3

Kathleen had agreed to a change of visiting arrangements, but complained incessantly about it. Her initial plan had been to spend the weekend at a luxurious spa, paid for by her current boyfriend, a well-known gallery owner who cheated on his wife. But Lynnie had insisted that she really needed to talk to her, so she had finally given in. She had baked an apple pie, Lynnie's favorite, and had made a pot of tea. Like Tony and Angela, Kathleen had been somewhat surprised about Lynnie's request to change plans - the three of them finally having something in common - but now she was looking forward to spending a few days with her daughter.

There had been times Kathleen regretted having agreed on Lynnie living with Tony. Or more precisely, living with Tony and Angela. Right after the divorce, she hadn't been able to take care of the girl, who was a little over five years old and still in therapy after her terrible accident. She had had a full-time job she had really liked, and Tony had been on a leave of absence from his job giving him enough time to take Lynnie to her doctor's appointments and therapy sessions. So it had just made sense to allow her daughter to live with her ex-husband, accepting the undesirable side-effect that she would live in the same house as her archenemy.

The former spouses were getting along quite well, more often than not. That could be called a surprise, considering the unpleasant end of their marriage. Every second weekend Lynnie stayed with her mother and her respective boyfriend - and there had been quite a few over time. Tony didn't ask for child support, which she would've fought against in court anyway, given the fact that he was living in a solid relationship with a well-to-do woman. At the beginning Kathleen had thought that the reason for Tony and Angela not getting married was exactly because they wanted to sue her for child support. But she had been mistaken. Tony had never demanded a single dollar from her, and Angela never ever interfered. Her ex-husband only demanded that she respect the visiting agreements and stick to the appointed pick-up times. After she had once shown up unannounced in Fairfield, thus bursting in on a family dinner, Tony had made perfectly clear that he wanted her to respect the rules.

Sometimes Kathleen wished her daughter played a much more vital role in her life than she actually did. She knew she wasn't the motherly, devoted and self-sacrificing type of mother, like the perfect wives and mothers you could see on TV, who gave up their careers and put their children's and husband's needs always in first place. She just wasn't able to do that. A possible explanation might be that she had lost her own mother in her early childhood and lacked a role model. Another, and maybe more likely one was that she was a self-centered, narcissistic and selfish person. But you couldn't call her a bad mother. She loved Lynnie, she cared for her, and deep down in her soul she knew that leaving her with Tony had been the most altruistic decision she had ever made on her behalf.

"Mom, there's something I need to talk to you about," Lynnie started. She was nervous, and tense, and apprehensive, but she needed to know. She had always been closer to her father than her mother; she had been Daddy's little girl from the very beginning. Since her parents' roles had been reversed for as long as she could remember, it had always been the most natural thing that her father had stayed home and had looked after her whereas her mother had been away working. Only when she had stayed over at her friend's house had she realized that things were the other way around in other families. But she hadn't minded so much. She had always felt loved by both her parents, only that both showed her their love in very different ways.

"What is it, Princess?"

"Don't call me 'Princess', Mom! You know that I don't like it."

"Okay, okay! What is it, Gwendolyn? Is that better?" It wasn't really. She preferred Lynnie, but Kathleen never called her Lynnie. She insisted on Gwendolyn, or Gwen, because she was named after her grandmother, and Kathleen didn't like the pet name Tony had given her. Lynnie had long ago given up trying to stop her mother from calling her that old-fashioned name which had actually never suited her. So she did what she always did and just ignored the issue.

"You always told me that Dad and you were a dream couple," she started and hoped that this rather general remark would already get her mother to talk.

"We were! We were a perfect match! Both from Brooklyn, college students, very serious about our second-chance education, I was a waitress and he was a housekeeper. We were meant for each other."

Okay, so she had to be a bit clearer. "But you never told me that he only proposed because you were pregnant."

Kathleen gasped with wide eyes. She was taken completely off guard, had expected anything but this as the topic they would be talking about, and had never wanted to have that conversation with her daughter. She knew that thinking she'd be able to hide that little detail from her forever had been childish, but now that she was actually confronted with the question her pulse accelerated and instantly put her in defensive mode.

"I wouldn't call it 'only'. Besides, who told you?"

"That's got nothing to do with it. The question is, why did you never tell me?"

"Because it's of no importance! We would've married anyway. We were very much in love." Kathleen stood pat, her chin up. But she was nervous. She tried to hide it, but wiped her sweaty palms on her thighs and avoided Lynnie's glance.

"Really?"

"Who told you we weren't?" Kathleen demanded to know now, trying to gain some time to think. She didn't want to deal dishonestly with her daughter, so she weighed her words cautiously in order to not tell her too much. She didn't need to know everything.

"Nobody." She wasn't lying. Nobody had talked to her about it explicitly, she had simply overheard Angela's and her father's conversation.

