The room was cool. Franklin always kept his house, his living room cool. I guess that's a good thing because I knew this meeting was going to get hot and very excited. I did as instructed and called Tracey. At least, this time I didn't have to bribe her to show up. I just called her and she agreed. I couldn't tell you how awkward it was when she tried to give me a hug. I permitted her, of course, and she didn't seem to realize how stiff I was in the embrace. I suppose that it was good tat she didn't. I didn't want to break her heart. It was painful enough for me to hear, but this would mean that her whole life was a lie.
It was also pretty uncomfortable just sitting in the room just the three of us. Franklin was sitting just in the middle of the sectional, in the bend of the 'L' so to speak, as he said he would. I was sitting on the end that was closest to the window. It was close to noon so the sun wasn't shining into the house, just beating straight down from its apex. Trace was sitting on the other side of the couch nearer to Franklin than I. She was making those stupid googly eyes that she made whenever she saw a boy that she liked. He looked, on the surface, aloof, but I really think that he was trying his best to ignore it because of my presence. I wouldn't have been upset if they got together. He would probably be the best guy for her. But, I'm getting way, way ahead of myself.
I allowed my eyes to drift down to my wrist. It was exactly ten to noon and I was getting antsy. I felt like asking if he called them, but I knew that would just annoy him. I already asked him, twice, and the answer didn't change in the five minutes between questions. They were coming, and they were coming together, or, to be clearer, they would arrive at the same time and by the same means.
I looked back out of the window and spent some slow-moving time looking mindlessly, lethargically at the skyline. It made no sense that I was in this city sitting in this house about to open a can of worms. It made no sense that I would be working on a marriage that has cause very little joy in proportion to the stress. I really wanted a beer, a bourbon, or some vodka, but Franklin denied it saying that it'd be wise for me to stay sober. He was right, but a buzz to ignore the tension would have been nice. He even knew me so well, that he hid all of his booze somewhere, probably off of the premises. I admit, if I had anything to drink, I most likely would not be able to stop. Furthermore to that, I would probably say some shit I didn't mean. I needed to be lucid because I certainly wouldn't be calm.
You know, I guess, when you have a profession like mine, life seems to move at double the speed so you need something any thing outside of yourself to be constant. I thought that Amanda was that thing.
Apparently, it was fleeting.
With that thought, Franklin's doorbell rang and the host got up from his seat to answer the door. He walked across the room, exhaling deeply, anticipating the amount of shit through which he was going to be force to wade. He opened the door with an inhale. The tone of her voice resounded through the hollow rooms of the house. I say her voice, but now, to me, it sounded more like the din a wounded animal screeching mixed with the noise created by long fingernails moving down a blackboard. She hugged Franklin flirtatiously, making eye contact with me through the dark sunglasses. He hardly reciprocated the hug and his back stayed straight. She let him go and stepped into the living room. She walked in with such drama, as to give me a chance to look at what she was wearing. It was a low-cut black dress and that's all I needed to see.
Jimmy came into the mansion right behind her and pounded Franklin's hand. He had a strange, dumbfounded look on his face. I didn't know why, but it sure was a strange look. If I didn't know any better, it would be the same pout that some made around people they liked. He couldn't have been smitten with anyone in the room. Could he?
He sat down and so did Franklin. I was, as I said by the windows. To my left was Jimmy, and beside him in the bend of the sofa, was the owner of the house and impromptu marriage counselor, Franklin. Beside him was my 'daughter', and beside her sat her mother and my maybe soon to be ex-wife. Franklin had the good sense to put a coffee table in the space that was between the ends of the sectional, because it would have been way too easy for either of us to get to the other.
"Now, I called you all here so you could settle this shit that has been messing with you're relationship," Franklin said, straightening his posture. "I'll be honest, I don't know if it's healthy for you two to stay together. I don't know that this is even worth the effort of saving. But I can say this, the fact that you both showed up, on time, says that you both think that there's something to the other person. You think that there's something worth fighting for. Now, I ain't saying that this is going to make anything easier, and I ain't saying that you are going to leave here feeling any different that when you came in. I got just one rule. One person talks at a time. I'm gonna let Michael go first."
"Amanda," I said looking into what I could see of her face that was not obscured by sunglasses, "Can you take the sunglasses off please?" I must have been more calm than I thought because Franklin seemed flabbergasted that I wasn't jumping over tables and choking the life out of a certain slut. I continued, "I don't know where went wrong. I don't know what I did or what I said exactly to make you so angry at me but whatever it is."
"Oh," she started, "how quickly you forget. I caught you between a stripper's legs. Don't think I'm just one of your dumb bitches that you can just call up and apologize to. I am not the one to try this shit on."
