Pageboy: A Memoir

When Page was 13, he told his mother that he only wanted to live with her. He was tired of splitting his time between two houses, and he did not want to endure Linda’s cruelty and Dennis’s indifference to his pain. Despite Page asking his mother not to say anything to his father, Martha discussed the change with Dennis.

Dennis was very upset to learn that Page no longer wanted to live with him. He drove the two of them to an isolated location, sobbed, and asked, “You love your mother more than me?” (215). Not wanting to hurt his father, Page agreed to keep living with him. Martha never brought up the subject again, and Page had to continue to hide his pain and endure Linda’s mistreatment.

When Page was in his early twenties, he and his father discussed his relationship with Linda, and Dennis said that “ninety percent of [his and Linda’s] fights were about [Page]” (218). Dennis continued to dismiss Page’s feelings about Linda and said that Page should be the bigger person and forgive her. Linda wrote Page a letter that outlined all of his faults, claiming they pushed her to mistreat him. Page is unable to forgive Linda, not having received a proper apology.