Chapter 8 Present Day
PRESENT DAY
OSCAR
A fall can happen fast, Oscar decided, as the jail cell door slammed shut.
“Son, you need to get a grip on your anger. It’s one thing to be mad at your girlfriend, but you can’t be telling a cop to f-off anytime.” The sheriff said, holding onto the bars that now separated Oscar from the free world.
“My fiancée,” Oscar wanted to say. My fiancée who’s sleeping with my best friend from second grade. And…f-off.
“If I had a dime for every one of your kind that I arrest on Saturday night, well, I wouldn’t be wasting my time on guys like you,” the sheriff said. “Just add alcohol,” he added and spread his arms, indicating the jail cell. “Hope you’re comfortable.”
Guys like me, huh? The sheriff never even bothered to ask if he’d even been drinking.
The sheriff gave him a dismissive wave and walked out, leaving him to stew in his thoughts.
Oscar looked around at the plaster chipping off the walls and the steel bars coated over with thick, gray paint. If only it covered the shame that he figured most people felt in here.
He looked at the stained plastic mattress on the single bunk and decided instead to sit on the floor with his back against the wall. The strong odor of urine wafted from the corroded toilet in the corner. It must be early for people like me, he thought as he sat alone.
He rested his elbows on his knees and his face into his hands.
Caroline betrays me with Ben, Ben betrays me with Caroline and I’m the bad guy. How often he’d been misunderstood in his life.
What bad luck.
The sheriff had driven by just as Oscar smashed the windshield of Ben’s Jeep.
Oscar didn’t think Ben and Caroline realized that he’d seen them in their passionate embrace. But if they saw the cop pushing him into the squad car and Ben’s shattered windshield, they may have figured it out. He didn’t care. He never wanted to see either of them again.
Anger melted into sorrow, and a deep grief boiled up from an incomprehensible depth. His body shuddered, and the same nausea he’d experienced when he saw them kissing bubbled bile into his throat.
His mind could not wrap itself around everything this meant.
The wedding was off. And what would he tell his parents and all their friends who had celebrated their engagement?
Some had even brought gifts that would need to be returned, but some of them had been used.
What then? What would he say to his own friends?
Caroline and Oscar maintained separate apartments, but practically shared the spaces.
He’d have to get his stuff back. And now he’d have a police record to include on his job applications.
He banged his head against the concrete wall and wanted to scream.
He had never known anger like this. It was probably good that he’d walked back to his car instead of confronting them, but when he’d reached his car, he grabbed his shinai from the back, walked past the wide-eyed kid waiting for his spot, found Ben’s Jeep a few rows over, and swung the sword so hard and fast that it shattered both the windshield and the shinai.
My shinai.
Oscar knew that his grief rippled out way further than his beloved sword. But the broken shinai, laying there in pieces, seemed to represent all that he’d worked for in his life—his honors at the university, his relationships, his new Sho-Dan promotion—all shattered.
His internal gall erupted, and he vomited on the floor.
He gagged and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
What happened after he hit the windshield had become a blur.
Someone grabbed him from behind and slammed him up against the Jeep.
In a flash, he mistook the figure for Ben and took a swing.
It turned out to be a cop and the reason the sheriff said Oscar was in more trouble than he could imagine.
Had he even tried to explain himself once he’d been roughly tossed into the back of the patrol car? Did they take his mug shot and fingerprints? His head swirled and ached. My life is over as I know it.
The sheriff said something about a phone call. When the man handed him the phone, he could only remember Caroline’s and Ben’s numbers by heart. They would normally be the first ones to call in an emergency. But this wasn’t normally.
Through the fog, Oscar remembered his father, an attorney, had traveled out of town for a deposition in Spokane.
He’d be the most logical to call but couldn’t remember his cell phone number from memory.
He and Caroline were supposed to have dinner on Sunday with his parents, but his mom had called to cancel because of this last-minute trip of his father’s.
That leaves Mom. Oh boy.
