OTHER MEN’S CHILDREN

HAVE SEX WITH MY MOM AND I WILL HATE YOU, read the Post-It.

Doug Stiles found the note affixed to his right shoe. He had gone to retrieve his loafers from his girlfriend Claire’s foyer, where he had left them to avoid tracking dirt onto her new cut-pile carpet. Staring at the message, he tried to decide which of the twins, Emily or Kati, was the likelier author. It wasn’t an easy guess; after a month of dating their mother, Stiles still had a hard time telling the pair apart. But then he realized the penmanship was too ungainly for a fourteen-year old, and too masculine for a girl. That meant it could only belong to Hunter, the eight-year old with the odd pageboy haircut whom that very night Stiles had treated to a pizza buffet, the one who had yet to master the spelling of his mother’s new boyfriend’s first name. If there was any doubt, Stiles only had to look to the Post-It on his left shoe.

Fuck You, Dug, that one said.

“You’ve got to talk to him,” Claire insisted when she read the first note. Stiles had decided to spare her the second one.

“Don’t you think that’s your job? I mean, he’s your son.”

“He’s threatened by you. He has to know you’re not here to take his mother away. You have to show him you care about him, too.”

Stiles gazed up the landing that led to the children’s rooms and thought of the Bataan Death March. “I bought his dinner—doesn’t that count as caring?”

Claire’s frown told him it didn’t. She trailed him as he hiked the stairway but stopped short of her son’s door. “It’s better if I stay outside,” she decided. “I’ll listen, though.”

Stiles swung the door open and discovered Hunter sitting upright on his racecar-shaped bed. He hesitated through the maze of scattered toys until he stood beside the boy. “I—uh—I got your message. I assume it was from you, anyway.”

“I left two messages,” Hunter replied proudly. The boast brought Claire out of hiding. She flicked on the light and calmly asked what the second note said.

“I didn’t want to show you,” Stiles answered, handing it over. “I don’t want you upset.”

Too late: she read the note and was upset. “You wrote this?” she snapped at her son. “He bought your dinner!” She looked to Stiles with a quizzical face that asked, “What are you going to do?”

Before Stiles could hazard an answer, he felt a jolt flare across his hipbone—not a deep pain, but an unexpected one that left him grunting with surprise. “Did you just hit me?” he gasped at Hunter.

He expected some excuse—”I didn’t mean to” or “It was an accident”—but the boy had his reasons: “I don’t want somebody new com—”

It was as far as he got. Stiles yanked him off the mattress and delivered a single swat to the fanny that sent the kid shrieking a foot into the air. As Hunter landed he began hopping in a fury of tears, begging for his mother’s embrace. Claire was too shocked to budge. So was Stiles, at least until the squealing got to him, at which point he rushed to the hallway and locked himself in the nearest bathroom, where he remained for the time it took the boy to stop.

“You really spanked him?” Stiles’ daughter, Shannon, asked when he called to tell her the story. The benefit of being close with a grown child, he had discovered, was to have a confidante handy for crises like this—even if he never could’ve predicted a crisis quite like this one. “That’s balls, Dad.”

“I couldn’t help it—I lost it. I’ve never been by hit by a kid before. I’ve never had one dislike me. Cats, yes—kids, no. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You never spanked me, that’s for sure. You would’ve had to have been around for that.” The drawback of being close with a grown child was that he had to endure her smart remarks. As Shannon liked to remind him, they hadn’t always been this intimate. For most of her childhood, he’d been an aloof if not an absentee father. They’d only recently been reacquainted, after her husband, a deliveryman for a soft-drink bottler, left her a month before the birth of their daughter. Shannon’s favorite smart remark? “I married my father.”

“The thing is, I understand his anger. Claire hasn’t dated anybody since she split from her husband. I’m the first new guy the kids have seen her with. I expected resistance, just not so … profane.”

“Was she mad? Most women don’t like their boyfriends beating their children.”

“I didn’t beat him, all right? It was one swat to the heinie. And Claire says I have every right to discipline him—she just said she wished I’d asked her first. Like I told you, I lost it.”

“Surely she understands why. Where does an eight-year old get off using the F word?”

