"THE STEPFORD EX WIVES."

A parody, and semi-sequel, to "The Stepford Wives."

DELUSIONAL DOTTIE.

Dottie's visit to the doctor.

"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."

Willa Cather, "My Antonia."

"Hey Mom I've been thinkin'." Sixteen year old Richard said, his hand tightly gripping a spoon which he held poised in the air over his heaped bowl of cereal. His tone was overly casual but an observant person would have noticed that he was clutching the spoon so hard his knuckles were turning red and they would most likely guess that though he was trying to sound casual there was something bothering the teenager.

"It's thinking sweetheart. Try and remember to speak properly- after all if we're going to get into Harvard we've got to sound like we belong." His mother replied brightly.

Richard may have been annoyed at his mother's use of the word "we" but he retained his placid expression. He'd been around his mother long enough to know that she involved herself in every aspect of his life- and even more so since they'd moved to Stepfordsonia from Stepford. She was just that kind of mother. Although since they'd made the move she'd been different- not so houseproud, and she'd even taken up self-defence and tennis!

"What have you been thinking sweetheart?" His mother asked, draining the last of her strong black coffee and lighting a cigarette- another new habit- although when he'd first caught his mother guiltily taking a few quick puffs on a cigarette out in the backyard she swore black and blue that she'd been smoking since she was in college. Considering his mother was such a prudent person- overly solicitous and overly worried sometimes such as worrying about whether she'd locked the front door before they'd even got to the end of the street or planning the weeks' food menu based on whatever number of calories she was allowed to consume at that time- he didn't think she was the type to smoke. Richard decided that her blatant lie was simply an attempt to justify the bad habit and shrugged it off; after all who was he to judge?

Richard took a deep breath and then blurted out, "I know we don't even mention his name around here but I've been thinking I'd really like to go back to Stepford and visit Dad for a bit. I've got to start applying to colleges soon and I'll be pretty busy so I thought now would be the best time to go."

His mother took a deep drag on her cigarette and then blew out a perfectly formed smoke ring. "Richard, honey, I know you're going to hate to hear this but you're actually a very special boy, perhaps that's why you're so smart. You're an Immaculate Conception, sweetheart. You don't actually have a father."

Richard's hand relaxed and the spoon dipped into the cereal. After he'd shoveled two huge spoonfuls into his mouth he spoke. "I bet you'd like that Mom and I can't blame you, after all divorce isn't exactly pleasant. But I'd like to maintain a relationship with Dad too. When you were thinking of moving to New York, just after you and Dad decided to separate, you were adamant that Dad remain in my life as both giving child support and having some kind of parental role."

His mother stabbed her cigarette out into the ashtray and regarded her son as though he was an alien instead of her own flesh and blood. "Me? Live in New York? Richard what on earth are you talking about? That would be the last place on earth I'd live, muggings, beggars, pollution…And why do you keep going on about a father? I wish you did have a father sweetheart, but you just don't!"

Richard took a sip of his orange juice to cover his exasperated expression. He knew his mother was pissed with his father but completely denying his existence was something else.

"Dottie are you ready? We'll lose the court if we're not there on time." A woman, dressed in tennis whites, but with perfectly manicured hair and face made up as though she were going to a party, popped her head through the kitchen window.

Dottie stood up. "I'm coming right now Peggy-sue. Have a good day sweetheart and try and keep the house clean if possible. Tomorrow I'm going to do some Sunday spring cleaning." She dropped a kiss on her bewildered son's forehead before hurrying out the door with her purse and tennis racquet.

Richard dropped his head into his hands. He'd been dreading bringing up the subject of his father with his mother since he had not even been mentioned once in the few months they'd been living in Stepfordsonia. But he'd expected an angry and bitter reaction, like the way his mother had first been, when her and his dad had arrived home from a party and announced, seemingly out of the blue, that the marriage was over. Instead his mother was acting like she didn't even know who his dad was. Unwittingly a conversation he'd had with his best friend, and academic rival, Anita popped into his head:

"Maybe she's got post-traumatic stress syndrome or something. You'd be surprised what sort of events can cause a mental unbalance in people. Was the divorce nasty?" Anita had asked, looking at him over her large glasses. Anita had received an early admission to study at Oxford University in England where she planned on studying medicine and since receiving the letter she'd been eager to diagnose everyone with some kind of medical condition- especially psychiatric ones.

