Chapter 3

Interlude

Theresa

Everything on my body hurt. I was about to reach for the bottle I kept in the drawer beside my bed when the door opened.

My father came in with a defeated look on his face. He shook his head and I knew what that meant.

“He said no?” I asked in shock.

“Well ... not exactly,” he mumbled. “A lot has happened since he left here, Theresa. I get the idea that if he could, he’d come and get you. There ain’t no doubt in my mind that he still loves ya’...”

He hesitated. “Honey ... I know you think you had your reasons, but you hurt him pretty bad. That takes time to get over and...”

“AND... ?” I asked.

“Well he’s kinda stuck in a situation of his own,” he said.

“Tell me everything!” I said.

Over the next hour or so my father told me everything he’d been through in trying to get Kevin to come home. He’d handled it clumsily, but what did I expect?

I took a deep breath and coughed several times.

“Do you need a pill?” he asked.

“Daddy, I’m done with the pills,” I said. “I think I need to try to get up!”

“Theresa, you’re not...” he began.

“Daddy, my last surgery was more than six months ago,” I said. “Since then, I’ve been laying here on my fat ass because I didn’t WANT to get out of bed. Now I have to.”

“So, you’re gonna do what he said?” he asked. I nodded my head.

“Kevin is right. I got his message loud and clear. It’s time for me to move on with my life.”

My father seemed a bit sad but he smiled. “So, who’re ya gonna date?” he asked.

“Date... ?” I asked incredulously. “Why the hell would I want to date anyone. I’ve been done dating for a long time. I need to get myself back in shape.”

He looked at me strangely. “Theresa, you ain’t making any kind of sense,” he said.

I just smiled at him and pushed my feet off the edge of the bed. Standing up was hard. I felt dizzy and all the blood rushed out of my head suddenly. My legs felt as if they were too weak to hold me. But I’d been there before.

All the training I’d done to become a cheerleader had prepared me for hard work. I just needed to get started.

Epilogue

Kevin

It always seems to happen on Sundays, so as I got out of my SUV a nagging little bug in my brain told me that something was about to happen that would change my life again.

It worried me because I had finally put my demons to rest, accepted my fate and found happiness.

My life was far from perfect, but I’d learned to count my blessings instead of crying about the way things should have been. Sure, I’d had to learn that life occasionally gives you nothing but shit sandwiches and if you don’t want to starve, you sometimes have to swallow some shit.

There are a lot of things that I don’t like about my life, but overall ... I’m luckier than most.

I have a nice house, I have my Mustang, I have my son and I have a woman who loves me a ridiculous amount.

As I step inside the house my legs are shaking and it’s only partially from the run I just did.

As soon as I open the door, I see her standing there smiling at me. It’s not her usual smile, this one has the entire house lit up. She’s holding my son as usual and that smile has me on edge.

Terry, never seems to let go of her, but fuck, who can blame him? I loved my mom, but if she looked like that this would be one of those incest stories.

“What’s going on, Sweetheart?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” she smirks. “We have company.”

I peek out the window and see Marge and her husband in the yard.

“Shit ... he’s near the grill,” I gushed.

As I rush out onto the deck, Marge and a couple of my neighbors wave at me. They always seem to gather at our house. That had stopped for a while after Rose died, but it’s started all over again. Somehow, I can’t help but think that Rose is watching me from up there and smiling.

“Okay ... Everybody quiet,” she says from the deck.

As I watch she places my son down near one of the lounge chairs. I can’t help but smile as I remember what we did on that chair after I gave her a massage the night before.

Then she scoots away from him. Not far ... maybe a foot or two. He immediately looks scared and shocked.

“Terry ... I’m right here,” she says. The sound of her voice encourages him and he looks right at her. The rest of us don’t matter. The sound of the most important voice in his life takes all his attention.

“Ahhhhh ... mmmmama,” he gurgles.

“Come to Mama,” she says holding her arms out. “Kevin, you idiot, get your phone out,” she stage whispers to me, without taking her eyes from him.

He pushes himself up onto shaking, unsteady legs as I hold my breath and my iPhone. And then amazingly it happens. He stumbles drunkenly between her outstretched arms taking one and then amazingly two and then three lurching little steps before collapsing onto her large pillow soft breasts.

Everyone in the yard cheers and he looks around, either not knowing or not caring what all the noise is about.

A few moments later, I light the grill, still unable to take my eyes from her as she sits there among a group of older ladies, still holding him.

Our eyes meet across the yard and suddenly, no one else matters. The words that never seemed to come before, fall easily out of my mouth. “I love you ... so fucking much!” I whisper to her.

