“What was your relationship like with Lexi?”
“Um, I was like a nanny. She wanted no part of taking care of the kids, so I raised them on my own. I’d see her when she got home at night, like 8:30 pm after she ate dinner somewhere, but she left for work like 5:30 am, or wherever she went when she left. I had no idea and didn’t care.”
“Did y’all kiss goodnight or talk at all?”
“No. We’d say hello or whatever, but that was about it.”
“Did she spend time with the girls?”
“Sometimes on the weekends. We’d go to a movie or something. Sometimes to a mall. But we never really did anything in public together, and Lexi didn’t want to take care of the girls alone. A couple of times a year she would take the girls on a weekend trip to Galveston, without me, to the Ambassador Resort and Spa. They had a nanny service at the resort, so Lexi didn’t have to do anything. She didn’t want anyone to see her with a husband, I guessed. See, Lexi never wore a wedding ring and never wanted to appear to have a family in her business life. She wanted others to think of her as a woman who didn’t need a man, as independent, as available. Sex was a weapon for her, a tool to trap a guy or get out of trouble.”
“Pizza, pizza,” Mac said, laying two boxes on the table. “Pepperoni and green peppers for him, and hamburger and onion for her.”
“How could you remember?” Ava asked, looking at her favorite pizza as a kid.
“I’m a food guy,” Mac said, pleased with himself, reloading the table with drinks again. “Here are some paper towels. Enjoy.”
“You da’ man!” Travis said, loving his drink and opening the pizza box.
“You never went to her law office?” Ava asked, in between bites.
“Nope. I was never invited, not even the girls, but I never really cared. Some of her co-workers did attend her funeral. Most said they never knew she was married. Her personal secretary came up to me after the service and said I should know that Lexi had cheated on me, more than once. I pretended to care, thanked her profusely for telling me, then left with the girls as soon as possible.
“There is so much that I still don’t even know about Lexi. It was an unbelievable situation to have been in, and it almost seems like a dream now. Or a nightmare, sometimes.”
“How did you do it, Travis? How did you not break?”
“I was focused. I knew my objective, and I just did my duty. Also, you got to remember, I was married for only six years, who knows if I could’ve made it twenty years. Probably not, but we’ll never know.”
“Only six years,” Ava repeated, shaking her head. She might have to re-think this marriage stuff. “So tell me more about being a stay-at-home dad.”
“I met an eighty-year-old woman right before Charlotte was born, met her in a line at the grocery store of all things, and she told me two important things about being a stay-at-home dad.
“One, she said that the reason men don’t stay at home with the kids is that it’s harder than going to work every day. And she was right. You are on 24/7, and you can’t relax. If you do, even for a moment, something terrible could happen, and you would never forgive yourself. You never realize how much you goof-off at work until you take care of a kid. When you are in charge of a young child, it is constant stress, paying attention and plotting your next move. Hell, just finding thirty seconds to go to the bathroom is an undertaking.
“And two, the couple has to understand that a woman’s need to have a kid is equal to a man’s need to set and achieve goals. If the husband resents his wife’s yearning for children, it will never work. He will do a lousy job. Or, if the wife does not allow the husband to set and achieve goals on the side, some part-time job or hobby, she will destroy him. She has to understand her husband’s needs are just as critical as hers. Otherwise, both will fail.
“That was some of the best advice that I got from anyone. It all held true over time. The job was harder than I realized, and my brain started to get fried because Lexi never allowed me to have a hobby or job, like golf.
“Why?” Ava begged. “She saw you play golf and knew how gifted you were. Why was golf off-limits?”
“Control,” Travis began, grabbing another slice of his pizza. “She liked having me completely dependent on her. I had to give up golf to be with her because, without golf, I had nothing in life in her eyes and would never leave. It was her way of breaking me and showing that she had complete control over me. Also, she couldn’t take credit for my golf. She was the only one in the relationship who was allowed to do well, and my golf threatened her little world. Plus, I think she felt like she was protecting me, in some weird way.”
“Didn’t you miss golf?”
“I didn’t think about it. I had a job to do.”
“Come on, Travis,” Ava scoffed.
“Ok, yeah,” Travis admitted, “I missed it. I missed it a lot.” Travis took a big sip from his drink. “The thing that I remember the most was the wind. Whether it was blowing through a tree outside the kitchen window, or running through my hair when I played outside with the girls, it felt like time slipping away, like my golf window was closing. I hated the wind. I just wanted a chance. A chance to find out if I was any good at competitive golf, and I felt my time slipping away, disappearing like the wind.”
Chapter 9
A New World
“What was Charlotte like as a baby?” Ava asked.
“Like any first child. The most beautiful and precious thing that I’d ever seen, but a scary mystery to take care of on my own. I was entirely out of my element, and as a guy, I didn’t want to read any directions or anything. I worked by trial and error: what temperature should the bath be, how often do you feed her, how do you get her to sleep, all that stuff, which may sound like nothing to you right now, but these are some of the most complicated problems that you’ll ever have in life. You’ll see one day.