"Is it true that I wasn't a planned child but conceived by accident?

"Says who? Your father's current girlfriend?" Kathleen asked, giving the word 'girlfriend' a pejorative ring.

"Her name is Angela. And she's not his 'current girlfriend'! He's lived with her longer than he was ever married to you."

Ouch!

"But she's the one who talked to you."

"No, I overheard a conversation between Dad and her."

"Have you been eavesdropping, young lady?" Kathleen tried to shift the charges against her daughter now.

"Nice try, Mom, but it's not me who we are talking about right now!"

Kathleen exhaled stagily. She slowly got the feeling that she wouldn't be let off the hook. One more try to beat about the bush. "They talked about how you were conceived? Don't they have a sex life of their own?"

"Well, they rather talked about marriage in general." Lynnie hesitated for a moment. She wasn't sure whether she should tell her mother but then decided, that she would find out sooner or later anyway. "Dad kind of proposed to Angela."

"Whaaaat? They are getting married?"

Until this day, it had given Kathleen an feeling of deep self-satisfaction that Tony and Angela had never married. It made her something special. As long as he didn't have a wife, being his ex-wife affiliated her with him. In her peculiar mind-set an 'ex-wife' counted more than a 'girlfriend' - or a 'confidante', or a 'soul mate', as he had liked to call her corrival. She couldn't make out Angela though. Why wouldn't she want to be married? Every woman wanted to be married! Being a divorcee was a stigma; a woman dumped by a man who wasn't able to share his life with her anymore. What a vilification!

"Angela didn't accept."

Kathleen gave a mocking laugh. "I always knew this woman was too snobbish to marry her housekeeper. Or ex-housekeeper." She had always figured that the difference in social status had been the reason then, and still was today, that Angela had never been willing to make her relationship to her former employee official. This woman had always believed herself to be greater than everyone else. She was self-employed, self-sufficient, and independent! Ha! Other words for being a wallflower.

"That's not the reason, Mom, but I haven't come here to talk about them getting married or not. I asked you something! Why did you never tell me that Dad and you had to get married just to let me be a legitimate child? Didn't you think I had the right to know?"

"We were very much in love, Sweetheart, and your father was thrilled when I told him I was expecting."

"It sounded different when Dad talked about it."

"What did he say?"

"That you had tricked him. That he had actually wanted to break up with you, but felt the obligation to propose because you were pregnant."

"He told you that?"

"No! Don't you listen to me, Mom? I've just told you that I overheard a conversation."

"His proposal."

"Yes, his proposal. But I don't want to talk about him right now, but about you. Did you?"

"Did I do what?"

"Cheat on him with birth control?" Lynnie spoke loudly now, the impatience in her voice unmistakable.

Kathleen felt like being interrogated, and she didn't like it. So she remained silent. But she should've known better. If Lynnie was anything like her, it was her stubbornness which was a striking resemblance. Lynnie was determined, she wanted to know and she wouldn't give in. "Mom?" she uttered sharply.

"'Cheating' is a strong word. I didn't cheat on him. He left birth control to me, like men always do, and I accidentally failed to take care of it once or twice. So it eventually happened. I got pregnant. If it had been so out of the question for him to have a baby with me, he could've used a condom. But he didn't. So I assumed he wanted it as much as I did." That was the pretext she had been calming her bad conscience with ever since she'd made the plan all these years ago.

"Didn't it matter to you that he was in love with another woman?"

"What other woman? You mean Angela? His so-called boss? He always insisted there was nothing between them."

"But there was, and you knew it, didn't you?"

"Of course I did! It was so obvious, although they weren't dating or anything, they only lived together under one roof. But Angela couldn't hide her jealousy from me, and your father stood me up so many times because of her particular needs. I only had to put two and two together. They were more than employer and employee to each other. I knew. And they knew. Everybody knew! The neighbors had been gossiping about them for years. It wasn't always easy for me. I was his girlfriend, and I wanted him to be with me instead of her. That's no crime! I loved him. I had to take matters into my own hands if I didn't want to lose him!"

It still hurt her that Tony had never been fully committed to her, not for a single day in their relationship. And that he had gotten involved with Angela right after their divorce bugged her to this very day. It made her feel like he she had been nothing but an interlude for him, something he regretted now in retrospect, something which had never been supposed to be forever. And of course it hadn't slipped her attention that her ex-husband had literally thrived at Angela's side. He had graduated after all, had become a respected professor at the college they had once attended as students, and every time he came to her house to pick up Lynnie she could read from his demeanor that he was happy, happier than he had ever been with her. He still looked good - well-trained body, thick full hair, winning smile. Deep down she knew that he was a good man, reliable, reasonable and decent. Unlike the other men she had been with since then, some of them cheating on their wives or abandoning their kids.

