My Three Husbands

How do you end up with the people you end up with, that's what Id' like to know. Out of all the billions of people you could possibly meet, why them? Is it, like, destiny?

In that final countdown of hours before my marriage to Tremaynne, I found myself flashing back to my first two husbands and my relationship with JD. While a Vietnamese girl gave me a manicure and a pedicure, one of my mom's wedding presents, I reflected on my life up to now. It was July 3. The nail salon was decorated with flags and everyone was being super-patriotic.

“Whucullanail?” the girl asked, showing me her tray of polishes.

“Black.”

“Oh, you go funeral?”

“No,” I said. “I'm getting married tomorrow.”

MY THREE HUSBANDS

 

 

CONFESSIONS OF A PREGNANT PRINCESS

 

 

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

My Three Husbands

Swan Adamson

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

“H
ow about a honeymoon
en famille?
”

I hate it when Dad Two uses foreign words.

“What does that mean, Whitman?” I asked.

He twirled spaghetti around his fork and smiled. “We'll go with you.”

“You mean like chaperones?” I let out a choked-sounding laugh and looked over at Dad One, my other dad, my real dad, to see if he was in on the joke.

He wasn't. The expectant look on John's face as he gnawed on a piece of crusty Italian bread told me he hoped I'd say yes.

The old worrying fear that I was about to be trapped or tricked by the dads stirred in my gut. It was a side effect from childhood, from a time when I wasn't old enough to say no and the dads always overwhelmed me.

“Not chaperones,” Whitman said. “More like guides.”

“On my honeymoon.” It sounded weird, even to me. “I don't think so.” I smiled nervously, looking from one dad to the other. “I don't think Tremaynne would be comfortable with it.”

“Darling, the man's been living in a
tree
for three months.” Uh-oh. Dad Two was starting to get impatient. “I'll bet he'd jump at the chance for a free vacation in a luxury wilderness resort.”

My ears perked up when I heard the words
free
and
luxury.

“We could go on all sorts of off-road expeditions.” Whitman raised a pee-colored pinot something or other to his lips. “I know, let's call Tremaynne and ask him right now.”

I grabbed that cute little Finnish phone from his hand. “No!”

“Afraid he'll say yes?” Whitman held out his hand and twiddled his fingers until I returned the phone.

John the peacekeeper stepped in. “She doesn't want to, Whit. Let's just forget it.”

“Why?” Whitman said, clearly befuddled.

“Because it's just too
weird!”
I couldn't think of a word that really expressed it. I tried to keep my voice low and the hot little-girl flush from rising to my cheeks.

Whitman, of course, wouldn't keep his voice down. He turned up the volume, the better to be heard by everyone around us. “What is so
weird
about two
fathers
joining their only
daughter
and her new
husband
on their
honeymoon?”

The thin, sour, sauerkraut-blonde girl at the next table glanced disdainfully in our direction. She must have heard. Now she knew.
I was the daughter of these two men.
The bitch, all in Prada, flattened herself to table level and began whispering to her dot-com fiancé—or maybe she was talking to that huge diamond engagement ring he'd given her.

Tremaynne doesn't believe in rings. Rings, he said, are symbols of capitalism. (Since his bankruptcy, he's been very down on capitalism.) So instead of that beautiful platinum-and-diamond ring that appears regularly in my dreams, floating just out of reach like a helium balloon, I got one made out of ink, skin, and pain. I paid for the tattoo myself since Tremaynne doesn't have a paying job. When I showed it to him, he kind of freaked. “You had that done for me?” he said. I think he was scared of the commitment it represented. You can't take off a tattoo and hurl it in your husband-to-be's face or drop it accidentally down the toilet or lose it at the beach. It's there, like, forever.

Whitman pressed on. “If you weren't so glum and unimaginative about everything, a four-way honeymoon could be fun.”

I rolled my eyes.

“You never
think,”
he said. “All you do is
react.
Against anything I say or suggest.”

“Parents. Don't. Go. On. Honeymoons. With. Their. Kids.” I tore off a hunk of bread and eyed the big sweet slab of butter. My two perfect fathers, ever mindful of their trim waistlines and smooth-flowing arteries, never spread butter on their bread. Whitman always said butter was vulgar unless you were in northern Europe. My mother, on the other hand, always encouraged my slatherings.

