by Julia Kent
“Joey’s here with Darla to tell us Darla’s been his girlfriend for the past two years, and not Trevor’s,” Mom declared, as if that were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard of.
Just as a chicken wearing a diaper walked by.
Doug and Susan looked at it. Their faces were puckered in confusion, which made me realize how much Trevor looked like his dad when he was puzzled about something. Neither of his parents said a word.
And then: “That’s why you called us?” Doug asked my mom, his face pinched with confusion.
Susan looked at Darla, then Trevor, then me. “What? But you...” She gave Trevor a pointed look. “You said Darla was your girlfriend.”
This was it.
The undefined moment.
My body began to expand, like I was taffy in human form. Every molecule in the room took on its own importance, as if my mind had to catalog everything. I’d never envisioned this scene. If I could choose how the world knew about our threesome, I wouldn’t choose this. I wouldn’t choose the bar moment with Mike back in Peters. I would choose for this to be seamless, as if it just were.
Society didn’t work that way. The moment at Jeddy’s with Darla’s boss’s men, Mike and Dylan, popped into my head unbidden. They had seemed so mature and steady, like the world could go eat shit if they didn’t like who the three of them were together.
I straightened my shoulders and squeezed Darla’s hand.
“Trevor is our girlfriend,” I declared.
Darla’s eyebrows shot up and Trevor gave me a WTF? look, and all four parents had expressions ranging from amusement to horror. My own dad managed to communicate both just from the wrinkles in his forehead.
My mind was a whirling dervish, and it took me a few beats to realize what I’d actually said.
“I mean Darla. Not Trevor. Darla is our girlfriend.”
Doug’s shoulders relaxed with relief, as if having his son in a threesome were better than having his son be transgendered. Is there a scale out there somewhere, a way to quantify which unconventional sexuality is better or worse? If there was, I didn’t want to see it.
Trevor put his hand on my shoulder. It felt like he reached through the cosmos to find me, but he did. The three of us were a united front, Darla serious but not stern, Trevor unable to make eye contact with anyone but holding his head high. I don’t know what I looked like.
I know what I felt like.
Relieved.
The secret was out. We couldn’t put it back in the box.
“You share her?” Mom asked in a quieter voice than I expected. “All this time you’ve been sharing her?”
“I don’t understand. I thought she was just the band manager,” Doug said. “And dating Trevor.”
“I’m both. And dating Joe, too,” Darla answered.
“Well. That’s unique,” Susan said, turning to Joanne. “Do you have any whisky?”
Mom and Dad’s quiet response to this made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I don’t know why, but the next words out of my mouth were:
“And Darla has been the driving force behind our band’s success. We’re going on a nationwide tour in the fall because of her.”
I said it from a place of pride. I was proud of her and of what the band accomplished.
Out of the corner of his mouth, Trevor said, “Might as well get it all out there, right? While they look like deer in the headlights.”
“WHAT?” Mom shrieked. “You can’t be on a national tour and do your third year of law school.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I took a year off.”
The air pressure from the collective gasp in the room could have propelled a small child to the moon.
Trevor squeezed my shoulder and added, “Me, too.”
“WHAT?” Susan screamed. “You can’t do that, Trevor! You’re editor of the law review!”
“Co-editor,” Mom murmured in a catty voice.
“Oh, God, Joanne, would you go drink a big glass of shut the fuck up,” Susan said, turning on her with a vicious countenance.
Mom looked like a fish out of water, her mouth opening and closing, but with nothing coming out.
“You both took a year off to go on a national tour with your band, one that Darla helped arrange?” Dad asked, laying everything out neatly, just like any lawyer would.
While Mom and Susan hissed at each other, we talked right over them.
“Yes.”
“And you’re sleeping with them both,” Mom snapped, leaving Susan hanging, her attention suddenly on Darla. “How convenient. Some people sleep their way up the corporate ladder, but I guess you had to fuck your way out of a trailer park.”
My turn to look like a fish.