“She’s grounding him for that, but it’s the other note she doesn’t know how to handle. It shocked her. It shocks me. How am I supposed to look a kid in the eye when I know he’s wondering if I sleep with his mom?”

“Are you sleeping with her? Already? How many dates have you two been on, anyway? She must be closer to your age than mine if she’s got three kids. Just do me a favor, Dad. Don’t ever date a woman younger than me. I couldn’t handle that.”

“We’re talking about this boy, not you. How do I handle him now? I feel like I’ve blown my shot at befriending him. I wonder if I’ve been suckered. What if Hunter wanted me to spank him so he could justify not liking me? Now I’ve given him reason to be resentful.”

“Spanking him was the right thing. You should talk to him, though. Tell him Norman Bates got his start worrying about who was fucking his mom.”

Stiles winced. He often chastised Shannon for her language. “You’ll never land another man with that mouth”—that was his usual rebuke. This time, he merely let out a weak sigh, which was his way of disavowing responsibility. “I know you didn’t learn that word from me,” he insisted.

“No, I didn’t, Dad. You would’ve had to have been around for that.”

“All right, all right. Here’s my idea. If Hunter could just see us together—you and me and Deena—he’d appreciate that I’m already a father and a grandfather, that I have my own family. I’ve invited Claire to bring him to the shop. What do you think? Will you come?”

The line went silent for several seconds.

“Let me get this straight,” Shannon finally replied. “You want to use your daughter and granddaughter to win over another man’s child? Wow. That’s balls, too.”

Before Stiles could defend himself, he heard Deena clamor for attention, and he knew Shannon had a perfect excuse to get off the phone.

“You know the funny part?” she said in lieu of outright declining his invitation. “Here’s a kid who can spell ‘fuck,’ but not ‘Doug.’ D-U-G—that’s hilarious. I can’t say what’s the insult and what’s the injury there, Daddio.”

Neither could Stiles. All he knew was that a point of pride, his sensitivity to his girlfriends’ children, honed over the twenty-two years he’d been divorced from Shannon’s mother, had been bruised. Stiles wasn’t like other bachelors he knew; he never griped about other men’s children. He wanted involvement in their lives because he wanted those kids to recognize that he was a man of good intent. Even after he broke up with their mothers—Stiles’ relationships tended to peter out when women realized he was married to his bachelorhood—he remained their friend to whatever degree they’d have him. He’d helped several find jobs, taught one to drive a stick, and co-signed a car loan for a third. Casey Burney even worked at his taffy factory, and Stiles hadn’t dated his mom since Danny Wuerffel won the Heisman—almost ten years now. For days following the Post-It incident, he tried to imagine Hunter at Casey’s age, nineteen. What ambitions might Stiles help him realize? He couldn’t say—the boy only had one passion: a collection of comic-book trading cards, which he kept filed in a shoebox in order of their market value.

“I don’t know about comic books or trading cards,” he admitted one night while cuddling with Claire. Minutes earlier during a furtive bit of lovemaking, he’d been distracted by the lock on her bedroom door, afraid the bolt hadn’t been properly thrown. “I do know candy, though. What kid can resist it?”

“You think Banana Fandango will win him over? Hunter’s not that easy.”

“It’s worked before. Trust me. One taste of my taffy, and we’ll be best friends. Granted, it’d be better if Shannon and Deena were with us, but—”

Despite Claire’s reservations, the next day she brought her kids for a tour of Stiles’ modest operation.

“You wouldn’t expect taffy-making to be so complicated,” he said, escorting his guests past copper kettles in which thick batches of corn syrup and sugar churned. “I never did until I bought this place. But you know what? As complicated as it is, it’s fun, too—oh, hey, Hunter, let’s stay off those pallets, okay?”

Halfway up a stack of fifty-pound sugar sacks, the boy threw a glare over his shoulder before continuing scaling. He almost made it to the top before Claire snatched him down.

“Taffy is a process,” Stiles explained, heading to the vacuum chamber, a large vat that resembled a steel diving helmet. “You have to follow it, step by step, or none of it makes sense. Now when a batch finishes in the kettle, we pump it in here for a good vacuum cooking.”

