Chapter 2

“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” ― Thomas Jefferson

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” ― Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

“Never give up ... No one knows what’s going to happen next.” ― L. Frank Baum

Later that evening...

“Daddy!” Angel’s eyes came alive as she rushed to embrace me once I arrived in my Ford Ranger pickup.

Sure, it wasn’t super-stylish, but I found that it always drew the right kind of attention. For whatever reason, it suggested a subtle hint of unapologetic masculinity of the type often declared “toxic” in some circles. Women, interestingly, often found it either attracted or repelled them, depending upon their attitudes. This was in spite of the usual TikTok nonsense about how women expect men to become less traditionally masculine or whatever, how insecure and immature men are if they don’t comply with the feminist agenda. In reality, a lot of ladies in my experience seemed to feel differently on an intuitive level.

“Angel baby!” I held my daughter tight as she briefly shed a couple of tears and then wiped them away.

“Daddy..., I know that we see each other now and then, but we haven’t done this kind of thing ... not in a while. I missed you! So have Becca and Lauren, I swear! It’s not your fault, but we never did get as much time with you as we wished ... or you wished, for that matter,” Angel reassured me as she sat in the passenger seat of the cab.

“So, your sisters will be green with envy, unless I do this for them, too,” I remarked now, hoping for a specific answer to a question that I never asked in the past.

“Oh, definitely, especially once I tell them. Don’t worry. They won’t think of you as a pervert or creep. You’re a man ... and you’re lonely ... well, as much as a loner can be. You’ve always been kind of your own man, even when married to Mom. I think that was what she both loved and hated about you. I, for one, just love it. There’s nothing to hate about your independence and your pride,” Angel told her own perspective on my marriage to her mother.

“I never have been able to get out of her why she cheated on me after pushing for monogamy, which I never wanted ... She sold me on it by promising that she would give back so much more than I yielded. That was a lie. But I never understood why she, having gotten what she claimed to desire from me, ultimately broke her own pact to be faithful, her wedding vows, etc. I really don’t get why she got pregnant by another man and had an affair baby. Did she really think that I wouldn’t figure it out? If she wanted to see other people, she could have just agreed to what I wanted instead.

“Of course, she would have had to take ... precautions. Then again, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant by ... that guy ... The only good thing to come of it, of course, was Brian. While he ain’t my son and I resent that fact, I will never wish away his existence. On the plus side, other than his birth, I was liberated from monogamy, so there’s that. Did she really believe that a double standard would have been acceptable to me or that she could have duped me into an unwitting cuckold?” I wondered aloud as I drove her to a nearby cafe.

“Like most women her age, or any age, I’m ashamed to say, we don’t form a consistent moral code or whatever, just going by her feelings of the moment. If her feelings tell her that she is an exception or above the rules or that this is a special case, then she believes that. Or at least she did. I think that you showed her ... and she hasn’t forgotten the fact. Nor forgiven it. I only really feel bad for Brian, not Mom. She dug her own grave. I love her, but whoever said that love is blind? I don’t have to like her that much at times,” Angel stipulated as we were seated by the hostess, a buxom woman closer to Ashley’s age than Angel’s.

“Thank you ... Genevieve,” I told her, acknowledging her name.

“You’re welcome. This is Maddie. She’ll be your server,” the hostess told me.

“And I’m Simon. This is my daughter, Angel,” I clarified now, “my eldest daughter. I have two others.”

“Divorced or widowed?” Genevieve pried into our business.

“Divorced. Many years ago,” I said with a sad smile.

“Because Mom was naughty,” Angel dared to be candid, “though I wouldn’t have my baby brother if she had behaved.”

Genevieve’s face went a bit pale at my daughter’s frankness. I got the impression that she expected the usual platitudes about “growing part” or whatever. Nope. Whatever time I had to raise my daughter, little as it was, was enough for some of my brutal honesty to rub off on my firstborn.

“Anyway, Maddie can take it from here. It’s her first night, but I flatter myself that I’ve given her enough training that will do until she gets some experience. She’s my niece, so I hope that she does me proud. She’s twenty-one, so she can serve you drinks,” Genevieve turned things over to her niece.

“And my daughter can drink them, being the same age. I can, too, but someone has to drive,” I observed, making it clear that Angel could drink if she wished, but I would remain sober.

“I don’t think that I need anything stiff ... yet. Perhaps just some iced tea. With a lemon,” Angel told Maddie now, the ginger waitress smiling as she wrote that down.

“And you, sir?” Maddie smiled at me, a look crossing her face that I couldn’t quite place.

“I will have some coffee. Do you have a cold brew?” I asked Maddie, who nodded.

“Yes, sir. One cold brew coming up,” Maddie smiled at me again and swished away without even jotting that down.

“Well, she’s a friendly one at least,” I commented dryly.

“Up to a point. She was a lot friendlier to you than to me. Oh, she wasn’t rude. But she smiled at you twice, Daddy. Twice. And didn’t write that down. She just rushed off to get our drinks. That girl’s smitten,” Angel teased me.

“With my old self?” I expressed some surprise.

