A Curve in the Road(28)
He glares at me for a few tense seconds, and I’m aware of Braden pushing away from the counter, removing his hands from his pockets while Bruce just stands there, watching in silence.
“Abbie’s right,” Braden says. “We should call it a night. What time is your flight tomorrow?” he asks Lester, in an obvious effort to calm rising tempers by changing the subject. I pray it will work, because I swear I’m about to lose it.
“We ain’t flying out tomorrow,” Lester replies. He drains the whiskey from his glass in a single gulp and slams it onto the countertop. “We fly on Thursday. But we won’t be staying in this waster of a town. We’ll be checking out first thing in the morning and going back to the casino, because we know when we’re not welcome.”
I’m fighting hard to stay calm and maintain my cool, but I feel my blood pressure rising and all my muscles tightening.
Lester staggers heavily toward me. Winston blocks him and begins to bark. I grab hold of Winston’s collar to restrain him and move out of the way so that Lester can leave the kitchen and get the hell out of my house, but as he passes, he bodychecks Zack into the wall and says, “You’re a little wuss. Just like your father.”
A blaze of fury explodes in my blood, and all I see is red.
“Hey!” I shout, shoving Lester hard in return so he falls backward into the refrigerator. Braden moves quickly to help Zack regain his balance and get between Lester and me, and I wonder if I’m nuts to get into a physical scuffle with a man twice my size.
By now, Winston is barking madly, and it’s chaos in the kitchen, but I don’t care. I can’t rein in my emotions anymore. The floodgates break open, and every last sour bit of my bile toward this man comes pouring out in a torrent of rage.
“How dare you speak to my son like that! You should be ashamed of yourself! And now that Alan’s gone, I’ll say what he always thought but was too polite to say to your face: you were a terrible father, and he couldn’t stand to be around you. That’s why he moved across the country—to get away from you. You’re a mean, despicable bully, and I want you out of my house right now. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Lester says nothing. He simply stares at me in shock, then storms out of the kitchen to the foyer. “Come on, Verna. We’re leaving. Get your coat.”
She scrambles from the sofa while my mother watches all of this with her mouth agape.
Carla’s daughters begin to cry. She hugs them close.
No one says a word while Lester, Verna, and Bruce pull on their coats and walk out the door. As soon as they’re gone, I rush forward, slam the door behind them, and lock it.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to Zack, turning quickly. “I can’t believe that just happened. I totally lost it.”
I realize my hands are shaking.
“You did great,” Zack says.
“He’s always been like that,” I try to explain. “Mean and crude. He’s a monster, and he likes to hurt people because he thinks so little of himself. Your dad always said so. He needs to belittle others to build himself up.”
“I know,” Zack says. “And I’m not a wuss. Neither was Dad.”
“Of course you’re not. Your grandfather’s a jerk, and we’re never going to see him again. I’m so sorry I invited him here. I was stupid, thinking he’d be a nicer person today, just this once. I wanted to give him a chance, but he’s still as rotten to the core as he ever was.”
Zack shakes his head in disbelief. “I don’t blame Dad for leaving home when he did. And if I ever see Lester again . . .” He gives me a dark look. “Let’s just hope I don’t.”
All I can do is nod my head and pull him into my embrace.
I’m not normally a vengeful person, but in that moment, I wish terrible things on my father-in-law. If this had been his funeral today, I would hope that he’d be rotting in hell tonight and for the rest of eternity.
That night, it’s not easy to relax and go to sleep. I toss and turn for hours, keeping Winston awake too, because he’s curled up at the foot of my bed.
I spend quite a bit of time thinking about our altercation with Lester and all the unspeakable things he said. How was it possible that Alan turned out to be such a good father with a man like that as a role model for parenthood? How did Alan rise above it?
I roll onto my side and stare at the curtains over the window, thinking about how much I’m going to miss Alan’s tenderness and how loving he was as a husband—the complete opposite of Lester. When I was pregnant with Zack, I suffered terrible morning sickness, but bless his sweet heart . . . Alan got out of bed at dawn each day to bring me crackers to eat before I rose.
I remember once when I was sick, he stood outside the bathroom door, knocking gently and asking if I was okay and if I needed anything. Eventually he came in, picked me up off the bathroom floor, and carried me back to bed. He set me down, pulled the covers up to my shoulders, kissed me on the forehead, and called one of my colleagues to get him to cover for me in the OR that day.
Months later, my difficult pregnancy came to a head when Alan was forced to watch helplessly as I fell unconscious in the delivery room and nearly bled to death in front of his eyes. I suppose he wasn’t accustomed to feeling helpless in situations like that, but this was different. I was his wife, and he wasn’t permitted into the OR when they rushed me away. He waited hours while the doctors fought to save my life, and it was a close call. I was very lucky.