Chapter 14

The food, beef stew, was really good, and I did eat more than any of the rest of them. Well, I really was hungry, damn near starving. The woman seemed to be happy that I liked her food. Truth was I didn’t even know she could cook like that. She never had while we were married. I mean she did cook just not like she did today.

“So, the food was good then?” she said.

“Yes, very good actually,” I said, “thank you.”

“You’re very welcome. I’ve been practicing. Made it kind of a hobby, actually,” she said.

“Well, you seem to be getting very good at your new hobby,” I said.

“Dad, would you like to go outside with me for a little while?” said my almost fifteen year-old daughter. I gave her a look.

“Sure, I guess,” I said. I was kind of surprised that she would ask me to go outside for an outing with her. I knew that there was a small park behind the Towers and it would be pleasant, I was sure, tooling around in it.

The Crown Towers was a ten story complex with a curved driveway with parking areas to east and west sides of the building. The front was essentially a garden separated from the building’s main entrance by a curved driveway leading to the parking areas. But, to the rear of the building was an actual cultured park which, as I learned later, consisted of two hectares of winding pathways and little copses replete with concrete tables and benches for the residents to picnic at. It was a very nice place.

I hadn’t been down to it, the park, any of the other times I’d been to their place, but I’d seen it through the picture window each time I’d visited.

It took the best part of three minutes for us to get down and into the park area. It sure was beautiful; I had to give the man credit for a choice location for his residence.

“You did good, dad,” she said. I looked her askance. We were moving slowly around the grounds. The paved path meandered in and out of the verdure and among the tallish trees.

“I did good?” I said, not knowing what she meant.

“Yes, telling mom you liked the food. She spent a lot of time trying to make it just right for you. I know because I helped her,” said Rebecca.

“Well, she deserved to be complimented, she, or the both of you I guess, did real good,” I said. “It’s been a while since I’ve eaten a meal I liked as much, a good while.”

“Well, thank you,” she said.

We’d been touring the grounds for some little time talking about purely mundane stuff. I learned she’d just started the tenth grade the month before. I learned she was an A/B student. I learned that she didn’t have a boyfriend that was anything like steady, but she had been on a few dates. Her school was a private-secular affair, Morningside High, with relatively high standards. She and her mom were close. What she didn’t offer was how close she was with the man: I thought that very significant. Probably coached relative to that subject too. She’d likely answer any question I had, but wouldn’t be offering anything otherwise—read she wouldn’t be rubbing my nose in it. Oh yeah, she’d been coached. I let things be.

“Dad,” she said, as we were on our way back and nearing the lobby and the elevators.

“Yes?” I said.

“Dad, my other dad really feels bad about everything. I hear him and mom talking sometimes. I mean about you and everything. I hope you can like each other,” said my daughter.

“Anything for you, dear heart, I love you,” I said. “Your—other—dad and I will get along. But no matter what, I won’t let anything come between you and me; I mean if I have a choice in the matter. Okay?”

I could tell that she got the nuance of what I was saying and that she didn’t much like it, but she would go along with it for the moment; well, that’s the feeling I got from her looks. This kid, my kid, was likely a helluva lot smarter than me. Probably read a lot of books.

The rest of the afternoon was resting time for me. I came out about 4:00 P.M. and heard Becca and her mom talking. The man was nowhere around at that moment.

“Mom, it’s Sunday, and I haven’t had any fun at all this weekend,” said Becca. “Gerald asked if I could go with him to the movies. Please mom!” she cried.

“Becca, your dad, told you no. You have to be here for our visitor for the near future. He needs you and he needs us. Okay?” she said.

So, he was her dad and I was a visitor, and the kid was being cloistered because I needed to be coddled. I decided to put an end to that charade immediately.

I wheeled into the room. I’d surprised them. “Let her go to the movies. I mean if you know the young man. This ‘visitor’ does not want to be in the way of your normal lives. Okay,” I said. “Her ‘dad’ told me I had a say in these things. So do I or don’t I?”

“Jimmy, I ... Of course you do.

“Okay then, Becca, since your dad here says okay, you can go to the movies with Gerald,” said my ex-wife.

“Becca was startled and I think feeling a little embarrassed by the scene. That said she wasn’t near as troubled as I was.

I wheeled around and headed for my room. The woman didn’t follow or say anything else. She’d be regrouping and figuring out how she was going to handle what I’d overheard.

“Oh my,” he said. “So did he say anything else?”

“No, but he stayed in his room all day. I didn’t mean anything by what I said. It just came out that way. But I’m sure, given everything, that he is ascribing all kinds of conspiracies and wrong motives to them, my words, regardless,” said Claire.

“Yes, I’m sure that he is. Jesus, I was so hoping that we could make inroads into ending this undeclared civil war we’ve got going here,” said Rodney Pollard.

