I Didn't Know...

I just looked at her. "Mom, were you here for the same conversation I was?" I asked. She looked over at me and tried to smile.

"Mom, I think he's writing you guys off. He's taking the whole stance that it was his mistake. He's saying that he was wrong for getting upset about this whole thing because he assumed that you guys had some kind of relationship but he can see now that you didn't. Basically, he's saying that he loved you and thought that you felt the same way about him but the whole thing was just him making a mistake."

"Well, that's not true," she said, realizing for the first time what was going on. "I do love him. I love him and much more than I've ever loved anyone. He has to know that. He's just being silly."

"No, Mom, he's being passive aggressive. What he's being is hurt and this is just his reaction to it. The man clearly loves you so much that the thought of you doing what you did has him all twisted up. So it's easier for him to deal with this by just pretending that there never was any kind of relationship. I'm telling you, the two of you are strange. First off, there's you, Mom. You are the very definition of a broken toy. You fell in love with a man who just used you and abused you. You cried over that asshole and told him that you loved him all the time. I don't remember much of that because I was only seven or eight when he threw us out. But I remember that I didn't like him."

"Then Don finds us. You were maybe twenty six or twenty seven when we met Don. Here's where things stop making sense for me. You got pregnant with me when you were 18 and had to marry the asshole. That means that you were only with him for the seven or eight years that I was alive up until then. "You're forty two now Mom. We've been with Don for fourteen years. In all of that time you've never once told him that you even cared about him. How the hell does that happen? The first morning after this all happened you were whining because he hadn't kissed you goodbye before he went to work. The weird thing is that I can see how this worked from his perspective. But not from yours."

"Explain his perspective to me," she said. "You always take his side anyway. You have ever since you were a child."

"Mom, Don is as bad as you are, but at least he makes sense. When we first moved in with him, we'd been through hell. We had nowhere else to go. My grandparents on your side wanted nothing to do with us. We literally had nowhere to turn. Don took us in. He was genuinely great to us. But he didn't do it totally out of the goodness of his heart. Don had lived alone ever since he got divorced from his first wife. He'd been so angry that he'd cut himself off from everyone. After a year or so of that, he was lonely and he didn't want to be alone anymore. We came along at just the right time for him too."

"Anyway, I started following Don around. And yeah, Don was my father figure growing up. I used to lie to all of my friends and tell them that he was my dad. And he is in every way that matters. Nope, he isn't my biological father, but he's still my dad. He was attentive and he cared about me. I grew up without too many signs of the trauma we went through. You, on the other hand, seemed to need to prove to someone...maybe it was yourself, that you don't need a man and that no one controls you. You need to let everyone know that the abuse that my biological asshole did to you wouldn't be repeated."

"But Mom, Don never tried to control you or abuse you. While you were running around telling people how strong and independent you were and how proud you were to be single, he was there taking care of us. While you were shouting to the masses that you'd never get married again...you already were. Mom, you were like one of those tall, weak trees. You stood above everything proudly. You told all of your friends and everyone you know what you would do and what you wouldn't do. But all the time, you weren't really standing alone. He was propping you up."

"You shouldn't feel bad though, because I have the same problem. I AM strong and independent. I'm in my twenties. I have a college degree and a great job with a future. Yep, my dad got me my job, but it's my skills and my work ethic that keeps it for me. But Mom, I don't want to be strong and independent. I want what you have. The problem is that Dad is a hard act to follow. I see the way that he treats you and I need a guy who'll treat me that same way. They're just really hard to find."

"So what do you think I should do?" she asked.

"Mom, to tell you the truth, I don't know," I said. "I do know that if you want things to even have a chance of going back the way they were you have to really step up your game and let him know how you feel about him. We do know that he loves you. He wouldn't be this hurt and this upset about what you did if he didn't. I think you're going to have to go Jane Seymour on him."

She looked puzzled. "I have to dress like a doctor in the old west?" she asked.

"Not Doctor Quinn," I said. "Jane Seymour, you know the whole open heart jewelry thing. "If your heart is open, love will find its way in," she says that in all of those damned commercials."

