We Were Three - Ep. 2

Transcript

Speaker 1 Discover Terra Madre Americas, one of the world's most exciting food events.

Speaker 1 Coming to Northern California for the first time this September 26th through 28th, dig into good, clean, and fair food for all with chefs Alice Water, Sean Sherman, and Jeremiah Tower.

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Speaker 13 These first two episodes of We Were Three are free, but to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the New York Times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and New York Times shows.

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Speaker 15 When I went to Rachel's house to interview her for the first time, I had my notes and questions, a whole game plan, like I do.

Speaker 14 Within half an hour I gave up on all that.

Speaker 15 We were sitting in her living room, facing a big Christmas tree covered in beautiful, strange ornaments of insects sent to her by friends and strangers. Her brother Peter had raised butterflies.

Speaker 15 And Rachel talked for six hours. Peter had been dead less than two months.
It was her first Christmas without him being alive. Her first birthday as the sole remaining family member.

Speaker 15 Her birthday is Christmas Eve.

Speaker 15 She just talked about her family, especially her brother.

Speaker 14 People want so much to vilify his inaction, myself included in that, you know, and

Speaker 14 my brother was considered a villain. They were like, oh my God, he should be busted for manslaughter, like back when he was still alive.

Speaker 15 She's talking about some of the responses she got on Twitter. She wrote about how her brother hadn't gotten their father to the hospital when he was dying of COVID.

Speaker 14 And, you know, that's just how it is everywhere. I get it.
The internet is what it is, but I just,

Speaker 14 he has been reduced to like

Speaker 14 this bumbling conspiracy theory-riddled anti-vaxxer who just sat by and watched his dad die and then he himself died. And

Speaker 14 there are so many contributing factors to that.

Speaker 15 The disinformation and misinformation, the whole swirl of rage politics and social media, is part of what happened in Rachel's family. The swirl matters.
It did real damage.

Speaker 15 But for Rachel, it was nowhere near enough to come to a real understanding of her brother's death. The brother she knew was a survivor, like she is.
Very accustomed to scrapping, avoiding, making do.

Speaker 15 There had always been one hardship after another to find some way to live through.

Speaker 15 How was COVID the threat he and their father missed? How could this be what did them in? This,

Speaker 15 and not everything else.

Speaker 15 From Serial and the New York Times, This Is We Were Three.

Speaker 15 I'm Nancy Updike.

Speaker 17 I'm Dr. Sarah Rahal, the founder and CEO of Armra.
I developed Armor Colostrum because I know your body was designed to thrive. It's your natural state, your birthright, and you can reclaim it.

Speaker 17 Colostrum is the first nutrition we receive in life with every essential nutrient our bodies need. It's nature's original blueprint for health.

Speaker 17 After a devastating health crisis almost took my life, I made it my mission to harness this power.

Speaker 17 Using proprietary technology, ARMRA captures over 400 bioactive bioactive nutrients in every scoop, delivering over 1,000 benefits that transform your health at its foundation.

Speaker 17 Whether for gut health, metabolism, skin, hair, immunity, mood, energy, fitness, or recovery, I invite you to join this collective revival of health and discover radical transformation for yourself.

Speaker 17 Visit ARMORA.com, that's A-R-M-R-A.com, and enter code health30 for 30% off your first subscription order. This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

Speaker 17 This product is not intended to diagnose, drink, cure, or prevent any disease.

Speaker 1 Coming to Northern California for the first time this September 26th through 28th, dig into good, clean, and fair food for all with chefs Alice Waters, Sean Sherman, and Jeremiah Tower.

Speaker 10 Savor the journey of Terra Madre Americas, only in Sacramento.

Speaker 15 Part 2. Assassin

Speaker 15 With COVID, one thing that got hammered into us was the danger of various underlying conditions, vulnerabilities a person may be born with or may develop over time or both.

Speaker 15 But it's not just people who have underlying conditions. It's families.
and countries.

Speaker 15 And in Rachel's family, there was a whole history of events and circumstances that accumulated long before COVID.

Speaker 15 The Camachos were Pete Sr., the father, Rachel, the older child, and Peter, a year and a half younger than Rachel.

Speaker 15 This small family pulled apart and came back together over the years. There were different configurations, competing alliances.

Speaker 15 But the core version of the family, built in the beginning, was everything the three of them together.

Speaker 14 The three of us were known for just being the squad and you, your dad, and your brother.

Speaker 14 And what's interesting is that same dynamic has fallen into this household where I have five kids and like there was a time where I'd go out for butter and I'd have my five kids.

Speaker 14 Like we would just always be together and that was how it was with me and my dad and my brother. Like he didn't just go for milk.
We would all just go.

Speaker 14 Like we just were so bound.

Speaker 15 This was Southern California in the 1980s. Santa Ana, Anaheim.
Disneyland is right nearby. Their dad was a civil engineer.
He worked in the oil business designing oil refineries.

Speaker 15 He worked in Orange County and Los Angeles, traveled a lot to work sites. Even with minimal traffic, he'd usually get home after seven.

Speaker 15 He wore white shirts with pocket protectors. He was one of five brothers.

Speaker 14 I hesitate to call him white collar because we were on welfare several times. We were always strapped.
We never, like, we'd never had a new car in our lives.

