OneThreeThirteen (A Presidential Agent Novel Series Book 1)

OneThreeThirteen - Chapter 9

SUSAN MADISON HAD AWAKEN in the middle of the night to the sounds of her ailing mother crying out for help.

Her mother, who'd changed her diapers when she was a baby, needed Susan to change hers now.

Her mother, Susan reminded herself as she stirred from sleep for what might have been the fourth or fifth time so far that night, had taught her how to recite her ABCs, had sang old McDonald to her on rainy in-door play days, had helped her select the perfect shade of coral – not pink lipstick, and all the other things that only a mother can teach a daughter, lay dying a slow agonizing death of ovarian cancer in the downstairs guest room.

Susan, an unflinching pragmatist, blamed the cancer that was killing her darling wonderful mother – not on God or on fate – but on her father and his years of wanton unfaithfulness.

For the entire length of her mother's marriage, her father had cheated. His job, as First Officer on the USS Taft, had kept him away from home for long stretches at a time. And during those times, there were other women.

What irked her more than anything else, was that her mother had forgiven him. She had bought into his male chauvinistic excuse of 'his needs' as the reason for his cheating. The only time she heard mention of her mother's 'needs' was when they were arguing. Her mother's needs, Susan noted, were always pushed down, belittled, and scuttled.

She could remember lying across her bed upstairs, listening to the arguments going on downstairs. "A man has needs," he'd scream at her mother. "Do you want me to quit my job, Miranda? Is that what you want? I'll do it. You just say the word, and I'll do it. But that will mean moving out of this house you say you love so much, and moving in with either my folks or your parents. I know I don't want to live with mine. Do you want to move back to Illinois and live with your mom and dad? Is that what you want Miranda?"

She was only a young girl during the argument years. And when you're young, your father is your father. Nothing more. Now as a grown woman with a husband of her own, she wondered why her mother had put up with her father's philandering. How had she stood the touch of his hands on her body knowing that those same hands had touched other women the same way they were touching her now. Where was her dignity?

Yet her mother had never said a disparaging word against her father until the day of his funeral. And then it had all come pouring out.

She remembered it clearly. It was seared onto the retina of her memory. Her mother had been sitting, somewhat forlornly, in the green velvet chair by the window in the front room. She was wearing a simple black dress, sheer black hose and simple black flats. She'd insisted on not wearing a widow's veil. Her only accessory a white lace handkerchief kept at the ready for any stray tears that might fall from those emotionless eyes.

As evening neared, the sun cast a long light filled rectangle across the dark pine wood floors that her father had installed in the room a few years back. People milled about the room offering their condolences and helping themselves to food from the overburden dining room table. She remembered she'd been in conversation with the Reverend Holloway when she'd noticed Mrs. Nora Smith approach the chair where her mother sat head bowed and looking older than her sixty years. Her mother, who seemed, to Susan, lost and unaware of her surroundings had suddenly and dramatically, at Mrs. Smith offer of sympathy, raised her head in wild eyed alarm. "Was it you?" her mother screamed. It must have been you. I know you slept with my Ralph. And I heard you had the cancer. Did he catch the cancer from you? If only he'd worn the condom when he was screwing bitches like you. Then he'd be alive and so would I."

If she closed her eyes, she could still see the look of abject horror on Mrs. Smith face. The poor woman looked like a trapped animal. Worse was that wrenching look of guilt that had passed between Mrs. Smith and her husband. The somewhat hushed tones of the room had turned to absolute silence. "Nooooo!" screamed Mrs. Smith -- more to the room full of her neighbors, friends, and associates than in response to her mother -- before bolting from the room. "No you didn't sleep with my husband, you bitch. Or no you didn't give him the cancer."