“Mr. Norris, you have two visitors out here who say they need to talk to you,” said Layla at the front desk to one of the assistant vice presidents at Commercial Credit Union in Houston, TX.
Andrew Norris glanced from the computer screen he was reading to his appointment book. He was pretty sure he didn’t have an appointment for Monday at 9:30 a.m. but figured he should double-check. He hadn’t looked at the book since just before he left for the weekend last Friday afternoon at five.
Feeling better that he hadn’t forgotten an appointment, the 36-year-old Norris told the office receptionist to send in the visitors. As they got to his doorway, the blond blue-eyed AVP rose from his desk to his full six-foot height and came around his desk with his hand extended.
Entering his office were a pair he had never seen before: a tall handsome older man with a combination of blond and gray hair and a young blond woman who looked to be in her early 20s. They looked to be grandfather and granddaughter, Norris noted, and he wondered why exactly they had specifically asked for him.
After shaking hands with both and introducing himself officially, Norris asked the pair to sit in the chairs across the desk from his chair before the older man spoke.
“You might want to close the door. What we have to discuss is personal, not business,” the older man said.
Norris raised both eyebrows at that announcement, but did as suggested and then returned to his seat. He looked attentively into the light blue eyes of the older man.
“We’re sorry for taking time away from your job, but this seemed to be the best time to do this,” the older man said. “I don’t know how much you know about me, or us. My name is Magnus Andersen, and this is my daughter, Genevieve. I’m your biological father, and Gen is your sister, or, at least, your half-sister.”
Norris froze in his seat, with his jaws open but no sound coming forth.
“I’m guessing then that your parents, or maybe just your mother, never told you about me,” the older man said.
Norris did his best fish out of water routine, sucking air voraciously, but not being able to manufacture words.
“I can assure you, Son, that what I’m telling you is the absolute truth. Your mother and I had a nearly year-long affair 37 years ago, and you are the end product. The man you think of as your father didn’t know anything at the time, and either he still doesn’t know shit or agreed to raise you as his own.
“If you want to verify what I’m saying, it might be easiest to do an Ancestry.com DNA test. I have taken an Ancestry test, and my results are in the system, along with my tree. I’m thinking at this point that your mother wouldn’t tell you the truth. As for the man you think of as your father…”
“Don’t you dare disrespect my father, you old fucker!” Norris yelled at the other man, causing both him and the young woman to flinch back in their chairs.
“I know this must be hard: some stranger walking into your office and claiming to be your real father, but it’s the truth,” the older man said quietly. “I’m sorry to lay this on you after all this time.”
“If you’re so sorry, then why are you doing it?” Norris asked harshly.
“I had hoped your parents, or at least your mother, would have told you earlier, and you would have tried to find me earlier. But I gave up that hope after 20 years.
“But now my time is limited, and I could no longer wait for you to come to me. I have the beginnings of dementia, and I am trying to put my house in order before my life as I know it goes away.”
Drew Norris looked at the pair as if he were seeing ghosts. He noticed that both visitors had the same coloring as he did.
Growing up, Drew always assumed he just had more of his Nordic mother than his southern European father. He had the same coloring as his mother and his mother’s basic look, but with both people sitting across the desk from him, he could see himself in both of them, as well.
“I am Norwegian on one side, and Finnish on the other. My roots go back to the Vikings,” Andersen said with more than a little pride.
“I have four children: three with Gen’s mother, and you. You are the oldest and Gen is the youngest.”
“Do you mind if I ask how old you are? You look almost too old for my mother,” Norris said tentatively.
“I’m 74, about 10 years older than your mother if I remember correctly. She was a young secretary in the history department at Harvard. I was a tenured professor.”
So far, everything the older man had said was in line with what Norris knew about his family, except for the father part. His parents had lived in Cambridge, MA, for several years in the early part of their marriage, and in fact, both he and his older sister, Lucy, had been born in the city. His mother did work for the university, and his father was a mechanical engineer, working in the city.