Speaker 14 Always some sort of rusty, you know, it just, we, it didn't ever feel like we were successful.

Speaker 14 But I understood that of all of her sons, my grandma knew to go to my dad when she was about to lose the house. And

Speaker 14 he was,

Speaker 14 I mean, for the most part, he was, he was, he was a successful person. And I think really in my family, that just meant he never went to prison

Speaker 14 but

Speaker 14 he his whole upbringing was very different he skateboarded he surfed and he played baseball and he would get jumped by his brother's friends for not being Mexican enough and

Speaker 14 they thought that he was doing all that white shit. And

Speaker 14 in a way, I think that he kind of was trying very hard to assimilate because

Speaker 14 he had had,

Speaker 14 his heritage was used against him often, whether in court, against my mom,

Speaker 14 police.

Speaker 15 Your mom using it against him in custody battles for you guys.

Speaker 14 Exactly. And saying it to us, like, you know, you're Mexic.
I should never have had a baby with a Mexican man. Like, she would just say all this ridiculous crap.

Speaker 15 Rachel's mother, in a text, denied saying that, calling it a deliberate outrageous lie. She denied using Pete's heritage against him in custody battles at all.

Speaker 15 She sent other texts saying among other things, I love all my children and tried hard to save them. That is just another very sad story of injustice and how the race card was well played.

Speaker 15 She said Rachel, quote, has been so very successful drawing the ignorant and feeble-minded into shelling out money to her for her fantastic heart of hate and acting abilities.

Speaker 15 Acting abilities is in quotes.

Speaker 15 Rachel's dad was 20 years old when they got married. Her mom was 19.

Speaker 15 Her mom filed for divorce less than three months after they got married. Rachel was born during the nearly three years of divorce proceedings.
Peter was born after the divorce was finalized.

Speaker 15 Their mom put Rachel, then Peter, into foster care. They were separated.

Speaker 15 In an affidavit at the time, their mother wrote, quote, because of my fear for the well-being of the children and my concern that they might be beaten by my husband, the children were placed in foster homes, end quote.

Speaker 15 It took their dad about a year to get first Rachel and then Peter out of foster care, and they stayed with him from then on.

Speaker 15 Their mother, in court documents, claimed their father beat her, he beat the kids, committed burglaries, did drugs, stole gasoline, had a gun in his car.

Speaker 15 If any of that ever happened, Rachel never saw it, never heard about it outside of these contentious court filings.

Speaker 15 Except the beatings. That part was true.

Speaker 14 We lied to the mediators and the child psychologists and the judges. We lied because we wanted to stay with her dad.
We didn't want to be in foster homes.

Speaker 14 We were in separate foster homes, you know, when my mom first put us in. And so, like, our attachment, like we really just needed to be together.

Speaker 14 Like I'd rather buckle myself in and let this turbulent life be it than possibly get on separate planes and they all might crash and we'll never know. Like it was just, we needed to have each other.

Speaker 15 They chose their father. They were more frightened of their mother's unpredictability, which never stopped affecting the family.

Speaker 15 Rachel says she took her first husband's surname, McKibbens, partly to hide from her mother.

Speaker 15 As a kid, Rachel found her dad to be the more reliable parent.

Speaker 14 Because my dad, he would beat the shit out of us, but he would still tuck us in every night and we'd pray together every night.

Speaker 14 Like there was always some sort of like coming back around at the tail end of violence and sort of not, and an unspoken apology was happening with the kiss on the forehead, the tucking into bed, and our nightly prayers.

Speaker 15 Some parts of this story are in the world of childhood memories that only one or two other people, now dead, might have witnessed.

Speaker 15 But I've spent the last several months talking to people who knew Rachel and Peter as children and adults, and who knew their father.

Speaker 15 I've looked through emails, texts, computer files, documents from courts and government agencies, family photos, papers, letters.

Speaker 15 So this is a chronicle told mostly through one person's memories and perspective, but also based as much as possible on documented facts.

Speaker 15 There was no sexual abuse at home, Rachel says.

Speaker 15 She's written and talked for years about her father's physical abuse, which was worse when he was drinking, but didn't stop during the times he was trying to stay sober.

Speaker 15 When Rachel heard the term dry drunk as an adult, a whole mystery from her childhood resolved in her head.

Speaker 15 There are stretches of her growing up Rachel says she doesn't remember at all. Entire ages, for instance, eight, just gone.

Speaker 15 But some memories stayed. There's an incident she's written about in more than one poem.
When she told me about it, I got a sense of the rhythm she lived with as a child.

Speaker 15 How abruptly a moment could turn dangerous and keep turning.

Speaker 14 I was on a church playground, and in order to get to it, you had to climb this stucco wall that scratched the shit out of you and I had a dress on and I didn't

Speaker 14 I was too small and all of the other kids had already hopped over and this man helped me up and he lifted me over

Speaker 14 and he put his hand where I knew it didn't belong

Speaker 14 and he wriggled his finger and I and afterwards And then he just stayed in the playground and watched us play. And it was time to climb back over the wall.

Speaker 14 He hoisted me up and did the same thing to me again.

Speaker 14 And I told my dad this when he picked me up, I said, That man over there near the bushes, he goosed me because that was the word I had been given.

