Chapter 66

I spent an hour and a half talking to my Dad, telling him first about how I couldn't seem to come up with one plan and then stick with it all the way through. After I was finished telling him about that, then I spent the rest of the time telling him about my latest problems with Joyce.

Joyce hadn't actually said anything about our lovemaking, but she hadn't needed to. I knew without her making any comment. Joyce hadn't responded to me like she always had in the past. Worse than that, I hadn't really responded to her either. Neither of us had come away from our night together in any way satisfied. This was a new feeling for me, and one I didn't relish having.

"Sex isn't everything, Kenny. It was probably a result of the pressure the two of you have been under. Joyce will understand." My father really didn't have a clue. He lived in a different world than the rest of us. I should stick to discussing business with him. He was always helpful in that arena.

"I don't think so Dad. I'm pretty confident that she'll believe I deliberately held back. She knows I can do much better. We've always done much better together. Last night was pathetic. I wouldn't blame her for giving up on me now."

It was me who abruptly changed the subject on him. I suddenly grew tired of discussing my failures and shortcomings with him. Instead, I started talking about the need to begin expanding the Quick Snacks program outside the confining geographical area we'd been limiting ourselves to.

I wanted to keep five full sales teams in the South, but send five others out to the west coast, and the other five up along the Eastern seaboard. It was time to find out if there was more than a narrow regional appeal for this particular distribution strategy.

I wasn't expecting any serious objections from my father. I'd been the one who had shown enough faith in the program to loan the company the money it was costing to hire, train, and equip the sales teams. I was underwriting all current expenses, and had assured my father that I would continue to do so as we expanded outward.

We were growing quickly enough so any uncovered expenses were nominal in size. In fact, we were operating in the black, but there was a big lag time in paying for the sales commissions being earned and accrued by the existing team members. I was handling that part of it as well, paying out the earned commissions and waiting for the company payments to catch up to me.

"I've been letting you run with this, Kenny. It's your program, and you know best whether you're ready to expand it or not. I appreciate you shouldering the financial burden for getting the program launched. I don't want you going forward the way you have been though, if doing so will jeopardize your trading program results in any manner. That program remaining on track and profitable is one of the keys to all our other results remaining profitable. With the credit commitments we have in force, we can't afford to begin losing margins on our bakery operations. We need a cheap and steady supply of grains and other ingredients. We're in a tough economy right now, and competition for every dollar of sales has tightened from what it once was. We can't afford to take any steps backward."

"You needn't worry about that, Dad. I'm not sure why things have been going so well with the trading programs, but it seems like I'm finding many more profitable opportunities to make trades. My volume of trading is up sharply, but the risk I'm assuming has never been lower. It seems like people are lining up to give me their money. I've never seen so many people in the market, all trading in the wrong direction. This last month has been far and away my most profitable trading month. Sometimes, I end up worried that I must be hallucinating. Billy Ray gives me the final balance reconciliations for each of my trading accounts, after each day's trading, and it seems like everything I'm doing is working out well for me. Last week there were seven out trades, with six of them settled in my favor. The other one was basically a wash anyway."

"You do seem well focused in your trading. Frank has been calling me, wondering why there is such a big difference from before. I didn't know what I could say to him, other than no one has been calling me to complain about their grain prices, or about the manner and quality of their grain deliveries. In fact, its just the opposite of that. People are calling to tell me they'd be really up against it if they couldn't count on your grain brokerage prices."

"Tell them not to be worried. It's the one area where I still feel confident of my competence. I just wish everything else was going as well as the trading is."

After I left my Dad's study, I went in to tell Gerta that I was going to head over to the country club to hit some balls for an hour or so. I drove Joyce's car out there.

I was alone on the range, pounding out ball after ball, concentrating on nothing other than the contact I was making. Most of the time I wouldn't even look up to see the flight of the ball. I didn't even notice when Shirley and her father came out on the range to hit two small buckets of balls. Mr. Jones and I had spoken on the phone several times in the past month or so, mostly about me needing another training crew to come down and help get salesmen trained and ready to get out in the field producing new accounts for us.

I nodded to both of them as soon as I noticed them hitting over at the far end of the range from me. Ron Jones nodded back to me, a neutral expression on his face when he did it. Shirley didn't say or do anything. I saw her blushing, and knew she was uncertain about how she should react to me. I didn't want her being uncomfortable at running into me like she had, so I put my head back down and began hitting ball after ball again.

I was surprised when I looked up again, half an hour later, to see Shirley standing less than ten feet from me. Her father was nowhere to be seen. I had only stopped hitting balls when I reached the bottom of the jumbo bucket.

"Hi, Kenny." Shirley seemed hesitant about even speaking to me. I wondered why she hadn't just hit her small bucket of balls and left with her father.

"Hello, Shirley. Are you and your dad playing here today?"

"We were going to play nine, but, I decided it was a good time for you and I to have a talk. I wanted to tell you myself why I've decided to leave the rest of the family and find somewhere else to live." I could tell that Shirley was uncomfortable speaking those words to me. Her face reflected the uneasiness she was feeling.

"Joyce didn't tell me you had decided to leave again."

