Bargains, Bets, and Blackmail

Fathers, Memories, and Bad News

Chapter 4: Fathers, Memories, and Bad News

It all started with a picture.

To be fair, it wasn't just any picture, and Archer knew how touchy his father was about his mother. He should've expected this though, should've known that putting out that simple little picture of Archer and his mother would spark a goddamn war against his father.

For what seemed like the billionth time, his father slammed his hand down hard on the kitchen table, rattling Archer's bowl of cereal and almost managing to knock over his orange juice. His eyes were red, as if he had been crying. But Archer knew better; Theodore Archer never cried. This was just sheer anger. His blood vessels were popping out of his eye sockets as if he planned to strangle Archer with them.

The mental image made him chuckle.

The sound of any form of joy, as always, just made his father angrier. "You never listen to me, do you?" he growled. "I don't want any reminder of her in the house! I don't give a damn what you think, this is my house and my ex-wife. When you have your own house, feel free to put up as many pictures of the bitch as you want."

Archer sighed, choosing not to respond. The picture in question, one of Archer and his mother on the beach, was clutched tight in his hand. He held it under the table so his father couldn't see he still had it.

His father stared him down for another minute, unblinking. Unmoving, really. He looked like a statue, some type of twisted gargoyle dressed up in a suit and carrying a suitcase.

Finally he sighed, breaking eye contact. He pulled out the handle of his suitcase and began to tow it toward the door.

He opened it slowly, looking back at his son as he did so. A strange thing that looked like pain shown in his eyes. It made Archer wish he was anywhere but here.

"You don't understand yet, do you?" his father said, his voice oddly broken. "You've never loved someone, you've never been deceived. You don't know what it feels like to have your heart ripped in two."

Archer shifted uncomfortably as his father slammed the door behind him. That was personal -- too personal. His father never talked like that.

Granted, it must have sucked to have your wife, the one love of your life, leave you for a construction worker who was not half as rich, nor half as attractive, as you. Especially if you thought your marriage had been damn near perfect beforehand. And it must hurt even more, knowing that she was now happily married with a daughter to replace Archer, while you were still single and raising an asshole of a son.

Archer didn't really like his mother -- at least he didn't like her as she was now. The choices she had made had ruined some type of childish illusion that he had always had of her, a version of her that was always nice and kind and could do no harm. The mother he imagined didn't have affairs with other men.

He usually tried to keep a realistic image of her always in his mind, as to not delude himself into thinking idiotic things. It was always good to be rational, to have a clear view of the world and it's subjects. It seemed that he was the only one who tried to think like that these days.

But that didn't mean he always managed to have that perspective. He was still human -- a teenager, no less. He was bound to have slip-ups, lapses in judgment. The picture had been one of them.

He had just wanted to think of his mother of the past for once, to lose himself in that feeling of comfort and security he had had before she had left them. Besides, it wasn't like the picture had been blatantly displayed in their home. His father had just happened to see it when passing Archer's room.