Claiming His Baby

by Nikki Chase

  Then Frank got his hooks all the way into her and showed his true colors. He started to become angry, irrational, and demanding.

  I watched helplessly as he took over our home and turned Mom into a different person.

  Things got even worse when he lost his job. He and his son moved into our home, and I had to walk on eggshells all the time to avoid setting off those two.

  Frank was overly strict with me, telling me he was berating me for my own good. Then he’d turn around, see his son doing the exact same thing, and let him be. “Boys will be boys,” he used to say.

  Brad, Frank’s son, is now a police officer. A profession where you’re always right and you hold a lot of power over almost everybody else. I can see why Brad would want that job, but I have no idea why anyone would give it to him.

  So, in summary, I grew up with a dad who left me, a step-dad who hated my existence, and a megalomaniacal step-brother who could do anything he liked.

  No wonder I used to think every man was a user who’d chew you up and spit you out.

  I thought I’d go out and stand on my own two feet. I’d never depend on any man. I’d make a name for myself, and make some money, too.

  Then I’d find some way to get Mom out of this house and away from Frank. It’d be just the two of us against the world.

  But I hit a big snag as soon as I started carrying out the first part of my plan. Just when I thought I’d turn the game on men and use them before they could use me, I met a specimen so different from the rest that he might as well be his own species.

  Too bad I treated him like I’d treat the rest of them. Now I’ll never even see him again, except for when he inevitably appears on a magazine or on TV. And I only have myself to blame.

  I get up and pull the luggage upright. It’s time for me to move on.

  I’ve obviously overstayed my welcome here. Maybe one day I’ll manage to persuade Mom to kick Frank to the curb, but it doesn’t seem like today’s the day. My own life is in tatters, so who am I to tell her what to do with hers?

  I’ll move to a new city and start a new life. I’ll channel all my energy into my work. Everything else will follow, hopefully.

  I’ll put Ethan and the whole fake wedding thing behind me. I expect to receive the divorce papers any day now. Mom can forward it to me by mail when they get here.

  It sucks that chapter of my life had to end, even though I was hoping it would last forever.

  Nevertheless, I’m glad it happened. At least now I know what kind of a man I’ll be looking for. Now I know decent men exist, and I won’t settle for anyone who doesn’t treat me as well as Ethan did.

  I have an interview to attend, so that’s all I should be thinking about. I’ve been preparing myself for all the questions they could possibly ask. This is my chance at breaking into serious journalism, and I’m not going to let it go to waste.

  Pulling out the handle of the luggage, I drag it out of my bedroom.

  The squeaky wheel reminds me of Ethan’s apartment, but again, I push out that thought out of my mind. I’ve done enough crying to last me a lifetime.

  No more sad thoughts about Ethan. No more tears.

  “Mom,” I yell out so I can be heard over their arguing. I listen as the hushed voices in the kitchen stop and add, “I’m leaving now, okay?”

  “What?” Mom asks. I hear her footsteps approach in haste, and soon I see her walking down the hallway. She looks disheveled. Her hair is a mess, her eye bags are massive, and her shirt has yellow stains on it. She used to look pretty, but she hasn’t been putting any effort into her appearance for a long time. She sees me standing with my luggage by the door and says, “You didn’t tell me you were leaving today.” In a lower voice, she asks, “Is this about Frank? I’m sorry about that, honey. Don’t pay any attention to him. You can stay for as long as you want.”

  “No, Mom. I have an interview and I just found out late last night.”

  “Oh, that’s great news.” Mom tucks my hair behind my ear and smiles, even though her eyes are sad. “I was just getting used to having you around again. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Yeah, I know. Call me any time,” I say, returning her smile. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

  “Where’s this interview? Back in San Francisco?”

  “No, Mom. It’s actually in Chicago.”

  “Oh, that’s…far,” she says with obvious disappointment. “I thought I could start visiting you more if you were in San Francisco, but Chicago… That’s on the other side of the country.”

  “Yeah. It’s a really good opportunity. It’s a newspaper called the Illinois Enquirer. They’re focusing on their online version so they’re hiring younger people. I’m really excited about this.”

  “I’m happy for you, honey. You’re flying out tonight?”

  “Yeah. I should get going. I already called a cab.”

  “I wish you’d stay longer,” Mom says as she takes the handle of my luggage and pulls it toward the door.

  “Well, they’re only paying for my hotel for two nights. If everything goes well, they’ll help me find an apartment to rent. If not, then I’ll be back here.”

  “Oh, no, honey. I’m sure you’ll get the job. They’d be crazy not to take you. You work so hard.”

  Just as we reach the door, there’s knocking from the other side.

  “You’re expecting someone?” I ask Mom.

  “No. It’s probably just the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the next-door neighbor complaining about the tree branch that’s apparently intruding into his property,” Mom says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  “Or maybe it’s the taxi driver,” I say as I grab the door handle and pull.

  Behind the door is the last person I’d expect to see.

  My jaw drops and my lips part, although no words come out of my mouth. My brain is still too busy trying to grasp what’s happening.