Over the next few days it seemed like I couldn't concentrate on my own life because I was so deeply involved with my parents and their issues. My dad called me every day or stopped by and took me to lunch. We talked about everything except the problems that he and mom were having. I knew that it was an act though because he kept asking me if I thought that she was a little bit off.

I told him that as far as I knew she was fine, except for her relationship falling apart. I also reminded him that our anniversary had come and gone and he hadn't popped the question to her.

"I don't think she was ever interested in that," he said.

"Dad, I know she was," I told him.

When I'd talk to my mom, it just surprised me how astute Dad was when it came to her. "Mom, are you a little bit off?" I'd ask her

"I have been feeling a little weak and a little weird," she said. "But I don't think it's physical. I think that not having Don hurts me. And Ted is treating me like shit at work."

"What do you mean not having Dad," I said.

"Honey, we knew it would take some time," she said. "He's being very polite to me."

"Isn't that a good thing?" I asked.

"I don't need him to be polite, Honey. I need him to love me. I miss all of the little silly things. I miss the times when I'd try to put the dishes in the dishwasher and he'd come up behind me and rub my butt. Sometimes, he'd come up behind me and reach around and cup my breasts and blow on my neck and then smile and just walk away and leave me excited. Some of those days, I'd be so ready for sex that I'd find him and we'd do it wherever I found him. We did it on the hard concrete floor of the garage. And it's not just sex, Terri. There were days when I'd come home from work and he'd have cooked dinner. Don really can't cook, Honey, but it was just the effort that he put into trying to please me. It's all of those massages on stressful days and his silly jokes. It's winter nights when he'd just start a fire and grab two glasses and a blanket. He'd fill one glass with my favorite wine and the other with that damned cherry Pepsi of his. Sometimes he'd get me chocolate too. And we'd just lie down on the couch under the blanket together. We'd usually end up turning the TV off and just watch the fire."

"Most of the time, we never even drank our drinks, we just lay there holding each other. It's silly but on most of those nights we didn't even have sex, but I'd just fall asleep in his arms and wake up the next morning feeling like there was nothing in the world that I couldn't conquer."

I noticed then that her voice sounded really rough, like she was about to cry. "Mom what's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "It kind of hurts realizing what I threw away. We don't even sleep together now, let alone having sex. I used to lie to my friends all the time. We'd talk about how men think they can just grope a woman anytime they want to and how we'd never put up with it. But all the while, I secretly loved it when Don would rub my butt. I just feel so drained of energy. I mean he's a complete gentleman. He treats me like we're very cordial housemates. I think I'd give every dollar I have to have him jump out of the hallway and throw me on the bed, like he used to."

"He did that to you?" I asked.

"Mm hm," she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. "It wasn't for real. He'd throw me on the bed and I'd pretend to try to fight him off. He'd start out rubbing my legs and I'd pretend I didn't like it. Then he'd start rubbing between my legs. But I guess Don knew what I'd been through, so even if we were playing he wouldn't force himself on me. If I told him to stop, he stopped." She started laughing then.

"What's so funny mom?" I asked.

"Honey, couples who've been together for a long time often experiment or try things to spice things up. Don and I were no different. Don and I couldn't do rough sex. He just didn't have it in him. I sat down with him and told him I wanted to be taken. So we made up a safe word. If I said that word he was supposed to stop. I think we used "Orange," or something like that. I told him that if I really wanted him to stop I'd say, "Orange."

"Don grabbed me and pushed me down on the bed and he really is very strong. He started kissing me and I screamed, "No, Stop!" He stopped. I was so pissed. We tried it over and over again and finally just had sex. Don just isn't good at trying to force himself on me. I miss that so much. And you know what else I miss?"

"I miss the way he used to look at me. If I walked around the house in my robe, he'd stare at the way my robe draped across my ass. If I went to take a shower, Don would suddenly have to pee. And even though we have two bathrooms, he'd have to go in the one that I was in. It does something for a woman's ego, to have a guy that's always ready to sneak a peek at her or who wants to fuck her at the drop of a hat. It made me feel like I was the sexiest woman on the planet."