“Love you more,” she smiles.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch!” gushes Marge’s husband from beside me. I was so busy concentrating on her that I never knew he was there.

“You’re just like Sam Witwickie,” he hisses while shaking his head. I don’t fucking understand it. You’re not some Adonis. You’re just a guy. Shit ... when I was your age ... I was better lookin’ than you are. But just like that kid in the fucking Transformers movies you get all the hot women.

Shit, I thought Aria was hot. I thought you had outkicked your coverage with her. But fuck ... Theresa! She’s just incredible. And she loves you like the Pope loves Jesus. It makes no fucking sense!”

I laughed and for once I agreed with the old toad. Even as I stood there my mind went back to how all of this happened.

I guess it was at what should have been a happy place but was actually the lowest point in my life.

After the baby was born, things with Aria just got worse. I was stuck with her. The funniest part of course was the fact that I’d never tried to get her. Circumstances beyond my control seemed to just push us together and I ended up with a beautiful but flawed woman that I liked a lot but didn’t really love.

Almost from the second he was born, Terry became my responsibility. Aria was no longer working, which was fine with me, but she was no longer doing anything else either. It had always been Rose who’d kept the house and done all the cooking and Aria saw no reason to change that.

She took care of Terry during the first month or so of his life, but only while I was at work. Her headaches seemed to multiply after Terry was born and they seemed to trigger the mood swings more often too.

Working in the health care field, my solution was that Aria should see a doctor.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried that,” she screamed at me. “I went to doctor after doctor from the time I was about twelve and started having these fucking things. Just leave me the fuck alone and shut that God damned baby up!”

Of course, she was always apologetic afterwards, but each time it happened, it fractured our fragile relationship even more.

And Aria, the beautiful virgin who’d supposedly waited all her life for me and couldn’t wait to get laid... ? I have no idea where that girl disappeared to.

The Aria that I lived with, became a fucking nun, that meant that when it came to sex I got fucking NONE. And when she wanted something she became some sort of warrior nun ... as if something like that existed (shameless hint).

Yep Aria was a Warrior Nun and sex was her weapon. We’d had many battles over her last goal, but I had dug in my defenses and refused to marry her. We were already supposedly engaged, but I adamantly refused to set a date or even buy her a ring.

My only reason for holding out was the niggling little promise in the back of my mind that told me Theresa was the only woman I would ever marry.

The arguments got so bad that some of the neighbors called the police a couple of times. When they came to the door Aria would never answer it. I always had to go.

“Sir, we’ve had a complaint about a domestic disturbance at this address,” they’d usually say.

Once, I just held out my hands for them to cuff me. I was damned near in the car when several of my neighbors came out and demanded that the cops tell them what they were doing.

“We’re taking him to the police station,” said one of the cops. “Just so he can cool off. It’s standard procedure in these cases.”

“I know that you fucking moron,” said one of the guys. “I used to be a cop. I was a cop for more years than you’ve been alive. But HE wasn’t the one screaming and breaking shit. We’re trying to tell you that you’ve got the wrong one. And I hate to mention it, but leaving HER alone with a newborn while she’s having one of her episodes might not be the smartest thing you’ve ever done, if you know what I mean?”

The cops looked over at me with a confused look. “Sir, why didn’t you just explain that to us?” he asked.

“Because I just needed to get away from the screaming for a while,” I said shrugging my shoulders. “I just wanted to come home after a day of work and have some peace.”

“I hear ya, buddy,” his eyes seemed to say as he uncuffed me.

His actual words though, were, “Alright sir, try to keep it down.”

Nothing seemed to work. My only respites from the storm were when I was at work ... she called me then too, but I told her that the lead lining in the walls of the X-ray room blocked cell phone signals. I was also free for the time that I went out for my runs

Things all changed one SUNDAY morning though. And that time I never got that antsy feeling. I just walked into the house and felt as if I’d been hit in the head with a two by four.

There in front of me ... in all her glory ... was Theresa. She was holding my son as if he was hers. She smiled at me and continued walking and rocking him.

She nodded towards the sofa where Aria lay.

“I already called the police and an ambulance,” she smiled. “We’ve got a problem, Kevin. This little guy is clawing at my boobs like he’s hungry and as big as these things are, there’s no milk in them. That nice lady from next door just went to get him some formula, but I get the impression that he’s still breast feeding ... like his daddy,” she smirked at the last part.

“There’s no problem,” I said, still in shock at not only seeing her, but that Aria had let her in. Theresa could charm the shit out of anyone, but this was just too fucking much. “I’ll just wake Aria,” I said.

