Without a Paddle

"What happened, happened," she said. "There's no way to take it back or I already would have. You need to just stay away from my son and stay away from me. It was a mistake. You took advantage of me five years ago and got me to do something stupid that I've regretted ever since." She said those things to me with both venom and malice. She wanted her words to hurt me. But I knew the real reason. She didn't want our feelings to ruin our marriages.

"Miriam, I won't tell anyone about what happened or about our son," I said. "But in exchange for that you have to do something for me."

"What," she spat acidly. "Isn't what you've already done to my life bad enough? What do you want?"

"You," I said. "I want more of what we did that day. If we don't, then I'll tell Mark everything. I've been through a divorce once and I'm tired of Cora, so going through it again won't hurt me, but you'd lose everything you hold dear."

She cried a lot but she agreed. She had no choice. We only get together twice a year which bothers me but she claims not to want to do it at all. Usually it's on Mark Jr.'s birthday which serves to remind her of why we're doing it and on my birthday as my special treat. This has been going on for almost fifteen years and we've never been caught. There have been a few times when we had to re-schedule or just missed it, but it has never ended. In fact, it's one of the things I look forward to the most. And now because of my inability to control my anger, the cat is out of the bag.

I have no idea how all of the chips will settle. In my mind, I kind of hope that things will calm down and go back the same. Mark will probably be angry for quite a while, but at least now he'll know. Well, he'll know most of it. I'm hoping that Miriam has enough brains not to tell him that it happened more than once. But if she doesn't let him know that we're still involved, I still have some leverage to use against her.

As far as things go with my son, that boy has some growing up to do. Now that he knows that I'm his father, things are going to have to change. I'm willing to be magnanimous. I have no intention of freezing Mark out. He'll be welcome to participate in everything that my son and I do. That's a lot better than they ever treated me.

What I'd really love to have happen would be for Mark to realize that as a friend, he should probably be willing to bite the bullet in exchange for all of the years that I've given him with my son. For the past fifteen years, I've had to stand on the sidelines and watch as my child was subtly transposed into a clone of Mark. I got absolutely no say in the important decisions of his life. I've had to watch from the sidelines as he went through his greatest triumphs and failures. And while it's true that Mark didn't know that Mark Jr. was my son, I suffered anyway.

So if he was a real friend, he'd just divorce Miriam and disappear. That way my family and I could work things out and he could start over someplace else. In a perfect world, he'd even take Cora with him but that would be asking too much. I smiled just thinking about it and as the smile was at its broadest, I see Cora coming down the stairs. She's carrying two suitcases.

"Goodbye, George," she says. Her eyes are filled with tears and she just walks away.

"Cora, wait," I said. But she doesn't stop. She walks out of the house and opens the trunk of her car. She puts her suitcases into it and closes it. I grab her arm and she pulls away from me.

"I know that I'm not very smart," she said. "But I'm a nice person and I loved you with all of my heart. I spoke to Miriam, George and I know what you did to her. You're some kind of a monster. And I've known about the other women you cheated on me with. But I always thought that in the end, my love for you would someday make you see that I'm the right woman for you and we'd end up happy. I never wanted or asked for perfection. I just wanted someone to love and to be loved by that person in return. And since it looks like that isn't going to happen, I'll have to settle for taking all of your money."

"Your lawyer, Stanton Rice, will be representing me in our divorce. He's very sure that he can get me a lot more money than the pre-nup we signed thirty years ago, especially since you've admitted in front of witnesses to cheating on me and fathering a child."

I was shocked. Her using my own lawyer was actually smart. The bastard knew how much money I had and where it all was. I felt a lump in my throat. The phone was ringing inside of the house and I ran to get it.

"George, can you come over here? We need to talk," said Miriam.

"Sure Miri, I'll be right there," I said.

"Don't you ever call me anything but my fucking name," she hissed. "My name is Miriam. Only my husband calls me Miri. You can call me Mrs. Dawson."