“Is there a rule?” Whitman asked, raising his eyebrows and watching as I slid my knife into the butter. “Is there a law inscribed somewhere on the Holy Tablets of the Boring Middle Class that says, Thou shalt not accompany thy daughter on her honeymoon?”

“Whitman, drop it,” said Dad One. I could tell he was nervous because he was compulsively realigning the silverware, dishes, and glasses, calibrating everything on the table to some orderly pattern in his head. Daddy's an architect.

“Yeah, drop it,” I chimed in.

“Drop it? What am I, a dog?” Dad Two turned slowly from Dad One back to me. He spoke as though I were retarded. “Look, honey, I know it's difficult for you, but let's be practical here. You don't have a penny to your name. Am I correct?”

I sat tight-lipped, wishing with all my might that you could still smoke in restaurants.

“You've just declared bankruptcy. At age twenty-five. Am I correct?”

I refused to answer.

“You've been married twice—even though I happen to know you were happier as a lesbian—”

“Ha-ha.”

“—and you've never been on a honeymoon.” His voice softened. “That's something every girl should have at least once in her life. Even if she's
not
married. So this time around we're offering it to you.”

“But it's not a honeymoon if you two come along!”

“There's no honeymoon, period, if we don't.” Whitman let out a sigh. “Look, honey, we'd love to send you off on a romantic trip to a luxury resort where you get fabulous spa treatments and pampered like royalty. But the truth is, I lost my shirt in the dot-com crash. We just can't afford it.”

“Then how come you can go?” I asked.

“Because your dad is the architect and they've invited him out for the gala opening. And I snagged a juicy little assignment to write the place up for
Travel
magazine.”

“So where do me and Tramaynne fit in?” I asked.

“Tremaynne and I,” Whitman corrected. “Well, I knew this place would do anything to get in
Travel
magazine. So I pulled a prima donna.”

“A what?”

“I said I needed to bring along my assistants, to help with the story.”

“You demanded,” Daddy said.

“I demanded,” Whitman said, “and they agreed. So now you and Hubby Three can come along with us. I even got you your own suite.” He let out a sudden snort of laughter. “You didn't think we'd all be staying in one room, did you?”

Oh, I loved that word—
suite.
“I don't know what I thought. This is the first I've heard about any of it.”

“A free honeymoon,” Whitman whispered emphatically. “Think of it. Free. All you have to do is pretend you're my assistants. Does that really sound so awful?”

“You mean we have to, like, carry your luggage?”

“No, you don't have to, like, do anything. Except pretend you're taking notes.”

“It's a scam, in other words.”

My comment took him aback. “It's a
present,”
he said with wounded dignity. “For
you.”

“And there's the other part, too,” Daddy reminded him.

“Yes, but I wouldn't
dream
of asking your darling ungrateful self-centered daughter to celebrate something with
us.
God forbid.” He rose abruptly and strode off to the men's room, leaving us in the dust of his melodrama.

“Celebrate what?” I asked my dad guiltily.

Daddy took my hand and stroked it. “We're getting married, too.”

“What?” Tears popped into my eyes. “Daddy!” It took me a minute to recover from my sentimentality and think clearly. “But how?”

“Well, it's not the same as being married married, but it's all we're allowed.”

“That registry thing?”

He nodded. “It has no legal bearing on anything. But we thought it would be a nice idea to celebrate our twentieth anniversary by getting Dped.”

“Dped?”

“Domestic partnershipped.”

“I want to be there. When are you doing it?”

“The first day it's possible. July first.”

“Oh.” The timing made me suspicious. I wondered if Whitman had chosen that date in order to overshadow my ceremony on the Fourth of July. The dads were being remarkably cool about my upcoming wedding. They didn't talk about it and hadn't offered to help with the preparations.

“That date's all right, isn't it?” Daddy's always extra solicitous when Whitman isn't around.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Back-to-back ceremonies,” he said. “Honeymoons together. Kind of fun.”

I let him pull me close and kiss me on the cheek. I wanted to lie back right there in the restaurant in front of everyone and be cuddled in his arms. But I was as rigid as my old skateboard. The sauerkraut blonde couldn't keep her eyes away. She was confused. I can always tell when they're confused. She couldn't place me, peg me, pigeonhole me. Maybe Ms. Prada thought now that I was Daddy's girlfriend or his wife. I closed my eyes and let him cuddle me.

