The affair

I remember, at the tender age of seventeen, after being sick for two years prior, the night it happened. I remember it well. It’s always going to be etched in my memory…the day I lost all respect for my father!

In June 2002, a year after we moved into a bigger, overall nicer house, one where we weren’t on top of each other, I was called into my parents’ bedroom on my way back from my last wee of the night. I was always taught to wee before bed, a lesson that became, and still is, a habit! I opened the crack of the door wider and crossed the threshold. There, with both of their backs to the headboard, my mother in her nightie, my father bare chested, I saw what I thought to be droplets of tears flowing down my mom’s face when she turned into the light.

‘Tell her!’ she demanded of my father. ‘Tell her what you’ve been doing…more like who you’ve been doing!’

I yawned and wiped my eyes, tired after reading two chapters of Lord of the Rings, a book with the smallest text I had ever come across.

‘Tell her!’ she shouted.

‘Tell me what?’ I asked, my nose scrunched up, wondering what she was going on about at this hour of the night. My dad sat there, paralysed and mute.

‘OK then,’ she said before announcing, ‘your father is having an affair!’

I gasped, my hand automatically covering my mouth.

‘Not only that,’ she continued, wiping her eyes on the neck of her nightie, ‘but he’s been having it for almost a year!’ She buried her head in her hands and began to sob. He tried to console her, but she brushed him off emphatically.

‘Is this true?’ I asked, my lips pursed, anger bubbling inside me, ready to explode like a volcano. When I got the nod, I did Vesuvius proud. I called him every name under the sun, pointing at him in disgust. I was pissed!

My dad, the light in my life, one who did no wrong and lived on top of a pedestal, in my eyes, had performed the ultimate act of betrayal a man, or woman, can do…cheat! And for a year no less! It might have been easier to swallow if it was just sex, but he was in a committed relationship with this bitch!

Once the lava subsided, I went to say something else, but no more words would come out. I shook my head and gestured my middle finger in the air at him as I left the room. I ventured downstairs for a break from my mind. I often did that. I was the type who had, and still has, a great imagination. Almost every night I went into the kitchen, only to position my chair in front of the window beside the dishwasher and talk to the slugs. Like I said at the start, I had been sick two years prior, no one able to give me a diagnosis, no one going down the psychiatric route, everyone convinced it was this or that or the other, depending on which specialist you talked to.

Every year, the slugs announced themselves with lines of slime on the mat, just inside the back door. We had great conversations, no one knowing they were happening as everyone was in bed by the time they emerged from under the dishwasher. As we chatted, me giving them tiny pieces of lettuce at a time, I told them what had just happened.

‘Pack a bag for the bastard and fuck him out the door!’ Fred said as he chewed.

‘Fred, don’t be so vulgar!’ Wilma chastised her husband. She looked up at me. ‘What I think you should do is…’

‘Fiona, can I talk to you?’ I heard the voice of my father as he entered the kitchen.

I looked up at him and then down at Wilma who nodded. I nodded in agreeance with her, but he thought I was nodding at him. As a chair was being lifted to just beside me, my eyes down, looking at my friends, I heard dad speak in the softest tone that had ever reverberated in my ears.

‘Are you ok?’ he asked as I put another piece of lettuce down for Fred.

I shook my head, ‘no!’

I knew always knew he was in touch with his emotions, but never had I seen what I then witnessed…he started to sob.

‘Imssoss sssooorrrrryyy!’ he cried.

He reached out for some consolation, but I dodged his arm. There was no way I was going to waste my time making him feel better about himself. Hell, I still wasn’t sure if I was awake or dreaming!

I put the remainder of the lettuce in front of them and wished Fred and Wilma a ‘goodnight’. I extinguished the kitchen light, my father not deserving of the electricity, and ascended the stairs, listening to his sobbing the whole way up.

I looked in on mom before retreating to my room. Sleep illuded me, so I picked up my book again resumed the battle between orcs, hobbits, and elves.

 

Once the sun shone on my house, it immediately crept through the gap in the curtain, me only noticing it when it began to blind me. I looked at the clock, it was 5:30. ‘Had I been awake all night?’ I wondered, got up, adjusted the curtain, and went back to hobbit land with the one ring to rule them all.

Mom was the first one to enter my room out of the two of them. She saw me, back to the wall, propped up by a pillow with a massive book in my hand and asked me something. I was too busy to hear her, and jumped when she touched my foot. She uninvitedly sat down beside my legs, having to prise the book from my hands for me to look up at her.

Her once alabaster cheeks were red and puffy, her nose a shade of burgundy, she had been crying. Almost forgetting why, I stopped myself before I asked her if she was ok. I can still see that worried look on her face. Yes, her husband was leaving her, but she also had a daughter who preferred getting absorbed in fictional lands than deal with her problems.

‘Have you been up all night?’ she asked, brushing a tear from her eye with the back of her hand. I found that her words were slurred and distorted before I looked at the clock again. It read 8:30. I nodded my head and reached for my book. She shook her head. ‘We just told your brother!’ she explained with that same partially obscured tone. I looked at her blankly, hoping to escape again so as not to deal with this life altering event. Her mouth began to move, but I heard nothing that came out of it. In my head, all I could hear was shouting and roaring, swords clinking against each other with the fires of Mordor in sight. She knew I wasn’t well! Mom tried to get me to rest my head on a pillow before throwing a blanket over me. I ripped the blanket from my legs and hurled it across the room with as much force as I could muster, shouting my pain as I threw it! I was angry! I never got angry!

