After I graduated from high school, Tom taught me how to drive. Unlike every other teenager in the universe, I had no interest in getting behind the wheel of a car when I was going to school. I wanted my uncle (my mom’s brother) to teach me how, since he was a part-time driving instructor, but Tom said there was no way anyone else was going to teach me.
Using Tom’s two-door, silver stick-shift Honda hatchback (which later became my car), I learned to drive in industrial parks, empty parking lots, and on dirt roads outside of town. It wasn’t fun – either the driving or having to spend more time with Tom – but at least I made it through him trying to teach me something without crying, like I did when I was younger. That’s progress.
The main reason Tom wanted to teach me how to drive was so I would be able to drive to work. I strongly suspected he wanted me to get a job and move away from home as soon as possible so he wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore.
I went out looking for jobs where I thought I could make use of my creative skills, places like newspapers, print shops, photo studios, and videographers. I took examples of my artwork with me to show them what I could do. But it was pointless. While they considered me “good,” I wasn’t good enough. It didn’t help that I didn’t have any real experience or a college degree. It was naive of me to think I could get a decent job right out of high school. They took my résumé (such as it was), but I never heard back from any of them.
Since I couldn’t find a “real” job, Tom put me to work on two projects he had going on around town (not that I had a choice). The first was helping out on the new house that he was having built for his parents, who were moving up from Oregon so they could live near us. Some of my duties included tidying up the worksite, like sweeping inside the house and picking up stray nails and boards outside. I also spent days spreading multiple coats of tar sealant on the exterior of the concrete foundation with a paint roller at the end of a long stick.
One afternoon, on the drive home from picking me up, Tom asked me how I liked working on the house. I don’t remember what I said specifically, only that it wasn’t too enthusiastic. Tom got angry and confused, wondering why I wasn’t thrilled with my new job. He said, “You don’t seem too excited.” I thought to myself, “Excited? I spend all day working with stuff that smells worse than shit. If I got any more excited, I’d fall into a coma.”
After that, Tom got me a job working at the first Super 1 grocery store when it was being built, since he was the architect for it and had an “in” with the owner. At the time I was hired, the store was still an enormous concrete shell, big and (mostly) empty, with random metal shelving, refrigeration equipment, and mountains of cardboard, clear plastic, and styrofoam packing material scattered everywhere. It felt like a huge, dark airplane hanger. I was assigned to crawl around on my hands and knees on a concrete floor all day wearing hard plastic knee pads and dragging a shop vac behind me, cleaning and vacuuming inside the bases of hundreds of shelving units. Just like working on Tom’s parent’s house, this job was hot as hell as well, with sweat dripping off my face as I breathed in dust from drywall and fought back nausea. I’m convinced Tom intentionally found me the crappiest jobs he could find just to torture me.
I remember the last place Tom, my mom, my sister, and I went together as a family (well, the four of us together, that is). We went to the Silverwood theme park, which had just opened for the first time a couple months earlier. I had no interest in seeing it, but Tom wanted to, as it was the big new thing in town at the time.
Right before we left home, Tom and I got into a huge argument (over something about which I have no idea, but knowing me, I probably didn’t want to go – or go anywhere with him). I think Mom and my sister were already in the car in the garage, waiting for the two of us to come out. I wanted to tell Mom about the argument when I got in the car, but I couldn’t since she was one of “the parents.” But I felt things shift that day. It was the first time I saw Mom separately from Tom. They were no longer one unit; this formidable force of the two of them ganged up on me. Instead, I saw Tom as my adversary and Mom as someone with whom I would soon be able to confide.
There was hardly anything at Silverwood in its early days. There was the train (which people could use to ride around the perimeter of the park) and a few rides and shops. I remember riding on the train, sitting in my seat (comfortably far from Tom, naturally), not enjoying it or paying attention to where I was or what was going on. Mom asked what was wrong, but I didn’t want to say anything, at least not at that point, so I kept it to myself. All I could do was sit there and think about that big argument I had with Tom and how I could possibly endure living with him for much longer. Tom and I were seriously becoming enemies.
Tom went out with some friends late one night. He came home around 2:30 in the morning. Mom and Tom immediately got into an argument over why he was coming home so late, where he was, and who he was with. During the argument, he burst into my bedroom and demanded to know what was going on and why Mom was so worked up. Piss off, buddy. You’re not getting any help from me. Mom later found out that Tom had been out dancing with a woman he’d recently met, a woman with whom he’d been spending a lot of time and getting a little too closely acquainted (FORESHADOWING!).
