The Cuckold's Son, Redux - Finish

After taking care of his baby sister, Danny entered the garage and located his baseball equipment. He grabbed an aluminum baseball bat and trudged toward his mother's studio. He entered without knocking, and fortunately for Danny, he did not have to witness his mother engaged in any sexual activity with either of the three men that were standing around naked as they talked to his equally naked mother.

"Danny!" Maddy said, "What are doing here?"

Danny ignored her and said to the three assholes, "I need you three dipshits to get dressed and get the fuck out of my house."

One of the men immediately grabbed his clothes but two of them took an aggressive posture towards Danny.

"Really, kid? You gonna be a tough guy? Try to impress Mommy?"

For an answer, Danny took one large step forward, bringing the bat up and swinging down towards the speaker's knees."

The man gave a startled cry and jumped backward so that the bat narrowly avoided his knees.

"Jesus, kid, what the fuck's your problem?" the man said.

"I've already called the cops," Danny said. "You three can wait for them so they can get your IDs, or you can get the fuck out now."

The three scrambled to put their clothes on, almost knocking each other over in their haste. The last thing they wanted was for their wives to find out how they had spent their afternoon.

After they had left, Danny walked back to the family room and scooped up Whitney. Maddy threw on her robe before following Danny out and sitting beside him on the sofa.

"Whitney was crying and had to be changed. You were ignoring your daughter."

Maddie gasped and rushed back to her studio, before returning a couple of minutes later.

"The monitor was turned off. One of the guys must have turned it off while we were..." Maddy trailed off as she made a vague wave toward her studio.

"We had an agreement. No men over while Whitney was home or while I was home. This can't continue, Mom. I'm thinking that calling Child Protective Services might be the best thing for Whitney. I can't be here all the time and if you're not going to take care of her, I need to get her placed in a good home where she'll be looked after."

Maddy started crying as she wrung her hands. "I know I'm the worst mother in the world. To both of you. But if it weren't for the two of you, I think I would have killed myself by now. I know I'm depressed. I know I'm spiraling!"

Maddy wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed. "I don't know what to do. I need your father," she cried.

Maddy lay on the sofa and slept while Danny went to the kitchen to start dinner. He found a family-sized frozen lasagna in the freezer and after putting it in the oven, walked out onto the patio and called Faith.

Once again, his call went to voicemail.

Danny had reached the point of acceptance that his relationship with Faith was probably over. They had been together for a long time and had been there for each other for any problems that had arisen in their lives. But distance dating was hard enough and few people were able to successfully maintain their relationship while long distance from each other. That's why so few high school relationships lasted past college. Danny and Faith were evidently no different. They only thought they were special. Danny thought that he might drive down to Austin for a face-to-face confrontation with Faith for final closure.

That thought made him infinitely sad.

+++

"Got a hot date tonight?" Becky Lewis asked her roommate as she watched her put on a little black cocktail dress.

Faith Nelson snorted. "Yeah right. You know better than that. I would never cheat on Danny."

Faith checked herself in the mirror and knew she looked good. Faith had started working for the Kate Lawson Modeling Agency of Dallas, a few months ago and had quickly become an in-demand model and event hostess. Her beauty and outgoing personality were readily evident and she had become the most popular of Kate's girls in the Austin area. Tonight, was a trunk show at Engstrom's department store and Kate would be wearing couture gowns and designer jewelry. The previous three nights she had worked a boat show at the Austin Convention Center. Faith was making excellent money and so far, had managed to keep up with her grades. Every dollar she earned was going into a special savings account, earmarked for when she and Danny were married. Which reminded her, she needed to call Danny. He had left a couple of voicemails for her and due to their schedules not aligning, she had not had the opportunity to call him back. She missed him and wanted to hear his voice.

+++

Bob Lee opened his door and stared in shock at the visitor.

"What do YOU want?" Bob said.

"Hi Dad, it's good to see you too."

"Don't expect us to kill the fatted calf," Steven's father said. "You ran away from your family. You blew your family up and then ran away from them. You're not wanted here."

