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But they knew why. Charlie knew it was because that was expected of him. You reached an age where you got the girl and the house and had kids. For him, it was the year after he finished at the fire academy. The family had pressured him. His brother Big Mike and Roberta were married and had Joey.
And then a mishap, Clare got pregnant. Stunned into reality, Charlie didn’t love Clare. He wasn’t even sure he liked her, but you got a girl pregnant in those days in a big Italian family, you did the honorable thing and married her.
Exploding, he’d had enough. “Do you really need to ask? You were pregnant with Paul, the pink elephant in the room. You were supposed to be taking birth control pills. I used a rubber until you promised me you were on the pill. You even showed me the container. ‘I’m on the pill, Charlie.’ And then two months later, POW! You’re pregnant!”
The wordrubberreverberated. Clare clamped her hands over her ears, cringing. Inexplicably, Charlie began to cry. All the years he was with Clare, he never questioned his devotion to her and their two sons. He went through the motions of being a husband the best way he knew how. If there was supposed to be more to it, he didn’t know because he’d never been in love before.
“Hurry up and get out of here,” he cried. “Go, before I say something else I’m sure to regret.”
“Oh my god, are you kidding me?”
“You would have been free to leave long ago if you’d been honest with me, Clare. Get out.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, back to reality, looking up from his coffee cup. “Paul, try not to place blame.”
“It’s pretty hard not to,” Paul said, looking at Clare, unsmiling. “Pop, you weren’t home half the time, so we know it wasn’t you.”
“What’s that mean?” Clare asked, scared Paul would honestly tell her what it meant.
But he was a gentleman, his father’s son, and would let Clare get away with the destruction of a family. Paul didn’t know yet that Charlie had never loved Clare, that she actually had been pregnant with him when they got married. No, that would come later.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Charlie asked, hoping that was the end of the conversation.
Paul’s disinterest in the opposite sex since Bethany had moved out had been a topic of conversation. Now, with the revelation that his mother was leaving the family home, he didn’t see any point in hiding his concern. “I’m going to take a break. It’s not like I loved Bethany, but I was used to her, do you know what I mean?”
“I’m not surprised,” Clare replied. “I’ll take the blame for it. You probably have trust issues.”
“Probably. I was hoping I could blame you, Ma.” Paul laughed, winking at her.
“We can always count on Paul to be truthful. You’ve been that way since you were a little guy,” Charlie said. “Plus Bethany would be a tough act for any girl to follow.”
“Pop, it’s not even that. She was easy to be around because she was so self-absorbed. I didn’t even have to talk, have any interests, or want to do anything. We did what she wanted, and fuck me if I didn’t want to do it. It was a no-brainer.”
“Son, language,” Clare muttered, grimacing.
“Oh, now we’re going to get proper,” he replied.
Ready to leave, Charlie pushed away from the table, laughing at the banter. The next time he came up to visit, it would be alone. The concern about the trip home, with Clare having his ear for the entire forty minutes, was a little unsettling.
As he hugged his parents, the relief at their exodus was palpable. He loved them with all his heart, but the discord in their marriage was nothing new to either him or his brother, Oliver. He watched them drive away down the dirt road, dust rising in their wake.
A horse whinny got his attention, so he walked back to the cabin and slipped on old worn cowboy boots and went out to visit his new pets, Gloria and Blackie the horses and Alfred the mule.
“Hey, neighbor!”
He looked up on his way to the barn, and his neighbors waved, so he walked over to meet them.
“Paul Saint,” he said, his hand outstretched.
“We heard about you from Barney, your landlord. Robin and Sam Webb,” the man said. “Nice to meet you. I’m retired SDPD.”
“Wow, is that right? I’m with the fire department. I’m so happy to be out here after a year in town.”
“I hear ya,” Sam replied. “We lived in Vista for thirty years, and just since I retired we moved here.”
“You look mighty familiar,” Robin said. “Barney said you were on TV recently. Could that be it?”
The whine of a truck engine coming up the road interrupted them.
