by Julia Kent
“You clearly need lessons on basic human decency if you’ve spent a decade alienating your son and shaming him for something no mortal human could ever fix! He couldn’t save them both, for God’s sake. Get over it before you lose Declan as well as your wife!” Marie shouts back, chest heaving and face livid.
Shannon’s mouth drops open with shock.
Mine, too.
My soon-to-be fiancée leans over to me and hisses, “What did you and Mom talk about yesterday?”
That sound you hear next is me, being catapulted emotionally back in time, the thump of my body. I’m eighteen now, suddenly. Eighteen and wearing a suit, running an international division of a Fortune 500 company. Eighteen and watching my dad get a righteous comeuppance from a woman who told me yesterday that while she can’t replace my mom—and would never want to—she thinks of me as one of her own right now.
“Declan?” Shannon pulls me aside and we’re hidden behind a large bookcase, the kind that’s filled with burgundy leather-covered classics and law books, statutes and other Very Important Writings in tomes meant to convey seriousness. Power. Privilege.
“Honey?” Shannon asks, stoking my cheek. I’m frozen, back to that day as I watch Marie take my dad down verbally.
Without warning I grab Shannon and kiss her, hard and furious, the blood rushing through my ears and crescendoing, like a set of stringed instruments all warming up at the same time, in harmony. The low rumbling invades my mind and now my arms pull Shannon against me, hands in her hair, my tongue tasting her.
She pulls away, lipstick smeared, eyes blazing. “We are at work!” she rasps. “Whatever’s going on inside you,” she adds, softening but still furious, “I understand you’re—“”
I kiss her again.
The door opens and in storms Jason.
“Oh, my God, is that my father?” she hisses, wiggling out of my arms. I can’t think. Can’t strategize. Can’t calculate or plan for whatever contingencies keep coming. Her family is like a giant game of human Whack-a-Mole. No matter how many times you think you’ve made them disappear, they just keep popping up.
It’s easier to just kiss her.
“I knew it,” Jason says. Shannon’s kissing me back now. We’re completely hidden behind the bookcase, and if Marie and Dad realize we’re still in the room, they don’t give any sign of it.
I pull away and look on the shelves.
“What are you doing?” Shannon asks, mouth red and boobs bouncing with heavy panting.
“Looking for whisky. We’re going to need it.” No decanters. No flasks. Just a very dusty set of Samuel Pepys first edition Harvard Classics. Not getting inebriated on that any time soon.
“Now, this is just ridiculous,” Dad announces, walking around the front of his desk in a confrontational manner. “Who in the hell are you?” he asks Jason.
“They’ve never met?” I whisper to Shannon, who really looks like she could use that whisky.
“My mom...my dad...yelling at the owner of the company where I work...” she mutters in short phrases.
And your future father-in-law, I think.
“Jason Jacoby.” Jason glares at Marie, who is combing over him from head to toe. Jason’s dressed in a suit and tie, clean shaven and has a nice, new haircut. He looks like any other businessman in his fifties.
Except I’ve never seen Jason dressed in anything other than jeans.
“I’m the husband of the woman you’re fucking,” Jason declares, eyes right on my dad.
And Shannon’s eyes roll back. She falls against me in a dead faint, slumping to the ground, her skirt riding up her thighs and her hair mashing into the Persian carpet next to the bookcase. Great. I’m about to propose to Scarlett O’Hara. Fiddle-dee-dee.
I’m pinned to a small table next to us and gaping at her. I’d faint, too, if my father accused my boss of fucking my mother.
This is one of those moments where you decide which kind of man you are.
One who cowers behind a bookcase in your father’s office while your future father-in-law accuses him of fucking your future mother-in-law?
Or a grown-up who goes out there and tries to mediate.
That’s right. I grab a pillow off the leather chair nearby and place it on my lap, gently moving Shannon’s head onto it and settle in.
This could be a while.
“I had no idea Becky was married!” Dad roars.
Oh.
“Becky? Who the hell is Becky? I’m talking about Marie!” Jason shouts, matching dad’s volume.
