Chapter 8

There is a rather large difference between thinking, “Someday I might meet a nice girl and fall in love with her and we’ll start a family,” and “I’m going to be a father!”

After she left I sat there, trying to wrap my head around the fact that, quite soon in the grand scheme of things, I’d be holding a little baby in my arms. I’d look into his little eyes and wonder what kind of man he would be when he grew up. I was sure it was going to be a boy. That’s probably because I was terrified it would be a girl. While I had a complete lack of parenting skills, I thought I might do less damage to the poor thing if it was a boy. I know this is a baseless fear, but fear doesn’t care if it’s baseless. It just grabs you by the gut and squeezes, while laughing maniacally.

I was finally able to say, “I’m going to be a daddy” after about ten minutes. Then the question popped into my head: “What the fuck are you going to do to get ready for this?” Another little voice in my head whispered, “What the fuck are you going to do when it’s here?”

There were more questions that whirled in my mind. Where would we live? What would we name him? What would my sister say?

Forty-five minutes later I got up and made myself a stiff drink. It had all boiled down to a conclusion that there wasn’t much I could do about any of those questions, with the exception of where we were going to live.

You might notice that I had made the assumption that it would be “we” who had this baby and “we” would raise it. I did not think once that she might take the option of leaving me to go somewhere else to have her baby and raise her baby without any input from me. At least I didn’t think of that option until three stiff drinks later, when I lifted the bottle and peered at its emptiness.

“Fuck,” I sighed. “I’m drunk.”

And, wouldn’t you know it ... that’s when Beth opened the door, walked in and sang out, “I’m home. Let’s talk.”

I got a little primer on what it’s like to be married and to have your wife very unhappy with you under circumstances you cannot control. I mean I couldn’t just ‘get sober’. Actually, she wasn’t “unhappy” as much as she was “disgusted”.

On the other hand, the alcohol lowered my inhibitions and she found out exactly how I felt about her having a baby. Basically, she found out I was seventy-five percent terrified that I would make mistakes and be a terrible father, and twenty-five percent elated she was going to have the baby, and that she had found me worthy to become the father.

After we “talked” she just put me to bed and told me to sleep it off.

Of course I didn’t remember most of what I said when I woke up later, sober. I didn’t have a hangover in terms of the alcohol itself, but I definitely had an emotional hangover related to having let her down by being drunk when she came home. I got up and wandered out into the living room. I smelled something delicious that made my stomach growl and found her in the kitchen, making bread. The crock pot was on the counter and when I peered inside I saw chili. She glanced at me but didn’t say anything and went on kneading the bread dough.

“Sorry,” I said, lamely.

“I know,” she said.

“I love you,” I said, lamely.

“I know that, too.”

“Do you still love me?” I asked, inanely.

“You should not ask questions like that when I’m still unhappy with you,” she said. “It tempts me to say things I’ll regret later.”

“Oh,” I said. “I guess that’s fair.”

“Of course I still love you, you dope!” she snapped.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, with conviction in my voice. “I think I got a little overwhelmed by the concept of you having a baby.”

“I know. You told me,” she said.

She put the bread dough in two pans and covered them with a dish towel. She set them by the window where the sun was coming in. Then she turned to me and undid her apron, tossing it on the counter.

“I’m going to have to punish you for getting drunk like that when we had something serious to discuss,” she said.

“Beg pardon?” I said.

“I’m going to spank your bare bottom, Bob. I’m going to put you over my knees and paddle you, like you paddled me when I was sixteen.”

“Now hold on there,” I objected. “You were sixteen. There’s a big difference between doing that to a sixteen-year-old and that sixteen-year-old doing it to me!”

“I’m not sixteen anymore, Bob,” she said, softly. “I’m almost twenty-one. And I am going to spank you.”

I reflected on that. Exposing my butt to her didn’t concern me. She’d seen every part of me naked. She’d even washed my butt in the shower. And, after all, she was just a girl.

I mean ... how bad could it hurt ... right?

“Okay,” I said. “I deserve it. I will submit to my punishment.”

Half an hour later I found out it fucking hurt a lot!

But what was the strangest part of the whole thing was that, when she was satisfied that I had learned the error of my ways ... I had a rock hard boner.

Then she took me to bed and told me I’d better not cum until she’d had three orgasms.

And thus was my entry into fatherhood. I’m pretty sure that’s not how most expectant fathers do things, but when she was satisfied again, and I groaned and recreated the circumstances in which I had become a father, the concept of her having a baby wasn’t as terrifying anymore.

We talked, there in bed, and explored all our options. The only thing I knew for sure was that we’d have to find a bigger house. Her ideas about that included finding someplace that would be appropriate for us, as a team, to do my work. The idea of her being my “employee” lost traction quite soon and I told her if we were going to be partners in raising a child, we were going to be partners in my business, too. That would solve several issues. First, I needed someone to help me deal with my ever-expanding work load. Second, no child care would be needed. She could be a stay-at-home mom and I’d learn how to take care of an infant.