Darla’s eyes flared but I was the one who stepped forward, getting inches from my tiny little mother’s face.
“If my mom should drink a big glass of anything, Susan, it’s a glass of hypocrisy, because,” I paused rolling my tongue in my cheek, “my mom’s been fucking Gene on the side and cheating on my dad.”
Gene really picked the wrong time to walk in just then.
“Hi, folks! What’s going on......” He dragged out the “n” as he surveyed the group, his face bright with exertion and his hair dark from sweat. He wore his typical leisure uniform of bike shorts and a tight shirt.
I was so close to Mom’s shocked face that I could smell the coffee on her breath and, with enough time, could tell you which organic estate in Guatemala it was from.
“You have no right to say something so nasty to Darla, but especially when you’re the one who’s violating your marriage vows,” I said slowly, emphasizing those last few words. We were eye to eye because I bent down, and something dark and carnal curled in her irises.
“A year off!” Susan whispered to herself. “You can’t Trevor. You just can’t!”
“I did,” he said gently as Mom moved away from me, keeping eye contact but physically shuffling over to Dad. She whispered something in his ear and they moved over to Gene, who got a strange expression on his face, like he’d figured something out.
“And you!” I was on fire, pointing at Gene. “You live here! You’ve lived here since I was a kid! You and Dad have a business together and you use our house like it’s yours and this is how you repay my dad? You let his wife cheat on him with you!”
Gene closed his eyes and let out a very shaky breath. He turned to Mom and Dad and gave them a wry smile. “We always said this would be your call.”
Huh?
“I’ll let you answer that,” Gene said to Dad.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU QUIT LAW SCHOOL!” Mom shrieked out of the blue.
This was confusing. Dad wasn’t outraged about Gene. Neither of them were freaking out about me, Darla and Trevor being in a threesome. Poor Doug and Susan were rummaging in the cabinets for booze. Susan found an airplane-sized vodka and drank it straight from the tiny bottle.
“Herb?” Doug asked. “Where’s your bar?”
Dad pointed to the living room. “Left of the television. Bring a couple of fifths.”
Doug gave him a salute and came back in with three fifths of liquor. He began randomly pouring big amounts into the coffee mugs he found dangling from hooks under the cabinets.
Doug and Susan drank greedily from theirs. Darla very quietly sidled over and grabbed one, too. She’s not much of a drinker, so this only added to my sense of the world shifting underneath my feet.
The fact that Dad had his arm around Gene’s sweaty shoulders wasn’t helping.
“Dad!” I yelled. “He’s sleeping with your wife! How can you be so...friendly?”
Dad’s head whipped up. He looked so helpless, his eyes pleading with me to help get him out of this mess.
“Joe,” Gene said softly, his eyebrows moving up and down through a serious of contorted expressions. “It’s not exactly what you think.”
“Don’t try to tell me I didn’t see you and Mom making out the other day.”
>
“It was Joey!” Mom insisted, hitting Gene’s chest. “I told you!”
Gene looked at Dad. “We thought it was just you.”
Fury ignited, white hot. “Just my dad? Just my dad? You disgusting piece of—”
“STOP!” Mom screamed. “Stop before you say something you’ll regret, Joe.”
“Oh, I won’t regret it,” I assured her. Gene looked so...hurt. Fuck that. My dad’s the one who should be hurt.
“Joey, you’ve got this all wrong,” she snapped back.
“No, I don’t. Who’s the hymen restoration surgery really for? Who’re you getting a nice and tight hole for—”
The smack caught me completely unaware, as it didn’t come from my mother, father, or Gene, who were standing on the other side of the kitchen island.
It came from Darla.
As the ringing in my ears grew in volume, and blood rushed to my face to fill in the burning, I heard Darla say in a deep, threatening voice:
“Don’t you speak to your mama like that. She may be a bitch of the highest order, but you don’t insult her like that.”
