A Dangerous Affair (Lesbian Story)

Beth

Elizabeth
18 September 2016

My father looked like he was dying.

When you go to visit someone on the hospital, you're never quiet prepared for the reality of their appearance.

You convince yourself that maybe you'll get there and find them as they are. Or perhaps they'll just look like they have a really bad case of flu.

But that's never the case is it?

My father looks like he is dying.

According to Kalinda, he's been bedridden for the past three weeks. He stopped eating to avoid the pain of swallowing.

Sometimes he slips in and out of consciousness. On the good days, he's so doped up on morphine he can barely register reality.

His face is a pallid grey and his once bright charcoal eyes are glazed over as he squints at me.

I contemplate holding his calloused tan hand, but that's not the relationship we had with my father.

His mouth opens slightly as if to speak, but stops to swallow. I can feel his pain as he wards off the attack on his body.

The closer I walk towards him, I can see the physical changes in his body.

Blue tipped fingers lay limp on the blue blanket. The clinical odour of steriliser did nothing to hide the changed smell of his decaying skin.

It's disconcerting to see a once powerful man appear so frail and helpless. Even if it has been a while since I'd last seen him.

Elizabeth
12 July 1999

It's been at least eight months since I'd been in the same room as my father.

Our parting was because of how I'd expressly told him to stay out of law career.

After all his wheeling and dealing he'd finally made at as a justice of the court. Unfortunately the many string of women he'd befriended made him a liability for being chief justice but for him just being a part of that history meant he'd realised his dream.

Having realised his self actualisation, he'd seen to it to meddling in mine.

Which led us to the shouting match that we are currently having.

In my fury at his latest scheme, I'd stormed over like a demon possessed not caring if I was interrupting his game.

Bradley Coleman, my junior rival at CPM associates, had significantly informed that I was surprisingly the youngest associate to take first chair in a case with lead partner Cyrus Chelsea.

"Did you ask Cyrus to consider me as first chair on the Suzman case?"

I don't want to engage in pleasantries. I'm too angry to even observe protocols.

I can just imagine the admonishing eyebrow raised behind his green gradient aviators as he barely acknowledges my tantrum.

"Good morning Elizabeth." He says grunting from taking his shot.

Everything about him annoys me right now. The way his Polo golf shirt fits over his broad chest, to his concentrated lip bite when he walks towards the hole.

"Stop playing games with me father! I want to know why the lead partner of a top law firm would admit a junior associate as his first chair in a three million dollar lawsuit?" I ask, my voice rising slightly at his continued nonchalance.

"You're a good lawyer Elizabeth." He shrugs and bends to check the dirge as he sees that he's landed in the sand. A small tsk escapes his lips.

Golf was never my father's strongest suite.

"No father I'm a damn great lawyer and you're avoiding my question which means you're guilty. Answer the damn question! Did you or did you not tell Chelsea to consider me as first chair!?

My father had the annoying ability to slow down his speech and emphasise words whenever he was lecturing me and proving me wrong. He spun around so quickly that I didn't have time to distance myself from his ferocious attack.

"Noooo Elizabeth, you are a GOOD lawyer. Because you walk around here with a high and mighty, pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword attitude that you can only afford because of the things that I made possible. The difference between you and being a GREAT lawyer is you don't recognise that success is all about power and politics." He lifted his palms in a balance of scales as if he held the two in his hands.

"The power that we laud over our lessers and the politics that we play with our equals. And let me tell you the first rule about this power and politics that you know nothing about dear daughter. You cannot get the things you want, without you getting the people who have them first. Yes I told Cyrus to give you first chair, what difference does it make he owes me a favour anyway and besides you said it yourself, you're a good lawyer. However, all of you are good lawyers. But I am trying to make you great".

Elizabeth
18 September 2016

I vividly remember that being the last time I saw my father because I can still taste the bitter acid taste of resentment that I had to swallow.

He'd just admitted a reality to me that I was trying to ignore. From that day, I worked hard at everything that I did and made sure that I used the opportunities of being a justice's daughter to prove to people that I deserved where I was despite who my father was.

It meant I became ten times better than the good lawyer that I already was. It took 15 years to rid myself of the stain of my father's influence.

Although it was never quiet out of the way. Veteran judges that knew him personally would still remind me that I was doing well 'following the footsteps of my father'.

Standing here and seeing him so utterly defeated pushes a dull feeling of regret into my gut.

I probably could've called more often.

"Don't." A wheezing voice with a Mexican lilt whispers.

My breath catches as I watch his fingers struggle to motion me closer.

"You. Are. A. Fine. Woman. Beth." He wheezes out.

Beth. I can't remember the last time my father used that name. If I think really hard about it, it was sometime in seventh grade when he'd miraculously made it for a show and tell at school.

I'd introduced myself as Beth at the start of my speech. It was a great speech. It was the best damn speech a seventh grader could deliver on paper mache.

Yet all my father could say to me was, if you use your nickname for important messages nobody will take you seriously.

I didn't notice until now that after that I officially became Elizabeth to him.

I watched his finger press the morphine into his system while he closed his eyes tight in pain.