Thanksgiving With the Ex
Copyright © December 2011 by S. L. Miller
All Rights Reserved:
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever.
Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The
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“Are you nuts? You’re seriously going to spring this on Christina. Your only daughter. She’s your flesh and blood and you’re choosing him over her?” Albert looked at his wife over the top of his glasses. Her face was a bit blurry, but he was getting used to that sort of thing happening lately. Besides, he knew Carolyn’s face with his eyes closed--every line and curve and its texture. He didn’t need to see her clearly now to know that she had that determined expression on her face that she got when it concerned their children. He also knew that nothing was going to deter her, but it never stopped him from speaking his peace.
“She doesn’t know what’s best for her right now and we both know that Sean is what’s best for her; and you know there’s not any choosing going on here, so don‘t even try that.” Albert sighed. Carolyn knew that he got irritated when she got in her children’s business, but she also knew that if she didn’t get involved, some of their problems had the potential to get worse.
“If it’s really what’s best for her, Car, shouldn’t we leave that up to them to decide?” Albert was sincere with his words and he wondered if she heard any of them or if the only ones she ever heard were her own.
Albert actually admired his wife of nearly thirty five years for all of the hard decisions she’s had to make, all of the problems they had to endure, and through all the mistakes, and even if she was wrong he couldn’t say that she didn’t try her best to do what she thought was right. He only hoped their three children knew and appreciated all she’d done for them. And this time, he was hoping his daughter would have it in her to forgive her mother for what she was apparently about to do. Still, he wanted to at least talk some sense into her before she went through with her little plan.
“Car, look, Chrissy isn’t a kid, not anymore. She’s made enough mistakes in the past to learn from them, we should hope,” Albert set both his glasses and his book aside and went over to her and gave her a peck on the neck as a few wisps of her hair tickled his nose. She still had such beautiful skin and her hair smelled fresh with just a hint of something that smelled faintly floral. If he closed his eyes he could almost picture them necking in high school and embracing on their wedding night. She was always his love, the girl who caught his eye and laid claim to his heart, and he didn’t want it any other way. Even when they disagreed, as they were doing now, and she was being stubborn and meddlesome, he still saw the good in her, the good woman and mother, and that made him love her even more. Her determined spirit was something to be admired. “Come on, get in the bed. The other kids will be here in the morning and we’ll run it by them before you do anything we all may regret.”
“First of all, I’m not going to hold a conference with my other children to ask their opinion on something I’ve already made up my mind about,” She’d been rubbing moisturizer on the same spot on her leg for the past few minutes and only now did she stop to stand face to face with Albert; Maybe not exactly face to face since he was just shy of six feet tall and she stood at a mere five feet two inches. “ Second of all, Sean is going to be here tomorrow and if anybody has any issues with him or the fact that he’s joining us for another Thanksgiving then they can bring it, but I’m not backing down from where I stand just because someone maybe uncomfortable.
“When Chrissy introduced us, we loved Sean. and after they said those vows, after they were married, he became family. He was our family for six years, last year included, and now we’re just supposed to scratch him off the guest list and pretend that he means nothing to us just because Christina’s decided that she doesn’t want to be married to him anymore, for who knows what reason? She keeps telling us it’s none of our business, or she’ll explain later when things simmer down. I don’t trust that. Marriage isn’t a flip flop decision, I know that and you know that, too.”
“Like I said, shouldn’t we let her figure this entire out on her own? She’s a grown woman, she’s not some teenager thinking she’s an adult, trying to do adult things; she really is an adult now. I think we should respect what she wants and let it be.” Albert rested his heavy hands on her shoulders and absentmindedly began to knead.
Carolyn was the type of woman that always seemed to be in control of any and all situations, but right now she was a ball of nerves and tension and he felt them under his palms. If he could he would’ve taken the stress that she was feeling as his own. As he added pressure now to what he was doing, he was lost in his own thoughts, trying to find the right things to say to his wife to call off what was sure to end up in madness and hurt feelings, and possibly something she wouldn’t be able to fix later.
“Al, I appreciate you trying to talk me out of it, I do, and I hear everything that you’re saying and don’t think that I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Carolyn exhaled and sat down on their bed. “But I’ve thought about this through and through. If she’s mad at me and doesn’t want to speak to me after this, then I accept. She’ll get over it, because I won’t give up on her. I’ll try to explain to her why I did it even if she won’t take my calls, ignores my texts, emails, and walks by me when I’m standing outside her place. She’s my daughter and I love her, and I only want what’s right for her.”
“Why don’t you try explaining it to me first?” Albert sat down beside her and covered her hands with his own.