Trevor
Pure pandemonium broke out as my dad refilled his and Mom’s whisky, I grabbed my own glass of escapism, and Joe just stared in red-cheeked horror at Darla.
Mrs. Ross sized Darla up with a look of grudging respect.
“Thank you. I think,” she said, “though you could have done without the bitch comment.”
“No,” Darla said, keeping her eyes on Joe, “I couldn’t.”
“You hit me!” Joe finally croaked out, hand across his face.
“And you deserved it. She might be an adulteress, and she might make chickens wear diapers and hovermother over you like a fly on a piece of shit baking in the August sun, but you don’t talk about your mama’s vagina in good company.”
“You can stop defending me, Darla,” Mrs. Ross said. “Really.”
“Lady, you accused me of being some rag they pass around and jizz into,” Darla added, her eyes finally turning to Mrs. Ross. “Now ain’t you the hypocrite.”
“She’s not.” Herb Ross’s tone was firm. He was clearly done with everything going on in this fiasco. “Joanne never cheated on me.”
“What?” Joe looked ridiculous with the giant red mark on his face, but he still had fire in him. “I know what I—”
“Your mother and Gene have my permission.”
My mom and dad gave each other a look I never, ever want to attempt to deconstruct. Dad nudged her and I think I heard him whisper the words “hall pass.”
“You’re a cuckold?” Darla gasped, then made a low whistling noise. “Seems like we three aren’t the only ones with a kink around here.”
I wasn’t about to ask what my parents’ kink was. I shuddered. Whatever Darla, Joe and I had thought this day would look like had been destroyed by all these scattershot revelations and moments. What was next?
“Not a cuckold,” he said with a sigh, turning to look at Joanne.
“We’re a threesome,” she answered in a testy voice, as if being forced to talk about it annoyed her.
“What?” Joe said in a strangled voice. “You’re a...what?”
My mom looked like the alcohol was flowing fast into her bloodstream, her eyes a little too bright. “So who’s the father, Joanne?”
Joe’s other cheek filled in bright red as the implications of that one hit him. He turned to Gene in abject horror.
“No, no. Nosiree,” Gene said quickly. “We didn’t start this...arrangement, er, until you were a teen.”
“A teen. You mean when you moved in?” Joe asked.
Gene, Herb and Joanne nodded.
Joe’s hand went to his heart. “Oh, this hurts. Eleven years. This has been going on for nearly half of my life and I was too stupid to realize it.”
“Herb, I told you we should never say a word! Joey, do I need to call an ambulance? Are you having a heart attack? I never should have let myself fall in love with both of you. Look what it’s doing to poor Joey!” Joe’s mom rushed to his side and began checking his forehead, taking his pulse, and generally panicking.
Joe watched her with a look of utter disdain that only Joe can express. The guy should patent that look.
“No. It’s an expression, Mom. I’m not really having a heart attack.”
“I think I am,” muttered my dad, Joe’s dad, and Gene in unison.
“Let me get this straight,” Darla said, looking around the room. “Joe, Trevor and I are in a threesome. You, Mr. Ross, and Gene are in a threesome.”
“We’re not!” my mom declared, grabbing Dad’s arm. Dad looked decidedly unhappy to be out of the club.
“Yes,” Herb said.
“And you’ve been living all these years under their roof,” Darla said to Gene, “pretending to be something you weren’t. You were ‘the business partner’ who just happened to live in the attached apartment and who never dated.”
Gene frowned. “When you put it that way...”
She turned to Joe. “And you hid me from your parents for these past two years ’cause you were afraid they’d cut you off and reject you.”
“You were?” Joanne gasped.
“But you were too stupid to look around your own damn house and see that the apple didn’t fall far from the fucking threesome tree,” Darla said to Joe.
Who paled instantly.
“How the hell was I supposed to figure that out?”
“By realizing there’s more to the world than just you, for starters,” she said with a snort.
“Joey. Honey.” Joanne brushed the hair off Joe’s forehead. He looked like a cornered collie in a cage with a group of toddlers. “I don’t care that you’re in a threesome.” Her voice was soft and loving.
