by Paul Cwalina
“Sir, do you have a home?” the male officer asked. I looked at them and they at me. Simultaneously, their jaws dropped.
“Mayor?” the female officer nearly shrieked. “Is that you?”
I got up from the ground and grabbed my laptop case. I exhaled hard and ran my hand through my hair. “Yeah, it’s me,” I said and rubbed my face to wake myself up.
“Sir, why are you sleeping on the sidewalk?” she asked.
I didn’t answer the question. I simply told them my address and asked, “Is that in your jurisdiction?”
“Yes, of course” she said.
“Good. Give me a ride home.”
I woke the following morning at 11:35. When I saw the time, I leapt out of the recliner and grabbed my phone. I missed a few texts, emails and phone calls, the most important one being from Ed from three hours prior demanding a re-work of the Miami speech NO LATER THAN NOON.
Unbelievable. The first day he trusts me to work remotely and I’m messing it up. I got my laptop and fired it up. While it went through its normal routine, I sprinted to the kitchen and grabbed a handful of ice cubes out of the freezer and held them against my face to help wake me up.
Was I sleeping on a sidewalk last night? I threw the ice cubes into the sink and went back to my laptop and opened up the Miami speech. According to Ed, Rick asked that we water down the section addressing Cuba.
Cuba...it figures. I hate Cuba. I hate the Castros. Why won’t they die already? Fortunately, I was able to re-work it easily and at 11:55, I emailed it back to Ed. Relieved, I went upstairs to shower and change.
As I showered and brushed, I inventoried the events from the previous night. When I had them assembled, they were in the shape of a worn and broken man. I couldn’t keep up with my expectations any longer. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, but I knew that more than anything I had to see and speak to Jennifer. I called, I sent texts, and I tried to reach her through Facebook Messenger. Nothing. She didn’t reply a single time.
The next day, I drove to Jennifer’s development and parked a street away. Looking between the homes, I could see her house and I waited until she got home from work. I saw her pull into her driveway and go into the house. With a pitcher in my hand, I sprinted through the neighbors’ yards and across the street to Jennifer’s house. I went to the side of the house where there was an outside water spigot and filled the pitcher. I took it to the front door and put it down on the concrete porch. I grabbed a metal pail I remembered seeing the night I was waiting for her and set it next to the pitcher. From my pocket, I pulled the agreement and a lighter. I set the agreement on fire and placed it in the pail. I rang the doorbell and sprinted to the side of her house to hide.
She opened the door and said, “What the...” Then she grabbed the pitcher and sniffed it and poured the water on the fire. I watched her pull the burnt agreement out of the pail and then look around. I quickly ducked back out of view and waited until I heard the door close.
I took the long, hidden way through yards and behind as many bushes and cars I could to make it back to my car without being seen. I got into my car and drove home.
Chapter Twelve
I pulled my car into Jennifer’s driveway early Saturday morning and parked it behind hers, less than an inch from her car’s back bumper. I pinned it in between my car and her garage door. The ultrasound was scheduled for ten o’clock, so the latest she would be leaving would be nine-thirty. I bought a large coffee on the way over and sipped it and surfed the news websites on my phone while I waited for Jennifer to come out. I wouldn’t be denied seeing her, that day.
I turned on the satellite radio to the Eighties station and listened for a while, but shut it off when I heard that INXS song Devil Inside. I read some political analysis on one of the sites that made a case for why Roman would win the party nomination. Below it were the latest Gallup numbers. They were forecasting a tighter race in Florida than in South Carolina, but the numbers had to be old. I wasn’t buying it. We were onto something and we had the momentum. True, there was not an abortion bill making its way through the Florida legislature like there was in South Carolina, but an eight-point victory there suggested we tapped into something that had legs outside of the state.
As expected, the two candidates who finished no higher than fifth in any of the first four contests both ended their campaigns on that Wednesday morning. Neither of them endorsed another candidate, which set off minor skirmishes to claim the voters and supporters they were leaving on the table. As soon as we heard the candidates dropped out, we called the media outlets and offered to buy every television and radio spot and newspaper display ad that the other two pulled. I didn’t want Rick to lose another state and began adjusting the speeches to make him sound like the presumptive winner.
It was a little after 8:30 when Jennifer emerged from the house. As she turned to lock the door, I got out of my car and stepped toward the walkway, stopping where it met the driveway. She took a few steps before she saw me. When she did, she stopped momentarily and looked at me, then kept walking quickly and with purpose toward her car.
“Move your car,” she demanded
“Jennifer, please wait,” I said calmly
“Move your car or I’m going to move it for you with mine,” she said determined.
