slippers, and by then we were all laughing uncontrollably in the vestibule beneath the stairs.
“Is this family completely nuts?” Barbara asked me, and my siblings began to sink to the floor, doubled up in laughter.
When we returned to bed, I told Barbara the whole story of my father’s long, debilitating war against his family. I had never revealed to another soul that he had been beating my mother since I was conscious of being alive, and that I remember hating him when I was in a high chair, my face burning with shame and humiliation that I could do nothing to protect my mother. My father could sense my hatred of him, and he began to beat me with some regularity when I was still in diapers. He always went for the face. Don Conroy was not the “pop you on the fanny” kind of dad. My brother Jim once told me that his first memory as a child was my father having me by the throat, beating my head against the wall. When my father laughed and denied it, I informed him that I could show him the wall.
For hours, I talked to my wife and told her of savage beatings that I had received over a lifetime. “But you’re such a nice boy, Pat,” Barbara said.
“Yes, I was,” I answered in the darkness.
“Do you think it will ever stop?” she asked.
“I think it stopped tonight.”
After Barbara drifted off to sleep, I began to worry about my father. In my last glimpse of him, he was driving down Hancock Street, weaving and out of control. He was far drunker than I had imagined.
Again, I lifted myself out of bed and dressed in the darkness. Lightly, I skipped down the stairs and went out to the front yard, where I looked down Hancock Street for any sign of Dad. I began to jog down the street, now badly shaken by my violent encounter, and guilt-ridden that I was the source of that violence. I regretted kicking him, and wished I had fought him straight up, but I had kicked him across the yard, and that’s what I had to live with the rest of my life.
Dad had not gotten far. I found his car on the Green, a park-like acre in the middle of the Point surrounded by stately antebellum homes. He’d passed out on the grass and was lying on his back six feet away from the car, its motor still running. I switched off the engine and walked over to sit down beside my father. I thought, as I studied his face, what a horrible thing it is for a boy to hate his father, how itharms that boy and damages him, how it makes him afraid and cowering every waking moment, how it debases and haunts his nightmares, and how the fighter pilot dives for his son even in his sleep. There is nowhere a boy can run to, no one who can help him. As I studied my father’s face in the moonlight, I realized I would always be serving a life sentence without parole because of the unpardonable cruelty of this one man. Now, on this night, my father had proffered his final gift to me—because I had kicked him across the lawn and beat him with my fists, I sat studying him at my leisure, deep in thought on the first night I ever thought of myself earning my natural birthright as a violent man. I was devastated. All during my childhood, I had sworn that I would never be a thing like him, and here before me, drunken and beaten, was living proof that I was the spitting image of Don Conroy.
But, in telling Barbara my story, I had felt a great lifting of the spirit, a cleansing and scouring and airy rising of the soul toward light. I felt what truth tasted like, and it rolled like honey off my tongue. I could change my life as a man if I could just quit pretending I came from a normal American family, if I could grant myself permission to hate my father with every ounce of loathing I could bring to the surface. If I was going to be truthful as a writer, I had to let the hate out into the sunshine. I owed it to myself to let my father know how much I hated every cell of the body that had brought mine to life.
I reached over and shook him. Turning over slowly, he tried
“Is this family completely nuts?” Barbara asked me, and my siblings began to sink to the floor, doubled up in laughter.
When we returned to bed, I told Barbara the whole story of my father’s long, debilitating war against his family. I had never revealed to another soul that he had been beating my mother since I was conscious of being alive, and that I remember hating him when I was in a high chair, my face burning with shame and humiliation that I could do nothing to protect my mother. My father could sense my hatred of him, and he began to beat me with some regularity when I was still in diapers. He always went for the face. Don Conroy was not the “pop you on the fanny” kind of dad. My brother Jim once told me that his first memory as a child was my father having me by the throat, beating my head against the wall. When my father laughed and denied it, I informed him that I could show him the wall.
For hours, I talked to my wife and told her of savage beatings that I had received over a lifetime. “But you’re such a nice boy, Pat,” Barbara said.
“Yes, I was,” I answered in the darkness.
“Do you think it will ever stop?” she asked.
“I think it stopped tonight.”
After Barbara drifted off to sleep, I began to worry about my father. In my last glimpse of him, he was driving down Hancock Street, weaving and out of control. He was far drunker than I had imagined.
Again, I lifted myself out of bed and dressed in the darkness. Lightly, I skipped down the stairs and went out to the front yard, where I looked down Hancock Street for any sign of Dad. I began to jog down the street, now badly shaken by my violent encounter, and guilt-ridden that I was the source of that violence. I regretted kicking him, and wished I had fought him straight up, but I had kicked him across the yard, and that’s what I had to live with the rest of my life.
Dad had not gotten far. I found his car on the Green, a park-like acre in the middle of the Point surrounded by stately antebellum homes. He’d passed out on the grass and was lying on his back six feet away from the car, its motor still running. I switched off the engine and walked over to sit down beside my father. I thought, as I studied his face, what a horrible thing it is for a boy to hate his father, how itharms that boy and damages him, how it makes him afraid and cowering every waking moment, how it debases and haunts his nightmares, and how the fighter pilot dives for his son even in his sleep. There is nowhere a boy can run to, no one who can help him. As I studied my father’s face in the moonlight, I realized I would always be serving a life sentence without parole because of the unpardonable cruelty of this one man. Now, on this night, my father had proffered his final gift to me—because I had kicked him across the lawn and beat him with my fists, I sat studying him at my leisure, deep in thought on the first night I ever thought of myself earning my natural birthright as a violent man. I was devastated. All during my childhood, I had sworn that I would never be a thing like him, and here before me, drunken and beaten, was living proof that I was the spitting image of Don Conroy.
But, in telling Barbara my story, I had felt a great lifting of the spirit, a cleansing and scouring and airy rising of the soul toward light. I felt what truth tasted like, and it rolled like honey off my tongue. I could change my life as a man if I could just quit pretending I came from a normal American family, if I could grant myself permission to hate my father with every ounce of loathing I could bring to the surface. If I was going to be truthful as a writer, I had to let the hate out into the sunshine. I owed it to myself to let my father know how much I hated every cell of the body that had brought mine to life.
I reached over and shook him. Turning over slowly, he tried
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