The Beautiful Game

Chapter Six - Carter

      I was fourteen years old the first time I saw my Father cheat on my Mom.

      She had been beside herself, preparing Thanksgiving dinner, especially since he'd ambushed her with a couple of 'business associates' dropping by at the house later in the day. My older sister Isobel and I had been helping chop copious amounts of vegetables since morning; we diced, mashed, and roasted so many things I'd happily never have thanksgiving dinner again.

       As usual Benjamin Hughes was absent, he'd been locked in his office the entirety of the day. Only surfacing when he needed a coffee refill. Hughes & Malcolm Law Firm were known as pit bulls of the law world; he was intelligent, well-read, and relentless in his practise.

      I used to hero worship my father, his impeccable suits, perfectly gelled hair, and infallible confidence. He and his best friend had started their law firm with every penny they had, their inheritance spent on a dream. I admired their tenacity.

     We were opposites, my father, and I.

     Conversation never felt easy, not since I was a child, not helped by my complete lack of interest in Law, it always seemed too argumentative. I'd started to spend more time outside, taking an interest in football and climbing. My Father had about as much athletic capability as a snail, and after a while he just stopped even trying to talk to me about it all together.

       It was always my Mom's brother, my Uncle Tom who had played football with me, took me to games. It was Uncle Tom who'd helped me choose which College I played for, I'd shown him my Michigan University acceptance letter and he'd been beside himself.

'You'll play in the Big House! For a team who has the most all-time wins in college football history, now, if that doesn't get you in the NFL then I don't know what else will, son.'

       It didn't matter, my Father and I's lack of things in common didn't matter, because I loved how much he loved my mom. I idolised how much he loved her. He showered her with gifts, designer clothes and bags, anything she wanted doing to the house was done. They were a power couple, college sweethearts, married just after graduation and pregnant with Isobel in the year following.

     We sat down at the table with the four strangers. My mother, Isobel, and I sat at one end of the dining table: my father, his law partner Aiden Malcolm, Aiden's wife Claire and two interns at the other. My father had the goofiest look on his face throughout the entirety of the meal, it was the most animated I'd seen him in a long time. My mom tried hard, she really tried to make conversation with his colleagues.

     That's what I remember the most.

      Not finding him entangled with his intern. Not walking in on them both naked from the waist down on his office desk. Nope.

     The thing I remembered in most detail was his stupid, toothy, fucking grin and the way my mother's eyes focused on her plate in disappointment every time she was ignored.

     Sometimes I even dream about that meal, the way that my father's eyes would linger on the busty redhaired intern to his right, absentmindedly buttering the bread my mother had made from scratch. Isobel and I, chewing in silence and my mother's laughter, that got smaller and smaller the less she was involved in conversation.

     That's the thing that made me the angriest, the most hateful, was that he'd done it to her.

     He'd isolated her, convinced her to quit her job at the newspaper, ostracised her from his work, for it all to inevitably lead to embarrassing her in her own home.

      My father didn't shout, he didn't chase me from the room, he simply asked me to close the door. He didn't even look ashamed as he held onto her hips, at least the slutty intern had the shame to look away.