I remained calm. “You’re not going to hit or move my car.”
“Oh no? Watch me,“ she challenged, and then she opened her car door and started to get in.
“You told me you wanted a real father for our child. I am the real father and I am here to be one. Don’t take that away from our child,” I said in a slightly elevated voice. It stopped her. She had one hand on the roof of her car and the other on top of the open driver’s door. “I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since Monday. I’ll tell you again that nothing happened. I just don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know how to handle or stop that woman.” I paused for a moment while Jennifer kept her back to me. “Anyway, I’m not going back to DC. I’m going to work remotely, just like you suggested, so I’ll be here, not in DC anymore. I’ll be here for you and the baby.”
I could see and hear Jennifer exhale and I could see her body relax. She looked up to the sky and then she bowed her head for a minute or two. I simply stood and waited.
She closed the car door hard and turned and walked at me like she was going to punch me. Instead, she grabbed my shirt, along with roughly a hundred chest hairs, and pulled.
Ow, ow, ow ow, ow....
“For our child’s sake, I am going to forgive you. But you listen to me. Forgiveness isn’t just the asking for or the granting. Truly asking for forgiveness means you understand and hate what you did and never do it again and never have to ask for that forgiveness again. You need to understand that,” she said seriously and looking intensely into my eyes.
“I get it. I understand,” I responded.
She didn’t relax her grip at all, unfortunately. In fact, she tightened it a bit and I was getting irritated. “Do you understand that by burning that agreement you are promising to marry me? To be here every day for our child?”
I put my hand on the middle of her chest and grabbed her sweatshirt the same way she was gripping my shirt, and I pulled her up and closer a bit. Through clenched teeth, I said, “I do.”
At first, I didn’t even catch the humor in what I said, but Jennifer did. I saw her trying hard to suppress a smile, and then I couldn’t help but do the same. We released each other’s shirts and began to laugh. She rested her forehead against my chest and said, “I hate that I can’t stay mad at you.” I laughed again and then put my arms around her. She quickly broke that up. “Easy there, Casanova,” she said, pushing me away. “Don’t get any ideas unless you’re planning on marrying me this afternoon.”
“Well, I can’t this afternoon because I’m getting my chest waxed to match the bald spot you just created,” I joked.
She laughed and said, “I’m sorry....Hey, I was planning on goi
ng to Jimmy’s Java for a bagel and coffee. I didn’t eat. Do you mind going there first?”
I had no problem with that and pulled out of the driveway. Just as it did last time, our shared laughter worked wonders in opening ourselves up to each other. I told her all about Sarah and what it was like being the mayor. Neither of us were ready to discuss Chelsea. She told me all about Jeff and I felt comfortable asking her a question that had been on my mind for a while.
“I hope this doesn’t upset you, but you were married to Jeff for seven years, right? And you never had kids. Yet we were together just one night and...”
She half-smiled and said, “You know it only takes once, right?”
I let out a short laugh and said, “Yeah, I know. I get it, but...”
“I know,” she said then took a deep breath and let it out. “Well, that’s what eventually lead to the divorce.”
“I thought it was because he was unfaithful,” I said.
“No. That certainly didn’t help matters, but there was something else that was the real reason I divorced Jeff.”
I sat back in my chair and stretched out my legs in front of me, crossing them at the ankles, while I prepared to hear the details of her divorce.
“I always wanted to have children, from the day we got married. Jeff didn’t, though, and we both used contraception for the first two years of our marriage. Then one day, completely out of the blue, he says that he wants to have kids and he was going to stop using the contraceptive. I was thrilled, obviously. I was ecstatic. So, you know, we went forward with trying to get pregnant. We were trying and trying but nothing was happening. After a few years, I said that we should go to a fertility clinic to see what the problem is, but he refused to go. He would just keep saying that it would happen, that I had to be patient and we’d eventually get pregnant. Then more months would go by and he had me convinced that I was infertile. He would make me feel defective to the point that I just started looking into adoption,” she said and then paused. Her eyes began to moisten, but she was still okay to continue. “Then I guess it was about a year ago now that he came down with a really bad case of the flu. I took him to the doctor’s. He was so weak and wiped out that he had to lean on me to walk from the car to the doctor’s office and back to the examining room. Once we were in there, he laid himself down on his back with his arm draped over his eyes. I felt so sorry for him. I was just sitting there and his medical file was on the counter next to me. I was bored so I started flipping through it and stopped on a page where I saw that he’d had a vasectomy. It was like a punch to my stomach. I went numb. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Then I looked at the date and it was right around the time he told me that he wanted to have kids and stopped using birth control. I was devastated. I closed the file and put it back on the counter and then I just walked out of the examining room and out of the doctor’s office and left him there. I went home, put his clothes in suitcases and put the suitcases on the walkway in front of the house. He must have finally called for a taxi from the doctor’s office. He pulled into the driveway as the locksmith was pulling out. I didn’t talk to him again until our first divorce hearing.”
