Sins of the Father

Barbara stared at her for a moment and then looked back down at her plate. She was quiet for the rest of dinner and then went to her room.

Before going to bed that night, I knocked on Barbara's door and went in when she said I could. "You know, Ilse was right. You're being ridiculous. It's going to destroy Mom if you don't go to college."

"I know. It's just so damned hard. I don't want anything from him. Not a damn thing."

"Think of it like the Child Support. Mom's always used that to pay for stuff for us. Same thing."

"I guess so. You know, if I'm an idiot, you're blind."

I thought that she was going to say that I should use some of the money for college, but I had my scholarship. I was fine.

"How am I blind?"

"About Ilse. That girl loves you. She always has and all you could see was that hoe, Ara."

"What? That's ridiculous."

"Really? Why has she never had a relationship? Why is she never with a guy for more than a week or two? Why hasn't she dated anyone since you found out about Ara?"

"That's... No, we've just been friends forever. It's not... If you said that to Ilse, she'd laugh her ass off. You're way off base."

"Now who's the idiot?"

"Whatever."

I went back into the kitchen and made a bunch of hard-boiled eggs. I was too riled to sleep. Finally making my way to bed, I slept through my alarm and missed my first class. There were no nightmares and I felt rested for the first time in a while.

On Saturday I was at the gym waiting to get weighed in when I spotted Mom. She waved and held up a bag. It was from Honey Baked Ham. She was the best. After my weekly weigh-ins, I ate whatever the hell I wanted to until midnight. I was a quarter pound under, threw on shorts and a sweatshirt and sat down to eat. A ham sandwich, a turkey sandwich, and mac and cheese were scarfed down in record time.

Usually after I was done for the day, Ara and I would hit Dairy Queen on the way home. I'd have to think of a new routine. I mapped out my bracket and I had a while before I had to hit the mat. The coaches hated seeing me eat like that before I wrestled, but they'd seen the results when I didn't, so there were no complaints.

After stretching out, I got a sweat going by jumping rope. I took off the shorts and sweatshirt and sat on the bench and cheered on the other guys while waiting. When my name was called out, I got up, got another quick stretch and walked out. Hearing my cheering gallery, I looked up at Mom, the girls and Ilse. Sitting beside them were Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt. I couldn't believe that Ara's parents made it.

It took me a minute and the ref had to call me by name, but I regained my composure and went out there. I won all my matches that day and rarely gave up a point. For the first time ever, I got annoyed at some of the guys who asked me about Ilse before we left. She got hit on relentlessly and it had never bothered me before.

We all went to Dairy Queen and Ara's name never came up. When we were in the parking lot getting ready to leave, both Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt hugged me. Mrs. Schmidt held the sides of my face in her two hands and stared at me while crying.

"I would have loved to have you as my son-in-law. We're always there if you need us."

Answering the knock on the door, I came to a couple of immediate conclusions. It was Carly Mastalon, a popular reporter for KABC out of Denver. Her face was on half the billboards on the highway. Our wrestling team had been interviewed a few times and I realized that if they didn't send a segment producer out first, she must be here to try to wow me, which meant they really wanted an interview or whatever.

The other realization was that Dad gave me the check under the assumption that everything ended there. I had no idea if he could legally demand the money back if I started giving interviews, and that wasn't a risk I was eager to take.

Carly must have been used to people being bowled over when she shows up, as she politely waited while I gathered my thoughts. I had been remarkably calm since everything went down. Maybe I hit the gym a little harder and was more aggressive on the mat, but after burning Ara with the emails, that was it. I flashed back to watching my father laugh at the restaurant as I called Ara's phone. He fucking laughed. My own father was nailing my girlfriend and was laughing at my being clueless.

Fuck it; let him sue me.

"Hi, Carly. I'd be happy to talk to you about whatever you'd like. I'm Adam Westbrook. I assume that you're here about my father. Come on in."

She seemed surprised by my greeting and accepted the offer of a bottled water.

"I apologize, but let me get my due diligence out of the way. You're Adam Westbrook, son of Gerard Westbrook of Fort Collins?"

Hadn't I just told her who I was? "Uh, yeah, that's me."

