Fearless (21 page)

“I’m fine, Jesse. Just seeing Kenny back home… you don’t understand. It’s just very emotional for me. Thank God you were a good donor match.”

“I was a
perfect
match, and yes thank God I was. But Mom, I have to tell you something I haven’t mentioned yet. When I was tested to see if I was a match, the hospital told me something I couldn’t believe. They told me I was a match for my dad.”

“What do you mean? How would they know? Your father is dead, my dear.”

“No, you don’t understand. They told me that Kenny is my dad.”

Her face went white and she choked, trying to suck in air.

"Mom, why didn’t you ever tell me that Kenny could be my dad?”

“Oh my dear Lord, Kenny is your dad?” She covered her face with her hands and wiped her palms down its surface, like she wanted to wipe away the years of secrets.

“You never knew?”

“I didn’t… I…I may have suspected but…” She rubbed her palms on her thighs as she sat on the edge of the neatly made bed. She shook her head and looked up to the ceiling, as if praying for the courage to say what she needed to get off her chest.

“What happened, Mom? I really need to know. Why did things go the way they did? What happened between you and Frank…and Kenny?”

“Oh Jesse, dear. I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want you to think poorly of me. I was under so much pressure from your grandmother and Frank, and well, everybody. I didn’t know what to do. I was young and stupid…and stupidly got pregnant. You must think horrible things about me.”

“No, Mom. Never.” I pulled up the small decorative chair from the corner. “Kenny told me that part.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, Kenny and I had a heart to heart when all this shit came down about his cancer.”

She closed her eyes and massaged her forehead with two fingers, pinching the area right between her eyebrows. “Oh, I see.” Her voice was low but she continued. “Like I said, Jesse, I was young and stupid and got pregnant out of wedlock. This was in a time, and in a small town, where that sort of thing was frowned upon.” She paused. “Then there was the horrible accident…and everything changed in my life in the blink of an eye. The whole Earth just opened up beneath my feet and swallowed me into darkness.”

“What happened with the accident, Mom? What really happened?” She looked like she was about to cry.

“Don’t be upset, Mom. Kenny told me everything about Dad. The way he treated you was atrocious. Kenny explained it. Dad wasn’t a good husband. I can understand that it must have been difficult to love him and, with the added pressure from Grandma, you felt you could never divorce him. You were stuck. You had so many reasons to give in to your feelings and emotions towards Kenny, but couldn’t.”

“You don’t know it all. Frank may have been a bad husband but what I did was even worse.”

“Mom, like I said, we’re all human and you were just… following your heart.”

She leaned forward and grabbed my wrist. Staring into my eyes she said, “Listen Jesse, it’s not what you think. There is more. Much more. I did something horrible. Are you sure you want to hear everything?” Letting go, she leaned back and took a deep breath.

Her response shook me but there was no going back now so I nodded. I needed to hear the truth, finally.

“It all happened on the Fourth of July in 1996. We were having a great time at my friend Lisa’s party and your dad was getting drunk, as usual. He wanted to leave because that’s what he did when he got drunk. I told him not to drive. Then I realized he had put you and Jimmy in the car. I got you boys out...he was so drunk he couldn’t even get the key in the ignition.”

“What happened next?”

Chapter 23

The Fourth of July, 1996

Emily

Frank was such an asshole!

I sat with my back against Lisa’s front door. I could barely breathe. The thought of Frank taking the kids while he was drunk had left me shaking and scared out of my wits. I held Jimmy and Jesse close to me, waiting for my breath to return to normal, looking up at the ceiling.
I hope no one sees
. But Lisa did.

She rushed over to help me to my feet. Lisa probably knew. No one talked about these things, no one wanted to confront the ugliness, bring it out in the open, because then you had to make a decision and take action, do something about it. It’s just easier for everyone to keep quiet, ignore it, and hope it will just go away on its own. You fool yourself and you hope you can fool everyone else, but they know. The look in Lisa’s eyes told me she wanted to help but chose to suffer for me, in silence, right along with the rest.

“Are you okay, Emily?”

“I’m fine. Can you watch the kids for a while? I need to go back and make sure Frank doesn’t drive home drunk.”

