Same Old Song and Dance Ch. 03: Conclusion

"Uhm what did, she call you," asked Mark.

"Oh shut up," spat Sherry. She got up from my lap and moaned in pain. She rubbed her ass and Mark's eyes bugged out.

"What happened to your butt," he asked.

"I got a spanking," she whined. She reached into her pocket and pulled out some change. She counted out fifty cents and handed it to him.

"No way Jose," he said. "There were two parts to our bet. You owe me a dollar."

I discussed my intentions with them, including both possible scenarios and what each would mean to them and my fears for Terry and Debbie as well. I told them that Debbie had also known what was going on and as much as I'd tried to shield her from the ugliness of the situation she'd probably known before any of us.

A short time later Terry and Debbie came in. He handed me the keys with a big smile on his face. "I love that car, sir," he said.

"Terry, I spanked your sister tonight," I told him. He looked at me in confusion. He looked across the floor at Sherry. She just nodded, and absent mindedly rubbed her ass.

"What did I? ... I should have told you, Sir," he said. He looked awful.

"No Terry, you did what you thought was right in a situation that no kid should ever be forced into. The only thing I'm upset about is that you've suddenly started calling me 'SIR,' and being extra polite. When in your life have I ever been anything other than 'Dad?"

"I just thought that maybe ... With everything that's come out ..." His voice trailed off.

"Terry don't think about it," I said. "Nothing has changed. You are still every bit as much my son as you were last week. Some bad things have happened to us, but we'll make it through them. I refuse to allow us to think, feel or act like victims because of something that none of us chose. It's going to be different in some ways. I've already spoken to Sherry and Mark about it, but I intend for the five of us to make it through this. At the same time, I don' expect any of you to abandon your mother just because she, and I won't be together any more. She's going to need your love and understanding even more now. I'm going to be talking to her and her lawyer over the next few days to try to work things out so this transition is as painless as possible for all of us.

Later, that evening after Debbie was asleep and Terry was in his room playing some weird video game I called her.

"Greg, Honey, I'm so glad you called," she cried. "After the way you left the meeting, I wasn't sure we would ever talk again. I miss you so much. We can work this out. I know we can. Do you want me to come over to the house, so we can talk in person? I need to see you so badly, Honey. I just need to look at you and ..."

"Donna, I need something from you," I said.

"Greg, are you coming over here?" she asked. "Is this a booty call? You don't have to act weird about it, you know. Half of my divorced friends are still screwing their husbands occasionally after the divorce. I want you too, baby. I want you bad right now. It's still yours. No matter how angry you are at me ... It'll be really good baby, I prom ..."

"Donna, listen to yourself," I hissed. "You sound like some whore who's trying to convince her John to pick her over all the others. That isn't why I called you. However, before we get to that, you've been out of the house for a little over a week now ... Aren't you worried about the kids at all?"

"No, I'm not," she said. "Why should I be? You're like Super Dad. There's no way you'd ever let them even be unhappy, let alone let something happen to them. Two of our kids are adults, and Debbie lives in a tween's world of ice cream, cookies, computer gadgets, and clothes. Her only boundaries are the limits of her daddy's love which for her is endless. I am the one in trouble here. My church group held a meeting, and somehow they all forgot to invite me or notify me about it. I should be upset, but I just don't give a fuck.

I started laughing.

"I really don't care about my clubs or volunteering, Greg. I may not have shown it, but I've always had my priorities straight. YOU are my priority, Greg. You're my life. I'd pick you over even our kids if it came down to it. But in time, they'll get over this. I'm not sure we will if we don't start trying to fix things. Laugh if you must, but those old biddies and even the entire church congregation can all go to hell. Only you matter."

"That wasn't what I found funny," I said. "You said nothing mattered. Not the church group, or volunteering, or your friends, or even our kids. You said you didn't give a fuck. Isn't that the very heart of irony, Donna? Because if you didn't give a fuck ... If you hadn't given so many fucks to so many men over the years ... We wouldn't be talking over the God Damned phone right now. We would probably be snuggled up in our warm comfortable bed together right now." I heard her sharp intake of air, and a small whine as my words struck home.