“I don’t want her to regret this. I really don’t. I don’t want her to be here next Thanksgiving, alone, wishing she’d had another chance with her husband, or with somebody that she really isn’t into, and going along with a relationship just to be in a relationship. I guess I just want her to have a second chance, take a second thought. Sometimes that’s all people need.” Albert nodded, not sure if his wife was right, but he also understood where she was coming from after telling him what she had. Though this may not be the best way of going about it, behind Christina’s back, maybe it was the way to get her to give Sean a second chance if he wanted one. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. If he showed up, then he was willing to make an effort at their marriage, and that would say a lot right there.
“Alright, I guess we’ll try it your way, for better or worse.” Carolyn had to smile at Albert’s words. She had it engraved in both their wedding bands after they had Christina. Their own sets of parents hadn’t thought they’d make it after the death of their first child during their first year of marriage, a stillborn that Carolyn cradled in her arms and kissed. It was a moment that she still remembered and continued to dream and think about, even now, years later. After that experience, Carolyn had always considered their marriage to be a bit of a miracle of some sort. There were days when she honestly couldn’t believe they’d made it through such hard times: the death of their first child, Albert branching off and starting his own firm amidst scandal, not to mention the other things that had threatened their family unit as a whole. Yes, Carolyn did consider their union a miracle and a blessing. She couldn’t find another way to look at it.
Life taught them both a long time ago that you couldn’t assume that things were going to stay the same or that things were going to go according to plan. Life had a way of knocking you on your ass and you learned your lesson and got back up, made the same mistakes over and over and kept getting knocked back down, or you crumbled under the pressure. Carolyn had seen all three roads taken and she would have loved to think that she was in the first category, especially when it came to her children. They made their mistakes and they allowed them to decide how they were going to take care of some of those mistakes. They’d had their childhoods and when they tried to grown up too fast reality had its way of bringing them back down to earth. Their children had to learn what she and Albert already knew, that they weren’t invincible, bad things happened, and not everything was fair. Those weren’t just a bunch of cliché sayings that people repeated throughout their lives for no reason, which was something that anyone who lived long enough had no choice but to learn.
“Do you remember what Christina told us before we met him? I mean, right before he walked into our house and she told us that he was nervous about meeting us.”
“Of course I remember. I remember what he said as well.” Carolyn smiled sadly and nodded. They were both nostalgic at that moment. That had been a good day, and they’d fallen in love with Sean almost on the spot, even Albert, who’d been prepared to hate every single guy that their daughter brought home, but Albert broke the silence in the middle of the reverie, “Don’t you think that you’re about to make Thanksgiving dinner a rather volatile situation, springing this on Chrissy and everybody else the way you’re doing?”
“This family has seen a lot worse, don’t you think?” Carolyn looked at him pointedly and she didn’t need to say another word as he nodded his head. She was the lioness and those were her cubs; that was something that didn’t change regardless of how old they got. They were still her children.
That was part of being a parent. It was hard just sitting back and watching people that you gave birth to, nursed, people that looked like you, who you loved unconditionally, and just allowed their problems to just be their problems and not get involved at all. Letting go was a lot harder than it sounded. Anyway, she was sure that she was right about this. Whether or not anyone else was going to jump on her bandwagon was another story, and if their other kids were going to react anything like Albert, then she was in for a fight, despite her own conviction.
“Just don’t get your hopes up,” Albert’s resolve had melted. He may not agree, but what was done was done. “Even if Sean does show up here tomorrow when everybody else does and everything is the same as it’s always been during the years before with him here, so what? That’s everybody else. You know Chrissy isn’t going to be onboard with this and knowing her she’s going to flip out when she sees him here. They got a divorce, like it or not, and for whatever reason they’re not together; the point is, they’re not together. You can’t expect them to just forget whatever happened and fall into one another’s arms and pretend like nothing happened.”
“What did happen?” It was a question that had been plaguing Carolyn since she learned of the breakup. “One minute they were fine and then she just tells her husband that she’s leaving. According to him, there was no reason, at least none that he knew of.” An affair had crossed her mind, Carolyn had to admit that unpleasant truth, but even with Christina’s past, she didn’t think even that was likely in this situation. If there was one thing she did know, she knew that Christina loved Sean. This was a matter of what and why at this point and she was tired of guessing. She wanted it from the horse’s mouth, and if inviting Sean was the only way to get it out of her, so be it. She’d be the bad guy, or in this case, the bad mother.
“We’ve allowed her to make some pretty big decisions that we didn’t agree with in the past and she didn’t get a second chance afterwards. She didn’t get to change her mind later. I just feel that this is my chance of trying to make things right.” Carolyn willed her tears back, but one of them escaped and Albert wiped it away, just when she sniffled.
