“Bad boyfriends don’t disguise themselves; their girlfriends do it for them.” – Laurie Notaro

During my phone company days close to Christmas, I was sent to check on a new installer trying to connect a residence line. He had called in to say he was afraid, and the people who lived there were trying to burn the house down. When I pulled up, the installer stood outside the house, a shabby ranch, dark amid the other houses decorated with lights and Santa, looking stunned. "Listen, these people are in some kind of cult."

We went into the kitchen, and a woman wearing a long dress and a head covering was throwing scalding water on the counters, floors, and walls. There was no electricity or light except for a candle. A toddler with long side curls and a yarmulke was sitting just out of the range of the water, sobbing.
"Excuse me?"
She didn't answer me.
"Phone company." 
She looked at me but didn't speak. The cellar door was open, and the installer pointed towards the stairs. "The husband's down there with the older son. They're heating up pokers." Surely not, I thought. I walked slowly down the steps, and there was a man and an older boy. The furnace door flung open like a vision of hell, with flames leaping. Both of them were heating pokers in the flames.

"Hey,” I said. They turned to look at me and then shook their heads. I was not to be spoken to or engaged with. I was female. "The installer can't work in an unsafe environment. You won't get your phone service until your wife stops throwing boiling water on all the surfaces and you close the furnace.”

They pulled the glowing pokers away and went up the steps without a word. We followed. The husband and son pressed the glowing metal into all the cupboards and shelves in the kitchen. The wood was smoking, the child was crying, and there was no electricity. The older son shoved his mother, who said something to him, and the father didn't react. I flagged the job.

The inside foreman was displeased. Ma Bell got the phone working no matter what.
"Are you kidding me? Afraid of a little water?"
"Boiling water, hot pokers, and a child who was allowed to abuse his mother," I said. "And no electricity."
"They're purifying. Making it kosher."
"Fine. We'll go back on Monday."
"Did you leave the equipment?"
"No. I was afraid he'd burn it with the freaking poker."
He sighed. "You gotta respect people's beliefs," he said. "What are you, anti-Semitic?"
"No! I felt invisible, and the furnace was wide open. It was dangerous."
"You're a woman. You're traif. You need to toughen up, Moynahan."

The Sicilian's building was a small skyscraper, gray and hideous. I rang his bell, and after a moment, there was a squeaky "Hello?"
"Hey, it's Molly. I brought you some soup."
There was a pause. He was probably freaked out that I had tracked him down, but I was a woman on a mission. "No shit. Come up."

The elevator creaked up twenty floors and then stopped, opening on a hallway that resembled every hallway in every horror movie I had managed to watch. It seemed to end in nothingness, brown and gray and walls the color of sour milk. It was awful, and it smelled like cabbage. There was the sound of locks being opened, padlocks unlocking, and then a creaking hinge. I followed the noise, barely able to see in the murky light. It was spring, but the hallway was perpetual late November or maybe February, with a chill and darkness that promised a long, sad winter. He was standing there, his skin so pale, his hair black and curly, a t-shirt and black jeans, a cigarette in his mouth. "I can't believe you did this," he said.

Dentist office. My mom's taste in furniture was extremely high-brow, influenced by the Bauhaus and Frank Lloyd Wright, leather and steel; we owned stuff in the Museum of Modern Art, Uncle Brendan's knock-offs, and the real thing. The Sicilian's furniture was awful, a La-Z-Boy recliner, a hideous couch slipcovered in some sort of corduroy; the furniture was sparse and pushed into the center of the room, so you were greeted by the back of the couch as you came inside, the walls bare, an apartment of a very depressed tenant. 

Part of me was immediately repelled by the lack of taste or care, but mostly, I was entranced. It had been a long time since I felt superior to anyone. The kitchen was even sadder. There was an unused stove, an ancient refrigerator, and a Formica table and chairs that looked salvaged from the set of a remake of The Grapes of Wrath. Opening a cabinet, I counted two bowls, one plate, and a mug. "How long have you lived here?" I asked.
"A year."
"A year? Really? It feels like you just moved in."
The Sicilian was leaning against the sink. "No one has ever visited me."
"You don't have any friends?"

Even I had friends despite my psycho behavior. Palmer, my ex-boyfriend Geoff, and other people in my life who I could count on. Alison, my former roommate, was living in Madrid, but I felt like she was still someone I could call, and when she came back to America, we'd be close again. The Sicilian seemed like the loneliest person in the world, living in this building that looked like an Eastern Block prison in a Hasidim neighborhood that was deserted every Saturday at the last stop on the D train. I remembered a horror movie with the logline, "No one will ever hear you scream." I didn't realize in several months, I would be screaming, and whether anyone heard me, nobody ever came to see if I needed help.

