The Earl-of-That-Never-Happened

8.6.2012.




This day I awoke from a nightmare, a phrase of an essay, a repeatedly cast phrase from my early life in my head was there ready on hand- in head really. I awoke anxious and then remembered the dream/ the nightmare relating to 2006 for that was what the nightmare was about? And too the repeated phrase I’d heard throughout my childhood and teenage years, an essay I hadn’t written yet but for the past few days knew I would..



This morning I awoke tense, unable to remember why, my body tense and tensing “The dream” I thought, remembering for I had been tense in some combination of justifiably running away while wanting to come toward.



A man I knew, who appears in my dreams for whom there is seemingly ever run toward and away as a set of impulses simultaneously going off at once.



I met him when he and I were much younger but now, last night, he appeared at a table with a contract. The contract was short and to the point, all that was required on my part was that I sign on. He only required my signature, that I sign and there would be some reward? Some prize? Relief? Or release? Some or all of the aforementioned. There was an animal I fled the table to be with because “only humans do this, only humans“.



The contract was brief, just a minor and clearly drawn stipulation and all that was asked of me, which is and would be all, was to sign my name and pull my prior testimony relating to the year of 2006. And thus the same phrase I went to sleep with in my head was there to tower and glower at me in the morning.



Title: “That Never Happened”



People, like sitcom or media types, often have catch phrases. A catch phrase being a repeated line, something they revert back to, over and over and over again.



Catch and/or key phrases become and are almost like a person’s eye or hair color, a swirl section of fingerprint or a smell and in that theirs. That for which they are identifiable, known and while not always entirely understood certainly seen through the prism of those catch phrase/s.



My father’s catch phrase, one of them, was: That Never Happened. I remember one instance in particular, the day I really saw what that catch phrase was rather than what he was telling me, and all of us. What the phrase “That Never Happened” really was, why he repeated it over and over again, what it was there for, and perhaps even the alchemy he believed it could and would always elicit.



We had all heard “That never happened” before, individually, in pairs and even the three of us: my mother, my sister and I. But never like this had he said it, within this set of circumstances.



Obviously my mother was the first who gave into this little phrase: That never happened. My sister and I on the other hand were born into it.



Somewhere between the moment my mother met him and everything that came after she would and did replace what she’d seen or heard (or both) with “That never happened”. He, her husband, would say “that never happened” and she would obey for my mother had been raised on obey.



I however had begun countering this particular catch phrase; my countering increased the older I became for I would… I made it my business to remember and remember well so that when and if the Earl of That-Never-Happened appeared, as he often did, I would remember the where, the when, what everyone was wearing and whatever I could remember about what preceded and followed because the Earl of That -Never-Happened would certainly be reappearing. And a little bit more of my mother would disappear whenever he did.



I became an in family professional witness.



For when and where I could recite exactly what was said, the setting and circumstance in as close to exact and in as much detail as possible…. Not always but sometimes if I remembered enough well enough it would jar my mother Martha’s memory. Or maybe simply give her enough that she could trust her own a bit again? That she could - maybe, that she could try and speak up for herself, for us. And at such points of having someone remember, take notes for her and speak them aloud at such times Martha would emerge a bit from the haze she was in, emerge from That-Never- Happened-Land and step into No-“That-Did-Happen-I-remember-too” land.



Martha needed a too, and I was that too.



So now Martha could rejoin what is happening right now land?



Except she really didn‘t like it there either.





On this particular day The Earl of That-Never-Happened lost a bit of his lands. Not that he noticed for as usual he was either drunk, hung-over or in a state encompassing both.



We, the family unit, were somewhere between Tennessee and North Carolina, the Appalachians- in a cream colored Volvo with leather tan interior driving towards vacation in an utterly respectable vehicle with open containers in the trunk. Resting in a cooler were Vodka, Jin and Scotch on ice with sandwiches and fruit for we were driving from Kentucky to Hilton Head, South Carolina. In between there would be a rest for the journey was to be two days and thus open containers in the back because on just such a vacation The Earl had found that he was in a dry county, surrounded by several other dry counties. The Earl never risked such again so open containers it was. Open containers and him ever correcting in those mountains, his wife offering to drive, him barking that he was fine.



