When she was young, Beth Raymer knew that her father had tapped the family’s phone lines to spy on his wife; he planned to use the recordings against her when he filed for divorce. As an adult, Raymer discover the terrible secrets the recordings contained. This is a stunning essay about family, abuse, betrayal, and the painful limits of truth:
At first, when I started listening to the Divorce Tapes, it felt as though I was living in my very own version of Our Town. I’d push PLAY and hear my grandfather, who was now dead, talk about his Lions Club meeting. In the background of conversations, I’d hear the chirp of the cuckoo clock in the kitchen, the ting! of Mom’s spoon as she stirred her morning coffee. For many, many hours, it was 1996 or 1997, and I got a very clear idea of what my parents’ daily lives were like as empty nesters. My father was always at the dealership, while my mother, who had never worked outside the home, spent hours on the phone with her three sisters. She talked about her marriage, but they also discussed more everyday things: books they were reading, gossip they’d heard, the latest episode of Cops.
One day, as I listened to my aunt talk about the latest drama within her small town’s police department, the conversation took a turn. Suddenly, the two of them were openly talking about something I had thought of as a family secret, something that happened to my sister as a child that we had always struggled to make sense of. I rewound. It took me a minute to gain the courage to push PLAY again.
My mother’s voice: Colleen didn’t want me to have anything to do with them. She didn’t want me to have his baby’s pictures in the house or anything.
I pushed STOP.
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