"I'd like to talk to you and Mom. It'll just take a couple of minutes and then I'll get out of your hair," Steven said.

Bob shrugged and walked away, leaving Steven to follow him into the den where June, Steven's mother sat reading the newspaper. Bob sat next to his wife and grabbed her hand.

"Say what you have to say. The sooner you do, the sooner you can run away back to wherever you've been living."

"I've been living in San Francisco. I've also been trying to work out why I'm the way I am. I've been seeing a psychiatrist for the whole time I've been away. I wanted to know how I got to where I ended up."

Bob shrugged his shoulders. "The sex things that you and Maddy got up to? Those were sick and disgusting. Your mother and I were ashamed that you were our son. And then you just ran after Maddy had her daughter. We couldn't understand why you couldn't adopt her out or Maddy move with you to California. We just don't understand any of it."

Steven sat in the chair facing the sofa. He leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. "I don't understand most of it myself. I do know that there was no way Maddy was going to give up Whitney for adoption. And with her parent's health problems, there was no way that she was moving to California. And I was too embarrassed and ashamed to stick around. So, I took the coward's way and ran from my problems."

"And now?" June Lee asked. "Why are you here now?"

"The shrink I've been seeing tried something new several months ago. He tried hypnotherapy. It's hypnosis to try to find out the root cause of why I'm the way that I am."

June snickered. "He hypnotized you? Did he make you walk around the office and cluck like a chicken? We saw a hypnotist on a cruise ship and that's what he did to some of the people in the audience."

"And then he convinced a guy that he was Elvis and had him walk around the stage singing 'Jailhouse Rock,'" Bob added. "Is that what you're here for? Show us your Elvis impersonation? Maybe walk around scratching in the dirt and clucking like a rooster?"

Steven closed his eyes and took a calming breath before continuing. "No, I'm not going to sing any Elvis songs for you or cluck like a chicken. But something did come up that seemed important and I want to find out more about it."

"And what was that?" Bob and June were still smirking about the whole Elvis and chicken thing.

"He dredged up a memory from when I was a kid. Maybe five or so. It was at our old house over on Monroe Avenue. I remember a large black man arguing with you, Dad. He had his shirt off and Mom was sitting on that sofa crying. I was watching from the landing at the top of the stairs."

June Lee paled and started rocking in her seat, "No, no, no. You couldn't have seen that." June started hyperventilating and soon could not breathe.

"Go get a paper bag out of the drawer in the kitchen," Bob said while easing his wife forward so that her head was over her knees.

Steven rushed to comply and came back with a paper lunch bag which Bob put to June's mouth so that she could inhale and exhale into the bag. She soon calmed down.

June grasped Bob's right hand in both of hers as she started crying.

"I'm so sorry baby. I'm so sorry."

Bob hugged his wife to his chest and said, "It's okay sweetheart. It's been forty years. It's okay."

Bob turned to Steven and said, "I'm going to put your mother to bed and then I'll come back and we'll talk."

Steven scrolled through his phone for fifteen minutes until his father emerged from his bedroom.

"She's asleep. You brought up a pretty bad memory and she didn't take it well." Bob Lee eased himself down onto the sofa and looked at his son.

"It sounds like what you saw may have affected you in a big way. That's the only reason I'm going to tell you about what you saw. It's something we've buried and kept buried for almost half a century."

Steven felt a churning in his stomach. What his father was going to tell him sounded like it was a deep, dark family secret that may still be affecting his family.

"Do you remember when your mother worked for the post office?"

Steven nodded his head. When he was a small child, his mother worked at the local branch of the post office as a letter sorter. He remembered her wearing her uniform every day and then one day she stopped wearing it and stopped going to work.

"Her boss was a man named Eugene Davis. Eugene was the first black man promoted to a supervisory position at that branch. Keep in mind, it was the early eighties, so it wasn't like it was the sixties or anything, but change came slowly to Dallas.

