Do Not Pass Go Ch. 02

She smiled. "Could we maybe do this tonight? After I've washed the grease off and don't have to worry about my manager yelling at me? This is the crap shift, 10 to 6. But between a shower and a few errands to take care of I won't be ready until 8."

"Is there a coffee shop near where you live?"

Theresa smiled. "Isn't there a Starbucks everywhere?"

Going back to my apartment and getting a shower only used up an hour. It was 3:45 P.M. and there still was a little more than four hours to kill. I really should take a nap. Despite the 30 minutes after checking in, I was still really behind on my sleep. The problem was that I couldn't fall sleep until I got exhausted. Even then I slept in fits.

Instead I settled back onto the bed and turned on the tv. Ten minutes after lying down I was asleep.

As it was, I had to rush to get to the coffee shop. No, not Starbucks. Thank God that had just been a joke. By 8:30 it was obvious I had been stood up. By 8:45 it was clear that I was desperate and by 9 I was so kicked up on caffeine I could just vibrate my way home.

It was a disappointment, but I guess I should have been glad she didn't give me a fake phone number. Even though my hand was shaking slightly, I finished my cup, walked out and almost bumped into Theresa just outside the door. She looked nervous, but cute. Her hair was undone and the circles under her eyes were gone.

"I've been out here for the last ten minutes." She looked so small now. Her body pulled in tight from uncertainty or fear.

"Am I really that..."

She shook her head. "It's not you. It's anybody. You're really a great guy and I'm not used to being around that."

"It's a little late to see a movie now. I would say let's go in and have some coffee, but as it is I'm going to be getting to bed tonight." She looked sad and I took her hand in mine squeezing it firmly. "So you can have coffee, but for me it's going to be water."

The night went on and I can't say that it was all that I ever hoped for. Talking for hours really meant each of us whining about our problems. Still, it was nice to talk to someone we knew wasn't just putting up with us.

It turned out that her ex-husband had full custody of a six-year-old girl from a previous relationship and that during the three years that Theresa had been married to her ex she had fallen in love with the little girl. Now with the marriage over, she had no right to see the six-year-old she considered her daughter. She was the only mother the little girl had ever known, but on paper she was a stranger.

The good thing was we slept together. Unfortunately that just meant she was curled up against me on the sofa. In the morning we exchanged a kiss and our phone numbers and said we would keep in touch. She was working on getting a college degree part time. Trying to study some notes even as she tried to get wash and dry a load of laundry had her in a rush to get me out the door.

We both leaned in for a peck on the lips and it was nice. It was good knowing there was someone going through the same shit I was going through. But the kiss hadn't really said that, it had been an eighty-year-old aunt kind of kiss and so we leaned back again smiling embarrassed that after talking until 4 A.M. baring our souls the best we could manage was a perfunctory meeting of lips.

The second kiss was worse because when our lips were almost touching, it got weird. She was grateful to me, but she didn't want to lead me on. She didn't want to have sex with me any more than she wanted to kiss the furry mole on the eighty-year-old aunt's chin. Realizing that at the last second, the kiss was just a clumsy collision between two sets of lips.

For all that, it meant something to me.

The next day I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Even when I was minutes away from seeing my kids for the first time in four months, it was at the back of my mind that it wasn't going to happen. If not for the death of the family court judge who had presided over our custody hearing, I'm sure there would have been some last minute catastrophe. Still, I expected a phone call all day. Standing just outside the county building, it hit me that it was really going to happen.

How had Tommy, Traci and Jenna changed in four months? Really, it was more like seven months because the kids had barely said a word to me in the three months leading up to the final custody hearing. I just hoped they didn't still blame me.

Even now I had to push down the impulse to tell them their mother had cheated on me. Maybe sometime, but not now. They had to be screwed up enough right now. Threatening it had just been something to make me feel better when talking to my ex-wife.

A bored officious woman opened the door to a small conference room and motioned me inside. She started going over the dos and don'ts of the supervised visitation, but her voice faded away the moment I saw my kids.

Jenna had turned 15 since the custody hearing. My present had been routed to her through my lawyer's office, but somehow I got the feeling the charm had never made it to my daughter. I had its twin in my pocket, but looking at my oldest daughter, I doubted there was any point in giving it to her.

