Part One: Beginnings
Chapter Three: Kathleen, September, 1983
Kathleen Davidson, who was the youngest of the three Davidson daughters, turned 13 and ascended into adolescence and ultimately womanhood during a time, which seemed, to her, to be a time of festering decay. Everything about the early 1980s suggested that the Davidson line had persevered for too long. Jack was in the dusty back room where he once slept and now died of cancer, and Gerdie no longer pretended to adequately divide her time between her husband and children; perhaps she figured that hey—at least fully two thirds of her offspring were grown and they could therefore presumably could take care of themselves. Kathleen, as she existed as a child unto herself, was something else entirely.
Kathleen knew as well as anyone else that she was a mistake, or a glitch or a forgotten condom during a rare night of passion between the two Davidson parents. When her sisters were turning 13, after all, nearly two decades ago, she wasn’t the vaguest wisp of thought in her parents’ heads or her sisters’ heads. Gerdie and Jack were seeding past their prime, not ready to mind a newborn again. They were instead ready to be grandparents. Donna, at least, was happy to oblige them in that regard (or more accurately, simply did oblige them in that regard.) When Kathleen was born, her two older sisters were looking forward to college, to careers, to life’s pursuits. Her neice, Michelle, would only be twelve years younger than Kathleen, in fact, which was a closer proximity towards her than the baby’s mother, being her second oldest sister, Donna, who was sixteen when she was born at the very cusp of the seventies.
Michelle was here with at the family celebration of Kathleen’s 13th birthday, in fact, she was sleeping right now in her bouncy chair placed carefully next to the birthday girl. Or so that is what her sister, Deborah, who was sitting across from her baby neice and baby sister at the dining room table, did claim, but Kathleen could not help but think that her one year old niece liked surreptitiously surveying her surroundings. Such a trick was common place around the Davidson family, as well as was prevalent in Michelle’s father, so Kathleen therefore did not know from whom little Michelle might have learned or divined that trick—her mother, or her father (or her aunts or her grandparents).
Of course, no one was allowed to speak Simon’s name any longer, instead, preferring to call him “Mr. X”. He was the ghost who never was, or he turned Donna into a ghost, perhaps, (though for a “ghost,” as her mother and sister described Donna, she looked more like a workaholic to Kathleen, as she had always been a work a holic, but at least when her boyfriend, Simon, used to be a fixture in her life, he could cajole the mechanical sister into at least acting somewhat human. This was, of course, before, for whatever reason, he decided to abandon his pregnant girlfriend for reasons unknown and completely disappear from the Davidson’s lives—even Kathleen’s life, the girl now did remember bitterly to herself, despite the fact that he had before devoted almost the entirety of her own life to taking charge of her literary education. She still did treasure the copy of “Little Women” that he had given her when she was only five years old, much to Donna’s chagrin, who claimed that her baby sister would never have the time to read it—even in the indeterminable future, when it would be at her age level in which to partake in reading. And Kathleen, horrified that this was true, had actually proved her sister right so far; though she had never had the fortitude to read the husky tome, she did keep it hidden; it was even dog eared with age, and stashed behind her yearly school textbooks, as if it served as a constant and unchanging reminder of the first man who had entered her life who was not also her father, and—dare she even admit it—the first man whom she had ever loved with unconditional fervor.
Donna had arrived at the old family home for a brief interval during this past weekend, however, with the intention of dropping of a birthday gift off for her baby sister, which happened to be a plastic cosmetics set, which she’d obviously just bought from the nearest convenience store, and then depositing her own daughter to her over extended mother—Gerdie, who had been taking care of other peoples’ lives and problems for years, after all.
“I can not stay, because it has become a hellishly busy week at the hospital,” Donna explained, and she sounded like her usual exasperated and over worked self, but Kathleen knew the real reason for her flight. Everyone knew the real reason for Donna’s flight. But living in denial was so natural to the Davidson family that no one stopped to question it anymore.
