Read Online The Love Children by Marylin French - Free Book Online Page B

send Mom enough money to even feed me, as though I was the one who had divorced him.
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    At the end of August, my mother flew down to El Paso and crossed the border in a van to get a Mexican divorce. The night before, she called my father from Texas to tell him what she was doing. I was asleep when the phone rang, which it did a few times before I was able to pull myself out of sleep; I went to the top of the stairs, preparing to run down and pick it up. Dad must have been sleeping in his chair; he answered the phone and quickly exploded in curses, calling Mom horrible names. I ran back to my bed. He stayed awhile on the phone; I couldn’t believe Mom would remain on the line to be called those names. Then I heard loud noises. Dad was clattering and clanking around, throwing things, it sounded like. Suddenly he appeared at the top of the stairs.
    â€œDid you know about this?”
    I sat upright in bed. “What?”
    â€œShit!” he cried, and stomped back down the stairs.
    The next morning, as I got ready to go to work, he threw some things in a bag and tore out of the house, yelling at me not to burn it down. He got in his truck and drove away, fast. When I was sure he was gone, I called Mom to see if she knew what had happened. But there was no answer. I tried to think of who else I could call, who else might know. I called Annette Fields, but she wasn’t home.
    The next evening as I was sitting down at the table to eat the dinner Mrs. Thacker had left, my father burst in through the back door.

    He took one look at me and shouted, “Did she tell you?”
    â€œWhat?” I asked, hating the tremor in my voice.
    â€œThe divorce , bitch!” he screamed.
    Bitch ?
    He stomped past me and went to the pantry and opened a fresh bottle of Canadian Club, poured himself a glass, and sank down at the table.
    â€œShe divorced you?” I asked timorously.
    â€œShe tried,” he muttered. “But I fixed her.”
    I waited. I didn’t dare ask. But he couldn’t contain himself.
    â€œShe thinks I’m a dummy. She thinks she can use my power of attorney. But I sent a telegram to Mexico, revoking it. Hah!”
    â€œHow did you know where to send it? How did you know the address?”
    â€œAmericans get divorced in Juarez,” he said. “They stay in El Paso and cross the border in a van. That’s the cheapo way to do it. That’s what she’d do. I know your mother. Oh, yes! I called the court there.”
    â€œSo what does that mean?”
    â€œMeans she thinks she’s divorced, but she isn’t!” he grinned. “And then I met her at Logan and told her so! Fixed her wagon. That bitch!”
    â€œYou met her at Logan? How did you know what flight she’d be on?”
    â€œThere’s only one flight a day from El Paso to Logan. Had to be on it.” He smiled that sick grin again and poured whiskey down his throat.
    I hadn’t realized my father was that resourceful. I always thought of him as an innocent, an artist with his head in the clouds, who just couldn’t help being inadequate in daily life. That was why he drank; everybody knew artists and writers drank because making art was so hard. Jackson Pollock and William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald—you
didn’t expect them to be able to deal with daily life, fixing a faucet or mowing the lawn. But Daddy could work with his hands—he built all his studios.
    â€œWhat did she do?”
    â€œNothing,” he shrugged, “what could she do? It’s a fait accompli!” He smiled again.
    Somehow I couldn’t picture my mother standing there silent for this. Not that I wasn’t dismayed that she’d divorced my dad. Why did she have to do that? And why did she have to do it while I was living with him?
    â€œShe must have done something,” I insisted.
    â€œBitch,” he swore.
    â€œAre you calling me a