No Words

(I missed the deadline of the previous contest, #294: Words, Words, Words, but wanted to add the story to my page, even though I know it cannot be in the contest. The prompt: Write a story in which the first and last sentence are the same.)

No Words

“I had no words,” mom sobbed at the kitchen table, clutching a wad of tissues and constantly dabbing the water pouring out of her eyes, nose, mouth. At one point, she just put her head in her arms on the table and just bawled. Her body convulsed with each gasp. “We could never figure out what or when to tell you, so..”

I looked over at my “dad?” With his back to the table, feigning cleaning an already spotless area. “So what? You’re not my real dad?”

“I am your real dad,” he turned firmly and looked right at me. “In every aspect of the word ‘dad’, except actual blood. And believe me, there are a lot of blood dads out there who have no idea, and therefore, no right, to be a father.” He was mad at me. Very mad. He wanted to continue, but mom suddenly stood up and blocked him.

“David, shhh. Let me. Please. Let me tell her.”

“Tell me what?! You mean there’s more?! As if finding out at age 32 that my father is not my real father…”

Again, dad pushed against mom and got through. He leaned over the table and pointed his finger at my nose. “I am your real father. I was there from your conception to this very day and I have raised you and loved you as my own blood….” Spit was coming from his mouth. “Don’t you EVER say I’m not your real father.”

“David,” Mom put her hand on his shoulder. He continued, easing his tone a little and straightening up. “Did you ever not feel loved by me? As a father? Have you ever not felt like my little golden angel your whole life?”

“No, of course,” I began. Now Dad was crying. He looked at mom, threw his hands up and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this is supposed to be about her, but it hurts, god damn it, it hurts!”

I ran to him and hugged his back as he hunched over the sink, seemingly to hold onto it for dear life.

“Dad,” I’m so sorry. I am your golden angel. Always. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry, I’m just in shock.”

He turned and hugged me so tight, I could barely breathe.

“Come now, mom broke us up. I guess this is why we avoided telling you for so long. These feelings and intensity of emotion—we were always such a happy family, the Miller trio, right?”

She looked at me with a hopeful face, as if pleading for forgiveness.

“Yes,” I said. I reached over dad to get a glass out of the cabinet, filled it with tap water, kissed his dad’s cheek, then my mother’s and sat down. “Let’s start over,” I said. “Dad, C’mon. Sit.”

He sat and we all took each other’s hands, a large, box of tissues in the center of the circle.

Mom took a deep breath and began. “First of all,” she said, taking both my dad’s hands, “we are ecstatic that you want to start your own family. And how responsible of you to check your family history first. In the olden days, there were no such precautions, —anyway—I guess it’s good that you asked. We knew this time would come. You need to know, but we could never find the right time.

At first, we thought we would tell you when you were 18 and graduated high school. But you were on such a high with your future writing career. Four years on the school newspaper, an honor student an then accepted on scholarship to study journalism. We were so proud at both graduations, hardly a time to tell you. Why torture you with a dark truth when your future looked so bright?

Then you got the job at The New York Times! No, we weren’t going to ruin any of your celebrations, no way! So we decided to wait a little bit longer.

Then, you got promoted to the investigation department and you were looking into all sorts of crimes, so we thought that was the perfect time. Your understanding of your—our, situation might become clearer as you learned more on the job. So, we decided that the next Thanksgiving to tell you. Dad and I had it all planned out: how we would tell you, the walk for ice cream we would take like we always do to feel better, after we told you. We were feeling strong and ready that it was the time was right and you deserved to know.

But then, you walked in with a surprise of your own! Peter, your new boyfriend. We could tell how happy you two were and we knew he was the one, and well, of course we couldn’t tell you with him there. Again, we did not want to spoil your happiness.

Then you were engaged, then married. We really should have told you before you were married. It is so wrong that we didn’t.” She started to cry again. “What if Peter didn’t understand? Of course he would have, and if he didn’t, then he wouldn’t be the right man for you, but,” She stood up. “Oh, this is too hard.” She looked at David pleadingly and ran into the bathroom off the kitchen. Dad and I heard her sobbing through the door.

I took my dad’s hands and looked into his eyes. “Dad, what is going on? You guys are killing me with this suspense. And freaking me out! Please, just tell me. Who is my biological father?” I stared at him and squeezed his hands tighter. “Please,” I squeaked.

My mother came out of the bathroom, face washed, towel in hand. She stroked dad’s hair as she sat back down. She was barely sitting when she just blurted it out. “Your biological father is in prison. When I was…” and then she lost it again, and buried her head. “I can’t. I have to, but I can’t,” she said, her voice muffle in her arms.

Dad pulled his chair closer to mom and put his arm around her. “It’s okay,” he said. “I won’t make you tell it again. I’ll do it this time.”

“Prison?!” I interjected, my curiosity far too strong for patience or tenderness for my mother. I looked over at dad and raised my arms to ask, “Well?”

Dad slid his chair back to center and placed his hands on the table. I could tell he wanted to hold mine, but mine were folded tightly by my chest and I would not budge until I heard the rest of this seemingly frightening tale.

“We were on our Honeymoon. Niagara Falls..”

“Yes, I know,” I interupted. “I saw the pictures.”