"Well it's kind of weird…" Richard had replied slowly. "At first it was very messy, Mom bagging Dad, Dad bagging Mom, me being put in the middle. And then all of a sudden we were moving here and Dad was never, ever mentioned again."

"Maybe she realised how it was affecting you? If there's one thing your Mom cares about it's you." Anita had suggested with a shrug.

"You don't get it." Richard had said agitatedly. "I think she actually believes that I don't have a father, that I was an Immaculate Conception. At least that's what I think she believes because I've never actually asked her about him, I'm scared of her reaction, it might make her crack up or something- especially if she's got PTS as you suggested…"

"Disturbing." Anita had mused. "Look Rich, I think you're going to have to mention your father- purely to gauge her reaction. Perhaps ask casually if you could go and spend some time with him? See what she says. Surely she can't deny you have a father- it's medically impossible. Unless you were an IVF baby- which you weren't because you spent fifteen years of your life with your mother and father."

Richard had sighed. "All right, I'll ask her about going and visiting him and see what she says- perhaps speaking about him, even if it's bagging the crap out of him, will help her."

"It probably will. Don't worry Rich- I'm sure she's fine, just having a hard time coping and therefore choosing to ignore your father's existence."

The Grandfather Clock in the living room struck the hour bringing Richard out of his reverie. Ha, he thought, a little triumphantly, shows how much you know Dr. Anita- Mom honestly seems to think that my father doesn't exist!

Dottie bent over and carefully tied her shoelaces. After observing a woman fall over her shoelaces the other week and fall right on her face breaking her nose Dottie made a mental note to be more careful. But then she was a naturally cautious person all round- her habit of always returning to the house to check that everything was switched off and that the kettle or toaster hadn't been left switched on at the wall irritated her son no end. Thinking of Richard now reminded her of the strange conversation just before. It had sounded like Richard honestly believed that he really did have a father, and furthermore that he knew this imaginary father. If he were a kid she wouldn't have been surprised- after all how many young fatherless kids would like to pretend that they had a Dad? But he wasn't a kid, he was sixteen. Setting out her towel, water bottle, sports water, spare racquet and first aid kit Dottie stood up and began her pre-game stretches- after all she didn't want to injure herself.

"Richard looked kind of stressed this morning. Is he beginning to worry about college applications?" Peggy Sue inquired.

"If he is he's not saying." Dottie said, pulling her left knee up to her chest and holding it there. "Actually though we had a very strange conversation this morning before you arrived. Richard was insisting he had a father and that he wanted to visit him."

Peggy-Sue looked thoughtful. "Well obviously, Dottie, Richard does have a father. I mean it's not like you're Mary Magdalene and Richard was an Immaculate Conception." She laughed, a tittering laugh that often got on the nerves of the woman of Stepfordsonia not long into an afternoon tea or committee meeting.

Dottie forced herself to laugh as well. "Well obviously." She managed. "But Richard doesn't know his father, he's never met him and he's talking about remembering the divorce and what it was like. But I've never even been married."

Peggy-Sue now looked concerned. "Gosh, maybe the stress of the end of his senior year is getting to him?"

"Maybe I should make an appointment for us to see Dr. Doweling?" Dottie suggested, finishing her stretches.

"It couldn't hurt." Peggy-Sue said, and she tipped two tennis balls out of the container, stuffing one down the side of her tennis skirt. "But tell me Dottie, you've never actually mentioned Richard's father to me at all in the few months we've been friends. Was it a bad experience?"

Dottie hesitated; how she'd love to tell her friend she had no knowledge of Robert's father but she knew that Peggy-Sue would be scandalized, thinking perhaps she'd been on drugs or booze and unable to remember her past. "He was a handsome man…tall, dark, piercing blue eyes." She said softly. That was the only real memory she had of the man she was sure was the father of her son, and it was a hazy one at best.

