Tu Es Ma Lumière

186 - Father *Modern*

I am well aware of what a horrible father is.

When I was a child, my father sold me and my brothers to his enemy. I remember crying and weeping and clutching, but that was all gone with a sharp clap to the ear. We were on the boat, and soon, the figures were smaller and smaller until they were nothing. I held my younger brothers' hand, looked towards my elder brother. We were all we had from then on.

A few days later, the story hit the news after the police came to the next door. They carried the body of Mr. Villeneuve's son on a stretcher, covered by a blue sheet. The story broke, it rocked France so much that Charles, Francois and I fell from Spain and back into the land of our blood. Hitmen had been ordered to get us, to punish our father for something we didn't really know. My mother had been devastated, so much so that she had to take to a clinic for several weeks. We came back to her, wrapped in black blazers and ties as the cars swept past us.

My father, the coward that he was, never showed his face at William's funeral. From then on, the two of them became strangers in all aspects but their sex lives. Fighting and then fucking, then doing it all over again the next day. Breaking up and making up then breaking up and making up. Ending things and fucking other people, father's whores on his arm and the hickey's on my mother's neck. All the while, we were told to stay away from the Villeneuve's, from the Bourbon's, keep ourselves to ourselves, and most of all, "grow up".

I didn't have a Daddy. I didn't have a dad. I had a father, a cold man who paid for the food on the table and the table itself, but it went no further than that. He looked to Francois to be his heir in the shady businesses he had, so our elder brother was pulled away from us, Charles and I becoming apparent allies in all things. We didn't mean shit to him, but as long as his golden boy followed in his footsteps and got more money in the house, he didn't give a fuck about us.

Like I said, I know what a bad father is. It's a man who doesn't love his son, his child. But, in some sick kind of way, one only a father could understand, he did love me. I do know that, and he loved Charles in the same way. We could never compare to his Francois, especially not when his shot body was found bloody in the snow. But, he did love us, so he wasn't a terrible father.

I moved away from him, but I think about where I went wrong wit it all. I never tried to think about, to deal with, what was going on inside me, inside my head, inside my heart. The rage, the hatred, the vulnerability, the steel, the fear and the confusion and a thousand other things. Hatred and fear of the enemy, of who would smile to my face as he slid a knife through my back. I would never allow my children to feel the same kind of fear.

I met Catherine on the Italian border, and she had my babies ten years later. One, two, three, four, five, so many more than we expected. We hadn't expected to separate after the third miscarriage. See, at that time, Cat and I were fighting and fucking and leaving and coming back much like my parents did. We were turning into them, and I couldn't bare the thought, and neither could she deal with the pain and trauma inside of her. I slept with Diane, and she gave me Bash. Catherine slept with Richard, and they had Clarissa. God knows how, because I sure don't, we had our babies. Francis, Elisabeth, Claude, Louis, Charles, Henri, Hercules, Margret, Emone, Henriette. Twelve babies in eighteen years.

Coming home to those little faces that had Catherine and I's blood, mouths taking in whatever we could put in. I am aware of what I did, you don't have to remind me. I became Daddy to Sebastian, but only him. He was my son, he was my small copy, so innocent and rambunctious and fearless, so unlike his half siblings, most of who'm carried Catherine's sicknesses and anxieties. Maybe that's why I was always closer to Sebastian, but that's no excuse for being Father to the rest of them.

Taking Daddy away from Francis, Elisabeth, Claude, Louis, Charles, Henri, Hercules, Margret, Emone, Henriette, but giving it to Sebastian, it wasn't right. It wasn't the best thing I could have done. But, somehow, I just couldn't give those kids a Daddy. I was Father to them all, but Dad to Sebastian. I don't understand it, either. You don't have to hate me, or out rightly say or think it. I already hate myself for it more than you could ever know.