Dancing In The Rain

I read the local paper on the train in the morning.  Today, buried in the middle of the first section, was a story about a man from Greenwich who savagely beat his wife with a baseball bat.  She was found unconscious, lying in a pool of blood, in an upstairs walk-in closet.  As I read the article, my heart began to pound and tears crept down my cheeks. I had to fight the urge to get up and run.  It was PTSD.

For twenty-one years, I was married to a man who threatened to kill or harm me on a regular basis.  I knew he meant it because I had, on different occasions, my head slammed into a wall,  a glass broken over my head, bruises on my chest, my glasses broken on my face and other things of that nature.  Nothing was ever serious enough to require medical attention.  It was just enough to let me know he meant business. Most of it was psychological terrorism.  He promised to throw my cat out the window, to lock me naked out of the apartment, to smash everything I owned, to see me in my coffin.  He told me I was a disaster and that is why God didn’t give me any children.  I remember one night early in our marriage when we were arguing and he told me nothing was mine, it was all his.  I insisted that wasn’t true; that I had brought a certain amount of  equity to the marriage. He kept at me for hours until I wound up in tears on the floor.  He had me sign a piece of paper that said everything was his, nothing was mine. After I signed it, he read it then tore it up and threw it in the fire.  The argument was over and I realized at that moment that he had the power.

How do I explain that to people?  How do I explain that an intelligent, educated, talented woman allowed someone to do that to her?  “Why didn’t you leave?”  “I would never put up with that.”  “How could you marry a man like that?”

Well you never know until you are in that situation, do you?  That wasn’t the man I married. The man I married told me he loved me more than anything in the world and couldn’t live without me.  He treated me like a queen.  He did everything for me.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized that he did everything for me to keep control and to deride me for not doing anything. It’s a Catch 22, isn’t it?

His anger and rage came slowly.  One day he smashed a vase.  Another day he smashed the answering machine because it had too many messages on it from my friends.  But then he would turn around and be so sorry and tell me he only got mad because he loved me so much.  And then one day it was me he smashed. But by then I was so convinced that I had done something to deserve it because I knew how much he loved me and someone who loves you would only hurt you if you did something awful. Right?

I began to believe that I could control his rages (and that’s what they were, rages; his whole face would distort and I could see his brain shut down, the “Monsters from the Id” would take over).  I thought that I just had to act a certain way or say certain things or be quiet at certain times and he would stay the sweet, loving man I married.

But I never knew when they were coming.  It kept me in a heightened sensory state, always on alert for signs that the anger was building.  We’d be at dinner, having a pleasant conversation and suddenly he would get very quiet.  I’d look up and see his face starting to change and know the tsunami was about to hit.  I’d spend days later trying to think what I could have done differently to have stopped it.  That’s the irony,  I was trying to control the uncontrolable.

And keep in mind, this was all happening in private or someplace where no one knew us.  In front of family and friends, he was a prince.  Everyone thought he doted on me, he wouldn’t let me lift a finger.  How lucky I was to have such an attentive husband.  How could I tell them otherwise?  No one would believe that when we were alone he called me whore and  woke me up in the middle of the night to yell at me and throw me out of bed and then when I was settled on the couch and falling asleep, wake me up again and apologize and beg me to come back to bed.  I know because I tried to tell my mother and aunt what was going on and they thought I was exaggerating.  How do you fight that when you are already broken down?

And yet, when he was dying with colon cancer, I took care of him day and night.  And when he died, I was lost.  I went into a deep depression.  For all that happened between us, I did still love him.  I should have hated him.  But he wasn’t a monster all the time. I guess it’s human nature to be ever hopeful for the best and in the long run, to remember the the better parts of a life. Or maybe I was just mourning the life I deserved and never had.

