I was confused and upset when my sister, Doreen, who is thirteen years older than me, left home to marry.  I was only about six years old and I wondered why she wanted to live with her fiancé, Bill, and not with me. Even at that tender age, I wondered why anyone ever got married.  I remember asking, “Why, why, why?” and I don’t think I ever got a reasonable answer.  I was just told a bunch of “mushy” stuff like “love, love, and love.” Yuck! The only thing I understood was that Doreen moved out of our family home, leaving me to grow up as an only child, the only remaining buffer between our unhappy parents.

    Our parents fought often, sometimes loudly and sometimes violently.  Not that they hit each other, but doors would slam, furniture would bang and the dog would bark, waking me from the deepest sleep.  One time when I was small, I heard one of them knock over my little rocking chair.  I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room, yelling, “Stop it! Stop it!”  Their angry eyes and clenched fists turned towards me.  I was told to get back to my room, and I did, but not before I said, “Knock it off out here!” 
 
     Then I covered my butt with my hands (just in case I got whacked), and ran back to bed with my dog following closely, and seemingly crying in his quiet whimper, “Wait for me!” 

    After that night, it seemed that they fought less in front of me, but instead made snide, sarcastic remarks to each other.  I was certain that their fights must have been long and loud when I wasn’t at home, because my arrival would often find one of them slinking away from the other and the air would feel thick and nasty as if someone was boiling cabbage on the most humid day of the year.

    Everyone’s parents fought.  I knew that.   Even though the homes on our block were nicely spaced apart, we all lived dozens of summers without air conditioning and our windows were always wide open to catch the smallest breeze.  We heard our neighbors fighting, punishing their kids or yelling at their relatives on the telephone.   We knew not to go to a friend’s house after supper because they had just been slapped or their parents were hollering at each other. We also knew, however, that we could go to their house the next day, because the red hot anger, would have cooled with the night air and life would go on as it had before.   

    This wasn’t the case at my house, however.   Instead of general apologies and kisses or even more shouting, my parents began to hurt one another with silence. These periods didn’t seem to start with an all out fight; just suddenly there would be a certain meanness between them and criticisms and cheap shots would be fired across the dinner table.   Then it would become quiet.  These silent treatments started off with relatively short periods of time before reconciliations, but it wasn’t long before a day would turn into a week, then into a month then into a season and finally into one whole year.

    I feel that it’s important to tell you that my parents grew up in New England during the Depression.  My Mother and Grandmother took in lodgers, basically strangers, to pay the rent.  They knew all about food ration stamps and shortages and sacrifices of all kinds.   When my parents married, Dad moved into Nana’s home too.  My Father joined the Navy near the end of World War II when the government called up any and all remaining eligible American men.   My Dad was thirty years old and the sole support of my Mom, Nana and my five-year-old sister, Doreen, but he was off to war.  These tough Yankees had done whatever was necessary to survive and it was with this same, unrelenting determination that they kept up their “silent treatments” of each other.

    It’s only with growth and time that a kid begins to realize that this was a really peculiar situation to be involved in, and especially so if you were the only child at home. We would all eat dinner together.  We would watch TV together and we would all go to visit family together.   My parents would say things like,

    “Jackie, tell your father that . . . . ”

    Or, “Jackie, ask your mother if . . . .”

    And I’d be sitting, right there, between the two of them, with my head spinning back and forth like a crazy person at a tennis match.   Then they would answer each other.  What’s even more bizarre is that eventually I would come home from school or a friend’s house and find them talking to each other like nothing had ever happened.  They’d be chatting away like old pals, catching up on all of the news and gossip they’d withheld over their silent treatment time.

    As I grew older, I began to understand why my parents fought so much.  After my Father came home from World War II, he was eligible to receive Veterans benefits, which included receiving a low interest loan to purchase a home.  He, like many GI’s, wanted to be the first in their families to own a home and a piece of land.   When I was two, and Doreen was fifteen years old, he and my reluctant Mother, purchased a home, and we moved to the suburbs. 

    Although we were only about sixteen miles away from my parents' families, we might as well have been one hundred.   My Mother hated living “on the farm, in the woods, in the country,” as she would say.  She felt “stuck” without any public transportation to “get her out of there.”  She could never seem to tell me where she wanted to go and would say, “It’s just the idea that I could go somewhere if I wanted to.” 

