I was in the sixth grade when my mother decided to go for the hat trick and get married for the third time. To be honest, I was pissed. I’d only met Richard a handful of times. One of those times was a high-stakes cultural exchange to see The Lion King in theaters, so we weren’t exactly soulmates. Richard was finishing medical school and planned to be an OB/GYN, which, given what I found out later, is a terrifying career choice for a man with a “meat hook” hobby.
The first time he stayed over, I threw a literal tantrum about him sleeping in my mom’s room. I’m not sure why I cared, maybe it was the exhaustion of my mother’s dating history keeping my life in a state of permanent “Loading…” status. I told them I wouldn’t tolerate them sleeping together unless they were married. I thought I was being a strategic mastermind; instead, I accidentally fast-tracked the nuptials.
They eloped in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. They didn’t even tell us. I caught Richard sneaking upstairs for bed and, right as I prepared my best 13-year-old verbal hand grenade, he smirked and said, “We can… because we’re married!”
It gets worse. I found out the witnesses were Mom’s friend Gabriella, a feisty, older German sex worker, and her brother, Alfred. So, the local sex work industry was in the loop, but the kids were on a “need to know” basis? Also, Eureka Springs? I loved pink doilies and Victorian houses! I would have been the perfect chaperone, but no, I was replaced by a German lady with a thick accent.
As I got to know Richard, the vibe went from “annoying stepdad” to “clinical micromanager.” He was obsessed with my grades and, weirder yet, my skeletal structure. He actually measured my bones to see if I was “meant” to be skinny like the rest of the women in my family. The verdict? I was “medium-boned.” It felt like he was checking my factory specs to see how much body fat I was legally allowed to carry. He told me to watch my diet, despite the fact that I was in dance three days a week and taking gym. Apparently, unless I was actively vibrating from physical exertion, I wasn’t doing enough.
Then there was the favoritism. Richard treated my younger sister, Rachel, like a Disney Princess. Rachel was a difficult child who blossomed into an even more difficult adult, but to Richard, she was a literal saint. It was enough to make me puke.
One day, fueled by spite and boredom, I went snooping. I found meat hooks. Not like, “I’m starting a butcher shop” hooks, but “I have a dark secret” hooks. I also found photos of my mother tied up in doorways with expertly looped ropes, surrounded by more hooks, wearing a big, stupid, “I’m in love” grin. My beautiful, dumb mother. It was gross. It was “I need to go live with my Dad for a month” gross.
I eventually moved back home because I missed my own bed. By Spring Break 1995, they had been married six months. March 25th was a Saturday. We were hosting a dinner party for Richard’s medical school friends. My mom was upstairs “getting ready” (which usually took three business days), my sister was playing with neighbors, and Richard was in the garage.
I was in the backyard on the swing, criss-cross-apple-sauce, blasting Green Day and Nirvana on my Walkman, trying to transcend my existence. Suddenly, over Billie Joe Armstrong’s voice, I heard the loudest BOOM of my life. I didn’t just hear it; I felt it in my marrow. I assumed a house across the street had simply decided to stop existing.
I ran inside. My mom came flying down the stairs, screaming for me to grab my sister and the neighbor kids and get out. As we ran across the yard, I thought I saw Richard walking toward us. I felt a brief moment of relief, Oh, he’s fine. Then he vanished. It was a ghost, or a trick of the light, or my brain refusing to accept the physics of a pipe bomb.
Thick black smoke began billowing from the garage. We huddled at the neighbor’s house, watching the street fill with fire trucks and ambulances. After what felt like several lifetimes, Mom walked in with a cop.
“Girls,” she said quietly. “There was an accident. Richard is dead.”
My sister basically levitated off Mom’s lap in a fit of inconsolable grief. I just sat there, buffering.
The aftermath was a fever dream. Because Richard was a “wealthy” med student, the FBI and the bomb squad descended on our pink house in Broken Arrow. They found another pipe bomb in the house and a storage unit filled with explosive ingredients and automatic weapons. My stepdad wasn’t just a bone-measuring weirdo; he was a domestic insurgent in training.
Then came the “charity” of Richard’s biological father, Millard. He showed up in a private jet with a wife who looked like the Wicked Stepmother from Cinderella. He told my mom he’d pay for the funeral, but since they were only married six months, he was cutting us off forever immediately after. Total dick move.
Mom took him for every cent she could. She picked the most expensive casket, the fanciest double headstone, and even made him prepay to have her name engraved on it for the future. It was her final “screw you” to his estate. (Side note: In 2012, the IRS called my sister looking for Millard for tax evasion. I hope he’s wearing a jump suit that matches his cold, dead heart.)
At the funeral, I got my first and only limo ride. When they opened the casket, I didn’t recognize him. His head was too large; it looked like he was wearing a Richard-themed mask. Mom whispered, “That’s not him, it’s just his shell.” He was wearing the Lion King tie we gave him for Christmas. I wanted to snatch it back, why waste a perfectly good Simba tie on a guy who blew himself up in our garage?
The house was a wreck. Pro tip: The police don’t clean up “biological matter.” My Aunt Susan and my mom spent an entire day scrubbing what was left of Richard off the garage walls because we couldn’t afford a biohazard team.
The first day back to school, some “fuck-face” kid on the bus asked if my dad was trying to kill us with bombs under our beds. I lost it. My mom, meanwhile, had retreated to her bed, smoking a truly heroic amount of weed. Sometimes she’d try to pass the joint to me, and I’d just stare at her until she remembered I was still in middle school.
I just wanted someone to tell me we were going to be okay. But in our house, “okay” was a relative term, and things were about to get a whole lot crazier.
Rock Bottom Was Only The Lobby 
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