The Nuclear Family - Chapter 9

[:::: Authors Note ::::]

This here is one of my favourite chapters in Part 1, because at last Robbie gets to serve some justice.

[:::: Go back to Chapter 8 ::::]

For the next few days, Amy’s offer played on my mind. If I were working out, I wondered what types of gym they would have where she lived.  As I cleaned up the dishes at Darren and Toni’s, I wondered if she had a dishwasher.

She has asked me to ‘run away’ with her, made her interest in me clear, and even told me she had to go overseas soon and wanted me to come with her.  I was intrigued by Amy; she was possessed of a confidence that was beyond her years, yet in the same breath, she also showed a hesitation and vulnerability that was endearing.

I thought back to what Darren had said, that I didn’t really have anything holding me here.  It wasn’t as if I had a family I wanted to see or a wife with whom I had any intention of reconciling.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to get away.

The deciding factor that once more changed the direction of my life came two days later.  I had been out for a run, in my workout gear and was walking along the Gold Coast Mall, looking for a Queensland Transport office I knew was around to renew my driver's license when I heard her voice.

It was my mother, and she was laughing. 

I stopped dead in the middle of the street, and I spied them almost immediately.  My mother was there, as was my father, looking stoic and pleased with himself.  On the other side of the table was my soon-to-be ex-wife, and holding her hand was my older brother, grinning like the fool that he was.  In my mother's arms was a baby, and she was cooing and making those sounds that all grandparents do when they hold the next generation.

None of them looked upset that they had screwed me over; they looked like a generational family in the middle of a blissful brunch.

It made me sick.

I must have stood there watching them for almost two minutes before I caught my mother, having handed the baby back to Georgia, looking at me.  She was staring back, all sounds of conversation at the table had ceased, and the rest of them were now looking in my direction.

Shit.

I shook my head and started moving again, as fast as possible without breaking into a run.  As it was, I almost made it two blocks before she caught up with me, moving past the government offices to renew my driver's license without pause.

“Robbie!” I heard my mother yell with laboured breath. “Robbie, please wait up.  Please, sweetie, please stop!”

I thought then about breaking into a run, I could easily lose her if that were the case.  I was fit, and she was a grandmother who had likely not worked out since before she fell pregnant with my brother, if she ever had.

But it would only delay the inevitable.  Now that they had seen me, I was sure the family's attempts to contact me, especially my mother's, would pick up once more.

So I stopped, drew in a quick couple of breaths and pulled my phone out of my pocket.  I turned back towards my mother and looked at her as she doubled her efforts to catch up to me, seeing I had stopped.  Before she caught up to me, I dialled Amy.

“Hey there, handsome,” she chirped. “What do I owe the pleasure?”

My mother stopped, a half dozen paces from me and looked at me on the phone.  I looked her directly in the eyes as I spoke to Amy.

“Alright, gorgeous,” I said, speaking to Amy. “Everything we spoke of, let's make it happen.”

She laughed for a moment and then stopped. “Robbie, are you okay?”

“Yep,” I said in a very short tone, my eyes still looking at my mother.

“There is someone, isn’t there?” she asked. “Likely someone from your family that you don’t want to know, it's me, right?”

“That’s it,” I told her.

“Got ya,” Amy giggled like a schoolgirl holding a secret. “In that case, how about I pick you up around seven tonight and you can tell me all about it?”

“Okay, see you then,” I told her, hearing her laugh again as I hung up and put my phone back in my shorts.  Her voice put a smile on my face, and I knew that regardless of what happened between Amy and me, it was the right choice to get myself out of the area.

“What do you want, Hattie?” I ask my mother, deadpan, dropping the smile.  She went to object to me calling her by her name, but then thought better of it.

“Robbie, please,” she pleaded. “This isn’t fair, you can’t treat us, your own family, like this.  You cut us off.  Please, Robbie, you need us as much as we need you.”

“Fair?” I asked, tilting my head to the side and letting a hint of my anger at my family surface.  “You have no idea what the word fair means.  I’ll tell you what’s not fair.  Having a family lie to my face for years about an affair between my wife and brother.  It's not fair to protect the snivelling asshole who knocked up my wife and then all of you trying to make it appear to be mine.  It does not come across fair to me that I gave everything to you, to the family, to the business, and you all screw me over.  Does it sound fair to you?  Does it, Hattie?”

I could feel my face somewhat flush, but it felt good to let a little of my anger out directly at the source of my pain.

“But Robbie, It's not the same; we need you,” she repeated.

I guffawed.

“Like fuck you need me, Hattie,” I told her.  “What you need is someone to run the company for you.  Someone to fix the mistakes that your fuckwitt of an older son is always creating.  Or, how about the shit your daughter screws up?  You want an acquiescent perfectionist that makes your lives easier, keeps the profits rolling in, not a son to love.”

“That’s not…” then she stopped, looking for another word, but unable to find one.  So she changed tack.

“Robbie. You know we all love you.”  I don’t think it escaped her notice that it was the first time since all this started that she had told me that.  For a moment, my heart softened.  What son does not want to hear his mother say that she loves him?  And the older we get, the more that statement should mean.  But it lasted only a moment, until their betrayal once more played itself out in my mind.

I barked a harsh laugh. “You all love me.  Seriously.  How can you stand there and say that when you did what you did?”

I dropped my voice and lowered my gaze. 

“Tell me how deceiving me on almost every facet of my life for years is love.  Tell me that Hattie, tell me?” I demanded.

My mother stood there and looked down at the pavement.  She knew I had the moral high ground and didn’t have a response. People were parting around us, staring at us as they walked by.  But overall, this was just another drama on the streets of the Gold Coast as they went from place to place.