  “We already have the latest issue of Watchtower, and we have already heard the good news about Jesus Christ,” Mom says with a polite smile when she sees a man clad in a suit on our doorstep.

  I don’t know how she could mistake him for a Jehovah’s Witness.

  Firstly, his suit fits him too well for it not to be designer and outrageously expensive. Secondly, the flashy black convertible parked in front of our house can’t possibly belong to an ascetic door-to-door evangelist.

  “Mom, he’s not… Uh, he’s not a…” I try to find the right words to say to make things less awkward, as the man stares at us with confusion on his face. In the end, I simply say, “I know him.”

  “Oh.” Mom flicks her gaze between him and me. She smiles and says to the man, “You look familiar.”

  “He's, uh, sometimes he's on TV.”

  “I see. Well, I’ll let you two talk, then. I’ll be inside. Let me give you one last hug before you leave, honey.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  With that, she leaves me alone at the door to deal with the handsome stranger.

  I have so many questions to ask him, so many things I want to say to him. I thought I’d put everything down on the letter I left him, but my mind kept coming up with more.

  I just never thought I’d get the opportunity to even talk to him again.

  “What are you doing here?” I finally ask.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  That voice. I thought I was never going to hear it ever again.

  And it's just like Ethan to answer my question with another question.

  Ethan

  “Page twenty-four,” Eliza says when she enters my office—without knocking.

  Having worked with me for years, she knows how much I hate getting unexpectedly interrupted. Add to that the fact that my whole life got turned upside down the last time she came here with news.

  Before she walked in here with that magazine? Perfect life. Only getting better. Healthy kid and beautiful fake wife I was starting to really like. About to shut up ex-wife and mortal
enemy once and for all.

  After? Nausea and chills all the time, except for when I’m drunk. I’d drink more, but I hate the hangovers. Besides, I have a kid to take care of.

  See the difference? Same kid, but a beautiful divine gift before, and a burden that hampers my attempts at becoming a serious drinker after.

  “Oh, stop glaring at me, Ethan. Trust me, you’ll want to see this.” Eliza drops a magazine onto my desk before she plops down on the chair. She leans back, clasps her hands together, and watches me.

  “Another fucking magazine?” I groan.

  What is it this time? Penny is secretly a sleeper KGB agent? What could be so important Eliza decides it's acceptable to break one of my biggest rules about knocking?

  I slide the magazine across the glass surface of the desk.

  The garish cover features women I recognize from TV, all wearing swimsuits and photographed in bad lighting to emphasize their uneven skin. The biggest headline, emblazoned across the cover in bright yellow, says, “Worst Beach Bodies in Hollywood.”

  Jesus. What an uplifting read.

  To the left of the pictures of perfectly slim women is the text: “EXCLUSIVE: Mrs. Ethan Hunter’s Confession.”

  I raise my gaze up to Eliza and raise an eyebrow. I know how tabloids often make up their own stories from unreliable sources. I ask, “Is this real?”

  “Would I bring it to you if it wasn't?”

  “How bad is it?” My fingers pinch the edge of the first page, eager to read what Megan has written about me, but also afraid to find out.

  “It's not bad, actually. Your wife really knows her audience.”

  What kind of an answer is that? I still have no idea what to expect, and I hate that Eliza has just referred to Megan as my wife. It reminds me of what I thought I had found and subsequently lost.

  I flip the pages impatiently. The graphic designer of this magazine should be kicked in the ass for making it impossible to navigate.

  Wait. Oh, that's right. Eliza has already given me the page number.

  I finally find page twenty-four and see a big picture of Megan and me, having our first dinner date.

  Seeing her so pretty and happy feels like a kick in the nuts.

  I’ve been trying to tell myself maybe it wasn't as good as I remember, but there it is sitting right in front of me: evidence that it was, in fact, as good as I remember.

  I look happy in these pictures. We both do.

  This article is written by Megan. It's an account of what has happened, told from her perspective.

  Without going into too much detail about how it happened, Megan says that Penny was the one that who came up with the idea, and that neither she nor I could say no. Next thing she knew, we were in my office, saying our vows in front of a minister and two witnesses. “The most surreal experience of my life,” she calls it in the article.

  She also admits to having interned at The Goss, and having taken the job as my personal assistant to gather material about me. But then, she got to know me and decided not to write about me at all. She cut off her editor, never expecting her to retaliate by blowing her cover.

  She even mentions how the media has been unfair to me by pushing Ashley’s side of the story as truth. She doesn’t go into much detail because, as she says, “it’s not my story to tell.” But she insists that I’m not the monster my ex-wife makes me out to be.

  Megan ends the article by apologizing to me for having misrepresented herself and “returning kindness and generosity with deception.”

  Overall, this article actually makes me look pretty good. Instead of an evil boss who forced Megan into marrying me, I seem like a good guy making the best of bad circumstances.

  Megan has painted me as a “doting father who's doing his best for his daughter,” which must gain me some sympathy from the bored housewives who are reading this magazine while their kids are climbing all over them and their husbands are playing video games.