Stiles caught Hunter’s wrist as he reached to twist one of the chamber’s steel nuts. He clamped his hands to the boy’s shoulders, hoping to hold him still, but he wiggled free and sidled up to his mother, who was looking at her shoes, distressed.

“Vacuum cooking gives it the texture of boardwalk candy, the kind you might’ve eaten in Atlantic City a hundred years ago when saltwater taffy was all the rage. Do you know where the name ’saltwater taffy’ came from?”

“No,” Kati grumbled. Or maybe it was Emily—Stiles wasn’t sure. Hunter poked at the fittings on the pot’s piped side. Stiles decided to go straight to everyone’s favorite part of the tour, the pullers, which was Casey’s station.

“This guy in the 1880s, David Bradley, owned a store that flooded. Along comes this little girl wanting something sweet, and here his whole stock is swamped with ocean water. So Bradley says, ‘Grab a piece of my newest delicacy—I call it saltwater taffy.’ It’s not a true story, of course, but every taffymaker in the world tells it.”

“Cool,” said the twin that Stiles was pretty sure was Emily.

“Yeah,” the other agreed, indifferent.

Hunter, meanwhile, flushed with briny repugnance. Stiles knew why: Claire was holding Stiles’ hand. She’d decided that to accept them as a couple the kids needed to see them displaying affection. She didn’t appreciate it when he told her candy would work better.

“It’s hypnotic, isn’t it?” he asked, as the puller’s arms whirled around one another, stretching a gummy blob into thin, shoestring lengths.

“Why’s it brown?” Emily asked, frowning. “It looks gross.”

“That’s the color of cooked cornstarch and syrup. The flavoring is added as the batch is pulled. What’s this one going to be, Casey?” He reached for the production schedule on the wall, but Claire wouldn’t let go. He had to take the clipboard in his left hand. “Ooh, Watermelon Felony—that’s another big seller. You better watch, Hunter. You’re missing the best part.”

The boy wasn’t interested in the pullers. He was glowering at the handholding.

“All my equipment,” Stiles continued, ignoring both the stare and his itchy palm, “dates from the thirties, when taffy was first mass produced rather than handmade. It’s a bear to keep the machinery running, but it tastes better. We don’t produce as much as bigger operations—only 270 pounds at a time—but with smaller batches, I can inspect each piece. Come see my Rose 530, my wrapping machine. It may be seventy-five years old, but it spits out 180 pieces a minute.”

Stiles didn’t make it five steps before a chop to the wrist snapped his hand out of Claire’s. When he spun around he discovered Hunter in a half-crouch, his fists swirling at his pageboy bangs, as if he seriously expected to brawl. “Let go!” the boy screamed. Before Stiles could point out that, thanks to the chop, he’d already let go, Claire grabbed Hunter by the collar and dragged him behind the vacuum chamber, where her yelling drowned out the chugging machinery. Stiles smiled weakly at Emily and Kati, who showed their sibling solidarity by pursing their lips in disapproval. When he turned to Casey for sympathy, he found his employee frantically ignoring the fracas by dousing the taffy with watermelon flavoring.

“Hunter has something to tell you,” Claire said, returning. “Tell him, son.”

The boy looked mugged. “Sorry,” he said, in a voice that made it clear he wasn’t.

“It’s okay,” Stiles stammered. “Why don’t the girls stay here. I—uh—I have a surprise out front for Hunter.”

He wasn’t planning to pummel the boy, but everyone including Casey looked at him as if he were. He promised Claire it was a good surprise and led Hunter to the showroom, where wicker tubs of candy lined the walls. Hunter shoved a hand into a bucket of Strawberry Hiccup and began stuffing his mouth.

“So,” Stiles said, feigning a grin, “I can’t be a bad guy if I make good taffy, right? Although, honestly, I’d prefer you not throw the wrappers on the floor.”

The boy squatted and scooped up the papers he’d discarded. The candy was turning his lips pink and foamy.

“I know we got off on a bad foot, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, does it? I’m sorry I spanked you the other night, but that was an unusual situation—at least, for me. Your mom and I are friends. We care about each other. I would never do anything to hurt her, or you. And to prove it, I brought a peace offering. I thought you might like this.”

