitude. I had nearly landed on the bearded man, but still had not given him cause to look up from his reading. Frozen in time and space, my only response was to stare at the bald spot on top of his head. I still had not seen his face.

         “Do you remember the beating I gave you this morning?”

         Every joint froze. I responded with nervous laughter.

         “Jesus Christ! You must be okay if you can laugh at a statement like that.”

         He continued reading his book, unfazed. 

                                                                                        [2]  

         I could not move. I could not breathe. I could not think. I stood motionless and frightened until a man, wearing a white smock, with a stethoscope around his neck, entered the room. In one hand, he held a plastic dish containing items I could not see from where I stood on the floor. His other hand grasped a clipboard. The crying woman, silently tearful, followed close behind. I wondered if this man was my doctor, or my captor. His intrusion quelled my momentum and thwarted my plan for escape.                                              Questions blurred my mind. He sensed my fear.

         “Hey! Hey! What’s going on in here?”

         Still reading his book, the bearded man gestured with his free hand as he spoke. 

         “He jumped off the table and nearly landed on my lap. Since then, he’s just been standing there.”

         The man with the stethoscope took charge.

         “All right now. All right. Everything’s gonna be OK. I just need you to sit back down here and tell me everything you remember...”

         I could not talk. I had trouble processing his words while trying to process my situation. I stared in blank horror at the sight of this lab-coated man removing a syringe from the plastic dish. My fear quickly turned to panic.

         “…the doctor has ordered something to relax you. You’ll feel better soon.” 

         With expert skill and speed, in a blur, he removed the cap from the needle, and then snapped the side of the syringe with his right middle finger. The sight of yellow medication spurting, as oxygen bubbles were purged, caused bile to rise in my throat. I had to speak.

                                                                                        [3]  

         “STOP!” 

         The sound of my own voice shocked me, startled the occupants of the room, and brought a sigh of relief from the man with the syringe.

         “So, you can talk.”

         “Stay away from me with that needle. I mean it!”

         “But it will help you relax and feel better. It will also help your headache.” 

         “My headaches are my concern.”

         “But that lump on the back of your head has GOT to hurt.” 

         I raised my hand to my head and found a goose egg the size of a goose egg. 

         I quickly deduced that I had no allies. I did not know these people, and their mere          presence upset me. My thoughts turned to the confines of strait jackets, padded cells, and high voltage torture. My only chance for sanity was to refuse the injection and get out of there.

         “I’ve had enough of this shit. I’m leaving.”

         To my surprise, the nurse told me I was free to go. 

         “I can’t prevent you from leaving, if that’s what you want to do. But it would be against our best medical advice.”

         His response caught me off guard and I hesitated. Somewhere inside me was a hope that I would be forcibly detained. Although I somehow knew that hospitals were places where injured people go for help, something about this situation seemed very wrong. I needed time to collect my thoughts.

         Before I decided what to do, the bearded man pierced the silence without looking up from his book, without missing a beat, in the most matter-of-factly toned query I had yet, or since, heard. 

                                                                                        [4]  

         “Where’re you gonna go, anyway?”

         “Home.” was the only answer I could summon to offer. And once again, as if to no one in particular, he spoke.

          “Where’s home?”

         I did not know what to say or do. My blood turned to ice. I stood in the stark realization that I truly had no idea where I was or how I got there. I had no idea why I was there or who I was. They had me. I gave up.

         Feeling the cool of the alcohol I smelled swabbed onto my arm, I sat back down on the paper-covered exam table. As I felt the needle puncture my skin, I experienced an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. (This was what it felt like to die.) As the medication took effect, I realized the nurse had at least been telling the truth. 

I did begin to relax, and although the pain in my head was still severe, I did not seem to mind as much. Whatever these people had planned for me was now up to them. When the narcotics reached peak potential, I had no more control over my body than a mannequin.

         I lay on the table staring blankly at the nurse. His lips were moving. His face was swimming.

         “Go to sleep now, Grant. Your parents will still be here when you wake up.”

         I was hallucinating. Who was Grant? Were these people really my parents? 

         I remembered what the bearded man said about beating me this morning. If that was the reason I was here, would I be safe to be alone with him while a doctor’s prescription placed me unconscious? 

         The last thing I remembered was being thankful upon learning that the large crying-lady was not my wife.

