But I did not call Charlie that night. I still feel such rage toward him, I don’t think I could articulate an intelligible word if we got on the phone. Instead I called my father.<\/p>\n
\u201cMatt Wrightson!\u201d Dad was speechless for a full five seconds. \u201cWhere\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n
Whenever I\u2019m with my father or his wife, we pretend that Laura and her family never existed, that there never was a group marriage. We always talk as if Dad, Mom, Darby and I had lived in a regular nuclear family for a while, and then had a regular nuclear divorce like everybody else — as if Dad had gone straight from his marriage with Mom to his marriage with Betty.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only when an old photo crops up, or some question forces him to refer to what he was doing from 1971 to 1976, that you can hear in his silences how much he misses Laura. There are sentences he can\u2019t finish. It isn\u2019t embarrassment that stops him, though I think the sex would be difficult for him to discuss, especially with his daughter. It\u2019s not just deference to his wife, Betty, either. It\u2019s a great lake of disappointment he can\u2019t get around. Only a couple of times in my adult life had the subject come up, and both times he ended up crying.<\/p>\n
I filled him in on Matt\u2019s life and adventures. Then he had to get the news of Ivor and Leif. I could feel him working up to the subject he really cared about, finding the courage. \u201cAnd Laura?\u201d The words came hoarsely, as if his throat were swelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiving in Danville. And\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlone? What? Tell me. Is she\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMarried, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMarried! So!\u201d He fell silent.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad?\u201d<\/p>\n
He sniffled.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you okay?\u201d I wished I could put my arm around him, and at the same time I wanted to slap him. For once, why couldn\u2019t I be the one in crisis?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m okay. So.\u201d He cleared his throat. \u201cWhat does he do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new boyfriend of hers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHusband. He\u2019s retired from the furniture business.\u201d I told him what I knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he\u2019s a real k\u2019nacker<\/em>, eh? A big shot?\u201d In recent years, he had taken to translating Yiddish expressions for me, newly conscious of the heritage he never imparted to his children.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019s a k\u2019nacker<\/em>, Dad. I never met him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo does she\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDoes she what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEver talk about me?\u201d<\/p>\n I had to restrain a sigh of exasperation. \u201cOh, Dad, how would I know? I haven\u2019t poken to her.\u201d<\/p>\n The conversation ended fast after that. Dad welcomed me to come to him in Humboldt and, as he put it, \u201cjoin the party.\u201d It turned out a group of Betty\u2019s quilter friends were visiting for most of the week. “It’s a schlep<\/em>, I know, a long drive, but we’d love to see you.” The breath hissed out of me. Squeezing into Dad and Betty\u2019s place with a retired quilting couple from Idaho and their local friends didn\u2019t sound like the kind of refuge I\u2019d envisioned. He even offered to get a room for me in town. But why would I drive three hundred miles to sleep in a hotel?<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what, Dad? Maybe I\u2019ll just hang out another day or two here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll call you when I have things a little more sorted out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHoney? Is Charlie going to leave you for this girl?\u201d<\/p>\n I opened my mouth to answer, but the words jammed like broken gears.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you want me to come there?\u201d<\/p>\n The offer almost made me sob. It was the kind of sympathy I\u2019d been waiting for, and for a second I was going to say yes. But I couldn\u2019t. Miserable and lonely as I felt at that moment, it was worse to think of myself collapsed into such helplessness that someone had to come pick up the pieces.\u00a0 \u201cNo. No. Enjoy your party. I\u2019ll talk to you in a day or two.\u201d<\/p>\n After I hung up with him I sat at Matt\u2019s desk staring at the phone as if there were clues written on it that I couldn\u2019t decipher. There was nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do.<\/p>\n Except take care of my kids. Thank god I still had them. I wiped my face on my sleeve and went downstairs. Dante was by himself, watching television. \u201cWhere\u2019s Chloe?\u201d I glanced around the room. \u201cDante?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019s your sister?\u201d<\/p>\n He looked curiously at me. \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cChloe? Chloe!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHere,\u201d came Matt\u2019s voice. He came up the stairs leading Chloe by the hand.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe doesn\u2019t get much warning, does she?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWarning\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen she has to respond to nature. We had a little accident.\u201d<\/p>\n I grabbed some clean clothes from my suitcase and took her back to the downstairs bathroom. I had just finished cleaning her, her clothes and the bathroom when a crash came from the living room. I rushed back up as quickly as I could with Chloe in my arms to find Dante standing on the back of the couch. In his hand was a two-foot temperature probe, on the floor a stained-glass lamp, shattered.<\/p>\n The lamp, it turned out, was an antique and irreplaceable. I could see I wouldn’t be able to stay much longer with Matt and Penny.<\/p>\n So here is my dilemma. Having snatched up my kids and fled across the country, I don’t know where to turn. Any suggestions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whenever I\u2019m with my father or his wife, we pretend that Laura and her family never existed, that there never was a group marriage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[60,65,61,62,10],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrienne","tag-digital-ficition","tag-interactive-nove","tag-poly-fiction","tag-poly-novel","tag-polyamory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}