Monday, October 31, 1988
It’s Halloween, and to quote Brianna (June Diane Raphael) in one of my favorite episodes of Grace and Frankie:
I am “wicked pissed.”
That son of a lowlife excuse for a so-called husband of mine went to work, took my car and left me stranded. I’m supposed to be in a substance abuse counseling class at the junior college. I’m supposed to be in a goofy-cute slapdash costume, pigging out on snacks and contraband spiked punch at the interior design department’s get-together where I’m still friendly with the profs, but oh, no. It wasn’t enough for Tony to destroy my entire weekend.
Now he’s taken away my only party.
That motherf—
The Klingon Way
There’s a scene in Star Trek TNG where Picard (Patrick Stewart) says something to Worf (Michael Dorn) that generates a not-unexpected Klingon response:
“If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand.”
If I’d had any nerve, I’d have called a taxi, emptied the bank account, and paid cash to have the locks changed. Then I’d have rented a small van, emptied the place, and left. Tony’d have come home, not been able to get in, pitched a fit, maybe put his fist through the door like he did the wall in the foyer a couple of years back because I said/did something he didn’t like.
Shoot, if I’d broken a window and tossed enough stuff around, maybe he’d call the cops. Let the officers come and look around.
“You weren’t robbed, Mr. d’Olio. Your wife did this.”
Think Tony would trash another wall?
Halloween Weekend
I never cared much for his nosy judgmental parents, and after what his mother pulled with my bridal shower, the feeling was clearly mutual. But there was a Halloween dance at the church on Saturday night, and his folks were going, so I finally got him with, “No, you don’t have to wear a costume, but you’ll be the only one.”
He “agreed” in that way he has of making you think there’s a joint plan, but then he pulls the rug out from under at the eleventh hour, and he did just that.
Saturday morning 10.29.88
He’s getting ready to leave as usual.
“You going to Elgin?” I really meant “going to work for Daddy” but I’d hadn’t been analyzed yet.
Tony’s dad owned a small, specialized company and either needed a LAN system or fabricated the idea to get Tony back in there under his thumb just like he had Tony’s brother, younger sister, and older sister’s husband by the short hairs with his nepotistic rates. It took some convincing, but eventually Tony reluctantly learned—acquiesced (look that up in Merriam-Webster)—to deal with PCs on the job, but I had the last laugh even back then:
Anthony Aglio d’Olio, Jr. hated PCs with a vengeance.
“They’re only good for playing Pong.”
A-hole.
But then one of his three East coast buddies—the the one I liked the best, and not just because he was the cutest—was Ed. He came through O’Hare on a planned layover so we could have dinner and catch up.
O’Hare Airport bar, two years prior
We’re having cocktails, and Ed and Tony are bullshitting about Boston, and Ed says, “I have some news,” then drops the bomb that he’d been recruited by Pixar.
Mr. Supportive’s response?
“You went to goddam M.I.T., Ed. Why the hell do you want to throw your life away making video games?”
Son of a—
I didn’t know all the George Lucas/Stephen Spielberg connections, but I did know that Pixar was hot. It was in Silicon Valley. And that in 1988, anybody hired by Silicon Valley had it made in the shade for life.
Lest you think that was a dive off an unrelated pier …
Saturday 10.29.88
Turns out, instead of going to Elgin to mumble and grumble and cuss his way through figuring out his dad’s LAN, Tony was off to McCormick Place for a trade show.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Silence.
I didn’t learn until I left him that his refusal to answer any direct question was far more on the order of, “F* you, b*tch. What I do is my own goddam business, and I make the money around here, so I’ll do what I want when I want. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll knock off these goddam classes and do what I told you to do back in 1983.”
1983
“You can do anything you want as long as my shirts are ironed and dinner is on the table.”
His perma-press shirts wouldn’t need ironing if his mother hadn’t obsessively ironed everything in sight. He never came home when he said he would, either, so I’d given up on cooking except when I felt like it.
As for the classes, this substance abuse counseling for the hearing impaired certificate was the closest I could get to a “career” that paid anything. That’s because …
“You’ll never be worth more than minimum wage.” (OK, so why don’t I—)
“Bachelor’s degrees are really expensive.”
I knew right then that he really meant “you’re not worth it.”
Thanks a bunch for the vote of confidence, you stingy, punitive piece of …
Saturday 10.29.88
“OK.” <sigh> “But you will be home on time to go to the dance, right? … Right?”
That SOB never committed to anything in his life, so of course, I didn’t get “yes” or “sure” or “I’ll see you then.”
Instead, I got a lousy excuse for Peter Boyle.