"She doesn't know yet, no one does. I've just decided this morning. I don't want to be a part of what's happening with all of us now. I don't think it's healthy for the children, not living like we have been. They're beginning to get older, and they ask so many confusing questions now. It really isn't healthy for them to be growing up in such a different and uncertain living situation. Derek has started playing this role with all the girls. I'm worried that he and Little Bertie are getting into things they're both too immature to handle."

"Kids are just naturally curious, Shirley. They're getting to an age where they notice differences and want to find out about them firsthand." Joyce had warned me that Derek had been caught, several times, touching some of the girls inappropriately. Like me, she believed it was a natural, normal, phase he was going through. I knew the wives had all taken pains to speak with Derek, and the others, about what was appropriate, and what was off limits to them.

"I don't want Derek acting that way. He thinks he's acting just like you do with us. He has been fighting with Bunny, trying to show all the girls that he's the Alpha Male."

"I talked to Joyce about some of this, Shirley. She says it isn't as bad as what you're saying. They're all still little children. I think you're overreacting."

"It doesn't matter, Kenny. I was simply telling you what I've decided. When I get things moved and settled, I'll let Joyce know what I've decided about you having visits with the children." It was only when Shirley turned and started running off towards the clubhouse that I began to realize how difficult talking to me about her decision had been. I also began to see how hard it must have been for Joyce to convince Shirley to move back in with them again earlier.

To me, this was just one more sign that the whole family situation was in trouble. I knew Shirley was overreacting, but if it hadn't been her fears for Derek, it would have been something else. The same was true for Emily and Brenda. All of them were uncomfortable with the way things were now.

Joyce and I were the two key players all the others revolved around. Everything I'd seen and experienced since leaving the clinic told me that this was true. Unless Joyce and I found some way to bridge our differences, our family was doomed to disintegrate. I couldn't hold it together, and now, apparently, neither could Joyce.

I took my golf bag down to the pro shop and turned it over to one of the assistants there. I'd come to the club to pound on some balls and lose myself in thought while I did so. Shirley's visit was unexpected and troubling to me. Instead of me having a chance to work on my latest problem with Joyce, I now had to come to terms with this new reality.

I didn't remember all these undercurrents operating in my life before my breakdown. Things had happened then, but they were usually short lived, because they were brought up and dealt with fairly promptly. What we had occurring now was a host of problems that had festered too long, and were now spawning new problems for all of us. No changes being considered would do anything to help the underlying problems. Shirley taking the children and leaving wasn't going to solve the real problems.

I was back in Joyce's car, driving back to Mama's house when it finally hit me fully. I was the problem.

In spite of my reconciliation with Eddie, Dale and Cindy, the differences in me were still coming between all of us. I had them with me, but it wasn't the same as it once had been. I'd seen too much evidence of the differences in our relationships with each other.

I wasn't appreciating them like I had been, and they weren't getting all they wanted from me either. We were all compromising, hoping that time would bring the improvements we needed. For some reason, listening to Shirley telling me that she was leaving the family, brought all those differences up into my conscious mind. For the first time I could remember, I realized that it was going to be an all or nothing proposition for me. No compromise was going to be possible because our lives together were too intertwined. It took all of us to make any of it stable. We were bleeding off our emotional resources and reserves. To me, Shirley's worry about Derek was proof enough of the correctness of my thinking. I couldn't imagine her being that worried about Derek's behavior before my breakdown. It would have just been something we laughed about and handled, nothing that required such an overwhelming response.

At noon, Joyce came over to Mama's with our five children. It was obvious, looking at the defeated look on her face, that she hadn't been able to talk anyone else into coming over with her. Even Dale, Eddie, and Cindy had decided not to come with her.

Mama and Gerta tried their best to put a happy face on the day, but, though it seemed to work out well enough with the children, Joyce and I both had long faces throughout lunch. As soon as lunch was over, everyone else melted away, leaving Joyce and me alone together.

"I saw Shirley at the club, Joyce. She's decided to find her own place to live again."

"I know. She called me right after she finished talking with you. Emily and Brenda are going back to Lawrence after you leave too. You can't just treat them like you did, Kenny. I had a hard enough time getting them both to agree to come back to Ridgeline in the first place."

"Last night wasn't very good for us, was it?"

"This isn't about that, Kenny. I really tried to do all I could to make this weekend a success for us, and look how it all turned out?"

"I know. It's my fault, Joyce, not yours. I'm not blaming you for any of this."

"Cindy thinks she's going to go back to how she was before she came over to your house again. She said everything's too different now for her. I think Eddie and Dale are having second thoughts too. I can't keep going through all of this with you, Kenny. I'm too tired to do it anymore."

"I'd probably give up too if I was you, Joyce. I can accept now that the problem is me. I'm not the same, and I can't ever be. We can't keep trying to force something that doesn't fit anymore. I don't fit the role I used to fill with all of you. I wish I did, but I know I don't. Even when I try to be that Kenny for people, it isn't working. I can't see things the same way as I did before. I don't like the same things I used to like."

"We all can see that, Kenny. You don't have to tell us that. Things always have to be your way now. None of us can adjust to that much of a difference in you."