“What, do you think that I’m the only girl my age who’d message a silver fox? Oh, no, Daddy. So many guys these days ... the ones my own age ... they’re a bit girly for a lot of ladies’ tastes. The odds are ... if a guy actually believes what we tell social media, he’s in for a lot of disappointment. We can smell the estrogen on a soy boy. It’s very ... repulsive, at least to me. Of course, I don’t blame guys too much. If we girls don’t know what we want, how can we expect it of dudes? Yet we tend to somehow demand it, insist upon it,” Angel tipped me further about young ladies.

“So ... it’s the ... testosterone? That’s what draws girls like flies to honey or whatever?” I thought aloud, noting that observation in my own head.

“More or less. Just like the estrogen ... we can smell it. Guys your age haven’t been tamed, domesticated, brainwashed, conditioned ... emasculated. Well, a lot of you haven’t. You’re a prime example. You drive a pickup! That’s a declaration of war on the feminizers of your sex if I ever saw one.

“Look, Daddy. I’m your daughter. Mom did her best to poison the well, but even more than my sisters, I’m your daughter. I inherited your no-nonsense ways, at least to an extent. I feel bad for Brian. The kid’s confused, bewildered, a bit of a milquetoast and a doormat. He’s never really had a father and he wouldn’t look to you, since Mom basically told him that you rejected him,” Angel explained her perspective as Maddie returned with our beverages ... perfectly done.

“There was nothing to reject. He wasn’t my son. He was her affair partner’s, the other man’s. He was the proof of your mother’s infidelity, the fruit of her illicit passion. I mean, he was born just after we divorced,” I countered with a reminder of how obvious a course of action I took.

“I know that, Daddy. So do my sisters. Brian doesn’t. It’s not his fault. Mom really has fucked with him. She drove away her former lover and refused to let him have anything to do with raising the boy, so he’s had no real father figure, no strong man of any kind, no true male influence in his life. He only knows what Mom’s taught him about men and manhood in every sense. Unconditional surrender to all feminine whims, catering and pandering to us ladies at all turns. He’s in for a rude awakening, I fear, and he won’t thank Mom for that,” Angel coughed to express her disgust with her brother’s upbringing.

“Why did she do that? Drive away her lover?” I wondered, “I thought that she wanted to marry the guy.”

“Exactly. And when he refused, she punished him by keeping his son from him. She never put his name on the birth certificate, nor yours. He has no legal rights short of proving paternity, and I suppose that this was far too much effort for that guy’s taste. Too rich for his blood. Or maybe too expensive. To say nothing of how much child support would cost. He just gave up and moved on to someone else, probably one or two more married women. Besides, he was married himself. He couldn’t afford that divorce on top of the other stuff, at least as he saw it,” Angel told me now.

“Sorry to interrupt, but are you guys ready to order?” Maddie looked sincere in her apology, but I smiled at her, “or would you prefer an appetizer first. Here’s some bread, of course. Plenty of butter. Real butter, I might add.”

“Well, it might be a while, so let’s do appetizers first. Fried and breaded calamari. With plenty of cocktail sauce. What about you, sweetie?” I asked Angel now.

“Caesar salad ... and don’t skimp on the dressing. I love good Caesar and I can tell that this place will have it. Must be top-notch anchovies in there or something,” my daughter beamed.

“Very well. I will get right on that,” Maddie blushed a little for some reason.

This time, she wiggled her tush as she walked away and Angel burst into girlish laughter. This was a fresh reminder that, for all of the hard-nosed common sense that she inherited from her old man, she was still a young woman. She clearly could find something amusing about the way that a girl her own age flirted with an older man. It was pretty transparent this time, after all. Maybe it was for extra tips or a good review, I cynically thought. Maybe not. Time would perhaps solve that mystery.

“Oh, my God ... she’s crushing on you ... she’s really smitten with my old man!” Angel laughed, adding, “I know, I know, you’re a jaded, sometimes bitter divorced, middle-aged guy who doesn’t trust the ladies. But I know girls my own age, such as Maddie. She’s totally taken by you!”

“Maybe she has Daddy issues,” I suggested skeptically.

“All girls have some kind of Daddy issues, Daddy, one way or another. That’s the dirty secret that they don’t tell you. Mine are that no man will ever quite live up to your standards or fill your shoes. Or give me back the time that Mom stole from us. It’s a very high bar for any poor schmuck that tries it. That’s just how it is. The best man I’ve ever known in life is my own father and you can take that to the bank, Daddy,” Angel brushed her golden bangs from her face as she said that, too.

“So, in spite of everything that your mother did to us, you don’t hate or resent me. What about Becca or Lauren? I know that she wasn’t thrilled with me that one time,” I commented next.

“Oh, she’s over that. If anything, she feels embarrassed by it. She hasn’t had as much time with you raising her as me or even Becca, after all. She’s never quite forgiven Mom for that fact. None of us have. We love her, don’t get us wrong ... but she wronged all of us in a very real way. I’ve been seeing a therapist. All three of us have.

“They were provided by the college ... not the best quality, but it’s no extra charge. She’s trying to get me to move on and let go of my resentment. Mom can feel it in all of us, but she has also noticed my distance, my aloofness with her. It really bothers her and has made her put extra effort into the effort of manipulating my brother,” Angel responded as Maddie returned with the appetizers.

“Great work here, I can clearly see,” I took a bite and raved about the fried squid.