Dad looked at me and all I could think was that we’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. Obviously Mom had zoned out and not heard what Dad had just said.
“Mom, are you okay?” I asked. I stood up and put my arms around her shoulders. “Mom, did you hear what Dad just said?”
“Yes, Daniel. I heard him, but I can fix this. I’ll fix it, I promise.”
My dad was staring down at the table with his head in his hands. “Miranda, I’ll always love you, but I love her too. Please don’t think I love her more than you. That’s not the case. I just love her differently,” Dad explained.
“I tried to give you a daughter, Peter. You know I tried, I just…I couldn’t have any more kids. I’m so sorry I failed you.” She started to sob. Her chest was heaving and tears were streaming all down her face. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t leave me. Please. I’ll do anything, Peter. We can just go on like we have been. We’ll just forget about today. We’ll start over fresh.” She walked to my dad and leaned in to kiss him.
“Stop, Miranda.”
She wouldn’t stop. She sat on his lap and started kissing him all over his face.
“Miranda, no. Please don’t do this. Please don’t lower yourself to this.”
She laughed. It was a scary laugh. “Lower myself. Really, Peter? I don’t think I can get much lower. My husband is leaving me for his whore he’s been with for twelve years and has two daughters with. How much lower can I get, Peter?”
“Miranda, stop. This has nothing to do with you or my feelings for you. I love her differently. The girls need me and Daniel doesn’t need me as much anymore.” He was trying so hard to explain this in a way that made sense, but none of this made sense. He stood up, lifting Mom to her feet as he did. “I will come back this weekend and pack my things. Please don’t be home. I have my lawyers working on the paperwork for the divorce. I won’t take anything, it was always all yours anyway.”
“Is that what this is about? My money? You know that never mattered to me, Peter. You were all that ever mattered to me. I’ll do anything. Please don’t do this. Please,” she begged. Sobbing she asked, “What did I do wrong? Tell me what I did to ruin this. I’ll change. I’ll be whatever you want. Is she prettier than me? Younger? Just tell me, Peter!” she screamed as Dad grabbed his briefcase and headed out to his shiny black BMW.
“I’m so sorry. I really am,” he muttered. His eyes darted over to me before he closed the door that led to the garage and I could see they were filled with tears. It was clear that this was breaking his heart, but it was what he felt was right.
Mom sunk down to the ground where she stood. Sobbing uncontrollably she just kept asking what she had done.
What she had done?
How could she even ask that?
She hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.
My dad was the one who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. All she’d ever done was raise me and take care of him. She kept our home spotless and took care of everything. She was the epitome of the perfect housewife and mother.
I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face as she sat there on the floor in the kitchen. I knew she was completely heartbroken.
She had to be right?
She was losing the man of her dreams, the love of her life, her partner, her soul mate, right?
I knew that he had taken the love she had for him and smashed it into a million pieces as if she meant nothing to him.
That’s what I thought I knew anyway - I had never been more wrong.
My mom didn’t deserve this. Once again, that’s what I believed at the time. Then I realized something….no matter what my dad had done with this other woman and these other kids, he had never neglected my mom and me.
She jumped up off the cold tile floor, screaming as she ran out the door, “Can’t we continue like this? If the only way I can have you is by sharing you, I accept those terms. I can’t live without you. You are my entire life.”
My dad was already pulling out of the garage and driving away. Mom made it all the way to the end of the driveway before she dropped to her knees again. She sobbed and begged him to come back.
I couldn’t stand this anymore. I had to get out of this house and away from all of this shit. My best friend, Becca, lived two blocks over. I knew she would be hulled up in her room studying for our Chem test, so I ran all the way to her house.
Becca and I had been best friends since the moment I pulled her hair in kindergarten. It was a bonding experience that neither one of us had ever forgotten. We did everything together and I had no plans to ever change that. Becca got me and I got her and really there was nothing more important than that in a best friend. Yeah, the guys at school gave me grief about having a girl for a best friend, but screw them. She was the perfect best friend.
Panting as I rang the doorbell, I tried to catch my breath. My whole life was falling apart. I was losing my dad and I was worried what that would do to my mom. This was going to change everything, and I couldn’t imagine it changing for the better.
“What the…get in here,” Becca said when she finally answered the door. Her long dark brown curls were pulled back in a ponytail and her big brown eyes were shining. She ran upstairs and before long, Mike Evans, was bolting down the stairs pulling his t-shirt over his head as he went.
“Hey, bro,” he huffed.
“Hey.” That was all I could get out.
“I’m sorry, babe. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, promise,” Becca whispered in Mike’s ear as she placed a kiss on his cheek and pushed him out the door.
“What’s going on?” She walked over to me and we sat down on the couch.
“I can’t believe the asshole did this to us. How could he hurt my mom like this? I don’t understand, Becca. I thought he loved her.”
“What happened, Daniel? I need all the details before I throw in my opinion.”
“He’s been cheating on her for years.”
She looked shocked. “Are you serious? And he told her about it?”
“Yeah, he told us because he’s leaving. His daughters apparently need him more than I do.”
