The man my mother married was a stable man, at least as far as a job was concerned. He was a pharmacist, and he was always in demand. Sometimes, he worked two jobs because pharmacists were needed so much. But stable? Not mentally or emotionally. He was not a pleasant man, nor naturally a loving man. He did, however love me, and was always kind and generous to me. He was shy, but had a temper. He and my mother would often fight, and sometimes the fights would be bitter and violent. He broke windows, broke down doors, hit her twice that I know of, and she just always kept egging him on. Once, when I was about 10, I was sitting on the sofa and Daddy came into the room and turned the porch light off. My mother, who was ironing in the next room, came in and turned it back on. She said, “My son is still out and I like to keep the light on until all my children are home.” He came back in and turned it back off, and went back upstairs. She came back in and turned it back on. He came down, went out on the porch, picked up a garden tool and broke the light. It made a loud crashing sound. I was scared. I wanted to run upstairs, but I was frozen in my seat. My mother came back into the room as Daddy came back into the house. “What are you doing?” she asked, as if he was crazy. “I wanted that light off.,” he mumbled, and started up the stairs. “Go ahead and break them all, see if I care,” she said in a daring voice. He went into the other room, came back with the iron and started swinging at the overhead lights, breaking them, shattering glass all around the room. The noise and the flying glass petrified me. I began to scream and cover my head. I don’t remember anything else until I discovered myself at Nanny’s house. Yet the next day we were all together shopping for new light fixtures. It was crazy, and scary. Yet, it wasn’t the fights that bothered me as much as the silence. They lived in separate rooms shortly after they got married, and they would literally not talk to each other for months at a time. If my mother needed grocery money, or something else, she’d leave him a note on the dining room table and he would produce the needed item the following day. My mother did not allow us to talk to him. He was evil, at least when they weren’t getting along. Often, when my mother wasn’t home, I’d wait for him to come out of his room and I would talk to him. Since I was the youngest, he used to bring me trinkets. I was his favorite. I never knew any other father and, to me, he was my daddy. When I was four, I used to sit on his lap and pour the cream and sugar in his coffee and stir it up for him. My mother, for some reason, didn’t like him using cream and sugar, and made him start drinking his coffee black. I lost my little job. Whenever I was talking to him and he heard my mother’s car drive up, he would disappear into his room. He didn’t want me to get into trouble. Sometimes, I’d get “caught” talking to him and he’d go back in his room and I’d get a chore to do as a kind of punishment. He loved me in the only way he knew how, and I loved him, too. As bad as it was at home, he would never leave. I didn’t think he’d ever leave me. But we would leave him! After a fight, we often hopped in the car and headed to Nanny and Pop Pop’s and stayed for several days. My mother would say that this was it, she had had enough. But they would reconcile for a few weeks and they’d talk and we’d all have dinner together and it seemed like a real family.