“I know, me too,” she said. “Rod, it just slipped out. I’m just not used to him being around and having to worry about everything I say and how I dress and everything. I don’t know if I can do it. The way he looked at me when you guys came home. Yes, I dressed up for him, but not to turn him on or tease him, really! I did it to honor him.”

“You, and me too, have to figure this out. Maybe we even need to include him in our figuring it out. It’s a helluva lot harder for him than it is for us, Claire. Anyway, so Becca went out with the kid?” he said.

“Yes, she felt bad for Jimmy and didn’t want to go after the fact. He was obviously hurt and she picked up on it for sure. But, in the end she did go out. But, Rod, that’s another thing. He’s going to be making things hard on her too. He won’t mean to, but he will be, just like he did today catching us talking about him like that,” she said.

“Fuck,” he said. “Only the first day and we already have conflict. Damn it!”

She’d left me alone all day, and I actually appreciated that. I didn’t want to get into it with them. I had to stick around for two more weeks and that was the bottom line. I knew she’d be calling me in for dinner, or he would. But until then I was going to just be not in the way. Fact was I just didn’t know how to handle things. I had to allow that maybe she didn’t either. I didn’t think that she meant to demean me, calling me “the visitor” but she had and she knew it was hurtful after the fact.

I also knew she didn’t actually respect me. She was grateful to me for saving the lot of them, but I was a nothing to her compared to her current lover and husband. I’m sure she was virtually always comparing the two of us. She might, as she said and he said, allow me great latitude in dealing with Rebecca, but that was it wasn’t it: she was doing the allowing not me. I actually had little or no real relevance when it came to anything. Yes, she owed me. Yes she felt guilty for betraying me. Yes, she wanted me to find another woman—talk about the impossible dream. But the fact was I was pretty much nothing when it came to their lives and mostly just in the way. I was sure she’d have just loved it if I only showed up on the big holidays and left it at that. Fucking wonderful! Well she was going to get her wish in just about two more weeks.

Then it was a week later. It was Saturday, and one of Becca’s friends, Jill something or other, was overnighting it. As it happened each of the four bedrooms in the condo had small balconies. The cheaters had theirs in the west wing. The other three rooms were in the east wing. Mine was next to Becca’s. I think that they did that, the room assignments so as to maximize my interplay with my daughter, another crumb thrown my way is the way I saw it. All of the foregoing having been said, the room assignments turned out to be fortuitous after the fact. I was out on my patio relaxing while the two teenagers were out on theirs. I heard it all.

“No Jill, I have to be around for him. Well, he is my biological dad. And I do like him. I mean how many daddies actually save the life of their kid? He saved me as well as mom and dad. So no, I can’t be going out all of the time even if he tells me to. I need to be around for him,” said Becca.

“I understand,” said her friend.

“Well, thanks for that,” said Becca.

“That chair that he uses sure looks like it cost a lot and it’s not much bigger than a chair in your dinette. I’d like to have one of those myself,” said Jill, laughing and changing the subject.

“Yeah, dad got it for him. He doesn’t know it either. Dad is afraid, that if he knew, he’d give it back and get one of those cheapos. Dad pulled me aside to make sure that I knew not to say anything about it, ever,” said my daughter. “The thing cost a lot almost twenty thousand dollars. I was with dad when he bought it for him.

Well, my daughter was right about one thing, or the man was, whichever. I would be giving the fancy dancy chair back to him. There was no way I could come up with the cost of the thing; and truth told I would like to have. It did make things way easier than they were going to be now in terms of getting around.

I did have a grand in the bank, kind of a backup fund in case I needed a little cash for a rainy day. Well it sure as hell was a rainy day now as far as I was concerned. I’d have to keep quiet about it until I could leave of course.

My plans to leave, though I hadn’t said anything about it to the cheaters, were set for the Monday morning of the following week, two weeks and one day, since first coming to their house. Things had gone relatively smoothly since my overhearing the two girls that one time. I had some quality time with Rebecca over the two weeks that was something I guess. The two cheaters seemed to be going out of their way to make it easy for me. I was glad for that. It might be a long while before I was going to be able to see my kid again. I would not be going back to their house not for anything, not ever again. No, if I got to be around my daughter again it would be at my house or some other place, but never at the Pollards’.

I did have my cheapass phone. It was good for making calls and texting but that was it. I’d used it to call Sammy and get him committed to picking me up after the man went to work. I’d also sent him a check for eight hundred dollars for a new chair, well, it wasn’t new; it was used, but supposedly it was in good condition. At any rate that’s what the seller on eBay said. Sammy did all of the ordering and had done the pickup for me too. He had a truck and he’d be coming over in the morning after Claire left to do her usual Monday morning shopping trip. I’d leave them a thank you note attached to the seat of the fancy dancy chair they’d gotten for me, on the sly, for me to use.