I'm female. I have no problem discussing any of this rather colorful past. I was 14--still in the family home after this took place, though I didn't find out about it until twenty years later--despite the fact that my older brother caught him in the act and stopped him. Ours was a big house of many big secrets--one of which, I believe but cannot prove, was that my father's own father killed his first wife. Or, if you wish to go with the official story, she passed away suddenly in his car on the way to the hospital of "appendicitis," leaving my grandfather free to marry his pregnant secretary. She had refused him a divorce because she was Catholic. There was an immediate cremation and no death certificate--nor was there a birth certificate for my aunt, born seven months later, something she didn't learn until she first applied for a passport in her fifties. In my F's case, the bottom line was he wanted a divorce and all the money. Not very original. My mother comes from an old world sort of family and so, yes, to this day my father is formally invited to holiday celebrations and the like. At her home. And he attends. Past unpleasantness is not discussed. His current wife is the same age as my younger brother. She attends also, of course, but as my mother never remarried (go figure) he sits at the head of the table. Surreal? Well we're used to it. My mother and I are quite close (I have three brothers but no sisters), a result of living with a misogynist sociopath and surviving. Sometimes we get together and worry about his current wife (his second one became an alcoholic, ended up in a mental hospital and now, I believe, lives with nuns in Massachusetts). But she's made of pretty stern stuff and he's older now, in his sixties. Not the terror he once was. My brothers have a really hard time now--they are all so dedicated to being men completely unlike their father, and I think that's hard, not being able to respect him or turn to him ever for advice or guidance. I got used to it long ago, because he loathes females, but they held out hope into adulthood.