    The problems only worsened with time, as my father hurt his back and couldn’t sit in one position very long.  He loathed his commute to the city for work and soon grew to hate driving, period.  My Mother wanted to dress up and go out drinking and dancing on Saturday nights, and to visit family on Sundays, while my Father was content to stay at home.   Once I thought I knew what their problem was, I would beg them to compromise, but to no avail.  I wondered why they had ever bothered to marry in the first place.  Their damned stubbornness would not allow room for many, if any, concessions, and the third world war ebbed and flowed in our suburban living room.

    Uncle Bill was my father’s brother. He and his wife, Edna, had introduced my parents to one another when they were all at a dance club many years earlier.  This will probably sound a little bit twisted to you, but one thing we enjoyed doing as a family, was going to my Aunt Edna’s and Uncle Bill’s house to observe their unhappy union.   It was like going to a verbal prizefight!    Now, I had been exposed to plenty of profanity at home, but my aunt and uncle had elevated bad language almost to an art form.   Edna and my mother would talk about what bastards the brothers were, and, if Bill overheard them, he would come into the kitchen and scream at Edna, “Shut up you stupid bitch, don’t ya see we got frigging company?”  

    To which Aunt Edna, with her bright red, Lucy Riccardo hair and mannerisms, would slowly rise from her chair. With each inch her voice would increase in volume, “Bitch huh? Bitch!  I’ll tell you, you’re a son of a Bitch, you are! You goddamn, stupid, bastard, asshole!  What the Hell’s the matter with you talking to me like that in front of the kids for Christ sakes, son of a bitch, pain in my ass!” 

    Their wicked volleys would continue and we would laugh about their arguing, in what I guess was a, misery loves company sort of way. It was there, in that uncomfortable house, that I sharpened my profanity skills, while I continued to wonder, why oh why, anyone ever wed.

     I was about fifteen when Edna and Bill’s daughter, my cousin Donna, announced that she was getting married.  Now, I had been pretty close to Donna, considering our seven-year age gap and I thought that maybe she would tell me what was so great about matrimony.   So I asked her. 

    “Well, people get married because they love each other,” she said. 

    “That can’t be the only reason,” I said.

    “Well, I guess some people get married 'cause the guys rich or he’s real good looking or he’s a real nice guy.”

    “What happens if he goes broke or goes bald or goes asshole and you don’t love him so much anymore? ” I asked.  “Doesn’t there have to be something else besides love?”

    Donna glared at me and I knew that my cozy-cousin time with her was about to end real soon, but she asked, “Something else, like what?”

    “I dunno, like you enjoy traveling or playing cards or talking to each other. Why are you marrying Bobby?”

    “Well because I love Bobby and he loves me, and it’s what people do when they love each other.”

    “Ya, but your parent’s fight all the time, and my parent’s fight all the time, and won’t you end up the same way?”

    “No, we won’t because we really love each other.”

    “Maybe your ‘something else’ is water skiing, you both like that,” I offered.

    “No,” she said, and then went on sounding much like her mother. “Our marriage will be wonderful, just because we love each other!”

    “Fat chance,” I thought.  

    Donna did have a lovely evening wedding.  My parents and I went with Doreen and her husband Bill.  I don’t recall if my parents were speaking to each other or not, but I remember being grateful that someone else would be in the car with us.

    The reception hall was a local VWF or ELKS club.  The large room was cut in half by a large curtain.   On one side was the main wedding reception, band and dance floor.  The bar was on the opposite side, with a few club regulars sitting at tables and listening to a man softly playing a piano.   After we had eaten and the toasts were made, the dancing began.   The wedding band played the usual standards and couples danced quietly and politely.  My parents danced once or twice, but soon returned to our table to drink more of their favorite, Knickerbocker beer, while the band took a break.   It wasn’t long before Aunt Edna came over to my parents and said something about the music and dancing.  She and my Mom went to the Ladies Room. 

    “What’s going on?”  I asked Doreen.

    “I dunno - probably just girl talk,” she said.

