Daddy

“Nothing. I'm just so tired … all I do is work and pay for stuff for the baby and for her … she gave up her job, and she thought she was pregnant again, but she wasn't.” And this time, the baby wouldn't have been his, at least, he hadn't touched her in two months. “She's been going out with Billy Webb and Johnny Pierson … I don't know, Dad … all she does is go out. Sometimes I have to take the baby to work with me. I love Alex, I don't want to leave him … but I can't …” He started to cry again. “… I can't do this anymore … I just can't. Last week I thought of killing myself, I sat in the garage for an hour, trying to get the guts to turn the car on, but I couldn't. I just kept thinking of Alex and what would happen to him if he was left with her. She doesn't give a damn, Dad. Sometimes she doesn't even remember to feed him all day and he's screaming his lungs out when I get home. Last week he almost fell in the pool when I left him alone with her for ten minutes. Dad … help me please … get me out of this….” The jagged sobbing seemed to go on for hours, but when Oliver suggested he come out to California as soon as he could, Benjamin said he couldn't leave the baby. He loved him too much and Sandra would neglect him too badly.

“Why don't you bring him?”

“She says she won't let me. I told her last week, I'd take him away, and she said she'd call the police if I tried it. She says I have no right to take him, she's his mother. And if I took him, all her friends would think she'd done something really awful, and it would make her look bad. But she doesn't want to take care of him either.”

“What about Sandra's mother? Do you think she'd help?”

“I don't know. Her boyfriend walked out on her and she moved to Bakersfield from L.A.”

“Do you have her number?”

“Yeah. Sandra left it on the kitchen wall” His crying had finally subsided. He was eighteen years old and staggering under an awesome burden. “You know, she hasn't even been home since yesterday morning. She's been screwing around almost since right after Alex was born,” he was five and a half months old by then, “and, Dad, I tried to make it work, I really did, but I just can't,” and then in a voice of shame, “Sometimes I hate her.” Oliver didn't blame him a bit, and suspected that in his shoes, he might have killed her, or certainly walked out on her a long time since. But Benjamin was so determined to do the right thing, by her, and by his son. He was only grateful once again that the boy hadn't married her. At least that much was simple.

“Just relax. Why don't you go to Grampa's for the weekend?”

“What'U I do with Alex?” He sounded suddenly blank, like a helpless child. After almost a year of working two jobs, and supporting a girl who wasn't his wife, and almost six months of caring for his child, the boy was so worn out, he could hardly think straight.

“Take him with you. Margaret'U give you a hand, she was a nurse. Just pack up your stuff, and get the hell out of there. I'll call him and tell him you're coming. Now give me Sandra's mother's number.” Benjamin gave it to him, and hung up after promising to pack a bag for both of them end go to his grandfather's that evening.

Oliver called his father then, and explained the situation as he repeated it to Margaret in the background, and assured his son that he would do everything he could to help the boy.

“You've got to get him out of that situation, Oliver.”

“I'm going to do everything I can, Dad.” He didn't tell him that his oldest grandson had actually contemplated suicide over it, he was still too shaken over it himself. But he told Charlotte when he hung up, and she was horrified.

“Oh my God, Ollie, get him out of there. Why don't you fly back there to pick him up?”

“I want to talk to the girl's mother first, and see if she'll take in Sandra and the baby.” He dialed the number in Bakersfield, and the woman answered it on the first ring. She sounded drunk, and more than a little stupid, but she knew who Oliver was, and about Sandra and Benjamin and the baby. And Oliver patiently explained that he and Benjamin felt the time had come to make some other arrangements. He asked if she would be willing to take her daughter back into her home, with her baby. And after hedging for a while, she finally asked Oliver the only question that really concerned her.

“Would ya pay for the kid, if I did? And her too?”

“I might.” It would be worth anything to him to get her out of Benjamin's life, but he didn't want to tell her that. It would make her even more greedy. “It depends how much we're talking about. And I would certainly expect Sandra to work to support herself as well, unless she goes back to school, of course.” But the woman seemed less than interested in her daughter's education.

“How much are we talkin' about?”

“Say five hundred a month for her and the child.” It wasn't a fortune, but it was enough, particularly if she was living with her mother.