Guess Who?

"As the doctor came in he was looking at a bunch of papers."

"How long over-due is your period Heidi?" he asked.

"Three weeks," she said quietly. "I took one of those home tests and it was positive so I knew I was pregnant." Heidi's mom jumped up and slapped her. The doctor was flummoxed. I sat there in shock. I had no idea why Heidi's mom was so angry. She told me to wait outside of the office so I walked out. There was nothing going on in the office except screaming and yelling and when the two of them came out. Heidi apologized to me. The doctor must have told his nurses because everyone in the place was either smiling at me and nodding or looking at me like I'd just fallen off of the turnip truck."

"On the way home, I asked Heidi's mom what all of the yelling was about. I still didn't know. Heidi and I were in the back seat. I held her hand and her mom turned around and looked at us. None of us had any seat belts on and her mom had a cigarette dangling from one side of her mouth. We were driving down the freeway in a car with no air bags and she was looking into the backseat. Holy shit, we could have all died. I don't think she ever looked at the road. She just drove until someone honked their horn at her and then jerked the wheel."

"Jimmy, my daughter tried to do a really bad thing to you," said her mom. "You see, she thought that she was pregnant about three weeks ago because she took one of those home pregnancy tests. They're not very accurate. The test showed that she was pregnant. She isn't. Apparently, Heidi does some recreational drugs that gave a false positive reading. Even if she was pregnant, it probably wasn't yours. You and Heidi had sex for the first time last night, right?" I nodded my head.

"Honey, you can't get pregnant over-night," she said. "Heidi was trying to pin someone else's kid on you. You're a nice boy. Most of the losers she hangs with aren't. She figured you'd pony up the money for an abortion and if it wasn't possible to get one, you'd marry her and take care of the kid so she can continue living in Disneyland."

"I frowned and tears came to my eyes. I was still holding Heidi's hand and her mom turned around and asked me why I was crying."

"You dodged a bullet kid," she said. "You should be happy. Why are you upset?"

"I love her," I said. "I really wanted to marry her."

"She pulled the car over and the three of us all cried together. Of course, none of us cried for the same things, but it was good to get past it and let it all out."

"You are the nicest young man I've ever met," said Heidi's mom as she drove away.

"Over the next few weeks, I concentrated on school and my classes. I got a lot of girls hitting on me after word had spread about my adventure with Heidi. I guess any kind of press is good and to tell the truth, I later found out that Heidi had told some of her wilder friends about the size of my equipment. But though I was being sought out, I didn't date. None of us gets to control or dictate who we fall in love with. There were some really nice and really nice looking women trying to date me, but I still carried that torch for Heidi."

"From the moment she'd driven away, I never heard from Heidi again. If we saw each other across campus, she looked the other way. If I tried to catch up to her, she just ran. I was heartbroken. My dorm mates followed all of the campus gossip and had no problem telling me when they'd hear that my girl got gang banged or that she gave some guy a blow job. They seemed to take particular delight in telling me those things."

"About two months after the ill-fated doctor's visit though; I was pretty much over it. I'd finally given in and agreed to go out with a really nice girl from one of my classes. She was just a little bit chunky and she wore glasses, but she was really sweet. It was her personality that I was mostly interested in, but I have to admit that she had the best parts of bigger girls and I couldn't wait to get my hands on them."

"We'd gone to a movie and were walking back to her dorm, hand in hand. She smiled at me and we stopped and she put her hands on my shoulders and tilted her head back. In those days, that was a signal that she wanted me to kiss her. I'd been chewing gum the whole afternoon to make sure my breath was minty fresh. Nice girls don't like to kiss guys that taste like vomit. I leaned in and okay, I peeked. I didn't do it on purpose but I wanted to make sure that the kiss was perfect so she'd want more. Her lips were big and soft and I already had my arms around her waist."

"The kiss never landed. It was as if the hand of fate decided to step in. Just before our lips blended, I heard the worst screeching sound I'd ever heard."

"What the hell are you doing?" screamed Heidi. "Why is my boyfriend kissing fat girls in the middle of the street?"