He’s been dead thirteen years now.  It was several years before I understood that I was abused, before I could speak openly about it, before I understood that there was no shame on me.  It was a therapist that I went to for help with my depression who first explained to me that as someone who experienced domestic abuse, I suffered from a form of PSTD.  And it’s true.  I am married to a wonderful man now.  But I still don’t find it funny when he tries to scare me by jumping out of the dark.  And I don’t like to be held down or wrestled with even in fun. Or grabbed from behind.  And I know he doesn’t understand why I get upset when he yells at the Giants for making a stupid play. But I can’t stand yelling or anger, even silly fan anger, from someone I love.

But why did this story today get to me?  I’ve heard or read about plenty of men who have killed their wives or girlfriends and it doesn’t make me cry and shake. Was it because this was an upper-class, educated, professional couple who no one would ever think this would happen to? Maybe. Maybe it was the baseball bat.  Usually it’s a gun and that’s cold and only takes one shot.  A bat is up close and personal.  And ugly.  And shows someone is really pissed off. Or maybe it was because when the police got there, Michael De Maio was very calm and when they asked what happened, he freely admitted bashing his wife’s head in. “I lost it”, he said.  “I just lost it.”

For a long time I believed that was how I would die.  He would just get so angry and pick up a hammer or knife or frying pan or whatever was handy and he would just “lose it”. I guess Diane De Maio wasn’t lucky enough to have her husband die before she did.

The house where Michael DiMaio allegedly smashed his wife’s head in

So I made it home OK last night. No demonic slugs. No mutant bears. It was after 11:00. Pretty late (well, pretty late for someone who has to get up at the butt crack of dawn to go to work). Called my husband. Let him know I was OK. Let the dogs out. Fed them. And that’s when I should have turned out the lights and gone up to bed. I had put 300 miles on the car that day. Most of it in legendary Tri-State traffic. I was over tired. I felt like I had been standing too close to a smokey fire: my lungs singed, eyes burning, skin sandpapered. When someone is home with me, I have no trouble going to bed. I can barely keep my eyes open through the 10:00 news. But when I’m alone, when it’s just me and the dogs, I can’t bring myself to climb those stairs.

I wouldn’t call it insomnia. I always think of insomnia as not being able to sleep. This is not wanting to sleep. Maybe I get it from my mother. My father worked nights and she would keep me up with her well after a little girl should be asleep. But maybe that was my fault. Until I was seven, I wouldn’t go to sleep unless she was in the bed with me. So I guess if she wanted to watch the Tonight Show with Jack Paar, I had to be up too. She asked me once when I was in my twenties if I needed her to be in bed with me because I was afraid of the dark. I told her no, it was because I didn’t like the bears staring at me. (Here we go with bears again.) She asked me what I meant and I described laying on my back and looking to the left and seeing the bears. There was a yellow background and each bear appeared to be in a shadow box or frame. They wore blue lederhosen with gold buttons and had one foot raised as if in mid dance or march. And they were playing instruments; one a drum, one a concertina, one a fiddle. They were smiling but they were staring at me and it made me uncomfortable. My mother’s jaw dropped. “That was the wallpaper we had in your room when you were first born. You described it exactly. But I replaced that paper before you were two. Your changing table was up against the wall and the way I always laid you on it, the wall was to the left of your head”. “Well, maybe I just saw a photo of it and that’s what I’m remembering.” “No, I have no photos of that room and anyway, any picture would have been black and white and you knew all the colors.” This, perhaps, was the first indication that I was not a normal child.

But back to not wanting to go to sleep. Maybe I’m just a night owl. In my teen years I would stay up till all hours listening to late night FM radio where they played comedy albums. (Remember those?) Mel Brooks’ 2,000 Year Old Man (Let em all go to hell except cave 76!) Monty Python (Are you Mary Queen of Scotts? I am. screams & crashing noises). Fire Sign Theater (Shhhh. I think someone is tapping the line. tap dancing sounds). Mort Sahl, the album about the Kennedys, Bob Newhart. I loved them all. Probably went a long way to shaping my idea of what’s funny.

Thing is though, I like the early morning. I’ve learned to love that quite time right before the sun is fully up and there’s a little mist in the air. Before the birds are in full chorus. I love to take my cup of coffee out on the back step and watch the dogs sniff around trying to find the little straggler frogs still hiding in the wet grass. Sometimes the humming birds have an aerial battle for possession of the feeder and they whizz past my head like feathery F15s. And I just breath.

