He had a difficult time sleeping while it was going on. He would get up between a quarter after eleven and midnight to chain smoke on the back porch and talk to my ears. He had never experienced emotion more complicated than contentment or anger. This explosion of self-awareness had him in a tailspin.

He had needs all of a sudden. And it made him mad. He talked big, threatening to let her go. She would never be able to support herself, he said. It's not like he hadn't had opportunities to have a fling or two, he said.

I was his diary by night. His daughter by day. I was honored that he was sharing that level of information with me. I was disgusted AT the information he was sharing with me.

Unfortunately, his newfound awareness was the selective type, because he somehow missed the awesome weirdness of sharing the details of their messed up sex-life with me.

Aside from feeling awkwardly privileged at his confiding in me, it validated a lifelong dislike for my mother. Tara defended her. Mom told her that Dad never held her hand when they were young. She resigned herself to be married to an emotionless man. He never indulged her needs, Tara said. He never cultivated a sense of emotion between them. She gave him the opportunity, and he brushed it off. He's reaping what he sowed, Tara said. Fair enough, I said.

However, during her midlife crisis, Mom lashed out at him excessively. My sister couldn't argue that. She wasted herself on him, she said in so many words. She didn't know if she ever really loved him, she told him. This prompted his midlife crisis.

So we became a house divided. Tara with Mom. Me with Dad.

She left and stayed with a family friend once. A week later, Dad had shooting chest pains while he lay awake in their king-size bed trying to go to sleep. The ER doc said it was an anxiety attack.

She came home. The next time she talked about leaving, he removed thirty-grand from his retirement to buy her a new car. She decided to stay.

This fritzy stage of their marriage eventually passed; Dad got over her. But they remained together, addicted to their apathy.

Mom went a little crazy when my grandpa passed on. He lived with us for the last two years of his life. A life-long alcoholic, he wedged cans of beer into his pockets smuggling them from the refrigerator to his bedroom. He walked through the living room with a can protruding from each thigh.

After his death, Mom began doing similar things--shoddy attempts at concealing her drinking. Grandpa liked to be suspected because of the attention; much of his telling behavior was intentional. Mom hides the evidence a little better, but she can't hide the effects like he could. Not even close. I have this theory that she began doing this to "recreate" his antics. I think it makes her feel close to him.

These days, Dad can hardly stand her. He recently took a position with his company requiring him to travel to a different part of North America every week. I worry this might break them; part of me hopes it will. They would call separation for the sake of individual happiness selfish and lazy. They DO call it selfish. And to retain this "right" to criticize others for it, they remain in their torturous, vacant marriage.

My husband and I are in the process of buying our first home. We'll close in about two weeks. After we move in, I'm seizing custody of my parents' cat.