My Parents Are Sex Maniacs

by Robyn Harding

  6

  The next morning, my dad calls the house around ten. My brother answers. “You fucking bastard!” he says, dropping the receiver like it was scorching his hand.

  “Troy!” my mom yells from her prone position on the couch. “Language!”

  Picking up the cordless phone, I take it to my mom. I give her a supportive, hopeful smile. “You can do this,” my hopeful smile says. “It was just a birthday blow job. There’s no need to throw away eighteen years of marriage over it.” She takes the receiver. “Hello?” she says.

  I retreat to the kitchen but linger just around the corner trying to eavesdrop. Apparently, my dad is doing most of the talking, as my mom is basically mute except for the odd “Give me a break” and “Oh, come off it, Len.” Finally she says, “I don’t know if the children want to see you. They’re feeling pretty humiliated and betrayed . . . Okay . . . Okay . . . Well, we’ll discuss that when you get here.”

  My heart lurches in my chest. My dad is coming here? Now? I hadn’t realized it before, but I’m not ready to see him. Does he think he can just do it with my best friend’s mom and then waltz in here and take us out for ice cream? I don’t freakin’ think so! I will refuse to see him, and I’m sure Troy will do the same. We’ll make him pay for what he’s done. We’ll wear him down until he finally comes home, crying and begging for forgiveness, tearfully promising to have himself chemically castrated so that he never humiliates us like that again.

  But the next thing I know, my mom has washed her face and thrown a cardigan over her new and highly unflattering sweatpants and flannel shirt ensemble. “Your father and I are going for a drive. We have a lot to figure out,” she says absently as she wanders through the house looking for her purse. “If I’m not home by lunch, make sure your brother eats something.”

  “Okay.”

  I hear the sound of my father’s Infiniti pulling into the driveway. I retreat farther into the kitchen, not wanting him to see me through the front window. I’m momentarily afraid that Troy will fly out the door and launch himself onto dad’s windshield, swearing and pounding at the glass in some ADD-fueled rage, but he stays holed up in his room. Purse found, my mom hurries out the door.

  She is definitely not home in time for lunch. And as the winter sky begins to darken, I’m afraid she might not make it home for dinner. I knock on Troy’s door.

  “It’s getting late. Do you want a sandwich or something?”

  “I’m not hungry,” he grumbles.

  I go in and sit on the edge of his bed. Troy is lying on his stomach, picking at a seam in his wallpaper. “I’m not hungry either,” I say, before I realize I’ve just given him an opening for a fat joke. But surprisingly, my brother doesn’t say the expected “That’s a first.” He just keeps picking at the blue paper.

  “What do you think Mom and Dad are talking about?” I ask. Troy just shrugs, so I continue. “Of course, I don’t want them to get a divorce, but I don’t know how Mom could ever forgive him. I mean, Sunny Lewis-Marshall was her best friend, and who knows how long she’s been doing it with Dad.”

  Troy rolls over. “I don’t want to fucking talk about it, okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, leaving before he has another wall-punching episode. The kid needed therapy before all this happened, but now he might have to be committed.

  I decide to call Sienna. If anyone can relate to what I’m going through, it’s her. I bet her parents are also off on a drive right now, leaving their children to fend for themselves as they discuss the future. Dialing her number, I listen to it ring in Sienna’s house. Suddenly, a thought strikes me. What if Keith and Sunny are not off on a drive? What if, unlike my parents, they actually want to include their children in the decision-making process and they’re having some kind of family meeting right now? What if Sunny—or should I say Mrs. Lewis-Marshall—answers? Yuck! I don’t want to talk to that . . . father-blower! I hang up the phone. I’ll call Sienna on her cell.

  I’ve just started to dial when I hear my mom returning. Troy bursts out of his room and we both rush to the door to meet her.

  “So?” I ask as soon as she walks in. “What’s going on?”

  Troy is at my shoulder. “What did that bastard say?”