"Ah a good looker- always the worst." Peggy-Sue said nodding knowingly. "Cheat on you did he?"

Seizing on that as a convenient excuse to get out of discussing the topic Dottie nodded. "With my best friend. I caught them together in our house, in our bed would you believe, when I was six months pregnant. Needless to say I've never seen him since."

Peggy-Sue shook her head in disgust as she took her place on the other side of the net and got ready to serve. "Men can be such animals. I'm lucky that Albert and I still have such a wonderful relationship. Why some people say we shouldn't have even divorced."

Privately Dottie didn't understand Peggy-Sue and her ex-husband Albert who lived in Stepford. Despite Albert marrying another woman, one who was a cooking and cleaning whiz according to local gossip, Peggy-Sue still saw a lot of her ex-husband. He'd often turn up at her place for a "friendly visit" and when Dottie had suggested that perhaps Peggy-Sue turn him down now that he was remarried Peggy-Sue had been aghast. She reminded Dottie that she and Albert were still deeply in love and she was perfectly happy to take what she could get and not at all concerned about the fact that Albert had a new wife.

"Yeah." Dottie muttered and then Peggy-Sue served the ball and the tennis game was on, ending all conversations.

"Mom I'm glad you're here." Richard said as he hurried into the house later that afternoon after having spent most of the day playing basketball with his mates. "I've got an appointment with Dr. Doweling and I wanted, no I needed, you to come with me."

Dottie looked up from her book. "And this from the boy who wouldn't let me come into the doctors after he was seven years old." She teased and then her face paled- where the heck had that come from? She hadn't remembered anything really from Robert's early childhood and all of a sudden there was that.

"Are you all right Mom?" Richard asked concerned.

"Fine, fine. When is the appointment sweetheart?" Dottie said, waving off her son's worry.

"Five thirty." Richard answered.

"Right, well I've made a casserole for dinner so we can heat it up when we get back, and perhaps pick up some bread from the bakery on the way home." Dottie said, immediately planning as she always did. A stranger, catching sight of Dottie's extremely thick yearly planner, would perhaps have been amazed that one woman could be so organized. It fit in though, with her cautious, pedantic nature and common worrying.

"Okay, well I'm going to go and do some homework before we leave." Richard said, and he slung his backpack from the floor up onto his shoulder and went upstairs. He felt as though he'd been doing homework for only a few minutes before his mother was knocking on his door and telling him they better get going if they didn't want to be late due to the evening traffic.

It was about twenty-five minutes later, at exactly five twenty eight, that they entered the doctor's surgery. Dr. Doweling was a Stepfordsonian, as he was married to the president of the women's committee in the gated community, however his office was downtown. Occasionally it would cross the minds of some that as a doctor he could probably afford something better than the mediocre area.

"Just in time Mom." Richard said as they took a seat in the waiting room.

"We were always going to be on time sweetheart." Dottie responded calmly. "Now do you want me to come in with you?"

"No, I think I'll go in first but perhaps the doctor will ask you to come in afterwards?" Richard responded.

He had called the doctor, who most people who lived in Stepfordsonia knew pretty well, and asked for his help – especially seeing as how it was a weekend- and the doctor had been very willing to help. So when he walked into the office a few minutes later Dr. Doweling's first words were, "Did you bring your mother?"

"Yes she's in the waiting room. I'm really very worried about her Doctor." Richard said, sitting in the chair next to the desk where the doctor was seated. He shifted in the seat trying to get comfortable and had the sudden thought that perhaps the patient, rather than the doctor, should be the one sitting in the comfortable leather chair. At least in cases where the patient was in pain.

"I don't blame you. Tell me first, Richard, what was the relationship between your parents like before the divorce, before they started fighting?" Dr. Doweling asked, his pen poised above a clean sheet of lined paper.