Jenna's anger seemed to have matured to bitterness. Physically she looked the same. Her features were her mother's, the same rich brown hair, doe eyes and sharp chin. In profile she looked cute, but when she opened her generous mouth and smiled she looked spectacular. There was no chance of that now though. Pinch faced and bitter, she was almost a clone of my ex-wife.

My thirteen-year-old Traci was playing with the buttons on her blouse, but I had noticed her quick glance when I entered the room. The cast of her face was the same as Jenna's but dulled. Though not quite as good looking as her sister, I had always thought of Traci as the fortunate child, blessed with tremendous intelligence and maturity. Most times it was hard remembering that I was dealing with a teenager. Her birthday had come a month before the custody hearing. She had gotten my gift all right, and, as her mother informed me, immediately taken the iPod up to her room and smashed it to pieces.

I was just happy I hadn't given her a puppy.

Thinking that made me a little sad. If I had told her that a year ago she would have just grinned and shook her head acting like she didn't know why her dad seemed to think he was a comedian.

Tommy was a few weeks short of eleven. He was looking directly at me and all I could see was anxiety. Tommy was the shy one in our family; though we pushed him into everything from Tae Kwon Do to T-Ball, he seemed happiest on the computer or drawing in his notebooks.

My eyes just ate them up, but while they had all glanced in my direction, none of them had actually looked at me.

Finally the officious woman stopped talking and motioned me forward.

"It's so good to see you! It's been so long I almost didn't recognize you... you all look so grown up." I smiled at them and watched as they still avoided looking at me. "Okay now's the time where you guys talk."

Maybe this was pathetic, but I had practiced for this moment. I had thought out two hours worth of things to babble on about just in case something like this happened. Now though all of the drivel was just running away from me.

"Your aunt and cousins say hi. Hello from the depths of a cold Minnesota winter." Shrugging, I looked at the officious looking CPS woman and saw her furiously scribbling something on her legal pad.

"Guys, I know you're mad at me. That's all right. It's okay if you want to yell at me for two hours. I haven't heard your voices in four months. Don't you think that's enough?"

Tommy burrowed his head into his collar; Traci stared at her buttons; Jenna glared at the corners of the room.

"You'll never have to come to St. Paul if you don't want to..." And then I stopped having run out of words. When I faltered Tommy and Traci had looked up, their eyes just kind of popping out as they saw me. They just looked me over like they would some weird blue mold that they found in the refrigerator.

Traci looked at me carefully. "Dad, what happened? You look different."

"I guess I lost a little weight."

"Like maybe a ton?" Traci asked.

"Well, maybe a lot, but I don't think a ton."

Traci looked up and down my body and then stared at my face harder. "Your hair's different."

"It's still me. If you want me to prove it, I could tell you a joke. And if you groan you know it's me."

Traci smiled a little at that and Tommy's eyes looked amused. I avoided Jenna's unchanged frown.

"You want to know how I lost the weight? Eating right, getting lots of exercise and being snowbound for two months. It was getting so bad at the end that your cousins had to hit me with a tennis racket because when they woke up I was nibbling on their elbows."

"Dad..." Traci groaned.

"Gross," Tommy said.

"At least that proves I'm your dad, doesn't it?"

Traci and Tommy had gotten closer and I touched their arms. "It's so good to see you."

Jenna looked at the three of us blank faced.

"Hi Jenna."

"Hi Dad." She looked at me and her face just seemed to collapse into itself. "I'm so sorry."

I turned toward Jenna and nodded seriously. She was looking at me now and I saw the pain in her eyes. "You have two choices. I can either ground you for a month, or you can give me a hug and we can forget about it." She took a first step toward me and then stopped. "Come on. I've been waiting for this hug for months."

She jumped forward and her body exploded into my chest knocking Tommy and Traci to the side.

Her head thunked against my breastbone so hard it hurt. "Dad, I'm so so sorry... every time you called... I felt so guilty and so mad! Mad, mad, mad, but it was all my fault. I..." She broke off and just sobbed into my chest for a couple seconds.

"Shhh... it's okay."

She was sobbing softly. "It wasn't true. When I told the judge that I wanted to stay with mom... Dad, I've felt so bad for so long. It hurts all the time now and it's all my fault."

