a typical weekend in my young life

Kurt Luchs

After realizing that nonstop infidelity and arguments
lifted from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
were not leading to a happy marriage,
our parents embarked on a therapy weekend
somewhere on Chicago’s north shore that Summer of Love.
They left their seven offspring to the tender mercies
of one Jack Devlin, recently fired from our father’s place of work
for abusing both alcohol and cocaine,
currently unemployed and enjoying a week-long binge
but otherwise a model citizen and ideal caregiver.
Upon entering our home, eyes wide and bloodshot,
wiry black hair standing on end, ruddy face dripping with sweat,
he marched straight to the record player, rifled through a stack 
of 45s, selected one and began miming with ferocious concentration
to the Rolling Stones singing “Play with Fire.”
We giggled nervously at first, but the novelty began to pall
after half an hour of repeats, interrupted only by him pausing 
to sniff some powder from a vial and take a pull from a flask.
Jack noticed one of our half-dozen cats, the lovely Morna,
and proceeded to forcibly share some of his powder with her.
She yowled, raced outside, clawed her way up a poplar tree,
had some kind of seizure and fell, never to be quite right after that.
We gaped at Jack, uncertain what to do, not believing 
what we had just witnessed. He turned his attention to our 
three-year-old sister, preparing to give some powder to her.
His eyes grew wider as he said that he wanted
to write his name on her bellybutton with his tongue.
My older sister and I snapped out of our trance,
gathered up our siblings and walked quickly to Northside Park
half a mile away, where there was a pay phone.
We called our parents and waited. Our brothers and sisters
sobbed and wailed, worried about the fate of our other animals.
An hour later we returned home in time to see
our parents pulling into the driveway in our Citroen 2CV.
They were followed by a white van from a mental institution.
Two muscular men in white uniforms got out of the van
and entered our home. Five minutes later they emerged
with Jack Devlin kicking and screaming in between them,
wrapped in the loving arms of a straitjacket. They strapped him
into the back of the van and left. We never saw him again.
Aside from the cat, no one was physically injured or killed.
It was an unremarkable weekend much like all the others,
that sunny therapy weekend in the Summer of Love.