“After your older sister was born, I remember your mother being self-conscious about the weight she had gained while carrying the baby. It was only about 20 pounds, but she was always worried that your father would be unhappy with her because of that. She was talking about that at lunch one day in the cafeteria at a table right next to where I was sitting, and I remember thinking that your father was a putz if he couldn’t see that your mother was a beautiful woman.
“I started making it a point to stop by the history department office and compliment her. I knew what my end game was. I was always a ladies’ man. I knew what to say to eventually get them into bed, and what to do once I got them there. Yes, I was already married, but for me this was only a little more than just sex. I knew, though, that your mother kind of felt it was more than that. We had even discussed her leaving your father for me, but then my wife got pregnant with our first, and I just couldn’t leave her. Fortunately, your mother hadn’t said anything to your father, so she could just continue on with him like nothing had happened.
“She never told me if she was going to tell your father. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to intrude. That was between them. It was their marriage.”
“That was nice of you, not wanting to intrude,” Norris said more than a little sarcastically.
“From what Traci said, she truly loved your father. It was just that she was feeling a little dumpy, and I was there to bolster her confidence when she was feeling low. We started our affair about a year after your sister was born, and two months later she was pregnant.”
Norris exhaled after the older man finished his story, not realizing he was holding his breath.
Norris’ parents moved to Indiana about a year after he was born. Two years after that his younger sister, Janet, was born.
“Even though I wasn’t invited to be a part of your life, I kept track of where you were all these years,” the older man said.
Both Norris and his younger sister favored their mother and had their mother’s pale coloring. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that both children could take after their mother’s side of the family, Norris thought to himself.
Norris sat quietly for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, a half-minute.
“Bottom line–what do you want from me, Mr. Andersen?” Norris finally asked.
“Just your acknowledgement that I actually exist–as your father, at least biologically. Apparently, your parents or your mother never wanted you to know about me, and that was their choice, but I’ve always known you existed, and that you are a part of me.”
The older man had tears in his eyes as he stood up, with Genevieve following. Norris stood up as well, not exactly sure what was happening. He assumed the meeting was over and stuck his hand out for a handshake, but Andersen grabbed the hand and pulled the younger man into a hug that lasted about 10 seconds.
“That’s all I wanted, Son. Thank you for your time,” Andersen said.
With that, he and Genevieve left the office.
Drew sat alone in his office for several long minutes, his mind whirring like a blender at high speed. He would definitely have to do an Ancestry DNA test to verify what Andersen had said. Assuming, however, that what Andersen had told him was accurate, he definitely had a dilemma of epic proportions.
Up until a few minutes ago, Alex Norris was the only father Drew had known. He idolized his father, and as Drew grew into manhood, Alex went from just being a great dad to a great dad as well as a great friend.
“Fuck! Now what do I do?” he thought to himself.
Drew knew the questions. He just didn’t know the answers, starting with the big one: did his father know that Drew was the biological son of another man? If Alex didn’t know, than Drew telling him would tear his heart out, and that was something he wanted to avoid at all costs. But if Alex didn’t know and later found out Drew knew and didn’t tell him, wouldn’t that be the betrayal of all betrayals?
He considered going to his mother first with news of meeting Andersen, but then he realized that if his father didn’t know, his mother had been deceiving him all these years, and would probably continue to do so.
Probably the only way this would work out well for Drew was if both parents knew and decided not to tell him. That would result in some hurt feelings, but not be the epic confrontation.
Drew’s head dropped to his desk with a noticeable thud.
“I hate Mondays,” he said out loud to no one.
Drew went to the Ancestry.com site and ordered a DNA test. He knew that he had several weeks before he would get the results back. Maybe by then he could figure out some way to transport himself to another universe.
Magnus Andersen was completely truthful to Drew, the results of the Ancestry DNA tests proved when Norris got them back several weeks later. By this point, Drew had decided not to approach his parents with what he had found out. He knew it was taking the coward’s way out, but he loved Alex with all his heart and would do anything not to hurt the man he still considered his father.
