Who are you, Howard Hughes?
He just winked and squared himself with his invisible courage for today. It's Father's Day, an awkward, difficult day for us where the boys jockey for position and are equally touched and left ruined by the gestures of the children to honor an entire room full of real and surrogate fathers, each one bringing something incredibly specific and necessary to their lives. Collectively the boys represent separate and equal parts of love and care to the children, and the children themselves have never failed to acknowledge that to the men who love them so much. They are like me in that regard. Instant forgiveness, instant affection.
However.
There are certain levels of affection and attention that the kids bestow on the boys. They have their own hierarchy, and they have their own preferences. PJ, Daniel and Benjamin are instant comfort, always available, patient to a fault, permissive and loving. Lochlan is their ready-steady rock. As long as he is around all is right with the world. He looks out for them in a strange, appreciative way. They understand his logic comes from a slightly different place. Caleb is Daddy Warbucks. As long as they behave properly and display their fine manners and intelligence they have learned they can have the moon from him. They also know that he is quick to anger and unforgiving. Like Cole. They do not ask for things, but they are drawn to that the same way I am.
Maybe because it's as close as we can get. Maybe it's because it's an authority that brings a small measure of comfort in the familiarity. It's what they know when everything isn't water fights and movies and stargazing and making ice cream. They know fathers are not fairy tales that are only fun. They know fathers will enforce the rules and be the final judge and jury. They know fathers will set limits and work to raise them up properly as well as happily.
Caleb arrived this morning, dashing and unhurried in his little silver sportscar and a crisp pair of jeans with a button-down dress shirt, looking like a forties movie star, acting like he had everything in the world, when in fact the only thing he has is now tied up in knots, tangled in the welfare of his brother's widow and her knights, because he decided to take a risk and place it all on black, betting everything he had on the only thing he believes in.
Me.
Baudelaire would call him out for this one.
Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.I am supposed to be making an effort to ensure that he is properly recognized as the living blood of my children, but all I can do is stand in the shadow by the window and watch with morbid curiosity to see how they react to him. A relief follows, and it's as if Cole had never left them, they simply replaced their memories with that of the uncle who managed to miss the first six years of their lives mostly and now suddenly we can't seem to take a deep breath without him making a note of it and rotating the world accordingly in case we miss something.
I broke his brother's heart so badly he died and for that I was given everything, including the gift I could not return, the confirmation that Satan owns my youngest child. I was forced to replace my memories of Cole with Caleb's face. And I have. I've been good. I have listened, like a child, as the rules were spoken to me slowly and repeated until there was no ambiguity left. I am now the most vulnerable, requiring the most direction, supervision and care. The children grow and mature and Bridget never changes.
It isn't a turret that the knights guard anymore, it's the nursery and so the jostling for position remains. The need for approval rusts into the metal on their armor and coats their shields in desperation.
An equal fool, I extended the lunch invitation because I always choked back this overwhelming, oxygen-sucking need to please Cole so that he wouldn't become angry. And then like a princess, I cast my coldest look around the room, reproach on ice, a challenge to question my final rule on behalf of my children. He stays. No fists.
Lady of the flies, the immature leader who fuels her needs with her wants and couldn't raise a glass half the time, let alone these two beautiful creatures born of rage and fear and then molded into something wonderful. That is thanks to the boys.
And that's just a sliver of today. A small taste, a single drop of the blood I spill to quench his thirst for more of me because I don't know what to do with these feelings and so I pretend. I pretend I'm alright and the kids are alright and everyone gets along and we give cards and drawings and I pretend, like everybody else, not to see how he stares at me across the table as he exclaims over the menu the children chose for lunch, so at ease with them with so much tension beneath the surface it hums a steady drone in my head, between my ears that I'm forced to excuse myself and leave the room, fearing my brain might start to leak out from my ears and my heart might follow that lead. I'll pay for this later. Ben will look for my hierarchy. Everything costs me something and I am emotionally unemployed.
It hurts. I don't know why. Some days are hard. The kids are doing a fine job though. They always do when they have everyone's attention. Just like their mother. And they know that in a short while he will drive away from the house in his silver sports car and we can go back to breathing full breaths and not watching what we say around him, just in case it is the wrong thing.
On the way out he cups my face and smiles ruefully, reading my unfocused eyes.
Considering Baudelaire?
Yes.
'I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy. '
'I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.'
Very good one, Bridget. See you on Tuesday for a drive and some lunch?
No, I have nothing to wear.
Perfect. Just wear the bracelet I gave you. That's all you need.
I frowned as he kissed my cheek and walked out the door. I threw that bracelet into the ocean the day he gave it to me. And I hate the fact that he is Henry's father. I pay the price for their hierarchy. I pay dearly. As I look around the room and feel the eyes on me, I see that we all do.
It makes me sad.