"Jenna that judge would have given your mom custody no matter what you or anyone else said. You have to let go of this. I forgive you. You're my daughter and I love you and I don't want to see you being unhappy."

Tommy and Traci were just standing there looking shocked. I wrapped my right arm around Jenna and just held her to me as she continued to cry into my chest.

"Everything that happened between your Mom and I is in the past. I'm sorry you had to get caught in the middle of it, but it's over. All either of us want is for you to be happy now. I know you feel a little down. But maybe you're a little happy to see me? Because being with you right now is the happiest I've been in months."

Jenna just cried harder and a second later Tommy had wrapped himself around my left side and was grabbing on for dear life.

Traci was frowning looking down at her shoes until I grabbed her chin and tilted it up toward me.

"Dad..." Traci started and then stopped and looked down again.

"It's over now. I love you." I reached out and caressed her hair and then touched Tommy's. "No matter what happened or what will happen that's not going to change."

"But I should have done something..." Traci started.

"Forgiven, forgotten and in the past. I'm just happy to be with you and I don't want to spend a second wasting it on feeling bad."

Traci just stared at me. "Why dad? Why did I do it? I knew the only thing mom cares about it herself."

"That's not..." I said getting ready to lie, but looking into my daughter's eyes I just couldn't do it. "... important." I peeled Jenna and Tommy off my body. "Okay, enough with the crying." I kissed Jenna and then Tommy quickly on their foreheads. "I want to enjoy my time with you."

I motioned to Traci. "Come on, if your brother and sister have to put up with it, so do you."

My thirteen-year-old acted nonchalant, but when I kissed her forehead she couldn't hide her smile.

"So come on, just tell me everything that's going on in your lives. And don't leave anything out."

Suddenly I was lost in talk about Jenna's swim team and Traci's oboe pieces and the book Tommy was reading. It felt like it was just an eye blink and the two hours were over.

After the visitation, getting to the airport and taking my plane felt odd. Those two hours had been my life and this was just the stuff around it, just a long boring dream and now I had to wait two weeks before I could wake up again.

It wasn't really that bad. Getting back to my sister's place woke me up. Collecting my niece and nephew's hugs and my sister Billie's kiss on the cheek and then telling them all about the time with my kids was pretty much like real life. The morning was rough, but once I got involved in my job it wasn't too bad. But that evening after my sister's kids had gone up to bed and my sister had sealed herself in her room to study for her law school classes, time dragged.

I had gotten used to not getting phone calls at night and so I was startled when my cell phone rang. The run my niece had taken me on when I got home had just about killed me and for awhile it seemed easier to sit there until the ringing stopped. Even the digitized version of Pachelbel's Canon got annoying after a while. But Pachelbel didn't really stop, there just was a three-second pause.

"Hello?"

"You're a complete fucking bastard!" My ex-wife's voice screeched at me. "I bet you enjoyed it didn't you? You must think you're so smart setting me up like that. Making me tell them that. You're such a fucking asshole! God, you just had to do it. You had to make me look like I was the bad guy. You're such a shit... a total, absolute, fucking shit!"

"And I love you too, Jess," I said tired but still enjoying my ex-wife's confused snort. Maybe it was just the exhaustion from the run, but for the first time in a long while I felt calm and in control. "Can we start this conversation over and try for it to make sense?"

"Fuck you!"

"I got that part, Jess."

"You said you were going to tell them. Don't act like this wasn't a set-up. After talking to you, they wouldn't say a word to me. And you said you were going to tell them."

The fatigue faded and I bolted upright. "Oh my God..."

"The looks on their faces, Peter. They looked at me like I was something they would scrape off their shoe. And they just stood there while I told them."

God, why didn't I have any alcohol in my room? "How could you tell them, Jess?"

"You said you were going to and I had to defend myself. Jenna looked at me like I was something she wanted to flush down the toilet."

"It was said to hurt you, but I would have never done it. No matter how mad I get at you, I wouldn't do anything that would hurt the kids."