Shannon’s eyelids flutter, her soft eyebrows bending down in consternation as she comes to. I’ve never seen her faint before, and while I know stress can do that to a person, having her drop like a sack of potatoes in the middle of this fiasco just feels like a giant joke.
Let’s take inventory for a second here:
1. Marie has invaded our workplace.
2. She’s lecturing my dad for being a jerk after my mom died.
3. Dad just revealed he’s porking his admin, which is against company policy (Shut up. I am not a hypocrite. Shannon is not my direct report.).
4. Jason has barged in and accused my dad of schtupping his wife. The wife who dated my dad long before my oldest brother, Terry, was a twinkle in anyone’s eyes.
5. Shannon fainted, with her face in my lap and not in the fun kind of way.
6. Everyone’s screaming at each other and all I want to do is put my mother’s ring on Shannon’s lovely finger and make sweet love to my fiancée.
There’s the recap.
Not one bit of that makes sense except for the last part, and as Shannon sits up and looks wildly around the room, her hands cold and shaking, we hear:
“Out! Both of you! Before I call security!”
That’s Marie shouting. Shannon and I jump to our feet and race around the bookcase to find Jason and my dad on the ground in their suits, wrestling.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
“She’s mine!” Jason grunts as he gets Dad into a messy wrestling move. I take it Jason learned how to fight in the streets in south Boston. While we three McCormick boys learned fencing and boxing at Milton Academy from instructors who competed in the Olympics, Dad was a street kid, too. A Southie street kid.
Two Southie guys on a thirty-year hiatus from a brawl? This could get interesting. If nothing else, they both have middle-age paunches to work around, and while I know Dad has gym-toned arms, Jason’s been doing his own yard work for the last three decades.
And they seem to have checked their civility in the same place where their common sense is hiding.
“You—” The rest of the filth that comes out of Dad -- a stream of invective aimed solely at Jason, Jason’s mother, Jason’s genitals, and stretches back about six generations -- is a product of Dad’s Irish-Scottish heritage. Mostly his Scottish heritage, because Scots don’t forget anything when it comes to insults.
It’s in the DNA.
Marie starts screaming, “I don’t know what’s gotten into Jason!” while Shannon looks at me in horror.
“Do something!” Shannon shouts at me.
What the hell am I supposed to do? I’m not exactly trained in techniques for breaking up a fight between your future father-in-law and your dad. Besides, there’s more to this fight than meets the eye. I could stop them. I have the power (and could probably take them both in a fist fight. Scratch probably. Definitely).
Letting people show themselves to the world, though, gives me more power than shouting and making them stop. There are many ways to take charge. To dominate. To be a leader.
Sometimes stepping back and observing is more effective than taking action.
Shaking her head and muttering something about useless billionaires, Shannon grabs a water spritzer that Becky uses to spray the spider plants in Dad’s office, marches over to the four hundred pounds of aged meat wriggling and grunting on the floor, and sprays them.
Over and over, like dogs.
> “My suit!” Dad shouts, holding up his palms. “Don’t ruin this suit! It costs more than your annual bonus.”
Shannon keeps spraying, over and over, and shouts, “I don’t care. You quit hurting my daddy!”
The door bursts open (again), and in comes Becky, flanked by two guys who look like mafia hitmen genetically bred with sumo wrestlers.
“Security’s here! Who’s the—oh, my God, Jamie! Jamie, what happened to your face, sweetie?”
Jamie?
Becky kneels down and the security guys, me, Jason and Dad all crane our necks to get a view of the massive expansive of thigh and purple garters we’re invited to enjoy.
Shannon whaps me. Marie gives Jason a little kick and he grunts but doesn’t say a word.
“What’s that for?” he and I ask in unison.
Marie and Shannon give twin snorts while Becky fusses over Dad and helps him to stand.
Jason reaches up toward Marie for assistance in standing. She pretends he doesn’t exist, crossing her arms and giving Shannon an unreadable look.