There was no way around it, he’d have to call his mother to bail him out. She’d always been good to him, but as a Missoula socialite, this might just do her in.
The door between the cells and the office slammed open. Oscar jumped.
The sheriff walked to his cell, inserted a key, and swung the cell door open. “Your friend will not press charges,” he said with a disgusted scoff.
Oscar stood.
“You been drinking tonight?” he demanded.
“Not a drop, sir.”
The sheriff shook his head at the bile on the floor.
“You’re sure as the hell going to clean that up before you go.
” The sheriff walked to Oscar, and inches from his face, stared at him.
“Son, you ever take a swipe at another officer, and you’ll get a real ass-whooping,” he said, and thumped him hard on the chest with a knuckle.
“It’s a good thing I know your father. He helped me out with my divorce.
I’m sure whatever thrashing you escape from me, your father will handle.
Not sure how knuckleheads like you come from men like that. ”
* * *
Oscar put his phone, wallet, and keys in his pockets, got another stern warning from the deputy, and walked out of the downtown county jail, stopping at the first landing.
With the jail looming behind him and Caroline and Ben leaning against the Jeep in front, he couldn’t see an escape. He would have jumped off the side of the stairs if the handrail didn’t force him forward.
Oscar tried taking a sharp left at the bottom of the steps, when Caroline ran to face him and she wrapped her arms around his waist.
He held up his hands, trying not to touch her, and turned his head away.
“Oscar, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
Oscar scoffed and turned to glare at Ben. “How could you?”
Ben’s guilty look said it all. He was a terrible liar.
“How could you sleep with my fiancée?”
“I swear, it was an accident.” Ben said as he studied the ground.
“Oh, you just tripped and fell into her, huh? You guys deserve each other,” Oscar said, disentangling himself from Caroline’s embrace and storming off to find his car.
* * *
Oscar picked Buki up from his apartment and drove to his parents’ house.
The dog sensed the tension and did not leave his side, not even to play with Oscar’s parents’ dog or to search for leftover scraps in her dish.
Instead, Buki sat at his side with a paw on his leg, content to have Oscar scratch an ear.
From the dining room table, he watched his mother scurry around the kitchen. He’d told her many times he wanted nothing to eat, but she insisted on fixing Kraft macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. Oscar guessed it was her way of dealing with this humiliation.
He didn’t know where else to go and when he pulled up to the house, it surprised him to see the living room lights on. When she met him at the door, he appreciated not having to wake her and scare the wits out of her but frustrated to learn that Caroline had already called.
His mother had opened the front door in her robe with a look of anger and concern. Once he told her why he’d spent a few hours in jail, she softened and started rattling pans.
“Here you go, dear, best to put some food in your tummy before we figure this out.” She set the plate of yellow mac and cheese and red hotdogs in front of him. She sat down, but popped right back up. “Oh, you’ll want some ketchup and mustard.”
The steam rose from the food, and as he stared, he felt himself shrinking, as if he were once again that starving five-year-old. His twenty-five-year-old self just wanted to push the plate away and run away.
His mother set the condiments next to his plate, sat down, and put a hand on his forearm. “I’m so sorry that this has happened to you, Oscar.”
Her kindness snapped the anger from his mind, leaving him numb.
“I always worried that Caroline flirted too much with everyone,” she said. “Now I see it…between her and Ben, I mean.”
Oscar wrinkled his brow. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Well, I thought she made you happy…and that made me happy.”
Anger returned to him, demanding that he escape—Anywhere! Just run!
“Her mom is sure odd,” his mother continued. “Didn’t you say that her mom lived with some other guy while still married to Caroline’s dad? Sometimes these things run through families.”
His mother’s compassionate expression deflected the angry look Oscar shot at her.
Oscar tried pulling his arm away by raising his hands up to cover his face, but she kept her hand firmly planted on his forearm. He figured she worried more about her social standings among her friends.
“What’s Dad going to say?”
