The weekend is over. Saturday’s warmth and Sunday’s chilling rain are now a collage of sensory images I will process and adapt to as this Monday progresses. Still I’m haunted as my day begins. But for a simple look my brother gave his son on Saturday, I wouldn’t be thinking of him, my father, the Monster. It’s not my brother’s fault; it’s genetics. My brother can’t mimic the man he doesn’t remember. And he sure as hell, can’t deliver a reassuring discourse to quell the tsunami that’s about to overcome me. My brother is the fortunate one—blessed. For me, the older brother, it’s different. The Monster has come calling. I try to ignore him, but he takes hold of my thoughts; his Monday’s ransom demand is simple: I must endure another memory—another challenge to my perceived reality. I must oblige the insanity.

 Late spring’s warmth is a welcomed feeling. Nature’s rebirth has regenerated a faith that all will be not as it’s been. The beatings have abated as the Monster has morphed back in to my father, a man who sells real estate out of model homes built on farmland relinquished to a suburban fantasy idealized in television shows and movies. I’m ten years young and readying myself for school. My two older sisters have finished the battle of the bathroom, and have donned their Bishop Fenwick brown skirts and white blouses with Peter Pan collars. My diabetic sister, sixteen months my junior, waits for my mother to test strip her urine, before we both head off to school, leaving my brother to sip on his grape juice as my father finishes his sunny-side-up eggs and coffee. This particular morning things are calm. My father has yet to put on his grey suit, white shirt and red tie—his real estate uniform. He sits in his white t-shirt and beige chinos casting judgment on the Red Sox, as he reads the Boston Globe in a grey fog of Pall Mall smoke. My mother is the first one to notice the murky puddle seeping upwards from beneath the front lawn. She calls for my father. My brother laughs as I sneak out from the kitchen, curious as to what could distract my father from his morning read and smoke. The calm has subsided.

Septic tank? I have no idea what that means, or what it is. My father does; he surveys the front lawn, swears at my mother and orders her to get his boots. She’s subservient to his command, oblivious to my nosiness. I step outside as my father looks up to a fine blue sky, and begins to curse my two older sisters. “How many times have I told them not to flush that shit down the toilet? How many? Christ, Suzanne, hurry the fuck up will you?”

That voice is not my father’s. I want to go back into the house before he notices me, but it’s too late. “Get me the shovel,” he barks without looking at me. The eyes in the back of his head are in stalking-mode; his ability to sniff out my fear is acute. “Don’t just stand there!” Across the street, Gary and David Garafano walk to the bus stop with their heads down. They won’t acknowledge me; they won’t pay homage to the Monster.

My mother and I cross paths as I run towards the garage. She looks at me, but she doesn’t see me. There are two shovels leaning against the heating oil tank. I take both of them, not wanting to disappoint the Monster. I hurry back to the front lawn. The stench is overwhelming: shit, Old Spice, and Vitalis, mix with the fear permeating the eastern breeze flowing in from the Atlantic. Even the crows notice the smells and retreat southwards over the cattail fields into the distant pines and birch trees. The pheasants remain stealth in the cattails, refusing to make a sound.

The Monster slips his feet into his black boots, leaves them unfastened, and walks to the edge of the muck; he taps at the sludge with the spade. I clutch the old coal shovel incase he demands it. “This is all I need,” he says, “I’m not dealing with this now.” He turns and faces me.  He holds out his shovel; I brace for its impact. “You dig in the center of that crap until you hit cement.”

My ignorance irritates him. I begin to follow him into the muck, but my mother pulls me back. “Chuck and Cherie need to get to the bus stop,” she says. Her freckled face has no dimension as she looks at the Monster and then diverts her stare to the Murphy’s house.

Mrs. Murphy herds her hundreds of kids into her station wagon and smiles an uncomfortable smile. She’s never seen the Monster, only heard him from the safety of property lines. I sense her fear.

“Are you paying attention?” the Monster snarls. He trudges back into the muck and kicks at it. “Right here…dig right here. There’s a cement cap. Find it.”

I pick up his shovel and walk towards the muck.

“Not now, you fat fuck, when you get home from school.”

My diabetic sister comes out the front door and waits. The Monster, fearful of her illness, lets us pass down the driveway and out to Sycamore Circle. My mother wishes us a good day, but it’s too late, instinct tells me my sister’s talisman won’t protect me…it never does.

I don’t remember much of that particular school day. Fifth grade and my teacher Mrs. Wilson are not part of this memory I must endure to free my Monday from the Monster’s hold. I do have a vague recollection of coming home to my mother sitting in her darkness, whispering that she made brownies—the juice bars were for my diabetic sister. My brother is in the backyard playing in the sandbox with his Tonka Toys. That’s where I find the Monster’s choice of shovel. I order my brother to stay in his sandbox while I make my way to the muck in the front yard. How my green Swamp Boots replaced my PF Flyers, I don’t have a clue. I just know I dug that hole and found the cement cap as best I could. I overcame the stench and the ridicule of Gary and David Garafano with all the bravado I could muster. Finished, I went inside the house that late spring afternoon convinced I had appeased the Monster.

“What is this…?” The Monster has come home early for supper; his grey suit is rumpled; his slicked-back hair shines in the confused sunlight.

“I dug the hole,” I call out to him as I run out of the house, letting the screen door slam, something that in itself is enough of a provocation to send the Monster in search of the brown alligator-hide belt he uses to strip my flesh of its dignity.

“I can see that,” he says.

“I found the cement cap.”

“Come here!”

What happened next is legend in my family. No one speaks of it, but my siblings do remember. The Monster walked into the muck wearing my father’s cordovan wingtips. He sloshed around in mud and shit building his anger to a crescendo.  I don’t know how he did it, but he extended his arms to the front porch and caught me by the shoulder, dragging me towards the hole I dug. He threw me at that hole, tripping me. As I tried to steady myself on my sinking knees, he kicked me in the back, then planted his knee into my neck, forcing my head downwards into the abyss of shit, floating Kotex pads, and mangled toilet paper. I couldn’t hold back the puke; it flew out of me in wretched waves, drowning out my mother’s screams. My three sisters cried out for the Monster to show mercy. Their pleading was the last sound I heard as darkness engulfed me. The egregiousness of my crime was simple: I was the fat, lazy son of a real estate salesman who didn’t dig a hole wide enough for the Honey wagon to enjoy its meal. I never appeased the Monster.

The blue jays and chickadees are singing in the backyard—my Connecticut backyard. I’m no longer that fat, lazy son of a real estate salesman. I wait and listen, lingering between what is and what has been. Enough of this, the ransom is paid in full. Give me back my Monday.

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