Beth’s ambivalence about being with child expressed itself in her decision not to tell her parents she was pregnant. I told her that wasn’t fair to them. They were going to be grandparents, after all. She kept saying she’d do it, but never did. That’s why they didn’t find out about it until they came to her graduation ceremony. She was, at that time, four months along and her abdomen wasn’t flat anymore. I will never forget her mother walking into the house with a big smile on her face, stopping abruptly, and squealing, “You’re pregnant!”

“Uh, yeah,” said Beth. “I was going to tell you, but the time never seemed right.”

“There’s no right or wrong time to tell me something like that!” said Molly, who was no longer smiling.

By the time Beth finished delivering her prepared explanation, about how she was dating a man and didn’t find out he was married until it was too late, Molly was furious. She blamed me, of course, for not taking care of her daughter and making sure she didn’t get in that kind of trouble.

“She’s a grown woman,” I objected. “I can’t tell her who to date and not to date. I didn’t even know she was dating this guy! We never discussed who she was dating. All I did was help her with her school work.”

“Well, this is going to ruin her life,” complained Molly. “She doesn’t even have a job, yet.” She paused, frowned, and looked at Beth, who had stood there listening to the whole diatribe. “Do you have a job? Is that something else you decided not to share?”

“I hired her!” I blurted. “I mean she’s going to work with me while things get figured out.”

“We asked you to take care of her during college, not become her parasitic host,” snorted Molly.

“I have to get ready for the commencement ceremony,” said Beth, stiffly. “We can talk about all this later.”

And, just like that, she left me alone with her parents.

Paul was less angry about the fact that he was going to be a grandpa in roughly five months. His laconic, “You got anything to drink around here? I could use a stiff one,” was delivered in his normal voice.

Molly barked at him not to get drunk and I almost said she could spank him if he did. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t see the humor in that.

They say time heals all wounds and, in this case, that seemed to be true. It was two hours before Beth “commenced” and, during that time, I was able to reassure Molly that Beth’s life hadn’t been ruined. I explained how my work load had become dangerously close to being something I couldn’t handle. You didn’t turn down work, because you needed the word of mouth of satisfied customers to secure your future. Having Beth there to help me would solve two problems at once. I told them I intended to find a new location that could serve as both office and home for Beth and me.

Molly, once she got used to the idea of Beth and I working together, lobbied for finding this new location in Fresno, where they lived. I said I’d think about that, but then hedged and said cost of living would be a concern and that I was looking for somewhere that would be less of a challenge. Molly lamented a little about how Beth had a brand, spanking new degree and could make good money if she used it.

“She will be using it,” I said. “I’m using my degree and she’ll use hers, too.”

“You’ve never had a real job,” snorted my sister, who was a civil engineer, working for the city of Fresno.

“Now, Molly,” cautioned Paul.

“Well, he hasn’t!” she insisted. “He plays with computers all day, like a teenage boy!”

“Let me ask you something,” I said, unperturbed. Lots of people thought what I did was easy, because they didn’t see me doing it. All they saw was that, at one point, their computers didn’t work, and a little later, they did work again. “If you went to work tomorrow and your computer didn’t work, would that impact your job?”

“Of course,” she said. “I use my computer all the time.”

“And if it didn’t work and you called me and I fixed it, would you consider that a good thing?”

“Yes,” she said, stiffly. She wasn’t stupid. She already understood what I was getting at.

“Now, I assume you’re on a network. Like a city network, maybe?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And what if the entire network failed? What if nobody on the network could do anything with a computer except use it as a big paperweight?”

“Bob, I know you fix computers,” she groaned.

“I do a lot more than that. I resurrect dead systems and networks. I make whole rooms of servers work again.”

“What will she get paid?” asked Paul.

“I can only start her at about eighty-thousand a year. That’s a flexible salary, give or take ten thousand, depending on how much business we have. When she gets up and running her take home will probably go up.”

“Eighty grand,” said Paul, thoughtfully. “That would be a tough go, in terms of surviving in California.”

“If she was alone, yes,” I said. “That’s why I agreed to let her keep living with me for a while.”

Little by little Molly calmed down, and by the time we took our seats in the auditorium she wasn’t frowning anymore.

We clapped as Beth walked across the stage and accepted her rolled up tube of paper. It wasn’t her diploma, of course. Her account had to be zeroed out before they’d give her that.

We went out to dinner and, since all the other graduates and their families were going out to dinner, too, Beth had plenty of time to talk to her mother while we waited for a table and then finally ate. Paul and I talked sports and the weather and reloading, which was something he was pretty heavily into. I thought that would be difficult in California, what with all their anti-gun legislation and such, but he said it was manageable.