Oscar’s mother sighed. “He’ll probably say you dodged a bullet. As a divorce attorney, he’s seen it all.”
Sadie, his parents’ twelve-year-old yellow lab, sauntered over to Oscar and Buki, her nails clicking against the hardwood floor. She gave Buki a sniff then laid her head on Oscar’s lap. He met her expressive eyes that seemed to say “I’m sorry life is so hard.”
Oscar rubbed Sadie behind her ear. Her fur felt as soft as the day his parents brought her home as a puppy on his thirteenth birthday. Her muzzle seemed grayer each time he saw her now, and that sadness broke open his heart.
Sadie, Buki, and his mom let him grieve. Tears overflowed his eyes and dropped onto Sadie’s head.
“Sorry, girl.” Oscar wiped the droplets from her fur. She seemed to press her head deeper into his lap, squeezing grief from his heart.
“I feel like I was born under an unlucky star,” Oscar choked out.
“I don’t believe there is such a thing,” his mother assured him.” Life is just life…full of challenges.” She repositioned her hand to his shoulder.
Questions poured out of Oscar. “Why am I like this? Why so restless, why so…forever searching? Why would Caroline do this to me? Am I just a bad person? Is God mad at me? Am I just broken?”
He looked to his mother for answers, but she said nothing.
“Mom, was I a bad kid? Why did you adopt my little sisters?” There, he finally asked the question that he’d wanted to ask ever since he was five, the day they brought the two little girls home that upended his life.
Her neck turned red, which usually meant she was about to get angry. And boy, could she get angry!
Instead, she looked at him with eyes that he’d never seen before—filled with a mixture of kindness, compassion, and sadness.
“Seems like we have lots to talk about, don’t we?” His mother let go of his shoulder and leaned back in her chair in resignation.
Oscar regretted his outburst. But the agony of betrayal became the lever to dislodge deep rooted pain that he’d carried all his life.
“First of all, Oscar, I love you so very much. I hope you know that. And no…you were not a bad kid, not at all. Well, not until tonight, maybe.” She let a teasing smile cross her lips. “You were so easy. You would just sit so content in your chair.”
Both Buki and Sadie seemed to sense his pain and pressed closer. Sadie whined, demanding more attention. Oscar stroked her head, and she settled.
“Oscar, you’ve always been our sensitive kid, even more so than your sisters. You feel things deeply, ponder things deeply. Probably what makes you such a beautiful human being and a talented artist. You see the world differently. I love that about you.”
A look of sadness crossed her face. “I’ve often wondered if we made a mistake in adopting your sisters.
The psychologist said that part of their behavior difficulties resulted from adopting them as toddlers.
I’ve always worried that they pulled so much of our attention away that you felt abandoned. ”
Oscar looked at Sadie and Buki. He’d said too much already. The pain that Caroline caused had spilled out unintentionally to his mom.
He tried course correcting and said, “It seems like Dad just ignored me most of the time. To the point, I thought you guys had adopted me as well.” He smirked but added seriously, “I thought there was something wrong with me and that’s why he didn’t want to be around me.”
Her face flashed with heat, and she stood up from her chair, almost knocking it over and paced back and forth in front of the sink, wringing her hands.
Both dogs sat up and watched her pace. It took her a few minutes to settle on something, and she sat back down and held his arm with both of her hands.
Oscar had joked about the adoption, but not about his father ignoring him.
He swallowed hard, watching his mom’s tear-filled eyes search his.
Pictures from his baby book flashed across his mind—photos from the hospital with his mom holding him post-delivery.
She’d even kept the umbilical clamp that had separated them.
His mother shook her head slowly and looked at the floor. “Your dad is not your biological father.” The revelation came with streams of tears. “I’ve always been grateful that you never got one of those genetic tests before I could tell you the truth. I’m so sorry, Oscar. I am so ashamed of myself.”
She searched for words.
“I had an…encounter…before I married your dad.”