"I believe you. I accept that too. Now what?"

"I don't know. I don't want to think about it right now. It doesn't matter what I say anyway. In the end, you'll decide, and then you'll tell us what you've decided. I'm going to quit worrying about it. Nothing I do seems to help anyway, so I'm going to start worrying about just me and the children." Joyce was acting defeated and depressed. It wasn't like her to just give up in anything. For her to be talking to me like this, the situation really had to be bad.

"You never answered my question about last night, Joyce. It was bad, wasn't it?" She got up from the table and started walking away from me. She shot me one last look, letting me see how angry she had become with me. "I tried to give you what you asked for, Joyce. I warned you what would happen if it was just your old Kenny by himself."

Joyce spun around and glared at me. I was once again glad that I was so much bigger than her. This time though, in spite of our size difference, I thought she really might attack me.

"You made it as bad as you could just to make me think I should accept how you now are."

"I didn't. When I did that, I left it up to him to do whatever he was going to. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be like what we were used to, but I didn't interfere in any way."

"It isn't about the sex, Kenny. None of us like the way you treat us, or how you act when we're around you. Eddie told us how good the sex still is, but that isn't enough, not by itself. We miss the love, and the way you used to act with all of us."

"I still love all of you. I never stopped loving you." I felt myself getting angry. This was just another way Joyce had of making me feel bad about who I had become. They all had to know that I still loved them. I'd told each of them that I did.

"I think you believe that, but you aren't showing us anything we could say demonstrated any of this love you supposedly have for us. We see it with the children now, and that's a big improvement. You can't just tell people that you love them. You have to show them as well. You think all you have to do is give someone three or four orgasms and it will prove something to them. It doesn't, Kenny. I'm not saying it doesn't help things, but, if that's all we get from you, it isn't enough."

"We have to begin somewhere, Joyce. I'm not spending all my time trying to come up with new reasons why you and I can't be together. I'm trying to make us fit again. There are so many things we could be doing together, things that benefit all of us, but all you seem to be concerned about are the things that are changed that you don't like. Today, after Shirley told me what she was going to do, I thought about it. None of these things have to happen, not if we were working together to prevent them. The way we're going now, everything is going to be lost, just because a few things aren't the way we'd both like them to be."

"It isn't just a few things, and the things are a lot more important to me than they seem to be to you. It isn't just me that feels this way. You make it sound like I'm the only one standing in the way of all of us being happy together."

"No, that isn't what I believe. I believe that you and I being split up allows all these other things to seem more important, and harder to solve, than they really are. This is a problem that is primarily just you and me. All the others are taking their lead from what happens with us."

"Now you've gone right back to saying I'm the problem again."

"No, I'm the problem. What I'm saying is you need to be part of the solution to my problem. You need to make a sacrifice if you really don't want the family to split apart like it seems ready to."

"I tried that already. It doesn't work for me."

"You never tried. When you saw problems, you pulled away from them, and from me. That isn't how you solve problems, Joyce. I'm trying to change, but you make it harder when all you seem to do is tell me you don't like who I am now. I've made changes. You said yourself that I've gotten better with the kids. I've tried with Eddie, Dale and Cindy too. It isn't as perfect as I'd like it, but I'm trying to make it better all the time. I could use your help with that. I trust what you say to me."

"You don't trust anyone, Kenny. That's part of your problem. Even Mama and Gerta tell me that. You used to listen to people before, but now you just do whatever you want to."

I knew she was right about that. This weekend had been a good example of me making so many changes to the agreed upon plans. I'd done it at the house with Emily, Brenda and Joyce, and again, with Joyce, over at Mama's house. Always, as it was happening, I'd believed it was change for the betterment of the existing plan. It hadn't turned out that way though. If I'd stuck with the original plans, things would probably have gone better.

"I trust you more than anyone else, Joyce. I can learn to listen again. All it requires is some self control and practice. I have self control. You need to see if you can learn to live with the differences in me that I can't change. We won't know which differences are changeable as long as you don't try to discover them."

"I want what I used to have with you, and you can't give me that."

"No, I can't. We can get into a circular argument about that, making no progress, or we can try to work together to see how much we still do have together. You made your decision without really knowing what was left that you did like."

"Why don't you tell me what's left then?" Joyce had come closer as we spoke to each other. This was our longest conversation about this subject since I had come out of my dormant period in the clinic.

"I'm not sure what's left. So far, all I know is that you aren't happy with the whole package. We had good sex while I was at the clinic, I thought. We still work pretty well together when we're working on the business, the meal programs, or the group homes. We don't seem to still be having the same kinds of problems with me being around the children that we once had. Mostly, it seems like you just don't like the way I act around you and the other wives."

"I think you were being on your best behavior in the clinic, because you wanted the doctor to release you. Since you've been released, you act more like you did before you started getting better. You don't try to cooperate with me anymore."

"It's difficult to cooperate when someone is telling you that they hate who you've become, without even pointing out any specific small changes they need you to make."

"It isn't small changes, Kenny. They aren't even the kinds of things you can change. It's your whole attitude, the way you look at us, and how you treat all of us now. You aren't the same. You don't act like you used to, and that was what we loved most about you."