Speaker 14 Like when we'd poke each other, my dad, stop goosing each other. Like we'd just like, you know, poke and mess around the back seat.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 he said, What?

Speaker 14 And I said, I, oh, he was over there. There's, there was, there was a man over there.

Speaker 14 The, the man in the, he had like sweat pants, like a jogging suit.

Speaker 14 He goosed me.

Speaker 15 Rachel was in the front seat next to her father as she was saying this. Peter was in back.

Speaker 15 Their father turned off the ignition.

Speaker 14 He got out of the car and he turned around, or he came around, opened the door, and he yanked me out by my braids and just started smacking me and my body.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 how old were you?

Speaker 14 I was in kindergarten, and I just

Speaker 14 that was it. I just got beat up and then put back in the car, put your seatbelt on

Speaker 14 and then drive home.

Speaker 14 But he didn't drive home. He drove to my grandmother's and he just drank like half a bottle of jack

Speaker 14 and told the whole household what happened to me. which I was

Speaker 14 mortified by

Speaker 14 and

Speaker 14 then I got my hair chopped off.

Speaker 15 It chopped off my braids to make me less of a girl. Girl was not a good thing to be was one lesson she took from that.
Another lesson, she understood how alone she was.

Speaker 15 The one parent she had left, who was supposed to be taking care of her, could decide on a dime to hurt her instead. and blame her for pain she didn't even understand.

Speaker 15 Family included those truths as a baseline for Rachel.

Speaker 15 And then there was the rest of it, because family never means just one thing.

Speaker 15 Rachel told me, I am who I am because of my father. She meant a lot of things by that.
She's funny like her father, smart like him, determined. A good arguer, a showboat.

Speaker 15 Their father was irresistible when he wanted to be. Charm itself, the way many alcoholics are.
He could fix things, build things. He loved to throw money around and be generous.

Speaker 15 Their father was, when the mood was right, a giddy co-conspirator with his children.

Speaker 14 Like my dad would go ding-dong ditch with me and my brother. And like this is, this is an older dude.

Speaker 14 And he had a retired cop car that had been spray-painted beige. And that was what we drove.
And we had this wild old, like, dragnet spotlight that you could shine on people.

Speaker 14 It was just really just a card, like a character written by Tennessee Williams and Wes Anderson.

Speaker 15 Movies were a huge part of their life as a family.

Speaker 15 Almost every Sunday, Rachel, Peter, and their father would go to Edwards Cinemas in Anaheim for a matinee, it was cheaper, and see probably an action movie. Peter was a big Van Damme fan.

Speaker 15 Favorites they would re-watch at home until they'd memorized lines, trading places, La Bamba, planes, trains, and automobiles.

Speaker 15 The lines that cracked up Rachel and Peter became like seaglass, softened and beautified by being returned to again and again.

Speaker 15 Rachel says her father would never let outsiders criticize his kids.

Speaker 15 Even when she or Peter hurt another child and a parent showed up at their house and complained, her dad might say, for instance, well, maybe your kid's a little fuckface.

Speaker 15 And let's face it, some kids are. Rachel remembers being a kid other kids were scared of.
Her brother, too.

Speaker 14 If you're not playing with other kids, or if when you do, you're the one who throws a rock at someone's face, or you're the one who takes something,

Speaker 14 you take tag and it just gets violent.

Speaker 14 Or there's duck duck goose and you just

Speaker 14 can't help but harm the person instead of just tapping them on their head.

Speaker 15 And these are all things that your brother did?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I mean both of us. When it came to playtime,

Speaker 14 we both were the kids who would take it too fucking far.

Speaker 15 Home had to be a hidden world full of secrets. Rachel and Peter knew without being told how important it was to lie, especially to anyone in authority.

Speaker 15 But Rachel says sometimes their father would remind them anyway, be careful what you say or you'll end up in foster care.

Speaker 15 As Rachel and Peter got older and learned the American caste system as it plays out in school, they found even more reasons to hide.

Speaker 15 Rachel remembers shoplifting tied because Peter told her someone at school had said he smelled poor.

Speaker 15 She says she was more adept than Peter at blending in.

Speaker 15 The disguise worked while she was at school. But home was always a wild card.

Speaker 14 We always had shame about having friends over because like, you know, we didn't have cool furniture. One time we had lawn furniture as our furniture.

Speaker 14 Like he once had a kiddie pool in his room full of crawdads and like not an aquarium, but like a $3 toys r us kiddie pole you could get in that summer. And we just lived.

Speaker 14 We lived in a way where we understood it wasn't normal and the kids would make fun of us for it.

Speaker 15 Most of their father's violence happened inside their home. But the times Rachel remembers her father hitting her or Peter in public and no one around them intervening made clear to her,

Speaker 15 Peter and I are on our own.

Speaker 15 That realization created an enduring and subtle connection between them. They could laugh at things no one else would find funny.

Speaker 15 They'd speak in code, like, dad's bottom teeth are showing, meant, He's drunk.

Speaker 15 Rachel remembers the feeling of being in bed at night and hearing her father's door open down the hall and her and Peter each in their separate rooms reaching out to one another any way they could.

