Part 61

"I brought his childhood photos up for Brenda," Donna told David. They looked out at the darkness by the docks. "So when you get a chance, go over there and see them. If you want to, that is."

"Yes. I'd like to."

"You'll see why I don't feel sorry for you - with your old songs that remind you of me. Look at those pictures, and you'll see I had to think about you every day!"

"I'm sure you didn't, in spite of that."

"You're handsomer, now, than then."

"Gee, thanks."

"Really. Alexander - Zander, will have that advantage. A boyish face. Makes you cute when young, but really handsome later."

"He looks a little like you."

"You think so?"

"Yes. He reminds me of you."

"That's because I'm the one who brought him to you!"

"No, it's his eyes. They're big and round."

"I've got to check that out next time I see him. I've never thought of that."

"Did anyone ever think he looked like Cameron?"

"No," she answered. "Then that wasn't remarkable. That family isn't that close. They weren't around, and so there wasn't much discussion about things like that. So nobody noticed. I thought that was lucky. If they'd brought it up, I'd have tried to say he favored my side of the family. I remember, once, only once, some aunt of Cam's saying Peter must favor my side of the family. I was scared about her turning to the next child, but she didn't."

"Figures. What is it about this Peter that once he comes up, all other subjects and people fade to the background?"

Donna smiled to herself. In David's case, she had decided not to take any offense at prejudice in favor of Alexander over Peter. He was right. Somehow, Alexander came second and always had. Let him come first with somebody, she thought. Who better?

"That's the way those families are," she said, kindly. "You know, so old fashioned, being the oldest son means something."

"My family is actually starting to sound like it's not the worst one in the world. Those families don't sound like they really have much going for them. Money. That's all. Yet they're always right."

"Not always," she said. "Not about everything. Actually, not about much."

"Besides, Zander is an oldest son."

"Yes, yes, he is. In a way, but not really. He wasn't born under those circumstances."

"Well, he could have been."

"Yeah," she said, not wanting to argue with him on the subject. She went over to him where he leaned on the railing, looking out. She put an arm around him, comfortingly - he looked a little hurt. "I'm not allowed to apologize," she said. "So I don't know what to do."

"As long as you don't do that, you can do whatever you want."

"Isn't Ginny cute?"

"She's beautiful."

"The new one will be, too."

"For sure."

David was reading patient lab test results in the coffee shop. He felt someone standing there. Which one is it, he thought, and looked up.

"I've resigned myself to running into Cam like this," he said. "but it's always nice when it's not him."

Brenda sat down, laughing. "This is one of those better times."

"How are you?"

"Good. I feel great. Totally nauseous every morning. I really love it."

"I bet you do."

"It could be better than to be me coming up to you in here."

"It could be Zander, but you're pretty OK," he smiled.

"Well, it could be Donna, too."

"That's marginally OK."

"Do you feel like you left her too soon, maybe? Back in Florida, when you affair ended."

"The question doesn't quite fit, because she was married. She wouldn't leave. You can't go on like that forever."

"I don't blame you for making an ultimatum."

"It's hard to say. I could have given her more time."

"How much? Did you think she really wanted to stay?"

"I was pretty young then. Yeah. It did seem like that. Whatever I was, it wasn't better than the marriage, which could have been better than it looked to me. I thought that sometimes. Later. Other times I couldn't believe it. It was too complicated to handle at that age, I guess. But picture what it does to your ego when somebody won't leave Cameron for you!"

"It couldn't have been that! That would have to be fear, or social pressure, or something. Not a preference for him!"

"You never know!"

"I have no way of knowing except that it's absolutely impossible!"

"I like your loyalty. If you're going to love Zander you pretty much have to dislike Cam."

"You do. But you did what you could. I mean, if Cam wasn't so mean, she might have left him, because he would have understood their marriage was a dud."

David laughed. "She would have left him if only he was a nicer guy!"

"I think that may actually be true."

"If I had waited as much as, just a couple more months. Oh, I hate thinking about that. I had trained myself not to."

"Still you realize what's true. It could have been different if you were still there when she learned she was pregnant. Then it could have come up right there that the child might be yours."

"Yeah, and if I'm right about the way I was then, well, I'd have used that for all it was worth. I still don't know if I would have convinced her, but I might have. Something I never had as it was, anyway. But now, looking back, I'm kind of glad. Would you really want that as a basis, I mean, if she wouldn't leave just for me, why be happy she'd do it because we were having a child? When you're young you kind of want to be more important, that way, than anything else."

"Oh, I understand that. But now you've got a little idea what you might do for your child."

"I understand what she did for Peter, in my head. Then again, why was Peter more important than Alexander? But back then it wasn't as clear as it is now."

"Even if not, she gets torn in two that way."

"Yeah. I haven't been understanding enough. I'm not torn in two."

"Well, that being torn in two had nothing to do with you and Cam. Just the kids. As to you and Cam there couldn't have been a conflict at all. I'm a woman. I know."

"I was in California a while before I gave up the idea she was going to show up."

"If she had, she'd have been pregnant, and you might not have liked that, because back then, wouldn't you have thought it might be Cam's?"

"That would have been OK. Don't forget good old Peter. She could have showed up pregnant with her two year old to boot. That would have been OK, too."

"I can understand how that would have been frustrating. Donna had an awful marriage, so how could you understand her staying with it?"