******
Alex Norris was absolutely thrilled when his Ancestry.com DNA kit showed up in the mail. He had a lot of questions about his family history, and there were no older relatives alive to ask. He had joined the genealogical website about a year ago, and was slowly putting together his family tree.
Alex’s wife of 41 years, Traci, looked at her husband like he was a child with a brand new toy. She had listened to her husband ramble on about finding various family members for a year, only peripherally paying attention. She knew he was looking at past family members, a chore that would take him years.
Alex saw the bemused look on Traci’s face and smiled back at his wife. She wouldn’t understand, Alex thought, because she has family bibles on both sides of her family reaching back almost 300 years.
It only took five minutes for Alex to get his swab and get it ready to send. He grabbed his car keys and called out to his wife that he was going to the post office.
“All right. Drive carefully, Alex,” she called back.
Alex found several more relatives through the DNA matches when they came back and started corresponding with new family members he had found. He was spending at least an hour a day on the Ancestry site.
“I’ve paid for your membership for the next year, and I’ve got a DNA tests coming down for you, Lucy and Janet,” Alex gushed to his son over the phone. “This stuff is great. The info is tremendous. You three have to try this.”
“Wow, Dad. That’s great,” Drew responded as his mind started working overtime.
Alex was especially close to his son. The two talked at least once a week. They agreed on practically everything, from politics to sports. Like Alex, Drew was quiet, yet intense on certain things, and had a wry sense of humor. Everyone in the family could see that he treated his wife of five years with the same reverence with which Alex treated Traci.
Two months later, Drew still hadn’t turned in his DNA test, and Alex in his enthusiasm couldn’t understand why.
“You’ll love this, Bud,” he said, calling Drew by his familiar nickname. “You’ll get to e-mail with family we didn’t know we had until recently and…”
“Dad… Dad. I don’t need to do my DNA. I already did and you won’t find me. I’m not your son… at least not biologically,” Drew said in little more than a whisper.
“Wait. What?” Alex said. “What do you mean you’re not my son? Of course you’re my son.”
“No, Dad, I’m not. I had a visitor last year. Does the name Magnus Andersen mean anything to you?”
Alex was puzzled, to say the least. Drew picked up on the hesitation in answering.
“Dad, are you someplace where you can talk? I mean you need to be in a room by yourself.”
Alex was talking in the kitchen and Traci was in the family room. Alex moseyed his way outside to the porch swing on the front porch.
“Okay. We can talk now,” he said to his son with the most serious tone Drew had heard since Alex gave him the talk about sex when he was 12 years old.
Drew spelled out for Alex in detail his meeting with Magnus and Genevieve Andersen the previous year.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I was hoping to never have to tell you. I wasn’t sure if you knew already and just decided to raise me as yours, or what the story was.”
“Raise you as mine‽” Alex practically yelled. “You are mine, Bud! I don’t care what any DNA test says. Now as for whatever your mother has told you…”
“She hasn’t told me anything, and I haven’t told her a thing. Dad, I’m sorry for not telling you. You know I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“I know, Drew. I know. Not your fault, Sonny-Boy, and it shouldn’t have been your problem,” Alex said.
“So now what are you going to do?” Drew asked.
“After drinking a bottle of Jack? I have no idea,” Alex said. “I always thought your mom and I were in it for the long haul; that we’d grow old together. Maybe we still can, but right now my heart is breaking. Right now we might not have another 10 minutes. I’ll call you in a few days, Drew.”
“I love you, Dad. Bye.”
Alex walked back into the house, went straight into the bathroom and promptly threw up. After cleaning up, he headed for his liquor cabinet and grabbed a three-quarter full bottle of Jack Daniels and a glass. He staggered over to the kitchen table and plopped down in a chair.
“Are any of them really mine?” Alex thought as he downed his third drink.
“Babe, you okay? What are you doing in there?” Traci called into the kitchen.
“Am I okay? Good question,” Alex thought. “No, I’m not okay. What the fuck do you think? Much of what I thought I knew was wrong.”
Alex seriously considered going into the family room and choking Traci to death as he downed his sixth shot. Everyone who knew Alex knew he was a reflective, slow-to-anger person. He proved their assessment was correct by pouring a seventh shot and remaining at the kitchen table.
