"Don't come in! I'm not dressed. Get out!"
Finally, on Christmas morning, of all days, after having lived with her in the same, small apartment for six, happy years and after having tried to see her naked for six, frustrating years without success, I caught her. I saw her. She was naked. That was the last time I saw Carol.
Too focused on her naked body, I didn't notice that she was upset. I didn't see that she was crying. Too immersed in my own personal perversion of catching her naked, I didn't know she had been crying all night. I didn't realize she was leaving.
My mom died when I was young. I don't even remember her and had my Dad not saved some old, black and white photos of her, I wouldn't have known what she even looked like. She looked like me or rather, I look like her, blonde hair and blue eyes, just like my Dad, too.
He since remarried, but by the time he remarried, I was older, twelve-years-old. I never considered his second wife my Mom or Stepmom, even, just his second wife. Forced to live with her in the same, small apartment, she was a total stranger, as far as I was concerned. In the beginning, I didn't want anything to do with her. Consequently, I always called her by her name, Carol, instead of Mom. Besides, later, as I got to know her and grew to like her, she felt more like my older sister than she did my mom.
At a time when people are supposed to be happy, Christmas Eve, I remember they were arguing all night long and the next morning, too. They were always arguing or more accurately, my Dad was always yelling at her, calling her names, and being abusive to her. My Dad turned up the Christmas music that played on the radio, and while Nat King Cole sang chestnuts roasting in the fire, my Dad's temper heated our small apartment to an unbearable temperature.
Now, every time I hear that song, I think of that fateful night and turn it off. When I hear that song, I think of Carol. I no longer think of her naked, but crying and hurting. She was my friend and I abused her friendship on the pretense and for the perverted pleasure of seeing her naked. I wasn't there for her in her time of need. I didn't help her and now she's gone.
They fought a lot, but this time was different. This time, I heard Carol's voice. Normally, I'd only hear my Dad yelling at Carol, but this time, she was yelling at him. I never saw Carol mad. I never heard her raise her voice to my Dad before. I stayed in my room with the pillow over my head. I didn't want to hear them arguing, not now, on Christmas Eve of all days. They ruined my holiday.
It was selfish of me to think that, but I was still just a child really, just eighteen-years-old, an immature man. Their marriage, just as their inability to get along had nothing to do with me and how I felt. This was real and was all their problems, not mine. This was life, their lives, and I was no one but a bystander in this tragic accident of humanity, only there because there was nowhere else for me to go.
The next day, when my Dad and I sat by the Christmas tree opening gifts, the only gift for Carol was from me. There was a stack of presents from Carol to me and to my Dad, but not one gift from my Dad to Carol. I held my tongue wanting to ask him and against my better judgment I did.
"Where's Carol's gifts? Did she take them with her?"
"I didn't buy her anything," he said in his gruff voice and I knew enough not to ask him to explain, only, I hoped he would.
He didn't say, I didn't buy her anything, Johnny. If he had said my name, I could have asked him why he didn't buy her anything and why she left. Yet, by not saying my name, much like the punctuation at the end of a sentence, was his way of telling me to drop it and I did.
Didn't buy her anything? How could he not buy her a gift for all that she's done for him? How could he do that? I wanted to ask him what happened. I wanted to ask him if she was coming back, even though I knew she wasn't and had already been replaced by Debbie, his new, younger girlfriend. Christmas that year with just me and my Dad wasn't the same and would never be the same again.
Instead of the smell of a Christmas turkey in the oven, Dad bought Chinese food and pizza the next day. The only cookies Debbie knew how to make were Toll House cookies from the freezer. Nothing was ever the same again. All of it changed for the worse. Instead of a home, it was just a place to sleep, eat, and shit. It was all shit without Carol there to make things right.
Debbie didn't cook. She didn't clean. She didn't do laundry. She didn't do anything but give my Dad what Carol wouldn't a blowjob. I guess, at this point in time, that's all he wanted and all he cared about getting was blown by a woman young enough to be his daughter.
I was angry. How could he do that to Carol, the woman who cooked and cleaned and put up with his foul temperament? He's such an asshole. It was at that moment that my Dad taught me how to treat or more correctly, how not to mistreat a woman.
At first, when he brought her home, I didn't like her. I thought she'd be a wedge between my Dad and me. Yet, as the time passed, she was my sounding board, my life preserver, and my best friend. I liked Carol, I really did. She went to bat for me with my Dad, smoothing the way with her calm manner and fearless in the face of his violent temper.
She was nice and I was sorry to see her leave, especially in that way, when my Dad dumped her for a woman half his age. The sorrow that I felt for the loss of her was as if she had suddenly died. One minute she's there and then, without so much as a good-bye, she's gone. I mourned her loss, as I would the loss of my Mom, had I been old enough to know she had died.