“His daughters? He had kids with his ho?”
“Yep. Two little girls who need their daddy.”
“What a bastard,” she said in a pissy tone.
“No shit.”
“How’d your mom take it? Is she pissed or sad? Pissed is so much easier to deal with…please say pissed.”
“I don’t know what she is yet. It literally just happened and the last thing she did was beg him to stay and keep the other chick on the side.”
“Oh. My. God. Your poor mom. I’m so sorry that you guys are going through this, at least my mom just left us. Things would’ve been a lot different if she’d had a dude on the side somewhere.”
“Lucky dog,” I tried to smile, but I couldn’t muster one up.
Becca pulled me into a hug. “This is going to be okay. I know it doesn’t seem that way, but it might work out for the better. If your dad is doing that shit, your mom doesn’t need him around and neither do you. Like my dad always says, ‘Everything happens for a reason’.”
“I’m not there yet, Becca. I’m still pissed. I wanna go key his car or something. I know it’s a punk move, but I still want to do it.”
“And as your best friend I feel the need to assist you. Shall we do it now or wait until he isn’t expecting you to be pissed?”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever not be pissed at him, Becca. I don’t see this feeling going away anytime in the near future.”
“That’s a good thing. Any emotion is good emotion. Be pissed, or be sad. Sit down and cry. I’ll cry with you, but don’t go blank.”
That’s what had happened to Becca’s mom. It was like one day she was happy and loved her family and the next day she was just gone. Like gone inside. She didn’t leave the house. She barely spoke to anyone and after about six months, she packed up her stuff and took off. Becca cried for a month.
&n
bsp; It was so hard to watch her go through that, I wouldn’t make her do that with me. I was a fifteen year old guy, not an eleven year old girl. She wasn’t able to adjust for awhile, I was already getting over this shit. My worry now was that my mom wouldn’t.
“I guess I better get home to Mom. See if she’s still in the weird denial zone.” I stood up and started toward the door. Before I reached it, I felt Becca’s hand on my shoulder.
“I’m always right here, Daniel. If you need me, I’m here.”
I placed my hand over hers and with a nod of my head I bounded down the porch steps and back toward my house.
When I walked in the door, Mom was sitting on the couch with her legs curled up under her. She had a bottle of gin on the table beside her and a glass in her hand.
She downed the drink and said, “Where’d you go?” Then she sniffled, “Are you going to leave me too? That’s all I need - lose my husband and son at the same time. Then I’d have no one. Not a soul. I’d be one of those sad women who sits at home and cries all day for the loves she lost. Is that what you want me to become, Daniel?”
Sitting down beside her on the couch, I took the glass from her hand and sat it down on the table. “Mom, don’t treat me that way because of him. I’ll never leave you. You’re my mom - the only one I’ll ever have and I love you. I ran over to Becca’s house for a minute, I didn’t leave you.”
Tears were streaming down her face and all of a sudden she started to sob. “What am I going to do, Daniel? How am I supposed to live without him? He’s my whole world. He has been since I was sixteen years old.”
Putting my arms around her neck, I pulled her close to me. “He’s not your whole world, Mom. You’ve got me. We’ve got each other and we are going to get through this.”
She pulled away from me and wiped the tears from her eyes. “So wise. My son is so wise. I just wish I could believe it. I’m not going to be okay, Daniel. You will be, you’re a man now. Men always come out of everything smelling like a rose, while us women sit and cry in a pool of shit.”
“Mom, come on. He’s an asshole. He hurt you and broke our family, he’s not worth all of this.”
“You don’t understand and you won’t until you fall in love. Love is a crazy thing, once it gets a hold of you it doesn’t just let go. Even if the person you love does something horrible to you, you can’t immediately hate them. Your father is a good man and I love him. I will always love him and hopefully tomorrow he will wake up and realize how much he loves me and misses me and he’ll come home to us.”
I knew he wasn’t coming home, but there was no arguing with my mom. She was sure he was going to come back to her.
From that day on my dad was still my dad, he just wasn’t my mom’s husband anymore. Shortly after the divorce was finalized, he married Brenda. His attendance at my school functions didn’t change at all. He came to everything always bringing his new family along with him. My sisters cheered me on and Brenda always looked a little sad when she saw me. She really did love my dad and I always wondered if she felt bad for what happened with my mom. It wasn’t her fault that this happened, it was all on my dad and that was something I would never forgive him for.
It was clear to everyone that Brenda and Dad were very much in love and of course he loved my little sisters, April and Annie. He would light up when they walked into a room. They were his little princesses.
Mom would also attend all of my school functions. She would always be a few sheets to the wind, but she would be dressed to the nines. Wearing some low-cut slinky dress to my graduation was horrifying for me, but she would always make sure to get as close to Dad as possible so she could rub in his face what he was missing. The days of her acting like the fifties housewife were over the day Dad broke the news to us. When she was home she was in pajamas and slippers, and she only left the house to go places where she stood a chance of running into my dad. For those times she would wear the skimpiest clothes she could find. It broke my heart to see her act that way, but it was also embarrassing. It embarrassed me, but it embarrassed me more for her.