"Now, I just feel like a nothing. Even at work. Ted has half of the staff thinking that I'm some crazy old woman who wanted a relationship with him, when all he wanted was a one night stand. Terri, I didn't even want the one night. I just wanted the flattery and the attention. And it's really, really stupid because Don gives me...or gave me all of that. I think that I just began to take Don for granted. It's like you keep trying to tell me, we were like an old married couple. I had it in my head that Don's flattery didn't mean anything. I guess I was so used to it, that it just didn't register. I don't know how it couldn't have because Don was really nasty sometimes."

"Don...my Dad, Don?" I asked incredulously.

"Terri, there were times when you'd come over to eat with us and he would just go wild," she laughed.

"While I was there?" I asked.

"Oh yeah," she said. "You'd go into the bathroom to wash your hands. You'd probably even talk to us through the door. Don would lift my skirt and bite my ass. Or he'd stick his nose into my pussy through my panties. As soon as you turned the water off, he'd sit back down like nothing had happened. You'd come out of the bathroom and I'd be sitting there all flushed and horny. And there would be Don across the table with a big smirk on his face."

It was after one conversation like that that things changed. I told my dad about it. Of course, I left out all of the parts about their sex life, but I told him the parts about how much she missed the closeness they had lost. And I also let it slip that Ted was bothering her at work. That was probably a mistake.

My dad didn't have lunch with me that day. He called and told me he had to take care of something. When I got back to my desk after lunch time, I got a call from Dad. He needed me to come and get him and he gave me an address. I thought it was a good thing. I thought that if his car had broken down he'd get it fixed and then start thinking about getting a newer one.

When I got to the address he'd given me, it turned out to be the police station. I had to bail my dad out of jail. He'd been thrown into jail for fighting. I told the guy behind the desk that there had to be some kind of mistake. My dad is a forty two year old engineer. He doesn't get into fights.

"Honey, your dad started it," said the cop. He showed me a video taken by a security camera. It showed a building that seemed to be familiar to me.

The video showed Don walking up to the building as people were going in and coming out. He just stood there. A younger guy, who was maybe a little bit bigger than Dad came out of the building with two other guys about his age. My dad said something to one of them and the guy turned towards him. My dad slapped the shit out of the guy. I was stupefied. I don't think he's ever been in a fight that I know of. The younger guy held onto his face and my dad started screaming at him. The younger guy was talking back and still holding his face. His friends started laughing at him. Then, as dad turned to leave, the younger guy tried to sucker punch him. He turned and the punch hit his shoulder instead of his face and then it was on. Dad had been holding in a lot of rage lately and he let it all out. He started just pounding the guy. The funniest part was that the man's friends didn't get involved. They just yelled at Dad and started calling for security. It was the security guards who pulled Dad off of the guy.

"Where is he? And what is he charged with?" I asked.

"Disturbing the peace," said the cop. I looked at him crazily.

"Your dad slapped the guy first," he said. "But that was as insulting blow more than an attempt to hurt him. He also did it right in the guy's face. That didn't start the fight. You saw that they talked about it afterwards. Then your dad turned to walk away and the guy tried to punch him while his back was turned. He's a bigger guy than your dad but he's a God damned coward. They each tried to hit each other, so that's a wash. We spoke to the other guy in the hospital. They seem to have reached a deal of some kind. Your dad went down there to make that guy leave your mother alone. Neither of them is going to press charges. We're only charging them both with disturbing the peace. We just needed someone to come down and pick him up."

I went into the room with the cells and smiled at Don through the bars.

"Come on Mike Tyson, let's get you out of here," I smiled.

"Don't say anything about this to your mother," he said. I just shook my head. Mom had taken the day off from work to go to the doctor's office. Even before I got home she'd called me to ask me what happened to Dad at work. He had his hands all wrapped up. I think she believed that Dad had been in some kind of accident at work. She was really worried about him. She sounded hysterical over the phone. I really wanted to tell her what he'd done for her, but I couldn't. I'd promised him that I wouldn't tell her.

