We’re Not Angry. Just A Little Disappointed.

by Tricia Dower

It’s difficult to give your characters emotions you rarely allow yourself. Take anger. In my family, the unspoken rule was: swallow it, deny it, drive it deep into your constipated bowels. Expressing anger was unseemly, low-class even, more for muscle-shirted Stanley Kowalski types. People with passion. People who had uninhibited sex. It indicated a lack of self-control and self-control was everything. It was okay to be — somewhat, slightly, maybe a bit, just a tad — annoyed or peeved as long as you didn’t go on about it. Occasionally Dad would call out to another driver, “You dumb Benny. Where’d you get your license, Sears and Roebuck?” But Mom was there to shush him; to teach my sister Lillian and me outbursts were aberrations.

Disappointment was our emotion of choice. Dad expressed it directly; Mom subversively. Anger would have been kinder. When someone says she’s angry, you have the opportunity to apologize or explain. Disappointment fills the air with verdict: You’ve let the side down. You’re the bitter pill that has to be swallowed, the bummer, the downer, the dud, the washout. My characters know about disappointment: "You're not cut out for this, are you?” he said, crouching beside her. She turned away from the disappointment in his eyes.

My mother was a tightly lidded cauldron of rage brewing migraines, ulcers and depression. Lillian and I can recall only two occasions when we saw her express anger directly, each on a Mother’s Day. The first: after Lili announced she’d be spending the day with her best friend’s family. Mom hurled a three-pronged fork to the floor where it stuck and quivered like an arrow.

The second: four years after Lili married and moved away. Dad and I woke to the frying pan set down on the stove with a thump intended to be heard. We’d planned on fixing Mom breakfast in bed. She’d gotten up early enough to ensure that it didn't happen. I raced down the stairs and into the kitchen. "I'll do that,” I said, out of breath.

"Don't bother.”

We went to church and came home to the every-Sunday-but-Mother’s Day-pot roast waiting in the slow cooker, the meat stringy and dry, as usual; the carrots caramelized. On any other Mother’s Day we would have been at Novak's but my mother had pronounced it an "old lady's restaurant." Supposedly she wanted to eat at home that year. We took our seats at the dining room table. Dad said Grace. Mom filled her plate, stood and headed for the porch.

"Mary?" Dad said.

"The hired help never eats with the family," she flung back over her shoulder.

Minutes later she fled past us in tears. Dad followed her up to their bedroom.

"It's really something," he said later, "to find out that, in 24 years of marriage, your wife has never had a happy day."

I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to recognize the anger that masquerades as disappointment. When my first marriage broke up, I couldn’t acknowledge anything more than hurt. (“Okay, we’ll just have to work with that,” the counselor said.) My feelings seem like rain drops that must seep through topsoil and layers of rock before reaching a hidden well. Every so often, close to the moment I feel it, I’m actually able to say, “That makes me mad.” I’m so proud of myself that whatever I’m angry about no longer seems important. I’ve yet to hurl a fork.

My characters are my testing ground. I want to push them. Let them lead the way. Let them drink more deeply from their emotional wells. If they can get away with it, there’s hope for me.

Photo: The Never Angry Family, way back when. Left to right, me, Dad, Lili and Mom.