Perverted Reality

In April, her ex-husband David jogged across the high-school parking lot to tell her she was getting fat. “Wait up. I don’t mean like fat fat.” His hand loosely circled her upper arm and she yanked it free. “Be careful,” he called. “There’s an obesity epidemic going on.”

When she finally told Freddie she was pregnant, he whooped at such great luck. He smiled his irresistible smile without let up. “A boy! My son!” He lost his suave hotel-manager act and acted like a teenager, pounding her shoulders, slapping her high-five. “Is it okay to tell people? You’re not just playing me, Amanda? We’re getting married and everything?”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

After phoning his mom and talking to his two younger brothers, Freddie arranged a meeting early the next morning: his family, Amanda, the girls, and him. Then he ordered a bottle of Champagne and finished it off waiting for his friends Rick, Mark, Max, and Brian to arrive. “Party time!”

Amanda swam in the hotel pool with the girls. They showered, watched TV, and slept. Freddie and his friends played poker all night. He woke her in the morning, wondering about a blood test to prove the baby was his. “Mark’s idea. Because, we both used birth control.”

“Do you want to wait, then, before I meet your mom?”

Hell, no. Freddie couldn’t wait. Joyce Berger, a city social worker, pulled Amanda into a cramped, messy kitchen. “You! You’re the answer to my prayers. Now Fred’s got no choice but to grow up.”

After meeting Freddie’s high-school drop-out brothers, Amanda decided to take a slew of blood tests. Not because Freddie and his family worried her genetically. Or, not entirely. But rather, she and Freddie hardly knew each other. He drank too much, dressed too well, and played video games in a trance. A paternity test would resolve his doubts, even if it couldn’t off-set hers. 

Still, she debated marrying him, almost nonstop. Was convention motivating her? The girls? Even if she supposed they might serve as factors, they weren’t good reasons.

Above all, however, Amanda didn’t love Freddie. She loved Walter, who she believed, rationally or not, had consigned her to this fate.

Why was it that Walter said, “Don’t marry Freddie,” more adamantly than he’d ever said, “I love you, Amanda”?

Anytime she complained that he didn’t return her fervor, Walter would say, “But, you know I love you, Amanda. You absolutely know it. So why keep saying it?”

“I don’t know, Walter. Is it really so obvious that it gets boring saying it out loud? Like saying, “Hey, is it hot in here—or what?”

What truly pissed her off was that somehow Walter had instilled inside Amanda the same stupid, backward, self-defeating morals he had chosen as his own. A perspective that perverted reality, and would thwart them forever.

During April, when she didn’t return his voice mails or texts, Walter sent her CDs of Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter and Johnny Hartman recording with John Coltrane. Old people’s music, except that she soared on the every sound, every time. He sent her Shakespeare’s sonnets and beautiful watercolors by a local artist.

In May, when she called, ready to thank him for such wonderful gifts, they started right in fighting. What she saw as ambivalence, he viewed as sensible respect. He would always love her, but they couldn’t deny their past. If they were to move their love into the sexual realm, that transfer demanded reverence. The immeasurable jump from father to daughter--to man to woman.

She sputtered at this. “How do you know what’s a jump and what’s not, since you’ve got us glued to the ground?” Walter just didn’t love her the way she loved him.

“Do you want me to move to Oak Park, Amanda? If you want me to marry you, just say so, and I will.”

“Walter, how many times have we gone over this? You won’t, and you can’t.” She snapped the phone shut.

Walter called back, saying—he would so move there; he would so marry her. He’d buy them a house for five, Walter, Amanda, and three children.

“It’s too late.” She hung up on him and refused to answer his calls. His god-awful patience and “sensible respect” ruined her disposition.

Six months pregnant, she called Walter again. And this time, before saying “Hello,” she picked up on his frustration.

“I love you without restrictions, Amanda. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

“Nothing, Walter. I want nothing. I want you to do nothing.”

“Honey, please. Why are you so angry?”

Good question. She had no idea. But in a tumult of indignation, she drove straight to the hotel. Freddie was drunk, but what else was new. “Guess what?” she took his manicured hand. “The wedding’s on. Next Saturday. No matter what.”

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Comments

[Bosco]

I think Amanda's childhood experience messed her up something fierce. She seems unable to come to terms with Walter.
You are doing a great job at conveying such a complex, difficult relationship. It must be challenging to write.

[Dan Leo]

It's as if the characters are on a speeding train, but they have no idea where the train's going.

Ah, like life...

[Kathleen]

I'm not the one to say, because I care way too much about Amanda. That's an occupational hazard. (Do people still say that? I've haven't enjoyed conventional and/or truly hazardous employment for many years.)

[Lily Kane]

"What she saw as ambivalence, he viewed as sensible respect."
Ooof, this is too familiar. Great writing though!

[Lily Kane again]

oh yeah, and people DO still use that phrase occupational hazard... not that i would know, i'm not exactly employed

[Kathleen]

Lily, sometimes I think we operate on a similar wave length.