30

That fall my father left the family.

His leaving was quite a shock for everyone - my mother, our friends and relatives... No wonder why - everybody around had used to think our family perfect, and make an example of my parents as a truly stable couple. Even Sue, as she had seen how chummy and close to each other my parents were, how quietly and amicably they did things together, for they had never aired their dirty linen in public - she had used to sigh and envy me, saying how lucky I was to have such a good family while her own folks had long been on the brink of divorce.

And now - it was like a bolt from the blue. All of a sudden. They had lived together for eighteen years, everything had been so great - and now, there you go.

For all our people my father's leave was like a bombshell. For everybody but me. Because I was the only one who knew what secret was hidden behind it all. I knew it but I kept my mouth shut. Reader, let me keep it quiet, in this story, too. Let me keep quiet about that heinous and  incredibly disgusting fact that had made my father leave the family - for even he realized that it was the only way out of all that mess he had made.

What's the saying for it? Age mellows some people, others it makes rotten, right?

While young my father was a four-eyed nerdy swot, and he had never known other women but my mother. If for a woman it is a virtue, for a man it is a shame and disgrace, so men prefer not to share it. And if, in his declining years, such a "virtuous" man takes a walk on the wild side, all hell breaks loose then.

Anyway, our life under the same roof had become an issue. It had become so unbearable that the choice had to be made. One of us was supposed to be gone. It was my father.

That evening I was sitting at the desk in my room and doing my homework as usual, when the scraping of a key in the keyhole became audible. The sound creeped me out; I could feel in my bones that it was HIM.

I couldn't stand his presence in the house. Having him around suffocated me and freaked me out. But, happily, right after him my mother came back from work, changed into her home wear and went to the kitchen to make dinner.

"Dinner's ready!" she shouted out in fifteen minutes.

I sat still in my room even though my homework had long been done.

"Do you need a special invitation? Come and eat!" mother knocked at my door.

"I won't" I uttered through my teeth.

"What do you mean 'I won't'?"

"That I mean. I won't. Until HE takes out the trash... I'm not going to have dinner with you!"

"Yury!" she called him, "Take the trash out; really, the bin is overfull!"

"Like hell I will!" father replied not even raising from his chair.

The atmosphere in the house was getting really tense. The conflict was already unavoidable. I ran out of my room, grabbed the kitchen bin and, without saying a word, I put it in the lounge room, close to my father's chair.

Father, in his turn, also jumped up, grabbed the bin and, also in silence, kicked it into my room, scattering the rubbish all over the floor.

"What the hell?!"

A moment - and the bin, like a rocket, flew back. Another moment - and father kicked the bin out of the loungeroom again. All this thing was going on in silence, and it looked like we were playing football with the full kitchen bin.

"Are you going to have dinner tonight or not?!"

Mother came out of the kitchen and, as she saw the garbage bin flying around the corridor and all sorts of rubbish scattered on the floor, she clapped her hands:

"What the hell are you doing?! Stop it!!!"

"Yeah, right, stop it!!" I echoed, "Tell him to either take the damn trash out or... go to hell!!!"

"I f*****g will!!!" father roared.

"Fine! I don't want a father like you!!!"

"Can you f*****g explain me now what the hell is going on here?!" mother yelled losing her patience.

"F**k you all!!!" bawled my father and, as he pushed her away, he suddenly darted to the TV, grabbed it and, holding it in his arms, ran out of the house like a shot from a gun.

Mother just stood there with her month open and watched him go in silence. Father, in the meantime, as he had dragged the TV down the stairs, came back for the rest of his belongings - and, at a moment's notice, he threw all his clothes in a sheet, twisted it into a bag which he slung over his shoulder - and off he went.

"So... what's for dinner tonight? Fish and chips?" I asked her calmly, as if nothing had happened, when the frontdoor had slammed after my father for the last time.

Mother didn't reply at once. She was still too shocked to speak.

"No, wait... Did you understand WHAT has just happened?.."

"What has happened? Something that should have happened long ago."

I had long been waiting for his to explode, so I was cool and detached. Which couldn't be said about my mother. She looked like a fish out of water.

And that was only the beginning...