  Finished reading the article, I stare at Megan's pictures. Damn, she’s so fucking beautiful. Just look at those killer curves on her body. I want to reach into the scene printed on the magazine, and sweep her hair away so I could kiss her neck. She’s so sensitive that she’d start moaning and begging me for more in no time.

  Eliza clears her throat, jerking me back to the present. “I think she’s just saved your ass. She's done my job for me. Good crisis management skills on that girl.”

  “Yeah,” I say, still trying to shake off the dirty thoughts in my head.

  “Although she created the problem herself, so...”

  “Yeah.” I’m still in a daze, not quite believing that Megan has basically taken the blame for our fake marriage. She doesn't need to put her personal life out there for people to judge and criticize, but she has nevertheless done it for me.

  “But if you want to ask her to move back in, that's entirely up to you,” Eliza says.

  “Huh?” I snap my head up to look at Eliza, who's giving me a knowing smile.

  “You said she moved out as soon as you found out, right? Well, Ethan, in all my years of working for you, I’ve never seen you so miserable, or so distracted. You’ve always been focused on whatever you're doing.

  “Far be it from me to tell you what to do in your personal life, but I don't think it’ll be the worst thing in the world if you start living together again. It would make for such a good story. The way people have been eating up this article, they’d go crazy if you two decide to make a real go at it.”

  I stay quiet. Evidently, I’ve already said too much without ever opening my mouth.

  “Well, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing, boss,” Eliza says with a sly smile as she gets up from her chair and walks out of my office, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  My head fills up with possibilities, while my heart begins to pound in my chest.

  Make a real go of it? At marriage? With Megan?

  Penny cranes her neck to check that Matt has gotten into the elevator. She looks at me, then at the grilled chicken and vegetables on her plate, and back at me again.

  “What is it?” I ask. I haven't been able to pay attention to anything since I read Megan's article this afternoon, but I can still recognize it when my little girl has something difficult to say.

  “Uhh…”

  “Did you get into trouble in school?” I love Penny, but not everybody gets her. She's too smart for her own good sometimes.

  According to her teacher, her sarcasm and offbeat sense of humor don't make her cool. I beg to differ, but apparently the popular girls don't like it when she's unimpressed by the latest designer bags that they’ve bought in Europe.

  “No,” Penny says, to my relief. I’d hate to sit through another long session with Mrs. Turner, whereby she complains about all the things that make Penny great in my eyes.

  “Then what is it?” I ask.

  “Um… Did you read Megan's article?”

  I run my fingers through my hair. Am I the only person who doesn't read gossip tabloids?

  “What did I tell you about those magazines?” I ask.

  “So you have read it,” she says with a grin.

  “Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. The point is, I’ve warned you about those magazines, haven't I? I told you not to read them. They're going to rot your brain.”

  “My brain is not going to rot just because I read something you don't want me to. I’m not a dumb toddler you can lie to, Dad. I’m almost a teenager, and I have a smartphone. I can Google.” Penny rolls her eyes. “Besides, you so have read it. I didn't say it was in a tabloid, but you already knew.”

  Damn those detective stories, turning my sweet little girl into a scary human lie detector.

  “Okay, I’ve read it,” I admit. “What about it?”

  “I think you guys should make up.”

  “And why do you think that?” I ask as my heart begins to race. I’ve been thinking about asking Megan to come back, but I’ve been worried abo
ut how it would affect Penny. God knows she's gone through enough upheavals in her life.

  “Because everything in that article is true.” A grin blooms on Penny's face and she says, “Also, you were happier when she was around. You like her. Like, like like her.”

  Ethan

  I stare at the suitcase as Megan speaks with a woman who seems to be her mom.

  “Where do you think you're going?” I ask, terrified that I might've missed her had I come just a few minutes later.

  “I, uh, I’m moving,” she says as her mom walks back inside the house.

  It's a humble house in the outskirts of the city. For some reason, I never expected Megan to live in a place like this. She always looks so glamorous that I forget she doesn't usually live the way she did at my home.

  “Yeah, I can see that.” I glance at the luggage, then back at her beautiful face.

  That beautiful, infuriating face. I want to scream at her for leaving without telling me and for planning to use my life as fodder for her article.

  At the same time, I want to grab her and hold her tight, maybe even handcuff our wrists together, so she’ll never leave my side again. I repeat my question, “But where do you think you're going?”

  “Chicago,” she says softly, shock still freezing her tongue. She’s dressed in a casual pair of skinny jeans, a white shirt, and low heels. Pretty low-key for Megan; no doubt it’s because she was about to get on a plane.

  “Chicago? You were going to move to the other side of the country? And you weren’t even going to tell me?” I can’t help but raise my voice, although I remind myself to hold back in case Megan’s parents could hear us.

  If everything goes well, I’ll be seeing them a lot so I don’t want to make a bad impression. Come to think of it, they’re already my in-laws right now, even if they don’t know it yet.

  Judging from Megan’s mom’s reaction when she saw me, she probably doesn’t know who I am, which means Megan hasn’t told her and she doesn’t keep up with the news.