Some have said that fathers never say the things they really want to. They stand by, stern-faced, unrelenting walls that wait for you to fall, to fail. When you're seven years old, they cross their arms over their chest and stand at your pyramid game as though there are a thousand far more important places they could be, should be. This game and you are a waste of time, and the minute you slip and fall, and the other kid on your team with the ball trips over you and loses the game, he's waiting, that emotionless wall shifting momentarily into disappointment. Instead of clapping you on the back on the way home, and saying, "There'll be other games. . ." Instead of offering to take you for a consolation ice cream where all the other kids have gathered with their more enthusiastic parents, he says nothing. You sit in the passenger seat beside him and wonder if he'll ever forgive you, if he'll ever be able to look you in the eye and smile again. When you get home, he tells your mother, "You missed one hell of a game," and for a moment you actually believe he's going to brag you up. Maybe he'll lie and tell her she should be proud of his potential, but instead he says, "Your son. . ."and he says that with the deepest contempt, as though he's already given up on you, denied you as his son. "Your son blew the whole frackin' game." Fathers never say the things they should; they say the things they really want to. At least mine does. . .
Sunlight streamed down over her, shining off of her golden hair and creating something of a halo around her head. Lee paused in the corridor, one hand posed on the door, the other loose at his side as he watched the gentle, Caprican wind lift the small strands of her hair against her face. She reached up, the length of her white sweater hanging over her hand so that only the tips of her fingers came out to tuck away the hairs behind her ears. It had been awhile since he noticed just how beautiful she was, and abashed by his own bad behavior and negligence, he pressed through the door to meet her with an anxious and flirtatious grin.
"You took my breath away just now, you know?" He announced as he slid up and took her by surprise, his arms coming around her waist to draw her near. He breathed her in with the breeze, her hair smelling of honeysuckle and lavender flowers as she turned her cheek into his kiss. "I was standing in the doorway when I saw you out here waiting, and I. . . I don't know, it blew me away. I saw the most beautiful woman standing out here and then it hit me, that beautiful woman was mine."
"Lee," pinched her lips softly and rolled her eyes. "You know you've already won me."
"What?" The clever grin drew more deeply from the corners of his mouth. "Are you saying I should stop trying to charm you now?"
"Well, if you insist," she turned in his arms and snaked her arms around his neck, leaning inward to nuzzle the tip of her nose against his. "It is nice to know that even though you've already won me, you're still the most wonderful man I've ever met."
"And now you're trying to charm me," a chuckle shook his chest. He lowered his arms around her, drew her closer and managed to steal a kiss. "And let me say it's working wonders. So tell me," he stepped back, holding her at arm's length to look at her. "What's the big news?"
Her entire face beamed at the mention of her news, rivaling the very sun that shone down upon them. Her eyes blinked in nervous distraction, glancing away, but then back again. "I've had my suspicions for a couple of weeks now, but I wanted to be sure before I told you."
"Told me?" His own smile widened, and he tilted his head curiously. She leaned away, her grin growing larger, more playful. "Told me what? Come on, Gianne, all this secrecy is killing me."
"Lee, do you remember that night we came home from the fireworks, and it had been such a beautiful day, do you remember? It was like it was meant to be, and that night. . ." a long, dreamy sigh escaped her. "That night we made love, and though I have no complaints about our lovemaking there was something different about that night. . . it was. . . I don't know, magical."
It started in the pit of his stomach; a gripping terror that he thought for sure was going to drag him to his knees in relentless pain. His throat grew tighter, his breathing more difficult as a cold sweat broke out on his forehead and dripped down his temple in a single line. He knew exactly what night she was talking about, knew of the strange, magical feelings she spoke, but he had written them off as some coincidence, as just a really great night and nothing more.
"So then I was late last week, and I knew that something was off," she went on, that enthusiastic light still shining in her eyes. "The doctor ran all kinds of tests, and then this morning he called me." She paused there, as though the need for dramatic effect compelled her. Lee wanted to shake the words from her, to spill them out so he could wipe them away as easily as they'd come. Gianne bit down thoughtfully and drew her lower lip between her teeth. He watched as it slid through, leaving a faded pink where the pressure of her teeth had been. "Lee, we're pregnant."
