PLEASE MR. OUIJA - pt 2

PLEASE MR. OUIJA – pt 2

 Who did that?

 **

 It happened gradually. The change, I mean. Maybe I should be more specific. I should have said, “HIS” change.

 I’d gotten used to John’s ignorance when it came to our family. For whatever reason, through the next few years, he no longer seemed interested enough to be an active participant in family matters.

 “I’m planning a family picnic at the lake tomorrow. I thought we’d leave after church, spend the late morning and be home by late afternoon. What would you like me to pack for lunch?”

 His reply? “You take the boys. I don’t feel like going. Have fun.”

 After a few weeks of that – almost verbatim conversation, I stopped asking. And yet, I was determined to try something else.

 “It’s a beautiful afternoon. How about if we take the boys across the street to the park and ride our bikes for, oh, maybe an hour?”

 “Nah, not in the mood to ride my bike. You go.”

 “Okay, then, we can do something else. What would you like to do?”

 And that’s how I knew.

 “I’m going to Sue’s apartment. She said she needed help moving her couch. I won’t be long.”

 My thought? “Oh, her again.” Sue was a young woman, about ten years my junior, who worked with John. She found an apartment only a few blocks from our house. So close, in fact, you could walk there. In the beginning, I didn’t recognize her interest in him. In a way, even if I had, I never thought he’d act on it. Yet, her “neediness” and “helplessness” always had him finding his way to “help her”. And she never bothered to call anyone else. I know this because I asked the other men that knew her.

 It really didn’t take me long to acknowledge what was happening. And yet, I still trusted John. Or maybe it was because I didn’t want to NOT trust him.

 So, life went on and so did other things.

 Maybe, because of this new development in my personal life, I never fully noticed what was happening inside the house.

 It might have been something subtle: the cabinet doors might rattle, we might feel a slight shift on the floor (which we attributed to a truck going down the road), or maybe the room would feel a bit colder - any other slight bit of occurrence that ordinarily might be easily explained away.

 On a gloomy, Saturday afternoon that had the clouds threatening rain, Ken and Jim were in Ken’s room playing their old Atari game. Since John was home and watching TV, I decided to take advantage of the quiet and bake a cake for after supper.

 Even though the weather was warm, we had our windows open only a crack since the rain was imminent and the wind started picking up.

 Without warning and without reason, Jim’s bedroom door opened and slammed shut hard enough to rattle the walls.

 John jumped off the couch, ran to Ken’s bedroom, flung the door open, and yelled viciously at the boys, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You plan on breaking down the house?”

 Ken was nine and Jim was seven and even at that rambunctious age, they were good kids.

 “Dad, we didn’t do anything.”

 “Doors don’t slam themselves so don’t give me that line of bull! You’re both grounded!”

 With that, he walked to the wall where the Atari was plugged in was, yanked it out of the socket, grabbed the game and then stomped out of the bedroom. What he did next was unthinkable. He took the game down to the cellar and grabbing his hammer, smashed it into pieces.

 That was the first time I’d ever seen him that angry. He grabbed his keys and without a word, stormed out of the house.

 He didn’t come home for two days and while my sons and I still walked on eggshells, not knowing when he’d come home or what kind of mood he’d be in, at least we could breathe a bit easier when he wasn’t there.

 Things in the house, however, didn’t ease up because he was gone.

 I heard Ken call out, “Jim, you left the faucet on in the bathroom.”

 “I haven’t been in the bathroom since this morning when I took my shower.”

 As Ken stood there looking at the faucet, it slowly turned itself off.

 “Uh, Mom. Come here.” He was quiet and I could tell a bit unnerved.

 I walked to the bathroom and Ken explained what happened. As we stood there, the faucet turned itself back on. Then off. Then on again.

 We slowly backed out of the bathroom. After about ten minutes, the faucet finally stopped its little on/off dance and yet, the boys and I looked at each other, neither of us knowing what to say.

 The back door opened and closed, then the cellar door opened and slammed shut. Our puppy lay shaking and whimpering under the kitchen table.

 Jim, hiding behind me asked, “Mom, what’s happening?”

 “I don’t know or at least, I don’t think I know.”

 Ken replied, “As long as it happened when dad wasn’t here. Otherwise, he’d be blaming us for that, too.”

 No sooner did Ken say that, the front door opened and slammed shut.

 John walked in and said, “What do plan to make for supper?”

 John and his bad mood were back.