Alex thumped his chest with his left hand. He was still feeling sick to his stomach, or was he having a heart attack, he wondered. Was it possible that Traci, his Traci, had cheated on him all those years ago? Several hours ago, it didn’t seem possible. Now, after what his son had said, not only was it possible, it was a stone-cold fact.
Forty-three years ago, Traci was a 20-year-old junior at a large Midwestern university waiting in line by herself at a McDonald’s for her Sunday night dinner. Alex was waiting right behind her, noticing how well the young lady in front of him filled out her tight jeans. Her pink sweater was enticing him from the back, with her blonde hair hanging down over her shoulders, making him wonder what it looked like from the front. He got his answer when she took her small bag of food from the McDonald’s employee and turned to walk past him. She had a pretty face and filled out her sweater nicely. She caught him looking, and gave him a shy smile. Realizing he was caught, he smiled back.
Traci took her time heading back to her dormitory, knowing that the young man would have to wait a bit for his food. She gave him a few minutes, and then leisurely started walking back. When Alex spotted Traci just a few hundred yards down the road, he immediately knew she had waited on him. He hustled over and caught up to her soon after, asking if she wouldn’t mind having some company on the walk to the dorm. She agreed, and about two months later, Traci and Alex were a couple. A year after they graduated, she with a teaching degree and he in engineering, they were married.
Alex got a job with an engineering firm in Cambridge, and Traci went to work in the history department at Harvard. They did well for a young couple, and two years later their first child, Lucy, was born. A month after their second child, Andrew, was born, they moved to Indianapolis, IN, where Alex took a job in middle management at another engineering firm.
Alex had remembered those early years fondly, but now that he had cause to reflect back, things apparently weren’t as good as they seemed. Alex put in a lot of hours back in those days, but Traci didn’t seem to mind, and in fact, she had a few long days herself.
“Shit!” he thought. “Why the fuck would a history department admin ever have to work late? I am a fucking dumbass!”
Traci was surprised the next afternoon when Alex’s car was already in the garage when she got home from work. He had seemed a little off the night before, she noted, so maybe he left work early due to illness.
“Hon, are you okay?” she called out as she went from the garage into the home’s kitchen.
“No, I’m not,” he said quietly from his perch at the table, which startled her.
Traci took a step back, then saw Alex and two cups of coffee already poured. She sat down at her usual spot at the table, where Alex had placed her cup. Alex sat impassively, starting straight ahead, while Traci tried to figure out what was wrong.
“Are any of the children mine, Traci?” Alex hissed.
Traci blushed crimson and her eyes got wide. After all these years, this was the last thing she expected to be talking about today.
“Shit,” she whispered half under her breath.
She peered over to her left, expecting her husband to still be staring straight ahead. Instead he was directly facing her, glaring through her, to be exact. Traci immediately dropped her eyes to the table.
“Any? None?” he asked stridently.
“Two. The girls are yours,” Traci croaked out.
“So says my cheating slut of a wife!” Alex cried. “Well, I guess that’s why they invented DNA testing!”
“There’s no reason for name-calling, Alex,” Traci said harshly.
“It’s like libel, Traci. It’s not name-calling if it’s the truth, which it is!”
“How… why… after all these years, how did you find out, Al?”
“Our son… and yes, he’s still my son… got a visit last year from your lover, who wanted to get a look at the son he had never seen, before he completely succumbs to dementia.”
Traci gasped and put her hand to her mouth.
“You mean you’ve known for a year‽” she asked incredulously.
“No, Drew has known for a year. He kept your lousy-ass secret for a year! He only told me because I kept pushing for that damned DNA test. If I hadn’t pushed, I never would have known, and you could have pretended for the rest of our lives that you loved me.”
“I do love you, Alex. I do. I made a mistake. I had a lapse of judgment,” Traci sobbed. “Let’s talk about this. PLEASE!”
“A lapse of judgment! Is that what you call an affair that went on for almost a year! A lapse of fucking judgment!”