"Is this some kind of research? Is it some kind of charity? God damn it James, I told you that you can't save the world single handedly. Isn't it enough that you donate money to feed starving children in Africa? Do you have to go around kissing fat girls too? You can't do it all."

"What do you want Heidi?" I asked.

"You dummy," she snapped. "I'm your girlfriend, remember? Don't act like you don't know how this works."

"Heidi, I haven't seen or heard from you in eight weeks," I said. "When I did run into you on campus, you ran the other way."

"That was hormones, James," she said. "And it's your fault."

"Heidi, you're a psychopathic bitch," I said.

"Yeah, so what," she smiled. "That part isn't your fault. But the hormone thing is. I'm exactly eight weeks pregnant and it's real this time. I've already been to the doctor, so guess who the daddy is?"

"I don't know," I said. "Is it the football player you gave a blow job to last week? Or is it maybe one of the guys you had the gang bang with the week before? Could it be the thirty year old guy with the handlebar mustache who's running around telling everyone that he's your boyfriend?"

"No Jimmy James, you ARE the father," she squealed. "I think Maury got that from her. I was tired of being a sucker so I asked for a blood test. I also wanted to see the doctor. I spoke to him and to Heidi and her mom. In those days they didn't do a blood test until the baby was born. The dominoes all stacked up and the timing was perfect. I was probably the only person who could have been the father."

"No abortion," I said.

"Fine," she said. "But I want a ring. I want everyone to know that I belong to the father of my baby. And I want us to get married before the baby is born."

"We'll get married the day the baby is born," I said. "That way they can do a blood test just to make sure."

"So we got married and we, or mostly I, had Dave. Dave was in day care during the day so Heidi could go out and work on her modeling career. Apparently she wasn't exactly the type they wanted. There was always something wrong with her. Either it was no boobs or she was too short or she was too spacey or she wasn't spacey enough. I didn't really care if she didn't make a dime modeling. I just needed her to be happy. I worked all day. I dropped Dave off at daycare and picked him up in the evening and then took care of him for most of the night. I even cooked because Heidi was on her feet doing appointment after appointment all day long trying to get her big break."

"But Dad, she eventually got it didn't she?" asked my daughter Sarah. "She does have those huge blow-ups in the den in the old house from when she was on the cover of Vogue and another magazine."

"Sarah, Honey, those were fake," I said. "If you look at that cover it doesn't say, "Vogue," it says "Vague," I had them made up to cheer your mom up near the end of her career."

"I worried about Heidi, because her ego was so frail and the modeling game is rough. Imagine stomping from appointment to appointment all day long and constantly being told, "You're not what we want," all day long. I guess somewhere along the path Heidi got discouraged. She didn't go after her appointments with the same gusto she started with. I really think that it was because times were changing and the spaced out looks that were so popular in the late seventies morphed into ultra conservative looks in the early eighties. I decided to surprise Heidi while she was at the agency she worked out of by showing up and bringing her flowers and taking her out to lunch. I'd just gotten a promotion to team leader and it carried more money and more respect. I wanted to splurge on my girl and my son. Everything was right in my world."

"I'd heard Heidi talk about Phil Jackson from the time she started modeling. He was a famous photographer who'd gotten a lot of models started. She told me that he thought she had the potential to become a supermodel. So when I dropped by the agency and the woman at the desk told me that Heidi was in Phil's office shooting some shots for her portfolio, I was really jazzed. I'd get to see my sweetie at work. The charge wore off when I barged into the office and saw Heidi on her knees with Phil's dick in her mouth. It was surreal. Heidi's head bobbed up and down and Phil noticed me and his eyes got huge. His dick started to shrink because he knew who I was. Heidi noticed the change in Phil's arousal and looked up and saw where he was looking. Our eyes met and she reflexively bit down. Phil's first scream was loud enough that people emptied the offices around his to find out what was going on."

"Heidi got up and started moving towards me and I noticed then that she was completely nude. Obviously Phil was going to fuck her next. I looked beside me and picked up a couple of expensive looking cameras. Even in pain from Heidi's bite, Phil tried to wave at me to put the cameras down."