“Who all's going to be at your DP ceremony?” I asked.

“Just a few close friends.”

“Are you going to invite Mom?”

He tensed. “I'll think about it.”

A tall, handsome man with thick sandy-brown hair, sharp blue eyes, and a long, straight nose appeared at the far end of the dining room. Whitman. Daddy's lover and my faux pa. He smiled at us over the heads of the diners. It was only a naughty-little-girl fantasy, but I imagined him seething with jealousy. Wanting me for himself.

In actual fact, the one who was seething with jealousy was Ms. Prada at the next table. Don't ask me why. I didn't do anything to make her fiancé stare at me like that.

 

 

After my fancy-ass dinner with the dads, I drove my dying Toyota back over to the east side where my mom lives. I wanted to be with her, but I didn't know why.

It had something to do with the dads getting married. I felt kind of anxiously protective, as if I were the mom and Mom were the little girl, and I had to break some potentially traumatic news to her. If the dads didn't invite her to their DP ceremony, she'd find out about it and be devastated because she was left out. But if they did invite her, she would make up some excuse not to go because she'd feel humiliated in front of all their friends.

Twenty years
the dads had been together. Which meant it had been twenty years since Dad left Mom. Which meant it had been twenty years since my own life had taken that fateful turn. A jumble of memories suddenly swelled up in front of me, like those wafer-thin sponges that expand in water. Whitman used to buy me one at Zabar's every time I visited them in New York.

Christmas and my birthday, those were always the big events. One of my earliest memories is being with Mom and Dad on Christmas morning in the big Victorian house with a fire roaring in the fireplace and what looked like hundreds of presents under the tree. It was the first time I understood the meaning of Christmas (toys, all for me) and the pretty stuff that went with it: the giant tree hung with glass balls and strung with white lights, vases of fresh-cut holly, cards, cookies, ribbon, the special incense that my mom would burn. Carolee just loved to decorate for Christmas. I was wild with excitement as Mom presented me with box after wrapped box, laughing as I tore off the paper and hauled out dolls, stuffed animals, games, clothes, candy, and books. At some point in my rampage I was so idiotically, incandescently happy that I ran over and jumped into Daddy's arms. He held me the way I liked to be held, suffocatingly close, squeezed tight as a swaddled papoose. My mom stopped laughing and said tenderly, “Oh, look at all that lovin'. Can't I have just a little?” And I said, quite deliberately, as Daddy rocked me in his arms, “No. I hate you.”

My first Christmas alone with Carolee was an unwanted memory, but I found myself reliving it as I drove east toward her house. It was during the Big Change, after Daddy moved out of the big beautiful Victorian house. For months nothing had been clear to me. Daddy still lived in Portland but was talking about moving to New York. Fear gnawed at me day and night. I couldn't figure out why he'd left us and I was terrified that he would move away forever. Mom went from being happy to being a sobbing wreck. Without Daddy the house felt disjointed, scary, empty. That Christmas, as I came down the wide oak stairs wearing my Big Bird slippers and Wonder Woman cape over flannel pajamas, it was not Daddy I saw but Mom's support group. I stopped dead in my tracks. The smell of coffee and pot wafted up to my nose. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” Mom called out as I stood there staring down at them. “Santa's left lots of presents for you.”

I could see the presents, but I knew she was lying about Santa. “Is Daddy here?”

One of her friends muttered, “No, your asshole daddy is not here.”

“He's not an asshole,” I shot back, hotly defensive,
“you
are.”

They coaxed me downstairs with the lure of sweets and joys beyond measure. Only I felt dry and empty, like someone had pulled the plug and my bubble bath of happiness had drained away.

That Christmas, the first one without Daddy in the house, Mom's support group worked valiantly to cheer us up. They clapped and oohed and aahed as I opened my presents. Then they inducted me into a daddyless world of all women. One of them gave me a perm. One of them painted my toenails gold and my fingernails green with red stripes. I got to put on foundation, powder, lipstick and mascara. All day long they sucked on cigarettes and joints and sipped coffee and drank eggnog and munched cookies and took turns holding Mom, who spent most of the day sobbing on the sofa.