Four syllables, three words—it felt like a blow to the gut, the wind knocked out of him the way it had been that day on the pyramid court. He'd stumbled, fallen forward and felt that painful loss and struggle from his own breath. Gianne kept talking, her animation and excitement fluttering outside of him like a moth beating its wings against an outdoor light in the darkness. She was gushing, spilling out all of her plans, her thoughts, her ideas. . . "and of course now we'll have to get married this summer. We simply can't bring a baby into the world out of wedlock. I mean, it's no small secret that we live together, but there are members of my family who would be horrified at the. . . Lee?"
The sound of his name drew him into his body, and he stepped back, lightly shaking his head. "No," he murmured softly.
The soft sound of Gianne's laughter battered against the hardness that stiffened him from the inside out. "We were already going to get married, silly."
"No," he said again. "Not that. It's the other. . ." he couldn't bring himself to say it. "What you said before."
"You mean about us being pregnant?"
He looked away from her as he drew even deeper into himself and struggled against his own breath. "About that. . ." he managed.
"You're not excited?" she withdrew too, now standing a space apart from him, her brow wrinkled with confusion. "I know we didn't plan this, but I mean. . ."
"You're right, we didn't plan this," stiffer and stiffer, he felt as though he was choking in his own shirt. He reached up, unbuttoned the collar and stretched his neck. "Gianne, we didn't even discuss this."
"Come on, Lee. We've been engaged two years. We're getting married in just six weeks," she pointed out. "So this came a little early."
"Early?" It should have never come at all, he wanted to shout. Who was he to think he could be any kind of proper father? His own father hadn't been around long enough to teach him anything about fatherhood, or what it meant. He imagined himself—awkward against the struggling cry of a small baby, and in his hands he saw that infant crumble to dust, some fault of his own inadequacy. "Gianne, no. We've never even discussed this."
"But it's part of the package, Lee," her blue eyes narrowed as her voice trembled between a mingling of fear and anger. "People get married, they have families. . ."
"Not me!" His teeth were clenched so tightly when he said those words that bits of spittle flew from his lips. "Don't you understand? Not me! I am not a family man, Gianne. I'm not fit to be anybody's father!"
She tilted her head at him, white-sweatered arms crossed over a defiant chest. The wisps of her blond hair still caught in the breeze seemed to whisper around her head—like a halo. "So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying no, Gianne." He looked away, the pain in her eyes stabbing through him like guilty splinters. "No!" The blood pulsed through him in dangerous rhythms. He could feel his hands swelling with it, with the unbalanced mingling between horror and refusal, between losing her and finding the strength to just hold on.
She was wringing her hands, twisting one inside the other, and though he wasn't sure why, or what she was doing until it was too late, the stun of what came next left him speechless. "We come together, Lee," there was a coldness in her voice unlike any he had ever heard before. "Without this baby, there is no me."
He swallowed, barely unaware of how cold his own gaze had grown. "Then I guess there is no us," he said in a dull tone he hardly recognized.
Gianne remained strong, her eyes unblinking though the tears in them wanting desperately to fall. She held her closed hand out to him, nudged his arm with her fist, "I can't believe that after two years with you, I only now discovered who you really were."
He looked away then, opening his hand to accept the returning of his gift to her. The metal was warm in his hand, but the stone was cold as the emptiness in her eyes then. "I'm sorry to disappoint you," he said.
Shaking her head, she spun quickly on heel and started away, down the steps beside them and rushing off into the sunlit afternoon. There was a part of him the longed to cry out to her, "Wait! Please, I'm sorry! I don't know what I've done, please, wait!" But he never opened his mouth, and Gianne never looked back.
Lee went on with his life over the next months. She did not call, but he thought of her, wondered how she was, where she was, if there was any chance at all for him to take it all back and embrace his fears, but it was too late. . . Like his own father had once done, he'd said the things he wanted to, instead of what was right, and in so doing, he alienated his own child before it was even born. Months later, while back in his father's company and under his command—Caprica long gone, Gianne and their unborn child long gone, the guilt would eat at him until there was nothing left inside him but a splinter of pain that festered with infection every time he looked at his own father.
There were some things a man couldn't prevent, no matter how hard he worked to avoid them. The son becomes the father, the father destroys the son, the cycle continues.