My father-in-law's last six months were an interesting time.
Interesting as in the "Chinese" curse, of course. He was failing, his body giving up after 80 years on this earth and having lost his wife two years before.
Sometimes I think that the loss of his wife was, for him, the beginning of the end. He seemed to have less and less energy when we'd visit him weekly (if not more often) and cook up a nice dinner. He had a couple of incidents where his blood glucose would either plummet or head for the moon which sent him to the hospital.
For over a month my wife Helen stayed up in his house to care for him until he decided to be both combative and non-compliant, apparently wishing to die. We decided, when he got out of the hospital, to move him into our house.
It was a bumpy ride before he got out of the hospital given they'd confined him through the Baker Act. It seems that psych floors are great places to collect pressure sores.
Once we moved him into our guest room, especially with the rented hospital bed and the rest of the necessary paraphenalia, he seemed to settle in, becoming comfortable with us. With this move my wife wouldn't be away from the house-- and me-- for a week or more at a time, allowing us to share a bed again.
I had my own role in giving care doing what we could to help maximize his quality of life given the time he had left. So I did my best to keep things pleasant. We'd wheel him out to various restaurants for dinner, using his car with that huge seven hoffa trunk to carry the wheel-chair.
Admittedly, driving a Lincoln Town Car can be disconcerting to someone like myself, for example, who prefers smaller cars. I'd always felt that that car was poorly named: After all, there weren't many towns that a "Town Car" can fit within, though, perhaps, the name comes from being able to carry a whole town. It felt like I was driving an aircraft carrier.
In any case, one day I was sitting and chatting with him in the living room while my wife was out shopping and we got a call from my sister-in-law Eva, the older of his two children.
Now, of the two, I'll admit that while my wife may not be a beauty queen, she has a very pleasant face, especially when not displaying a frown.
I had long before realized that the face of one's spouse is an important factor in a marriage, since, on waking up, it is hopefully the first portion of your spouse you are likely to see.
But I digress...
Now it has more than occasionally haunted me that sister-in-law Eva did not look anything like my wife Helen. She didn't act much like Helen, either, despite having grown up in the same family.
What made this different between the two of them more obvious to me was that both my step-son and biological son looked more like each other than my wife and her sister did. It had been more than a little bit disturbing to realize how different my wife is from her only sibling.
So when Alfred hung up the phone he sighed, telling me "She still isn't willing to fly down here to visit me."
I nodded and shrugged. "Not much we can do about it, is there?" I wondered what was wrong with Eva that she could not understand her father. I clearly understood what he was trying to say, and, face it folks, I'm usually impervious to hints.
Alfred shook his head. I knew enough of the dynamics of his two girls to know that my wife Helen, despite her quickness to anger, was far warmer of heart than her sister.
Well, some people have cryogenic blood, some don't. I have my complaints against Helen, but, compared to her sister Eva, she qualified for sainthood.
Now, admittedly, I'm not the smartest man in the world, all right? But I do know enough to never say something derogatory about another person's family members, though this hadn't been that easily learned a lesson. After all, one of my key genetic flaws is that my feet aren't big enough.
Oh, yeah, yes, my feet ain't big enough.
Well, truly, I know that my feet, being of size eleven and a half, aren't all that small, but I meant "too big" in a more symbolic sense, as in, "when I put my foot in my mouth, I can still talk."
This one flaw alone may help explain why I'm usually not sought out as a "friend" and sometimes amazes me that my wife dated me for any length of time, much less married me.
But...
So there I was, sitting and talking with my father-in-law, and I say, as usual without thinking of the consequences, "Sometimes, I swear, it seems like Helen and Eva have nothing in common, despite being sisters."
Oops.
Then my mind got blown. "That's because, despite the birth certificates, they're not."
What? Did I really hear that? I re-ran what I thought I heard and I'll bet that left me with my mouth hanging open. Sure, my wife Helen resembled both her father and many of her related aunts and uncles.
Alfred's eyes closed for a moment, looking sad. "I'm sorry, I really shouldn't have said that."
I looked around, my curiosity more than merely piqued, and so I gently prodded him with "What do you mean? They're not sisters?"