She smiled and it triggered something in me. Carly was super hot. I hadn't felt an attraction to a woman since that day at the Sheraton, but it was like this reporter was pumping out pheromones.

"Okay, Adam, I'm going to tell you what I've found out and you can let me know if it's on target or not. Sound good?"

"Yeah, sure."

She had the gist of it down. Nothing about my meeting with Dad at his house, but she had the general outline of everything else, including his leaving us and setting up a new family.

"And you would be okay with discussing this on camera? I'd be right there with you and we'd do a run-through before we get started."

"That shouldn't be a problem. When do you want to do this?"

"How about 15 minutes?"

She made a call to a truck that was clearly right around the block. I was hoping that we'd be done by the time the girls got home from school and Mom got out of work. I gave her an on-camera tour of the house, both inside and out, and we sat on the couch while I described my childhood. There was pre-Dad leaving and post-Dad leaving.

We talked about my trip to Fort Collins and what I saw at the restaurant and then we took a drive over to our old home next to Ilse's house. I guess it made a nice contrast. I was glad I hadn't mowed our lawn yet that week.

As soon as we were done, I went to the bank and took out all $50,000. I put the money in a steel box and buried it in the backyard. My father could do whatever he wanted to, but the girls were getting that money.

The 40-minute interview got chopped down to a piece that ran for less than five minutes. The way it started out, it looked as though I could just be a bitter young man who resented his father due to a divorce. They even mentioned how he paid his child support like clockwork. As the piece went on, it got worse and worse for him.

They blocked out Ara's face, but somehow had gotten copies of all the photos I had attached to the emails. They ran them, part of the video and some footage taken from the hotel's security cameras. They stressed Ara's age and it started looking like something out of "To Catch a Predator". It ended with a mention of a reported intentional overdose.

I didn't know how they found out about the pills, but I guess that's why Carly's a reporter and I'm not.

All hell broke loose that night and I was inundated with calls from reporters. Some knocked on our door until I called the cops. Newspapers the next day led with variants of "Senate Hopeful Cuckolds Son". I was less than happy to see that.

Carly had told me that I couldn't speak to any other reporter for 72 hours, but that sounded like bullshit, so I checked my copy of the release and contract I had to sign. It didn't say anything like that, so I talked to whoever called. I also made it very clear that if they came to the house I wouldn't speak to them or anyone from their outlet.

Standing in front of the mirror in my pajama bottoms, I stared at my image. I lifted my hand and covered my left ear, blocking from view my burgeoning cauliflower ear. It took me a few minutes to separate myself from what I was seeing and just look at my features. It was like staring at a photo of my father when he was young.

It felt as if my shadow had grown heft and was pushing me down. The emotional exhaustion was huge. The nightmares, depression and vomiting were worse than when he first left us and although I knew that it was the double betrayal that was at the cause, knowing didn't help. I was obsessed with believing that I should be stronger. I shouldn't allow them to have so much power over me.

The weight was inexorable. It lay across my shoulders like thick chains rooted to the grave of what should have been. Fuck the two of them and fuck any chains. I straightened my shoulders, looked at my shared features and punched the mirror. Hand bleeding, I went into the kitchen, grabbed a beer and drank it on the porch.

When I came inside, Barbara was cleaning the glass from the floor of the bathroom. A few minutes later she knocked, entered my room with a bowl of water and a hand-towel and gently washed my hand clean without saying a word. After kissing my hand, she left, closing the door behind her.

I slept through the night.

Both Gail and Ilse had been keeping an eye on Dad's campaign. It was moribund within 48 hours and dead within the week. That didn't stop the media. I assumed that they would keep picking at the corpse until a new story came along to lure them away.

Sitting on the couch with a textbook next to me and a laptop open, I looked up when Mom came through the door.

"Get your sneakers on. We're going for a walk as soon as I change."

We went in the direction of the park that she brought us to almost every day when we were kids. Mom started off talking about incidentals. How was the car running? Did I need any money? Did I get any hours working construction this week?

When we got to the park, she had us sit on a bench. It was a warm day, but not hot. The repetitive strains of the distant music from an ice-cream truck played on and on, competing with the calls of children enjoying the playground.