From his shirt pocket he drew a trading card featuring a green, vaguely reptilian superhero called Beast Boy. Stiles had bought it off Ebay for thirty-five dollars.

“It’s the chase card you’ve wanted, right? I’m sorry; I couldn’t get the other one you like, the Wonder Girl one—at least not for less than a hundred. But I’m guessing that even at thirty-five dollars, Beast Boy will go straight to the front of your shoebox, huh?”

Hunter took the card, studying it without a hint of excitement or appreciation. When he bored of the glossy, over-muscled figure, he stuffed it in a back pocket.

“You can buy me whatever you want,” he replied, exposing the clots of chewed taffy stretching his rictus. “And you can give me all the candy you want. I’m still going to run you off.”

“You didn’t spank him for that?” Shannon asked when she finally responded to her father’s urgent pleas to call. “It’s not the F word, but it still deserves a whupping.”

“Don’t you see? That’s what he wants. He thinks if he needles me enough, I’ll lose my temper and do more than cuff his fanny, and then Claire will have to dump me.”

“This isn’t a criminal mastermind, Dad. He’s just being a man, marking his territory. You’ve got to show him you’re top dog. Otherwise, he’ll keep walking all over you.”

Stiles groaned, wondering how his life had been reduced to a pissing contest with an eight-year-old.

“I don’t think I can. I get why he’s rude. I’m an empathetic guy. Forgiving, too—I want to forgive him. I want to be the bigger man—when I’m not around him, that is. When we’re in the same room, it’s a different story. Then the only thing I think about is how much I’ve started to dislike him. When he opens his mouth it takes all the restraint I have not to tell the little shit off. I’m afraid that if I have to discipline him again, I’ll let slip what I really think of him.”

Stiles felt relieved to admit these feelings—until he heard the silence that greeted his confession. Shannon took so long to answer he thought she’d been disconnected.

“If you really feel that way, you have to stop seeing this woman. It’s not fair to her or to those kids.”

“I’m exaggerating,” he scrambled to lie. “I have to say these things out loud to know I don’t mean them.”

Shannon wasn’t convinced. The conversation ended with a question that made Stiles wish they had been disconnected:

“Would you want a man in my life who felt that way about your granddaughter?”

Flustered, he decided on a compromise. If Hunter didn’t want a new man in his life, and Stiles didn’t want to be despised, the two of them would keep their distance. From now on, he and Claire would do couples things, separate from her children.

Of course, he couldn’t tell his girlfriend about this plan. What he didn’t count on was her guessing it so soon after he began declining invitations to the twins’ piano recitals and Hunter’s peewee football tourney.

“How long is a while?” she wanted to know when she wheedled it out of him.

“How long until Hunter graduates high school?” he joked.

“I can’t believe you’re avoiding my son—he’s eight!”

“I’m not avoiding him,” Stiles protested. “I’m giving him space. We rushed things—it’s too soon after your divorce. This arrangement is best for everyone. Your kids can have their mom back, and you and I can focus on our relationship without distractions.”

“My children aren’t distractions. This ‘arrangement’ might work for you, but it won’t for me. I can’t exclude my kids from any part of my life. It’s hard enough to hold things together. I’ll go crazy if I have to lead multiple lives.”

Stiles glanced around the room. “Do we have to have this conversation here?” he begged. They were in the banquet hall of a Holiday Inn, attending a cocktail party hosted by the local printer who supplied his candy wrappers. “Can’t we have fun tonight?”

Claire downed a Chardonnay from the courtesy table. “If you want fun you should date that one.” She nodded over her shoulder at a slightly plump blonde in navy pantsuit greeting guests.

“Rhonda?” Stiles rolled his eyes. “She’s my sales rep—I could never date her. She’s twenty-three! That’s two years younger than Shannon!”

“Yes,” Claire agreed, helping herself to another wine. “But something tells me a twenty-three-year old’s life is a lot less complicated than mine—what do you think?”

Forced to abide Hunter, Stiles soon realized that he didn’t merely dislike the boy, or that he was starting to resent Claire. What he felt was even more troubling: he wanted to be accommodated, to have his tune danced to. It was only fair; she and her family owed him. They’d brought so many complications to his life.