"Please don't," he begged. I slammed them down as hard as I could on the hard tile floor of his office. I kicked over a shelf with about eight other cameras on it too. I walked out of his office and I heard Heidi running behind me trying to get dressed as she ran. People were laughing at her as she followed me down the street barefoot. I was driving an old 71 Boss Mustang then. I hated the Mustangs of the late seventies. I didn't give a fuck about the gas crisis or the environment. I wanted horsepower. I figured if I could afford the gas and I could because I had a great job, then I could drive whatever I wanted. Shit, all of the generations before me had fucked up the environment so I deserved my chance to fuck it up too."

"When I got home, I put Dave to bed and called Heidi's mother to come and get her. She arrived before Heidi did. I told her what Heidi had done and she just sat down and shook her head. While we waited for Heidi to come home she must've smoked two packages of cigarettes. I can still remember her holding her grandson and blowing smoke around the room like a chimney. It's a wonder we survived the eighties."

"When Heidi finally showed up, I picked Dave up and took him out in the backyard so Heidi and her mother could have some alone time. She kept begging me to talk to her and her mother kept pulling her away from me. She told Heidi that I didn't want to talk to her and she needed to give me some space. She took Heidi home with her and the phone calls started. Heidi must've called the house a hundred times over the next twenty four hours."

"I did agree a few days later to allow Heidi to come and visit David on the weekend. I was planning to go out and do some shopping and maybe play a round of golf while she was with him. When Heidi got there and I started to leave, she asked me where I was going. I told and she reminded me that I usually took care of Dave so she didn't know shit about feeding him or changing him or any of that other shit. I had to stay with them while she visited. Heidi told me the whole time how sorry she was and how much she missed me. She told me that Phil had forced her to do what she was doing and that she had to do it or he wouldn't take any pictures of her."

"I, of course, got pissed. She told me not to make any waves because that was just another of the things you had to go through to be a top model. It was years later but I found out that she'd been lying then. Heidi had been propositioning most of the photographers and most of the booking agents to try to get a shot. She had probably screwed more photographers than Kodak. But then I believed her. She seemed very sincere and I loved her so much. She even offered to give up her career and become a stay at home mom. What can I say? We got back together and I promised to never mention it again."

"The next few years were very good ones. I seemed to be making more and more money and by the time that Dave was five, Heidi ended up pregnant. Sasha was born to parents and a brother who worshiped her. Heidi cheated on me again with Dave's third grade teacher and I forgave her. We had a few more good years and Sarah was born. I caught Heidi cheating on me with our next door neighbor but I couldn't leave because we had three kids that I loved more than anything on earth. I wanted to get away from her so badly but I couldn't leave you guys."

"I guessed it would be like one of those divorce stories on the internet. As soon as you guys were old enough to get out of the house, I would be too. I no longer felt the same way about Heidi, she'd just hurt me too many times. But we'd been through so much together that it just seemed easier to be together than to start over."

"When Heidi's mom died, she seemed to settle down. We had the strangest talk after the viewing of her mom's body. Everyone had left the funeral home and only Heidi and I were there. Her mom was buried with a cigarette in her hand. I kept expecting her to sit up in the casket and help us out with our problem. "

"Heidi looked at me across the casket and started talking."

"James, I'm an asshole," she said. "For most of my life, I've been waiting for lightning to strike so everyone would know that I'm special. I've cheated on you and our kids more times than you know. For every time that you've caught me, there were probably five or six that you didn't. And I don't know why I do it. You've always been the best lover I've ever had. That thing of yours is huge and it took you a while, but you use it just the way I like. I've been a shitty mom, and a shitty wife, but you've stood by me through all of it; why?"

"Because I loved you from the first moment I saw you Heidi," I told her.

"James, I've loved you too. From the moment you told my mom, in the back seat of that God damned death trap of hers; when you told her after I'd tried to trick you into playing daddy to someone else's kid, that you loved me and you wanted to marry me, I fell for you. I tried to stay away from you because I thought you were too good for me and I didn't want to fuck you up. But fate intervened and put us back together and now, for the past twenty five years I've tried to fuck that up." A tear rolled down her cheek and I could see that she was serious.