***
At the end of Young Frankenstein, after the Creature (Boyle) and Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) have exchanged brains and married the girls, now it’s the wedding night. Boyle/the Creature is sitting in bed, heavy black reading glasses perched on his nose, perusing the Wall Street Journal. Madeline Kahn, complete with Elsa Lanchester’s original Bride of Frankenstein hair, all piled up with zigzag lighting streaks on either side, is in the bathroom humming Battle Hymn of the Republic when she stops and calls out:
“Honey … Honey, I hope you didn’t find Daddy’s little party too boring, he did it just for you, and he meant sooo well. Say you liked it.”
“Mm-hmm”
Tony … Ton-y? I hope you don’t think you’re getting out of this one. Your mother is expecting you more than I am. Say you’ll be home on time just this once.
Mmmm.
Tony’s Mmmm didn’t have had Boyle’s charming two-syllable upward inflection. It was flat and low and dismissive, like The Yummy Noise that Wilder thinks Marty Feldman/Igor (“it’s prononced Eye-gore”) made over the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte dessert when it was really Boyle as the newly lightning-zapped Creature finally waking up after Wilder, Feldman and Terri Garr/Inga (“Vould you like a nice rrrr-oll in ze hay?”) left him chained to the table in the basement laboratory.
I love you, Tony.
Mmmm.
***
Of course, I got the gutteral dismissal and off he went for the morning. And the afternoon. And three o’clock and four o’clock and five o’clock and the dance starts at seven with cocktails at six-thirty and never mind MapQuest (which didn’t exist in 1988). It can take ten, fifteen minutes just to get out of McCormick Place, find your car and make it to a real road. After that you can add MapQuest’s insane lowball forty-eight minutes (based on 2:37 p.m. today as I write this).
Rush hour? Everybody in a mob trying to get the hell out of Chicago on a Saturday afternoon? Faghettaboutit.
Saturday 5:30 p.m.
<ring ring>
The original 1966 rotary phone that he refused to update because “You know they charge you extra every time you use a touch-tone phone.” Nobody knew that except Tony d’Olio.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” I can hear the convention hall in the background. Unless he was lying and was at a downtown bar, but no. Convention crowds have a different quality.
“Where are you?”
“I’ll be home a little late.” You’re already late, you bast—.
“You said … <grrr> you promised you’d do this one thing for me.”
“I know.”
“If you leave right now, when will you get here?”
Nothing there but McCormick Place.
“Tony?”
Now I hear him huff. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
As-soon-as-he-could was somewhere around nine-thirty. Considering church hall dances end at insanely early hours, my evening was shot the minute he called.
Sunday morning 10.28.88
We went to Mass then got in the car, but he headed directly home.
“Wait a minute. We’re supposed to go to brunch with your—” Mother.
“I need to get back downtown.”
“You didn’t tell me that yester—whatever.”
“I’ll be back around four.”
Sunday afternoon, somewhere in the neighborhood of four o’clock
<ring ring>
Did I remember to mention that there was only one phone in the house?
On the wall next to the fridge between the kitchen and the family room—fka attached garage—of the 1,500 sq. ft. ranch. The phone was a dozen feet away from the east wall with the bedrooms and bath on the far west. If you were sitting down in the bathroom, forget the phone. They’d just have to call back.
But *69 wouldn’t be available for another year, and by now, I’m sure you’re thinking, He refused an answering machine, too, didn’t he? That’s right.
Modern phones, answering machines, central air, dishwashers, washer/dryers in the house, not half a mile away at the laundromat.
Fahgettaboutit.
***
“Hello?” McCormick noise again. Great.
“I have a surprise for you.” I am immediately suspicious.
“What’s that?”
“Ed’s here.”
“Ed?!”
“He’s coming home with me on the train.” Train?
“Where’s your car?”
Nothin’ but McCormick.
“Do you need me to pick you up?’
“No. Just meet us at Barone’s.” A very nice pizza place in Glen Ellyn, practically on the tracks, and it’s still there as far as I know.
“OK. What time?”
“I’ll call you.”
“OK.” That much was reasonable.
Commuter trains are convenient and efficient, but on a Sunday night, it’s anybody’s guess when you’ll get from the Chicago & North Western passenger terminal to your stop. But Barone’s wasn’t more than a fifteen minute drive for me.
No worries.
Sunday 10.30.88
Five o’clock. Six o’clock. Seven. Seven-thirty—
<ring ring>
“Yes? … Where are you? … Where? … Where’s Ed? … Where’s Ed!?”