"But you did, Donna. You gave a fuck. You gave a lot of fucks to so many men that I'm not sure even you remember them all. You gave so many fucks that two of your children may never even know who their fathers are. So yeah, Donna, none of it matters. Our kids don't matter. The church doesn't matter. Your friends don't matter. Nothing matters except getting another dick crammed up in that hole, you call a pussy. But you missed one Donna ... you see ... Despite what you claim, I don't matter either, Donna. If I did ... If I mattered even one little bit, maybe you would have thought about how much it would hurt me if I ever found out what you were doing." I could hear her sobbing over the phone.

"And Donna, those kids DO fucking matter. Sure Sherry is an adult. She almost went crazy. I had to spank her adult ass tonight to shock her into realizing that I am still her father, no matter who dumped their sperm into your diseased cunt at the time. Terry is an adult, Donna. He's a strong young man and I'm more proud of him every day. But he lost the love of his life, AND his fucking mother at the same time. How strong can he be? And while you lay your guilt on him and let him carry the load for what you did, he finds out that he may be losing his father too, Donna. I'm not going to let either of those kids lose me. I'm going to make it as if none of this ever happened for both of them. And you also laid your bullshit on Debbie, Donna you laid all of that shit on a thirteen-year-old girl ... It's not that the kids don't matter is it Donna. You've just written them off because you know they hate you. But you won't get off that easily. I spent part of the evening telling them that they need to keep you in their lives; it's going to be tough going for a while, but you will at least attempt it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I do," she said tearfully. "And thank you, Honey for that. I do want to be a part of their lives. I just didn't know how to do it after all of this. But you didn't have to ask me to do that. I'm your wife. I love you. I love you more than you will ever know."

"Yeah, yeah," I spat. "You'd climb the highest mountain for me and swim the deepest ocean ... As long as you could do it with a dick in your mouth, and your legs spread. But talking to the kids isn't what I need you to do. What I need you to do is to give me as complete a list as possible of every guy in our town and the surrounding areas that you've slept with. You don't have to give it to me. You can give it to my lawyer."

"Greg you can't fight that many men," she said.

"Trust me," I said. "I have no intention of fighting anyone. And, I have no reason to. You can either give me the list voluntarily, or I'll petition the court and have you forced to on the grounds of establishing paternity of the kids and ..."

"Greg, can't we just settle this between us, or ... Can't we please just let it go. I swear it will never happen again. This could tear this whole town apart."

"I'll have my lawyer request it then from yours," I said. "I'll have him write up the ..."

"I'll do it," she cried. "But can we try to keep this private?"

"Yeah, I can see how much you care about me Donna," I said. "It's okay for me to become some kind of town joke, but you don't want anyone else to be embarrassed because they got busted for fucking the town whore."

"That's not it at all," she said. "I love you Greg. More than life itself. But these people have wives and families. I don't want a bunch of innocent people to suffer for my weakness."

"So your own children and husband are the only ones who are supposed to suffer, huh?" I asked. "I'd say Fuck you, Donna, but too many people already have."

* * * * * *

Sally

I looked across the restaurant and spotted two people among the chaos of the late lunch crowd. The first glance was at Earl, the rapidly aging fifty something year old manager of the place. Earl didn't own the restaurant. He was the cook and manager. An older couple, who had retired to Florida, owned it, and we sent all the profits to them. They rarely ventured beyond the sun belt. In the ten plus years that I had worked here, I had seen them twice. I doubt that they even knew my name.

Earl was looking particularly fetching that day in an unshaven, beer-bellied, greasy T-shirt sort of way. Maybe it was just the fact that all the estrogen, testosterone, and general family love being thrown around the restaurant on that lazy, hot summer day made me want to throw off some hormones of my own.

Earl's wife, Connie, had stopped by that morning and promptly caused a scene. The woman Earl had hired to take care of her was nowhere to be seen. It appeared that Connie had gotten out of her bed, grabbed the keys and come looking for Earl again. She clearly stopped off to purchase liquor and smelled like a brewery.

She had come into the restaurant screaming about it being their anniversary, and she wanted her present. She had barfed in the middle of the floor and several customers had left.