I walked out the back door and over to the gate in the fence. The gate wouldn't open. Then I noticed that there was a big padlock on the other side of it. I went back through the house and went next door. The door was opened by a crying Miriam. I reached out to hug her and she slapped my face. Her fingernails raked my cheek and drew blood. She looked worse than I've ever seen her. Her hair was thrown back into a pony-tail and she had bags under her eyes. It was the eyes that bothered me the most. Her eyes alternated between dull and lifeless to an almost feral state.

"Mark will be here in a few minutes," she said. "You stay on the fucking porch until he gets here."

"Mir...Mrs. Dawson, what about our son? Is he coming too?" I asked.

"You should probably hope not," she snapped. "The last thing he said about you was that the he'd had to get away from you yesterday to avoid murdering you. I spoke to my husband, Mark, this morning for a few minutes. He won't even talk to me because of you. He wanted me to know that Mark Jr. is fine. He went back up to his school early because he couldn't take what was going on down here. My own son won't even speak to me because of you. He HATES you, George. Because of your mouth, we've both lost him. You went from being his dad's weird friend to being the man he hates most in life. Are you happy now?"

I was stunned. This wasn't the way things were supposed to work.

"I've always hated you George," she said. "Every time that we were together, I only did it to spare my husband the pain that you put him through yesterday. And part of it was pure selfishness on my part. I'm damaged George. I kept thinking that deep down inside no matter how much he loved me, Mark would have chosen to be with a woman who could give him more children. So I thought that if he found out about us, he'd have divorced me and found one. I was so stupid. Do you know who made me see that? Cora did. She told me about how she wished that you'd loved her even half as much as Mark loved me. And I let him down. I won't do that ever again, George. And whether he takes me back or not, I'm going to see to it that you suffer. Now sit your ass on that porch and don't move."

"But Miri, I'm..." her hand moved so fast I didn't see it. And this time it drew more blood. I was sitting there on that porch with deep welts on my face when Mark's Mustang pulled up. I knew that he and Miriam were still living together which was more than I could say about Cora and me. I wondered then, if we would work out our differences. From what I'd seen, Cora had really loved me and was hurt by what I'd done. I just felt neutral about her. I guess that from the first time that Miri and I'd gotten together, Cora had only been in my life to fill a place. Realistically, she was better off without me. Hopefully, we could come up with a settlement that I didn't mind paying her, but I just couldn't see fighting for her the way Miri was probably going to fight for Mark.

Miri's words came back to me. She hated me. My son hated me. None of that was what I wanted. As Mark walked towards the porch, the coldness in his eyes was far worse than the anger I'd seen on Miriam's face. It was that coldness and lack of emotion more than any of the other's reactions that made me realize what I'd fucked up. Until yesterday, I was a valued member of a family group. There were five of us. True, I wasn't with Miri but in the beginning we were friends and until Mark started talking about how good she was in bed, I'd never looked at her twice.

And that was twenty fucking years ago. I kept after her, always trying to feel what Mark had described and it took this to make me see that she would only do that for someone she loved and she HATES me.

Instead of being his father's best friend and the person who would be the man in his life if Mark ever died, I jealously tried to impose myself in Mark Jr.'s life. All it did was to make him view me as some weird old guy who was too interested in him. I was never his father. I was only a sperm donor. Me being the one to impregnate Miriam was an accident. If Mark had been home, or he'd gotten back from his business trip early, or if Miri hadn't been missing him so much that a little wine and a lot of persuasion hadn't convinced her...Okay maybe it was a lot of wine and a little persuasion, but what it was is an accident. There had been no love or joy ever in our coupling. And what I saw as her reacting to how deeply I'd penetrated her was actually her vomiting in disgust over what we'd done.

I'd lost it all. I was probably going to end up some lonely old man that no one cares about. I'd be all alone in a crappy apartment with fifteen cats and a cabinet full of tuna.

As Mark started walking up the stairs to the porch, eying me warily, I saw the end of our fishing trips together. They would be no more. Most of the time, we didn't even take Mark Jr. with us on those trips. It was just the two of us. I saw the end of our weekly treks to the golf course. We were a feared pair either in open play or in our golf league. Mark would probably find another partner easily. I saw the end of our lazy weekend barbecues and dinners together in the winter. I remember Miriam trying out new dishes on us and smiling so hard she glowed when they were good.