Things quickly started to deteriorate after that. The tension was constant, and arguments erupted almost every day. The end was near and inevitable.
After a brief and explosive argument between Tom and Mom one night, Mom threw a large calculator at him (the only thing within arm’s reach), and Tom made a mad dash for the back door. The sight of him jumping in the car and screeching out of the garage, like the coward he was, is still one of my favorite memories (too bad about the calculator, though; it never quite worked the same after that). Tom returned not long after, but not for very long.
Near the end of summer and two days before my mom’s birthday, Tom left us for good. My mom, my sister, and I were watching TV in the living room. Tom was sitting at the table in the dining room, working on who knows what. Without warning, he quietly got up from the table, walked out to the garage, got in the car, and left. We heard him leave, but we didn’t think anything of it at the time – at least not until he didn’t come home that night.
When Tom eventually came back a few days later to pick up some clothes and a few other things to bring to the hotel at which he’d been staying, he told my mom that when he heard us laughing at the TV, he felt like he “didn’t belong.” Apparently, the sound of the three of us enjoying whatever show we were watching was the final straw that convinced him we were no longer a family (if we ever really were one). Tom filed for divorce shortly after.
When the news was going around that my parents were going to get a divorce, my mom’s longtime best friend (who she’d known since first grade) called Tom and invited him to go fishing with her and her husband. Read that again if you need to. I’ll wait.
Not long after my parents separated, Mom went to visit Tom while he was working on his parents’ new house. She asked him if there was any way he would consider coming back and working things out. Tom turned her down. To this, Mom replied, “It’s a good thing you said that, or the kids would have left.” It’s not that she actually wanted him back, but she thought she’d ask, just to see what his response would be. Tom added that his reason for not wanting to get back together was that he and Mom “didn’t click.”
With Tom gone, we needed money coming in. Any potential child support was a long way off (but only for my sister since I’d turned 18 earlier that spring). So after abandoning my delusions of finding a job doing something I liked or was good at, I took whatever I could get.
Mom and I found temporary employment at a computer keyboard plant doing mind-numbing assembly line work. That lasted for about a month. After that was over, Mom landed the first in a long line of jobs in retail, while my career path quickly led me to the first of an endless string of janitor jobs. Everything I was capable of doing, all my “gifts” and “talents,” were useless. The only jobs I could get were cleaning toilets.
Whenever Tom came over to the house to discuss the divorce, at some point he’d get pissed off and storm out. Every time. He’d get up, stomp across the living room, and then dart out the front door, slamming the door behind him. Every meeting ended the same way, except for one night. On that night, I jumped up and made it to the door before he did. As he reached for the doorknob, I grabbed him by the front of his coat with both hands and threw him down into the nearest chair. He was scared out of his mind, which I could tell from the look of horror on his face, his eyes bulging and his bottom lip trembling. That was the first time I ever stood up to him. He never tried storming out again.
Tom later accused my mom of turning my sister and me against him. Sorry, dude. She didn’t have to turn us against you. We never liked you in the first place. We were glad you left. Sure, we would be worse off financially, but we would be far better off without you around.
During the divorce trial, Tom was on the stand, and Mom’s lawyer asked Tom when my birthday was. It seems like a simple enough question, right? A father should know his children’s birthdays. After hemming and hawing, obviously having trouble remembering when I was born, he finally said a date – but it was the wrong one.
We had to move out of our second house after the divorce. We were forced to sell it so Tom could get his half of the money. We sold all but a quarter acre of our land, took our half of the money, and built a new house on it (that was our third house, for those keeping track).
Not long into Tom’s second marriage (married to the woman with whom he was out dancing before he divorced my mom), my sister and I received a long letter from his new wife, going on and on about how great a man he was, how downhearted he felt about his children ignoring him, and demanding that we treat him better. Sorry. No sympathy here. He treated us like crap, and he’s the victim? I thought, “Give it time. You’ll find out what he’s really like.”
Tom bought me a computer drawing program one Christmas, probably trying to impress his new wife by pretending he was a good father. I told him I already had that program. Three months later, he mailed me the receipt so I could take it back. The receipt was my birthday present.