“Wow. And that was the end of Jeff, huh?”
“And that was the end of Jeff,” she said and then looked into my eyes. “I will not be lied to.”
I shook my head. “On behalf of my gender, I apologize.”
“Well, that was a lot more evil than your average man, but apology accepted.” She smiled coyly.
We finished our coffees and headed to her ob/gyn’s office. Once there, we only had to wait a few minutes before being led back to an examining room. Jennifer introduced me to the doctor, Cheryl, and then got herself prepared for the ultrasound. She pulled up her sweatshirt and Cheryl applied a gel to Jennifer’s midsection. Cheryl looked at me and said, “Come over here nice and close and her hold hand as we do this.” I rolled the chair next to the table where Jennifer was and she held out her hand.
Cheryl said to me with a smile, “Are you ready?”
I naively replied, “Yeah, sure.” There are certain events in life for which you can never be fully prepared. You can hear about them, observe them, or even study them, but when the real thing happens, it shakes you to your core. It realigns your thinking and permanently changes how you will see, feel, and think from that moment forward.
Cheryl pressed the device against Jennifer and a sound like a submarine making its way underwater filled the room. I unmistakably heard the rhythmic beating. “Do you hear that, daddy?” Cheryl asked, almost beaming. “That’s the sound of your son’s heart beating.”
That’s when everything changed.
My mouth ran dry, my nerves jumped in my skin, and I felt a mental and physical numbness. All I could really hear was that beating heart. Jennifer and Cheryl may have been talking, but all I could hear was the beating of my son’s heart. Cheryl pointed me to the computer screen. “Watch,” she said. “There’s his head and his torso and that’s his right arm and one of his legs...” I turned from the screen and just stared at Jennifer’s belly. My son was no longer an abstract concept. He was no longer just the words ‘baby’ or ‘child.’
Right there under a veil of Jennifer’s skin and flesh rests my son...a completely new and unique life that is helpless and defenseless and completely reliant on Jennifer and me for his protection and nurturing. I am just about a foot away from my son. That sound is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
I looked up at Jennifer, who had been looking at me the same way Chelsea watched me as I looked at the Vermeer painting, and in my mind a thousand dots were connected in an instant. I suddenly understood everything Jennifer was saying and understood why she was so adamant and tough about everything and I was suddenly looking at the most beautiful woman I had ever known. I looked at her and saw my home.
She put her hand to my cheek and caressed it with her thumb. She smiled silently at me as if to say, ‘Do you understand now?’ Her guard was completely down for the first time. Forget the no-touch policy. I took advantage of the opportunity and got up, put my hand on her cheek and leaned in and kissed her on the lips. She put her arm around me and kissed back.
I broke the kiss and we stared deeply and silently into each other’s eyes. Everything between Jennifer and me was changed. Everything was different and everything was better. Oh, there would be work to do, but its purpose was clear. I sat back down and Cheryl continued.
“You must like listening to that sound, huh? Your smile is a mile wide and I’m about to see a grown man cry,” Cheryl said. I put my head down and couldn’t respond. “Now, here’s the other one,” she said.
Other one? Why is there another one? Why does my son have two hearts? I don’t know much about this stuff but I don’t think that’s right. Maybe a baby has two hearts when its developing and one goes away after its born. More likely it’s a defect. There’s something wrong.
I looked up and said to Cheryl, “Other one?”
Cheryl and Jennifer just looked at each other. Then Jennifer turned to me and said, “I have two aunts on my father’s side that are twins.”
I couldn’t care less about your genealogy right now. Don’t you realize our son has two hearts or some kind of defect? Don’t you realize there’s something wrong? Stop smiling! What is wrong with you?
“Twins skip a generation,” Cheryl said. Then she pointed up to the speakers overhead. “Do you hear that heartbeat? That’s your daughter. There she is on the screen.”
There must be a limit on the amount of joy a person could feel and I was testing that limit. I have a daughter, too. I took a moment to let that sink in. There are two new and unique lives, each of them flesh and blood of my flesh and blood and Jennifer’s flesh and blood. These two people are looking to me to protect them, to teach them everything they need to know, and to be there for them.
“Why don’t either of you look surprised?” I asked. Then I looked at Jennifer. “You knew this whole time
and you didn’t tell me?”