Chapter 3

I responded rather groggily to the knock at the door, which had turned into some real banging, forcing me to slip some of my rather crumpled clothes on that Sunday afternoon, at which point I opened the door to my motel room to find Pastor Lawrence Myers and two deacons looking rather intently at me. Myers was the new minister at our community church, and from what I had seen, I was yet to be impressed with him. The previous pastor had been chased off, which was bad enough, because I really liked him, but Pastor Myers had already seemed to get a hold on Tracy and half the time he was all that she could talk about after services ... Pastor Myers this, Pastor Myers that, to the point that the kids and I were even more tempted to switch churches than we already were. I had the feeling that after today, we were about to make a run for it.

“Brother David, good to see you! I wondered where you were. I know that things have been kind of crazy for you, but I had hoped to see you in the services this morning. You’re not leaving us because of the issues in your marriage, are you? It doesn’t help to become bitter and angry at God, and remember what the Scripture teaches us about becoming hostile and mad at your wife, too. You two really need to work things out, you know. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I’m hoping for you two to seek some counseling, which I’m more than ready to provide both of you,” the pastor greeted me with a sermon right out of the gate, which was awfully presumptuous of him.

“Pastor Myers, if I had wanted a sermon about the state of my marriage, I’d have gone to church this morning, which no doubt witnessed a homily on the subject of divorce. I hope that you gave the missus at least as much hell, given that she’s the one that showed me the door. As for counseling, I’m not sure how well that will go. She’s adamant that we can only be together on her terms, non-negotiable, and she had me served with divorce papers just yesterday, Reverend. How Christian is that? You want to lecture someone about divorce, want to preach, start with her. I disagreed with her on something and she wanted me out of my own house, me and the kids! Her own children, even though they’re nearly eighteen. Still, what kind of mother kicks out her children, just weeks shy of their eighteenth birthday? Seriously!” I asserted myself.

“Well, now you’ve made some serious accusations there, but shouldn’t she have a chance to speak her turn? Was there something done beyond the pale, perhaps?” Pastor Myers struggled, grasping at straws, while the two deacons shifted uncomfortably behind him.

“Yes, something was done beyond the pale! A woman essentially used the threat of violence to kick her own husband and children out of their home! That was definitely beyond the pale, sir! Good day, sir! If this is the kind of influence that you’re having on my wife, I think that I’ll just find another church!” I indicated the door, strongly urging him to leave, just as my twins barged through, almost shoving the reverend and his goons aside in their haste, which cracked me up.

“Well, if they’re going to act like hooligans, and you tolerate that, maybe Tracy just wanted to put a scare into them, that’s all!” the parson sputtered.

“That kind of scare? I don’t think so! Besides, they’re just being hungry teenagers! Couldn’t you tell that they were bringing brunch home from Rally’s? Say hi to my wife and tell her that I find out that she’s using this as an excuse to bring home strangers, I will find out and use it in the divorce to hammer her even harder! I’ll find the biggest shark in the town and nail her ass to the wall!” I growled at the minister.

“Now, now, there’s no need for talk like that! Surely, there’s been a misunderstanding. Tracy would never cheat on you, son,” Myers did his best to con me, but I wasn’t buying ... in my experience, the most righteous people turned out to be the biggest hypocrites.

“Meaning that it’s probably you slipping her the salami,” I taunted him, making him fluster and blush a bit ... as if I had just struck home.

“There’s no need for such accusations! All that happened was a fight, that’s all! Haven’t you heard the saying, anyway, ‘cheaper to keep her, ‘ my son?” Pastor Myers really pissed me off now.

“Haven’t you heard of the Scripture, remove your foot from your neighbor’s house? Well, do it now! I’m not your son, especially if you’re boffing my wife! Oh, and tell her to forget this dumbass laundry list of demands! She has already shoved me into a motel, but her victory is fleeting! The courts hate mothers like her and she will not get to take me to the fucking cleaners!” I shouted angrily at him, making my kids laugh as I cussed him out.

“Now, now, Mr. Morgan, there is no need for profanity ... haven’t you heard of the Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain’?” Pastor Myers started to preach again.

“Strange, I don’t recall Jehovah answering to the name ‘fuck’, do you, kids?” I laughed, as they snickered, while I finally pushed Pastor Myers and his deacons out and slammed the door in their faces.

“Evidently, that’s their idea of ‘visitation, ‘ to wake a middle-aged guy from his cat nap in a motel room with his kids, after one of their parishioners kicked them out of their home. They should visit her and preach at her instead,” I chuckled as I dug into the burger that they got me, nice and loaded with onions and barbeque sauce.

