The smell of something burning woke me up again. I wondered for only a second if the house was on fire, and then wondered if we should try and save Henry's piano, but decided that if the house was on fire he could manage without the music for a while.
Halfway down the steps, the smell got worse. "Briar, go back to bed," Dad yelled, not even turning to look at me.
"How do you know it's me?" I called back, not stopping.
"Because Henry doesn't like getting up in the middle of the night, and you make a habit out of it," Dad said, smiling.
"So what are you burning?" I asked, rubbing my hands in front of the fire. I really didn't care as long as I got some warmth. Dad had said time and again that he would get a normal heating and cooling system that didn't have a mind of its own, but it never happened.
"Oh, you know," he mumbled, "things that don't matter anymore."
Ah. That basically translated into, "Shit your mom left behind that she will never see again."
"Okay..." I said, "but without this being a cypher, what are you burning?"
"Her wedding dress," he said slowly. Her wedding dress? Wow, he'd actually done it. Henry and I had made fun of him, because that dress had stayed in his closet for years and he hadn't touched it once. I wondered what made him change his mind now.
The story is fairly old, I guess. Older than me at least, and slightly older than Henry. Our mom would wait until Dad ran off to work (after kissing her goodbye and telling her that he loved her) and then she'd run to phone and call up one of her many, many "gentlemen callers".
From there, she may as well have not had a husband, but she did, and even though she knew it all too well, she'd kiss the men to greet them.
One of the guys she was with actually had a family, though he was never caught. Dad said that all the fun was knowing they could have a younger, maybe prettier girl on the side without the commitment.
I'm not defending my mom, but she knew how to work with what she had. It didn't take her long to get from one thing to another, because she and her "friend" to do everything while Dad was gone. And they got busy...quickly.
They did it on a pull out mattress that was normally used for company, and quickly after she'd clean everything, spray air freshener around, and pretend to be the good wife just as her screw of the day ran out the back door.
It wasn't long before the consequences of her misdeeds showed up in a very real way. She got pregnant. Without any reason to doubt, Dad was happy. He'd rub her belly and talk to it, smiling the whole time...
...and never realize how unhappy our mom had gotten. Whether she was unhappy, knowing what she'd done and seeing that the consequences were showing, I can't say.
Now, most women would have learned their lesson by this time and would have stopped in their tracks, or they would have at least taken nine month detour from their gallivanting. But my mother was a trooper, a worker bee, and would not let her good men down.
Even if there was something very big between them.
Dad always stayed up late on the nights that our mom didn't have her phone to make sure she got home safe.
He only ever yelled at her once about coming home late, and even then she just waved him off, but at the slightest sight that our mom may or may not cry in her "delicate situation", Dad cracked.
He apologized a second later about yelling at her. Me and Henry would always say, though never to his face, that he was too gullible to be married to someone with the slightest bit more brain than him.
The baby was born only a few hours later in their bedroom, Dad not knowing what to do and running around like his ass was on fire.
"Their"--her--first child was a boy, and they named him Henry. Dad knew just by looking at him; Henry wasn't his, but like I said and like you've seen, Dad just can't judge people, let alone a baby who didn't have any say in whether it wanted to be born or not.
So, Dad held him close without thinking anything else about it. He never mentioned it, or yelled at our mom and say that he didn't have to raise Henry because he wasn't his. Dad just held him, and he held him more than our mom would ever hold either of us.
When Henry was about two and a half, our mom was pregnant again, and now I was the lucky owner of a nine month ride in the slimy room of life, commonly known as the womb.
I was born in November, but don't let my mom's face fool you. She was only happy that she didn't look like a walking beached skank whale anymore. Dad put in the skank only after she was gone.
My first memory of life was of Henry trying to distract me from the yelling going on downstairs. Mom had come in late, again, and had kissed a guy on the front steps. It was one of the few times she openly cheated, and though Dad knew she did every time she went out, he never said anything about it...except for that night.
"I don't care if you disrespect our marriage, but you doing that in front of the boys, Sam! You can't do that!" He yelled. Again, he wasn't thinking about himself and used us as his shield to try and show her the error of her ways. It wasn't TV. She wasn't suddenly going to become a good mom and we weren't suddenly going to live in the deep south and talk like gentlemen while mother cooked pies in the kitchen. It just wasn't going to happen.
"What do you care, Ed? Only one of them is yours to take care of!" she yelled back, using Henry against him. Dad never wanted to show it, but the fact that Henry wasn't his did bother him. Henry was the proof that our mom was an avid cheater.
"They're both mine, and ONLY mine, to take care of! I want you out, now!" he yelled, and whether he really meant it then, Henry and I will never really know, but she did leave.
Our mom left without a second glance back. She didn't run upstairs to hold me and Henry again, and she didn't look back while she was drove her car out of the driveway. She just left.
Dad came up just as soon as she was gone and hugged us both, saying it over and over...
"It'll be okay, guys," he said, "It'll all be okay."
Kids and babies will believe anything their parents say.
