Jerry Springer, Home Edition

I couldn't find a brass dinner bell that had been my mother's. I had stowed it away in the hutch in the dining room with some newspapers I was saving but now they are gone, replaced with some stuff that belongs to my wife. My 5-year-old daughter, without any prompting from me, suggested that "Mommy probably threw them out." She said this because she knows about the lamps (see Where's My Lamp) and because she caught her mother throwing out a picture she had drawn for me as a present.

• The bell was a small hand bell with the brass handle shaped like a cross inside a diamond. I don't know where or when my mother bought it, but it had survived years of abuse from me and my brothers. As a little child, I had always liked it, and so when my mother died, I kept the bell from her dining room.

Later, when my wife came home, I asked her if she had seen it. No, she said, she hadn't. She claims she hadn't even been in that hutch in two years, yet she rearranged it just after this past Christmas and put a present of hers in there.

Fine. I dropped it and left for a walk. When I got back my wife, 18-year-old stepdaughter and my mother-in-law were all waiting to tell me what they think of me. And they did.

It started with a complaint that I had allegedly told my daughter that Mommy threw the bell away. But in reality, my daughter figured that out for herself.

My wife does not realize that our daughter can see what happens around here.

And the fighting continued with a broad range of accusations. Apparently, my wife fed them some rather outrageous lies about me. Recent arguments and long ago arguments had been rewritten and much exaggerated. Her mother laid into me about calling her daughter names. My step-daughter laid into me about another argument her mother and I had years ago, only she remembers me throwing her mother down the stairs, which is not even close to what really happened. (No one was injured when we both tumbled down 2 steps with her on top of me. It was my fault, but it was not the crime I am accused of).


The whole confrontation tonight was ugly. I was being yelled at by three angry women. But what really got me was that the accusations were way beyond exaggeration. Some of them were plain lies.

So I got defensive. I admitted some bad behavior but I also brought up the hypocrisy of my mother-in-law when she accuses me of being a bad husband and parent, and she was an alcoholic who allowed one son molest one daughter. Anger made me point out that my wife has cheated on all three of her husbands, and I had wrongly been the other man.

I poured out the truth that had been hidden. I suppose it was in spite or anger, but it really gets me that I am burned at the stake for being angry when my wife cheats on me.

And then my wife tells everyone that it was me who wanted a divorce in 2001. But she doesn't add that I asked for a divorce after begging her for months to be part of this marriage. She leaves that part out.

And since we all know now that my wife checked out 3-4 years ago, why is she still here? She makes $65,000 a year working part-time. The only reason she is here is because I pay for everything (I hope to explain that another day).

Anyway, it was an ugly, ugly argument. Eventually I told them to go to hell and retreated to the basement. My mother-in-law suggested that I kiss her ass. I didn't.

So now I regret most of what I said. I brought up things that I should have let go. I allowed myself to be pulled into a fight that can have no logical resolution. I hit below the belt on some things. I acted badly again.

I don't know how long I will have to stay in the basement. Perhaps until morning. And I don't know what awaits me then. I'll probably get a call from their family in the hills of TN. Certainly I will be threatened before the week is over. They are probably planning right now to come up here and re-enact a scene or two from Deliverance.

Maybe they'll bring me back to Tennessee on the hood of their pickup. Any who knows what will become of our fragile negotiations for shared parenting.