Supposedly Ed Went Home. I never did ask if “Ed” was a fabrication, but I didn’t go to Barone’s. I didn’t order a delivered pizza. I did have a snifter of the Courvoivier I bought one night a few years back when I was almost as wicked pissed as now but directed more at his parents and shampoo-shunning sister. Tony finally sauntered through the door around nine-thirty, and for once, I ignored him.
“Hello? Anybody home? Kathy—” Don’t call me Kathy. I took a sip of brandy and aimed A Yummy Sound in his general direction.
“Mmmm.”
Monday morning, October 31, 1988: Halloween
“Kathy, I need to take your car.” I told you, don’t call me—
“What?! Why? Where’s yours?”
I peer out the kitchen window at an empty driveway.
No black 1988 Thunderbird coupe with leather seats, CDX-1 CD player, and Bose sound around speakers. The car he insisted was so sexy that it got him looks from women. Plenty of money for a car that cost the same as the mortgage—$500 for a $77K ranch that was older than me and another $500 for the car. But of course, no money for a washer in spite of the pre-existing hookup in the kitchen.
“How did you get home last night?”
No answer. <sigh> Screw it. He’d broken me.
“But I have classes today, Tony.” I didn’t mean to whine, but I was so tired. “How am I supposed to get there?”
The SOB stood there, impassive, waiting for me to hand over the keys to my LeMans. I got my purse.
“Here.”
“I’ll call you later.”
Don’t bother. Or maybe I just won’t pick up the phone.
Halloween, early afternoon:
<ring ring>
“Yes?”
“Hi. Whatcha doin’?”
“I’m not in class where I’m supposed to be.”
“Want to go to the opera?”
What?
“What opera?”
“Die Fledermaus.” Nice … wait a minute.
The bastard destroys my weekend and destroys my weekday party and takes my car and leaves me twiddling my thumbs, but I’m supposed to twinkle and glow so he can get his musical rocks off at Strauss’ little Halloween operetta. Bye-bye handing out candy to the neighborhood kids, too, so opera? I’m not so sure.
“I’m not so sure,” I said.
“Sure about what?”
“If I want to go.”
“Why would you not want to go?”
“I’m not so sure I want to go with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you destroyed my weekend, and you destroyed today, and now you want me to dress up and haul it downtown. I don’t know if I want to go to with you. Are we at least getting dinner?” Fat chance.
“If there’s time.” There wouldn’t be any time because he’d run late. Intentionally, if need be.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said.
He made an odd noise, then said, sounding strangled, “What’s to think about?” And what’s up with the weird tone? You sound frantic. You don’t get frantic.
No way would I ask what’s wrong. Let him endure a little silence for a change. I start counting. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three—
“Kathy?” Say that one more time … “Kathy?!” Where’s the knife drawer …
I had to move three states away before I broke people of the nickname that my mother used like an expletive.
“Tony, I said I’ll think about it. Bye.”
<click>
An hour later
<ring ring>
“I’m still thinking.”
<click>
This was not Tony’s first sabotage-by-theater attempt. Two years previously, he tried to drag me to hear the Chicago Symphony perform one of Gustav Mahler’s most popular symphonies—the Sixth—the one with a hammer blow rumored to have dislodged the light bars of some poor regional orchestra’s cheap stage.
Now, I love Mahler. When I was nineteen, fresh out of high school with nothing better than a garage sale piccolo (thanks for your support, Mom), I played the Sixth with the Wheaton Summer Symphony. I was, however, not in love with the idea of losing the evening before my final project and exam.
I was in my bedroom office at my drafting board with my acrylics, tinting lovely broken blue-green (translation: aqua) when he waltzed in on Monday, all grins and giggles like the ass he was—is.
“Wanna go hear Mahler?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night as in tomorrow, Tuesday?”
He grinned and nodded like the bobblehead that best reveals his lack of a soul.
“No.”
“Why not?” Aw, listen to the poor little puppy dog whine.
“I have class Wednesday morning.”
“So?”
“I need to have this ready.”
“So?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that the jackass who dropped out—more likely flunked out—of M.I.T. would infer that I purposely flush a full one-third of my grade down the crapper along with my 3.75/4 GPA.
“No.”
Halloween, last call … er, phone call
<ring ring>
“Yes?”
“Are you coming?”
“Why don’t you just go by yourself?”
“Because you’re good company.” Right.
Same thing he said at the mandatory Catholic pre-Cana conference before we got married. When everybody sat in a circle, and we all said why we wanted to marry the person beside us. When every other person in the room—,yself included—answered with some version of I love my future husband/wife more than life itself.
Then they got to him.
“Tony, it’s your turn to share. Why do you want to marry Kathy?” Snarl …
“She’s good company.”
