In Spite of Everything
Read In Spite of Everything Online
Authors: Susan Gregory Thomas
Praise for
In Spite of Everything
“Raw, funny, searingly honest and electrifyingly intelligent. As a field guide to the beat-up, busted heart of Generation X, it’s damn near definitive. Thomas solves the mystery of her devastating divorce—and the emotional catastrophe that defines a generation.”
—L
EV
G
ROSSMAN
, author of
The Magicians
“This smart and emotionally mighty memoir will show you how every family of divorce is unhappy in ways we can all relate to, learn from, cry about, and (after reading such a great book) transcend. Sad and funny,
In Spite of Everything
is the first book to dissect, with scientific definitiveness, the Busted-Marriage Generation. It also tells a very moving personal story with real beauty.”
—D
ARIN
S
TRAUSS
, author of
Half a Life
“At once a literate and poignant memoir and incisive journalistic illumination of the cult of domestic consumption,
In Spite of Everything
is a remarkable and moving study of an American generation’s uneasy search for home.”
—W
ELLS
T
OWER
, author of
Everything Ravaged
,
Everything Burned
“This book is brave, startling, and profoundly moving, and I could not put it down.”
—J
OANNA
H
ERSHON
, author of
The German Bride
and
Swimming
“Harrowing, hilarious, and profoundly wise,
In Spite of Everything
is the work of a supreme talent and an emotional daredevil, a woman courageous enough to reveal every scar that lines her heart.”
—B
RENDAN
I. K
OERNER
, author of
Now the Hell Will Start
“Honest, riveting and illuminating.… An indelible portrait not only of a family, but of an entire generation shaped by loneliness. Breathtakingly beautiful from start to finish.”
—L
ISA
D
IERBECK
, author of
One Pill Makes You Smaller
“In
In Spite of Everything
, Susan Gregory Thomas goes way beyond American pop culture’s cute, run-of-the-mill bromides about marriage and parenting and gives us a work that’s shot through with a stark and clarifying light of honesty. It is an inspiring book—and often an uproariously funny one, too.
In Spite of Everything
establishes Thomas as one of the most important new voices in American writing.”
—J
EFF
G
ORDINIER
, author of
X Saves the World
“As a memoir,
In Spite of Everything
is both raw and smart; as a generational analysis, it is spot on—culturally, economically, and psychologically. This is an engaging and fast-paced memoir, and a generational portrait for those who refuse to be categorized.”
—L
ISA
C
HAMBERLAIN
, author of
Slackonomics:
Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction
“
In Spite of Everything
is a profound emotional history of the last forty years. Susan Gregory Thomas is the expert on Generation X’s emotional fallout. All recovering latchkey kids should read this book.”
—A
DA
C
ALHOUN
, author of
Instinctive Parenting:
Trusting Ourselves to Raise Good Kids
“An engrossing memoir, and a deeply moving and personal tale of divorce, love, motherhood, and what makes us who we are.”
—M
ARIAN
F
ONTANA
, author of
A Widow’s Walk
ALSO BY SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS
Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates
Parents and Harms Young Minds
In Spite of Everything
is a work of nonfiction. Certain names have been changed in order to disguise the identities of the persons discussed. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
Copyright © 2011 by Susan Gregory Thomas
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this book were originally published as articles by
Babble.com
and
MSNBC.com
.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomas, Susan Gregory.
In spite of everything : a memoir / by Susan Gregory Thomas.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-946-8
1. Thomas, Susan Gregory. 2. Thomas, Susan Gregory—Marriage.
3. Thomas, Susan Gregory—Divorce. 4. Divorced women—United States—
Biography. I. Title.
CT275.T5566A3 2011
306.89’3092—dc22
[B] 2010043104
Jacket design: Gabrielle Bordwin
Jacket photograph: Frank Schott
v3.1
For my family
(and a little bit for Eminem)
MORE THAN THIS
E
very generation has its life-defining moment. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: “Where were you when Hitler invaded France?” or “Where were you on D-Day?” If you want to find out what it was for a Baby Boomer, there are three possible questions: “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” or “Where were you when you heard about Kent State?” or “Where were you when the Watergate story broke?”
For most of my generation—Generation X—there is only one question: “When did your parents get divorced?”
Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything.
M
y dad left in the early spring of 1981, while my mother was leading a school trip to England. While she was away that week, Dad was in charge. I was twelve; my brother, Ian, was nine.
On the first night, Dad called to say he was running late, that he might not be there by dinnertime. We’d never had to make dinner for ourselves before, but I knew that Mom had a stash of Stouffer’s French bread pizzas in the freezer. Unsettled, Ian and I were nonetheless united in one thought: unmediated access to TV. We sat on the floor of our parents’ room, watched
Magnum, P.I.
, and ate the pizzas. We ended up falling asleep on the rug.
When we woke up the next morning, our father was lying on top of the bed in his dark gray pinstripe Brooks Brothers suit, his standard investment management uniform. The whole room smelled of Dad: scotch, sweat, and shaving cream. His white dress shirt was pressed to his chest like wet tissue paper; his face was dusted with unfamiliar salt-white whiskers. Ian and I looked at each other, scared. Dad was a perennial early riser: up hours before anyone else, impeccably shaved and dressed—reading the paper and drinking coffee by 5:30
A.M
. It was now after eight; we had to be at school, sitting at our desks, by 8:25. Ian and I swapped staccato whispers over our father’s body, when suddenly he opened his eyes, webbed with raw capillaries. “Let’s go,” Dad growled, and got up immediately. We followed, mute. He drove us to our respective schools without a word.
The second night, no phone call. It was cold in the house; usually, it took two furnaces to heat it, and I didn’t know how to turn them on. I called our current babysitter, a college student at Villanova University named Carol. I told her that my dad wasn’t home and asked if she could call him. There was a pause on the line. Then she said she’d be right over. She was there in fifteen minutes.
The next afternoon, I came home from school and no one was there. My brother had been taken to Cub Scouts by someone’s mother, I think, and Carol was still in classes. I was in the kitchen prying frozen orange juice concentrate out of its canister when my dad pulled up. I looked out the kitchen window, waiting for him to get out of the car. A few minutes went by. I went outside.
He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his sports car, a plastic tumbler of scotch in his hand. He was wearing the same clothes. He didn’t look at me. I ripped a hangnail off my thumb and chewed it. Finally, I opened the door and got in. “Hi, Dad,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. The ashtray was open; there were three cigarette butts inside, each O’ed with pink lipstick. He tilted the tumbler back, slipped the scotch into his mouth, opened the car door, got out, and popped the trunk. My thumb had bled onto the sleeve of my white school shirt.
When I came around to the back of the car, I saw that there was a case of scotch in the trunk. Dad was pouring from a newly opened bottle into his tumbler. He silently screwed the cap back on and clinked the bottle into the box. He chugged it back, eyes closed. He set the glass on the hood.
“Everything okay here?” he asked.
“Carol came,” I said, sucking at my thumb.
“Can she stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have to go on a business trip,” he said. “As it turns out.” He slammed the trunk shut and finally looked at me.
“I have to go now,” he said. “Call if you need me.” He squeezed my shoulder, got in the car, and drove out of the driveway.
After a few moments, I sat down. I was wearing the navy blue tunic uniform of my all-girls’ school, and loose driveway pebbles stuck to my bloomer-covered bottom and the backs of my thighs. I wrapped the belt of my tunic around my wound. It was cold and wet still, early spring. The edges of the front yard were flanked by forsythia, which were just budding Crayola yellow. I’d never had his number to begin with.