While Earl tried to calm her down she'd grabbed a butter knife from one of the tables and started slashing at the air preventing Earl and everyone else from getting to her. Earl told me to make the call, so I'd called the sheriff's department. Andy arrived ten minutes later. It was probably the longest ten minutes of Earl's life.

Connie cursed and screamed at everyone she saw. Her vitriol was so toxic that several customers left the restaurant. She was practically foaming at the mouth as she cursed and hissed. The only thing she didn't do was shit on the floor. Earl tried to keep everyone calm, but the damage to the lunch crowd was already done.

Andy had seen it all before. He walked in, said "Hi," to Earl and me then turned to Connie.

"Connie, are we going to do this the hard way or ..." Andy began. He leaped backwards quickly as the butter knife slashed viciously at the area his face had just occupied.

"All righty then," he said. Andy pulled his taser from his belt and fired it, rendering Connie a twitching lump on the floor. He calmly walked over to her and pulled two zip ties out of his pocket.

"Sally can ya get me a couple of towels?" he asked. I ran to the linen cupboard and got him two of our best towels.

Andy almost gently wrapped the towels around Connie's wrists, and then zip-tied her wrists together. He repeated the procedure on her ankles, just as the EMS truck pulled up. Andy let the paramedics remove the barbs from the taser. They looked up at him and nodded.

"She's fine," said one. "Her heartbeat and vitals are strong and steady. She'll be a little shaken up when she wakes up ... Uh, she's going to sleep for a few hours cuz I gave her something to knock her the fuck out. I don't need a repeat of that other time."

On one of the previous occasions after being tasered, Connie had awakened and grabbed a large salt shaker that had fallen to the floor beside her. She hit one of the ambulance attendants so hard that she'd split his forehead open and given him a concussion.

"Should we take her home or to the hospital, Andy," asked the driver.

Andy shook his head. "I'm sorry Earl," he said. "But the knife is a whole new element. She ain't gettin' any better. In fact, she's gettin' worse. This is a public place. There are families with kids in and out of here all the time. I'm gonna have to send her to Pecan. You can sign her out of there and into the rehab facility of your choice after 72 hours, but she needs professional help." Earl just nodded.

Pecan referred to the Pecan Mental Health and Substance Abuse Clinic. It was thirty miles outside of town. They were equipped to handle violent and uncontrollable offenders.

After they took Connie away, we had gotten back to business. It took a while, but our customer volume increased back to normal levels. Earl would as usual, note the wasted food and lost revenue as a power outage on his logs for the couple that owned the restaurant. If they asked he'd just tell them that the power outage had shut down the air conditioning and plunged the restaurant into darkness. Most of the customers left. It took almost an hour to get the power back on. Since we did have several legitimate power outages and brown outs during the hot summer months, they wouldn't question it.

So now, looking across the restaurant at Earl, with his scruffy beard, and his greasy apron, still trying to keep the customers happy after the morning he'd had, he looked pretty good to me. I thought he deserved a mid-week pick me up and so did I.

Sometimes I wonder; I mean if you look at all the rules of society and morality, sleeping with a married man is just wrong. I guess it makes me some kind of slut. However, it's the same old song and dance. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. And when you look at it, who does it hurt if I give Earl the occasional quickie?

It's not like Connie will ever know or care. Nor is it the case where I have someone at home to be hurt. As sad as it seems, Earl is the closest thing I've ever had to any kind of happy ever after. And I guess he sees me as the brightest spot in an otherwise shitty existence. So later on, I'll suggest to Earl that I'll handle the clean up after the dinner rush, so he can go out to Pecan, also known as the nut house, to check on Connie. And maybe he could stop back here to make sure I closed up everything with the proper care. He knows what that means.

That brings me to the second person I need to look at. Of the two this one, my daughter, Kira is far more important. I know that what she did was wrong. It seems especially wrong to me, because what she did to Terry, was exactly what her sperm donor did to me. That was partially why I felt so bad for the boy. While he was telling me what happened, the look of outright despair in his eyes reminded me of exactly how I'd felt myself. I couldn't believe that any daughter of mine could be so thoughtless and so cruel to someone who loved her as much as he obviously did.