Deborah was here as well, a fact that shocked Kathleen most of all. Her childhood was riddled with remembrances of two eldest sisters, it seemed—one who was ardent and steadfast in her beliefs—and had even dragged her baby sister to one of her ardent and steadfast feminist rallies several, several years ago—and the other arriving at her childhood home only on sparse occasions, always looking worn and vulnerable, and seeking out the mother, Gerdie’s, advice, of which the other her, it seemed, was trying to get away from. Kathleen had heard stories of Deborah’s radical past—consisting of all of the rallies and all of the marches and all of the protests, but now, it seemed, she spent more time in an office—so she said, anyway—and generally, she seemed mellower, as if she did not have the weight of the world’s problems around her shoulders anymore. Deborah, who always seemed to burn with a passionate fire, was quenched somewhat, except, of course, when it came to confronting with Gerdie’s treatment of Jack, or vice versa, as it were. Kathleen sighed. Her sister just did not understand the Davidson household—how could she, now that she was an adult and lived away from her childhood home? Their father had much changed since that time she spoke of in the ’60s. That is, if that time had even transpired in the first place, of course.
“Are you all right over there, Kath?” Deborah asked her sister from across the long table. “Do you want me to get Mother? How many pillows does that—“ She was growling and cut herself off suddenly, glancing at her sister, but Kathleen simply sighed, knowing what profanity her eldest sister must be thinking about their sickly father, Jack, and their mother, Gerdie’s, constant tending and care. How utterly useless it was, Kathleen thought to herself, for her sister, Deborah, to feel this compunction to sheield her from the nasty opinions that she harbored about their father, and that Kathleen already knew about anyway.
And yet, the young girl did bite her own lip. Michelle should not be exposed to such vulgar talk and angry sentiment about her grandfather or about her grandmother or about her grandparents’ relationship in general. But it was not like Donna would notice such liberties either taken or not taken around her daughter either way.
Meanwhile, her sister, Deborah, was desperately switching tactics; she was calming herself, perhaps, by shifting her focus away from the father whom she so ardently despised. “How was school today?” she tried asking Kathleen instead, and that was when the girl suddenly realized how angry she was at her sister. How did she have any right to be so judgmental anyway? She sat in her—grassroots organization office all day, or whatever the heck it was, and she got paid (at least it was only minimum wage, Kathleen supposed, in order for Deborah to afford the rent on her run down apartment in a bad part of town) for spewing biases against anyone who believed differently than her. And the worst part was… there was a time when Kathleen believed it. There was a time when she venerated her eldest sister for her drive and for her convictions and for her stamina. But that time, ultimately, had long since past. Perhaps Kathleen was drawn to that kind of dogmatic rhetoric as a child, but not anymore. She was a teenager now, after all.
“School was all right,” She managed to mumble in response to Deborah’s query from across that long table.
“It was just al right?” Deborah asked, and Kathleen was sure she could hear the soft scoff beneath her eldest sister’s tone. “What, is that administration just not challenging you enough in that place?”
And Kathleen did clench her hands together under the table at this lunacy which had found it’s way out of her sister, Deborah’s mouth, before she did suddenly remember to act like a lady, as her mother did indeed teach her how to do. She did not want to be challenged by Deborah’s condescending questions. She was much more than mildly content to leave that to her sisters, and their constant and unending battles against the elements. Meanwhile she, herself, solely wanted peace.
It was at this moment that Gerdie shuffled quietly out of the Jack’s back room and the near by hallway and in to the dining room, and suddenly, baby Michelle did open her tiny, pure blue eyes. Gerdie smiled at the baby, and then smiled apologetically at her daughter, Michelle, and spoke with beaten down sincerity. “I am truly sorry, sweetie, but your father had—“ she tapered off and her face clouded as Deborah let out a small snort. “Yes, well, I will bring out your cake now, then.” Looking even more beaten down, as if her eldest daughter’s mere expression could harm her physically, she shuffled away, this time heading for the kitchen where she could pick up and serve the cake she spent all day slaving over for her newly teenaged daughter and her ungrateful, selfish slob of a sister. And there was poor Michelle, of course, who did not have the teeth yet in order to consume any of the conflict.
And speaking of dear Deborah, she was obviously still pissed off at the attentions, which her father, Jack, had received from her mother, Gerdie just now, as she began to open her mouth and spill out her usual assortment of bitter drivel. “You had better make this quick, Ma!” Deborah called after her retreating form. “Kath does have school in the morning. You can get back to worrying about dear Daddy once she is in bed, can you not?”
“Do be quiet!” Kathleen shocked herself by hissing out vitriolic words against her sister’s tired tirade. “I am fine with this, Deborah.”