Speaker 14 There were coughs we would do sometimes to notify.

Speaker 14 We would do certain knocks. I don't remember what they meant, but like just we would check on each other.

Speaker 14 There was one time where my brother wedged a triangular block, a wood block. So my dad, you could hear him try to

Speaker 14 open the door real hard, and he banged into it. And, like, it was worth it.
Like, sometimes we do that for each other.

Speaker 14 Like, I put a roller skate, like at my one at least weird old metal roller skates that I'd inherited. And I was like, these are useless.
These are not cool.

Speaker 14 And, like, we would sort of create like toy-infused booby traps.

Speaker 14 Or just things to just make the moment that we knew was inevitable a little like

Speaker 15 ridiculous and comic.

Speaker 14 And I think about it, I'm like, it wasn't really to stop our dad. We knew that couldn't happen, but it was just to entertain the listener.

Speaker 15 They were each other's listener, their witness.

Speaker 15 But the bond Rachel and Peter shared of both being victims of this man they loved and were tied to was constantly forced into competition with their own separate instincts to be spared.

Speaker 14 Because I think about in movies, you see like the two kids climbing to bed together and hiding under the covers and everything.

Speaker 14 But instead, what we did was like, I would be frozen in my bed and he would be across the hall in his.

Speaker 14 And you hear the belt and you think, oh, which room is he just coming into? Just to randomly,

Speaker 14 drunkenly beat one of us up.

Speaker 14 And so just to have that constant, like your shoulders are up to your ears at all times and your back hurts from it. And over time,

Speaker 14 you know, it just

Speaker 14 became

Speaker 14 it, you know, it went from like

Speaker 14 hushed whispers across the hall to like just the

Speaker 14 soundtrack of

Speaker 14 a beating about to happen and the quiet of it. And we don't scream and we don't make sound because we don't want to disrupt the neighbor's night.

Speaker 14 And it beat up in silence is such a weird, it's a weird

Speaker 14 galaxy

Speaker 14 to not make a sound when you hurt really bad,

Speaker 14 to have yourself picked up by your hair, lifted off the ground, like three feet,

Speaker 14 and like all of the yelp that your natural body wants to do gets pushed down.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I became a loudmouth. When I was older, I

Speaker 14 was done. And I think that that didn't ever happen for my brother, who's never granted an outlet to just

Speaker 14 make a proper sad noise.

Speaker 15 Being a loudmouth versus staying silent, these roles, these choices to speak or not, came to define them and eventually to separate them.

Speaker 15 Rachel and her brother got school photos every year, and her father seems to have kept almost all of them.

Speaker 15 I looked through the photos after I'd been talking to Rachel for months, and my expectations were colored by what she and others had told me.

Speaker 15 I'd heard Peter felt uncomfortable having photos taken of him. He didn't like smiling.
But he did fine in these.

Speaker 15 A kid with a round face and thick brown hair, who looked like he could have been cutting up with friends right before or right after the photos were taken.

Speaker 15 Rachel though had a relationship with the camera the way some people just do.

Speaker 15 In the photos she looks like she's enjoying the attention rather than simply accepting it. She pays attention back.

Speaker 15 She's got a giant dimpled smile, big eyelashes. She's beautiful.

Speaker 15 I talked to people who knew Rachel and Peter in high school. The two of them went to the same school, Rachel always a year ahead.
As an older sister, she cast a big shadow.

Speaker 15 She had friends, a boyfriend, she was a jock, a theater kid, a good student, a writer. By the end of her junior year, she was also a mother.

Speaker 15 She'd kept her pregnancy secret from almost everyone, including her father, for a while. Rachel says the baby stayed with her at night.

Speaker 15 and with members of her family or her boyfriend's family during the day. And Rachel managed to stay in school and keep doing well.

Speaker 15 And on top of everything else, she was a fighter, so other students didn't mess with her.

Speaker 15 Peter was a quiet kid, kept mostly to himself, which of course isn't allowed in high school, so people did mess with him, if they thought they could get away with it without Rachel finding out.

Speaker 15 Peter struggled in his classes. He wasn't a jock.
He didn't do team sports. He liked dodgeball and handball.
Rachel had gotten help when she was young with speech difficulties and dyslexia.

Speaker 15 She never saw Peter get help, for instance with his lisp and his reading problems. She doesn't know why.

Speaker 15 School just never became a place where Peter managed to shine or find close friends.

Speaker 15 At home, their father insisted on being scrupulously equal with them to the point where Rachel remembers he would measure each one's glass of milk so they were the same amount.

Speaker 15 But the more Rachel succeeded, the more her father encouraged her and focused on her. When she was a gymnast, he bought her a balance beam.
When she was in Dracula, he built the coffin for the set.

Speaker 15 He went to her games, her meets, her award ceremonies. He took her to acting lessons in Beverly Hills.

Speaker 15 In high school, the alliance between Rachel and Peter frayed. He resented her.

Speaker 15 Rachel doesn't remember her father saying anything explicit like, my money's on Rachel, or, Rachel's Rachel's a smart one.

Speaker 15 But kids perceive all sorts of truths their parents never say out loud. And this one was obvious.

Speaker 14 Well, enough to where my brother could say, well, dad favors you. He's always favored you.