“Because, keeping you in the dark was protecting you,” the voice of my father said suddenly, as he, Georgia, pushing a pram, and my brother came at us from another direction and wound up standing with my mother.  I noticed that Joanna had joined them in the last few minutes as well. I just hoped she didn’t ask about Amy.

I shook my head and looked at him.

“We’ve already been over this, Brad,” I replied, also calling my father by his name, but letting more of my disdain for him affect my voice when I said his name than when I spoke my mother's name. “You weren’t protecting me.  You were all building a debt of pain and betrayal that was multiplied when I found out all of you knew and I didn’t.  Yet despite it all, you still all treat me like shit while you all prance around without a care in the world.  Why do I have to be the only one suffering?”

“You’re not the only one suffering,” Joanna said quietly. Gone was the greater-than-thou attitude from the other day.  Now she just looked… less.  “We all suffered when we kept this from you.  We know it sucked.”

“But none of you did anything about it either,” I blasted back, ignoring the two adulteress in their midst. “If you had done the right thing, then shit for brains here would be gone, and I would still be part of your now suffering business.”

“Look, Robbie, it sucked, I know,” my sister told me, becoming just a little indignant once more. “But now you treat us like we don’t exist, you know, we're suffering just as much, if not more.”

I glared at my sister, wondering how she could even utter those words. “Suffering? Pull the other one, Joanna. The other day, when you stormed into Darren and Toni’s place to berate me for not forgiving the whore…” I spat, quickly glaring at Georgia, who shrank back, pulling the pram a little closer to her. Then I shot a withering glare at my brother, who didn’t care. “And of course, let's not forget the waste of space between the ears thing that we have to call a brother.  He should be begging for forgiveness and mercy for what he’s done, but noOOOoo, he’s still employed, still strutting around like he shits gold brinks and gives zero fucks about who he screws over.”

I shook my head. I was getting tired of this confrontation and the fact that we were still covering the same ground, and they still hadn’t been able to grasp regret and that it was driving me further and further away.

“You think you know what it is to suffer, you have not a clue,” I told them. “Wait until you don’t have enough work because dickwad here can’t sell his way out of a paper bag.  Or that you haven’t a clue how to run the order sheet, or run a spreadsheet to keep the finances going, manage suppliers, talk to staff… basically you're all fucked, and this time I am not going to be there to sort your shit out for you.”

I was swearing too much, getting myself a little too worked up.  I held up my hands, closed my eyes and shook my head.  When I opened them, I scanned each of them briefly, and other than my mother, and perhaps the look of sadness on Georgia’s face, it still had not dawned on them.

“I watched you all for a few minutes earlier,” I told them in a soft voice. “You were happy, laughing, playing peek a boo with a kid that you tried to pass off as mine.”

I let that sit for a moment.

“Yes, mine, for six months, you all let me believe that I was the one who knocked up my wife.  I trusted that each and every one of you had my back.  I thought I had a family.  Were we perfect, not, not by a long shot, but I would have gone to bat for any of you back then, in fact, I did, for each of you and my reward…  Betrayal.

“Then you each tell me to get over myself, that I am blowing it out of proportion, sure, they did a bad thing, but you’ll get over it.  Well… Fuck you very much.  I have been living in hell because of all of you, and never once have any of you given a shit about how I feel.”

“Son,” my father said. “That is because you never gave us…”

“A chance?” I spat, interrupting my father. For a second, he hesitated, and then an angry glare passed over his features.  I didn’t hesitate. “You were going to say that you were never given a chance to say how sorry you were for screwing up my life, for how regretful you were of your actions, and you understand why I am so upset, so angry. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it, Brad?”

He glared back at me.

“No son.  I was going to say, you never gave us the chance to explain.”

“Explain what?” I asked. “I mean, you explained everything perfectly clear on your front lawn.  I mean, I must have been adopted if you think that I would accept the insane bullshit you’re all shovelling.

“Do the whore or the fuckwitt regret screwing me over?”

I looked at them, and outside of my father, who was glaring at me with a hateful expression. None of them, including Georgia and my brother, could meet my gaze.

“Thought not,” I replied and half turned to walk away.  I was tired of this conversation. 

But then Brad Jr, for some reason, found some courage and stepped around Georgia, around my father and boldly strode up to me, grinning ear to ear.

“Robbie, oh little Robbie,” he taunted me. “Do you hear what a whiny little bitch you are.  We’re all right; you need to get over yourself. Look,” he said, gesturing to the kid in the pram. “Georgia and I have a beautiful baby boy here. Suppose you could just get over yourself and suck it up. Apologise to all of us, we could make you the little tykes' godfather.  I know it’s a consolation prize, it's not being your kid and all, but…”

He never finished the sentence, as his body was in the middle of moving sideways in an unnatural way.

I’ve mentioned previously that I do a couple of different martial arts.  I’m not a professional, but I do fight in a number of local tournaments against the guys that are.  Some of them have been big shots in the US fighting circuits, and I tend to win most of those bouts, especially in the last several months.

Being able to stand toe to toe with some of the best MMA fighters around the world means that while I can make a little pocket money, I can also move very quickly when I want.  My stupid brother never stood a chance.

As I finished touching down courtesy of my flying roundhouse kick.  Brad Jr. was crashing into the wall of a building about six feet away.  It was an impossible distance, but then again, that kick had several months of repressed anger unleashed in a single moment.

No one, not my mother, my father, my sister, my soon-to-be ex-wife and especially not my stupid ass brother, saw it coming.  Moments after he stopped talking, he was lying there unconscious.

As I straightened myself up, I felt a calm that I had not felt in months, since before this nightmare began.  Everyone looked at the piece of shit lying on the pavement, their mouths ajar.  Then the yelling and screaming started.

[:::: End of Chapter 9 ::::]

[:::: Go to Chapter 10 ::::]

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