Deborah’s eyes lit up as she surveyed her baby sister critically. Barring—the issue of father, of course, and then that whole Simon incident, where she allegedly wrote their sister, Donna, a letter about finding him and cutting off—his reproductive organs once he had abandoned the family,—Deborah was never one to get too riled up about things, but Kathleen, staring, in a hopefully not too wide eyed way at her sister’s recent expression, began to wonder if perhaps she was about to become the “Feminazi” again, and she wondered if, with her hasty mutterings just now, she had participated in walking straight into her sister’s trap. Deborah was opening her mouth, and ready to respond with whatever reaction she harbored when finally and blessedly, Gerdie came out of the kitchen with the cake.
“All right,” she said, looking red and flushed. “Deborah, will you go and get the matches, please?”
Deborah gave them both a dark look and Kathleen rolled her eyes, unaware that she was copying her sister’s own teenage behavior.
But ten minutes later, Deborah was joining their mother, Gerdie, into singing happy birthday to her, and Michelle was even gurgling along in her baby babble. Kathleen looked at the cake curiously, lit up with thirteen standard candles (and an extra one for good luck as well). She could not quite exactly explain it, but she had always felt drawn to the flame. She was kindled by its warm light, perhaps. Her family wasn’t really one that gave way to such soft edged sentimentality, so she blew out the candles thinking in abstracts, wishing for a place in this world, for peace of mind, for everything, which her family had pined for since Gerdie came over from Germany. She heard her family’s clapping, faint and relatively unenthusiastic, belying Kathleen’s own discomfort with the state of things in her life and in her family’s life. From between her mother’s arms, the newly deigned teenager was sure that her niece, Michelle, was surveying her with fresh new eyes and a fresh new understanding of the world.
It was at this moment that Jack once again coughed from the other room, and he effectively broke through Kathleen’s spell as Gerdie scurried off, after handing over the baby to her aunt. Kathleen touched her face curiously, feeling the warmth of her skin, and trying so desperately not to focus on her sister, Deborah’s, eyes which were boring in to hers.
Deborah, however, did not have these desires or convictions. Kathleen held her eldest sister sigh, and her own skin tingled, suddenly certain that she would ask a question. Which of course she did, occurring one second later. “Who do you think she looks like?” Deborah asked Kathleen quietly, but the girl could not help but wonder if that underneath of it all, her eldest sister, Deborah, spoke with a sneer in her voice, and was obviously trying to be contrary. “Do you think she looks like Donna? Or do you think she looks like—Mr. X?” Deborah stuttered over the words, and Kathleen could not help but to feel shocked or to feel smug—or perhaps to feel both at the same time.
Kathleen’s head did not whip up in shock, and she did not make the baby cry out, as she had already thought about Michelle’s father and Donna’s boyfriend, Simon, just recently back in that very day. It had not been long since she’d last thought about the man who just might have become her brother in law. Now that she was 13, perhaps she could admit to herself that she had a childish crush on her sister’s boyfriend, all of those years ago. Her lips quirked as she wondered whether she made Donna jealous—the 16 year age difference not withstanding, of course. But the truth was that the two youngest Davidson sisters had fallen under the same spell. Romantic Simon, quoting his poetry, a patron of theatre. He was so good, so kind and so gentle that his abrupt disappearance still haunted them over a year later. “Yeah? Well, men do that,” Deborah would have told her snidely, and though Kathleen would never admit to thinking such a thing, she wondered if her sister was right. Simon had left a pregnant Donna in the middle of the night one night and now, Jack was losing his battle to cancer. That was both of the men in Kathleen’s life—and they were both soon to be leaving, or were utterly gone. And then she would be left with her niece and her sisters. Her mother. And finally, herself.
Deborah ate her cake with audible clinks on her silverware, and Kathleen could not help but think that she must be livid at her question being ignored, but Kathleen did not alter her attention from Michelle, though her heart was beating fast over her sister’s not so direct mention of Simon. Her life wasn’t even her own, Kathleen did suddenly realize. She was born into a family on the cusp of extinction. Who was she, now on her 13th birthday? And would she ever feel comfortable in her own skin? And would she ever find someone to love her for herself? And would she ever find peace?
Deborah sighed, and Michelle whimpered, and Jack coughed from behind. Kathleen, meanwhile, did hold her breath, and waited for that indeterminable time in the future in order to start to finally exist.
