Father’s Conspiracy

      A few weeks after the late night violence, my father took me aside and told me that my mother was going to divorce him. He told me he loved us, and he instructed me and my brother and sister to cry and beg my mother not to divorce him.

      He said, "If you cry and beg your mother not to divorce me, she will change her mind, and we can stay together as a family."

      My dad acted as if he was genuinely sorry. He tried to explain that he was angry with my mother because he found out that my mother wanted to leave him and that she fell in love with Father McDermac – the very priest that was performing last rights over me during my ear surgery.

      Father McDermac was a very tall, broad shouldered, robust man and movie star handsome. He was in his late twenties and an ex-golden glove boxer in college before he heard the call from God to give up sex and other earthly pleasures.

      He was sort of like Pat O’Brian and Bing Crosby version of a priest in the very best sense; and he looked as if he would be more at home on a surf board than a priest’s smock.

      I remember him as being very gentle, sincere and compassionate and he seemed to be especially fond of my brother and sister and me.

      He had a manner about him that reminded me of Atticus Finch in the movie “How to Kill A Mockingbird”, a character that Gregory Peck played as a type of man who is the ultimate loving and attentive father. Looking back, I realized that he was the antithesis of what my father represented and my siblings and I so sorely grieved that my father was no Atticus Finch.

      My dad tried another gambit for my heart or at least my allegiance.

He reminded me of his apology the night after the abuse and he said that he was so fearful of my mother leaving him that is what forced him into such a violent rage… to show that he loved her.

His logic of how men showed women that they really do love them, somehow escaped my unsophisticated child’s mind. Also, the memory of his threats after he thought we had go off to school was still vivid in my mind and remains as vivid to this day.

      Each of us went to our mother to beg her not to leave our father. In those days divorce was uncommon enough to be scandalous, but scandal was the least of my concerns.

      I went to my mother and poured my heart out. I was racked with tears and grief. My mother was very understanding, and she held me, quietly telling me that I should always love my father no matter what. She told us that, for reasons that she could not get into and that I was too young to understand, she had to divorce him.

      Years later, I found out from both my parents that, although my dad was out at sea for six months at a time, the weeks and months that he was in port, he would expect the house to be cleaned and kept up, lunch and dinner made, and my mother to be the perfect hostess whenever he wanted to entertain.

      When he would sit with us for at supper, he would eat lobster or steak, while we had hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. I must not have minded, because I do not remember who ate what. My dad also expected sex on demand, with a smile. (My dad has always been a life support system for his penis).

      He expected his clothes to be cleaned and pressed so that he could go out with his friends until the wee hours of the morning chasing other women. My father verified my mother's grievances years later. And he’d often lamented that he had driven her away.

      He told me that my mother was one of the few women that you could trust if you had to be gone for months or even years and that, as long as she was married, she would never cheat on you.

"Not like most of those other fucking whorish women!" he’d often snarl.

      She had told me years later, that she had indeed fell in love with father McDermac – a priest that had been assigned to her from the Catholic church to counsel my parents… particularly my mother on the specific parameters of a proper Catholic marriage. My mother’s unhappiness stemmed from my father’s unwillingness to comply to all the tenants of marriage, while my mother struggled to survive in a marriage with a man that held her happiness and worth in total disregard.

      As it turned out, Father McDermac also fell in love with my mother as he battled conflicts of being a proper and good priest as he struggled with his very real feelings and desire towards my mother.  He had talked with her at length of his very real torment about wanting to marry her and wanting to serve God.

As it also turns out, my father decided to complain to our church about Father McDermac. True to form, they moved him to another district much the same way they move pedophile priests (only quicker).

      My mother said that Father McDermac eventually quit the priesthood and married and had several children, (He was a good Catholic after all).

I often pondered how our life would have been if my mother and he married.