Bad dogs always know when they’ve been bad and don’t whimper. Jason stands on his own and brushes himself off, trying to maintain a thin veil of normalcy, as if he didn’t just get into a physical fight with the richest man in Boston, and Dad didn’t just insult four generations of Jacobies.
“I assure you,” Dad growls, “I am not fucking your wife.”
“That’s right,” Shannon says defiantly. “You’re much too old for Jamie to sleep with, Mom.” Her glare at Dad as she repeats the nickname could double as a chemical peel in the finest spa in one of our luxury hotels.
“Shannon, what do you think you’re doing?” Dad says to her, whirling on one heel and ignoring Becky’s aid. “I’m your boss and—”
Spritz.
Shannon sprays Dad in the face.
I burst into laughter.
“You’re a dog. A dog who only sleeps with women who are four or younger in dog years,” Shannon announces.
Becky gasps and says, “I’m not four! I’m nineteen.”
“I rest my case,” Shannon announces.
Dad moves aggressively toward Shannon, who holds up the water sprayer in defense.
“I will not be insulted like this on my own company property!” Dad thunders.
“And you won’t yell at my daughter like that!” Jason roars back.
“And I’m not sleeping with Jamie!” Becky adds.
“One of these things is not like the other,” Marie sings under her breath.
Marie appears to do math in her head, then turns a shade of angry pink. “Not only are you a cruel parent, but you’re an ageist misogynist with little penis syndrome!” she says to Dad, who is trying to decide which of us he’s most pissed off at. It’s a rare moment when I am not in the running, so I’m basking in the glory.
Jason looks like steam is about to come out through his ears, and he yells, “How in the hell do you know that he has a little penis?”
“I do not have a little penis!” Dad screams. Marie wins.
Becky turns to me so earnestly, so sweetly, and says, “He’s right. He doesn’t.”
I wish I could try out that fainting trick Shannon just used, but instead I’ll just yell like everyone else.
“THAT IS ENOUGH!” I shout. Time to stop observing. Time to take charge with words and actions.
Everyone comes to a halt except for Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who keep chewing their gum and looking bored, like this is the lamest security issue they’ve ever had to answer.
They’re right.
“You,” I say, pointing to Marie. “You betrayed my trust.”
“I did no such thing!” she protests. “I just went home and thought about what you said at your mother’s grave yesterday—”
“You were at Elena’s grave?” Dad asks in a small, hushed voice. Somehow, it’s worse than when he was screaming.
“Who’s Elena?” Becky asks.
“Shut up,” Dad and I say in unison.
Becky storms out.
“And you,” I say to Jason. “You are making a fool of yourself. Dad and Marie aren’t having an affair. Dad doesn’t date anyone under thirty and he never dates married women.”
“Their expectations are too high,” Dad explains.
“I really dodged a bullet with you, didn’t I?” Marie says to Dad, then turns to look at Jason with a contrite expression.
“Then why were you joking about marrying Declan’s father the other day? And why are you here in James’ office, so angry and passionate?” Jason asks, bewildered.
“The joke was mine,” I say gruffly. “Poor taste.”
“That’s easier to believe than the idea that I would sleep with her,” Dad says with a sour face.
“You’d be lucky to sleep with me, buddy,” Marie shoots back.
“That’s right,” Jason mutters. “Wait. No,” he backpedals.
“Everyone’s having sex but me,” I say under my breath. Shannon kicks my ankle.
“Hold on, hold on. Go back. Why was Marie talking with you at your mother’s grave?” Dad asks. There’s a look of genuine concern in his eyes, at least, the part of his eyes that I can see. His right eye took some kind of graze and it’s swelling up.
“I went to talk to Mom,” I say, keeping it simple.
“You mother is dead,” Dad says with great skepticism.
“I never said she talked back.”
Silence.
Broken by—who else?—Marie. “Declan told me the story of how Elena died. How Andrew nearly died. And how Declan had to make an impossible choice. Defy his mother’s wishes or let his brother die.”
Everyone seems stunned. They are stunned. She summed it up quite well.