When I graduated high school I received my trust fund that my grandparents, my mom’s parents, had set up for me. My mom had grown up in a home where she was given everything she wanted. Her parents were very well off and they bestowed all of that on my mother and now on me.
When she married my dad they gave her an account that would cover all of the family’s expenses. We could’ve lived the life my mother grew up in, but my parents didn’t want that. They wanted to live in the suburbs and raise me without a silver spoon in my mouth. The only extravagance I remember us ever having were my dad’s cars. He always had the newest model BMW. That was his thing. When he left us, he also gave up all of the money. The money didn’t matter, he left anyway.
My grandparents passed away when I was little and left the majority of their fortune to me with the stipulation that I not receive it until I graduated high school. Not only did I inherit their money, but I also inherited all of their properties. There were so many zeros on my bank account it was ridiculous. At the age of eighteen I owned a penthouse in New York City, a ski cabin in Vail, a condo in Malibu, a hunting cabin in a small town in Wyoming, a huge home in the Hamptons, and a small country house in Missouri.
My grandma was originally from Missouri and the small house was where she was raised. I’d never been to any of the properties I owned and it seemed crazy to me that they were really mine.
When I told Becca about it she just laughed her ass off and asked me when we were going to visit all of them. So as a graduation gift to both of us, I took us on a road trip over the summer and we made it to each of my new homes. We ended our trip in Missouri and we both agreed that it was the most relaxing place we’d ever been. I joked with her that one day I would retire there and she could come too and I’d have a house built for her next door.
Growing up I didn’t know that we had that kind of money. We didn’t live in a way that screamed “wealthy”. My parents never let me in on that little secret. I knew that we didn’t worry about money, but I had no idea what was waiting for me at graduation.
What surprised me the most about our new life was the fact that my mom didn’t hate my dad. Actually, she still loved him with all of her heart. No matter what he had done to her or to our family, she loved the man.
Chapter Two~
Becca and I went our separate ways after graduation. She wanted to go far away to college so she ended up at UCLA. She was enjoying the sun and the sand, while I stayed close to home with my mom. I took some classes at the University of Illinois, but mostly I spent my time taking care of my mom. The depression wasn’t going away. It had been years since he left us, and she had barely left the house. I begged her to go out or go on a vacation with me, but she just wouldn’t do it.
“Daniel, don’t be silly. I can’t leave town. What if he comes home and I’m not here,” mom said as she sat at the kitchen table and sipped her gin.
“Goddammit, mom! He’s not coming home! He’s been gone for years. You have to get over him and move on.” I didn’t want to say this next part, but it had to be done. “He doesn’t love you anymore, mom. He loves Brenda and he’s married to her. They are raising their family together.”
I heard the slap before I felt it. Mom jumped up from the table after she slapped me and got in my face. “How dare you say that to me! Of course he loves me. He’s my husband.” Mom started to walk out of the room.
Looking down as I rubbed my face, quietly I said, “No, he isn’t.”
Mom was in front of me before I could say another word. “Get. Out.”
“What?”
“I said get out. I don’t want you here anymore.”
“You don’t mean that, mom.”
“Like hell I don’t. I don’t need you here. Your dad will be home soon and he doesn’t need to hear your lies.”
“Mom, he isn’t co…”
She grabbed my chin and squeezed it hard.
“Don’t say it again.”
“But, mom.”
“I want you out now. It’s not like you don’t have anywhere to go, my parents made sure of that. Pick a place to live and get the hell out.”
“Mom, you really want me to leave?”
“I can’t stand you saying such horrible things about your father. He loves me and I love him. He will be home before you know it.”
I stood up and screamed, “You’re fucking delusional. He’s not coming home. He has a home with his new wife now.” This time I caught her hand before it reached my face. “Don’t slap me again. I’m leaving.”
“Good. I’ll let you know when your dad comes home and then you should plan a visit.”
It was official my mom had lost her mind. All the years of missing my dad had finally caught up with her and she’d completely lost it.
I left the house that day, bought a ticket to NYC and made an appointment to talk to an adviser at NYU. If I was going to do this, I might as well do it right.
***
I’d just gotten in from my morning run and sat down to start studying my book on American Literature, when my phone rang.
“Hey, what’s up, Becca? Long time, no hear.”
She sniffled and said, “Daniel, I got a call from my dad this morning.”
“What’s wrong, Becca? Is he okay?”
Becca’s dad was a good man. He’d raised her on his own since her mother left. Working two jobs and doing everything he had to, to give her the best life possible.
“It’s not dad. Daniel…”
My heart was racing. I knew this wasn’t going to be good news. “Just say it, Becca. What’s going on?”
“I’m so sorry, Daniel. It’s…it’s your mom.” She started to sob. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know if your dad knows yet or not.”
“Knows what, Becca? What the hell happened?”
“The house…it caught on fire. She didn’t make it out, Daniel. They think she was asleep in her bedroom and she most likely died before the fire got to her.”
Four Letters Page 20