                                                                                        [5]  

  _____________________________________________________________________  

  _____________________________________________________________________                                                                         

                                                                                 CHAPTER 1

         My parents purchased their first two-bedroom, one-bath, single-level, kitchen off the living room (with a full finished basement), 1100 sq. ft. single-family home in the city of Dearborn, Michigan, for the modest sum of $19,000.00, two years before I was born. The location offered easy commuting to Detroit City for a one-car family man, and adequate distance for my mother to claim proper residence in the suburbs, without being too remote. 

        The presence of trees and the existence of garages were scarce on my block. Chain-linked fences restrained canine companions, limited the roaming of small children, and defined exact property lines behind tightly packed houses, while compacted perfectly trimmed hedges determined the fronts. 

        A new car parked in any driveway signaled recent promotion and sparked rumor-driven gossip for days. A swing-set in the yard was a reliable indicator that children were frequently under foot, and the presence of a swimming pool, according to my father, elevated money-foolish arrogant families to a social status of the highest echelon of idiocy. We had a dog, one car, a swing set, and no pool. 

        My father began his lifelong work as an electronics computer machine specialist by applying the education he gained during his four-year contractual obligation with Uncle Sam. 

        Following two misdiagnosed years of hospital confinement in a Tuberculosis Sanitation Ward, his antagonistic personality proved no match for well-intentioned taunting and warnings from friends and family on the subject of his pending enlistment into the United States Army. Although the true medical affliction had eventually proven to be Double Pneumonia, the resulting atrophy of muscle and stamina became obviously evident to everyone but himself. His bone thin 5’7” frame contained a will to succeed and an ego to reckon. In an effort to show the world that nobody tells Bruce Meadows what to do, he made up his own mind not to become Government Issue for the Army. Instead, he became a Marine. 

                                                                                        [6]  

        I never knew my father as emotionally expressive, save fits of rage and anger. He fulfilled his duty as a good man, husband, and father: no more, no less. We never went hungry, we were always properly clothed, and our house never collapsed. He was hard working, brutally honest (as I was often reminded), and widely feared. 

         I cannot remember a day in my life seeing my father without a beard. I have seen pictures of a clean-shaven man I can only see as familiar, but I do not recognize the person in the photo. My memory holds only the sights, sounds and uncertain anticipation of his coming home from work at 6:15 sharp to set the particular mood of the evening, depending on his own - usually conveyed within minutes. 

        I learned to anticipate his daily arrival in the mimicked silence and obedience I learned from my mother. 

        My mother came from the original dysfunctional family. As if a secret known only to her, I was never privy to the extent to which her siblings, each fathered separately, numbered. She alone affectionately knew her father, a man deceased before her twelfth birthday, as Daddy. 

        He was a good man with a wooden leg - as the legend goes - bald as a cue ball, and proud of his garden. An opened bottle kept safely beneath his bed during the night provided his regular morning nutrition through flat beer, and he always took time to sit in his garden with my mother, while she was still very young, eating tomatoes sprinkled with salt. His employment remains a mystery. 

                                                                                        [7]  

        The woman my own mother knew as mother sponsored my inherited facial characteristics. She passed on, before I had a chance to know her, suffering a heart attack upon learning the fate of President John F. Kennedy broadcast on her radio; she drowned in the bathtub. My father did not like her, and I’m sure the feelings were returned in kind.

        My mother first met my father when she was just sixteen, while he was home on leave during the fourth year of his enlistment. A six-year difference in age, yet living directly across the street from one another, their paths never crossed until fate stepped in. 

        Young Mary Lou Wells, through rose-colored glasses, saw a way out of her unhappy home life by way of a dashing, older, handsome man in uniform, with a good financial future. 

        Older, wiser, more experienced Bruce Meadows, thinking only with his penis, saw a young, eager, virginal piece-of-ass. The pregnancy was a one-sided accident.

        Public opinion in 1960 brought disgrace, humiliation, and allegations of indecency by association upon families of unwed mothers-to-be. For the too-horny-to-buy-a-condom not-concerned-about-her-age service man came bragging rights of the conquest, demands for proof of fatherhood, and accusations of statutory rape - until Grandmother Meadows stepped in.