Tom came into our new house once, and only once. I was home alone one afternoon. Mom must have been at work. I don’t know where my sister was – either at work or school, probably. The doorbell rang, and I answered the door. I couldn’t believe who I saw standing on the other side of it. I should have just slammed the door, but, being the polite guy (and wimp) that I am, I let him in. He wanted me to sign a birthday card for his father. Trying to choke back fake tears, Tom said he thought his father wasn’t going to be around much longer (which was a complete exaggeration; his father was fine; he lived for many more years). He asked me if I could also draw a little something, too, so I did a ballpoint pen drawing of Superman on the left-hand side of the inside of the card. I’m assuming his birthday card request was just an excuse to see the inside of our new house.
Tom wanted to pay to send both my sister and me to college, even after the divorce. Sounds good, right? Who would turn that down? Me, for one. Accepting his offer meant him buying his way into my life again. First, it would mean he thought he could see me or talk to me whenever he wanted to. Second, he would hold it over me. If and when I ever made something of myself, he’d want to take credit for my success since he was the one who paid for my education. Sorry. Not interested. We finally got rid of that asshole. I didn’t want him back in our lives. My sister accepted his offer, though, and went to college on his dime a few years later, after she moved to Seattle.
Mom encouraged both of us to take Tom for as much as we could. While I can see that point of view and I can see why my sister did it, I couldn’t do the same. In my opinion, the bad outweighed the good. And yes, because my sister accepted Tom’s money, she had to talk to him on the phone and visit with him in person whenever he wanted.
Tom’s second marriage lasted about ten years. But shockingly, its demise wasn’t due to anything Tom had done (well, not entirely). It turns out his new wife and her son had been stealing money from his parents. Pity. I thought she was the one.
About a year or so after Tom’s second divorce, Mom and I went out to eat at Pizza Hut one night. Tom came in with a young girl (no older than her 20s or 30s, compared to him in his late 50s). When I went up to the salad bar, Tom got up and came over to talk to me. I told him I had recently done some published comic book work (me, having recently had some success in the artistic field and something to brag about). He said he wanted a copy. I agreed to give him one, just so I could get away from him. Later, as Mom and I were leaving, I stopped at the table where Tom was sitting on the same side of the booth as the girl. I told him, “You’re getting them younger all the time, aren’t you?” He smiled and laughed, assuming I had said something funny, not realizing what I’d actually said. But once he finally achieved comprehension, his eyebrows dropped, and his smile quickly faded. Next, I asked, “How do you live with yourself?” I walked away from the table and headed toward the door. When I reached the door, I turned around, and there he was, standing right behind me, looking super pissed. I got right in his face and said, “Sit the fuck down.” I turned around and walked out the door without looking back. That was the second time I ever stood up to him and the first time I ever cussed at him. It felt great.
The next time I saw Tom was at my grandmother’s funeral (my mom’s mother’s). He was all chummy-chummy with me, either forgetting what had happened at Pizza Hut or pretending it didn’t happen. My other grandmother (Tom’s mother) was also there. She came up to me, sobbing, wondering why I never visited them, even though we live in the same town. The reason I never visited is because I hated her and her husband almost as much as I hated Tom. Besides not liking them personally, why would I want anything to do with the two people who spawned the devil, who was my father? I told her I’d visit, completely lying through my teeth.
The last time I saw Tom was across a grocery store parking lot late one evening. He was with his fifth wife (you read that right: fifth). He kept waving at me, trying to get me to come over to talk to him. I kept ignoring him, pretending I didn’t see or hear him. He eventually gave up and entered the store.
I still remember where I was when I heard that Tom had died. I was picking Mom up from work, and she told me the news after she got in the car (she heard the news from her brother, who called her earlier in the day). I couldn’t have been happier. Giddy is too small a word. My first thought was that I wanted to know where he was going to be buried so I could go pee on his grave. We found out later that it’s in another state, so I haven’t gone there yet. But I look forward to it.
Tom, along with my bullies and my teachers, seriously screwed me up. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be enjoying the anxiety, depression, obesity, OCD, PTSD, low self-esteem, and poor self-image issues from which I suffer every day. Who knows how much happier I could have been and how much further I could have gotten in life if they had simply left me alone? Regardless, I’m working really hard to like myself now, to enjoy my own company, and to not put myself down so much in an effort to undo some of the damage they did to me. It’s not easy. And it’s been a long,8slow process. But I’m trying. Wish me luck.
Copyright © 2023 Larry Dempsey. All rights reserved.
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