I remember even more the way she stuck out her lip and good naturedly survived our ribbing when they were bad. But we always did things together. I was greedy and now I'd have to suffer for it.

The funny thing about it is that I'd always had all of the things that were important. From the beginning Mark had been too eager to share his son with me. I remember him handing Mark Jr. to me and telling me to hold him from the very beginning. When the boy walked for the first time, Mark held him and helped him balance. "Go to George," he'd said excitedly. His first words after, "Dada," and "Ma," had been "Jirghgg," which was the baby trying to say George.

Things didn't get weird between us until after Miri started trying to separate us. And she only tried to do that to protect her family after I started trying to make demands. I got greedy in trying to demand something that they'd freely given me anyway. I didn't realize that I was crying until Mark stepped up on the porch near me.

"Whatever you're crying about now, it is probably going to be worse," he said.

"Mark...I..." I began.

"Save it," he said. "I didn't ask you to come here so the two of us could talk. We all need to talk about the future together."

As we walked into the house, I noticed the coldness there too. Their house, even more than my own, had always seemed like home to me. Yesterday, love and laughter seemed to inhabit the place. They bounced off of the walls, like echoes of all of the joy the people who lived there had shared. But just one day later, those echoes and memories seemed more like ghosts. Every memory had been tainted and twisted until it no longer seemed the same. Was the sound of a child screaming the result of his joy or his torture? None of it meant anything anymore.

As Miri's eyes hit Mark and he looked away, I saw another thing I'd destroyed in my greed. She reflexively reached for him the way she had hundreds of thousands of times and then recoiled as she realized that he'd no longer allow any contact between them. If true love is as powerful a thing as they say, then I must be a truly great evil, because I had single handedly destroyed the truest love I'd ever seen in my life. For tearing those two apart alone, I should have been executed.

"Where's Cora?" asked Mark. "What we're going to talk about affects all of us."

"She's gone," I said. "She's going to file for divorce. So I guess whatever we have to say only affects us and little Mark."

"Mark Jr. doesn't want to have anything to do with this," Mark said. "He's still trying to get a handle on his new reality. But he's a tough kid. He'll bounce back pretty quickly. It's just that everything he's known for his entire life was a lie. That's pretty tough to come back from. The emotional scarring alone could ruin a lot of lives, but Mark Jr. is tough."

"George, he wants nothing to do with you. As you pointed out, he's only twenty years old, but he's still over eighteen which means that although he can't drink, he's an adult. And he doesn't ever want to see you again. He doesn't want anything from you or to do with you. Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "You're going to make him see me?"

"No, but as his..." he stopped. "You may be his biological father, but I'm his dad. So I get to make certain decisions in his life. He has no say in that. So you're going to possibly have a big impact on his life."

"What do you mean possibly?" I asked. Mark reached into the folder he'd been carrying. He looked through a lot of smaller folders and threw a stack of papers on the table in front of me.

"I intended to give you the other ones first," he said. "But shit, nothing ever goes the way we plan it. Yesterday I woke up and thought I was the luckiest man in the world. The woman I loved more than anyone in my life ever, I mean I loved her more than I loved my parents and they gave me life. Anyway, she woke me up in my favorite way, but by the middle of the day my whole life was shit. How did I plan to spend my day yesterday?"

"I was greedy," he said. "I wanted to spend some time with my beautiful wife. Then, I wanted to do something stupid with my son. Then I thought we'd all get together for a nice lunch out on the deck. Following that, I'd sneak away with my best bud for a round of golf because if we win the club tournament this year it would make our third victory so they'd engrave our names on the championship cup."

Both Miriam and I were starting to choke up as Mark spoke. "By the end of the day, my son was no longer biologically mine, my wife no longer loved me and I have no best friend. So as bad as your day is going George, rub some dirt on it and let's get this out in the open," he said.

I looked at the papers and he was suing me for a lot of money. "What the fuck is this about?" I screamed.