If he only hadn't been so bewitched by this woman! This woman, who was so different from her. Who had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. Who had been sent to the best private schools and had been brought up in an environment of affluence, intellectuality and refined society. Angela's family belonged to the New England aristocracy, to Connecticut's high society so to speak, and Kathleen had always been intimidated. Even when she had first been called and invited over to her house for a study session with their study group. Her house had been impressive, especially compared to the tiny apartment she lived in at the time. Angela's manners had been impeccable, her look elegant. She had walked around the house in a tight business suit, high heels, with perfect make-up and hair. Kathleen had never been dressed like this in her entire life, yet Angela did every day! She had been an attractive woman, no doubt about it, and she still was, ... Tony had taste, Kathleen had to admit. Angela was still slender, her blond hair shoulder-length and perfectly trimmed. Her skin, although the first fine wrinkles showed around her eyes, was radiant and firm. Men certainly fell for her easily, even at that age, and she bet that there were a lot of fellow ad execs who made approaches to her. Why for god's sake was she so crazy about Tony? Her Tony!

What bugged Kathleen most was that now, over time, Angela had outdone her appearance-wise. All these years ago age had played to her very own advantage. She was younger than Angela, had been wilder and more spontaneous, not trapped down by a job or family. Angela wasn't only older than she, and even older than Tony, she also had been settled with responsibilities for a business and a son. But today, you couldn't tell which of the two women was younger. As a matter of fact, people would say that Angela had aged better than Kathleen. Kathleen had gained some weight; she wasn't fat or anything, but a size zero was out of the question. Her blond hair showed its first streaks of grey, and when she was off a relationship, having nobody to sponsor her visits to the hairdresser, she just couldn't afford regular trimming and dyeing. Her eyes were encircled with clearly visible crow's feet, and her skin had aged prematurely from too much sunbathing. More than ever, Kathleen felt second class to Angela. But it most certainly didn't make her back down, instead it had rather the opposite effect; she overreacted and fired indiscriminately whenever she felt challenged.

The only field she felt having the edge over Angela was motherhood, and Kathleen silently congratulated herself from time to time that she had outwitted her opponent so easily with making Tony the father of her child. If this woman had been so classy or morality-driven to not let him into her bed without being married, well, she hadn't! And every time one of their rare encounters left a bitter aftertaste on her tongue, she washed it away with the sweet self-satisfaction of having succeeded in keeping Tony away from Angela long enough until her childbearing years were finally over. She would never be able to give him what she had given him ... a child! Okay, he was Jonathan's surrogate father - granted! - but that wasn't the same. They lived this silly little pretense of an harmonious patchwork family out there in this country house, but Tony and she had more than only patchwork, they had the real thing! A biological connection through blood relationship. That counted more than being only emotionally related, right? An emotional connection could be released any time, a biological one couldn't!

"Mom? Hello-ho!" Lynnie waved with her hand in front of Kathleen's face, thus pulling her out of her temporary musing.

"What?"

"I asked you why it didn't bother you that Dad was in love with Angela when he married you."

"It didn't bother me because he wasn't!" One could almost hear the exclamation mark Kathleen put behind that sentence. She pressed the words through gritted teeth, staring Lynnie into the eye to reinforce her argument. "He had a silly crush on her, that ... was ... all! And I can't tell you what she saw in him. Maybe it was his physique, his athletic body. I bet with all this sitting behind their desks these business people don't have such gorgeous asses!"

"Oh please, spare me my father's physical advantages!"

Kathleen sighed. Thinking about Tony's perfect body still gave her shivers. "They had been living together for more than six years when your father and I met, so if they had been so much in love, as you are trying to tell me, then why hadn't they dated? Why hadn't they confessed their love?"

That was something that bewildered Lynnie as well. Lynnie, being a teenaged girl still unfamiliar with love's trials and tribulations, couldn't think of a reason why two people who loved each other so much worked so hard to stay apart. Kathleen for her part preferred her very own interpretation, namely that Angela and Tony had simply never been meant for each other.

"Can we drop this topic now? I don't want to waste my weekend talking about my ex-husband and his floozy," Kathleen finally tried to put an end to the conversation.

"Would you please stop calling Angela names, Mom! She's very kind to me, and you know that I like her a lot."

"Whatever," Kathleen answered dismissively.

'Interesting,' Lynnie thought, 'that Angela never speaks of my mother in such a condescending tone.' If she ever spoke of her at all, she was calm and composed. Never had Lynnie heard her using bad words or speaking ill of her. As a matter of fact, she hadn't even known that Angela disliked her mother until she had overheard her explaining why she coulnd't marry her Dad.

Her mother probably thought that she was through with asking, that all her questions had been answered. But that was far from true! Numerous questions she was dying to get answers for still flashed up in her mind, and she was determined to get those answers. Well, she still had the whole weekend ahead of her. There was enough time to drill her mother with questions until her urge for knowledge would eventually be satisfied.