"The first time I caught your father cheating on me was soon after Barbara was born. The second time was a few years later. He was able to convince me both times that he was sorry and that it wouldn't happen again. I was easy to convince. I had three young children and needed a husband. I'm sure there were others."

She leaned over and grabbed a leaf off the ground. Mom fiddled with it as she continued.

"I'm telling you this because I don't want you to think that I believe he was a good man. He wasn't and he isn't. That being said, there's something you should know. Do you remember how he always wore a shirt? Always? He even wore a tee-shirt in the pool. There was a reason for that. His back was covered with scars and welts.

"He loved you. He sucked as a father, but he loved you. I saw him cry less than a dozen times. Once when each of you were born and twice more when he was in your bedroom late at night, sitting on the floor and watching you. Both were in the year before he left, and both were on days when I had to convince him not to hit you. It was something trivial that kids do. You broke a dish or something or got a bad grade.

"After I had calmed him down, he was inconsolable. He'd just hold me and shake and shake. Two weeks before he left, he explained his scars. His mother had run off with some guy when he was a kid. His father turned to drinking and taking out his anger on him. Open hands were used, then belts. It graduated to fists and straps. He got meals and even clothes by convincing friends and their families that he just needed a little help this one time. It was always small and never someone twice in a row. Dinner with this family once a week, maybe a hand-me-down shirt or sneakers from another family once in a while. He had them on a rotation. If he never hit up the same family with any frequency, they wouldn't ask any uncomfortable questions.

"He became charming. He learned how to use people and get them to do what he wanted. And the beatings continued. You know how old he was when his mother left, and the beatings started?"

I looked at her. "Not a clue."

"Ten. Do you remember how old you were when he left?"

"Ten. Are you saying that he left because he was afraid he was going to start beating on me?"

"You and the girls. It may have been the single best thing he's ever done. It doesn't let him off the hook for the rest of it though. What sort of a father doesn't get his kids birthday or Christmas presents? He could have mailed them from anywhere."

She sighed and tossed the remnants of the leaf to the ground. "With everything happening, I wanted to let you know that there was a time when he did love you. He loved you enough to recognize what was happening and to walk away."

"Mom..."

"Honey?"

"Alex. He's ten."

We didn't have a meet that weekend and I was stressed out from everything with the reporters and worrying about Alex. Ilse called with a solution.

"Hey, pack up your stuff, including your waders. My cousins and I are meeting up at the cabin. You're driving and I'll cover the gas."

When I hear cabin, I usually think of a small, rustic building with one barely functional bathroom. Ilse's family had money and their idea of a cabin was a bit more grandiose. It was two floors with eight bedrooms and three full bathrooms. They had family get-togethers there every year with everyone and then other events just for the cousins.

It sounded like a great idea.

Going without sex for a healthy teenager who had been getting some at least 10 times a week was taxing. Ara and I had fucked like rabbits. After what happened, I lost all interest for a while. Spending time with Carly had jumpstarted my libido and Ilse had some very hot cousins. I immediately started packing.

I didn't know if there was a patron saint of getting laid, but I was prepared to light some candles in the hopes that at least one of Ilse's cousins didn't bring a boyfriend. My duffel bag and fishing gear in the bed of the truck and a handful of condoms in my pocket, I headed over to her house.

The first thing I should have noticed was her three bags, each larger than my duffle. I didn't. She was wearing a halter top and daisy-dukes as she bent over one of her bags rearranging its contents. I stared for longer than I should have and then had some momentary guilt over scoping out my friend. I really, really needed to get laid.

Getting out of the pickup, I walked over and grabbed the two bags she wasn't working on.

"We're gonna be gone three days, not three months."

Still bent over, she looked back at me over her shoulder. "A girl's got to be prepared, Adam. Besides, Billy might be bringing Joe with him. I've always had a thing for Joe. I need clothes in case we go into town to a bar or something."

Who the fuck was Joe? That weasely prick that was always staring at her tits?

"How are you getting in a bar? Your ID sucks."

She turned, hand on her hip and looked up at me. "When I'm dressed for a bar, you're the only guy I know who would be looking at the ID instead of at me."

