A House Divided – Chet's Cataclysm
Chapter 17
Chet turned his van onto the dusty long driveway that meandered from the lonesome highway up to the two story home of his childhood. He shifted into park, squinting at the orange and magenta hues of the setting sun while he sat collecting his courage to face his own origin, no matter how sordid the explanation might be. He reached over, slinging his duffle bag onto his shoulder and slowly made his way up the three steps to the long front porch, struggling to walk without a limp so as not to worry his mother. He glanced at his watch and wondered if perhaps he would have time to ask the questions before he and his parents went to bed.
Charlene Kelly heard the bumping sound of her son's footsteps on the porch and quickly got up to turn on the light for him. She looked at her husband's worried stare and decided to paste a smile on her face for Chet's sake. She remembered the empty sound in his voice when he called to say he needed to talk to them. She had readily agreed for him to drive to their home as soon as he could get there. Now, the butterflies in her stomach fluttered as she opened the door to face whatever situation her oldest child was bringing home with him.
"Chester," she crooned, opening the door and extending her hand to caress his left cheek. The caress turned quickly into a hug.
Chet could feel her trembling within his embrace and a part of him wanted to run back to Los Angeles and forget the impending conversation. But, this was something he knew he had to do because he couldn't continue living in the pit of darkness that had swallowed him up all those months ago.
"Hey, Mom," he whispered, grasping her hand as they released each other. "How've ya been?"
"Oh, fine…fine," she turned around leading him into the kitchen where she had a pot of fresh coffee warming and fresh baked pumpkin pie waiting to be sliced.
Chet dropped his duffle bag near the doorway and followed his mother into the kitchen. The scents drifting beneath his nose made his mouth water and sent his mind reeling back to his childhood. He briefly considered how strange it was that smells seemed to trigger memory more than visual images or sounds. The train of warm thoughts jerked to a screeching halt as he entered the kitchen where he saw Charles Kelly sitting at the table nursing a cup of coffee.
Charles turned a pair of tired eyes in Chet's direction as the older man stood and extended his hand. "Son, good to see you."
"Um, yea…you too." Chet struggled to get past the word 'son' but managed to ease through it without Charles noticing that anything was amiss.
"How about some coffee and pie? Both are fresh. I just made the pie today and the coffee is less than half an hour old," she winked playfully at her firstborn as she pulled a cup out of the cabinet.
"That, ah…that sounds great, Mom. Let me just run to the bathroom first. Been on the road a long time today," he snickered.
"I understand, dear. I'll have your pie and coffee ready when you get back."
Chet could only nod his approval as he turned down the hallway. He lingered in the bathroom much longer than was actually necessary to relieve himself trying to decide the best way to begin the conversation. He knew that he couldn't wait until morning; he'd lost enough sleep over the issue since he'd discovered it. Now, here he was face to face with the people who knew the answers to his questions. He washed and dried his hands then walked back down the hallway, hearing the old boards squeak beneath his weight with each step. As he neared the kitchen, he heard the end of the conversation his parents were having and stopped dead in his tracks.
"Please, Chuck, please promise me you won't fly off the handle with him like you did last time. No matter what it is he has to tell us just try to remain calm." She placed a soft hand on her husband's right shoulder leaning down for a quick kiss on the cheek. "He's very sensitive to your moods and I don't want him to run out on us again."
Charles felt his anger beginning to smolder. "You can't keep treating him like he's an infant, Charlene. One day, he's gonna hafta man up and do what's best for…"
"For whom, Charles?" Charlene walked to the kitchen sink slowly crossing her arms. "What's best for Chet…or what's best for you?"
"Damn it, Charlene…do NOT put words in my mouth," Charles' frustrations were beginning to seep out of his pores and puddle along his brow line.
She reached around behind her back, untying her apron and slamming it down on the counter. "What, Charles? What does Chet have to do to gain your approval? Quit his job and go to work someplace where he's miserable just to please you? 'Cause maybe that's why he's here. Maybe he's here to tell us he's going to change jobs. Is that what you want? You want him to give up his career just so you can sleep a little better at night?"
"No!" Charles slammed his fist down on the table causing the silverware to bounce and rattle. He sniffled a bit, his remorse for his actions evident on his face. "I'm sorry….I just…well, you understand. I mean," he looked up searching his wife's face. "You know why."
Charlene softened her voice and closed the distance between them. "Yes…yes, Chuck I do know why. But he doesn't. You've never told him or the other two either, for that matter. But Chuck," she held his face between his hands as her blue eyes darted back and forth drinking in the pain in the green orbs staring back at her. "He needs to know…he deserves to know why he carries the Blain name."
Chet's imagination had run amuck and he stood silently in the hallway clenching and unclenching his fists. When he could take it no more, he cleared his throat to announce his presence then stormed into the kitchen, startling both his parents.
"Yea…I do deserve to know," he looked from one to the other. "That's why I'm here. I want to get to the bottom of this whole thing right now." He pointed downward with his index finger as his breathing rate increased and he watched the stunned look on their faces grow.
"Ch, ahem, Chet…I…we," Charlene stuttered, feeling her throat closing up preventing her from swallowing.
"Mom," he never took a step towards her but his heart was reaching out in her direction. "Please…sit down," he requested pulling out a chair. "I need some answers that only the two of you can give me and I…I want the truth," he swallowed back the bile inching its way up his throat. "No matter what…just be honest with me…please?"
Charlene locked eyes with her husband as she sat down in the proffered chair. "Honey…what questions do you need answers to?" Her voice sounded shaky even to her own ears.
Chet ran a nervous hand through his curly hair feeling the overwhelming need to pace but unable to accomplish the task. This wasn't at all going the way he'd planned it. Finally, he leaned his forearms on the back of one of the kitchen chairs as he looked at first his mother then his father and then returned his gaze to his mother's worried face. His mouth was dry and the lump lodged in his throat was beginning to make his eyes water.
"I, uh…last December when I was here, I was looking through Dad's box of war memorabilia and," he gulped trying to find his voice to continue. "I was looking at the dates and…" He scrubbed his scruffy face with his hand swearing under his breath. "The dates just don't add up."
Charles drew his dark bushy eyebrows together in confusion. He cast a quick glance at his wife and saw the same expression on her face as well. "What do you mean, they don't add up?"
Chet pulled out the chair he was leaning on and sat down. His hands became animated as his agitation grew. "For me…the dates just don't add up…for me?" He splayed an open hand over his chest.
"Well what kind of math are you using?" Charles asked trying to interject a bit of humor into the confusing situation.
"Gestational math, damn it!" Chet slammed his hands down flatly on the table, regretting the move when he saw the coffee bounce from his cup onto the tablecloth.
Charles and Charlene Kelly sat dumbfounded listening to their older son. Charlene kept repeating his last phrase silently to herself until her eyes grew large with understanding. "Chet! What are you insinuating?"
"Who is it, Mom?" Chet's vision was growing blurry with the tears he was trying desperately to dam up. "Who is he? I wanna know. I hafta know."
Charlene's face grew beet red. "He's sitting right in front of you!" Her words grunted through clenched teeth in disbelief at what she was hearing.
Realization colored Charles' face when he finally caught on to what Chet meant by gestational math. In spite of himself, he raised a nervous finger and pointed it straight into Chet's face. "I don't know what the hell you think you're trying to pull here but you will NOT make such accusations about your mother in this house."
Chet watched his father stand quickly, knocking his chair over with a crash that once again caused Charlene to flinch. Then Chet stood, matching the older man's stance as they locked angry eyes.
"I won't stand here and listen to this shit from you! This is MY house and you can get your sorry ass out of it now or I'll throw you out!"
Both Kelly men trembled with rage but both turned to look at Charlene as soon as she released her high pitched wail.
"CHARLES! Wait! At least hear him out!" She cried into both hands using them to cover her face for a moment. She jerked a napkin out of the dispenser and blew her nose. "Chester…wh…what exactly are you asking me?" Her voice was slow and deliberate.
Chet looked back at his father who still stood towering over the table, eyes red glaring at the younger Kelly man.
"Charles…please, sit back down." Her words were meant more as a command than a request. She hesitated while the older man carefully picked up his overturned chair and slowly took a seat. She looked back over at Chet who looked poised to bolt out of the house if Charles made the slightest move in his direction. "Chester?"
Chet's mouth moved but no sound escaped. He sat down, coughing into his fist and shifted in his seat seeking a comfortable position but finding none. "Mom…I, I know when you and, uh…you and Dad got married and that he had to report to New Jersey the following week. He didn't get back out here for over a year." Chet lowered his eyes and stared at his interlaced fingers twitching on the kitchen table. "He…he was deployed just a few days after he finished basic training which didn't give him enough time to travel out here and then back so…"
Chet's hesitation allowed Charles the chance to speak once more. "HE is sitting right here so why don't you address HIM instead of acting like HE isn't even in the room?"
Charlene firmly set her jaw then turned to her husband and did something she almost never did. "Charles…for once in your life would you shut the hell up and just listen to what your son is saying?"
Charles Kelly was taken aback by his wife's brazenness. His features softened a bit as he addressed her request. "Sweetheart, I AM listening to what he's saying and he's accusing you of…of being…loose…while I was at basic. Now I won't stand for it. I won't allow him to say something like that in our house."
Again, Chet blew out his breath and laid his head down on his hands on the table as he listened to the conversation going on around him. He kept waiting for an answer to his question but no one seemed eager to explain things to him. Finally, when he'd had enough, he slapped the table and stood up. "I'm sorry, mom…I'm sorry I brought it up…hell, I'm sorry I was ever even born," he managed to spit out as he reached the front door. He stumbled down the steps from the porch to the ground, trying not to reinjure his freshly healing cut. Hobbling as fast as he could he followed the fence row beside his parents' home, unable to put enough distance between himself and his arguing parents.
The field behind his parents' home had always offered a place for him to be alone during his awkward adolescent years. He remembered lying on his back staring up at the stars as a pimply faced kid who wondered why he didn't seem to have the charisma the other guys had with which to charm the girls. He remembered lying in this same spot and wondering why his dad was always so hard on him; much harder on him than on his brother George. Now, here he sat on this same mound of grass, back against a fence post, looking up at the same stars, seeking some sense of solace in finally understanding why Charles Kelly had never told Chet he loved him.
Inside the Kelly residence, Charles and Charlene had their backs turned to each other. Charlene's sniffles and nearly silent whimpers from her seat at the table sawed through his hardened heart. The emotional pain he began to feel was as agonizing as what he'd endured as a young soldier…and at this moment, he felt just as vulnerable and weak as he had back then.
Charles lifted his head from his hands and surveyed the contents of his home. Pictures of their three children taken during their growing up years showed happy carefree times. But Charles' heart knew that the smiles on their faces weren't always genuine. The three children he and his wife had reared had learned from a very early age to stay out of their father's way when he was in one of his angry moods; moods that seemed to happen too often around the holidays. He had always made sure that he was in total control of his family; a fact that Chet, seemingly, had spent his entire childhood and adolescence trying to disrupt and Charles had been heavy handed with him during those times. More than once, Charlene had encouraged him to talk to the children, especially their eldest, about their father's past but each time Charles had found a reason not to do it. Real men didn't talk about things like that and he felt an overpowering need to prove his manhood. He had been a good provider for his family, proof that he had loved them and was devoted to them. So why had their older son come home making such accusatory remarks about Charlene?
He watched his wife's shoulder's heaving with her sobs and he wanted more than anything to pull her into an embrace, tell her that everything would be alright. But that was something he simply could not do. Her words had peeled back several layers of his hard shell; layers that he'd spent decades sealing off from everyone. Finally, he could take her tears no more and he reached out slowly pulling her into an embrace.
"Sweetheart…I'm…I'm so sorry. I," he gulped, using every ounce of strength he could muster to proclaim his decision. "I'm gonna go talk to him…I want him to hear it from me…man to man."
Charlene, though initially resistant to her husband's embrace, couldn't believe what she was hearing. This was the announcement she had wanted from him since the children had been old enough to know what had happened. Her vision was blurred as she looked through her tears at the man she had loved since she was only sixteen years old. "Are…are you sure?"
He could only nod, swallowing hard to force the lump back down opening up his throat so he could speak. "I, I've never been more sure in my life."
E!
Mike grew tired of watching the movie the others seemed to be so enthusiastic about and stood up from his seat stretching. He quietly meandered out the kitchen door and made his way over to the dorm where he knew he'd have more privacy. He had tried to call Chet earlier but had gotten no answer to his calls. He had found that somewhat disturbing but decided not to mention it to the others yet. He sat down at the desk picking up the receiver and spinning the dial for the number he knew by heart. He leaned back, listening as the connection was made and waited anxiously for Chet to answer. By the fifth ring with no answer, he released his breath. By the tenth unanswered ring, he slowly set the receiver back down and cupped one hand over the knuckles of the other, resting his chin on the resulting plateau.
"Problem?"
Mike was startled by the voice but then wasn't surprised to see Johnny looking at him worriedly. Johnny seemed to be able to move with cat-like stealth. "Uh…I'm not…sure."
"Sorry, man…I wasn't trying to eavesdrop or anything, I just…," Johnny was pointing at his bunk when Mike raised a hand to stop him.
"No, no…I was just trying to get in touch with Chet and…and he's not answering."
"Oh," Johnny said, propping a hand on his hip. "Maybe he needed to get something to eat?"
"This isn't the first time I've tried today, Johnny. I don't like this. He's up to something," Mike said pushing back from the desk and standing up.
"You don't think…I mean, he wouldn't…," Johnny stuttered, rubbing a nervous finger beneath his nose.
"I don't know what to think. He never said why he came here this morning and," Mike's eyes suddenly widened.
Johnny recognized the look all too well. "What?"
"There's a letter on Cap's desk and it's written in Chet's handwriting."
"You read it?" Johnny couldn't believe Mike would stoop so low as to invade Cap's privacy.
"No, of course not but…neither did Cap."
"Huh?"
"It's still sealed. I saw it on his desk and," he swallowed then looked directly into Johnny's eyes. "John…do you think he'd quit because of all this?"
E!
Chet didn't know how long he'd been sitting in the field but he was ready to head back to Los Angeles; though what awaited him there wasn't much more than what he'd found here. He'd left his bag inside and even though he really needed his personal items, the prospect of facing Charles again made the decision to leave those items behind an easy one. He decided to call his mother later in the week to make sure she was alright, but he refused to go back inside his boyhood home and face the man who had just, for all intents and purposes, kicked him out.
Chet stood up, toeing the loose dirt around the fence post, not sure why he was so hesitant to leave until he realized that he still didn't know the circumstances around his existence. If his foot hadn't already been sore, he'd have probably kicked the fence post. Instead, he simply leaned his forearms on the fence one final time before climbing back through the wooden slats. When he stood up, he nearly choked. Walking towards him, eyes red but this time not from anger, was Charles Kelly.
Charles looked up and saw the pain in his son's eyes and knew that he was the reason it was there. He pressed his lips into a thin line as he walked closer to his firstborn. "Chester?"
Everything within him wanted to run but something kept Chet rooted in place. He refused to look at the older man and decided that the minute the yelling started, he would leave. "Yea?"
Charles gulped then did something that he should have done thirty years earlier. He reached out his arms and pulled Chet into a hug.
"What the…?" Chet somehow managed to resist the urge to punch the other man. Instead, he felt the silent shaking that he knew meant that Charles Kelly was doing something he never dreamed the older man would do. Cry.
Charles struggled to find the words he had to say. "Chester…I, uh…I love ya, son."
Suddenly, Chet wasn't a thirty-one year old firefighter but was somehow transformed back to the young boy who had longed to hear his father's words of adoration. He felt himself melt within the arms of the older man as he wrapped his arms around his father's back. "I…um,"
"Let me finish, ok?" Charles pulled back clapping Chet on the shoulders, tear-streaked face shining in the last rays of the setting sun. "I'm not mad at you for raising the question…not anymore. I just…I'm just stunned."
Chet felt his world begin to tilt.
"Let's have a seat."
Chet followed his father's request and waited as his father lowered himself to the same grassy knoll.
"Everything you said back there was correct…about the time, I mean. But your mom didn't…didn't step out me."
Chet looked over at the older man realizing in his tortured mind there was only one other possibility. "Ohmygod," he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "She was…I'm the result of…," he couldn't finish his thought.
Charles saw the look of horror on his son's contorted face and heard the panic in his voice. He wrapped an arm around the younger man's shoulders and squeezed hard. "Absolutely not, Chet, so don't even think like that." He let his words sink in for just a moment. "It's true that I didn't have time to make it back out here and then back to Fort Dix in that short period of time. But, your mother was quite a gal…still is," he grinned slightly. "She teamed up with my best friend, Les, and the two of them traveled together to come see me before I shipped out. Chet…look at me please."
Chet dried his face with his shirt sleeve but then did as he had been told.
"Chet, I AM your father. Of that there is no doubt."
"What?"
"Chet, do I need to explain the birds and the bees to you, son?"
Chet hung his head in embarrassment. "Uh, no…but, are you saying Mom traveled across the country for a…um,…a conjugal visit?"
"Well…yea, I guess that's one way to put it," Charles said with a hint of a smile.
"Then…then that's when…when it happened?" Chet rubbed his face with his open hands. It had been a long day and his fatigue was catching up with him.
"Eh, correction…that's when YOU happened. I got the letter from her in April telling me that I was going to be a father." He reached out his hand and clapped his son on the back of his neck.
"Damn…I'm such an idiot," Chet lamented.
"No…you just didn't have all the information. I kept that letter with me in my pocket over my heart until I was able to come home. Back to my wife…and baby son." He let his words sink in before he continued. "That letter contained some…well, very private details and…it wasn't meant to be read by anyone but me so it never made it into the box, understand?"
Chet could feel the blush rising up around his neck and settling on the tips of his ears. "Oh…oh yea," he said with relief in his voice. "But why did you give me the middle name of Blain?"
Charles became deathly quiet as he fought the horrific memories stored in his mind. Finally, he looked out into the dimly lit field and in a voice barely above a whisper he spoke. "Son…that's…that's the hardest part of this. Your name is Chester Blain because I'M here…and HE isn't."
E!
A/N: I'll be tying up the loose ends very soon and bringing this one to a close. Thank you all for reading this and especially for the PM's and the reviews.