        My fathers’ mother was a neat old bird. Raising two kids through the depression era, she worked for Fisher Body Motor Company as a line driver. Six days a week, 12 hours each day, she drove completed vehicles from the end of the assembly line to designated parking spaces where they waited for transport to unknown dealerships throughout the country. Each day she used her U.A.W./Teamster/Union negotiated 90-minute lunch break to race home to change the medical pads coating her husband’s cancer-ridden body, apply new salve, and occasionally, when food was available, eat. 

                                                                                        [8]  

         This five-year medical nightmare ended one afternoon when the cancer grew strong, and my grandfather grew weak. My father was twelve when, by default, he became the man of the family. His sister was fifteen, and my grandmother was too old, too early. She did not have the time, or the patience, for bad judgment and carelessness. Therefore, my mother’s pregnancy was deemed careless in the tunnel-visioned view of Grandmother Meadows, and now pathetically unavoidable. There was only one way to fix it.

        Whenever Grandmother Meadows made a decision, the outcome was inevitable; and nobody dared to get in her way. Therefore, in June 1960, after driving 16 hours straight through to the New York military base where my father had been stationed, she presented my mother to my father for marriage. It was not a suggestion. 

        16 hours after an exchange of “ . . . I do’s . . . ”, my grandmother once again slept in her own bed, with my pregnant mother, sleeping unaccompanied by my father, just across the street.

        By association, my grandmother assumed the role of mother for her new daughter-in-law. This meant that Grandmother Meadows was now the boss. Any ideas my mother harbored regarding controlling her own life began a slow death that day. Her dreams, if any, had become the property of Grandmother Meadows. She would run my mother’s life, as she had dictated my father’s, for the next three months until the day of my father’s discharge. After that, she would only interfere in my father’s absence.

        In December of that same year, my brother Bruce was born - just 355 days before my own arrival. 

        The rivalry began soon after.

                                                                                        [9]  

        Throughout our entire life, Bruce and I were never brothers: we just happened to have had the same parents. And it was because of our parents that we were never supportive or close.

        The gap cemented by my parents, between Bruce and I, went much further than chronology. The competition that separated us was constant, dark, and always encouraged. It caused lifelong resentments that never diminished.

From the time we were born, we were pitted against each other in every aspect. 

If Bruce were to get into trouble, he would be directed to see that “… Grant’s not in trouble. Is he?”

        If I ventured outside of the backyard after being told not to, I could be sure to be expected to provide the answer to “…you didn’t see Brucie go out of the fence, did you?”

Bruce was reminded that my grades were always great, and his sucked. I was reminded that Bruce was strong, and I was weak. My Aunt always pointed out that Bruce was her favorite, and I was useless. Bruce was told that he was a slob, and I was neat. The rivalry continued, and festered, between us to the point that my mother was eventually forced to use a measuring spoon to insure equal amounts of Ketchup being placed on each of our plates at every meal, even though Bruce hated ketchup. My parents couldn’t stand it, and they never accepted that they caused it.

        Most times Bruce got the worse end of the deal because he was too softhearted and far too sensitive. My parents never saw the end to which they would eventually drive him. He took everything they told him to heart, and he believed it. He believed he was a slob. He believed he was worthless. He believed he was no good. He even believed that he shared a birthday with me for most of his childhood.

                                                                                        [10]  

        The day of my birth, although nearly a year after his, came ten days before his on the calendar: mine on December 12th, his on December 22nd. For whatever financial or personally inconvenient reasons determined by my parents, his was always celebrated on mine.

        On December 12th, year after year, a few friends and family members would gather at our house. They would sing “Happy Birthday”, they would give a few presents, and then we both would blow out the candles on a single cake. Nevertheless, it was clearly my birthday, and Bruce never forgot it: especially ten days later when his own day passed without recognition. This hurt him like a vise on his heart. It affected him permanently.

        Likewise, there were opportunities of deficiency on my part that played to Bruce’s strengths. 

        Bruce liked food, and I hated to eat: period. During dinner, (always served at 6:40 PM SHARP), Bruce would race through his meals, while I ate at a snail’s pace. My father, always looking for a reason to criticize or demean, could not understand. He demanded that I finish at the same time as Bruce. This, I did not understand. However, my own understanding did not matter. What mattered was that this pissed him off, and when I was ten, I almost puked the night that he lost control.

        Before dinner began, I was warned.

        “If Bruce finishes tonight before you do, I’ll God-damned feed you myself. Do you understand me?”

