I walk out of the back door into a landscape of beauty and murder. No one uses their front doors here. Front doors go out to the stretch of lawn before the worn road. Back doors lead to driveways and barns and yards of green leading to fences and woods.

Even now I’m not really sure if this happened to me or if my mother told me this story so many times that I feel like I was there. My mother never tired of telling terrible stories about my father. My father never tired of doing horrible things that made perfect terrible stories for my mother to tell. Those were their jobs, and how I saw them.  My father, a distant, cruel figure made of money and alcohol and sarcasm, who existed to torment others, especially my mother; my mother, a creature molded out of tears and grief and fresh-baked pies who existed for her children and her martyrdom and bad choices. They were both casted so well, especially in my blurry memories from my childhood. Movie of the week fodder – or maybe an HBO limited docuseries on dysfunctional marriages.