On that drive he lost a bit of his land, The Earl of That-Never-Happened. Me, perhaps a sliver of my sister and my mother saw a distant glimmer of where she truly was, and in that, where she had put us: her children.



We had stopped at a McD’s for a bathroom break, the Earl got his coffee and of course there would be no food, that was a game he had enjoyed playing and was still playing.



We three ladies went to the lavatory. We all existed our stalls at or about the same time. We all three stood washing our hands, perhaps one of us was even in the drying stage when a girl in her McD’s uniform walked into a stall.



Tinkle. Flush. Exit Stall. Exit Bathroom.



No hand washing.



The McD’s employee of that particular McD’s apparently wasn’t one for silly notions such as washing one’s hands after using the lavatory.



When we three witnesses returned to the car our collective astounded silence spilled out in the car. The Earl wanted to know what we talking about. We relayed what had occurred.



“That never happened” The Earl of That-Never-Happened said.



Someone, perhaps two perhaps all three of us countered and told the story again, as if perhaps he hadn’t understood.



“That never happened” he said with the same except now even more inflated air in which he said it the first time, every time- as if holding a scepter while sitting several feet above on a throne. But as we three said semi-simultaneously “Yes it did” he sipped his coffee, you could feel rage come off him, growing more frustrated in that air particular to despots.



Again the three all contributed and it was again (?maybe for the first time) pointed out that we three were there and he wasn’t, hadn‘t been- only our eyes had been in the room. At which rather than ending things this sparked him into becoming more enraged because one of us had pointed out the obvious “We were there you were out getting coffee- we were there to see it you weren’t” and someone, perhaps Martha, perhaps myself though most certainly not sister may have even implied that he was being unreasonable, and I do believe the word “crazy“ was used.



And he repeated to us what in his view we weren’t understanding “I said it never happened - it didn’t happen”.



My mother sat looking first frustrated and angry- followed by confused and desolate. The Earl of That-Never-Happened looked nearly smirky, victorious for he had won the argument of what had and had not occured, of what could and could not have occurred and thus could not have been witnessed by anyone as he was in charge of all he did, and did not, survey



And so it was. I’ll never know exactly what branch of the crazy tree he was sitting on at that and those moments.



Did he actually believe that in declaring this or that to be or not be- in what passed for his mind - did that make it so? Or was it simply a calculated mind control mechanism, having worked well and repeatedly with my mother (and small children) perhaps he simply thought he could cast that spell forever, never to have it countered, questioned or ultimately battled.



Was it the soul-less pomposity of either of those? or some other possibility? - I don’t know.



What I do know is that if he were to ever read or comment on anything here or forthwith his reply would be or have been: “That never happened”. Though having read perhaps a rephrasing of the very same.



How crazy is/was he? Crazy enough that if one were to enter a room in which he was barred view and every person who emerged from that room said they were just in a room painted in color A) he would say to each: no you were not in a room of color A), the room of color A) does not exist- that is not the color .



“No - if you saw any color it was color B)”.



And if two were to come back from a room he had never seen or been in and say “It is/was color A)” He would say no it is/was not color A) but Color B), though he himself had never been in that room.



That he had never seen the room would do nothing to alter this declaration.



If three were to leave and report “We were all just there, we have been in the room and you have not been in the room either at this moment or ever. We, on the other hand, who have been there and were there are telling you the color was and is color A)”. The Earl of That-Never-Happened would declare “ No it can not be for I say it can not and could not have been . You will see what I tell you to see and remember what I tell you to remember as I tell you to remember it”.



Volvos really are wonderfully safe cars.



Solid.



