"I didn't propose to you," Dad said. "I told you I was going to marry
you."
Six months later, they got married. I always thought it was the most
romantic story I'd ever heard, but Mom didn't like it. She didn't think it
was romantic at all.
"I had to say yes," Mom said. "Your father wouldn't take no for an
answer." Besides, she explained, she had to get away from her mother,
who wouldn't let her make even the smallest decision on her own. "I had
no idea your father would be even worse."
Dad left the air force after he got married because he wanted to make a
fortune for his family, and you couldn't do that in the military. In a few
months, Mom was pregnant. When Lori came out, she was mute and bald
as an egg for the first three years of her life. Then suddenly, she sprouted
curly hair the color of a new penny and started speaking nonstop. But it
sounded like gibberish, and everyone thought she was addled except for
Mom, who understood her perfectly and said she had an excellent
vocabulary.
A year after Lori was born, Mom and Dad had a second daughter, Mary
Charlene, who had coal-black hair and chocolate-brown eyes, just like
Dad. But Mary Charlene died one night when she was nine months old.
Crib death, Mom always said. Two years later, I was born. "You were to
replace Mary Charlene," Mom said. She told me that she had ordered up
a second redheaded girl so Lori wouldn't feel like she was weird. "You
were such a skinny baby," Mom used to tell me. "The longest, boniest
thing the nurses had ever seen."
Brian arrived when I was one. He was a blue baby, Mom said. When he
was born, he couldn't breathe and came into this world having a seizure.
Whenever Mom told the story, she would hold her arms rigid and clench
her teeth and go bug-eyed to show how Brian looked. Mom said when