Traci broke down sobbing at that point. Alex looked disgusted, got up and walked into the family room. Later that night, Alex went to sleep in the guest room for the second straight night.
Over his lunch hour the next day, Alex called an attorney recommended to him by a co-worker who was divorced several years ago. Since Indiana was a no-fault state, Alex knew the split would be 50-50, although he’d probably have to pay some alimony for a few years due to the disparity in salaries.
Traci was in the kitchen preparing dinner when Alex came home that night. The smell in the house was wonderful, Alex thought. He would miss her cooking, Alex admitted to himself.
It was another quiet meal until Traci finally broke the silence.
“Can we talk, Alex? Please?”
Alex finished the mouthful of food he was chewing, took a drink of wine and pointed at his wife.
“I only have one question, Traci. Why?”
Traci winced at the question. She knew it was coming, but she was sure Alex wasn’t going to like the answer. She considered telling him a sanitized version, but she wasn’t sure how much he already knew by way of Drew. Getting caught in a lie at this point would probably be the worst thing she could do.
“After Lucy was born I was a little bummed out with the extra 20 pounds I still had on my body, and I guess Magnus picked up on that and started to compliment me and make me feel better about myself. He was a little older than me, and he just had a way of making me feel good just by talking to me. We went out for some lunches, then for some dinners and eventually… well… the friendship turned sexual. I knew I shouldn’t, especially since I really did love you, but then the sex was so good once we started. It… wasn’t better than what we had, it was different, and since I knew it was wrong, it was very exciting.
“Then I got pregnant, and I wasn’t sure who’s baby it was, so I knew we had to call off the relationship, and we did. It probably would have been easiest just to abort the baby, but you know I don’t believe in that.”
Alex took in the story with a stoic face, occasionally sipping his coffee. He expected Traci to give him a sanitized version, and she didn’t disappoint.
“Don’t you think that after all this time, you owe me the whole truth, not just a cleaned-up version that ignores half the story?” Alex said.
Traci screwed up her face. She didn’t expect Alex to want more detail.
“Shit,” she whispered. “He was a beautiful strong man, 6-4, with muscles, and he had a nice manner about him. I guess I fell kind of hard for him. Then when I got pregnant, I figured it was probably his, but since his physical characteristics were like my family’s, I knew you would never suspect the baby wasn’t yours. And, honestly, he was such a beautiful man I really wanted to have his baby…”
That last line was out of Traci’s mouth before she could stop herself. She shut up quickly and looked sideways at her husband, hoping he was too upset over the whole issue to really catch what had spilled out of her mouth.
Try as he might, Alex couldn’t help but wince at Traci’s last remark.
“So when did you find out Drew was your lover’s child?” Alex asked.
“My gynecologist did the work on that. He narrowed down the dates and those corresponded to the week that most of the history department went to UCLA for a conference. Do you remember that? Magnus and I slept together every night.
“I was ovulating then, but I knew you would never know where I was in my cycle. You never kept track, and I knew you would never put two and two together.”
“So I was a schmuck and a dupe. Perfect,” Alex said.
“But you still left out the part where your lover got his own wife pregnant, too, and decided to stick with her and not run off with you. I became a convenient fall-back plan,” Alex noted.
“I still loved you, Alex,” Traci said. “You weren’t a fall-back plan. We had Janice three years later; that’s how much I loved you. And you were a great father to our children. We did a good job of raising those kids, and now we’re going to grow old together.
“We’re so close, Alex. We’re 64 years old. Don’t screw this up now. Things have been good. Don’t ruin everything for a mistake I made more than 30 years ago. Please use your head… and your heart.”
“God damn it, Traci!” Alex yelled. “You fuck up and now you’re trying to blame me! You’ve been lying to me for 38 years.”
“No, Alex, I haven’t been lying to you for 38 years. I did love you then. I love you now. I’ve never stopped loving you. I know you may not believe it, but it’s possible to love more than one person at a time.”
“But for a while there, I was number 2. We made vows to forsake all others, Traci,” Alex said. “Had I known then what I know now, we would have been history. You broke my heart. You broke my trust.”