Mom stayed with me for either a long time, or a short space of time that dragged. Without access to the book I was bet into, she moved her body close to mine and rocked me as I let out a wailing cry. To this day, I can remember feeling her tears on my scalp, her hand stroking my hair until, eventually, tiredness crept up on me and I slept.

When I woke, I looked at the clock again. It read 16:49. I noticed my head was on my pillow and I had the same blanket I projected across the room tucked around me. As I woke, my head a bit clearer, I sat bolt upright, remembering the events of the night before. I jumped out of the bed and ran down the stairs.

There, in the hall, was a holdall. He was leaving! I rushed into the kitchen, my younger brother crying in his arms, my father looking up with puppy dog eyes at me.

Before I could ask, I heard, ‘he’s going to stay with his brother!’ in a matter-of-fact tone. Dad got up from his seat, my brother stuck to him like a baby koala, and reached one arm out towards me. That was an invitation I did not accept. Instead, I walked into the hall and opened the door. With sopping wet eyes, he bowed his head, tore my brothers arms from him and followed me, picking up the holdall as he left, me closing the door behind him. Something told me that that wasn’t the end. It was a Friday.

Over the weekend we grieved after a man who was still very much alive. Mom and my brother, Kevin, spent most of it in moms king sized bed, crying. There was a TV mounted to the wall so they were still able to watch that to entertain and numb themselves. I finished my book, desperately seeking more and more still to read every night. I wasn’t sleeping, and the environment in which I was in was one of great sorrow and sadness, so I transported myself to another. That weekend was also the first time I drew blood on myself after performing an act of self-harm. Somehow, it made me feel better, partly because it made me feel.

Once Monday came around, there was good old father dearest, desperately begging to come home. I said ‘no!’ but I had no control over what my parents did, with being a minor. That vicious circle, he leaving on a Friday and coming back on a Monday, happened four times in four consecutive weeks. I was completely against it, but who was I to have a say in my parents marriage.

After the second time, witnessing my mother age before my eyes, I told her that I was going to put a stop to these antics of his. ‘No! Don’t you dare!’ she scolded me. I asked her, ‘why?’ to which she responded, ‘I’m not ready!’ I saw desperation in her eyes and began going forwards and backwards to the library every second day, yearning to escape into a different world with each book. I was averaging a book and a half, to two books each night. If I’m honest, sometimes those two very diverse worlds were the only things keeping me going.

With the self-harm escalating discretely several times a day, infection began to set in. I had done a first aid course and knew, or thought I knew, what to do. It was the only time I felt alive, the only time I felt!

Four weeks went by, dad coming home every Monday and leaving again every Friday, and I was sick of it. He was taking the piss out of my mom, but he was also giving false hope to Kevin. That fifth Friday came round and I said, ‘enough is enough!’ With the holdall in the hall again, mom and Kevin resigned to the idea that this was the new norm, I saw my intro and went with it. I sat on the stairs, the other two audibly distressed upstairs in the bedroom, the tv on, and waited. I only got up as dad began to come down the stairs. He extended his arm for a hug. Instead of me embracing him, I roughly took his hand and led him into the play room. It was the one room in the house that I knew I would have privacy to say what I needed to say and not get interrupted.

‘This has to stop!’ I said in a surprisingly cool, calm, and collective manner.

‘What love?’ he asked, making me wince, him knowing full well what I was talking about.

‘You either walk over that threshold today and never come back, or you stay and choose the three people who love you the most in this world!’

That took him off guard. He probably had the notion that he would be able to butter his bread and eat it too. His body language told me he was a bit uncomfortable, his arm no longer extended as he knew I meant business.

‘If you leave today, I will promise you that even though you’ll probably get the cold shoulder for a while as I process things, I will not excommunicate you as my father!’

He nodded.

‘If you pull this bullshit of leaving whenever you want because moms a gullible softy again…that’s it! You will be dead to me!’

His face turned a shade whiter as he looked at me wide eyed.

‘My mother doesn’t deserve this crap! She has put up with this situation for a month now, and all I can see is it chipping away at her! She deserves to be treated like a queen, and here you are treating her like chewing gum on the bottom or your shoe! I will not stand for this anymore! Two weeks ago, she told me she wasn’t ready, but she’s shrivelling away to nothing over you! She needs a definitive answer, so I ask you this question…stay? Or leave?’

As I saw the cogs in his mind turning, I reminded him, ‘if you go, and stay gone, I’ll respect you more, and,’ I swallowed hard, ‘I promise to have a relationship with you, but you have to give me some time!’

Dad nodded. His eyes welling up. I watched as his bottom lip began to tremble and he closed his eyes tight, tears flowing down his cheeks. I began to cry also, knowing what he was going to do. ‘You’ll still love me?’ he asked, inhaling deeply. I nodded and pounced into his arms. We cried together until there were no more tears to be had.

I looked up at him. ‘You’re going, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah!’ he whispered and looked at me with his head tilted to the side. It was barely audible, but it was a definitive answer, something the whole family needed to heal.

As I walked my dad to the front door, hand in hand, I stopped at his holdall and hugged him tightly. I was a little girl again. He was finally doing the right thing, and I respected him for that!

 

After he left, I slid to the ground, my back to the wall. Dad never did get back up on that pedestal. Over the past twenty-two years I began to love him in a different sort of way. As it stands, we’ve seen each other three times in the past two years, but we talk on the phone about twice a week. The phone calls are short, but they’re something! We have worked so hard to get to where we are now with each other. I put up with a lot…but that is another story!