“Mom, I love Mia.”
“I know that but I still think you’re wanting something you’ve never had. I can’t help it if I believe that you look at Mia as a challenge. I think she deserve better than to give her entire soul to you and wake up one morning to find you don’t want her anymore, that she’s given you all that she can and you’re bored.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“I’m not responsible for the things that Pop did to you. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
Damien’s voice was soft and his eyes held his mother’s. “I just want you to like Mia.”
“I do like her, Damien.” She rose to embrace her son, “I like her very much. I liked her even before I met her. She’s good for you. I’ll admit that you’re trying to change. I’ll just wait and see. Don’t hurt her, though. She doesn’t deserve that. If you don’t think you can be true to her, don’t marry her.”
Damien kissed his mother. She didn’t understand what she’d done and his explaining wouldn’t help. She really was trying to keep Mia from repeating her own fate.
Two weeks
, he thought,
two weeks and this will be over.
“This is a cozy little scene,” Charles sneered. “But I don’t like her. Mia’s a stuck up little snob acting like she’s too good to listen and laugh at my jokes.
“You were being crude,” Damien answered, his voice sounding as tired as he was feeling. “Not only that, you spent the entire evening first grilling her, then glaring or leering at her. What did you think she was going to do? I told you Mia wasn’t like that.” Damien’s temper was rising and his voice rose as well. “I don’t like you talking to her like that.”
“You can’t tell me what to say or who the hell to say it to. Who do you think you are? You might be a man but you’d better think hard about it before you ever step in my face again.”
Damien shook his head. “Look, Pop, I wasn’t trying to disrespect you, but you’re going to have to show some respect to Mia. She’s going to be my wife and I’m not going to allow you to talk to her like that.”
“Are you threatening me? Just make it plain what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying that if you can’t behave civilly around Mia, then I think it’s best that you aren’t around her.”
“So now what? You’re telling me how to act for a piece of tail that you’re not even getting?”
Damien pushed away from the table, balled his fists and turned to his mother. “Tell me why you’ve wanted this for thirty years? You’re a good-looking woman. You don’t have to put up with this, with him coming over to sleep with you when he can’t find anyone else.
“And to answer your question, yes, Mia is the first woman who said no to me. I think you could learn a lot from her. She respects herself and she isn’t going to let me walk all over her.”
He saw the intake of breath and his mother lowering her eyes. He’d hurt her. Damn. He hadn’t intended to do that. His frustration with his father had allowed him to strike out at his mother. She didn’t need that. He glanced toward his father. One of them being a bastard to her was enough.
“Can we start over? Mom, I’m sorry I snapped at you. Pop, listen to me for a minute. I know it’s partly my fault. I started it when I told you months ago that Mia thought she was better than me. I was just pissed. She broke things off with me to wait until she told her fiancé. I didn’t like not being with her. I was angry. Hell, I was scared that she might realize that I wasn’t good enough for her, that her fiancé was the one for her.”
Damien laughed, then shook his head. “Do you want to know something? She thinks I’m special. That’s right,” he repeated proudly. “While the two of you might think I’m worthless, that I’m going to cheat on Mia, she doesn’t. I’ve never asked anything of either of you. I thought that the one time I did, you’d know how important it was to me, that maybe you’d come through. And in case you’re interested, you didn’t scare her away, Pop. With all that you did, you didn’t scare her away.” He stared at his father and walked out of the door.
He was lucky that Mia hadn’t run away screaming after the number his father had pulled. Between his parents and her brother glaring at him, it was a wonder that either of them felt like having a wedding.
He remembered Mia telling him how she wished she’d taken his suggestion and eloped. Well, now he was wishing she had also. At the time Mia had looked at him as though he had two heads, kissed him and told him to deal with it. But now he was tired of dealing with it. He wanted the wedding to be over before anything else went wrong. He wanted to make Mia his wife before she came to her senses and changed her mind.
* * *
Damien drove around aimlessly for hours. Finally he headed down Lake Shore Drive. It was much too dark to see anything but he drove anyway. The Ferris wheel beckoned and he turned on Grand Avenue, parked and looked skywards. He and Mia deserved a day together. They were seeing less and less of each other since they’d become engaged and that had to be rectified. Tomorrow he would make sure they did just that.
Another few minutes of looking at the Ferris wheel and Damien left, hoping that by the time he returned home his parents would be done with their fight, and that his father would be gone.
Damien groaned inwardly as he pulled up to his home and spied his father’s truck. He shook his head, not wanting to deal with more drama, not tonight. The drive had done him good and he wasn’t about to allow his parents to spoil the way he was feeling.
Without thought Damien eased his key into the lock, holding the door as he opened it, making sure he wouldn’t be heard. Too late he realized that though his parents didn’t hear him, he could hear them. He waited for a second before deciding to ease past the den. He couldn’t believe they were still going at it.
“I’m sick of playing the bad parent.”
Damien stopped at his father’s voice and almost laughed out loud at his father’s words
. What the hell kind of parent does he think he’s been?
“You are the bad parent,” his mother came back. “You should have married me.”
“Married you? Are you crazy? You’re lucky that I didn’t just leave you and never come back.”
“My God, are you going to throw that up in my face for the rest of our lives?”
“Yes.”
Damien heard his father growl but the growl contained something else. There was pain there. Damien sat at the foot of the stairs listening to his parents. Something was wrong. This was different from any of the fights he’d ever walked in on.