Then it changed. “I only care that you quit law school. Oh, my God, Herb, what are we going to do?” she shrieked.
“What if I care that you are in a threesome? You guys lied to me all those years. I thought Gene was your business partner, Dad!” Joe shouted.
“He is.”
“And he’s your—you share mom?”
“Yes.”
Joe just blinked over and over again.
My dad chose that moment to move next to me and clear his throat. “Ah, son, while they’re hashing all this out, did you really quit Harvard?”
“I’m taking a year off under the advisement of the dean.”
“Because of that stupid chicken video?”
“You know about that?”
“Trevor, Rick brought us to the computer last week and made us watch it over and over. He even vocalized and said a two-syllable word.”
“WHAT?” Rick was nonverbal, though he sometimes made sounds that were approximations of words. “What was the word?”
“Mavis.”
I sprayed whisky out of my nose, tears springing to my eyes from the deep burn. “Dad! Don’t joke.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Not joking. But about all this...if you and Joe want to be, uh, unconventional, that’s up to you. I need a lot more alcohol and your mother will need a bottle of Xanax to get through the next few days of untangling all this, but before this turns into a brawl, I just want you to know we love you no matter what. And Darla is a wonderful young woman. Anyone who spends that much time with Rick and who Rick likes right back is good in my book.”
Dad gave me one of those adult parent hugs where he made me feel like a little kid again, small and warm and well loved.
Meanwhile: “You are not leaving Penn to go pretend to be rock stars!” Joanne screamed at Joe.
“We’re not pretending!” he screamed back.
Darla mosied over and said out of the corner of her mouth. “I think we’ve had enough revelations for one day. Let’s rescue Joe and go home and let it all simmer.”
Mom came over, hiccuping lightly. “Joanne is such a ‘see you next Tuesday’. Always has been. I was only nice to her because...because...oh, hell, I’ve forgotten why
.” Mom’s eyes landed on me and I gave her an apologetic smile.
“Sorry you got roped into this,” I said as I hugged her.
She hit my shoulder. “You should be sorry for not telling us. All of it, threesome and law school.”
“I planned to.”
Her face darkened. “You all need to come over for a dinner party. No Herb and Joanne. Just you three. I have to confess it’s weird, and I don’t understand the dynamics of how you relate to each other, and you’ll get flack from people—oh, God, your grandfather is going to be such a bastard about this—”
“It’s fine, Mom. We don’t need to announce it to the world. We can unfurl it in our own time. It’s not like we need to make a video announcing our sexual habits to the entire world, you know?”
She patted my cheek and gave me a boozy smile. “Right.”
Darla and I made a ghost exit, slipping out of the house so quietly. I got in my car and texted Joe.
Just come out here and we’ll go back to the apartment. You can sort it all out later with your parents. Let’s go decompress.
In seconds he was at the front door, running to the car, his mom at his feet.
The backdoor flew open, he crawled in, and shouted:
“Let’s go!”
As Trev backed up, he nearly hit a brown chicken wearing a little red and white sweater that said:
MAVIS FOR PRESIDENT
Darla
And that, kids, is how I met your fathers...
Okay, no, seriously. That was how we told Joe and Trevor’s parents. On the drive back to the apartment, all Joe could talk about was how Gene turned out to be the third in his parents’ marriage.
“Tough luck, huh?” Trevor said to him.
“What do you mean?”
“Now you have even more in common with your parents. You’re all lawyers, you’re all in threesomes. Sucks not to be able to rebel.”
“Fuck! You’re right!”
Trevor found a magic unicorn parking spot right in front of the building and we got out. I looked at the main door and sighed.
“It’s good to be home.” We had already agreed that I would move my shit back in, because why live with Josie and Alex and the constant reminder of my human peacock days whenever I went to the bathroom? If I was gonna have something a couple of feet long attached to my ass, I’d like to be—