“But Charlotte was amazing. She almost seemed patient with me. After six months, we learned how to work together. I figured out her feeding schedule, I took her to the park every day so she could swing; we’d go to the zoo so she could make animal noises, all that stuff. I taught her how to walk really early, at eight months, which was stupid.”
“Why was that stupid?” Ava asked, enjoying a side of Travis that she had never known.
“I had to watch her more closely now because she could fall. Dumbest thing that I ever did in life. Charlotte wasn’t steady until 11 months, so for three months, I had to be right next to her at all times. But it was fun holding her hands and showing her the world on her own two feet.”
“When did Charlotte start talking?”
“At about 18 months. A little late, but Charlotte became great at it. 18 months was an important age as a parent because she finally could communicate with me, ask me for what she really wanted, like milk or apple juice or water, which is a lot easier than guessing. Also, if she felt sick, Charlotte could finally say if her tummy or ears or throat hurt, which, again, was a lot easier than guessing. But even better, I could explain to her that the medicine would make her feel better and that the pain would go away, so she knew that I was trying to make things better. I could finally tell her that I loved her and the medicine would help her pain, and she could understand me.”
“Did Lexi go to the doctor with y’all?” Ava asked.
“No,” Travis laughed. “If the baby even sniffled, she would run away. ‘I’m the breadwinner, and I can’t get sick. Keep that disease ball away from me.’ When Lexi was on the warpath, I would tell her that the girls were sick and she should stay away from them. It worked great, like a wooden stake to a vampire.”
“Then Shelby was born. I worried for Charlotte because we had spent so much time together, I thought maybe she would think that I had abandoned her for Shelby, but Charlotte’s reaction was the complete opposite. She loved her new baby sister and liked having mo
re time to herself. She was a protective and loving big sister.”
“No terrible two’s?” Ava asked surprised.
“No way, either girl. Terrible two’s is a myth. The children that have problems at that age are children who need more attention. If your child is a terror at two, it’s the parents’ fault, unless the kid is evil or something.
“My favorite age was three years old. At three, they start to understand why you taught them their ABC’s. They start to wonder how a car works, what stars are for, why dogs all look different, and they love how you have all the answers. At three, they understand that they’re not the center of the universe, and you help them understand that being a part of a whole is not only ok, but the way life works, and they start to feel more a part of things. They learn that they are a part of a family, a country, and a world. It’s pretty cool.”
“You liked taking care of them,” Ava said.
“Yeah, I guess. It was so much more than I thought it was going to be. But it was lonely.”
“How so?”
“As a guy, you don’t have an outlet of any kind. See, women have play dates and different things that they do together with young kids. They put the kids in a giant pen in the middle of the living room with some toys, while they drink wine and gossip. They go to the mall together and shop with the kids. They go to the country club and swim in the kiddie-pool together. But a guy can’t do any of that.”
“Why not?”
“Can you imagine what Lexi would’ve said if I hung out with other women all day? Can you imagine what their husbands would’ve said? Plus, women don’t want a guy around.”
“How so?”
“Here’s an example. I was pushing Charlotte in a stroller through our neighborhood when a Suburban pulled up beside me. A woman leaned out the driver’s window, asked how old my child was, and I answered six months. She gushed, saying how they have a Wednesday morning playgroup of infants, that my wife should bring Charlotte by and join them. I explained that I stay home with the baby, and she literally said, ‘Oh, well you can’t come,’ and she drove off, never to be seen again.
“No way,” Ava laughed.
“Swear. It happened all the time. Mothers were cruel to me as a stay-at-home dad, much worse than guys. They constantly tried to point out something that you were doing wrong, and obviously wanted me to fail. I was threatening to women, doing the job that they told their husbands every night that a man could never do. But guys were nice to me, mostly jealous. They barely saw their kids and wished they had more of a relationship with them. They saw me, how my kids loved and respected me, and they were envious. All their kids ever did was ask them for money, and all their wives did was complain that there wasn’t enough money or how the house wasn’t big enough. Guys were nice, and women were jerks.”
“What else would women do?”
“Here’s one. Charlotte was three years old and wanted to ride the carousel at the mall, so I brought both girls one morning. Charlotte rode her horse while I held one-year-old Shelby on another one. We rode around a few times, and then Charlotte needed to use the bathroom. You see, Charlotte had just got potty-trained and loved using new bathrooms, especially a big public one, a real pain in the ass but Charlotte loved it. So we go into the men’s bathroom, stroller and all, I go into a stall with both kiddos, she does her business, then we head out of the stall. Unexpectedly, four police officers were outside the stall, waiting for us. They grabbed Charlotte, took Shelby right out of my arms, and pushed me against a wall, face-first, then started frisking me. I asked what was going on and they explained that I had made a group of mothers nervous when I entered the men’s room with the girls. In order to prove that I wasn’t a child molester, I had to show them pictures of my kids from my wallet. This event was before iPhones, so I was lucky to have any photo. The officers questioned me for an hour. As we left, I saw the mothers laughing at us. Charlotte never asked to go to the carousel again.