Traci looked up with tears in her eyes. It seemed that Magnus told Drew everything, and Drew did likewise for Alex. For the first time, she wondered how Drew was taking things. She wondered how Drew and Alex were working things out. She also wondered…
“I know you’re wondering,” Alex said. “Apparently Lover Boy has dementia, and before he lost everything, he wanted to see his first-born and introduce himself. Seems you two never had a definitive discussion of what you were going to tell Drew about his real father. He even wondered if you had told me and the two of us had decided to raise Drew as ours.”
“Dementia. Poor guy,” Traci said quietly, tenderly.
“Even I wouldn’t wish that on the poor bastard,” Alex said. “Nah, I’d feel better if his dick and balls fell off.”
Traci pursed her lips, but decided it was smarter not to respond. She realized this was a fight she was not going to win. The best she could hope for right now was a tie, so to speak.
“I apologize for making it so easy for you,” Alex said. “Looking back on it now, I should have questioned why a history department secretary had to work late occasionally, but I just had complete trust in you. Complete. Trust. In. You.
“Obviously, I was a fucking moron.”
Traci cringed every time Alex said the f-bomb. Up until this point, he tried not to curse at his wife, especially the “big one.”
Alex called his son the next day and told him of the previous evening’s news, including the fact that Traci tried not to give him all the details. Drew could tell his father was struggling to keep his composure over the phone.
“Have you come to a decision yet, Dad? Remember, you two have a lot of years together, and it would be a shame to see you two split at this point,” Drew said.
“I haven’t come to a decision, although I have to admit it’s going to be hard for me to forgive the betrayal of my trust and the silence for all these years. She would have left me…
“But how are you doing? Seriously,” Alex asked. “I know telling me had to be hard. I’m sorry you were put in this position.”
“Hardest thing I’ve ever done, Dad. Never want to have to do anything like that again.
“Are we good, Dad? I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner, Dad. Honestly.”
“We’re good, Bud. This shouldn’t have been your problem at all.
“You do realize that you will always be my son, regardless of what a piece of paper says.”
“I do, Dad. And you will always be my father.”
“That said, have you visited with your other family yet. You’ve got what, a brother and two more sisters–at least halves?”
“I haven’t visited yet. Maybe I should,” Drew said. “You know, up until last year I had two sisters. Now I’ve got four half-sisters, a half-brother and a fucked up life.”
Drew got a second phone call later in the day, this time from his mother.
“Mom, you do realize I’m working here, right?” Drew said with more than a little undisguised disgust in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Drew, for everything,” Traci replied quietly. “You know Dad and I both love you very much.”
“How could you, Mom? You cheated on Dad, got pregnant and then didn’t say a thing to either Dad or me until you got trapped 30-some years later. Damn. That’s cold.”
“I’m really sorry, Drew. I loved him. I thought we were going to be together, and then his wife got pregnant, too. But your father… Alex was absolutely the best dad you ever could have had. I know that, and so do you.”
“I do know that, Mom. I hope you know that.”
Divorce papers were served to Traci at her job a week later. Alex received word from his attorney right after it happened, and his phone started blowing up immediately after. He didn’t return a call or text, and in fact, got quite a lot done at his office. Knowing what was coming when he got home, he picked up a pizza and six-pack of beer.
He was two steps inside the house when the verbal barrage began.
“Are you kidding me, you selfish bastard?” Traci screamed. “You just had to serve me at my office to humiliate me, didn’t you?”
“Truthfully, the thought did appeal to me,” Alex admitted. “Why shouldn’t you get a measure of shit heaped on you, like me?”
“That’s ancient history, and you know it. It was 38 years ago. You didn’t know about it, I never took anything from you. At this point, I’m not going to apologize for something that happened that long ago. I’m sorry that you are having a tough time getting over it, but it’s time to man up and get on with life.”
“I’m sorry, Babe. I didn’t realize that breaking my heart had a statute of limitations on it,” Alex said.