“Get to bed, whatever happens tomorrow, it’s going to happen. We’ll deal with it then. Come on, let’s get some rest.” Albert rubbed her back, but she wasn’t moving, she was staring at something and when he followed her eyes, he realized what it was. There was the picture from two Thanksgivings ago, with all of them there; Chrissy and Sean, their twin sons, Albert Jr. (whom they’d always called AJ) and Arthur, AJ’s wife Audrita, and Arthur’s longtime girlfriend Bianca, and Albert and Carolyn, smiling, happy in the November sunshine. It was a picture taken by their next door neighbor just past noon that day at Bianca’s suggestion. For Christmas she’d given them all framed copies of the photo. She may have been brown nosing her way into their hearts, but Carolyn couldn’t say she minded that approach at all, and she was honestly grateful that she’d done what she had. It was a beautiful gesture, no matter the motive, and although she couldn’t speak for Albert, she was happy to hear that Bianca and Artie were still together, although she wasn‘t quite sure if the two of them were going to take their relationship to the next level or not.
“We’ve made our lives work with those three for thirty two years so far, and they’ve added a few people along the way for us to get to know and love. You think we can maybe do it for another thirty?” Carolyn was still looking at the picture when she asked.
“Let’s take it one year at a time,” Their thirty fifth anniversary was coming up soon and he wanted to plan something special. Whether or not he was going to include his children in on it was a toss up at this point, but the prospect of involved their entire brood in a surprise was growing on him. “See if we like any of them after tomorrow.”
Carolyn laughed and he kissed her forehead. He brushed her chestnut colored hair aside and tucked it behind her hair; it just another thing he did that he didn’t even think about twice. He looked at her then, up close, and he knew that he would always think she was beautiful even if she let her hair go gray and stopped with the professional dye jobs, he didn’t care one way or the other. He would love her with more wrinkles; he would love her wherever they were. He wanted that for Christina; what father wouldn’t want their daughter to be loved? And if Sean was the one to give that to her in the end, he wasn’t going to argue.
***
Pictures were worth a thousand words and the fact that people would be asking a thousand questions if Christina took down all the ones of her husband, or rather her soon to be ex-husband, was enough of a reason for her to keep them on display in her office for the time being.
There would be some questions that she would have to answer that she wasn’t looking forward to, but there was no such thing as a squeaky clean divorce. She preferred to take the ripping the bandage off the cut approach to her own divorce as opposed to a long drawn out court battle. She intended to do all the heavy stuff at once instead of dragging it out piece by piece, month by month, and possibly year by year in court. She wanted to handle as much of it with Sean in private as she could when the time was right, but that wasn’t going to be right now. The last thing she wanted was to hurt him, but she supposed ignoring his attempts to get in touch with her were pain enough. If she could, she would assure him that it would all be over soon, and that he should cooperate. She wanted out and he should respect that. Respect her and her feelings. Besides, a part of her also knew that if she saw him face to face right now she probably wouldn’t be able to go through with it. She’d cleared her things out of their apartment when he wasn’t there and left him note and soon he would be served with the separation papers. All a matter of preliminaries as far as she was concerned, but their marriage was over. They’d been good together, he’d been good to her and for her, but there was too much that she hadn’t told him and so much that she didn’t want to drag him into. This was what happened when your past came back to bite you. If it were just a haunting of her past she could handle it, she knew she could, and without Sean knowing, but what was about to happen was going to change her life. This was the beginning of the end no matter what she felt.
Her mother was expectedly upset especially since she wasn’t giving anyone any explanation for the split, not even to her family. She hated the feeling of disappointing them and of not doing the right thing, but they would all know soon enough. The question now that lingered in her mind was what they were going to think after she did what she was about to do.
Christina looked at the picture that her brother Artie’s girlfriend had framed for them a couple of years ago. Those were the moments of her marriage Christina wanted to hold on to and let go of all at once. Cherishing the good times weren’t going to do a thing for her when she didn’t have him by her side to make more good times with or walk down memory lane holding hands together like her parents did. She hated when she ended up comparing any of her relationships with her parents’, thinking of what they had, all they’d been through, and how they’d managed to stick it out and stay together. She could’ve said that people believed in marriage more during those times, or that they were a different breed of people, but the fact of the matter is that it all depended on the two people involved. She knew that now. Most of her friends’ parents were divorced for whatever reason, and there her parents were. She wondered what could happen if she just told Sean the truth and got it over with, see what he said, see how he felt about everything, but the more she tried to be optimistic about it, the more she doubted him. She couldn’t take the look in his eyes he’d probably have after he found out what had happened, and eventually he would, she just didn’t need to be there to see it, nor did she want to. Moving on was the best thing for the two of them.