    After a few minutes I heard a rolling sound, and then the piano started playing loudly in the bar area.  I thought I heard my Aunt Edna holler, “Let's get this curtain pulled back, fellas! These people gotta dance!” 

    “Here we go,” my father said, shaking his head and finishing his beer.

    “Here we go what?” I asked Doreen, as Donna went running to find her mother.

    “Poor Donna,” Doreen said. “Looks like aunt Edna is going to get the party started.”

    The band returned, and Edna yelled to them,  “You guys! listen up!   You guys put everyone to sleep!   I want you to follow this piano player and start playing some good music! Somebody help me pull this goddamn curtain back!”

    My brother-in-law Bill went to help with the curtain and my father moved over and sat next to me. 

    “What’s going on?  Where’s Ma?”  I asked.

    “I imagine she’s conspiring with Edna,” he said.

    The curtain was slowly moving back and the piano player yelled to the band, “Give me a back beat guys like . . . . ” and he started snapping his fingers one, two, three, four, one, two, three four.  Then the drum answered thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. 

    We heard a woman starting to sing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and the band picked up the song, just as the curtain fully opened.

    “Holy shit,” said my sister.

    I followed her gaze to the sight of our very own mother sitting on top of the player piano and singing into a microphone.  My mouth dropped open.  I looked to my right and left.  

    My sister shrugged.  My father was shaking his head again.  Both seemed amazingly unconcerned.

    “Shouldn’t we DO something?”  I asked.  “Get her DOWN or something?”

    People were starting to rock in their seats and some were getting up to dance.

    “Best to leave her alone when she’s like this,” my father said.

    I looked at Doreen and she shrugged and asked, “You haven’t seen this before?”
 
    I shook my head.

     “Ya, Dad’s right.  Best not to mess with her right now.”

    It seemed like my Mother did about a twenty minute long version of that song.  It also seemed that I was the only one who was worried about it.  A lot of people were dancing now, even Donna and her new husband!  Soon the wedding band got the idea and began playing more swing music for the World War II crowd. My mother got down from the top of that high piano somehow, and I was happy that I wasn’t watching at the time.  She came over to us, and the look on my face must have said,  “What the hell is wrong with you, what are you doing, why were you singing, why are you embarrassing me?”

    But Ma just looked at me and asked, “What?”

    My father took her hand and they headed onto the dance floor. Doreen and Bill started dancing, too, with the different generations from the thirties, forties and fifties all doing their own versions of swing dancing. 

    Then the band started playing, “Chicago, Chicago, that toddling town!” Edna and Bill were on the dance floor too.  Mom and Dad started adding in some steps from the Charleston, with kicks and inside and outside turns.   Edna and Bill added some fancy twirling until Bill got winded and they sat down.   Soon everyone had cleared the floor. They all stood by, just watching my parents.

    “Look at them jitterbug, Jackie, “ Doreen said.

    I was watching.  In fact I was mesmerized as they performed all sorts of intricate steps. They were totally in sync with each other.  Were these really our parents who at times could barely stand each other?   Was this the unique thing that had made them want to marry?  Could this be their distinctive “something else” that made them feel connected to one another?  They looked so happy, smiling and moving as one.

    The jitterbug? 

     Really?

    I’d like to tell you that my parents never fought or gave each other the silent treatment again, but they did.  It continued until I had moved out of the house and into my own apartment.  Then they had to talk to each other, and, miraculously, even my mother became content in the suburbs. 

    My parents were two really good people, who loved each other but didn’t like each other very much some of the time. Tragic, really, all the time they wasted at war and in silence. It was only at the end of their lives that I could see how much my parents did care about each other. 

    Then, and of course, whenever there was occasion for music, dancing and the jitterbug. 

*     *     *

Biographical Note: Jackie Echteler was born and raised in Massachusetts.  She studied Medical Assisting in college and has worked in doctor’s offices, clinical hospital and basic research laboratories ever since.   In 2005, Jackie left her profession to become a full-time homemaker. She began taking an autobiographical writing class in January 2009.   She lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her husband, three children and two cats. Jackie's story "Ruthie" appeared in the September issue. See the November issue for her story, "My Dining Room Table," and the January issue for "Aunt Jen's Ring."