        In silence, I nodded my head slowly. I knew that he meant it. I lost what little appetite I had.

                                                                                        [11]  

        Every Friday, like clockwork, my mother cashed my father’s paycheck, and when we finished shopping for groceries, she prepared his favorite meal: Hamburgers. When I was ten, there was no meal I hated more. 

        While Bruce set the table, I sliced the pickles, onions, and tomatoes. The smell of hamburgers frying on my mother’s pea-green electric stove/range combination made me nauseous, and the fear of the coming meal made me dizzy.

        Whether Bruce changed the tempo with which he ate that night made no difference at all. It didn’t even matter that the hamburger my mother served me was smaller than usual. My stomach was too tight, and my throat was too dry.

        My father sat through every meal, head down, focused on a magazine or book. He would read silently to himself, turn pages, and occasionally speak to my mother without raising his head from the printed material. Discussion between the family members was strictly forbidden. 

        The assigning of the nightly cleanup duties indicated the end of my father’s meal. I had to clear the dishes: Bruce had to wash & dry. A fart and a burp announced my father’s exit to the living room to watch television: still reading the material he held during dinner. 

        When he left the table this particular Friday, I thought he had forgotten the promise he had made to me. 

        Bruce finished before me, as usual, and offered to trade duties.

        “Since I can’t wash the dishes until you clear the table, why don’t we trade so that I don’t have to wait for y…”

                                                                                        [12]  

        My father interrupted.

        “Grant. Are you done?”

        I did not answer.

        Entering the kitchen, he repeated his words.

        “I SAID are you done?”

        There was no need to answer. 

        “God Dammit! Didn’t I tell you what would happen if your brother finished before you? ANSWER ME!”

        As I opened my mouth to speak, my throat filled with the hamburger in my fathers’ hand.

        “Did you think I was kidding? Did you think I was kidding? When I tell you to do something, I MEAN IT! Now Answer Me!”

        I was choking. Not just gagging, but bug-eyed heart thumping piss-in-your-pants rigor mortis choking. I tried to spit out the food, but the bun that followed prevented my throat from clearing. I knew better than to raise my hands.

        “I said EAT.”

        My teeth could not touch together. I could not chew; I could not breathe. Reprieve only came when my father left the kitchen to yell at my mother after she screamed something from the living room.

        I ran to the bathroom with painful tears in my red, swollen eyes. My mother’s interference proved sufficient to allow me to flush my dinner. She had saved my life.

         However, in 1964, I was still only three years old. 

                                                                                        [13]  

        I remember the summer through such phrases as heat wave, heat stroke, and Hell on earth. I had no idea what all that meant; I only knew that it was hot. At night, the discovery of any cool spot on my pillow, however brief the sensation, was considered a personal triumph. Through the locked screen of a too small bedroom window, crept occasional relief in the form of a breeze: usually inadequate. The nightly sounds of distant thunder seemed much too far away to offer the relief brought by rain, and it showed no sign of approaching. However, when sleep inevitably came, I dreamed of swimming pools.

        My brother’s best friend, Billy, was the youngest of six boys and four girls born to Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien. They lived next door to us in a house often mistaken for our own. I could see no difference in the similarities of size and shape, and I often wondered how so many people shared so few rooms. My mother said they were Catholic. My father said they were idiots: they had a swimming pool.

        From my bedroom window, I could see the pool in Billy’s backyard. It was not like the nine-inch-deep plastic wading pool owned by most families. Billy’s pool took two days to assemble, and two days to fill. I watched the entire procedure with desire and jealousy. 

        My jealousy stemmed from the fact that since we were not a family of idiots, we could not own such a pool. Closer to my heart was the jealousy that Billy O’Brien was not my best friend. Instead, I took great pride in knowing that we were a hot, sweaty, miserably uncomfortable family of geniuses. 

        After two weeks of watching these idiots, and their idiot friends, relatives, and other neighbors, relieve their discomfort by foolishly relaxing in the cool waters of the swimming pool, Mrs. O’Brien called my mother to the fence for a discussion. 

        “Mary, you know that you and the kids are always welcome to come over for a swim. Billy bugs me constantly to let Brucie come over, so I figure that you might as well all come over.”

        “I appreciate the offer Pat, but Grant’s had a slight fever for a few days.”

“Well then, let Brucie come over today, and Grant can come over when he’s better.”

        The deal was done.