Speaker 14 Like when he finds, like when those words finally came out of his mouth, like when it was like within the last two or three years that happened.

Speaker 14 I think it was actually like four years ago, because I just remember feeling so guilty because

Speaker 14 a truth was named and we all kind of knew it. I hoped it wasn't true.

Speaker 15 Along with resenting Rachel, Peter, as he got older, would often shut Rachel down when she tried to call their father out. Sometimes he'd go so far as to take their father's side against her.

Speaker 15 Rachel remembers a moment, of course it happened while they were watching a movie. One I was pretty shocked they watched together.
It's a TV movie called The Burning Bed, starring Farah Fawcett.

Speaker 15 It's about domestic violence.

Speaker 15 Rachel was sitting there with her father and brother watching this movie, having seen her father hit his longtime girlfriend, as well as her and Peter.

Speaker 14 And he turns to me and says,

Speaker 14 Don't you ever let a man touch you like that if he does, you tell me.

Speaker 15 Your father said that to you.

Speaker 14 Can you imagine

Speaker 14 hearing that? How

Speaker 14 Hollowed out.

Speaker 14 And I'm like,

Speaker 14 you're saying that to me? You're a fucking wife beater.

Speaker 15 Peter turned to Rachel.

Speaker 14 And I'll never use a shut up, shut up. That's what Peter's.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 Like,

Speaker 14 it just had that weird ring. Shut up.
Like, just.

Speaker 15 The honeymooners kind of shut up.

Speaker 14 It was bad. And it just even made me.

Speaker 14 I was levitating. I was like five inches from the ceiling at that point.
Like, you fuck it. Like, I didn't say it, but I was just like, both of you, you're liars.

Speaker 15 This was how the big shift started happening in Rachel's head. Her family's secrets stopped feeling like secrets.
They just felt like lies. Lies that protected other people, not her.

Speaker 14 It's like there was a huge liberating turn when I finally was like, I'm not protecting people by lying anymore. I'm over that.
In fact, I'm probably going to tell the truth too often.

Speaker 14 I'm going to be uncomfortable very often. And it's true.
Like, I've been called a bully even for it. Like,

Speaker 14 I've been called all kinds of terrible names because of it. But I just.

Speaker 15 That's me, off-mic, asking if a certain spectacular blowout she told me about had been the turning point. The Wine and roses affair.

Speaker 14 I didn't even think about that. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Shit. Fuck.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 15 A stranger comes to town with wine.

Speaker 15 That's after the break.

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Speaker 17 I'm Dr. Sarah Rahal, the founder and CEO of Armra.
I developed Armor Colostrum because I know your body was designed to thrive. It's your natural state, your birthright, and you can reclaim it.

Speaker 17 Colostrum is the first nutrition we receive in life with every essential nutrient our bodies need. It's nature's original blueprint for health.

Speaker 17 After a devastating health crisis almost took my life, I made it my mission to harness this power.

Speaker 17 Using proprietary technology, Armra captures over 400 bioactive nutrients in every scoop, delivering over 1,000 benefits that transform your health at its foundation.

Speaker 17 Whether for gut health, metabolism, skin, hair, immunity, mood, energy, fitness, or recovery, I invite you to join this collective revival of health and discover radical transformation for yourself.

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Speaker 1 Coming to Northern California for the first time this September 26th through 28th, dig into good, clean, and fair food for all with chefs Alice Waters, Sean Sherman, and Jeremiah Tower.

Speaker 10 Save for the journey of Terra Madre Americas, only in Sacramento.

Speaker 15 Wine and Roses.

Speaker 14 Okay,

Speaker 15 that is shorthand for an avalanche of events that happened in the spring of Rachel's senior year of high school. This is where Rachel and Peter's paths fully diverged.

Speaker 15 Rachel is a playwright as well as a poet, so she lays the story out like a play, just one mad scene after another.

Speaker 15 I've heard from other people who were there for the moments that unfolded in public or or semi-public that they do remember these scenes.

Speaker 15 And please note that this upcoming small back and forth between Rachel and me is one of dozens of moments in our conversation where I can barely follow what she's saying because it's yet another bombshell.

Speaker 15 She starts off talking about Peter moving out.

Speaker 14 He actually moved in his senior year back into my grandmother's house and

Speaker 14 moved out

Speaker 14 from the house that he was living in with you and your dad into your grandmother's house with your grandmother my dad left us for a co-worker and moved out in the middle of my senior year he moved out and

Speaker 14 didn't tell us oh so you got you you two were living on your own yeah yeah it was wild we didn't know this woman and then one day she showed up packing our dad's stuff and yelling at us that we're bad kids and we're like woman who the hell are you what and it was his co-worker and they were married.

Speaker 14 I'm like, bitch, get out of my house. Like, who is this crazy white woman? I don't know who this is.

Speaker 15 It was just wild.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 15 he didn't tell you

Speaker 15 what was going on. No.

Speaker 15 Even after he moved out, he didn't call and say, look, I moved out or anything.

Speaker 14 He'd send us an envelope every month, $60 that was lunch money for no note, just cash. Nothing.
Nothing.