We ate the soup. He had nothing to drink but tap water. He told me about getting attacked on a beach by Hell's Angels somewhere in California. There was a girl, but she was gone. He sold leather, and drugs were involved, and none of it made any sense, but the thing is, I didn't care. He talked about Jack Kerouac and the Dharma Bums and Bukowski, and I recognized he had the same Bob Dylan wannabe Tibetan Book of the Dead superficial insight that my freshman boyfriend Jeffrey had possessed but with even less understanding of what it meant. 

I had come full circle as far as my life was concerned. I had a pointless job; I couldn't sleep, I was clinically depressed, and I was seducing an utterly unsuitable man. The only positive thing was my shaky, imperfect sobriety. I looked around the hideous apartment and thought, this will do. I saw myself from above and felt a sad tenderness for the lost girl sitting at that Formica table, nodding and smiling, smoking his cigarettes, bored to tears.

Apparently, the Sicilian's father was in charge of most things, including where he lived and worked, and now he was demanding we meet him for dinner at Gage and Tollner, a Brooklyn institution. His father was tied to the Mafia somehow, although my father would remark later that he was a "driver" as opposed to a “don.” The Sicilian was obsessed with unsolved murders, conspiracy theories, and Mafia hits. His bookcase was filled with books written about the Kennedy assassinations and histories of various Italian American gangster sagas. As far as I could tell, he had not graduated from college or read much besides the conspiracy books. After I left him, I walked through the gradual fading light towards the D train. In a few weeks, I'd be riding that train every other day, often falling into a blackout, and riding to 205th in the Bronx.

The dinner was awful and almost saved me. The Sicilian's father was dressed in an obviously expensive suit, gold cufflinks, a tiepin, and a cashmere overcoat he refused to check. He arrived late, shaking hands with several people as he progressed through the restaurant, high-fiving the bartender until he finally stood by where we sat and looked down at his son. "Why the fucking black leather?" he ignored me. And then his father clouted him not softly on the side of his head.

I was shocked. My parents might have been selfish and judgmental, but they never hit us as little children unless it was after one of us darted into traffic, and then it was a panicked slap on the bottom. This was brutal and mean. He looked down at me and said, "So this is the Irish girl?"
I stood up. The Sicilian stood up also.
"This is Molly."
"And what's that short for? Margaret?"
"Mary Ellen. No one calls me that."
"I will call you that. It's your christened name, no?"
"Yes, but it's not my name."
"Ah, just so much prettier than Molly. Do you mind?"
"Yes. Don't call me that."
He gestured to the waiter. "Three porterhouse, medium rare."
"I don't want steak."
"They're famous for their steak."
"Dad…" the Sicilian was silenced by a look.
"I don't eat steak." This wasn't true.
"You're a vegetarian?"
I caught the waiter's eye. "I want the flounder."
The waiter looked at the Sicilian's father as if asking for permission.
"And a diet coke." I turned my wine glass over. 
"She doesn't drink?" I had been transformed into a “she.”
"I don't drink. And I don't eat steak."

I didn't like his father, which wasn't much of a surprise. Placing a depressed person in that grim building was a sign the guy had no compassion. Also, he kept getting up and walking around the restaurant, having secret handshakes with any number of mobbed-up-looking guys. "Three cheesecakes," he told the waiter.
"I don't want cheesecake."
"You gotta have the cheesecake, Mary Ellen. It's famous."
"I'm fine. No cheesecake."

I went to the lady's room, and when I returned, there was a huge piece of cheesecake at my place. I picked up my purse and smiled at both of them. "I'm going to head home. Thank you for dinner."
The Sicilian's father stood. "Sit down. We got a car. We'll drive you home."
I didn't want him to know where I lived.
"No, thank you. It's really far to drive to Hoboken."
"Hoboken? Sinatra's birthplace." His father acted as if everything he knew was a huge surprise to everyone else. 
"Right." 
I leaned down to kiss the Sicilian. 
"Stand up, asshole."
"No, don't stand up."

And then I fled. I ran down the street and went through the turnstile. The train was waiting, and I jumped aboard, my heart beating very hard. I was afraid he'd followed me. Later, the Sicilian told me that his father had turned to him and said, "What's with her? Women's lib?"

Oddly, meeting his father made me more determined to be his girlfriend. I felt like something had to be done to offset such darkness. Strange that I'd imagine myself cheering anyone up. Most nights, before I fell asleep after taking various pills, I'd cry so long and hard that the pillowcase would be soaked. Lying in the dark sobbing, I'd ask my sister to stop being dead. She didn't answer. No one answered. I was in the tiny house behind my landlord's brownstone, the Madonna in front, alone.  

We became an accepted couple at work. I brought lunch to both of us to imitate a person I didn't know. My own mother never made me lunch to bring to school, and yet here I was late at night wrapping sandwiches in plastic, buying fruit and small paper bags as if the Sicilian and I were beloved children of attentive parents instead of the drifting, sad, offspring of people who lacked the time to parent. His mother, he claimed, was as violent as his father, but it was verbal abuse, being called a “loser,” a “fag,” and other names in Sicilian, which meant he was a disappointment. His parents were far worse than mine, except it seemed like he had successfully separated from them, and I was not so lucky.