  My mom sighs heavily and momentarily closes her eyes. She looks exhausted, like she could fall asleep standing right there in the mud room. Frankly, she wasn’t looking all that hot when she left, but it’s obvious she’s been through the wringer. If ever there was a time for her to revisit her anti-makeup stance, this is it.

  “Look,” she says finally, opening her eyes, “we haven’t made any final decisions, but I don’t want you to worry. Your father and I will make sure you’re both well taken care of, even if he’s off living in some love nest with Mrs. Lewis-Marshall.”

  “That prick!” Troy screams, doing some kind of flying martial arts kick in the air.

  “Mom, I think Troy needs a sedative or something.”

  “Louise . . . I just want to lie down.” She walks past us and heads to her room. Just before she goes through the door she says, “There’s money in my wallet if you want to order a pizza.”

  While I would have thought that the current state of my parents’ marriage would be ample cause for a day off school, apparently that’s not the case. At 7:00 a.m. my mom shuffles into my bedroom in her robe, flicking on the light. “Get up, Louise. You’re going to be late.”

  “What?” I grumble blearily. “You expect me to go to school today?”

  “Your education is not going to suffer just because your father can’t keep it in his pants. I’ll make you some toast.” She shuffles off to the kitchen.

  I’m even more annoyed when I get to school and realize that Sienna is not in attendance. Apparently the Marshalls have no policy regarding the importance of a high school education when your mother has recently revealed herself to be a nymphomaniac. “Hi, Jessie,” I say when I pass her in the hallway between classes.

  “Oh, hey, Louise. Is Sienna sick? She wasn’t in chem.”

  “Yeah, she’s sick,” I say, moving on before I’m asked to elaborate. It’s not a lie. If Sienna feels anywhere near as bad as I do when I think about what happened at my dad’s birthday party, she has every right to be absent. At lunch, I throw myself into set design for Rent. Opening night is still a couple of months away, but there is a ton of work to do. Besides, without Sienna there, I don’t feel comfortable hanging out with the other girls.

  For the entire week I work on sets at lunch hour. On Friday, Sienna has still not returned to school. “She must be really sick,” Audrey comments to me in our history class. “I phoned her last night, but nobody answered.”

  I clear my throat nervously. “There’s a nasty virus going around. Her whole family’s got it.”

  “Well, if you talk to her, tell her I’ll come visit her if she wants some company. I drink this organic echinacea tea, and I never catch colds.”

  But, of course, I won’t be talking to Sienna. I’ve called her cell phone every day, but she must have it turned off. I guess she doesn’t want to talk to anyone as she deals with the fallout from the birthday-party blow job. And there’s no way I’m calling her home number.

  Over the next few days, my parents speak sporadically on the phone, but the conversations usually result in my mom slamming the receiver down, then hurrying to her bedroom, where she puts Carly Simon on the CD player and sobs into her pillow. While I do mourn the loss of the perfect family we’d so long taken for granted, I’m too angry at my dad to feel much sadness.

  Then on Sunday morning, things finally come to a head. My mom wanders into the kitchen in her now ever-present sweatpants and slippers. “Your dad’s coming by to talk to you in ten minutes.”

  Troy, who is seated at the breakfast bar, half stands. He looks about to launch into another fit, but the withering looks he receives from us halt him in his tracks. I speak on his behalf. “What if we don’t want to talk to him?”

 
My mom sighs. “He’s still your father, even if he is in the throes of a severe midlife crisis he won’t admit to.” She pours herself a cup of coffee. “Besides, I think it’s important you hear what he’s got to say for himself.”

  I am sick with nerves as I wait for Dad’s arrival. The fact that my mom has returned to her bed does not signal a happy family reunion. I wonder where he’s been staying? A hotel? A youth hostel? Ha! He’s hardly a youth. Maybe he’s been living in the Infiniti? To distract myself, I clean the kitchen while Troy glumly continues eating his cereal.