Speaker 15 and no preamble you had no idea this was coming no no dummy are you listening they never saw it coming

Speaker 15 let's just all accept as rachel and peter had to the new reality that their father the parent who had fought to get them out of foster care fought for custody and had been their only stable home ever since that person had suddenly up and left, gotten married, and moved in with the new wife, Alex.

Speaker 15 And let's start at the introductory dinner Rachel and her brother had with their father and his new wife.

Speaker 14 There was an olive branch moment where he came and they took us all to Claim Jumper and we had this dinner together, the four of us, and we were sort of meeting our new mom that we had never, it just was so awkward.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 what I understood during that dinner was that they both were alcoholics who were absolutely leaning on each other. Turns out they met in AA.

Speaker 15 It seemed clear to Rachel they were not sober at this dinner.

Speaker 14 Like they were acting a little hyper and goofy and which isn't always necessarily out of character with my dad, but it just kept ramping in a way and then getting goofy.

Speaker 14 And then he grabbed her boob in front of us.

Speaker 14 And we were just like all right you know what this is what the hell and so kind of as a dig i brought up well interesting um because i i've been cast as the lead uh in days of wine and roses

Speaker 15 this is a high-end dig the days of wine and roses is a fascinating bit of pop culture from the late 50s early 60s it's a love story about two alcoholics an early portrayal of a

Speaker 15 There was a movie version with Jack Lemon and Lee Rimick, and the original teleplay with Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson.

Speaker 15 And in both, there were some poignant performances of true love and true drunkenness, both the giddy, flirty, mischievous kind and the dead-end, destroying your life kind.

Speaker 15 Her dad and Alex, for some reason, loved this idea.

Speaker 14 They got really excited about it.

Speaker 14 So he was

Speaker 14 he was really enthusiastic and said, I would like to help you in any way I can. And then he just put $500 on the table.
And we were like, is this for back rent? Like, what is this?

Speaker 14 He goes, no, just, just put this towards, uh, put this towards your play. And I was like, looking at Peter, who was just like, well, what do I get? Like, and he goes, well, you don't do anything.

Speaker 14 And Peter just sat there and I was like, oh, see, and now I gotta go home with my brother and it's just just there's gonna be that shit tension that happens

Speaker 14 and

Speaker 14 we went home and my brother went up to his room and didn't talk to me probably for a week just it was just the usual type of thing that would happen with us

Speaker 15 rehearsals for the play moved ahead Rachel's dad was on call to help like he always was with her theater projects.

Speaker 14 One week I had called

Speaker 14 him at work and said, we need props. Do you have any empty like whiskey bottles?

Speaker 14 And when I say that he came and in front of all of my peers opened up his trunk and there were at least, I think it was 60,

Speaker 14 it was between 60 and 70 bottles.

Speaker 14 And they all like all my crew, a bunch of punk rock kids were like laughing like, what?

Speaker 14 And like, it's just, it was incredible. and I was so embarrassed and I

Speaker 14 you know I it just it just felt like my entire life had been dissected for science class in front of everybody but like without my consent and

Speaker 14 what was interesting about our theatrical productions at the end of year is that there would be judges who would come in and we did three different plays and they would nominate people for like the Academy Award of Tustin High School.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 it was just so goofy because it wasn't even a sports, or it wasn't an arts school, but our teacher just really wanted us to like ride the momentum. Like this is, this is exciting.

Speaker 14 You could actually propel yourself to like start them. Who knows?

Speaker 14 She was great. And so there, I was nominated for best actress for my role in Days of Wine and Roses.

Speaker 15 Of course she was. And soon it was Tustin High School's Academy Awards night.

Speaker 14 But that same night was an Eagles concert, and my dad chose to go to it instead. And I was like, really?

Speaker 15 Like, you know what? I'm going to go listen to Peaceful Easy Feeling

Speaker 15 for the thousandth time instead of seeing you.

Speaker 14 And when I went through his stuff, I found the Eagles concert ticket. I was going through the photo albums, trying to be all like sweet and nostalgic.
And I'm like, good,

Speaker 14 94 Eagles concert.

Speaker 14 So I go, and his wife comes as his proxy

Speaker 14 and she was sloshed. And I was like, are you fucked? So I

Speaker 15 was, was she, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 13 You went.

Speaker 14 No, go ahead. Well, I mean, she just was, I'm here to take pictures for your dad.
I was like, oh, Lord.

Speaker 14 And I win.

Speaker 14 And my dad's not there.

Speaker 14 And I said, you know, I don't think it's really fair for me to be given this award

Speaker 14 because we are only given three months to prepare for our roles and rehearse. And my peers, you know, they had like 90 days, but I had 17 years to prepare for this role.
And when I...

Speaker 15 This was your acceptance speech.

Speaker 14 And that's it. And I walked off.
I was done.

Speaker 14 If you're not going to even be here for us to like help assist the lie into existence, then I just, I'm done. I'm done.

Speaker 15 Rachel remembers getting off the stage, sitting down at a table, and Alex, her father's wife, sitting next to her, and pulling out a bottle of wine from her bag, and proceeding to pour wine for herself into one of the glasses the school had provided for the non-alcoholic beverages that the children and other adults were drinking at this high school event concerning a play about alcoholism.

Speaker 14 And understand too, some of the actors like were freshmen. Like it was, you could be 14 or 18, 17.
And she, you know, and she just would not look at me.