“Sure, Em. Take all the time you need.” She gave me a concerned look but smiled for the sake of the boys and corralled them back to the party.

I smoothed my hair and slipped out the door to the car. Frank was just sitting there, in the driver’s seat, slumped over the wheel. I couldn’t tell for sure if he had passed out, so I pulled the door open and shoved at his shoulder. “Frank, move over, I’ll take you home.”

He wasn’t completely out yet and he groggily said, “Wha-a-a…what?”

“Move over!” I shoved harder hoping to shake him awake. He started to move but fumbled and it took him two attempts to slide over the bench seat of our old beater car.

“You’re a bitch. Stop shoving me.”

“Yeah, yeah, just—move—over.”

I managed to get behind the wheel and started the ignition. I pulled out of the driveway at Lisa’s rolling estate and pointed the car in the direction of home. Frank continued to make it practically impossible to drive, yelling, cursing and nearly falling into me as I drove.

“You were flirting with that son of a bitch gigolo in there. You wanted to fuck him, didn’t you? But you don’t want to fuck me anymore, do you?”

“Just shut up, Frank. You’re always drunk. Maybe if you weren’t drunk all the time…”

“That’s typical of you frigid women… blame the husband,” he slurred. I looked over at his red, watery eyes as his head wobbled in drunkenness. I couldn’t believe it. He had managed to bring a can of beer. He snorted a disgusting laugh and tipped the can, shaking the last drops into his mouth.

“You’re calling
me
frigid, you piece of shit. You with your limp dick from drinking…” I was so sick of this. The same old game, the same old argument. My stomach twisted with anger. I knew I should keep my voice calm, but I couldn’t stop the rage that was building inside. My blood was boiling and the madder I got, the more my voice began to rise. “You’re an asshole, Frank. You don’t take care of me…” I spat the words loudly.

“Bitch, you don’t take care of me
,
or
the kids… they hate you. They told me so. They said, ‘Mom is always crying, blah, blah, blah…’ They’re right, Emily. You’re always crying and whining. You need to be a wife for once, a real wife. You have duties, like when’s the last time you sucked my dick, bitch?”

Hot tears were stinging my eyes. My kids didn’t say that, did they? My kids loved me. Thoughts of desperation clutched at me like a hand around my throat, suffocating me. What kind of life was this? How could I have been so foolish and chosen the wrong guy?

By now, tears ran in torrents down my face, blurring my vision. I tried to wipe them away with the back of my hand but it was difficult with Frank’s yelling and swaying. He flailed his arms as he ranted like a man possessed and he kept bumping into me, making it difficult to steer the car.

With all the distractions I swerved a little. But it was late on a holiday evening and the road was empty of cars. It was only a minor digression from my lane, but it inflamed Frank’s rage all the more, adding fuel to the fire he was building in which to burn me in effigy.

“What the hell are you doing, bitch? You can’t even drive.”

As the car corrected on the road, his body leaned into mine. He grabbed my wrist. In his drunken stupor he probably imagined that he was taking control of the wheel to get the car back on the road, but in reality the car had barely swerved.

“You’re going to get us fucking killed.”

No sooner were his words of prophecy out of his mouth, when he pulled down hard on the steering wheel. The tires screeched. The car jerked violently to the side on the simple, small town, two-lane back road.

The old beater car - built in the years of no airbags, when lap belts were the only kind of seatbelt, for people too poor to afford any better - swerved off the road and hit a massive oak tree, head on. My lap belt was fastened. Frank’s wasn’t. I’d forgotten to remind him to put it on. All I suffered was a bruise from hitting the steering wheel, but his body was ejected from the car, crashing through the windshield, and he died.

Chapter 24

Jesse

My head was spinning. I sat woodenly in the chair, opposite my mom, in the small extra bedroom of Kenny’s house, where she was perched on the edge of the bed facing the window. I gulped, forcing the dryness out of my mouth. My brain refused to register any negative perceptions. She’s my mother, a saint in my eyes. Nothing would ever change that.

“So it was an accident.” I tried to shrug it off.

“It doesn’t end there.”

