I Hate You--Don't Leave Me - Jerold J. Kreisman [28]
Margaret was never able to please her mother even as the constant struggle for control between them raged on. Neither could Margaret please her own daughter or husband. She had never been able to make anyone happy, she realized, not even herself. Yet she persisted in trying to please people who would not be pleased.
Now, with Roger gone and Dixie so sick, Margaret’s life seemed to be falling apart. Dixie finally told her mother how Roger had sexually abused her. And before Roger left, he had bragged all about his women. Despite everything, Margaret still missed him. He was alone, she knew, just like she was.
It was time, Dixie recognized, to do something about the plight of this self-destructive family. Or at least herself anyway. A job would be the first priority, something to combat the relentless boredom. But she was nineteen years old with a two-year-old child and no husband, and she still hadn’t graduated high school.
With characteristic compulsiveness, she flung herself into a high school equivalency program and received her diploma in a matter of months. Within days of obtaining her diploma, she was applying for loans and grants to attend college.
Margaret had begun to take care of Kim, and in many ways the arrangement looked like it might work: raising Kim gave Margaret some meaning in her life, Kim had built-in child care, and Dixie had time for her new mission in life. But soon, the system showed cracks: Margaret sometimes got too drunk or depressed to be of any help. When this happened, Dixie had a simple solution: she would threaten to take Kim away from Margaret. Both the grandmother and granddaughter obviously needed each other desperately, so Dixie was able to totally control the household.
Through it all, Dixie still managed to find time for men, though her frequent liaisons were usually of short duration. She seemed to follow a pattern: whenever a man started to care for her, she became bored. Distant, older men—unavailable doctors, married acquaintances, professors—were her usual type, but she would drop them the instant they responded to her flirtations. The young men she did date were all members of a church that was strictly opposed to premarital sex.
Dixie avoided women and had no female friends. She thought women were weak and uninteresting. Men, at least, had some substance. They were fools if they responded to her flirtations and hypocrites if they did not.
As time went on, the more Dixie succeeded in her studies, the more frightened she became. She could pursue a particular interest—school, a certain man—relentlessly, almost obsessively, but each success spurred ever higher, and more unrealistic, demands. Despite good grades, she would explode in rage and threaten to kill herself when she performed below her expectations on an exam.
At times like these, her mother would try to console her, but Margaret was also becoming preoccupied with suicide, and the roles often reversed. Mother and daughter were again shuffling in and out of the hospital trying to overcome depression and chemical abuse.
Like her mother and grandmother, Kim didn’t know her father very well either. Sometimes he came to visit; sometimes she went to the house that he shared with his mother. He always seemed awkward around her.
With her mother detached and her grandmother ineffectual or preoccupied with her own problems, Kim took control of the household by the time she was four. She ignored Dixie, who responded by ignoring her. If Kim threw a tantrum, Margaret would cave in to her wishes.
The household was in an almost constant state of chaos. Sometimes both Margaret and Dixie would be in the hospital at the same time, Margaret for her drinking, Dixie for her bulimia. Kim would then go to her father’s house, although he was unable to care