Speaker 14 And then at the end of the night, she grabbed the back of my arm and she goes, Why did you do that to your innocent dad? And I just started, I was like, innocent.

Speaker 14 It was just weird that she chose that word.

Speaker 14 And then, so I thought, well, Innocent, of what? Like, what are we? Because I was like, if you want, like, I'm all, we can get ugly if you want to get ugly. But

Speaker 14 I'm going to go get pizza. Like, I'm not sticking around.
I don't need a ride from you. Cause, you know, she was going to drive me home.
Like, I'm good. I'm good.
Lady, I don't know you.

Speaker 14 I don't know you. Like, get away from me.
Don't talk to me about, oh, she goes,

Speaker 14 she goes, karma, karma, karma.

Speaker 15 And I was like, I don't in a California bullshit.

Speaker 14 Literally,

Speaker 14 take that shit back to Venice Beach and kick some sand over it like some dog shit. Cause get out of my face with that.

Speaker 15 Rachel remembers the awards night as the first time she ever called out her father in public.

Speaker 15 And even though he enjoyed being the cheeky dad who showed up at his daughter's rehearsal with a bunch of empty booze bottles, Rachel telling a room full of adults, especially a room full of white people, that she'd spent her whole life with an alcoholic, that was not the same at all.

Speaker 15 The finale of all this, an ensemble number, took place the following Saturday.

Speaker 15 Rachel says their father showed up at their apartment with Alex, the wife, and they started to go full Grinch on the place.

Speaker 14 They take the TV, they take

Speaker 14 the new

Speaker 14 CD player

Speaker 14 that he had bought for my birthday, they started taking the knife block, like just emptying out.

Speaker 14 And my dad comes to me and he just goes, you are an assassin. You're an assassin.

Speaker 14 And I said,

Speaker 14 why? Because I told the fucking truth. Why? Don't make me tell the truth in front of your new fucking wife.
He's like, you're an assassin. You're a liar.

Speaker 14 And my brother was just sitting in the background, like, oh, God, Rachel, don't, don't do anything. Like, we're all going to get beat up.
Like, everyone here will get beat up.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 I just remember her saying, how could you ever be this way to your dad? Look at how you don't appreciate anything he's done for you. And I'm like, bitch, do you know he has a girlfriend?

Speaker 14 And my dad looked stunned because my dad had a longtime girlfriend. And I go, I'm telling Sandy.
And I get on the phone and I call her and I go, did you know my dad got married?

Speaker 14 And I'm just sitting here like, yep, they're here right now. They're packing everything up.
They just took my, they took my CD player. And she's like, wait, what, what, is she pretty?

Speaker 14 What does she look like? And I was like, oh, what is this? Because bless Sandy, but like she was asking all of the questions. I hung up the phone and he was just like, he couldn't believe I did that.

Speaker 14 And I'm thinking, homie,

Speaker 14 you just, you left us.

Speaker 14 You've given us a world of pain numerous times.

Speaker 14 You got married. You try to introduce us to our new mom who's just not our mom.
Like, what is this? And I was like, and another thing, you're fucking bottles, you fucking drunk hobo psychos.

Speaker 14 Like, what the fuck? Why would you do that? Like, what is wrong with you?

Speaker 14 And I just, I just was screaming whatever I could at them just to hurt my dad and also to embarrass her with, like, you don't to embarrass her with the truth. Like, bitch, you don't know.

Speaker 14 And well, you understand that he beats the shit out of us all our fucking lives.

Speaker 14 Do you understand that he threw me through this glass fucking dining table? And that's why it's just a board?

Speaker 15 Like,

Speaker 14 like, let's get into it.

Speaker 14 And he just, he, he was just screaming, assassin.

Speaker 15 Then they left with all the stuff.

Speaker 15 Rachel and Peter Peter were alone again.

Speaker 15 He turned to Rachel, assessing the damage.

Speaker 14 He's like, you killed us. And I was like, I,

Speaker 14 you killed us. I'm like, I didn't kill us.
Like,

Speaker 14 leave me alone. Like, what the fuck is this?

Speaker 15 He was blaming you. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Yeah. For the whole, the whole thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 I was like, I, I, I don't.

Speaker 14 I'm sorry. I'm, I'm sorry.
It's like, we're not going to get lunch money anymore.

Speaker 14 And my brother was just like, I got to. I gotta get out of here.

Speaker 15 Rachel had felt like she didn't have much to lose by telling their secrets in front of Alex and the audience at school. She felt like, fuck my dad.
What's he gonna do? Leave? He's already gone.

Speaker 15 But Peter, who was 17 and had another year left of high school, concluded that he did have things to lose.

Speaker 15 The subsistence level stability he'd managed with up to now, for example, like regular lunch money, that might go away entirely. He was facing a new level of chaos, everybody for themselves.

Speaker 15 Peter moved out. He couldn't move in with his father and Alex, they lived too far away for him to get to school every day.

Speaker 15 The house he moved into was his grandparents' house, which is where he lived for the rest of his life.

Speaker 15 Rachel left Southern California, but it took a while to do it.