No. No. No. I didn’t think I wanted to know anymore. I wanted to put my fingers I my ears and go, ‘la, la, la, la.’ But she continued. She had to tell the whole, terrible truth and get it out of her head, for her own sanity’s sake.

“I was scared that the police would think I was at fault. People at the party saw us fighting and knew it’d been going on for a long time. I was scared. I was desperate. I worried that the police would think I hit the tree on purpose to kill Frank. I was afraid they would take you and Jimmy away from me, or I’d go to jail, so…I covered it up.”

“Oh my God, Mom, what did you do?”

“I made it look like he was driving. The windshield was only broken on the passenger side so I had to do something about that. I took a rock, a big rock I found on the side of the road and, from the inside, I smashed the rest of the windshield. And then I walked away.

“When I got back to Lisa’s house I told her that Frank had hit me in the face and that’s how I got the bruise on my head, that we had a big fight and he kicked me out of the car and insisted on driving home.”

Mom sat hunched over, with her head hanging down in shame. I had never seen her look so defeated before. After a silence she spoke. Her voice wavered and cracked. “Jesse, I’ve never told this to anyone else before, but this guilt has ruined my life. At times I just wanted to end it all, to end the shame and guilt. It was the hardest thing to live with, but understand that I did it for you and Jimmy. I guess, in the long run, it didn’t do any good keeping it all bottled up inside. Look where it left me, on medication and a burden to you and Jimmy. Please forgive me.”

The shame she felt forced her to bury her face in her hands and she gave in to the sobs that shook her. I moved to the edge of the bed, put my arms around her and moved with her as she wept, rocking back and forth.

In a muffled voice, from behind her hands, the words poured out. She was relieved to finally tell the truth. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing you boys. You were everything to me.” She wiped her face with her hands, then dried them on her jeans and took a breath, quelling the tears. “I gave up everything to keep my baby when I found out I was pregnant with Jimmy. Your grandmother wanted me to give up the baby for adoption, but I couldn’t. I loved him even before he was born. She had a fit about the pregnancy. Labels like, ‘bastard child’ were part of her world. She was a pretty strict Catholic and, in her book, you did the right thing and got married. So I did what a good Catholic girl should do and stayed with a worthless husband. I even gave up on going to college so you boys would have a traditional family life…I guess I was wrong. Look what it got me instead.”

“Mom, Mom, Mom… this is not your fault. He caused this. You were the victim, you were always the victim in that marriage, not him. Mom, listen to me. I love you. You are everything. Nobody should treat you like he did. Nobody!”

We sat for a few moments, in silence, until she calmed down and offered a meek smile as I released her from my hug. I moved back to the little chair across from her.

“What about Kenny?” I asked. “Did you ever love him?”

“I always loved Kenny. He was the one I should have been with.”

“Why weren’t you together?”

“It was complicated. We all started out as friends and, despite his horrible behavior, Kenny looked up to Frank. He was his big brother, after all…you know how that it is. And Frank wasn’t always so bad. I guess having a baby at such a young age, all the responsibility…he just wasn’t ready. So I did what I had to do and then after Frank died and Kenny came to help, I felt guilty every time Kenny tried to touch me or show any affection. It reminded me of Frank and what I had done.”

“I think you’re wrong about this guilt thing, Mom.” I leaned forward, with my elbows on my knees and patted her small hand.

“Kenny knew Frank was an asshole. He told me. He said he went back to Thunder Ridge after the funeral because he loved you and he hoped you could get back together.”

“I don’t think so, Jesse. He would never forgive me for what I did.”

There was a brief moment of silence.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Emily,” a deep voice rumbled. I looked up and, from my vantage point, I saw Kenny standing just inside the threshold of the bedroom. Mom turned around. How long had he been standing in the doorway, listening?

“There’s nothing to forgive. If only you had told me what happened, life would have been so different… for the both of us.”

“Oh, dear Lord, Kenny. I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were resting in your room.”

Kenny took a few steps further into the room. I stood up and Mom did too, smoothing her blouse. I watched the two of them, anxious to see the look on her face to see if there was any hope in her eyes.