I swear I felt a vein pop, "And I apologized when it happened! That was 1997, now it's 2013. That can't be the real reason you're mad at me! That can't be it. We have been together since 1986. I don't know why you would hold one fault, one honest mistake that happened ten, eleven years into our relationship against me now. How much sense does that make?" I asked. Maybe in her
"It makes sense Michael, after we pledged that we would be faithful to one another. Remember? We took vows! Till death do us part, Michael Townley."
"So that means that you don't want to end this then?" Franklin asked.
"I didn't then. I meant those vows then. Now it's, 'Till death or divorce do we part.' I just know that Michael has a serious problem and he needs to fix it."
"You know what, you're right. I have a serious problem and you're it."
"Alright, alright, alright, alright," Franklin said in quick procession. "This conversation won't get nowhere with y'all talking like this. Just tell me…" there was a pause. "Tell me about what you dislike most about the other. Amanda first."
"He's a drunk, and he's lazy. He's unappreciative and he's an angry, stubborn old man."
I wasn't really upset about being called such things. When you stick up joints with a partner like Trevor, you learn to develop a thick skin to comparatively light words like 'lazy'.
"And Amanda, I… I. I am sick of your judgmental glares, your endless guilt trips, and your whorish behavior around other men." I couldn't believe that I just said that, but for the first time in a long time, I told the truth to her without walking over eggshells.
"Oh really, I'm a whore Michael? You were the first to break those vows, YOU!"
"No, Amanda, you are quite right and I'm sorry. You are not a whore. You're a slut. A whore has something on you. A whore is smart enough to get paid for what she does!"
"Michael, don't forget that you were my pimp." She nodded airily as if she was proud of the statement. And it was just that, a statement. She didn't scream it in anger or embarrassment. She just said it, coolly. Tracy and Jimmy, grimacing, both moved toward Franklin. Franklin, just looked blank, or rather as if he was concealing how pissed off he was.
"I was, and I ain't proud of that, but that ended in 1987 before I married you. We both made vows. I followed them, but you didn't."
"Yes, I did." It looked like she was quivering a little.
"You did?" Those words came out more as a sardonic statement than a question. As I said them - those really short words - I reached into my breast pocket. I pulled out a paper that had been folded into fourths. That paper was what I wanted to show her the most. I didn't feel the least bit conflicted about revealing this secret. Fuck, it wasn't my secret. It wasn't my fault.
"Tracey, do you remember that day I asked you to come down to the Pier?" I asked. Now my voice was unnaturally calm.
"Yes," Tracey said, still not having pieced together where that line of questioning could be headed.
"Remember that I swabbed your cheek?"
"Dad, what does this-" Tracey stopped mid-sentence and turned to her mother who had taken her eyes off of me and focused on something -maybe the canopy of one of those imported palm trees- that was outside. Tracey figured it out She looked at her mother and said, "What is he talking about?"
"I don't know." She lied quickly. The words seemed to run into each other. I stifled a grim, ironic chuckle. What was she going to say to get out of this one? Well, I sure as shit wasn't going to give her the time to think of something. Hell no.
I read straight from the letter. "Subject A cannot be the father of Subject B. Subject A is of Northwestern European descent and Subject B has genetic markers consistent with peoples of Eastern Europe."
Jimmy spoke in his whiny voice, astonished, "Ma. What were you doing?"
"Fine, Michael. You happy? I cheated and Tracey isn't your daughter. Do you feel better now? You're right, okay, you're right." She spoke as if she was talking about a chore she neglected to do. She started to rise out of her seat quickly. She took her sunglasses off of the table and started to walk to the door. The walk turned into the brisk gait of a businessman. She was trying to escape.
"You are not going to shrug this off!" I was, by now, out of my seat, following her.
"No, I'm not shrugging it off, but I'm done talking to you." She opened the door and closed it behind herself. I reopened I to find that she was already in her car.
I screamed with my fist raised up in the air like a proverbial old man as she started to speed down Whispymound Drive, "We're not done with this by a long shot, bitch." I looked over and saw Franklin's neighbor just up the hill a ways staring at me. "And as for you," I shouted at the nosy man, "Mind your own fucking business."
I walked, more like stomped, back into Franklin's house and slammed to door shut, noticing the still cool air of the place. All I saw was my son standing looking out of the window at the hazy sky and Tracey. Tracey, who in my mind was and will always be my daughter, was just sitting on the sectional with her head buried in Franklin's chest. She was sobbing and convulsing and retching violently. Her blonde hair was disheveled and I could only imagine what the case was with the makeup she was wearing. I didn't know where she got the time to inhale in the part of the episode I witnessed. She was literally crying herself sick, by the looks of it. It made me angry. Did I really need to say anything about her not being my kid?
"Trace-," I started to say. I wanted to say something, but I knew that no word would come out. I wanted so badly to put a hole in a wall, but I was not going to, at least not here. "We'll talk later," I said before marching out of the house and slamming the door again.