“Auggie, I know you have little, if any, respect left for me and I suppose I can’t blame you. But let’s put this on the table and get it over with. Worth LaViere ran with the fastest crowd. He was like a gang leader, if I had to describe it.” Her voice was almost reminiscent and her eyes glazed as she pictured Worth’s father as he was when they were young. I knew this was not lost on Dad and wondered how he could even stand to stay in the room. “All the girls wanted to be with him and I suppose I wasn’t any different than they were. You have to know what that’s like,” she said in an almost pleading voice.
I nodded, although not avidly. “I was also raised by parents who taught me to stay away from boys like that.” I couldn’t help but say it. All these years I had taken her nasty comments and heavy-handed supervision. I was a mother now and even though I was taught to respect my elders, she was forcing this topic to the surface. I wasn’t going to let her out of it so easily. It was time she grew up.
“Okay, I deserved that,” she allowed and shifted in her chair.
I realized at that moment how much she looked exactly like the furniture in the room where we sat. It was hard, unrelenting and monotone. She surrounded herself with pious misery and expected everyone to accept that as the best way to live. I wasn’t going to accept it.
“Tell me about the baby.” I forced it out into the open.
Her eyes grew momentarily as if the memory had just now come back to her. Even Dad exhaled a bit uncertain whether she was up to talking about it.
“Dad needs to hear about this, too, you know,” I said. “He has stood by you all these years and it’s time he gets a bit of recognition for that.”
She nodded, drew a deep breath and began in a voice that blamed everyone but herself. I should have expected nothing more.
“Worth used me and dumped me on the side of the road, literally, one night. I can still hear his laugh. He’d pestered me over and over until I finally gave in. I thought he would marry me. I was so wrong. He wouldn’t even acknowledge that he’d been with me. Told people that I was loose and suggested I was beneath his level. That’s when I discovered I was pregnant.” She stopped there, swallowing hard and fixating her eyes on some spot in the distance that didn’t require her brain to think.
“I went to him at that farm and found him back in the paddocks with another girl. She was undressed from the waist down and he was upon her. I screamed and that startled her. She pulled herself together and ran. I guess she must have lived nearby. I was sobbing and ran up to him, telling him I was going to have his baby. He laughed and told me it was my problem. I remember slapping him and he hit me in the face in return, hard. I threatened to go to his parents and he said if I did, he’d kill me. He was wild. I believed him, so I left.”
Dad stood up to go and comfort Mother, but she waved him off. “No, let me say this. Time it was said.” She was going to finally lay it out, even if she was being a bit dramatic.
She continued. “Your father had been interested in me for some time but I only had eyes for Worth. When I found myself with a baby on the way, I went to him for comfort and he insisted that I marry him to save myself the embarrassment. I said I wanted to get rid of the baby, that I didn’t want anything to do with Worth LaViere. We drove to Florida, to my aunt’s place in Naples. Your father stayed with me the whole time. We were married before a Justice of the Peace and he talked me into giving up the baby instead of having an abortion. They took the child from me and that’s the last I ever saw of it. I never knew the sex, never knew what happened to it. I pushed that part of my life into the past and never looked back.
“Years later, our family began hosting the barbecues and it would have caused talk if the LaVieres weren’t invited. It would have brought scandal that none of us wanted. We wanted it all forgotten. Those were the pictures you found. You know the rest, Auggie. That’s all there is to tell. Condemn if you wish, but there you have it.”
“Mother,” I swallowed, “actually there is more to it.”
“What do you mean?” One fine eyebrow lifted. “Of course there isn’t. You want to gloat? Go ahead. Your mother got herself pregnant. I had no right to be so hard on you and I guess now, looking back, I was trying to save you from the embarrassment and humiliation I went through. I didn’t want your life ruined the way mine had been.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Dad said, standing, hands closed to fists at his side. “I hardly would call marrying me quite as bad as all that.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean that,” she said in a tired voice that suggested his feelings really weren’t the consideration he was looking for. Her red hair was frazzled, pinned onto her head in a very unbecoming manner.
I could only see red. All my life I had taken and taken from her — the condescension, the complaints, the put-downs, I had taken all that and more. But now she was making a tragedy out of being married to one of the most genuine, generous, wonderful people in the world — my father. I could not stand for that. I would not listen to it. Even if it meant that I would never see her again or if she was not to be a part of Ford’s life — it was time she got her comeuppance.
I began to put Ford’s outdoor clothing back on him. She could see I was preparing to leave. “Where are you going, Auggie. We’re not done here,” she said, aggravated that her drama was to be curtailed.
“Oh, yes, we are done, Mother. Let me tell you a little something. First of all, the only person who can stand you is here in this room and it isn’t me. That man who you’ve spent a lifetime belittling is worth a hundred of you. You were lucky that he loved you enough to stand up through what you put him through. He deserved to be loved for himself, to be adored because he has a huge heart and a noble spirit and the courage to get through the worst things that could be thrown at him. He is enough of a man to stand up even to you, Mother. This man saved you from utter disgrace. I cannot believe the way you’re treating him!” I continued to zip up Ford’s little outfit.
“You’re not leaving yet, young lady,” she tried again.
“You’re right, Mother, I’m not. Not yet. I have a little bit more to say before I go and I hope Dad will go with me. You’re right about one thing. Worth LaViere, II was a bastard, in more ways than you might ever know. That baby you had that was adopted out? It went nowhere. Nowhere but right into LaViere’s hands and that baby grew up to be Linc LaViere, living right here in this same town.”
Mother gasped as the words began to sink in. “But he’s, he’s…”
“Yes, Mother, he’s dead. You lost him not once, but twice. If he were still here, he would probably hate you as much as I do,” I said quietly.
“Auggie! How can you say that about your own mother?” she cried out, her voice rising to an hysterical level.