Stiles tried to repress his displeasure, but it leaked out in different ways. One night he took undue delight in trouncing Hunter at Uno. On another, he made the boy empty and then re-stack the dishwasher when it wasn’t organized to his satisfaction. The breaking point came when snide allusions to Damien and The Omen began creeping into his conversation. Then Claire couldn’t ignore the animosity.

“It’s no crime if you can’t handle him,” she said. “I’m the first to admit he’s demanding. But you have to be man enough to admit it. Tell me, and it’ll be easier on us all.”

“I want to be around you, not him.” That’s what Stiles wanted to say, and the fact that he couldn’t only abraded him more. “Why are you putting this off on me?” he demanded. “Do I lob F-Yous at people I don’t like?”

Claire reared back, shocked. “Aren’t you over that yet? Can’t you forgive him? He’s eight—he’s a scared little boy.”

I’m forty-eight, Stiles wanted to reply. You don’t think I get scared sometimes? But, of course, he couldn’t say that either. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m being petty.”

Claire agreed and then forgave him, not realizing he’d apologized only to avoid prolonging the argument. He assumed she understood this; he couldn’t believe it when she turned around and asked him to pick up a cake she’d ordered to celebrate Hunter’s upcoming baptism.

“I’m supposed to help Shannon paint the baby’s room,” he fibbed. “If I back out she’ll kill me.”

He wasn’t a good liar. “If you won’t help”—Claire spoke through her teeth—”be a man and say it. Otherwise, you’re wasting my time.”

“Hunter has a dad. Why can’t Bill get the cake?”

Stiles had only met Claire’s ex once when he and Claire picked up the kids after an aborted weekend with their father. They rendezvoused in a Wal-Mart parking lot, where Bill stared him down with a resentful squint. Hunter had his dad’s eyes, Stiles had realized.

“Bill’s been disinvited,” Claire revealed. “He’s nickel and diming me because I didn’t ask his permission before I bought Hunter that Wonder Girl trading card he’s been wanting. He says he shouldn’t have to go halves on it now that I’m dating a rich man.”

“Who told him I’m rich?” Stiles gasped. “I make candy more for fun than for a living! He can’t expect me to pick up his slack! When Shannon was Hunter’s age, I was legally oblig—”

Claire’s frown told him he’d said too much.

“I don’t want your money,” she insisted, so exhausted she had to take to a chair at the breakfast table. “My only point in telling you is so you know you complicate my life as much as you apparently think I’ve complicated yours.”

Stiles shook his head. “I can’t believe you got him that card. How much did you spend? I know it was at least a hundred—there wasn’t one for less than that on the Internet. Don’t you think that’s extravagant? This is a baptism, not a birthday.”

Claire’s hands dropped to the table. “Why don’t you and Bill get together and tell me what I can and can’t do? Again: if you don’t want to help, I’ll do it myself. And if you do, don’t unless you know you won’t resent it.”

Stiles deflated into the seat across from her. “I won’t,” he whispered. For a moment at least, he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t.

He spent the party marooned at a living-room card table, where he was assigned to monitor a display of Hunter’s cards, all meticulously mounted on Post-It notes advertising their market value. Whenever a guest wandered by, Stiles picked up the newest addition to the collection, which featured an overly bosomed heroine in blue spangled shorts and a red tank top firing an Amazonian fist into a villainous phalanx of foes. “Can you believe she spent a hundred dollars on this?” he would ask. Then Hunter happened into the room. The boy stormed over and plucked the card out of Stiles’ hand, slapping it back into place. Nearby adults turned away, hiding their faces in their punch cups.

To glut his discomfort, Stiles accepted a second piece of cake from the twin he was pretty sure was Kati, although he’d given up trying to tell the girls apart. He was licking the frosting off his fork when Bill invaded the party and, like a supersized version of his son, rushed up to him.

“Hunter just told me you and Claire are having sex.”

This time nearby guests didn’t turn away.

“Excuse me?” Stiles was distracted by Bill’s baldhead. The two times he’d met the man, Bill had been so angry that his crown glowed like lit charcoal.