Your mother was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. I couldn't believe that she had agreed to go out with me, much less marry me. We'd been married about four years when she got on at the post office. You were about three and just old enough for preschool. She had worked at the post office for about a year when the branch manager retired and they brought Eugene over from another branch and promoted him to manager."

Bob stood and walked to the kitchen. "I'm getting myself a beer," he said over his shoulder. "Do you want one?"

"No thanks," Steven replied. He didn't want alcohol clouding his thoughts.

Bob sat down and took a sip of beer, before placing the bottle on a coaster on the coffee table.

"Well, it didn't take old Eugene long to home in on your mother. Eugene wasn't married and your mother was married, but that didn't stop him from going after her. And he wasn't subtle about it either. The whole office knew that he was after her."

"Did she tell you about it," Steven asked.

Bob shook his head. "She thought she could handle it. Plus, she knew I had a temper. If I knew what he was trying to do, I would have gone after him. But then some things changed. I got laid off at the plant and we lost our insurance which we needed because of your asthma. June was able to get medical insurance for us through the post office. You're too young to remember it, but that was a tough time in this country. High unemployment and out-of-control inflation. I could only find part-time minimum wage jobs so we needed your mother's job. Eugene knew about our situation and threatened your mother with losing her job if she didn't give in to him."

Bob leaned forward to take another sip of beer as his thoughts drifted back to those dark days.

"Remember, this is Texas. Even though it was a union job, that didn't mean a damned thing. It's an 'at will' employment state. You can be fired for any reason and you have no recourse. Sure, you'd get unemployment, but we needed insurance too. Unemployment wouldn't have cut it. You could complain to management, but what today would be called 'egregious, pervasive, and systematic sexual harassment' was just considered workplace management flirting back then. Eugene knew this and knew he had leverage and he kept after your mother until she gave in to him."

Bob closed his eyes and shook his head at the memory. Steven's eyes opened wide in shock. Not his mother.

"Their branch was only four blocks away from our house over on Monroe. They would come here for lunch, do their business, and then go back to work. If I was working late, they would come over after work. This went on for three months before I came home early one day and caught them in the act.

"I guess I need to tell you about Eugene. He had been drafted by the Dallas, Texans football team in the early sixties as a defensive lineman. This was before Lamar Hunt moved them to Kansas City and renamed them The Chiefs. During his first spring training, he managed to get his knee ruined and that killed his football career. Even though he had attended college, he didn't really work towards a degree, so when his football career was over, he didn't have many options. He got on with the post office and over the next twenty years, managed to work himself up to management.

"I'm telling you this to put what I'm going to tell you next into context. Eugene was a lot bigger and tougher than me. I was average size and hadn't been in a fight since junior high school. When I interrupted Eugene and your mother, he started yelling at me to get out of their bedroom and leave them alone or he'd break my neck. I went downstairs knowing that my marriage was over and that I was going to divorce your mother.

"They came downstairs a few minutes later. Your mother had put on a robe and Eugene had put on his pants and shoes but was carrying his shirt in his hand. As soon as they came into the den, Eugene started yelling at me about interrupting them. He told me that my wife was now his woman and that there wasn't anything I could do about it."

"What was Mom doing while he was yelling at you?" Steven asked.

"She looked like she was in shock. How she was when you started asking us about that night? That's how she was that night too. It was obvious that she was terrified of Eugene.

"That's what you saw that night. Me being yelled at by Eugene as he walked around shirtless and your mother in her bathrobe crying on the sofa. After he finished yelling at me and telling me how things were going to be from now on, Eugene left for home. He had parked his car in the garage to keep the neighbors from seeing him go in and I had to move my car because it was blocking his. I followed him into the garage, past my tool bench and lawn equipment and I tried to talk him out of doing what he said he was going to do. He just laughed at me and called me a little white bitch."

Bob Lee sat back and sipped at his beer, lost in thought.

After a few minutes, Steven softly said, "Dad? What happened next?"

"Eugene never made it into the office the next day. Your mother wanted to call in sick, but I made her go in. After a few weeks of not calling in or showing up, they moved in a new manager. A woman this time."

Steven looked at his father in shock. "Did Eugene ever turn up?"