“You loved him. You were going to leave me for him until his wife got pregnant and he stayed for her. He chose her, not you. That didn’t escape me.”
Traci fought the divorce. She and her attorney got the judge to order counseling. Alex knew things were going to be tough when the counselor asked him about his hurt feelings after so many years.
“Mr. Norris, you seem abnormally hurt even though this affair was almost 40 years ago,” the counselor commented to Alex in the first session.
“Not to me, Mrs. Ryan. I’ve only known about the affair for a few months now. It’s new to me, and the wound is still raw,” Alex responded.
“We had a great life together since then,” Traci whined. “What happened almost 40 years ago was a lifetime ago. My commitment back to my husband can’t be overlooked.”
“But she cheated on me for almost a year. That’s why she had to recommit to me,” Alex said. “Don’t cheat. Don’t have to recommit.
“She got pregnant by her lover, and if he hadn’t decided to stay with his wife, she would have left me. Left me! Had his kid with him! So because he decides to stay with his wife, she comes back to me, keeping everything secret. I was her back-up plan, for God’s sakes!”
Alex was practically screaming at this point. His face was red. His anger was palpable to the counselor, and maybe everybody within a quarter-mile radius.
“Mr. Norris. Please calm down. Volume down, sir,” Callista Ryan said.
“Aarrgghh!” Alex screamed.
Traci asked the counselor if she could speak first at the next session. She desperately needed Alex to understand that her love for him was real.
“Alex, I apologize for breaking our vows, but I always loved you. And when I recommitted to you, I did so completely, and never once looked at another man. I came to realize my mistake, regretted it and gave you every ounce of my love after that. That’s why we had Janice. She was my gift to you, to our marriage.”
Alex looked directly into Traci’s pleading eyes. He admitted to himself that if he hadn’t learned of Traci’s cheating, he would have gone to his death thinking he had a practically perfect marriage.
In another time, another place, he would have gotten out of his chair, gone to her and given her a comforting hug. Stopping him, however, was the nagging thought that he did find out about her cheating, her pregnancy with another man’s child and her admission that she would have left him if not for Magnus’ decision to stay with his pregnant wife. Any of those three should give him good reason to divorce Traci; all three combined seemed to make for a no-brainer… except for the 43 years of absolute love he had given her.
Traci could see the apprehension in Alex’s face. He couldn’t keep his eyes on hers.
“You would have left me for him,” Alex whispered. “He had become your number 1 love, and you would have dumped me if it wasn’t for circumstances. We wouldn’t have had the last… 38 years of what I thought was a great marriage because you would have been gone, and I would have been alone.
“Yeah, that’s love.”
“But I didn’t leave, for whatever reason, and I rediscovered you, so to speak. You just admitted it, you thought it was a great marriage…”
“But what I thought wasn’t true, was it?” Alex cried. “That was a sham. You deceived me. You disrespected me. You can’t call it a great marriage if it’s based on a lie… a lie of omission.
“Your lapse of judgment–as you called it–would have resulted in a divorce if I had known about it. How dare you! We took vows! Didn’t they mean anything to you‽”
Alex broke down at that point, the first time Traci had seen him cry for anything other than the death of his parents. It was starting to dawn on her that Alex was as devastated as if this just happened recently. Apparently, the counselor had read the situation the same way.
“Mrs. Norris, although you would obviously like this situation to be resolved quickly, your husband has a lot to digest, and it’s all fairly new to him. And at this point in your lives, it looks like this reconciliation could be a slow go. It might seem to be better than the alternative, but going into your retirement years with this between you? That’s going to take both of you working very hard to overcome. If one of you is not committed…”
Traci looked hard at Alex. Alex caught the turn of her head, but he shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know, Traci, honestly. I can’t answer that,” Alex said. “I know the question to ask is ‘would I be better off with or without you?’ but I keep getting two answers. After all this time, I know I would be better off with you, just for the convenience alone, but it’s not about convenience, is it? Can I live with you, knowing that your choice was another? Knowing that you lied to me for 38 years? Knowing that everything I thought was true for the last 38 years was an illusion?”