"It was great, they seemed very happy. In fact I don't even remember them fighting until all of a sudden. Dad always said Mom was the perfect housewife- she was always cooking and cleaning. Mom always said Dad was the perfect provider and man of the house." Richard explained.

Dr. Doweling frowned slightly as he wrote on his paper. "And when they started to fight what was it about? Did it have anything to do with the way your Mom lived- as the perfect housewife as your Dad said she was?"

Richard shook his head. "They didn't really fight in front of me but I did hear Mom yelling at Dad for not accepting her as she was, for changing her."

"Perhaps she wasn't planning on being a housewife until she met your Dad, did she go to University?" Dr. Doweling quizzed.

"Yes she studied business at Harvard- which is one of the reasons she is so anxious for me to go there too. She met Dad when she was about twenty-five and already she was making good money and in a good position in her company for promotion to the top. Then after she and Dad married and I was born we moved from Chicago where I spent the first few months of my life, to Stepford."

Dr. Doweling looked up sharply. "Another ex-Stepford wife. Seems to be becoming a pattern in Stepfordsonia. Okay Richard why don't you ask your mother to come in here and I'll have a little chat with her and then I'll give you a call on Monday to let you know what's going on. You are the only relative aren't you?"

Richard stood up. "I'm all Mom has. Her parents died when she was in college and Dad's parents live overseas for what it's worth considering Mom never got along with them- but then judging by how she's been acting lately she'd say they didn't even exist."

A few minutes later Dottie came into the room and sat rigidly in the seat recently vacated by her son. She carefully smoothed the skirt of her dress and placed her handbag on her knee before addressing the doctor. "Well is my son all right?"

"Your son is fine." Dr. Doweling assured her.

Dottie sighed in relief. "Thank god, I was worried he was sick or perhaps suffering from some kind of mental exhaustion or both- he's under a lot of pressure at the moment." She said, leaning back in the seat more comfortably now.

"It's a hard time for any eighteen year old, making decisions about their future, worrying about their future, especially when they've only got the one parent." Dr. Doweling said, gauging Dottie's reaction as he spoke.

"Indeed." Dottie agreed. "I sometimes wish things had been different between Richard's father and I. Richard's missed out on so much growing up without ever knowing his father."

Dr. Doweling's placid expression didn't change as he made a few notes. "What happened between you and the boy's father- if you don't mind me asking?"

"Oh no doctor, I don't mind telling you." Dottie assured him and the lie rolled glibly off her tongue since what she was about to tell him had been told many, many times the past few months. "Lets just say we weren't right for each other and it was probably lucky we realised that early on otherwise Richard's childhood wouldn't have been as stable as it has been."

"Do you remember the name of Richard's father?" Dr. Doweling asked, leaning back in his chair and surveying the woman carefully.

"Does it matter?" Dottie asked, a little sharply. Even though the doctor appeared to be a very kind man who didn't seem to judge anyone and got along well with everyone in Stepfordsonia she didn't feel comfortable telling him she couldn't remember much until Richard was about ten, and even then her memories seemed hazy. Of course she remembered everything from when he was about twelve onwards: working two jobs to support him, going through a million babysitters, moving a few times before she got lucky enough to find Stepfordsonia and a brilliant job in the bank downtown.

"No, no, of course not." Dr. Doweling hastened to her. Clearly the topic of Richard's father was a sore point with her- but he couldn't work out why she honestly believed she had never even been married. "Tell me though, do you have any idea why Richard believes he not only has a father but that you two were only recently divorced?"

Dottie sighed. The idea of her only son becoming some kind of loony did not sit very well with her- especially considering he was applying to get into Harvard in the near future. They wouldn't want some crackpot studying there surely. "I don't know, unless he's cracked under the stress of school and such?"

Dr. Doweling made another note on the paper and then put the lid back on the pen. "Perhaps." He agreed mildly. "But it doesn't seem to be affecting any areas of his life so I suggest it's something like an invisible friend of sorts."

"That would make sense." Dottie agreed, her hands tightening on her handbag with nervousness; she sensed there was something about the entire appointment that the doctor wasn't sharing with her. "But you said he's not sick when I first came in?"