In the meantime, I sit with a glass of wine and watch Fraizer and Everybody Love Raymond and Law and Order and Law and Order SVU and Law and Order Criminal Intent until Maggie comes to me and tilts her head and wags her tail and looks at me with eyes that say “Can we go to bed now? So I click the remote. Give them their nighttime treats. Check the doors. Turn off the lights and climb the stairs to the second floor bear-free zone where I know I’ll fall asleep as soon as I switch off the lamp.

I was a Theater Arts Major in college. In those days we called it Speech and Theater. I think that was because “Speech and Theater” sounded more stable than “Thear-ter Arts“. We could convince our parents that there was potential employment in “Speech” as a therapist, teacher , etc. but being in anything that ended in “Arts” meant we would probably be living at home for many years after graduation.

I loved those college years (and the first few years after when we all moved to NYC and lived as a wild tribe whose days were filled with inventiveness and creativity). We used every opportunity to write and perform. We sang, danced, emoted, improvised and devised new ways to entertain ourselves and anyone who would give us their attention. We had no fear. It was the most alive I’ve ever felt.

Over time, it became more and more difficult to keep up that existence. The jobs we took to pay the rent gradually owned more of us. This was not college. There is no “Pass/Fail” in real life where you can do the bare minimum and still advance. There is only “Working/Unemployed” and a rare few get paid to work in “Thear-ter Arts”.

Other things happened. AIDS. People died. People moved away. People got discouraged.

I was one of the discouraged ones. I found I did not have the thick skin or unshakable self confidence needed to swim with the entertainment sharks. I began to believe that perhaps this had all been childish playacting and I needed to grow-up. And I was moving up at my job. Someone appreciated my talents (even if they weren’t the talents I appreciated.)

Then I met my first husband. He was madly in love with me and used that mad love to move me further and further from myself until I disappeared into him. I learned that my dreams were foolish and I was a disaster. I owned nothing. I thought nothing. I was nothing.

Twenty four years crawled by and then he died. I was free to start again. But like an animal who has spent much of its life in a cage, when the door was opened, I cowered in the corner. I couldn’t come out because I didn’t exist. Eventually, I learned to make my own decisions again, to do some of the things that used to make me feel good, to become myself again.

I remarried. An old friend who also loves me madly. But his love doesn’t consume, it nurtures. With patience, he coaxed a vibrant, happy spirit out of a dried up papery ghost. Still, old habits die hard. The heavy, thick chains I dragged behind me would make Jacob Marley shudder.

I fell into a routine. Work. Home. Work. Home. Waiting for that time when everything would fall into place; when I would do the things that gave me joy again.

Then one morning, walking zombie-like through Grand Central Station, I saw a poster in the window of a bookstore. It was a dancer, a ballerina in a slicker and umbrella, doing a grand jette over a puddle. The caption read “It’s not about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” I stood there staring at that poster, tears in my eyes. “Yes”, I thought. “I want to learn how to dance in the rain.” Then I remembered – I already know.

My senior year in college. I forget the reason, but my best friend Martin and I were not on our usual 70’s uniform of jeans and funky shirts. I was wearing a dress and platform heels and Martin was in jacket and tie. We were on the opposite side of the campus from where we needed to be and it was pouring rain. We didn’t have an umbrella. Then in one of those rare moments that seem planned but are completely spontaneous, we both began to sing. “I’m singing in the rain. Just singing in the rain. What a glorious feeling. I’m happy again.” We started dancing. Our best Fred and Ginger. Across the Quad. In the pouring rain. We tapped. We twirled. We dipped. We jumped on benches and low walls. The whole way across. The few people out in the downpour clapped and cheered. We arrived at our destination soaked but elated, feeling like we had just performed at Albert Hall.

I can do that again. I know how. I know what it feels like. I don’t have to wait. What a glorious feeling. I’m happy again.