Traci asked all three kids to call Alex and urge him to stay married. Drew told his mother flat out he wouldn’t interfere in his father’s decision, but both girls were not shy about calling their father in support of their mother. Alex graciously told both daughters that he would give their request serious consideration, but he couldn’t guarantee to them what his final decision would be.
“Please, Dad, don’t break up the family for a 40-year-old mistake. Let it go,” Lucy said after making her pitch.
“Luc, can I ask you a question?” Alex asked. “If Robbie were to cheat on you, would you forgive him easily?”
“After I cut his balls off? Yeah, probably,” his oldest answered.
Alex was shaving a few days later when the answer was almost literally right in front of his face.
“Yeah. You’re right,” Alex said to his reflection.
Alex asked to go first at the next counseling section.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ryan, but I now know that I can’t stay with Traci, and we should stop these sessions,” Alex said.
“Pardon me, Mr. Norris?” the counselor responded. ” What caused this epiphany?”
“I did. Well, actually my reflection,” Alex noted. “I came to the conclusion that there was no way I could ever look at myself in a mirror again if I let Traci spit on me and just took it.”
“I didn’t spit on you. It was never like that,” Traci whined. “I love you.”
“You were going to leave me; leave us. If that’s not spitting on me, I don’t know what is. You didn’t leave only because his wife got pregnant and he decided to stay with her. So the decision to stay with me really wasn’t yours. It was his.”
Traci dropped her eyes to the floor. She shifted her eyes quickly to Alex, then to the counselor before again looking back down.
“Mrs. Norris?” the counselor asked.
“It… it sounds harsh, but I guess it’s true,” Traci hissed almost under her breath.
“But what about all those great years? Don’t they count for anything, Mr. Norris?”
“She got a do-over, but I got lied to. And we won’t even talk about Drew, will we?”
“You’re making a horrible mistake, Alex. I love you and you love me,” Traci reiterated.
“When it comes to this marriage, obviously it won’t be my first mistake,” Alex said.
Traci scrunched her face at that comment.
“I don’t want a divorce! I don’t want a divorce! I don’t want a divorce!” Traci shrieked.
Traci didn’t get what she wanted, and at 64 she wound up living in a small apartment in a senior housing addition. She was quickly on her way to becoming a bitter old woman. Even her grandchildren weren’t too thrilled when Grandma Norris came to visit.
Alex also wound up in a small apartment, but in a regular section of the town. He decided he was going to use his retirement years as a do-over. He bought himself a Harley-Davidson Road King, and after retiring, spent the spring, summer and fall on the road, taking in the sights. He was a good amateur photographer, and would occasionally submit a photo to a magazine and earn a few extra dollars.
Although Alex hadn’t been a single man in more than 40 years, his adventures in dating occasionally were aided by the fact that single men in their 60s are far outnumbered by single women in that age group. It also helped that Alex wasn’t expecting to find hot, gorgeous women for a night of wild sex. Since he was in pretty good condition for a man of his age, however, when he did date, his partners seemed pleased with his performance.
While Alex enjoyed his occasional sexual liaisons with different women, he noted he missed the familiarity that he enjoyed with Traci. He missed the cuddling and snuggling that would always follow a lovemaking session with his ex-wife. Of course, he realized that most of his hook-ups were purely fucking, not lovemaking.
Drew was pleased that his father was enjoying his “do-over,” although he, like his sisters, would have preferred Alex stayed married to his mother. Drew was much more understanding of the decision than his sisters, who sided with their mother on the issue. Considering Alex went through with the divorce with no hesitation, neither daughter wanted to push their father very hard. While Grandma Norris wasn’t big on the grandkids’ lists, Grandpa Norris was a superstar with his laid-back attitude, longer hair and cool motorcycle.
Drew waited until Magnus died before getting in touch with his other half-siblings. As he explained to Alex, he would always consider Alex to be his real father and Magnus an interloper. His half-siblings from Magnus, however, were not responsible for what happened, so he had no problem contacting them, especially after Alex told him he had no problem learning about the rest of his family.