After My Parents Divorced

-- by Matthew B. Epstein

I’m told I’m safe and loved.

At 11 o’clock on Sunday morning,
my father came late to pick me up
from my mother’s and her new wealthy husband’s
stone and glass-walled house, high up Laurel Canyon,
on top of the Hollywood Hills.

My mother kept my father outside the front door for a long time.
My mother’s new husband was watching the game.
I listened from down the hall over the football noise:

something about late child support.

My father wrote a check
(which later bounced)
and guided me with an encircling arm
to his old Plymouth Valiant without seat belts.

He said I’m safe and loved.

Down we spiraled through Laurel Canyon
to his new wife’s small bungalow
in the flats of Los Angeles.

In the afternoon,
we drove west to Marina del Rey,
stepped lightly on docks lined with sailboat masts,
and strolled out on the stony breakwater.

My father held my hand to steady me
on the uncertain surface.
The sun glared and sparkled off the green ocean.
and he flipped down his clip-on shades,
while my striped shirt billowed in the breeze off the sea
like a drawn curtain before an open window.


Through the Pacific wind I heard
I’m safe and loved.

After dinner that night,
I watched the Disney show on the black and white.

In the kitchen, my father and his new wife
argued about money,
something about late child support.
She spoke clearly above the theme song,
“When You Wish Upon a Star,”

“We only fight when Matthew’s here.”
I listened from the sunken living room.

I know I’m safe and loved.

It was time, at eight o’clock,
to swerve back up the canyon road.
At each curve,
my father’s old Plymouth’s headlight beams
swept the dark yuccas and bougainvillea.

We parked on the steep street
before my mother’s and her new wealthy husband’s
Hawaiian-style house, hunching over Los Angeles.

My father turned the engine off, faced me in the streetlight shadows,
and told me, before he rang the doorbell:
I’m safe and loved.

My mother rushed me in her new house,
greedily, a possession.

No matter what, my mother said
I need to know I was home now and
I’m safe and loved.

Later my mother’s new wealthy husband beat me
with his striped belt:

something about late child support.

My mother watched TV
and didn’t hear me cry
through all of “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

My father was long gone, down the hill forever.

I whispered over and over through tears,
in the dark, till sleep:

I’m safe and loved.
I must be safe and loved.
I’ll always be safe and loved.