He sighed. "Helen is mine but Eva isn't. Eva is her mother's but not mine. We... wife-swapped. And the rubber broke. We were with Roger and Carol, and Roger's rubber broke in Louise. To make up for it, I got to impregnate Carol. My wife Louise had Roger's daughter and Carol had my daughter. We each kept the child our wife gave birth to."
I sat there, stunned. In a way I'm glad he continued his explanation. It was more fascinating than watching a train wreck.
"I wanted a son and so, after that incident, I tried to get Louise pregnant, but it never seemed to work for us. Roger and Carol had another child themselves which left me wishing I could have more, too, so, after a year we went back to swapping again and, well..."
He paused, holding my full attention.
I listened to him sigh. "We were with Mike and Michelle. This time it was my condom that broke. And Michelle told me she was fertile. She was a lovely woman, so warm hearted, though, in hindsight, her husband Mike wasn't as pleasant all the time. This time he looked angry as he pulled himself out of Louise, ripped off his condom, and put a baby into Louise."
The silence hung over us as my mouth hung open. Swapping? In the 1950s? "What about the pill," I asked, not thinking about that time period.
He laughed. "That didn't really exist yet, so it was either condoms or taking chances. What we did, once a condom had broken, was to make sure we knew who fathered any children. To ensure we knew who had who, we wouldn't have sex with our own wives for that month but we'd be having sex with the other's. Mike didn't want to take much of a chance in supporting a child by me any more than I wanted to be supporting his, so... we made sure who was the father."
All I could do at this moment was go "Wow" before pausing. "But Helen looks like part of your family. Why doesn't she look like Mike?"
He laughed. "Michelle had a girl, same as Louise, but Mike wanted his daughter and I wanted mine, so, about a week after the two kids were born, we exchanged babies. Back then it was a lot easier to shuffle kids around, you know. Especially when the pediatrician who first sees your baby is not one you'll be seeing regularly, either. Why do you think Louise stayed at her parent's house at the shore to have her babies?"
I sighed. This explained a lot of history, especially how each of "his" daughters had a different parent as "guardian". It might even go a long way to explaining the history of abuse, given that Alfred would've expected far more from his own flesh and blood. It also explained both how and why Helen's own mother hadn't done much for her and had even tried to smother her more than once. It was almost scary how many questions this story answered, given what I'd been told of Helen's childhood.
"It wasn't much later that Mike, Michelle and Molly, Louise's daughter by Mike, died in an auto accident. Louise got very upset and depressed. We told the girls that it was just post-partum depression, but it never got better and she never completely got over the loss. On top of that, Carol's daughter by me, Allison, was another annoyance to Louise. Allison seemed to be a fairly happy child, not that I had much chance to see her. Given the complications, we never got to swap again. Given that both Roger and Carol are now dead and gone for some years, I am cut off from Allison now. I'll admit that it would be hard to explain to her why I was interested in staying in touch."
My shock had to end. I shook myself out of this state when my wife came home with groceries. While we were bumping them in, I patted Alfred on the shoulder, "It's okay, she has no need to know."
It's been well over a year now that he's been gone.
It's funny how I sometimes wonder about that one confession.
He seemed far more comfortable with me after exposing his secret and it helped me to better see the man within the shell. In hindsight I sometimes think that his telling me this secret story of his two daughters was his last major act of contrition, making his passing easier for him.
It's strange, but I miss him. There are still questions I'd like to ask and stories I'd have liked to hear but now it's too late. It's only when silence is all that's left that you finally know some of the "right" questions to ask.
I got a lot of comfort myself from his confession, too.
How, you ask? Well, Eva managed to piss off every one of her relatives by leaving out all of her uncles from her father's obituary. Helen had been shoved out of the process by Eva and so my wife and I had clean hands in this little debacle.
So Eva is on everyone's list of people who won't be missed.
I take a lot of very personal comfort in knowing that my wife has no genes in common with her "sister".
Even if I can't afford to explain to Helen why I'm so smug.
Yes, I'm smug. And I'm proud of it, y'hear me?
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Author: Jack C Lipton Title: Shuffled Part: Universe: Family Values Summary: A comforting confession to hear Keywords: MF swap impreg Revision: $Revision: 1.7 $ Archive: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/CupaSoup/www/ Mailing List: FAQ: RCS: $Id: shuffled.x,v 1.7 2006/06/05 22:03:39 jcl Exp $