“Big deal. I had an affair. So what? I wasn’t the only one to have one,” his mother said.
Damien’s stomach fell. His mother? He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t heard it from her own mouth. What was wrong with this picture?
“I never slept around on you while we were together and as far as your little affair, you conveniently forget that you cheated on me twice.” His father’s voice was ragged with emotion. Damien thought about making noise to alert them that he was home but he found himself unable to move as his mother’s voice screamed out in anger.
“It didn’t mean anything. I’ve tried telling you that. I was confused and angry.”
“And that makes a difference? Why, Kathy? That’s all that I want to know. I loved you. I was good to you. Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I was unhappy. Chuck, it isn’t going to do any good to keep going over this. The first time I was just confused, I thought…”
“I know what you thought. You thought you could do it and I would never find out.”
“I still wanted to marry you.”
“You were sleeping around two days before we were going to get married. I found you in bed with a man, remember? Did you really think I was gong to marry you then?”
“I was pregnant. You should have married me.”
Damien begin to shake. His mother had slept around. She’d been pregnant and sleeping around. How could his father even be sure he was his son?
“My son was the only good thing that came out of our relationship.”
“You know, Chuck, sometimes I wish Damien wasn’t yours.”
“But he is mine. I made sure of that.”
“Don’t you think your putting me through that was revenge enough? You’ve used the threat of telling Damien for his entire life.”
“And you’ve used me being the bad guy so he would hate me for his not having a family.”
“You are the bad guy. He’s seen it his entire life—you’ve taught him your ways.”
“To protect him, Kathy. Yes, he knows my faults but I’m not the only parent he has that has faults.” Charles grunted. “I don’t know, maybe neither of us had what it took to be together. We tried, but it didn’t work.”
“We still love each other. We could try again. Damien will be gone soon and you could move back in.”
“I told you the last time you threw me out I would never live with you. ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’”
“Then why do you keep coming back?”
“Because you keep calling me.” Damien heard the bitterness in his father’s voice from the stairs where he sat with his head in his hands. This was the missing piece, the reason why his mother put up with his father, the bitterness his father displayed toward his mother and women in general. He was making her pay for betraying him.
“Kathy, I guess a little part of me will always love you but I can never trust you again.”
“So you’ve decided to make it your mission to destroy your son’s happiness.”
“I don’t want him to allow some little girl to make a fool of him like I did. I don’t want him to love her so much that he forgets to protect himself. You think men don’t hurt, Kathy? They do.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I know you are. But we both know that you play this doormat role in front of Damien. It’s not who you are. It’s never been who you were and I’m not buying into it again.”
“I’ve put my life on hold waiting for you to forgive me, to take me back. It was so long ago. I couldn’t help what I did. I was young.”
“You didn’t try to help it. It wasn’t enough that I loved you,” Charles spat out bitterly, his anger renewed. “You thought you were going to use my son against me. Well, you see that didn’t happen. I have the last laugh on you as far as Damien’s concerned. He’s more like the way I should have been from the beginning, and I’m not going to let him allow love to screw him up.
“You just think you have control over him. I’m his mother. When all is said and done, he will chose me over you.”
Damien couldn’t believe what he was hearing, all these years, all the fights, them pitting him against the other. It wasn’t because they hated each other as he’d always thought. In some sick universe, they actually loved each other.
Damien walked into the den, glancing from one parent to the other. “Are you two for real?” he asked quietly. “All my life you’ve been using me to hurt each other because you couldn’t find a way to make your relationship work.”
He looked toward his mother. “I can’t believe you always brought up Pop’s faults, but never once mentioned it was you who cheated on him.” He turned his gaze on his father. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“That’s your mother, boy. You don’t disrespect your mother.”
“But you do it. You’ve disrespected her my entire life.” He saw the look in his father’s eyes change and saw him glance at his mother.
“It’s none of your business what goes on between us.”
“It is when it affects me. Look, if it hurt you so much when you caught her cheating, why didn’t you just leave and go on with your life, forget about her?”
“Because he wanted to make me suffer,” Kathy yelled, “and you were the best way to do that.”
“You’re the one that used Damien.”
Damien’s head swiveled from one parent to the other. “I’m through,” he announced. “That’s it. Kill each other, love each other. I don’t give a damn.”
Kathy looked at Charles. “I’m not going to keep begging you to forgive me. I made a mistake. Okay,” she amended, “I made a bunch of mistakes, but through the years you’ve more than repaid me. Damien’s right, it’s time we end this feud. I’m moving on. The dance ends tonight.”
Halleluiah
, Damien thought and headed up to bed.
Mia snuggled next to Damien, enjoying the feel of his arms around her. They were looking out over Lake Michigan, the spray from the water misting them. She had always enjoyed watching the boats, and now with the fog rolling in, they looked even more beautiful and a bit mysterious.
Damien was unusually quiet, and Mia wondered what was up. “Anything wrong?” she asked.
“No, nothing.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Did something happen at the zoo?”
Damien stared at Mia for a moment. “Why do you want to be a psychologist?”
“I want to help people figure out their problems. I want to give them tools to keep themselves sane. I think if more people had tools they wouldn’t feel so hopeless and do things that can’t be changed.”
“Mia, you can work a lifetime with the garbage that’s in a person’s mind and never be able to help them.”