“Here’s another one. We all went to the grocery store one cold morning. We got inside, and I grabbed a shopping cart. I put Charlotte in the main bed of the cart and placed Shelby in the kiddie-seat in the front of the cart. They were all bundled up because it was cold outside, so I started removing their jackets and gloves in the store. Shelby’s knit hat fell onto the ground, unbeknownst to me. I started pushing the cart toward the first aisle, when some woman behind me picked up the knit hat, grabbed my arm and started yelling at me, saying that I was a horrible father. She berated me about how important a winter hat was for an infant in cold weather and how reckless I was to have lost it. Just then, a large woman came waddling into the store with an infant under her arm, the infant wearing just a diaper. I pointed her out to my female jerk and said she better yell at that lady now. The female jerk called me an asshole and walked off.
“Another one. A Pastor asked me out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I brought fifteen-month-old Shelby and three-year-old Charlotte along also. So we got seated, the waiter grabbed a high chair for Shelby and then brought chips and salsa. I explain to the waiter that my fifteen-month-old was too young for tortilla chips and asked if he could bring some flour tortillas for Shelby to nibble on instead. So the waiter brought the tortillas, I put a napkin on the table, because a plate was too dangerous for a fifteen-month-old, and I tore a tortilla into little pieces for Shelby to nibble on. I had a sippy-cup full of apple juice for Shelby to drink, so she was all set. The Pastor and I started talking, when a few minutes later a woman ran up yelling at us, explaining that an infant cannot eat tortilla chips. I explained to her that Shelby was eating tortilla pieces, not a chip; the woman apologized, then walked away. Five minutes later, another woman does the same thing. The Pastor confronted her this time and acted a little upset at her accusation, saying he was offended by her attitude. I touched his shoulder and said it was all right. I even thanked the woman. She walked away, satisfied. He asked me if this had ever happened before, I explained to him that it happened every day and it was best not to offend them. That was what they wanted.”
“That’s horrible,” Ava said. “Did the women realize how rude they were?”
“Of course. They didn’t care, Ava. They felt like they’re rescuing the child from Mister Man who knew nothing. It happened all the time. But once the girls got to be five or six, the mothers stopped harassing me. All of a sudden, they loved me. They were lonely, burned-out, and hated their husbands for never paying attention to them or the kids, so when they saw me doting on my children, they started treating me like a superhero. I went from being yelled at to hit on in a matter of years. It was an amazing sociological experiment.”
“What were you like at that time?” Ava asked. “You had to be a mess.”
“I was fried also. Definitely at my breaking point. My mind was shot, and I was incredibly lonely. Not lonely for a woman, I was sick of them. I was lonely for a purpose, and selfishly, for gratitude. The kids were great, but they were young, needy and demanding. Lexi came home drunk every night, never giving a damn about the kids or me, and constantly explaining to me how much harder her life was than mine, then passing out.
“But something big happened that changed everything for me. It changed my life as a dad and a man.
“One afternoon, when Charlotte was three and Shelby was fifteen months, I put the girls down for their nap and was preparing to do a load of laundry. Trying to be quiet, I snuck upstairs and picked up a few dirty clothes off the floor in Charlotte’s room. Suddenly, I heard her voice.”
“Thank you, Daddy. I love you.”
“I quickly turned. There Charlotte was, sitting up on the side of the bed, smiling, with her arms outstretched, wanting a hug. I had never seen her like this before. I walked over, hugged her long and hard, then gently let her go. Charlotte smiled again, then collapsed back down, rolled over and fell asleep.
“I walked out of her room, fell on my knees and cried. I
can’t tell you the weight that suddenly lifted off of my shoulders. It’s still the most significant moment of my life, hands down. You see, at that moment, I realized that I was not alone. I realized that someone was looking out for me and was proud of me because that was not my daughter talking to me.
“That was God.
“God had used my daughter, a little girl who had never done anything like that before in her life, to thank me for what I was doing, that God respected my efforts, and that God loved me. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I thought no one knew or cared about what I was going through, but God told me that He was proud of me, that I had made the right decision. From that point on, raising my daughters was a blessing and never a chore. That night, I found a church near our house.”
“Epiphany Lutheran,” Ava said. “You didn’t always go to church?”
“No. I had never been to a church. The next day, I met the Pastor, and we had lunch at the Mexican restaurant, that lunch I talked about earlier with the tortillas and the mothers bothering us. The Pastor and I became great friends and still are to this day. The church also had a school, so I enrolled Charlotte in their preschool program, and Shelby started when she was three. My children learned about God at an early age and still are Christians today. I’m very proud of that. And after your father died, when you were seven, I brought you to church and paid for your schooling at Epiphany. I’m very proud that you are still a Christian, Ava.
“After God spoke through my child, I changed my life, became a Christian, and have never been alone again. You see, it was loneliness that was destroying me, a loneliness that I was living a life that was pointless, just spinning my wheels for no reason. A life that no man had ever lived before me because I was just stupid. But the Bible showed me that I was not unique in my marriage, that I placed in this situation for a reason.”
“Oh, Travis, I disagree,” Ava interrupted. “You had no idea what you were getting yourself into, and she trapped you.”
Disappearing like the Wind Page 5
