Queen of Hearts

I have sometimes wondered, over the course of my life, how it is possible that the black cloud that hangs over my head never breaks apart to let the sun shine through. Once in a while, I feel tiny ray of warmth touch my face, bringing with it the first small glimmer of hope. Invariably, that small caress, whispering to me that my life will not always be so tragic, is doused by the rain and ice and cold that has shrouded my existence. I had thought I had left the drama of my childhood and my twenties, with alcoholic parents and a failed marriage to a drug addict littering the path behind me. In front of me, I saw my only child, a daughter, and I secure and happy, doing the things that “normal” people did. I did not realize, as I rebuilt our lives after my divorce, that there was a deep, dark secret that would bring my precarious house of cards crashing down, in a jumble, leaving the queen of hearts tattered and torn, dog-eared, a faded, tired version of her once vibrantly colored self.


The wheels of this family tragedy were put into motion long ago. My mother and father married in 1964, had a son in 1965, and I was born in 1969. From the old photos I have seen, and was fascinated by as a kid and into my college days as an art major, we seemed like a happy, normal, Leave it to Beaver kind of family, only tinted with the avocado, burnt umber, and harvest gold tones of the 1970s. The memories are disjointed, infused with both the good and the bad, and the realization that my life has been a lie. Everything I had believed as a child and even as I grew into adulthood, was perhaps not what I had thought it was. Another reality is now taking shape, after being forced to see everything in a new color scheme.


Pictures of my brother and I, in our pajamas and now politically incorrect Indian headdresses with brightly colored feathers attached to cardboard bands, holding puppies from a new litter from our rescue dog, Flopsie, often creep into my dreams. I recall photos of my father, holding me up as a baby, looking proud and protective in his sideburns and while he still had some hair on his head. I hold dear a foggy memory of my mother, with her thick, dark blonde hair swept away from her face with a chic headband, helping me color a blue bird ( it may have been Woody Woodpecker) in one of my coloring books and encouraging me to stay within the lines. Then images of my mother, rocking in a chair with the smell of beer tiptoeing through the living room, crying uncontrollably and saying she wanted to die. I think I was three or four. I remember my father packing me into his Porsche in the middle of the night, swaddled in a warm blanket, to go look for my mom. I remember my father’s outbursts over the years, the undeniable anger and resentment overflowing onto us kids, with the smell of alcohol mixed with the fragrant wisp of pipe tobacco on his breath. Always in the middle, a clay pigeon, the skeet that sent me into a spiral of shame, sails from the drunken, angry hands of my mother through the kitchen towards my irate father, delivers to my 10 year old self a shiner that had kids at school talking for days. My older brother detached and somewhat “off”, spent most of his time hiding in his bedroom.


My mother was a well-to-do young woman whose family owned and operated a garage up at South Lake Tahoe, Bijou, as it was known back then. Her parents were drinkers and smokers, and spoiled her rotten in her teenage years as their only means to make up for their own family tragedy. Their son killed himself with a gunshot wound to the head at the age of 21. My mother was affected deeply, and I think somehow, she blamed herself. She never talked about it over the years, but she always kept a framed black and white picture of Billy, in his graduation cap and gown, over her bed.