Day 168

Writing exercise

…

“Let me tell you a story you are not going to like.”

I remember like it was yesterday, the day my father came home from work earlier than usual, and instead of the usual greeting, shuffled from the front door to the study at the back of the house, shut the door, and didn’t come out until dinner time.

I remember my mother, after the exchange of looks as he went past, the slight nod of the head to say ‘not now’, and how it took her a minute before she resumed her pre-dinner chores.

I remember David, the youngest, Eloise, the middle, and me, Richard, the eldest son, watching briefly, and thinking nothing of it. We were too young to understand the way of the world outside grade school.

At dinner, that was the first thing my father said after we finished eating.

We didn’t understand what it meant, but we were disciplined enough to not question him.

“I had this speech all worked out, how to put the whole situation into perspective, but I forgot one very important element. You guys will have no idea what I’m talking about. I guess, to a certain degree, I don’t either. I come from a time where it wasn’t expedient pr possible to get a good enough education, not like what people need these days to just get out the door. We needed everyone working, and school was just a luxury we couldn’t.

“Then we got through the worst times, got better, employers retrained their employees, and it was full steam ahead. In prosperous times, everyone is looked after; in downturns, like the one we have been drifting into for several years, people are not so lucky.

“People like me. The problem, I was told today, by people who know much more about these things than I do, and in fact a lot of us at the factory, is that Americans are no longer buying American-made, and are buying cheaper imports from Asian countries.

“That forces the companies, like the one I work for, to try and cut costs to compete. They tried, they said, and I have been lucky in avoiding the last three sets of layoffs, but now they’ve decided to close the factory. It is no longer profitable. I’m not the only one affected. This factory sustained this town; it’s been the lifeblood of everyone who lives here.”

My mother had tears in her eyes. She knew what his words meant. “When?”

“Two weeks. We’ll get a severance check, but it will only sustain us for a few months, if we’re lucky.”

I figured something bad had happened at the factory because our teacher had said the whole town had been living on a knife edge, a curious expression that I asked him about, and he had said was like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, which I sort of understood, and thought
I’d ask a practical question.

“Does that mean we won’t have to go to school anymore?”

“No. You will all be at school until we work out what we’re going to do.”

“Well, that’s probably not as difficult as it sounds. My parents said I could come back anytime I wanted, and this might be the time.”

What might have been suggested as a practical solution might have received a hearing, but given the conversation my father had with my mother’s father the last time they visited, about a year ago, still indelibly etched in my mind, I doubted he would want to hear it.

“We spoke about that when things were fine, and I accepted it. You know, and I know, I consciously made a decision when we were married that we would live here and I wouldn’t have to work. I wanted that, and here we are.”

“You know what happened the last time you worked for your father.”

That conversation I overheard didn’t sound like she worked for him; it sounded like she had been his personal slave, or so my father said, and it would be over his dead body that she would come back.

Words were said that couldn’t be taken back. It’s why her parents, our grandparents, had never returned, and it was something that annoyed my mother. No one would tell her the reason why. Of course, she could have asked me.

I guess that was the problem with being a kid. Everyone thought you should be seen and not heard. And people just pretended you were not there. That wasn’t the only conversation that I had overheard between my father and others, and between my mother and others.

“This time it would be different. I’m a lot older and much more resilient.”

“He hasn’t changed. People like him never change.”

I could see the looks exchanged between them were headed for an argument where one of the others would say something awful and storm out, and we would be living in what the three of us children called hell. It was fear, of course, because lately, the mood turned to the latent threat of violence. We had talked about it at school, the fact that sometimes fathers and mothers got angry, and sometimes they took that anger out on each other, or worse, their children. It had led to one of the kids in my class saying he had seen his father hitting his mother, and the sheriff had been called in. Violence like that, we were told, was not acceptable.

“Well,” I said, “I have a thought. I read it in a story, in a book we had to read in class. It was about a family whose house had burned to the ground. They were not able to pay their insurance premiums, but what that had to do with anything is not the point. The point is, they lost everything. Or at least they thought they had, until someone pointed out they still had each other. Come to think of it, the preacher down at the church is always telling us that no matter what happens, we still have each other, which is strange in a sense because he doesn’t have anyone else. But we’re all here. Isn’t that a good thing?”

Both of them glared at me. Time to consider an exit strategy.

Then my mother laughed. Was it hysteria? I’d seen her laugh once before and then burst into tears.

“Maybe Richie has a point, Doug.”

“We still have to live.” Not so hostile now.

“But the thing is, like ot or not, we have options. Most of those at the factory, except the University types and the bosses, have nothing. As much as it sounds like the end of the world, and for a moment there I thought it was, it isn’t. We’re just forgetting what’s important.”

Then she turned to me. “You’re right about the preacher, but he would tell you he has his flock, which is his family. And he does go on about stuff, doesn’t he?”

…

That was the summer when a once-thriving town turned into a ghost town. It was where, when
I was much older and, as my father called it, properly educated, when I discovered it was all part of fitting into the global economy. I had dreamed of becoming an accountant, like my mother, but in the end decided to become a bookshop owner, if only to make sure there was at least one place in the world where people could buy real books.

We went back to New York and spent a few years with my mother’s parents, where my father got a job that he liked and my mother toiled autonomously from her father, making enough money to get us a nice place in the country where she and my father could retire, and I could have my bookshop in the town, by the sea.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025