When she went back to work the next day, she heard about it anyway. A lot of the people she worked with knew Don, from the company's picnics and parties. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Don would show up at her job and beat the fuck out of Ted.

Ted took a week off for "medical reasons" so he wasn't at work the rest of that day. But as soon as my mom got home that night she attacked Don. She just threw herself at him and started kissing anything on him that she could reach.

"I knew that you still love me you idiot," she yelled at him.

"He doesn't deserve you," said Don quietly.

"You're supposed to be the smart one," she gushed. "He never had me. It was just a mistake. I was weak and stupid."

All I know is the next day my mom was too tired to go to work and Dad's smile was back. I tried calling Mom just before lunch and she was still sleepy when she answered the phone. "What's wrong with you?" I asked her.

"I'm fine," she gushed. "I'm better than ever. We're uhm, sleeping together again. I think we're going to be okay. We kind of uhm "talked," all night long. We did a lot of "talking." We talked so much that I'm really sore but I feel really good."

Apparently they continued talking that evening because every time I tried to call them they didn't pick up the phone. My mom was ecstatic. It took three days for the ecstasy to return to horror and get even worse.

My dad had, as usual, spotted it first. Four days previous, when he'd said that my mom was a little bit off, she'd gone to the doctor. Her results had come back, including her blood tests. She was a very healthy middle aged woman. Her cholesterol was a bit high and she was also about six weeks pregnant.

Even when the doctor had told her, she'd immediately counted back and the dates lined up. Mom came home with the most ashen look to her that I'd ever seen. Dad and I were watching TV and she walked right by us. She went into their bedroom and started crying. Dad was after her like a shot.

I followed them into the room because I knew it was serious. I came in just in time for her to tell him.

"Don, I'm pregnant," she said looking at him.

"Wow," he said with a little half smile. "What are we..." Then his face fell too.

"How far along are you?" he asked.

"About six weeks..." she said sadly. Things had been going so well for them. But this had just dredged it all back up. And this time, it probably wouldn't get any better. Don just turned around and left the room. My mom just started crying. A short time later, I heard the sound of Don's Mustang driving away.

"Mom, how the hell did this happen?" I asked. She just looked at me in shock.

"I'm going to lose him for good this time," she said. "I don't want to be pregnant."

"Mom, it's still early enough for you to do something about it," I said. "Shit, you're over forty. No one would blame you for not wanting to go through that."

"It doesn't matter whether I do or not," she said. "The damage is done. He knows and he'll never forgive me."

"Mom, he loved you enough to forgive you over the actual act. Maybe he'll see that this is only an unforeseen result of the original mistake," I said.

"Terri, now you're the one who's being stupid," she spat. "Don's first wife got pregnant by another guy while Don was overseas defending our country. He divorced her. I was lucky enough to have him fall for me. So now his second woman gets pregnant by another guy. What do you really think he's going to do, Terri?"

"It was hard for him to forgive me, when not too many people knew about this. But now with a baby to constantly remind him that I cheated on him...my life is over. I have no one to blame but myself."

Don didn't go home that night. I don't know if he went to a hotel or if he just drove around the whole night. According to mom, he got home at about 7 a.m. and showered and changed clothes and went to work. My mom went in to work late. She'd thought about staying home, but she just wanted to get out and do something.

She found out later where Don had been. Just after lunch, Ted went to my mom's desk and asked if he could speak to her privately.

They went into a conference room and closed the door behind them. Mom said that Ted sat so far away from her that it was like they were in different rooms. He didn't even want to be close enough to her for there to be incidental contact.

"Can we settle this without the courts?" he asked. She was puzzled.

"If you go through the courts and file for child support, every company that I work for will know that I have an out of wedlock child out there. In some circles, that is still frowned upon. And since we can't do the honorable thing here, I'd really prefer it if we just decided on an amount for me to send you regularly."