"That part is my lawyer's idea," he said. "According to him, it's a very easy suit. I'm suing you for the cost of raising your child from birth to adulthood. Plus the cost of his education and clothing and vacations and whatever else went into it. You stepped up to the plate yesterday and proclaimed yourself his father, so now it's time to pay for it."

"But this is a lot of..." before I could finish, he slid another set of papers to me.

"This one's the alienation of affection suit," he said. "I don't really understand it, but it means that you stuck your nose in and fucked up my marriage. It means that if you hadn't gotten involved, Miriam and I would still be ecstatically in love."

"But she still loves you," I said. "Mark, this is over a million dollars..."

"I wanted more," he hissed. "Miriam was my heart. You ruined that so you have to pay for it George."

"Mark. I've never loved anyone except you," said Miriam. "This asshole could never come between us. I only did what I did because I didn't want you hurt."

"Miriam, we've been together for a very long time," he said. "You will get your chance to speak. I'm not going to just run off without listening to you. I owe you that much at least. But you've been lying to me for over twenty years and you haven't been faithful to me either. Our whole marriage has been a sham for a long time. But I owe you the chance to explain, so you'll have it."

"George, these papers are only copies," he said. "The actual documents will be served tomorrow. I'm giving you advance notice because for more years than I want to think about, you were my best friend and you really meant a lot to me. It was almost like having the brother I always wanted."

"Since what I have to say to Miriam only concerns us, you can go now George," he said. "All of the arguing and details can take place between our lawyers, so I doubt that we'll ever speak again. I'll probably be moving soon anyway." I stood up and took the folders off of the table. I was stunned. He'd dismissed me as if I was a fired employee or a business deal that had gone bad. I didn't get the chance to say anything or even apologize.

* * * * * *

Miriam

As George, shocked looks and all, left the house clutching the folders that Mark had given him, I drew in a nervous breath. I tried to calm myself down. I told myself that above and beyond everything else, Mark loved me. So everything would be alright. But as I looked at him, there was something different. There was a different look in his eyes than there had been just a few hours earlier when he'd left.

"Where did you go today, Honey?" I asked.

"My name is Mark," he said calmly. It reminded me of what I'd told George only a little while ago. But this was different. Where I was trying to regain my control over a situation where I'd allowed an evil person to subjugate me, Mark had no reason to treat me like that.

"Honey, can we just relax and talk like we always do?" I asked smiling. Mark could never resist my smile.

"I've already told you, my name is Mark," he said, more pointedly. "And you can talk any way you'd like to. I am relaxed. So talk. You have the floor." He pulled out his iPhone and turned on his voice recording app.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"It will probably be easier to remember what you've said if we have a recording of it. That way there'll be fewer arguments," he said.

"But H...Mark, we always argue," I smiled, "And then we make up. If we're shopping we argue over what size Ketchup to buy. That's just us."

"But this time it's serious," he said calmly. "And I'm pretty sure we won't be making up. I'm also very sure that unless you can pull a rabbit out of your hat, there's no longer an us...Miriam was there ever really an us?"

"What do you mean, Mark?" I smiled because I was confused. I couldn't understand what he meant. "There's always been an us, Dummy and there always will be," I said.

"No Miriam," he said. "You're talking about what you made me think for all of these years, but the wool is no longer pulled over my eyes. I'm talking about reality now. You know the world of facts, not the world of dreams or hopes. Let's stick to the facts, okay?"

Again I was confused. "Mark, the fact is that I love you and you love me. We're married and we're going to get past this. This is only a speed bump. We hate speed bumps, they slow us down but we get over them and we forget about them."

"Miriam, can we please stick to the facts?" he said again.

"But those are facts," I said. I was getting more confused as we spoke. "Mark, I love you and..."

"Let's start there," he said, cutting me off. "Prove that."

"Huh?" I asked. "I don't understand. How do I..."

"Miriam, let's look at this," he said calmly. "You claim you love me, yet you've been cheating on me for eighty percent of the time we've been together. In fact, over our twenty five years of marriage, you were only faithful to me for five of those years. That is a fact isn't it?"