Ilse was right. Laughing, I tossed her two bags in the truck and went for the third.

We talked about everything under the sun on the drive to the cabin. It had a small river behind it and wasn't far from Lake Pueblo. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, but she had endless legs that demanded attention. We stopped at Gagliano's Market and picked up some heroes, cold cuts, salads, breads, and Italian dishes. We hopped on 96 out of town and each ate a hero on the drive.

Ilse had a habit she was mostly oblivious to. If she heard a song by an artist she liked, she would lightly tap out the beat to the song on whatever surface was available. When the song was over, she'd randomly start doing the same thing to another song by the same artist, hearing it in her head.

She'd done this since we were kids and I'd always try to guess the song, usually to myself. Once in a rare while I'd guess out loud and she'd be slightly embarrassed, stop and refuse to confirm or deny.

I spent our silences guessing the songs in her head and enjoying the quiet comfort between us.

Being the first to arrive, we opened everything up, aired out the cabin and loaded the food in the fridge. They had a stacked cord of wood and I brought some over to the fire pit. Ilse staked out the bedroom she wanted, and I assumed that I'd be taking a couch on the first floor.

I had a laptop with me that I had taken from Dad's. It was better than the antiquated crap I used for school. I hopped online while we waited for everyone else to arrive. After a couple of hours, I got up and got changed.

Ilse was in the kitchen putting together a salad.

Leaning against the wall, I watched her. "You need a hand?"

She was mixing some balsamic with olive oil. "Nope. All good."

"Okay. Since no one's here yet, I'm going for a run."

Ilse looked back at me over her shoulder. "You have your phone?"

"Yeah, Mom, I've got my phone."

She laughed and I headed out.

I ran along the side of the road and let my mind wander. My best thinking was done while I ran. I thought of Joe. I'd met him a few times. He was a friend of one of Ilse's cousins and he'd been to her house for some events over the years. Joe came from money and he was a smarmy dick. I thought of my brother and knew that I had do to something, but I wasn't sure what. I thought of my father and the beatings that left physical and emotional scars 30 years later. I thought of Joe again. I hated that guy.

The sweat dripped off of me when I returned. There were still no other cars in the driveway. Pulling out my phone, I called our house. Barbara answered.

I kicked off my sneakers as I spoke. "Hey, I left you and Gail $40. It's on your dresser. Don't tell Mom. I'll be back on Sunday. Any more reporters?"

"No, we're fine. And stop leaving us money. It's... Look, just take care of yourself, okay? I love you, but you don't need to take care of us. How's the cabin?"

Looking around at the woods and nearly empty driveway, I replied. "Good. Beautiful, but there's supposed to be a bunch of us but no one else is here yet."

She laughed. "Wow, idiot, such an odd circumstance. Wonder how that happened?"

"Barbara, what are you talking about? Do you know something?"

"Nope. Just not as stupid as you think. I'll betcha they mysteriously don't show up."

"You're way off base. Ilse's waiting to hook up with one of her cousin's friends."

Barbara sighed. "Uggh. You're such a dope. I'll see you Sunday."

After cleaning the mud off my sneakers, I stepped inside. Ilse was curled up on the couch with her iPad.

"No one's here yet?"

She gave a half frown. "No. Bad news, an aunt on the other side of the family passed. They're not going to make it."

"None of them?"

"Nope. It's just us."

Suddenly, I was incredibly nervous. "I, uh, okay. Well... okay. I'm, uh, I'm gonna go take a shower."

Grabbing a change of clothes, I headed to the first-floor bathroom. I used the shower as an opportunity to reduce some pressure and found myself thinking of Ilse while doing so. Was Barbara right? It didn't seem right or real or even possible. We'd both been in the friend-zone forever.

We had some baked ziti with the salad Ilse made while sitting out by the fire pit. I had a couple of splits of wood going in the pit and we talked while watching the stars.

She grabbed two beers from the cooler, reached over and handed me one.

"So, what are you going to do about the kid?"

I paused, feeling the condensation on the bottle and slipping my thumbnail under the edge of the label. "I don't know. I wish to hell that I did. I guess I'm going to have to go over there again."

"What about reaching out to social services or something?"