She reached out and held the picture in her hand and took a good look at her brothers. Her brother AJ, always so serious, met his match in his wife Audrita. She was good for him; she helped to balance him out. Audrita saw past his straight arrow approach and handled him with the kid gloves that he needed at times, which other people never really saw in him. Artie, with his childish ways, seemed to have found the yin to his yang in Bianca, even though she knew their mother had her qualms about their relationship, though she seemed to like her enough.
According to Carolyn, Bianca came off as a little too shiny and polished for her liking. At least that’s how she appeared to be to them and it came across as less than real. Christina thought it was just some kind of excuse that a mother would come up with to not like his son’s girlfriend. That wasn’t how Christina saw their relationship at all. She saw another pairing of balance between the two of them. Bianca could take Artie’s jokes like a trooper and dish them right back out, she saw the love between the two of them, the way they seemed to meld together. Artie’s other girlfriends had always come across as too high maintenance for him, snippy and a little too prim, and they’d inevitably wanted him to change something about himself and be someone else that they would approve of. Bianca accepted him, loved him.
Christina looked at Sean in the picture and wondered what they’d say about the two of them. How did they rate on the pairing meter according to what her family knew? She looked at his smile, his beautiful smile that always kept her on her toes, those lips that she couldn’t stop kissing, and the way she had to battle to keep the other women away. His tousled bed hair that made him look young and his dark eyes that she could get lost in. He was one of the only married men of all she and her friends’ husbands that wore his wedding ring. She knew that was such a minor detail, but now it was those tiny details that mattered so much.
He’d dragged her out on a hiking trail on their third date and they’d gone camping. Among the trees and the wild animals he admitted that he was falling for her, and before a fire and under stars she admitted to herself that she felt something greater than the average mindless infatuation if she was willing to get bitten by all sorts of bugs and mosquitoes to be with “some guy”. She’d smiled, they’d kissed, and they made love that night. It wasn’t her first time, but it felt close enough to it, and it was special, so much more special than anything she’d felt before then.
She wondered now, sitting at her desk among papers, years after that date, how long would he wait before he started dating again and immediately she shook the thoughts away, but then realized that she’d better get used to the idea of them. People were going to talk, she was going to hear something sooner or later, and he’d probably remarry before the ink dried on the divorce papers. Dating was the last thing on her mind, but she was the one who was calling this thing off, not him, so it wasn’t his fault.
Everyday she had a message from Sean to call her. The week before he’d hounded her secretary, Lisa, to the point of exasperation. He told her he was desperate to speak to her, but Christina refused, and Lisa didn’t try to push her. She probably thought he was caught cheating, but she was a good one, she stayed out of any business that wasn’t hers, and that’s just one of the reasons why Christina had kept her on over the past few years. Too bad she couldn’t say that her mother minded her business.
Carolyn been hounding Christina when she first learned she and Sean were breaking up, but now that her mother hadn’t spoken to her for the past few days she was getting worried. When Carolyn wasn’t badgering her, she was thinking of something, some way to put herself smack dab in the middle of what was going on. Sometimes she had to admit that her mother knew best, but in this situation, it was a free for all. There was no right or wrong decision, no good or bad, and there was only moving forward and accepting that what was done was done. What happened couldn’t be changed now. It was too late. They would all have to deal with the consequences and even though she didn’t want to drag Sean in the middle of it, he was. He was losing his wife; his life was changing, too.
Lisa came in then with a message about a brief. It was the first day she hadn’t heard from Sean, and it both hurt her and gave her relief. The flip flopping emotions was almost too much to bear.
“Oh, I almost forgot, there’s a message here from some guy named Nicky. He said that he wanted to speak with you after work.” Lisa had to have noticed the straightening of her back, the way her facial expressions changed, more so because Christina felt everything change on the outside, but if she did, she pretended not to notice.
Christina didn’t know how she did it to tell the truth. She’d inherited more of her mother’s side, the side that wanted to know everything to the point where it felt like a need even though she hid it well. It was partly why she’d become an attorney. The intimate details she found out concerning other people’s lives were intriguing, and it was even more intriguing when she heard both sides of an argument and the way she was supposed to turn it around in the benefit of the client she was representing. She felt a certain power with her attorney/client privilege and she felt in control. That was the most important part. Feeling in control. Feeling as if there was nothing that would take place without her knowing about it first. Except for this situation that was coming up. She didn’t know what was coming up, there were no cue cards to tell her what her next line was going to be and there was nobody to tell her where to step. She was playing it all by ear and hearing Nicky’s name being called out to her made her feel a world of anxiety and guilt ever single time.