Page 32 of Bernadette
“He had gone to jail when I was two, he’d already had three felonies then, all for DUIs, or drug possession. The night of that fight, he had lost his job and stopped at a bar on his way home. That was the first time since getting out of prison the last time that he had drunk, and then he’d found his former dealer and cleaned out their bank account to score drugs. That was what the fight was about. Mom was in so much pain, because when he stomped on her stomach, she didn’t know it, but she had been pregnant, and it wasn’t what you would call a normal pregnancy to begin with. I think they only realized how bad it was when she was brought into the hospital. I learned later, that if she hadn’t been brought in, she could have died. To this day I still don’t know what it means, but it was called a tubal pregnancy.”
“Ouch,” the women said, and Chuck only shook his head and held up his hand.
“I’ll take your word for it. Anyway, when Mom came home from the hospital, she was out of work for what seemed like forever. Once she went back to work, things changed.”
“Changed how?”
“She only worked one job, Dad wasn’t in the picture. The last time I saw him was when she served him with divorce papers. She had pressed charges against him, and because she had lost the baby from him stomping on her stomach, he was charged with another felony. He went away for life, Mom divorced him, and she seemed happier, especially when she only worked one job. As I became older, she was able to attend all my games for all the sports I played, and was home every night. No more working three jobs and being exhausted with no time to spend with me.”
“Holy shit,” Justin said as he sat up and stared at Chuck in horror.
“What?”
“Is that why you went ape shit on our mom when she was pregnant with the A’s?”
Chuck ducked his head, shrugged, and drew out, “Maayyybeee.” Everyone saw his cheeks turned pink.
“What did he do?” Bernie asked, but not before she squeezed his hand she still held.
“Whenever he came over during Mom’s pregnancy with the A’s, which was a lot,” Justin began, then stared at him in horror. “Holy shit, that was the same time your mother went through what she did, and divorced your father. He went to jail then too. I remember overhearing Mom and Dad talking about it, but I didn’t know who they were talking about.”
“Yeah, that was the time. See, I thought that if I would have reacted sooner and pushed Dad off Mom, then she wouldn’t have lost the baby. What I didn’t say was that she not only lost the baby, but she lost all her female parts to have another one. I thought it was all my fault, because I wasn’t there to protect her. I was sleeping.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Bernie said in horror that a little boy would have to go through something like that, then have those thoughts.
“I know that now, and it was both Mom and Dottie that sat me down and told me about it. The A’s were about three when they finally caught on to my feelings.” He looked at the men across from him, then nodded to Alex. “You, you were the one that scared the shit out of me.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because of the way you were born.” Chuck looked at his other friends and saw they knew what he was talking about. “You were born the smallest, I don’t think you were even two pounds when you were born, and after Alfie and Alan came home from the hospital, you continued to stay in there all by yourself for three months.”
“Four,” Alan said.
“Okay, four months. You were five when you finally caught up with your siblings, and weren’t so sickly. I kept picturing that if my mother hadn’t lost the baby, then because she had been hurt, the baby wouldn’t have survived. I turned my helplessness for my mother into over protectiveness to you A’s.”
“Until we reached six,” Alex grinned. He looked around the table and laughed. “Alfie, Alan, and I overhead the J’s and Chuck planning on a camping trip that was about three miles from our house. They were sixteen. We might have overheard someone mention that some girls would be there.”
“Oh, shit.” Josh laughed. “I remember now.”
“Were there girls?” Bernie asked with a smile on her face.
“Until the A’s showed up and scared the hell out of them,” Justin chuckled as he took Ava’s hand in his. “We were sitting around a campfire, and all of a sudden they jumped up, screamed, and ran away.”
“What Justin didn’t say…” Chuck laughed. “…was that we were telling ghost stories, and the A’s happened to have used white grease paint to look like ghosts and black to look like the dead.”
“That was Morgan’s idea.” Alfie laughed. “She overheard us, and told us what to do. She rode her bike with us, and waited with them as we went into the woods and scared the girls.”
“Scared the shit out of us, too,” Chuck laughed along with the others as they remembered. He wiped the tears from his eyes, and grinned at Bernie. “It was great growing up with the Stuarts. Right from the get-go, that first day in kindergarten when they had my back when I took on that bully, I knew we’d be friends for life.”
“Yeah,” John said as he leaned forward and leaned on his crossed arms. “When Josh and I started our construction business, we would only do it on the condition of Chuck here joining us. When we’re stymied by the paperwork and getting new clients, he runs all of our job sites. I trust him with not only my life, but also my business.”
“That’s what family is for.” Chuck nodded to them. Everyone remained silent for a long time before Chuck looked at his watch, and grinned as he stood, gathering the empty beer bottles as he headed to the kitchen.
“Kick-off is in fifteen minutes.” He laughed as the men ran up the stairs and disappeared into the bedrooms they shared with their woman, and the women stayed where they were.
“You’re more than welcome to join us,” he said to Bernie.
“Thanks, but no thanks, I’m going to my room and unpack. I want to get settled before I start work tomorrow.”