"Like I did? Fuck you, Peter. What do you know what it's like? Do you realize how bad you've messed my life up? My mom's drinking again because of you. The sanctimonious alcoholic bitch. Anytime she sees me, she starts screaming at me over something. She's threatening to take me to court to get visitation with the kids?"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because it's your fucking fault! You've turned everything to shit. I had a perfect life and now it's shit!"

She let out a deep breath and I heard the sound of gulping and the clink of ice against glass. Though the shock of Jessica's bomb had woken me up, I found myself zoning-out thinking about what my kids would be thinking about this. As horrible as it was, there was a part of me that was shouting for joy that the kids finally knew about Jess. That part quieted down though when I thought about how bad Tommy would be taking this. It was that thought that led me to break the silence.

"So... what are you going to do now?"

"Me?" my ex-wife asked.

"It's kind of hard for me to do anything when I'm a 1000 miles away. Even if I came down there, there's a court order keeping me from seeing them without someone from CPS there. But if you can think of something for me to do, then I'll do it.

"Jess?"

"Damn it!" The ice clinked again and there was the sound of swallowing again. "Could you talk to them on the phone? Just tell them... maybe... maybe tell them that you don't blame me."

I blinked down so hard it hurt and my teeth grinded together.

"GOD DAMN YOU!" I screamed and hurled my cell phone at the armchair across the room. My hands shook and I just kept shaking my head for a couple seconds before my anger receded somewhat. Slowly I walked over to my phone and picked it up.

"Peter?"

Even the sound of her voice infuriated me, but slowly I pushed down my anger. "No, you're right. If I told them you weren't to blame, the kids would probably take it better. The only problem is that if I tried to say that my head would explode."

Jessica didn't say anything, but still something about her breathing -- or maybe the imperfect intuition of a long time husband -- told me that I had at least shocked her.

"Why are you calling? You're not going to take my advice and you knew there was no way that I would... follow your suggestion. So why? It's too early for you to try to cancel the visitation and our accountants and lawyers take care of all the bookkeeping. You knew yelling to me about this being my fault wasn't going to fly." My voice became softer. "We both know you're a self-absorbed bitch, dear, but you're not a stupid, self-absorbed bitch. So what's going on?"

"You're such a bastard..."

"Yes. But why are you calling me?" My ex-wife broke the connection just before I finished question.

The next afternoon Jenna called me at the work number I gave her. Even after an hour she was still apologizing and still telling me how horribly she felt. She said Traci and Tommy just seemed to be shocked and for the last two days none of them had talked to their mother. Traci and Tommy sent me emails and even IM-ed me while I was doing work. It was a distraction during work, but it was the kind of distraction that made work important in the first place.

I kept expecting Jess to call back during that week and even into the weekend, but the call never came. When the phone rang the Wednesday before the visitation weekend, I took a second to prepare myself to talk to my ex-wife.

"Hi Pete...?"

"Theresa?" It took me a second to deal with this. "Are you okay? Do you need someone to talk to?"

"Sorry about last weekend. You were expecting a date and you got me whining in your ear for seven hours. And that kiss... I wanted to kiss you, but I chickened out at the last minute."

"Well, I don't think you need to apologize, but hey I'll take it," I said laughing. "Besides you weren't the only one whining. If you really want to make it up to me let me take you out when I get into town this weekend."

"They've scheduled me for Friday and Saturday night, but I could do Sunday."

"My flight's taking off Sunday morning."

"Maybe in a couple of weeks..."

Except that I didn't want to wait a couple of weeks. Maybe this was just fascination or just 11 months of horniness, bursting to the surface, but I really didn't want to wait.

"What about Thursday... I mean tomorrow night? Work's slow right now, so I'm sure they'd let me take a vacation day. I'll fly in, rent a car, and whisk you away to some ridiculously over priced Italian restaurant and get you drunk on some cheap Cabernet."

"I'm really not a big fan of wine..."

"So we'll do tequila shots for nostalgia's sake," I said my voice light and teasing. "Or beer or rum or cough syrup, anything that will get us liquored up."

"You're serious about this?"

"Serious enough. Look there's no pressure, if we end up spending the night complaining about our ex-es, so be it. We did it before and it was something we needed to get out of the way. Now maybe there's something more. It's true for me. And there's got to be more to this for you too because otherwise you wouldn't have been too scared to walk into the coffeehouse or to kiss me that night.