A Crime

I didn’t talk to my father much after Mom died. I was a dutiful son, called once a week to see that he was well, but overall didn’t expend much thought on him. It wasn’t that I was resentful of him, but I had my own life and he didn’t seem all that interested in maintaining communication either, at least no more than I did. Still, on the anniversary of her death I continued to do what was expected of me and spent the day with him. He lived a little over two hours away, and it was the first time I’d been in the house since Mom died.

I didn’t know what to expect, but the lack of change in the house since I’d last seen it shocked me. It wasn’t that nothing had been moved since she died, the house wasn’t a living tomb that my father tended to—it was simply as though he had gone on living in the same way he always had, but now without her. I felt cruel for even taking note of the fact; a man can only mourn for so long (and I had certainly gone on with my life well before she had been dead a whole year). So I said nothing, and we spent the day doing what we were supposed to do and talked about her and what a wonderful woman she had been.

It’s hard to sit down with the intent of grieving however, and even harder to do so for an extended period of time. So it was only natural that after a point the conversation began to drift away from her memory, and soon into silence. The silence too seemed proper, the kind of thing that ought to stem from the situation. We had both fulfilled our duties, the meeting had ended in the way it was supposed to, and I prepared to get up in a few minutes and see him again in another year. Then, entirely out of turn, he began to speak.

“Your mother,” he started, “would not have wanted me to tell you this. As a matter of fact it was not only her dying wish, but her wish on the day you were born. But a year has passed, and after a certain point the dead can no longer be allowed their hold over the living. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I stayed silent, slightly incensed at whatever was compelling him to bring such a matter up now, at so inappropriate a time. He continued:

“Your mother and I, for a long time, wanted a child. I don’t care to elaborate on the methodology of the matter, and I doubt you want me to either, so let me merely say that we tried often. And after we had removed all possible stressors from our lives, and I had been made partner, and we moved here, we finally went to a doctor and I proved beyond all shadow of a doubt that it was in no way a matter of my virility. I cast no blame upon your mother, infertility is a crime that only God is at fault in, but the matter remained that we wanted a child. And you can say that it was selfishness on my part, or simply that your mother had a larger heart than I, but I would not raise another man’s child with the ease she had raising another woman’s. As a matter of principle, I wouldn’t do it at all. I can imagine that you understand. To be childless would be more dignified.

“I made this abundantly clear, and for a while she withdrew into herself. I tried my hardest to make the best of the situation, getting her to babysit neighborhood children in hopes that she’d feel more like a mother, but it merely deepened her sorrows. And so one night she came to me and she told me that she could bear it no longer, and that she had thought up a way in which I would raise my own child with her: she had found a brothel, and she had picked a woman who looked very much like herself, and I would go there and lay with her until she was pregnant. And we would take her child, and raise it, and your mother would love it as her own, and it would be her own, and we would never mention the ordeal again.

“And your mother, loving as she was, would even drive me to the brothel. And she’d eat at the Chinese place down the block, and I’d come join her once I was done. But she could never go inside with me, it strained her heart too much. Whatever flames of jealousy she had somehow managed to extinguish would flare again, or so she feared, and the whole operation would fail. So I was to do my duty, and once impregnated I would continue to take fiscal care of the woman until one day I would come home with you in my arms and that would be the end of it. It was expensive, to pay off a whore to sleep with no one but yourself and then for nine months more, but we had the money.
“And so that first night I went in and I met the woman whom your mother had selected and I must say that she did look remarkably alike: short, pale, with black hair and hazel eyes. Thin lips, freckles… well, you remember how your mother looked. Beautiful young woman. And I explained the situation to her, and she thought it sounded like as good a reason as any to get paid to do nothing for nine months, and so I paid her for the night and went to bed with her.

“Again I will spare you the details, but at a certain point during the act I looked at her face and saw your mother, and I simply couldn’t go on anymore. Even after turning her around, the back of her head just thrust into my mind images of your mother alone, eating dumplings in the harsh fluorescent lights. And so I gave up, and said I would return the next day.

"And I did, to the same result, and the same the next night. Of course I told your mother nothing of this, wishing not to worry her. And so on the fourth night, as I sat in the waiting room, I saw one of the most gorgeous women I had ever seen, second only to your mother. She was a tall redhead, and to avoid the topic from becoming too uncomfortable I will say no more than that I thought immediately that no child that she bore would come out wanting. And so I approached her with the same offer I had approached the first woman with, and she was similarly pleased to take it. And so I saw her for a few weeks until she told me she had missed her period, and thereafter every day for nine months I would spend some time with her before meeting with your mother, often at the Chinese restaurant but increasingly at other places as she grew bored of the food. And I never once lied to her about what I had done in the hours preceding our dinners, for there was nothing to lie about—after I had done my duty, I never slept with another woman.

“And on the day you were born, when I brought you home, when your mother first laid her eyes on you she fell completely in love. Had I told her then that I had not stayed with the woman she had selected, I doubt it would have affected her feelings for you. She was, as you remember, a very forgiving woman.”

Edit

Pub: 20 Jan 2025 22:47 UTC

Edit: 20 Jan 2025 22:55 UTC

Views: 84