RichardDaub.com, January 2024

At exactly 10:00 am on Saturday morning, Carl Sr. pulled into the driveway of “The Mansion” belonging to his ex-wife and her new husband, the man who’d cuckolded him, and leaned on the horn of his beige 1982 Datsun—no model, just a Datsun—until the front door opened and The Bitch herself appeared, arms raised as he continued honking.

He lit a Viceroy 100 and waited for his three biological children, whom he now considered chattel belonging to their mother, but corrupt liberal divorce court judges had mandated that he, at his own expense, entertain them on Saturdays between the hours of 10:00 am and 5:00 pm. His lawyers advised him to comply while they continued working on the disownment papers and running up the billable hours.

The oldest of the children, ten-year-old Carl Jr., emerged, followed by the eight-year-old girl and the youngest boy, five, walking slow as possible towards the running Datsun, they as unhappy to see him as he was to see them.

Carl Jr. took the front passenger seat and the other two kids sat in the back.

After backing out of the driveway, he asked none of them in particular, “So, how was your week?”

“Good,” they answered, sparing him any details.

After the twenty-minute drive back to West Hempstead, he pulled into the 7-Eleven on Hempstead Avenue, mere blocks from the house they resided as a family before his whore ex-wife slept with that scumbag playboy and turned his children against him. He bought them piña colada Slurpees, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Reese’s Pieces, Grape Big League Chew, Archie and Jughead Double Digest, quarters for Dig Dug and Zaxxon, and, for himself, a six-pack of Budweiser tallboys, two packs of Viceroy 100s, two buttered rolls, a 32-ounce coffee, and a bag of Wise barbecue potato chips.

Next, they headed towards his mother’s house in Franklin Square, where he’d been living since the divorce, reclaiming the basement bedroom he’d shared with his brother when they were kids. His mother still lived upstairs, widowed over two decades, his father passing when he was ten. Along the way, they pulled up behind an MTA bus with an advertisement on the back for Tom Gulotta, Republican candidate for County Executive, his large, smiling face having been vandalized with a Rollie Fingers-esque handlebar mustache, which, despite being a staunch Republican and Gulotta supporter, he found highly amusing, and even the kids cracked grins.

At the house, his mother emerged from her bedroom to greet whom she still considered her grandchildren. They were even less enthused to see her and escaped to the backyard after saying their obligatory hellos and having their faces scratched by the wiry hair growing from the mole on her chin as she attempted to kiss them.

With an hour to kill before he had to make the grilled cheese for lunch, he took a seat on one of the patio chairs beneath the green-and-red striped canvas awning, sipping a Bud, smoking a Viceroy, watching the boys play Wiffle Ball. The girl, sullen, was seated on the patio chair furthest him, listening to her Walkman, orange foam headphones, she intently not looking in his direction, he trying not to look in hers.

While the kids were eating their grilled cheese, he set up camp in the bathroom with cigarettes, tallboy, and The New York Post. After taking a dump and washing up, he sat on the toilet lid reading the sports section, sipping, smoking.

Afterwards, with four long hours left to kill, he wrapped the last tallboy in aluminum foil and they got back in the car and drove to the Nathan’s arcade in Oceanside, the cheapest entertainment option save driving around looking for buses with mustaches drawn on Tom Gulotta’s face. He gave them each four quarters, killing a good 45 minutes, then, on the way back to the house, they stopped at the Dan’s Supreme supermarket, where he purchased three pounds of ground beef, a bag of Kingsford charcoal briquets, a bottle of lighter fluid, frozen store-brand crinkle cut golden fries, a 3-liter bottle of RC Cola, a bottle of store-brand catsup, and a 12-pack of Budweiser cans.

Back at the house, on the black-and-white television in the den, they caught the championship match of the PBA Professional Bowlers Tour and cliff diving from Acapulco on Wide World of Sports.

Afterwards, he went out to the backyard and started the fire. He was content in the quiet, drinking beers, smoking cigarettes, while the kids stayed inside watching a rerun of The Love Boat. He stared at the burning briquets and checked his watch, counting down the minutes until 4:36, when he had to be backing out of the driveway to get them home by exactly 5:00.

The kids ate their burgers quickly and said good-bye to his mother while he wrapped a couple of more Buds in aluminum foil for the road. Right on schedule, unbuckled seatbelt over shoulder, he backed the Datsun out of the driveway and navigated through Franklin Square and Malverne to the Southern State Parkway, expertly maneuvering the narrow-laned, high-speed twists and turns of the section known as “Blood Alley”, followed by the sudden isolation of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway, and finally back to “The Mansion” in Massapequa, where his legal obligation concluded for the day and he could finally go home and relax, but not before a pitstop at 7-Eleven to pick up another six of tallboys and a few more packs of smokes. ▪