Speaker 15 She spent a year after high school living wherever, friends' houses, ex-boyfriend's house, the park sometimes. She lived at her father's girlfriend Sandy's house at one point.

Speaker 15 Then she moved in with her boyfriend's family. Rachel was barely in touch with Peter or her father that year in the following few years.

Speaker 15 She says one time she got a call out of the blue from Alex, her father's ex-wife at that point.

Speaker 15 Alex had gotten cancer, gotten sober, divorced Rachel's dad, who'd been drinking heavily. He'd gotten a couple of DUIs.

Speaker 15 Rachel says Alex is the first adult she remembers apologizing to her, saying basically, I got it wrong before when I believed your dad over you.

Speaker 15 Rachel landed a job, got her own place. lost the job.
She had three kids. The kids helped her reconnect with Peter.

Speaker 15 As adults, she and Peter found comfort in the fact of each other, veterans of the same obscure war. But Peter was hunkering, and Rachel was headed outward.

Speaker 15 She got married at 27 years old, moved across the country, and started publishing her poetry, often about her family and childhood. She knows her father read her books.

Speaker 15 She's not sure Peter did, or how he felt about the fact of her writing about their life.

Speaker 14 He would attend poetry readings with me and hear me describe events that he too survived,

Speaker 14 endured, suffered, whatever the word, but

Speaker 14 I got the applause.

Speaker 15 Did you guys talk afterward about what you had said in the poems?

Speaker 14 Never.

Speaker 15 You never talked about the abuse as adults?

Speaker 14 Well, he it was normalized. Like, you know, my dad kicked our asses.
I'm like, kicked our asses just is too

Speaker 14 passive, in my opinion.

Speaker 15 They stuck mostly to safer ground. Movies and TV, her kids, jokes, some memories, the Lakers.

Speaker 15 Every once in a while, a brief allusion to stresses and fears known only to the two of them.

Speaker 15 Peter became, as other relatives died off, the proprietor of his grandparents' house. He had a a few girlfriends over the years.
None of the relationships lasted.

Speaker 15 Peter was tall and nice-looking, and he could be warm and chatty in brief encounters with, say, a cashier at the grocery store or a receptionist. But he still struggled to make friends.

Speaker 15 He fixed up the house, made a garden in the back, and raised butterflies. took care of stray cats and a tortoise that wandered into the yard.

Speaker 15 His father worked out of state a lot, but he'd stay at the house with Peter when he wasn't working far away.

Speaker 15 Peter and his dad eventually settled into a symbiotic relationship. His father had the one bank account they both used.
His father took care of the mortgage and the bills. Peter took care of him.

Speaker 14 He had this kind of air of authority over my dad that was interesting to me

Speaker 14 because

Speaker 14 he,

Speaker 14 as a non-drinker,

Speaker 14 as a non-smoker, he really believed that my dad was poisoning himself, so he was trying to save my dad from that.

Speaker 14 And when my dad finally settled down and lived back in the house, which is maybe, I'd say, 10, 15 years ago,

Speaker 14 my brother became really sort of like this

Speaker 14 parent.

Speaker 15 Their father would give up drinking and go back to it. Sometimes in excess, sometimes he'd just have a beer.
Peter would get upset at any drinking. They got a juicer and resolved to get healthy.

Speaker 15 They worked out together. They were best friends, as Peter said in a text after his father died.

Speaker 15 He and Rachel had each built their own stronghold. Rachel in her writing and her own family.
Peter at his father's side.

Speaker 15 And the old squad, the three of them, as a three, also still existed somehow, damaged and imperfect, but recognizable.

Speaker 15 Every summer for five years in a row, Rachel and her family drove across the country and stayed for weeks with her father and brother in the house in Santa Ana.

Speaker 15 Then the family couldn't drive out to California for a few summers in a row because of work.

Speaker 15 And then COVID.

Speaker 14 Part of me wishes I never moved to New York. Part of me wishes I had just,

Speaker 14 but I was just, God, I was going to be eaten alive. So I I just needed to I needed to go but um

Speaker 14 if I'd been more present in my brother's life who knows who knows

Speaker 14 I'm in constant debate with myself

Speaker 14 and I think all people in mourning do this I know that they do

Speaker 14 um all the what-ifs and all that

Speaker 15 I asked Rachel if she's writing about any of this yet. She said no.

Speaker 15 She said when she writes a poem, she's settled someplace with whatever she's writing about. She was still roaming when we talked.

Speaker 15 She still wasn't sure what happened during the months she was barely talking with her father and Peter. What came before the texts.
She was letting me roam with her.

Speaker 15 But a girl can reach her limit with all the questions.

Speaker 14 Like, it's very unnatural to be interviewed during all of this. I know.
It's not a normal

Speaker 15 thing.

Speaker 14 It's weird to speak of things you haven't even processed yet, but

Speaker 14 like this is also sort of giving me permission to go about my life knowing that like I've uncovered things and I'm going to put those pieces together and figure it out, but

Speaker 14 they can also wait and or you know some sweet gingery white lady can just put it all together for me.

Speaker 14 Help my help me figure this one out. Hello.

Speaker 15 I am the gingery white lady, courtesy of Wella,

Speaker 15 and I did figure some things out.

Speaker 15 That's next time on the last part of We Were Three.