Chapter 13 #2
He was bringing Rita with him in the fall. It was important, he explained. She wanted to know my brothers and me. She wanted to meet Mom too, and it’s hard for me to believe that was true unless it was curiosity. There was no telling what he’d said to Rita, but I’m certain it was bad.
I supposed she wanted to see what he was talking about.
He’d been making his case. Mom was deranged, according to him.
She wasn’t well. Her mind was gone. He had no choice but to leave.
He feared she’d stab him with a butcher knife while he slept.
In the beginning he didn’t know how sick she was.
Those are the sorts of things he’d say to her and later to me.
When Dad and Rita visited in August, it was the first time we’d seen him since moving to Montreat.
Flying from Miami to Asheville, they rented a hotel room and a car.
Dad called to let us know they were on the way, and I was ecstatic.
Mom was quiet and acting weird when they pulled into our driveway, the weather drizzly and gloomy. It was chilly for August.
Overjoyed, I jumped into Dad’s arms, and he was undemonstrative and distant as of old, setting me down like an inanimate object.
He introduced us to Rita, tan with short blond hair and a big bright smile.
She was bubbly and positive, not the least bit creative or moody.
Everything about her was the opposite of my mother.
Rita and Dad planned to take Jim, John, and me to Bat Cave, but it was very foggy, the visibility only a car length or two.
Instead, we had lunch at a Stuckey’s Restaurant in Old Fort.
I sat next to dad in the booth, Rita on his other side.
I’d been thrilled to see him at first, then glum, reminded he didn’t live with us anymore and never would again.
He’d gotten married to someone else, and she looked pregnant now that she’d taken off her jacket. He was starting a new family to replace us. I’d lost my appetite and didn’t care what I ate.
“What would you like?” Dad asked again as I stared at the glossy menu.
“It doesn’t matter.” I shrugged.
“What if I suggested a Laddy Burger?” he replied to my horror.
I suppose he was being funny, but I was shocked and unnerved. Laddy was my emotional support dog and best friend. The idea of something happening to him was unbearable. I pretended that Dad’s joke hadn’t upset me. But he knew it had. He saw right through me. He always did.
After lunch we stopped in Black Mountain at Western Auto, and Dad got each of us a tennis racquet and a can of Wilson tennis balls, in those days white instead of chartreuse.
We returned to Montreat, and he and Rita accompanied us inside the house.
They talked to Mom while touring what she’d designed and built.
Laddy and I trailed along as Dad said that he and Rita were having a baby.
Then they drove away, returning to Miami, and Mom began to spiral.
She got worse a few weeks later when Laddy mysteriously vanished.
I came home from school, and she told me she’d let him out in the backyard.
Then she heard him bark. When she opened the door to bring him inside, he was gone.
I began looking everywhere, heartbroken, and often crying.
For weeks I continued roaming the woods, calling out his name.
Mom was sure Dad was behind it, hiring one of the “garbage collectors” to steal our dog.
Or maybe Dad had sent someone from Miami to do it.
She told me that he’d orchestrated this to punish her, to drive her mad.
The more likely story is that she gave Laddy away.
It would have been her modus operandi to drop him off at the Humane Society.
She’d done it before with pets and would again.
I don’t know what happened to most of our dogs and cats because I wasn’t told the truth.
Usually, I wasn’t told anything at all. Some of them remain unaccounted for to this day. During our Miami years, Snuffy was our only dog. Dad adored him, often taking his picture with the Kodak Brownie camera. One day when he came home from the office, Snuffy was nowhere to be found.
His silver dog tag was on top of the dresser in my parents’ bedroom, and Mom wasn’t home. Dad drove for hours searching the neighborhood in vain. When Mom returned, he demanded to know what she’d done with Snuffy.
“What do you mean you gave him to the dog pound?” I heard him say, and it was one of the few times he sounded angry.
“He’s too vicious,” she replied.
“No, he isn’t.”
“He bit Patsy.”
“All he did was scare her. He didn’t even break the skin.”
“Next time it could be worse.”
Snuffy nipped at me because I was teasing him.
But I wasn’t hurt. I don’t think Dad ever forgave Mom for surrendering his dog to a shelter.
I don’t know what happened to Snuffy but fear the worst. When Laddy disappeared in the fall of 1965, she decided that Dad had someone steal him to pay her back for Snuffy.
A bit of an elaborate plot, and I doubt that’s what happened.
After our cat Sniffy disappeared and reappeared months later, she vanished again, this time for good.
Krafti was a mixed terrier, and I don’t know what became of him either.
Or Smoky the cat. Or the second Laddy. Or her third miniature collie, Bella. And other pets Mom had and then didn’t.