Turn the heater off in winter, come back to the car and often there’s still leftover warmth.



Holds sound extremely well too, sound reverberates like in no other vehicle. Though I was never screamed at like I was in a Volvo so I suppose I don‘t have another motor vehicle to compare it with.



So loud, and that car with its windows closed. Holds sound so well that even into the next day it had been like having been at rock-n-roll concert the night before. That ringing of the ears a hold over from that thing some would call my father, I don’t know exactly what he was. Male, yes. A biological material contributor, yes. A financial provider of whom I was his property, yes. But father, parent? No.



That horrible ringing in the ears from what he kept screaming over and over again “Forgive and forget. FORGIVE AND FORGET!” That was another one of his catch phrases.



The thing to remember about catch phrases is they always have one or more hooks.



The hooks aren’t always bad, the hooks aren’t always for reeling you in and then smashing your skull.



Both those days in the Volvo were like that though, like I felt a gear in my brain slip- take notice of itself and correct a bit. Run smoother? No I wouldn’t go that far but from that point on those two phrases lost their prior command and control capacity.



My mother’ d look in my eyes as he’d say the once always effective line “That never happened” sometimes checking with me and later bracing herself because eventually I’d look at him with absolute rage and hatred and scream.



Though at first it was that I would become very alert because - never could quite wrap my head around what he was doing, gaming generally I guess. At those “that-never-happened” moments I knew to pay attention because whatever he was about to say was going to be the height of bollix, intended to maim or daze but mostly just win. There was never any goal beyond that - just winning some game. He was the bowling ball and we were the pins.



Anyway time Martha’s eyes would meet mine as he’d whip out the that-never-happened phrase she’d look a bit afraid because whatever that lie was - I was going to be calling him on it. I was doing so with increased loudness and I didn‘t care if the neighbors heard.



After the Volvo screaming incident I started screaming back. Meanwhile Martha just seemed to be waiting for all the obeying to pay off- not in this world of course.





Catch (aka key) phrases remind, either the teller or the hearer of one or more things. Though conceptually similar to triggers in the world of psy- they’re not entirely the same? Hmm, but back to catch (&/or) key phrases.



On a television program named Cheers most of the characters had catch phrases, most sitcoms usually do. On Cheers one of the hooks was, as I recall, ‘Back in…” so as to remind perhaps himself and certainly all that he was a small town guy. And of course there was a postman who told of facts which may or may not be true and most certainly would have had a questionable origin. Or “always the note of surprise” from the Harry Potter books, a bit of shorthand in that catch phrase.



Shorthand and catch phrases are related? Perhaps the same- hmmm hadn’t thought much about it before, truth be told.



About a decade after those two Volvo incidences I walked into KFC’s corporate office, The Earl of That-Never-Happened ex -wife, my mother, died. The woman from human resources who greeted me first offered her condolences and then asked what had struck me as an odd question to pose upon meeting someone for the first time:



“Are you still in contact with your father?”



There was a lot in that question and that’s what made it surprising because though we’d never met she knew enough to know, to know that the odds were good I would and did have nothing to do with the man/earl.



“No“, I replied not feeling a need to elaborate because she afterall had formed the question perfectly, which was strangely comforting like saying: we don’t know- but we know enough, we saw enough to know just what he was/is.



“He’s a legend around here- people still talk about him,” she said without any tinge of positive regard. A legendary monster some people say really did and does exist while others having never met, much less worked with, such a monster they could and can hardly believe such creatures roam the Earth.



If the Earl of That-Never-Happened were to have read all this the only things he’d take away from the text is that he must be very, very important having been referred to as both a legend and an earl. The broader implications of either term, or anything in between, would escape him entirely.



And so this morning a boy who shares my father’s first name appeared in a dream. That face so fondly held offering me a little contract on which to sign my name, disavowing what I had seen. Meanwhile that phrase for an essay had still been percolating while I slept: Mr./The Earl of That-Never-Happened.