“And how does that relate to my ‘cruel parenting,’ as you called it?” Dad asks Marie in a cold voice.
“You made Declan feel like he killed his mother,” Marie says, chin up, eyes locked on Dad’s. “He didn’t. He saved his brother. He did what he was told by Elena, who loved her children so much she sacrificed herself for Andrew. That’s what a good, loving parent does.”
Dad looks like someone slapped him. He actually does—there’s a red imprint of Jason’s hand on the side of his face, but his expression is also one of shocked reflection.
Andrew slips quietly into the room, the two security guards and Becky behind him and a gaggle of office workers huddling in the hallway, rubbernecking.
“Of course you didn’t kill your mother,” Dad says quietly, turning to me. “I know that. The wasps did.”
Shannon winds her arm through mine, as if she needs to hold me up. She doesn’t, but the warmth of her body reinforces me. Like having backup troops appear at the height of battle. You probably don’t need them, but just in case...
Dad’s bemused look teleports me back eleven years to a very different expression on his face. Back when his eyes were dead and the only feeling he seemed capable of expressing was anger.
I’m eighteen again (this is getting old...) but in the space of a few breaths I realize that’s wrong.
I’m a grown man.
“You told me,” I say with deliberate elocution, as if saying each syllable perfectly will drive home the emotional truth, “that it was my fault Mom died.”
The room becomes an icehouse. Jason’s head jolts and he looks first at Dad, then at me. His eyes fill with compassion.
The hardest part is accepting that.
“I never said that,” Dad protests.
After closing the door behind him and waving Becky away, Andrew says softly, “Yes, Dad. You did.”
Everyone is looking at Dad. I try to catch Andrew’s eye but he won’t even glance over here. Showing any emotion now, or giving a tell that makes him vulnerable, can’t be allowed.
But he can be my ally. Testify. Validate.
“I don’t remember ever saying that,” Dad says slowly, looking at the floor as if trying to recall a memory. “Perhaps I said somethi
ng else and Declan misunderstood.”
“Declan didn’t misunderstand anything, Dad. I remember. I was in the hospital and was recovering and you were making funeral home arrangements for Mom’s body.”
Dad goes pale. I feel my own face go cold. Moments like this don’t happen in our family. We don’t reminisce, or process events, or talk about feelings. There’s no playbook for how to act. We’re all winging it.
Me most of all.
“The doctor came in to review my case and you asked whether I’d really needed the EpiPen. Whether Declan could have just injected Mom and if I’d have been okay with what the EMTs had once they got to us.”
“I was trying to understand the facts, Andrew,” Dad says in a rough voice. “Trying to make sense of the whole situation.”
Andrew acts like he was never interrupted. “And the doctor said maybe. Maybe. That no one can predict how these reactions work, and that while my throat had closed up and I’d lost consciousness, perhaps...maybe...it was possible...nothing could be ruled out....” Andrew uses a sing-songy voice that is so uncharacteristic it seems like mocking.
Dad looks up sharply and stares at Andrew, but his face is anything but comedic.
“And then you lost it when Dec came into the room. You screamed at him so much that hospital security called the chaplain, and she had to take you to her private office.”
His eyes are downcast but not in submission. In anger. “You were drugged up, Andrew, full of all the medications they threw into your body to manage the anaphylaxis. I was bouncing between the morgue and your hospital bed. I’m sure you misremember.”
“Why do you assume that everyone but you has a faulty memory of that day, James?” Shannon asks.
“Because...I...” James McCormick doesn’t get flustered. Andrew and I look away. It’s like seeing Dad naked.
Jason, Marie and Shannon are all looking at Dad, and while Jason’s look is still one of general annoyance, it’s Marie and Shannon who are most interesting to watch right now. They’re both calm, heads titled to the left like they synchronized it, and they’re compassionate. Interested. Non-judgmental right now.
Whatever has just unfolded between Dad, Jason, Marie and Shannon over the past few minutes, it appears that Marie and Shannon are ready to listen and process and problem solve this emotional nightmare.