“One milkshake coming up, too! Mine is nice, though I don’t know if it will bring all of the boys to the yard,” Curtis joked as he handed me my chocolate shake, while drinking his strawberry one.

Stephanie nearly spat out her shake when she heard that comment, giggling at the idea, “Maybe we should stand out there with the shakes and see if they bring all the boys to the yard, bro! Though with our luck, they’d show up at Mom’s and she’d either chase them off or try to rape them!”

I nearly choked on my burger when I heard that remark, typical of the twins’ humor, of course. Maybe it wasn’t very Christian of me, but then I was never a fundamentalist type the way that the church seeming to be going since Myers took over. One thing that I liked about Pastor Al Ward was that he had an earthy sense of humor, was practical and down-to-earth with his beliefs and how he applied his faith, and he also didn’t think that it hurt to have opinions of one’s own. He often reminded people that Job and many other people had argued with God directly at times. If they could debate the Almighty face to face, it wasn’t a sin to have one’s own opinion that didn’t agree with the Scriptures at times. God wasn’t going to burn people for using the minds that He gave them, Pastor Ward would say. He presumably wouldn’t damn my twins for having a bawdy sense of humor, either, I think that Pastor Ward would have said.

“If we could catch that on camera, your mother wouldn’t be able to touch me in court, I think. I don’t mean legally, I mean in terms of her being eager to get the divorce behind her so that she wouldn’t be exposed as a hypocrite,” I observed with a wicked gleam in my eye, but I never actually intended to blackmail Tracy ... it was just a fantasy.

I never counted on my twins, much as King Henry II never counted on those knights that slew Thomas Becket when he uttered the notorious lament, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” Just as he should have known his audience, though, so should I. It was just a fantasy, but for Tracy, it was going to be a nightmare. The twins, after all, didn’t have to work for a living, and the saying was perhaps a bit truer than usual that “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.” I wasn’t at all aware that my off-the-cuff remark would lead to trouble for her, but ask me if I honestly care, and the answer would have to be “no.” Tracy made her bed with hatred and hypocrisy, and soon she would have to sleep in it.

At the moment, however, all I cared about was setting up the dental appointments for my twins, getting my direct deposits moved out of the joint-checking account into my own (I had already opened one by withdrawing the funds that I figured were mine and depositing them at the bank the previous Friday, so that they couldn’t be frozen), and notifying my secretary, Hilda, of my plans for a Tuesday working lunch and job interview. Since I was, de facto, the custodial parent, Tracy was lucky that I hadn’t yet put a restraining order on her ass and petitioned for child support and the family home. I certainly planned to make a point of my effective custody, but for now, withdrawing enough money and separating funds so as to have enough for my kids was enough for me. It was bad enough that we were essentially homeless now. The last thing that I needed was to have to deal with a major shortfall of funds.

“So, Daddy, can we go see a movie today? I know that you’re scrimping, so that’s why Curtis and I thought of a matinee. Since we’ve already eaten and won’t ask for popcorn or soda, it should be somewhat cheap, right?” Stephanie cleverly phrased her petition, and as she often did, reverted to calling me “Daddy” instead of “Dad.”

“Alright, you little heifer, we can do that! But first I’m finishing my lunch, you too, since we need full stomachs to resist the concession stand,” I pointed out, ruffling her hair with my right hand while I grabbed some curly fries with the other.

“So, if she’s a heifer, what does that make me?” Curtis joked, tickling his sister a bit.

“A rascal like me!” I laughed, tickling him a bit.

“Alfalfa or Spanky?” Stephanie teased me.

“Careful, missy, you’re not too big for me to turn over my knee, you know,” I chuckled.

This only made things worse, because Stephanie then started shaking her booty to taunt me with it, even moving it against my hand to dare me to swat her on the tush. I felt my boner grow in spite of myself, and I chided myself mentally for getting hard at the idea of spanking my teenage daughter. That was when Curtis decided to complicate things by twerking with both of us, something that would surely have been misunderstood if someone from Child Services had witnessed it, to say the least. The fact that I was hard as a rod and that my son’s butt only made me more erect didn’t help. Was I actually attracted to both of my twins? What would that mean for us?

“It’s okay, Daddy. We both know that we’re hot and so are you. To be honest, while this wasn’t the way that I fantasized about it, the idea of sharing you with Curtis has been a fantasy of mine for a while now,” Stephanie startled me with her confession.