"About a year later, they fished him and his car out of a retaining pond north of Denton. His skull had been crushed by what the papers reported as likely a ball peen hammer."

"Did the police talk to you and Mom?" Steven asked.

"They talked to everyone who worked at that branch. No one knew anything about it. The only thing that the police really got out of their investigation was that Eugene Davis was hated by everyone who worked with him and was a raging asshole. The list of people who wanted him dead was longer than the list of people who wanted to find out who killed him. I don't think the case was ever solved."

Steven was dumbstruck. Yeah, it was pretty obvious that the case was never solved since his father had all but admitted to killing a man, yet sat on his sofa calmly drinking a beer.

"But you didn't divorce," Steven said. It was a statement rather than a question.

"No, but it was a close-run thing. I knew why she did it and why she felt like she had no choice. It helped that pretty soon after that, I got on with Peterson Manufacturing and your mother was able to quit her job. We started seeing a counselor that was also a Baptist minister. That's why we started going to church. You may not recall, but we were never churchgoers when you were young.

"We never talk about Eugene Davis or that time in our life. But if you saw Eugene yelling at me and me taking it, I can see why that might mess you up."

Bob Lee leaned forward. "Now that you know the story, does that help you?"

+++

Danny's heart was racing as he stood in front of the door to Faith's dorm room. He could not believe that he was this emotional at the thought of seeing his girlfriend. If she was still his girlfriend.

At his knock, the door was opened by someone he had never before met. A cute Hispanic girl with shoulder-length black hair parted on the side said, "Hi, can I help you?"

"Um," Danny said, temporarily flustered by the stranger. He was expecting either Faith or her roommate, Becky. "I'm looking for Faith Nelson," he manages to stammer out.

"Oh, Faith's not here. I saw her heading out in an LBD and heels a few hours ago, God, I wish I could look as hot as her. Guys must be lined up to date her. Did you want to leave a message?"

Danny shook his head sadly, "No. No message." He turned around and slowly walked away as the door closed.

"Was that someone at the door," Becky asked as she exited the washroom.

"Just some dweeb looking for Faith," Becky and Faith's neighbor said with a laugh. "I sent him on his way."

"Did you tell him that she was working?" Becky asked.

"Not really. I kind of maybe implied she was on a date. You have to keep boys on their toes."

+++

Danny sat in his car with his head back against the headrest and thought, 'What's the worst that could happen?'

Faith was gone and might be sad for a while, but that would pass. Whitney was young and would not remember him. His dad was out of his life, save for a phone call every couple of months.

His mother?

He was beginning to think his mother was a lost cause and beyond any sort of redemption. She spent her days and evenings being in a highly sexually charged state and her nights crying. She was drinking too much and Danny suspected that some of the men that she was allowing into the house had drugs. Maddy's parents would not talk to him and had disowned their daughter. They refused to even acknowledge Whitney. Despite this, Maddy continued to send them checks; checks which allowed them to remain in their home. The home that they otherwise would have lost due to poor financial decisions and poor planning. They had distanced themselves from Danny since the now infamous meeting where he had to explain his parent's actions to them.

His Father's parents still reached out to him, occasionally but there was a Steven-sized gulf between them that neither one of them seemed capable of crossing.

So, if Danny were to have an accident and not be around, what's the worst that could happen?

Danny remembered what his manager had told him after he had been working at the sporting goods store for about a year. Danny had learned every position and could fill in for anyone and he thought that made him indispensable. His manager quickly disabused him of that notion by handing him a coffee cup filled with water.

"Stick your finger in that water," his boss had said.

Danny had looked at him like he was crazy.

"No, go ahead and do it. It's not a trick."

Danny shrugged and stuck his right index finger into the water.

"Now pull your finger out of the water. Do you see that hole that remained in the water? That's the same hole that you leave when you're not around. Don't ever think too highly of yourself. No one else does."

It was a lesson that had a profound impact on Danny. No one would really miss him if he was gone.

He sighed and exited his car and entered his house only to receive the shock of his life.