But at the same time, no mother wants to see her child suffer. And that's what Kira has been doing the whole God Damned summer. I've lost count of the number of times I've come home to find her crying her eyes out.

I've urged the girl to move on with her life, shit I even arranged a couple of dates for her and made her go on them. The first boy brought her back home after only a half hour. The second one took an hour. They were supposed to go to a movie. He later told me that everything they saw or talked about just made her cry. They passed a blue car; it wasn't even a Mustang, but it started her to thinking about Terry's blue Mustang. After he got her calmed down, he tried to keep the subjects open and neutral.

He told her that after taking a year off to work and earn more money, he was going to start college in the fall. He'd be leaving in a month ... That was all it took. She started blubbering about Terry leaving at about the same time.

He told her that she didn't have to worry because he'd heard that Terry wasn't coming back. The word around town was that Terry was going to take a summer internship next summer and who knew, maybe he'd never come back so she wouldn't have to ever see him again. He'd thought, wrongly of course, that the idea of never seeing Terry again, after their break up, might appeal to Kira. He was of course wrong.

All I could do was to reassure Kira that things would get better, but shit, summer was almost over, and they hadn't improved at all. I'd heard that Terry was dating that Lana girl. And as sad as I was for Kira, I was happy that he had bounced back and had bounced back high enough to date the town princess. All I needed now was a bit of happiness for my daughter.

She was learning a tough lesson, but it was one she'd caused herself. I was secretly thrilled when she'd started dating Terry. He was probably the nicest kid in town. He just wasn't the type of guy who'd ever hurt Kira. And more than that, he seemed almost to worship her. He treated her the way every mother wanted to see their daughter treated. He also had a good head on his shoulders and a bright future. He also didn't mind or notice that my Kira, as sweet as she is, just isn't made for college.

I loved watching the two of them, sitting on my back porch, talking about their future. When they sat there, holding hands, I was often silently, urging him to kiss her. I was sure that they'd already done more. But just seeing the two of them sitting there, with stars in their eyes gave me hope that true love was out there for all of us. I just didn't want Kira to end up like me.

And that bastard Jeff. Just listening to the things he said about her, made me hate him even more. Whenever he and his friends came into the restaurant, I always sent one of the other waitresses over to serve him. He had a lot of his daddy's money, so he tipped well. It wasn't hard to get someone to serve him. I was sure he had sweet talked my gullible daughter out of her panties and out of her future with a boy who really loved her.

Now in the aftermath, Jeff was dating several other girls; Lana had dumped him, and my Kira was miserable. The only good to come out of it was that from what I've heard, Terry had kicked Jeff's ass twice, before moving on with his life.

"Sally," called a voice over my shoulder.

"The specials are posted on the wall over the jukebox," I said. I turned and looked into the bluest eyes I have ever seen. It was Terry's father, Greg. I saw where Terry got his charm from. The man was ... I don't know how to describe him. He wasn't the pretty-boy type. Nor was he the dangerous, bad-boy type. He was just ... He was just the kind of guy that most women want to wake up next to. He was the kind of guy that on those mornings when you really don't want to get up, would surprise you with the worst breakfast that you've ever had. But you'd eat every morsel of it because you just knew he'd put his heart and soul and all of his love into it and brought it to you in bed.

Just seeing him, reminded me of how special his son was and where those qualities came from. Being this close to him, made me want to kick my daughter's ass for what she had thrown away.

"Sally, I wanted to thank you for talking to Terry that morning during the break up," he said. "You really helped to calm him down."

"I'm sorry I had to," I said. "Believe me, I know what he was feeling. I'm glad he bounced back and moved on. He's a good kid. He deserves it."

"He hasn't," he said. "He's miserable."

"I heard that he was dating Lana," I said.

"That's what everyone in town thinks," he said. "The reality is that Lana is dating him. She's pretty and makes sure they're seen together all over the town. I make him go when she comes over because he works so God Damned hard in school that he deserves some time off when he's home, but I know Terry, and he is slowly sinking into a depression."