Gripped

“Dad!”

Dan glanced up from his cell phone, which he had been hiding under the table. Jacob was glaring at him.

“Why isn’t your phone in the blue bowl?” his son demanded.

Since Dan sat at the opposite end of the table as his wife, it was pretty easy to conceal his text conversations.

And since Dan covered for all his kids when he saw them breaking Karen’s stupid rule, he expected them to do the same. Leave it to his son to be an entitled prick…

“Sorry,” Dan mumbled, tucking the phone into his back pocket and avoiding his wife’s gaze. “Just the boys at work.”

“Great lasagna, Jacob,” Libby said, shoveling a second portion on her plate.

“Easy there, tiger,” Dan chastised. The kid was getting chubby.

When Dan was young, girls cared about their figures.

He eyed Rosie as she sat back down at the table. Now, she was a real beauty. His eldest was always eating healthy and looking in the mirror.

It was like Libby wanted to get bigger.

Dan sighed as he cut his dinner. Running a family wasn’t easy.

Melinda’s recent sickness had cast a shadow over all of the Johnsons. Her behavior was strange and frightening. It wasn’t something Dan brought up with his buddies at work.

But he couldn’t help but wonder if the worst part was how it affected Karen.

His wife wasn’t a strong woman. He had known that since they met.

When they began dating, Dan had enjoyed that he could make this fragile woman comfortable driving her around in his big work truck or holding her hands in crowds.

But after they had kids, Karen became increasingly anxious about how to protect their little ones from the world. And despite Dan’s best efforts, he was no longer able to ease Karen’s mind.

When Melinda was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Dan had watched his wife droop lower than ever before.

But after a few days in the dumps, she had surprised him with her resilience. She had emerged from their dark bedroom like a bat out of hell, flying straight for Pottery Barn.

Certainly a new set of dinner plates would make everything better.

Dan had let her have her fantasy. He liked living in a nice house. Having nice things. In fact, it was the house that brought them together.

Karen was a realtor, and Dan owned a construction company. She had contracted him to remodel this beautiful old Victorian, and by the time he had finished, they were in love.

Dan bought the house, asked Karen to marry him, and the rest was history.

That felt like a lifetime ago. Though the couple still maintained the house, Dan had less energy for his marriage.

At least the kids knew their mother cared about them. That was more than Dan could say about his own childhood.

“How did Melinda’s appointment go?” Dan asked. For the first time during the meal, he looked directly at his wife.

Even though Karen craved a strong bubble of protection around their family, sometimes Dan couldn’t help poking little holes in it.

“Oh, just fine, dear,” she replied with a tight-lipped smile. “Dr. Mulligan prescribed Melinda a higher dosage, and once she adjusts, she’ll be feeling much better.”

Karen’s cheerful optimism struck Dan as a little pathetic.

This is a woman who can’t handle reality, he thought to himself. ~This is a woman too weak for the world.~

“So what’s the adjustment period like?” Dan asked casually. Only his kids knew him well enough to detect the criticism in his tone.

“Well,” Karen began, sipping her wine. The kids looked at their plates. “She’ll be tired for a week or two, a little dazed…”

“That doesn’t sound like it'll help Melinda get her grades up,” Dan said with a frown.

Karen sighed, her wine glass clinking as she placed it on the table a little bit too hard.

“Honey, some things are more important than grades. Like our daughter’s health. Her well-being.”

“Giving her more goddamned pills won’t cure everything, Karen.”

Dan shook his head. If a doctor told his wife to quit eating, she would starve to death. She was blindly faithful to authority, as she had been her whole life.

“Well, maybe if you ever took her to the doctor, then you could tell him the way you would do things, Dan.”

Karen drank her wine again with a self-important smile.

“Maybe I would, if I thought you’d ever let me get a word in,” Dan challenged.

“Guys, can we not?” Libby asked. She had finished her second piece of lasagna.

“At least wait until you think we’re asleep,” Jacob added, slamming his chair back as he got up from the table.

At that, Rosie stood up, too.

“Kids, have I dismissed you from the table yet?” Dan demanded.

His threat was empty, for he knew it was too late to teach his children such trivial things as discipline and respect.

As the rest of his family rose around him, Dan finished off his can of beer.

When he went to get a second, he wasn’t so concerned about his family anymore. He was thinking about Ramona.

JACOB

Jacob carried the kitchen trash out to the can at the end of the driveway.

It was a nice spring night, which made Jacob feel a little bit better.

Dinners with his idiotic family always got him worked up. He wished he had more deserving people to cook for.

Jacob heaved the plastic bag into the trash can and sat on a rock by the road.

He took a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and lit one up. He wasn’t of age, but the guy at the Shell station didn’t card him.

Jacob looked back at the family’s huge, yellow house. It was picture perfect, just like the manicured lawn with its flawless landscaping.

What a fuckin’ hoax, Jacob thought to himself.

Even before Melinda went insane, their family was far from perfect. His dad was checked out, and his mom was nearly certifiable herself.

In some ways, it was no surprise that Melinda had lost it. But she had always been hungry for attention. She was the youngest child and felt like everyone owed her something.

Jacob blew a cloud of smoke up to the coming night.

He was looking at the sun setting over the trees when a figure came out of the woods. He was a tall, lanky boy with a shock of red hair. And if Jacob wasn’t seeing things, he was wearing a long, white lab coat.

He moved quickly, like he didn’t want to be seen, hurrying to a house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Jacob knew that a homeschooled kid lived there, but he hadn’t seen him in years.

Before ducking around the back of the house, the red-haired kid turned around, as if he felt someone watching him.

Jacob held up his cigarette in greeting, but the boy didn’t return the gesture. He dashed around the house, disappearing in a flash of white.

DAN

Dan had always taken particular care in the shower before meeting a woman. It felt ritualistic to him.

After applying body wash with Karen’s loofah, he dried off and stood before the mirror. He inspected his bare torso. Even if his sun-worn skin had lost the elasticity of youth, the muscles beneath were still strong.

Not too bad, he thought.

Construction work kept his body fit at fifty-five years old.

He removed his shaving kit from a lower drawer. Dan delighted in adjusting his appearance to each lover’s preference.

Ramona liked him clean-shaven, while Karen preferred his five-o’clock shadow.

While Karen would remark on the greying hair that sprouted from his chest, Ramona said it made her feel like she was with a real man.

As Dan shaved, he thought of Ramona naked in her bed. She could stay there all evening because she didn’t have a family to attend to. Not anymore, at least. Her ex-husband used to rough her up, so Ramona had high-tailed it out of there.

In fact, Dan and Ramona were once practically neighbors, though they didn’t connect until years later.

Funny how life works, Dan thought to himself.

He thought of her scratching her cat under the chin and sipping wine from her bedside table.

Dan hoped she’d be tipsy when he arrived. A little booze always made her frisky.

He patted on his aftershave and ran a comb through his hair.

When he emerged from the bathroom, he was confronted by Karen, sitting on the bed…

Looking at his phone.

“What are you doing with that?” Dan demanded.

His wife didn’t meet his eyes. She let the phone fall, and Dan could see the emojis Ramona always sent him.

She had read his messages.

“What are these?” she asked, instead of answering his question.

For a moment, Dan was overcome by anger. The woman couldn’t even accept what was right in front of her face.

Maybe that was why he told her so plainly. His wife was too weak to make waves, even when their marriage was a sinking ship.

“I’m having an affair,” Dan said.