“Yeah, right now it’s okay,” he said. “They’re trying to make people have to go through a background check to buy ammo, but I don’t sell what I make. It’s just for me and a few friends I go shooting with. There’s talk about making people who reload get a class three license in order to possess powder and primers but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. We’ll see. Maybe if you find a cheap place to live Molly and I will retire and move there, too. So try to park yourselves in a gun-friendly state, okay?”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “but isn’t retirement a ways out for you?”

“Ten years or so from now,” he said. “We’ve both been saving pretty heavily for retirement.”

“You two can stop talking about retirement,” Molly interjected, proving she’d been listening to us while she talked to her daughter. “It’s bad enough I’m going to be a grandmother when I’m only forty-two. Let’s not get me involved with AARP, too, thank you very much.”

Paul leaned toward me and whispered, “You can join AARP before you’re fifty, now. We get pamphlets in the mail all the time and it always makes her upset.”

By the time dinner was over and we got home, Molly and Beth were buddies again. That was good, because they couldn’t stay to be with her longer. They had an early flight out the next morning.

After hugs all around, and an injunction for Beth to be more forthcoming and communicative in the future, Molly and Paul got in their rental car and drove away.

Beth sighed.

“That wasn’t too bad. It went a lot better than I thought it would,” she said.

“Next time you need to tell her within a day or two of when you find out you’re preggers,” I counseled.

She put her arms on my shoulders and pressed her baby bump against me.

“Do you mean we’re going to have more than one?”

I blinked.

She kissed me.

“Maybe we should find a house big enough for three ... just in case,” she said, her lips rubbing mine as she spoke.

“Fuuuck,” I groaned.

“Yes, let’s!” she said.

Deciding to upgrade and move out of the place you’ve lived in for ten years is easier than actually doing it. I know that seems obvious, but in our case it was even more stressful than usual.

In the first place, with Beth being pregnant and getting more pregnant by the day, we needed to do it quickly. “Quickly” in this case meant locating our new home, moving there, and having the infrastructure necessary for my (our) job in place so we could work as soon as we moved in. Then there was the issue of doing any repairs needed before the baby clawed its way out of her womb. I figured we had maybe three months to get it done and give Beth a little wiggle room. If the baby was premature, for example, that would present real hardship if we weren’t “in place” when that happened.

The biggest issue was trying to decide whether to move before or after she gave birth. The biggest pro to waiting was that everything was already in place where we were, except room for the baby. “Beth’s bedroom” was only about ten by twelve feet, which meant the bed took up half the space. True, we didn’t use that bed, at least not for sleeping, but it had to be there for when Grandma came to visit after her grandchild was born. And we knew she would come visit. We might be able to pull off having a nursery, of sorts, in that room, but it would be cramped. The biggest con to waiting was that moving with a baby who’s living outside its mamma is more hassle. Going to look at houses is more hassle. Making needed repairs to the new house is more hassle.

Since I was busy keeping up with the work load, it was difficult for me to do much in the way of research and inspection of potential new homes. Had we stayed in Lincoln it would have been easier, but Beth didn’t want to stay in Lincoln. She was thinking much further ahead than even I realized, though I should have known she’d do that. She’d thought five years ahead in terms of deciding when to get pregnant. She already knew who she’d get pregnant with, which was also something I’d missed.

When she thought about “a new place to live and work” she included her parents in the equation. She wanted to be closer to them than Nebraska, but not in California. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be close to her parents. That would have been fine. But she didn’t want to live in California. She hoped her parents might decide to retire even closer than we’d initially be, which meant being in one of the surrounding states would be the most attractive to them.

The Northwest got ruled out for the same reason California did. It wasn’t earthquakes, by the way. It was politics and the cost of living. She looked in Idaho and Utah, calling and emailing realtors, and it was entirely by a fluke that she got a lead on a piece of property in Arizona. She was talking to a realtor in southern Utah who mentioned the place in Arizona. It was three hundred acres of desert backed up against the Black Mountains, northwest of Kingman, about a mile off of highway 93. In the 1800s it had been part of a sheep ranch, but there hadn’t been any sheep on it for over a hundred and fifty years. What was left was the original adobe house, a lot of broken down fences, and a ton of dusty, inhospitable-looking desert. The mountains were pretty, in a craggy, bare way. They weren’t scenic, in the same way the Rockies were, further to the north and east. The area is on the eastern edge of the Mojave desert, on a plateau which is said to make the weather more moderate than other areas in Arizona. That means the fifties and sixties in the winter, high nineties in the summer, and dry all year long.

To read this story you need a Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In or Register (Why register?)

Support the author's future writing by purchasing this book from Bookapy

Parenting Skills? Not!

Lubrican

$3.99