Love at 11 - By Mari Mancusi Page 0,11

getting a divorce? Who am I supposed to live with?” Lulu demanded. Poor girl. While it was devastating news for me, at least I’d moved out of the house. This would impact my sister’s entire existence.

“You can stay with your father and his little whore,” my mother said in an odd, cheery voice.

I whirled my head around, jaw hitting the floor. What? What did she just say? I’d never, ever heard my mother use bad language in all my existence. She was the sunshine and oatmeal-raisin cookies stay-at-home mom who used to read us Bible stories. She didn’t say things like “his little whore.”

Which brought me to my next question. I turned to look at my evidently philandering father. Had he really cheated on my poor, sweet, innocent mother? How dare he? Anger replaced my sadness and I rose from my chair.

“Dad. What the hell is going on here?” I demanded, hoping he could hear me over Lulu’s wailing sobs.

My dad squirmed in his chair. For a chair he’d sat in for the last thirty years of his life, he suddenly seemed to find it mighty uncomfortable.

“I’m seeing someone else,” he said at last.

“Someone else?” My mother raised a carefully plucked eyebrow. Since when did she pluck her eyebrows? “Aren’t you going to tell them who?”

He took a deep breath. “Someone from my office.”

“Who happens to be twenty-three years old and pregnant with your child!” my mother added helpfully, if not a bit bitterly.

Nausea overcame me at that point, and I ran to the bathroom to retch. This couldn’t be happening. This could NOT be happening. It had to be some ridiculous dream. I’d wake up any minute now and realize the whole crazy scene was just a dream. My family was still together. My dad didn’t have a pregnant girlfriend who was younger than me by four years.

I started to retch again and bowed to the porcelain god in front of me. As I puked my guts out, I felt someone come up behind me and hold my hair back. After I was done sacrificing a good portion of my lunch, I turned around to see who it was.

My father.

I wanted to hit him. To strangle him. To kill him for his betrayal. How could he be so selfish? How could he put himself before his family?

“Can we take a walk?” he asked with a sad smile.

I nodded wordlessly, hating him and loving him more than anything at that very moment. We walked out the door into our backyard. The flowers my mother had planted, bright cheerful sunflowers, seemed mocking.

“I’m sorry if you feel I’ve let you down, Maddy,” Dad said as he settled down onto the backyard swings. The same swings he had pushed me on so many times growing up.

Higher! I’d scream. I want to touch the sky!

I joined him, scuffing the toe of my shoe against the dirt. Swaying back and forth, but not swinging.

I turned to face him. “Why?” I asked.

He reached over and brushed a tear from my cheek. “Every relationship is different,” he said. “And no one who’s not in the relationship can see what goes on behind closed doors. Your mother and I have been together in name only for years. We don’t talk. We don’t make love. We simply cohabitate. We tried marriage counseling. It didn’t help.”

I could feel my heart slamming against my rib cage and had to struggle to catch my breath. I had no idea. I thought my parents loved each other. But as memories of the last few years flooded my brain, I realized suddenly that I might have been looking at their marriage through rose-colored kid glasses. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen them kiss. Hug. I couldn’t. But I had simply chalked it up to it being an older, more mature marriage.

“But you didn’t have to cheat on Mom,” I reminded him with a frown. Falling out of love was one thing. Cheating was another.

He sighed. “Your mother is a very special person,” he said, swaying from side to side on his swing. “I tried to tell her I was unhappy for years. She begged me to stay. Said I could go out and do what I had to do as long as I didn’t leave her.”

This was surely a shocking day to end all shocking days. My mother had told my father he could go out and have affairs? I couldn’t even fathom the idea.

“So you’ve been fucking other women this