"It sure was a mockery of a marriage."

"You make a mockery of it," said a voice.

Brenda felt like she was being torn out of her skin for a second. She saw Cameron, then just started to laugh. David saw Cam and smiled ironically.

"How much of this have you eavesdropped on, Cam?" David asked him.

"You really think I'm going to tell you? You get more and more delusional."

"Sit down, and tell me how delusional I am."

Cam actually took up this invitation. Brenda was fascinated. Cameron gave her a brief look of contempt, then turned to David. "You make a mockery of the entire institution, don't you? You marry and divorce. Marry and divorce. Marry and divorce. Get involved with another man's wife and see nothing wrong with it. So what is it to you whether it's bad or good? How can you even bother to evaluate any marriage with those labels? How can my ex-wife do it either? She made a mockery of her own marriage."

"She didn't make a mockery of it. She wouldn't leave you. She let you make it deadly serious. Or her belief about the legal system. She put your precious Peter above her own desires, therefore, you should consider her a heroine and talk about her on much higher terms than you do."

"How do you know she didn't take it seriously herself?"

"I could say you don't take it seriously, since all you care about is the legal tie. Once made, you could care less what happens afterward. In fact, you think you don't have to do anything, make any effort at all. You can be a bastard and she has to put up with it because it's too late, she's your wife."

"Obviously it was not, since she left anyway."

"Finally."

"And that you think that a good thing proves my point."

"In that case, it was a good thing. For her. Why did you even want her to stay? You can't have been happy either. Or were you? As long as people are in their place, you don't care?"

"You have to make that commitment some time. Otherwise, there's no point. If you've been married 20 years, but you're still thinking about it, evaluating whether it's worth pursuing, you may as well have been only living together that whole time. You make a mockery of it, it means nothing, you may as well move in together until such time as one of you no longer wants to do it. Why make commitments you don't intend?"

"You have a point, but even then, there are extreme cases."

"And this was one."

"You can't possibly claim you were happy."

"How happy do you have to be? Do you have to be happy all the time? Don't answer that. I know what your answer is. As soon as you're not happy, you bail out, that's obvious, or you wouldn't be keeping the divorce lawyers in business. You'd have done the same to her, eventually."

"Even if that were true, then I'd still have my son."

"Who would be so much better off after living through two divorces. As it was, it was way more stable."

"That alone is not a value encompassing everything either. He had a stable long term experience as a shadow and foil of an older brother with a father who never said anything good about him and a mother more and more depressed. The unstable two divorces might have happened, but his brother would not be the fulcrum of his existence and he'd have some positive feedback about himself, by somebody who cared that he existed apart from his brother."

"This is so very fascinating," Cameron said. "But you have no idea what you're talking about, so it's only academically interesting."

"I know what I'm talking about," Brenda declared. "That Zander goes out of his way to be as unlike you as possible, which guarantees he'll be a wonderful father. Oh, and that makes him a wonderful man, too."

"Well, I've got to get going," Cameron said, getting up. "But thanks for the sociological insights."

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr," Brenda said. "That man!"

"He went on criticizing David for being divorced so many times," Brenda said to Zander when they were through with studying for the evening. "That fact. It is interesting. Do you suppose maybe that means something about his not getting over Donna?"

"I went out into the living room and they were playing with Ginny. It was a good feeling. I just felt good about it. I don't really understand it, either. I like my parents together? Maybe most people do."

"I've heard that," Brenda said. "No matter how old you get, when your parents got a divorce, that you still deep down wish they would get back together."

"But I don't, and I'm fairly sure Pete doesn't."

"Maybe it only applies when there was a time the family was happy."

"Yeah, and you want that back. That would explain it. But I don't have anything like that when it comes to my biological parents."

"I think you just see something that looks like it works. It's more like you. You want Donna to be happy. By now you even want David to be happy. This is about that rather than you."

He stroked her hair a little. "You're always saying nice things about me."

"That's easy," she said. "You can help them, too. You're their son. You get them in the same place. I think the more time they have together the more time they have to get past that they blame each other that it never worked out back then."

"You think that's it?"

"I've asked them questions here and there. It's easier for me than it would be for you. In general, or the sum of it – they both think the other was the problem while at the same time having gotten older and more mature or whatever – think they might have been the one to blame, or start to get that they are part to blame. I get this repeated theme of that 'we were too young to handle this,' or something along those lines. They got caught up over their heads."

"Dad."

"No. You know, they're both remarkable for not blaming him specifically."

"Do you think they've got another chance? It's been so long."

"It has. But yeah, I think, maybe, they do."

Cameron took his lawyer out to dinner. It was always good to do things like that.

Lee Baldwin was there at the Port Charles Grill. On his way out, he stopped to say hello to Jackie.

"Don't date a top flight domestic relations lawyer like this too long," he said to Cameron, jokingly. "She'll take you for all you're worth."

"She knows how," Cameron said, smiling.

"Well, you don't have to worry," Jackie said, joining in, "I'm in my forties and I've never been married. Isn't it proven that the odds I'll ever get married are extremely low? So you can date me all you want with no danger."

"Somehow that doesn't sound right," Cameron said, and his voice actually had a kind tone in it.

"You get cynical from doing that kind of law," Lee said. "Well, enjoy. Have a good night."

"You too," they said.