“Right, the pictures,” he said absentmindedly. “Pictures of the fourth day!” He said with his finger up as if he had a brilliant idea.

“Dad!” I screamed, and this startled mom to sit up.

“Just do it David!” Mom said mostly with air.

Dad turned from Mom then to me and then just said it as if he were telling me the latest sale at the grocery store, he said, “Your mother was raped on the last day of our honeymoon.”

Mom got up and came to the back of my chair and started hugging me as if I’d been lost for a century and just found. Dad came to my front and the two suffocated me with squeezes, tears and snot, and “we love you so much, we’re so sorry,’ over and over.

“Wait!” I shouted and pushed them away and went to stand by the sink. Mom and dad, stood hunched and frozen like a melting statue as they watched me stand there, processing the news I just heard—that my dad was not my real dad and that my real dad is a rapist! I came here today to learn my family history, like, cancers, or spectrums—not crime—rape!! This was all too much. I grabbed the chair my father was sitting in, pulled it against the sink and sat down. Calmly, with rage in my belly, despite my desperate love for the two saps who wobbled before me, I said, “Okay, I’m good. You don’t have to worry about me. Tell me everything. Every single, solitary detail. Do not spare me. Peter and I want to have a child..” My eyes welled up. “I need to know everything in order to make the best decision.”

And so I learned the horrid tale that my parents held between them and the New York police department for thirty three years. No one knew. No friends. No family. They made a pact of their love, stronger than anyone could imagine. Yes! She became pregnant on her honeymoon as everyone expected. But of corse, not in the way everyone suspected. And for all everyone knew, I was David’s daughter.

Of all of the millions of things running through my head, oddly, the one thought in the forefront was my hair. No wonder I was the only one on both sides of the family with red hair—an amazement to everyone over the years. Where did you get this luscious red hair from, family remarked at every single gathering. My parents always laughed if off with a “Who knows? Who wants another drink?”

I asked, “Does my rapist father in prison by chance have red hair?”

Dad and mom looked at each other and sank into the chairs. They nodded yes.

“Why didn’t you just abort me?” was my next question.

Again, my parents looked at each other. They were blushing! “Well,” my mother said, looking back toward me. “It was our honeymoon, if you know what I mean. I mean, for three days we barely left our hotel room…”

“Okay, yeah, I get it. No more of those details, please.”

“Anyway,” dad took the reins of the story. “On the fourth day, we decided we should probably go out to actually see the Falls and take some pictures—prove that we were actually there,” he chuckled. “The fresh air felt great and you couldn’t have known two happier people than your mother and me that day.”

And then his blushing turned to rage and tears began again. “We didn’t even want ice cream! We thought it would be a good pose for a picture.” He took in a few gasps and then continued.

He told me that he left mom at the viewing point to go get ice cream. While he was gone, a well- groomed man with a wrinkled map stopped to ask mom directions. She said it was too hard to explain, so she would walk with him for a bit. At the end of the stretch, there was a van. It all happened so fast. She turned away from him to point where he should go next and when she turned back, he grabbed her and threw her in.

Dad told of how he came back with two dripping ice creams, ready to tell mom a joke about it that he had just made up, but of course she was no where to be seen. He dumped the ice cream in the nearest trash and went to find a police officer.

“I was just so happy she was alive,” dad was shaking his head in his hands as if the incident just happened this morning.

Dad continued with the horrible details. When they returned home to their new apartment, trying to start their marriage through the emotions of the tragic event, mom of course missed her next period. There was no sure way back then to tell who the father was.

By this time, my mother was on the floor by my father’s knee. “Imagine, newlyweds, who should simply be picking out names and cribs, were deciding what to do if our baby was born out of crime.” He stroked mom’s head and looked lovingly down at her.

A chill went down my spine. Dad came over to me, and went down on his knees. “I loved your mother so much—still do,” he turned to look at her. She had taken his place in the chair. “How could I not love anything, or any one that was a part of her? You know how much you love Peter?” I nodded. “Imagine you had to put that vow you made to work, ‘for better or for worse’. That’s what marriage is: being there for each other through all the good and all the bad. To be a team in life.”

He reached back for mom’s hand and she leaned forward and took his. “We decided right then, that we would love you no matter what, and that in nine months, the ‘Miller Trio’ would begin.” He smiled at me and laughed through his tears. “When you came out with that orange fuzz on your head, we knew, and we didn’t care. You were so innocent and so beautiful, and I could tell instantly you had your mother’s eyes.” He drifted off in thought and dropped his head in my lap.”

I stroked his head and looked over mom who was also smiling and weeping at the same time. “And here’s the real irony,” she said, coming to join dad on the floor by my knee. “Two years after you were born, we decided it was time for you to have sibling, and guess what?!”

I wasn’t sure if I could take any more surprises, but still, I said, “What?”

“It turns out, your father has a low sperm count and couldn’t have any children!’

They were both looking up at me, with faces meshed with lines of joy and dread intertwined.

I stood, and let us all back to the table. We each swiped tissues out of the box and resumed our original seats. After a long pause of sniffles, dabbing, and taking deep breaths, I smiled at them and took their hands.

At this moment, I had no words.