  Right on time, his car pulls into the driveway. I look at my brother. “Try to control yourself,” I say. “Spazzing out isn’t going to help anything.”

  Strangely, my dad lets himself into the house as if he still lives here or something. “Kids?” he calls, with a surprisingly jovial tone in his voice.

  “We’re in here,” I call back, my voice sounding tense and strained.

  “Hi, guys!” he says brightly. I have to admit, he looks good. A slight bruise on the bridge of his nose is the only evidence of last week’s fight with Keith. He even looks a little tanned. God, has he been going to a tanning salon? My mom’s right. He is having a midlife crisis! He looks around. “Is your mom here?”

  “She’s in bed,” Troy snaps.

  “She spends a lot of time there lately,” I add.

  My dad chooses to ignore our comments as he helps himself to a cup of coffee. “Let’s sit down,” he says, going to the dining room. My brother and I follow.

  My dad takes a seat and clears his throat, as if he’s preparing to close the deal on a house he’s selling. “First off, let me apologize for what happened at my birthday party. That couldn’t have been easy for you—especially you, son.”

  Troy mumbles something incoherent with a definite f sound.

  “But, everything happens for a reason, and in retrospect, I think that it was fate.”

  “Right,” I snort.

  My dad looks at me. “Louise, we could do without your attitude at a time like this.”

  My attitude? My attitude? You cruise in here with your fake tan and your nouveau spiritualism and you expect to get away with it? But I don’t say this out loud. Instead, I give him a piercing look and slouch farther down in my seat.

  “In fact,” my dad continues, clearing his throat again, “I’m actually glad it happened.” Somehow, Troy manages to refrain from punching him. Did Mom slip some kind of tranquilizer into his orange juice this morning? “Your mother and I—well, we haven’t had a fulfilling marriage for a long time now—not that she isn’t a wonderful mother and a great woman . . . ” He pauses. “But, as a man, I have certain needs . . . ”

  I want to stick my fingers in my ears and sing loudly, but I’m too shocked to move. How can he possibly think we need to know this? Doesn’t he realize the damage he’s already done? Poor Troy will probably never be able to enjoy getting a blow job after what he’s witnessed! Okay, that’s probably not true, given what Kimber has told me about guys enjoying blow jobs, but look what he’s done to us! I am now speculating about my brother’s future enjoyment of blow jobs! God! Is this what happens to children of sex maniacs?

  Thankfully, my brother intervenes. “Just get to the point,” he says.

  “Sunny and I have grown very close over the years. We have a lot in common and enjoy each other’s company very much.” My dad pauses. “We’ve decided to move in together.”

  “What?” I say. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  “We’ve rented a townhouse in Surrey. We want you kids to feel welcome there, like it’s your second home. Of course”—he coughs into his hand nervously—“it’s not a very big place, but there’s an extra bedroom. We hope that you’ll be able to spend some weekends there with us—alternating with Sienna and Brody.”

  As predicted, Troy finally loses it. “I’ll never go to your fucking townhouse!” He bats my dad’s coffee cup off the table, sending it and its contents flying to the floor. “I hate you, you selfish prick!” With that, he runs to his bedroom.

  Dad is pale under the fake tan. “He’ll come around,” he finally says. “I know this is a lot to take in at the moment, but eventually everyone will see that it’s for the best.”

  “Right.” My voice drips with sarcasm. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

  He leans over and retrieves his coffee cup, then heads to the kitchen. When he returns, he has a dishcloth in hand. “We’d better clean up this mess,” he says. “Your mother’s got enough to deal with at the moment.”

  7

  Sienna finally calls that night. “Can we meet?” she says, and I can tell she’s been crying.

  “Of course,” I say. “Where?”

  “The Starbucks near the movie theater,” she sniffs, “in half an hour.”