I loved my parents passionately more than I hated them. Their occasional focused love offset a lack of consistent support. Just when you had found the strength to separate, you were lured back. That love changed everything. It came in the form of praise, money, or physical affection. My father would pull me into a hug, and I stopped breathing. I was so happy to be held and cherished. He would suggest that I return to graduate school, never mind that I had no money, and suddenly, I had a purpose. Or my mother would suddenly tell me how smart, beautiful, or brave I was, and it was like sunshine after weeks of gray, rainy days. Tethered. I began to plan on marrying the Sicilian.

I took him home, and he managed to alienate and bore my parents with his earnest defense of punk rock and plans to open a store. The first positive sign was my mother hated him. When he rolled his sleeve up in front of her, I was thrilled by her shock at the snake tattoo covering his arm. This was a new development in my ongoing crack up, my need to horrify my mother. We ate lunch at the house, and the Sicilian provided a short narrative around the Beats, his love for all things punk, and his hope to someday own a leather store. This was the finishing straw for my father. The idiotic comments about Kerouac and Ginsberg did not mean much to him. After all he had reviewed On the Road for The New York Times and he had tolerated worse from years of my dating stupid boys. It was the retail thing he couldn't stomach. My mother's father had sold hats, but somehow that didn't count.

"Molly," my father said after the Sicilian left for a family meeting. "I have no idea why you want to work in a department store, but I assume it's temporary. What I can't understand is how you can possibly admire someone who describes his lifelong dream as owning a leather shop?"

He looked at my mother for corroboration, but she shrugged and sighed. If it had been up to her, I would have stayed with the linen man. After he finally obtained a divorce, she might have had a fellow lover of Herman Miller chairs in her life. My father looked genuinely bewildered, while my mother was simply fed up. "I don't admire him. I've loved one person in my life, and you told me that meant I was a loser. " She's talking about that ridiculous Jeff," my mother looked annoyed. "The one who gave us those awful plaster feet he called art." 

Before Jeffrey left for Madison, he decided to present my parents with a set of plaster feet he had cast, six of them, long, skinny feet that he had made in art class. I think he was trying to stake his claim on me but it backfired and gave my mother years of sighs followed by three words, "Those awful feet." A year after Jeff was banished, my mother called and asked if I wanted the feet. "No."
"Well, we don't want them."
"Then throw them out."
There was a long pause, and then my mother spoke. "I know you think we were wrong to make you stay at Rutgers but look how well you did."
"Daddy told me love didn't exist."
"Now, never mind that. "
"I loved him."

I would marry the poorly educated son of a minor Mafioso and move to Borough Park to live in a neighborhood described as having the largest Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Israel. After that, anything was possible. I sensed that marrying someone you didn't love, possibly didn't even like, had the potential for violence. The Sicilian definitely had the potential for violence. I had seen him lose his temper and although it was yet to be directed towards me, I feared him. So, I would marry someone I didn't love who scared me because I was mad at my parents and didn't know what to do with my life. I went down to Princeton to tell them and they both looked pained.
"Honey, he isn't in your league."
"So? Look at Catherine. She was an Emerson scholar, totally brilliant, a mother and a wife, and then she just died. "
My mother's face softened. "It's very hard, isn't it?"

We never talked about Catherine. Mentioning her name made my father wince, and my mother's face tighten. Brigid would have nothing to do with me. "I miss her so much. I don't understand what to do anymore."
"You go on,. Go to graduate school."
"I can't. I want to disappear. Nothing feels right. I had a sister, and now she's gone."
"I had a daughter, and now she's gone," my mother turned back to the stove. "Tough."
"You win, Mom. Daddy, can you take me to the train?"

He didn't say anything until we were almost at the station. "Listen, he's not right for you."
"Because he wants to sell leather?"
"No. He's not smart, Molly. He's dishonest and angry."
"Who cares?"
"You will. Trust me. This is a very bad idea."
"I'm not like her, daddy. I'm not a genius." 
"You're different, Molly. You have different gifts."
He never talked about me. Sometimes, I wasn't sure he remembered I was alive.
"I keep dreaming about her. We're swimming in the ocean, and she lets go of my hand. I try to find her, but she leaves me behind. She was going to tell me what to do. I don't know what to do."
”You should come home more often.”
"I can't. Everything feels bad now. I want her to come back." 

My father put his hand in mine, and we sat staring at the train station. I wanted to stay, but I couldn't. "Remember, most things are simple, Molly. You just need to find your way. Please don't give up." He handed me a twenty dollar bill. "Do you need more?"
"No." 

“Yes,” I wanted to scream. I need you to tell me not to get married, to get help, to tell me I am enough, to hold me in your arms like you did when I was little and to say you were sorry for scaring me so badly. "I'll be fine," I said. But, I wasn't.

—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach

Follow and read more: