As promised, here is the next chapter. Just a note about the next update; it will be probably be next Wednesday or Thursday. I will be out of town next Tuesday and will not be back in time to post the next chapter.
This is probably the next place where this story is going to get a little controversial. Remember, this isn't required reading. Stop whenever I've gone in a direction with which you aren't comfortable. But, if you are still enjoying (or entranced by) the story, I love feedback.
Thanks for reading.
It Was All About Love For
By: December
Chapter 2: And by the pool that night, apparently
Last time: "What made this party different was the fallout Saturday morning."
"The fallout?" Dr. Lawrence asked.
"Yeah," James shrugged. "Sally had managed to throw a killer party that night in the hole and –"
"The hole?"
"Oh, I should probably explain that," the young man backtracked. "You see, when Sally and Derek first moved into that house, Derek decided he wanted a pool. So they put in an outdoor pool. Derek took care of the cleaning and the like, so every summer they would have a pool, until he left.
"After he left, Sally refused to use the pool, but wouldn't have it taken out either. So, during the non-summer months and when it rained, Sally would keep the big hole in the yard covered. But in the summer, she'd uncover it. I think she was trying to make some kind of statement with that."
"I…I guess," Dr. Lawrence conceded, "but that seems a little drastic."
"Probably was. But that night in October, Sally had the idea to uncover the pool and to have the grilling and party take place in the empty pool."
"I'm sure that was interesting," Dr. Lawrence allowed.
"And stupid. A lot of her drunk friends ended up spending a chunk of the night at the bottom of the pool because they weren't coordinated or sober enough to climb the ladders. And of course, no one was in any state to clean anything, which led to an interesting picture that next morning."
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The sun streaming through the guest bedroom window awakened him that next morning. He often stayed in the guest bedroom when his mother threw her parties. The guest bedroom had the nice flat screen TV and digital cable. It also was the only room upstairs with a lock, which was enough to keep the wandering drunks out.
After helping his mother set things up yesterday, Mike had grabbed his pajamas and sleeping bag and barricaded himself in the guest room. He hadn't closed the curtains in the room the night before, although he wasn't sure why. Because the house faced west and the guest bedroom looked out on the backyard, the full force of the sun came through the window. He thought about rolling over and going back to sleep, but remembering that his father was coming that day, the little boy got up.
Before leaving the room, he looked out the window. Obviously, his mother had decided to have most of the party in the pool, because various people and objects where all over the bottom of the pool. Mike hoped that most of the destruction was limited to the pool bottom. He could keep his father out of the backyard, he was sure. But if the house was a wreck, it would harder to hide.
So, instead of going back to sleep, Mike got up. Unlocking the guest bedroom door, he went down the back steps into the kitchen.
As he feared, it was a wreck. Leftover food all over the counter, broken glass on the floor. There were probably other things, but Mike didn't look at those right away. Instead, he walked to the sink and grabbed the dustpan his mother kept in the cabinet underneath the sink. Being careful not to cut his bare feet, he got on the floor near the biggest patch of broken glass and started to pick up the pieces. He knew he had to get the house in some sort of order before his father came, so he just got to work. He didn't think to call for his mother.
He also didn't think to stop and look at how bad the rest of the house looked. So, he had no idea until later that there were people passed out on the front steps and in the living room. He didn't know that there were random objects strewn down the front hall and that the mirror in the foyer had been broken. He didn't know about the people sleeping on the front lawn or the spots of puke in the grass. And he didn't know that the front door was wide open.
That was how his father found the house twenty minutes later. It was probably telling that Mike didn't process the shouting right away. It was probably about the third or fourth time that his father had yelled, "Mike! Sally! Mike! Where are you?!" that he heard him.
Mike didn't answer right away, because he was panicking inside. The house was a mess and his father was early. He was worried that his father was going to be angry with him about the mess.
And at first, Mike thought he was proved right. When his father got to the kitchen, he noticed the state of the room, Mike on the floor, and the pile of broken glass on the floor.
"Shit," was all his father said before he reached down and lifted Mike off the floor and into his arms.
From his new vantage point, Mike could see how messed up the kitchen was. He could also feel the anger radiating off of his father. "Dad, I'm really sorry about the kitchen."
"Where the hell is your mother?" was his father's response.
"I…I don't know," Mike answered honestly.
This just seemed to make his father angrier. After muttering, "What the fuck was she thinking?" his father headed toward the backyard shouting, "Sally! Sally, answer me damnit!" before Mike could stop him.
Before he knew it, he and his father – who hadn't put him down yet – were standing at the edge of the pool. At the bottom of the pool was a mess. Of the five people who were lying at the bottom of the pool, only two of them looked awake. The couple who were all smushed together in the car the day before.
"Hey," Derek shouted at the couple entwined at the bottom. "Where's Sally?!"
"Ow. Ow!" the woman of the couple muttered, "Why he is shouting?" she whispered as she blinked and held a hand to her head.
"Easy on the volume, man," her companion replied.
"Where is Sally?" his father growled.
"Who?"
"The person who hosted whatever the hell happened last night."
"Oh yeah," the woman muttered as she crawled over her guy and blinked. "Killer party. She's around here somewhere."
"Oh, there, I think," the guy pointed to someone else on the floor of the pool. Mike whimpered a little bit at seeing his mother just laying there with a glass in her hand.
"Shit," his father said again as he turned in such a way that Mike couldn't see the woman in the pool. "What the fuck?"
"It was probably all the cosmopolitans she had last night. Or was it the three dirty margaritas?" the female shared
"That was after the shot contest, right?" her other half replied.
Mike closed his eyes, because he could feel that his father was really, really angry at that point. "Look," his father said really quietly, "if she comes to and realizes she has responsibilities to people besides those that work in the local bar or booze store, tell her Derek has her son. If she thinks to ask."
"Sure, man, whatever," was the replied Mike heard, but by that point, he was moving again.
His father, still angry, walked back through the house and directly to the car. Mike thought about mentioning that he wasn't washed or dressed yet, but decided against that. Surprisingly enough, his father managed to put him in the car and gently buckle him in, something that he usually didn't do. But then he slammed the car door.
Mike sat there for a few minutes while his father leaned against the car and seemed to be shouting about something. Then, his father walked around the front of the car and got in. He didn't start the car immediately. He just gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his hands were turning white.
Mike wished he'd managed to get up earlier, clean more of the house up. It was his fault that the house wasn't quite right, he was sure. Wanting to lessen his father's anger, he tried apologizing again. "Dad, I'm really, really sorry for the mess."
After his quiet statement, his father turned to look at him. Mike saw a lot of things in his father's face, including some anger. But he didn't understand all of it, or why his father's eyes were glassy.
After blinking a few times, his father just quietly said, "Let's go." With that, he turned back to look out the windshield and started the car.
It was a silent ride. Surprisingly, they stopped at his father's new house first. They never went there first on the weekends. Mike couldn't figure out why they went there. As his father stopped the car, Mike tried to think about what he was supposed to do next.
His father came around to get him out of the car; Mike figured this was because he hadn't moved right away. After unbuckling him, his father lifted him into his arms. Mike almost objected – he was a boy, not a doll! – until he remembered that he wasn't wearing shoes at the moment. And that was still in those geeky pajamas that Grandma Rose, his mother's mother, sent him last year. Burying his face in his father's shoulder, he really hoped no one saw him.
As they entered the house, Mike decided it was safe to face the world. Walking down the last few steps to the house ground floor was a pretty woman with brown hair. She was on her cell phone until she noticed Mike and his father by the door. "Em, I'll call you back," she said and then quickly closed the phone. "Derek, what-?"
His father gently set Mike on the floor. Then he slammed the door and punched it.
"Derek!" the woman fussed as she looked at her father. "What happened? Why are you here? What's going on?"
"Do you know what she did?!" Derek began to growl, but his voice got louder and louder as he continued to talk. "She threw a party. Sally threw some fucking, crazy, out of control party with my son in the house. In fact, I arrived to passed out drunks, puke, rotting food, an open door, and my son on the floor, freaking picking up glass! In bare feet! Alone! What the fuck-"
"Derek! Derek Venturi, listen to me," the woman raised her voice slightly to be heard over his father angry ranting. "You need to calm down. Alright? You're scaring everyone."
Surprisingly, at this point, the strange pretty woman ignored his father and turned her attention to Mike. "Hi," she said as she smiled. "You're Mike, right?"
Mike nodded, a little too shy and confused at the moment to respond with his own hello in return.
"Have you eaten yet today?" she asked.
Mike shook his head.
"Okay, why don't you come with me and we'll get you some breakfast?" she offered as she smiled again. She then held out her hand.
Mike shyly took her hand and the pretty woman led him through the clean house to the kitchen. She pointed to one of the stools at the island in the center of the kitchen, and Mike climbed up on it.
"Now, let me guess," she began as she looked at him. "You like chocolate chip pancakes, don't you?"
Mike blinked in surprise. How had this woman known that?
The woman laughed, "You are just like your daddy." Unlike what his mother had said yesterday, Mike thought this woman was trying to pay him a compliment.
"So, I'll make some chocolate chip pancakes this morning. And your father always tells me that my pancakes are great," she winked at him as she began to move around the kitchen to start making the sweet breakfast. "Would you like something to drink, too?" she asked.
Mike nodded again.
The woman went to the fridge to pull out orange juice. She poured some in a small glass and put it in front of Mike on the counter. "Thank you, ma'am," Mike replied quietly.
She turned and smiled again. "What pretty manners! I'm guessing you didn't learn that from your father," she added with a laugh.
"Nana Abby said that you should always say thank you," Mike replied quietly not really sure what to say in that situation. It was true, though. His grandmother Abby did talk with him about saying please and thank you when she visited.
"And she's right. And you can call me Casey," the woman replied.
The kitchen fell to silence again as the woman – Casey – continued to make pancakes. As she was putting pancakes onto three plates, Mike's father joined them in the kitchen. Mike glanced at him before looking back at his plate of pancakes. His father looked less angry, but Mike still didn't know what to say, so he stayed quiet.
"Chocolate chip pancakes?" his father asked.
Casey shrugged, "I figured that the men in the house needed them today."
Mike felt himself smile at being called a man. And he looked up to see his father walk over to Casey and hug her. "Thanks, Case," he said quietly.
She didn't say anything at first, just hugged Mike's father back. Then, after pointing out the stool to Mike's right, where she had just set a plate with a stack of six pancakes, she said, "We don't have any whipped cream."
"That's okay," Mike's father said as he said down. He sighed as he looked down at his plate. At first Mike thought his father was preparing to punish him, until he said, "I have to talk to my father."
Mike smiled a little as he returned to his pancakes. Grandpa George was a fun guy, even if his jokes were bad. Maybe Mike wasn't going to get in trouble. Maybe Grandpa George would just come by to hang out.
"On a Saturday? Why?" Casey asked.
"To challenge custody," his father replied.
Mike stopped chewing. Custody was one of those red-alert words. Red-alert words were words guaranteed to make his mother start screaming or to result in a shouting match between his parents. Other red-alerts included "visitation," "family vacation," and "life choices".
Casey didn't start shouting. Instead she calmly replied, "You think it's come to that?"
"I'm not taking him back there, Case. No way in hell. Sally is not fit to be anywhere around my son."
Mike stopped eating and he dropped his fork on the plate. So he was going to be punished. His father was going to stop him from seeing his mother, probably because of the mess in the house. It made Mike scared. Who was going to take care of his mother when he wasn't there? She only threw those parties when she missed him. Maybe if he-
"Dad, I'm really sorry about the house," Mike began as he tried not to cry. He knew that crying wouldn't work with his father. His father had a thing about tears. "But, I can go back and clean it. And I won't let it get that bad again and-"
It was Casey who stopped him. Patting him on the shoulder, she looked at him first. "It's okay. It's okay. You aren't in trouble. And we aren't doing anything until after breakfast."
"I'm not taking him back there, Case," Mike's father insisted.
Much as she had tried to calm down Mike, she rubbed her hand up and down Mike's father's shoulder. Then she kissed him briefly and said, "Right now, we are going to have breakfast. Later, you'll call your father and we'll figure out what to do. Okay?"
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"Did Mike's father take him back to Sally?" Dr. Lawrence asked.
James shook his head. "No, he didn't. Admittedly, for part of the weekend, Derek and Casey tried to keep Mike's mind off of what happened after the party. But as Sunday came to a close, Derek had somehow appeared with Mike's homework and said he was going to stay with them for a little longer. A little longer stretched into Monday. Derek took Mike to school and picked him up afterwards."
"And Sally didn't say anything?" Dr. Lawrence asked, surprised.
"Oh, no! She showed up on the front steps of Derek's house Monday evening, not quite sober and screaming like a banshee. His parents had a shouting match that night with Derek refusing to return Mike. Mike didn't hear much of fight because his Grandma Nora and Casey had taken him upstairs and decided to distract him by helping him with his homework."
"And then what happened?"
James shrugged, "Mike stayed with Derek for a month until they went to court."
"Court?"
"Derek decided he wanted full custody of Mike. He was fighting to declare Sally an unfit mother. As it was, he was able to bar her from seeing Mike for awhile. The next time Mike saw his mother was in the courtroom."
Dr. Lawrence sighed sadly, "And I take it that the courtroom experience was hard on poor Mike."
James nodded. "Yeah, it was hell on him. But it would have made for good TV."
- to be continued -