In that moment in 1968, as they lay missionary style outside Spooky House, my mother looked into Harry’s face and felt a comfortable life with Pierce disintegrating. In its place, she saw a different, harder span of years stretch out before her: a small, anxious wedding, too many children, life in a blue-collar neighborhood, aggressive penny-pinching, hand-me-down clothes, thrift-store shopping. She felt powerless and unwilling to stop it from becoming a reality. She didn’t tell my father any of this. Instead, she put her hands on his face and said, “My mother’s going to hate you.”