"No, no he's fine." Dr. Doweling assured her again.

"Well if he's not sick why exactly did he come to see you?" Dottie asked suspiciously. There was something in the doctor's tone and expression she didn't quite trust- which was strange considering the doctor's reputation in Stepfordsonia. But then if there was something wrong with her beloved son, something really wrong, perhaps the doctor wouldn't tell her, perhaps it would be up to Richard whether she found out then or later?

"Oh just a check up, making sure he's healthy for his college life, that sort of thing. And I just wanted to have a word with you to confirm that he's perfectly healthy." The doctor said, and standing up he reached to shake her hand, signaling that the visit was now over.

Monday afternoon Richard waited anxiously by the phone for the call from the doctor. On the way home from the surgery on Saturday evening his mother had been extremely quiet and introverted. When he'd asked her whether something was wrong she'd assured him there was nothing bothering her in such a casual voice that Richard knew she was lying. Dinner had been a strange meal as Dottie had not said a word throughout it and Richard was then sure that something was wrong but when he asked her again she got irritated and said she had a headache and went up to her bed.

She had been better Sunday but there was still something in her demeanor that suggested there was something bothering her and it wasn't until he overheard her on the phone to Peggy-Sue that he found out what it was: "He's perfectly healthy Peg, at least that's what the doctor assures me. But I got the impression there was something the doctor wasn't telling me. What if there really is something wrong with him and the doctor just isn't telling me?" A pause as Peggy-Sue obviously put her two cents worth in. "Of course Peg, I know I'm probably worrying about something, but you know me- I can't help but worry." Another pause. "I guess you're right. If there's something wrong with Richard he'll tell me in his own time." Backing away from the door Robert had felt a strange sense of relief- for a little while he'd suspected that his mother had caught on to what was happening and why they had actually visited the doctor. His logical mind told him that was ridiculous- she'd never think something like that, especially when she honestly believed that there was no such thing as her ex-husband.

"Richard, this is Dr. Doweling, I suppose you've been waiting for my call?" Dr. Doweling asked after Richard snatched up the phone on only the second ring.

"You could say that." Richard replied casually. He didn't, for some reason, want the doctor to know that he'd spent the weekend worrying about the doctor's news. Who would have thought things would turn out like this when he finally got up the courage to ask his Mom about his Dad? Who would have thought his mother would have somehow convinced herself she'd never been married and managed to erase every memory of his Dad from her mind?

"Well it's like this," Dr. Doweling began, "It's not that I didn't believe you, I want you to understand that, but I did some research and I found both the marriage certificate for your parents as well as the divorce papers. I then spoke to a friend of mine, she's a psychiatrist, and we've come to the conclusion your mother is delusional about her past. She's not simply pretending as some kind of defence mechanism, she actually believes what she's saying. I have no doubts whatsoever that in your mother's mind she wasn't ever married to your father."

Richard sighed and leant against the wall. "But why does she believe it? It wasn't the divorce which triggered it was it?"

"Obviously I can't say either way definitively but I don't think so, no. If that were the case she would have blocked out perhaps the divorce but not a complete memory, not a complete life with a person." Dr. Doweling explained. "I'd like to get her to see my friend and perhaps have some tests run, CAT scans and the like to rule out any brain anomalies-"

"Are you saying she could have a brain tumor or something?" Richard interrupted nervously. It had not occurred to him until this moment that his mother could be seriously ill, that it could be some grave physiological problem instead of purely a psychological problem. Mental problems could generally be solved fairly easy but not all physiological ones could.

"Oh I very much doubt it. Most likely your mother is just, for some reason- a psychological reason- delusional." Dr. Doweling assured him, assuaging his fears somewhat. But there was still the problem of his mother's delusions and as he hung up, thanking the doctor and telling him he'd do his best to get his mother to see the psychiatrist he'd recommended, he vowed that whatever it took he was going to find out the reason for his mother's beliefs that she had never married, and divorced, his father.

In the next chapter we meet Brokenhearted Betsy-Lou and her sister.