“Kevin, Honey, I think it’s gonna have to be God that wakes her up,” she said. And she shocked me by laughing. My son was making little gurgling sounds like he was the happiest baby on earth. And he was. As I looked he was moving his little head into position on one of the biggest boobs he’d ever seen.

I went over to Aria and shook her. But her body was several degrees cooler than normal. I knew with just a touch that Aria had passed.

I was flooded with emotions. On one hand, I felt a sense of overwhelming sadness. I also felt as if something in my life was suddenly missing.

But on the other hand, I felt a sense of relief. But before I could say anything all hell broke loose as several vehicles all got to my driveway at the exact same time.

A police car with its siren blaring, barely beat the ambulance, which in turn was only milliseconds ahead of an unmarked car that may as well have had, “Undercover cop on board,” stenciled on its sides. A few seconds later Marge’s car pulled into her driveway next door and she got out carrying a big bag.

Marge managed to be the first one inside of the house though. The cops and the EMT’s like TV vampires, all waited outside of the door to be allowed in. Marge just walked in like she owned the place.

“Hey, Kevin,” she smiled. “We’ve got this. I bought a bunch of bottles and a few different types of formula. I called my doctor and our second idea is out, it would take six to eight weeks of hormone therapy at best and maybe even more with prolactin. The bottles are our best bet.”

I had no fucking idea what she was talking about.

“Kevin, open this God damned door,” yelled a voice I was all too familiar with.

I opened the door and Detective Jackman stepped in. He looked around the room and his eyes settled on Aria.

“I’ve read the files,” he said. “I know things have been bad between you two. What happened?”

“Oh boy!” said Theresa from across the room. “My daddy wasn’t kidding. You get straight to the point, huh, Detective Jackman?”

“And who might you be, young lady?” he asked and then answered his own question. “Theresa Brady, right?”

She nodded her head and smiled. As soon as her lips curled and her eyes opened, I swear the room got brighter. Shit even the detective smiled in response.

He turned to me. “You were NOT bullshitting when you described HER, were you?” he asked. He was too professional to just gawk at her, unlike the EMTs who just stared at her with their mouths open.

“Detective, I made the call,” said Theresa. “I gave them my name. Kevin wasn’t here when she died and neither was I.”

“I was with her,” said Marge. “Kevin was out running and she couldn’t get ahold of him, so she called me. She said she was having one of her headaches and she didn’t think she could handle the baby until her head stopped hurting. I came right over and suggested that she take a pain pill and try to take a nap.

An hour later I tried to wake her and couldn’t. I also couldn’t find a pulse. Luckily this lady was here to help. She called 911 and then took the baby. I tried to get him to come back but he cried every time she gave him to me.

Then I left to go buy some formula and bottles. Aria was gonna breast feed him for his first six or eight months. I’m sure she had some bottles here somewhere, but I couldn’t find them. When I got back you guys were here.”

“Sir, there’s no sign of any external trauma or any wounds,” said the EMT. He looked over at me and smiled. “Hey, you’re the X-ray guy, right?” I nodded.

“She was pretty. Did you know her?” he asked.

“My son’s mother,” I said.

“That’s rough,” he said. “But it looks like you bounced back really well.” He nodded his head towards Theresa.

“We are not together,” I said.

“Yeah right,” said Jackman. “Kevin, you need to spoon-feed that bullshit to somebody who didn’t spend almost three hours of their fucking time listening to your God damned life story. Every time you say her name you smile.”

I didn’t answer him.

“And it looks like she’s got it worse,” he said. “She’s standing over there rocking your baby between two of the nicest titties I’ve ever seen on a white woman, but she has not taken her eyes off you since I got here.”

I turned and looked at Theresa and when our eyes met I got weak in the knees. The smile she gave me scared the shit out of me.

“All right!” yelled Jackman. “We’ve got everything we need for now. But until the autopsy is over none of you should leave town.”

He went over to Theresa then. “Miss Brady...”

“It’s Foster,” she said.

“Okay, Ms. Foster, why are you so far from Hooterville, anyway?” he asked.

“It’s Grace Lake,” she smiled. “And it’s really easy. I sent my daddy up here to get Kevin and he came back empty handed. So, I came up here myself.”

He just nodded.

Marge and I spent the afternoon planning for Aria’s burial. Marge was sure that Aria had died of a heart attack.

Theresa spent the time getting to know my son. She smiled the whole time. When she put him down for a nap, she started cleaning the house and making dinner.

That freaked me out because I was so used to grilling or going out to get something. After Marge left, Theresa and I were alone, with my sleeping son.

“Theresa, why are you so happy?” I asked. “Aria is dead. My son lost his mother today.”