  Previously, my mom was reluctant to let me take the car out after dark, but obviously things have changed. I’ve got a new set of responsibilities now that I’m the only member of the family not locked in my room. “Mom?” I call tentatively through her bedroom door. “Can I take the car? We need to get some milk and cereal.”

  “Sure,” she calls back, without the usual “Drive safely” or “You teenagers may think you’re invincible, but I’ve seen one too many promising lives cut short by driving too fast / talking on a cell phone / fiddling with the radio.”

  Approximately twenty minutes later I pull my mom’s red Mazda Protégé into the parking lot in front of Starbucks. Sienna is already seated inside, pouring low-cal sweetener into her non-fat latte. I order one for myself and join her.

  “It’s so good to see you,” I say, taking a seat across from her and squeezing her hand.

  “You too,” she mumbles, her eyes welling with tears.

  “Are you doing okay?”

  “Not really. You?”

  “I’m more angry than anything else,” I explain. “My dad came over this morning to talk to Troy and me.”

  “Did he tell you their ‘great news’?” Sienna gives a snort.

  “Yeah.” I imitate my dad: “‘One day everyone will see that it’s for the best.’”

  She rolls her eyes. “Please!”

  We are momentarily interrupted. “Tall non-fat latte,” the girl behind the counter calls. I hurry to retrieve it and a handful of sugar packets, then rejoin Sienna.

  “How’s your dad doing?” I ask.

  “He’s in complete denial,” Sienna says. “He keeps saying things like, ‘Don’t worry, kids, she’ll come to her senses.’ Like, why doesn’t he just accept it and start hating her like Brody and I do?”

  “Do you?”

  “What? Hate her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course! Don’t you hate your dad?”

  I think for a second. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Sienna leans toward me. “Parents are supposed to put their families first. They’re not supposed to have affairs and destroy their kids’ lives. They’re selfish and sick, both of them.”

  “I know. That’s what my mom says.”

  “She’s right. How’s she doing?”

  “Not good.” I take a sip of my latte. “She hasn’t worn pants without an elastic waistband since it happened.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  “What about Brody? How’s he handling all this?”

  “He’s been crying a lot. He’s only thirteen.”

  “Well, at least he hasn’t turned into a complete psycho, like Troy.”

  Sienna stifles a smirk. “What’s he been doing?”

  “Swearing, punching things . . . I’m sure this whole mess is going to turn him into a serial killer or something. My dad will be sorry when the TV crews are camped outside his townhouse, asking him if he can think of anything that happened in Troy’s childhood that might have sent him on his killing spree.”

  Sienna can’t help but laugh. But after taking a sip of her coffee, she leans in and says, in a serious voice, “Have you talked to anyone else ab
out this?”

  “No . . . Have you?”

  “No. When Audrey picked me up at your house, I told her I had a migraine so she wouldn’t grill me. And I said our parents had gone out for drinks.”

  “Good,” I murmur. “The last thing we need is the whole school talking about our sex maniac parents.”

  “Totally. I mean, it’ll probably get out eventually, but let’s at least wait until after Audrey’s party.”

  I had completely forgotten about the upcoming party of the year, which, given recent events, has sort of fallen off my priority list. “So, you still want to go then?”

  “Of course!” Sienna says. “With all the shit that’s going on, we have all the more reason to get drunk and forget about everything.”

  I laugh. “You have a point.” I finish off my coffee. “Are you going to school tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” Sienna says, “I’ve already missed a whole week.”

  “Good,” I say. “I’ve missed you.”

  Sienna smiles at me. “Me too.” She pauses, looking at me intently for a moment. “I want us to make a pact, okay?”

  “Okay . . . ”

  “We’ve got to protect our friendship. Whatever our parents do, we can’t let it come between us.”

  Her words send a shiver through me. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that our friendship could be in jeopardy. Sienna is my BFF! No, she’s more than that. She is my confidante, my link to a social life, the future Dolce to my Gabbana! And Sienna is the only one who can understand what I’m going through right now.