***
“Kathy?” You lousy …
“I suppose I’ll go.”
And I went.
But I have too much pride in myself to show up to any event with dirty hair and no makeup like his sister did on my wedding day, and she was my designated matron of honor. Three guesses who designated her on my behalf.
I washed and curled my hair and wore a very sexy, very ’80s LBD (little black dress). Ridiculous shoulder pads, ruching down the front and back that some wise acre once said looked like coffin lining (not him—some snarky broad tossed it over her shoulder as I walked up the aisle at intermission). A very pretty ruffle at the hem and a sheer V panel that ran from the choker neckline to just above my navel and was sprinkled with sequins to distract from the curve of my bosom.
Like he ever looked at me so as to need a distraction.
He picked me up in a rental car, and I’m not sure I bothered to ask what he’d done with my 1981 LeMans. Not Grand LeMans, just LeMans. The $10K car he told me to choose off the lot the day he ordered yet one more custom number for himself. He told me right then that I’d drive it for a decade until it died (I did).
In the meantime, I got to go with him to a dealership every two or three years because he “wanted my opinion.”
Timeout
Let me tell you something my real husband taught me—the Messianic rabbi from Brooklyn who sold cars and insurance to make ends meet because his little services never paid much more than mileage.
Car salesmen—salespeople—sell to the woman first. Sure, she goes in, likes something, and it’s “where’s your husband” in so many words and body language. But a man? A man goes in alone, the dealer looks for a ring, finds one, and does everything possible to get the wife in there. Because no matter how long the schlong, if Wifey ain’t happy, the dealer is gonna be very, very nervous.
Tony d’Olio didn’t give a flying fickle finger of fate what I had to think about anything. He just knew how those guys/gals think so he used me.
I wonder what the dealer thought the day Tony ordered a godawful two-tone four-door brown/beige thing and I said, “You’re sh*tting me, right? Why do you want that? It’s the exact same car and color as your mother’s.”
Exactly.
***
Monday evening
We went to the show. He uncharacteristically bought me a pricey glass of intermission wine from the lobby bartender. What was wrong with me? Now we’re almost home and it’s almost midnight, but he blows right past the house and continues north.
“We need to drop off the rental,” he answered my not-quite wicked pissed frown.
He drove to a crowded little intersection that had two gas stations—one with a car rental service I didn’t know about—and the fabric store owned by the woman for whom I sewed the original fleece and plaid dog beds with zippered cheesecloth linings you stuff with cedar chips. (Yep. I’m the first who sewed those things, but I don’t know if she ever got the patent.)
He stopped behind his car but didn’t get out. Instead, he handed me the keys to the Thunderbird. His Thunderbird.
He never let me drive that thing. He never let me touch the keys to his car. Now he’s handing them to me and telling me to drive his precious baby home in the middle of the night on Halloween and I’m still buzzy from the wine because he refused to stop for a hot dog at any of the four Portillo’s we passed along the way.
“I’ll see you at home,” he said.
Fool that I was. Foolish girl. Dumb, stupid, hopeful soul. Why didn’t I stay and watch where he went?
I couldn’t. He was sitting there with the engine running and the passenger door hanging open and the heater blasting. I’m already shivering in my black patent pumps and cloth coat, the only thing keeping my legs warm being the skirt of the dress that’s dangling six or eight inches below the coat. I looked like a schlub. I looked like my mother.
No money for a washer/dryer. Sure as hell no money for an affordable little fur like his Italian-Catholic aunt’s Jewish husband could get for a song in the garment disctrict the next time they went to New York.
“I’ll see you at home,” he said again and then he sat there (impassive) until I got in my car—his car—and I pulled out of the lot.
About that Thunderbird
A mainframe computer geek’s wet dream version of a muscle car, it maneuvered on the road like he wished he could manuever in the bedroom without his tidy whities.
I tend to forget that he did let me drive it one other time—but just once—when he first brought it home. I remember saying, “Oh, my god, this thing … it’s so … obedient.”
I didn’t learn car lingo until 1992 when my girlfriend’s boyfriend bought a Thunderbird a few years older than Tony’s but just as luxurious.
“You mean how it handles.”
Mmmmm.
One more Halloween shot to hell
After the too-short drive home, I pulled into the driveway in front of the house while Tony put my car in the detached garage. We lived on a corner, so the house faced south while the garage was half a lot north and faced east.
I went in the front door. He came in the back. I washed my face. We went to bed. Me in a flannel granny and him in his socks and skivvies—a short sleeve white Hanes and ubiquitous tidy whities.
We went to sleep, and that was that. Or so I thought, until I woke up the next morning on All Saints’ Day to be continued …