"James, I will never cheat on you again. From now on you're my only man. I promise," she said.

"And I believed her. She melted my heart and I didn't leave her as I'd planned. We had several good years. We were planning on early retirement for me so that Heidi and I could travel the world. We'd raised three great citizens and we started taking little trips and learning new things. Even though we were in our fifties and had been together for over thirty years, we acted like teenagers. It wasn't unusual for people to find us parked somewhere in my Mustang, since Mustangs are all I've ever driven, making out like there's no tomorrow. Lots of people have passed by and seen Heidi's legs in the air, but from then on it was always me between them."

"We had lots of adventures and like I said, they were good times, the best before now, that I've ever had. Three years ago, we decided to try skiing. Once we got there, all of the kids were learning snowboarding instead of skiing. We decided to learn to snowboard too. It was the beginning of the end."

"Mom hooked up with your ski instructor didn't she?" asked Dave angrily. "So much for her promise, God damn!"

"Can I please tell this fucking story? It's almost over," I said. Sam got up and came and sat in my lap. I started talking again."

"So to answer your question, your mom didn't hook up with her ski instructor or anyone but me during our ski trip. That trip, all the way until the end, was one of the greatest memories I have of our marriage. Imagine spending the entire day with the person you love most and have loved since before you were really old enough to even know what love was. You wake up with her in your arms. You exchange a few long slow kisses and then swat her on the butt and go to breakfast. You get out on the slopes and take a ski class. The air is crystal clear and smells fresh. Every time you look at her, your heart melts because you love her so much."

"You have lunch together, then go back to your room and make very passionate love to her until late in the afternoon. Then you get ready for one final ski run before dinner. I have to imagine doing that over and over again, because it was only that way for the very last day. The rest of the time that we were there, we argued constantly because your mom bitched and whined about everything. According to her, the Chalet was too warm. It was too cold outside. The sun was too bright and it was too dark at night. The hills were too high and too long. The snow was too white. The people were fake. They were also too young. I think that your mom had to come to terms with the fact that she was nearly sixty and no longer a sex kitten."

"Anyway, that last day was perfect. It made all of the previous days of arguing and bitching worth enduring. We went out for one last run before dinner and that's when it happened. Your mom was not a great boarder, so she ended up on skis. As we got on the hill, we noticed that they were filming scenes for a commercial or an ad of some kind. Your mom went bat-shit crazy. She kept skiing through the area they were photographing. Apparently they didn't notice her. They were too intent on shooting the models they'd brought with them, so your mom, who again, is not a good skier, started trying to do tricks."

"She wasn't paying any attention to where she was going and ended up sliding down the entrance to one of the black diamond runs. Shit, our ski instructor doesn't ski those runs. One second your mom was posing and puckering up for cameras that weren't even pointing towards her, and the next she was screaming her head off until she hit that tree. It was scary. There was one long wail and then a huge crashing sound. She hit the tree so hard it moved."

"I was among the first to reach her and to be serious it was weird. Heidi gave the expression "tree hugger," a new meaning. She was there with her torso and face still in contact with the tree. One arm and one leg on each side of the tree, out cold."

"The ski patrol was afraid to move her. They immediately called an ambulance and a Med-evac chopper came and flew her straight to the nearest hospital. Luckily, we were here in Michigan, where there were a number of first class medical facilities close by."

"It took Heidi three days to regain consciousness. That was a good thing because during those three days they operated on her four times. The first operation had been to repair her broken nose. Some of the bone fragments were close enough that any trauma could have pushed them into her brain. Her brain was swelling because of the concussion and either continued swelling or those bone fragments could have killed her or at least lobotomized her. The surgery went well and pulled Heidi out of danger of losing her life. The following day they operated on her spine. Heidi had several discs that had slipped and were pressing on her spinal cord. If it had gone on for too long she might have lost the ability to move or control her limbs. That surgery took the longest. The doctors were sure that she'd regain the ability to walk as soon as she healed."