“He says you’re here every night and that you make him go to bed early so you two can lock yourselves in the bedroom. He says that while you think he’s sleeping, he’s sneaking to the door, listening.”

Hunter sidled up against a far wall, a hint of a smile curling his lips. Stiles didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know what to say,” he said.

“I do know,” Bill informed him, jabbing a finger in Stiles’ face. “If I ever learn you’ve been in this house again with my kids, I’ll knock your block off.”

Stiles wanted to remind the man that because he and Claire were no longer married, who came into the house wasn’t any of his business, but Claire beat him to it. She ordered Bill to leave. He didn’t—not immediately. Instead, he slapped the table with the length of his arm, flinging Hunter’s cards into the air and showering Stiles in a flutter of Beast Boys, Starfires, and Aqualads. Stiles leapt up, but his feet tangled in the crossbars of his chair and he spilled sideways. Only when he was face down in Claire’s new cut-pile carpet did he realize why he’d landed so hard upon his elbow: as he fell, he’d thrown his hands out to catch Wonder Girl before she landed in his cake remains. The card lay cradled in his cupped palms like a wounded bird.

“Call the police!” somebody screamed. “Call the police!”

A moment passed before Stiles realized that was him screaming. As he lumbered upright, Bill bolted out the door, chased closely by Claire. The rest of the party stared at Stiles. I’m a man of good intent! he wanted to proclaim. Then he spotted Hunter.

“You—you did this! Are you happy? This is your doing!”

He might’ve disgorged all the gall for the boy he’d swallowed if he hadn’t been distracted by the distinct sound of ripping cardstock, which felled the boy harder than the spanking, the thought of which still made Stiles tremble. Dropping to his knees, Hunter let out a piercing howl. Stiles waited for someone to quiet him, but nobody seemed to notice. They were too busy gaping at Stiles—or not at him, actually, but at the torn halves of Wonder Girl pinched in each of his fists.

Several months passed before Stiles saw Claire and her kids again. They were sitting in the food court of the local mall as he exited Zales, fresh from buying a four hundred dollar tennis bracelet for his current girlfriend, Rhonda, the slightly plump sales rep who sold him candy wrappers. Stiles was glad they were too busy watching Hunter devour an ice-cream cone to notice him; the awkward conversation would’ve made him regret the trip more than he already was. He’d only promised Rhonda a shopping spree to forestall another argument over Casey Burney. She didn’t like her boyfriend employing an ex-girlfriend’s son, even if Stiles hadn’t dated Casey’s mother since Danny Wuerffel won the Heisman. As he’d bought the bracelet he’d wished he could call Shannon. He would’ve liked to hear her opinion of how he’d ended up with Rhonda, although he could guess at least two reasons: he’d been lonely, and she didn’t have kids. Stiles couldn’t ask his daughter anything, though; she wasn’t talking to him right now. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with him since she learned his new girlfriend was two years younger than her.

As Rhonda modeled her gift, Stiles peeked toward the food court, wondering how much happier the kids were now that they had their mother to themselves. On the surface, Emily and Kati didn’t seem different at all—he still couldn’t tell which was which, at any rate. Claire herself appeared as steeled as she’d sounded on the phone the night of Hunter’s party when she told Stiles she couldn’t see him any more: “It was too soon for me to date,” she’d said. “We both had a responsibility to know that.” Only Hunter had changed. He’d undergone a growth spurt, and his pageboy had been sheered away in favor of a buzz cut. He was still clearly a child, though, so eager to sate himself with his snack that he didn’t care that his lips and fingers dripped with chocolate.

As he watched, Stiles stuffed his hands in his jacket, feeling for the bite of taffy he suddenly craved. He wondered if Hunter’s cone was a reward for good behavior, or if Claire had bought it to stall a brewing temper tantrum. Either way, he couldn’t begrudge the boy his treat. Far from it. He envied Hunter’s ability to get his way. Here was an eight-year old with everything a boy could want in the world—a mother and some ice cream—while all Stiles had to show for himself was a four hundred dollar receipt and a stray handful of Banana Fandango.

By Kirk Curnutt