When Tony leaped upon my back from behind, his arm wrapped around my neck in a choke hold, the embarrassment of cowering in front of his cronies too much for him to stand, I learned a very valuable lesson: never turn your back on you enemies. I learned a second valuable lesson as well when from out of nowhere Tommy struck a blow to Tony’s chin toppling Tony to the ground and me with him:

it was good to have Tommy for a friend. Tommy proceeded to whale on Tony’s pretty face until he was bloody and unconscious. None of Tony’s friends dared to interfere.

Finally Tommy stood over Tony’s motionless body and he kicked him in the groin with a ferocious thrust. That ended the fight.

The next evening I walked hand-in- hand, the hero to Catherine, the slayer of the dragon to Albert (despite the fact that Tommy had landed the only blows struck), and still, to Teresa, I was the pathetic poor kid who had no business pursuing Catherine. The love of my life was back in my arms and all was forgiven when at the end of our walk Catherine kissed me for the second time, her tongue dancing with my soul, and she whispered in my ear, “I love you.” I knew that she would be my wife someday and I knew that she would love only me forever.

Which is why, as I passed a slow moving Plymouth Voyager while still heading south on Interstate sixty-five just outside

Columbus Indiana, the flame of Catherine’s betrayal branded my cheeks with searing tears no less painful than when Catherine had abandoned me for Tony Artino over twenty years earlier.

“Why are you crying daddy?” Sarah had awoken and reached out and grasped my hand, “Were you thinking about mommy again?”

“Yes honey I was.”

Sarah and I played games to pass the time. We played “I spy” where we named a color and the other person would have to guess what it was that we had spied of that color. We also played “Beetle” in which we had to count as many Volks Wagon Bugs as we passed on the road to see who could spot the most. I drove just a few miles above the speed limit to avoid any unwanted attention. Sarah fell asleep after we stopped for gas and she continued to sleep as I got back on the highway and plodded along. Driving the speed limit was not something I was used to doing. I normally tended to have a heavy foot and driving so slowly made it seem as though we were cruising through a school zone but I knew that the least mistake might permanently end my journey.

* * *

We pulled off of the highway just before the Kentucky border for gas and for lunch. As I chewed my french-fries I looked down at my Beautiful Sarah and wondered what sort of life I would have had without her. Certainly I would not have been running from the law because she would not have been there to take Catherine’s life. But would I have been happy had Catherine and I never had a child? I just couldn’t imagine a life without Sarah, misery and all.

Teresa and Albert were choicelessly childless, a situation I, in hindsight, came to sympathize with as Catherine and I strived to impregnate her womb. During the first few years after we got married we fucked like field- mice at every opportunity just because we wanted to screw, but after failing to fertilize her eggs after so many trips to the well our concern grew. We desperately wanted a family. We started timing Catherine’s ovulations to coordinate our sexual encounters to optimize the chances of pregnancy. Sex became a labor, of love most times, but of tiresome weariness when it interfered with our work or sleep schedules. Eventually we tried fertility drugs and finally we were both tested and it was determined that my sperm count was too low to likely result in a child. In-vitro-fertilization was new and very expensive and really wasn’t an option.

The truth was that as much emotional pain as I was experiencing at that time over Catherine’s betrayal I managed to recognize that without Catherine’s affair I would never have had Sarah: my little Lizzy Borden. It didn’t matter to me that Sarah might have killed Catherine. It sickened me that it might be true; that Sarah might be a monster disguised as a sweet innocent child, but I loved her too much to let a little thing like matricide come between us. In light of the fact, and you must understand my morbid sense of humor masked my true horror at the possibilities, that Sarah, the product of my wife’s betrayal, might have killed my betrayer, Catherine, I found the whole affair sadistically amusing. Please don’t judge me for this; we use humor to mask our true emotions. I was horrified. But the whole scenario, if proved to be true, would have been nothing less than ironic.

Of course the final joke was on me. I was wanted for a murder that I hadn’t committed.

If Sarah had killed Catherine she surely could not have predicted, with her seven year old brain, that I would be implicated for her murder. I knew that Sarah loved me and that the last thing in the world she would have wanted was to be separated from me. If she had killed Catherine she had killed her in an oedipal attempt to eliminate the competition. And as far as I could tell, if Sarah had done the deed, I was quite culpable. I had espoused Sarah in many ways and on many occasions. When Catherine and I were not getting along I smothered Sarah with my affection. When Catherine and I made up I withdrew the extremity with which I displayed my approbation. That is not to say that I abandoned Sarah altogether. But my time with the two women in my life was more equally divided when my relationship with Catherine was harmonious. However Catherine sometimes managed long mood swings in which she would not talk to me for days, weeks, and on a few occasions for as long as a month or more. And I called upon Sarah to fill my vast emotional void; and I fed the fire even more so by allowing Sarah to call me lover. And when Sarah and I ate out at restaurants I fed the fantasy even further by acquiescing to her reference to our dining alone as dates. Once after Sarah had asked me for what must have been the hundredth time if she and I could be married like I was to Mommy I told her “Sure honey” in an absent minded attempt to dismiss her question without further persistence.

“I mean like in a church.”

This got my attention. She was serious. “Well how about we just pretend we’re married.”

“No, I want to marry you in a church, like I saw on television.”

We were not church-goers. In fact Sarah had never seen the inside of a church before. And one day, just to appease her unrelenting childish want, I took her to a church. It was an old majestic Cathedral style Catholic Church that I had been forced to go to every Sunday as a child. The neighborhood had changed dramatically from the time when I had attended both school and mass there. Blight had crept from the inner city to the outskirts of East Cleveland. Graffiti covered the walls of the street signs bridges and buildings nearby with proclamations as profound as “Sandra is a Hoe” and calls to action such as “No Excuses! Time to Fight!” Most of the houses of my old neighborhood were decrepit; paint peeling, roofs rotting, yards unkept. But the old stone cathedral was still as awe-inspiring as ever. It was the type of building which, had God actually wanted to live in the confines of man-made walls, he would have likely chosen over the simple modern structures they called churches in more recent times. We stopped in on a late Sunday afternoon and the sun was shining casting long colorful shadows across the dark old oak pews. The two story mosaic of Jesus on the cross, with its gold and beige and red hues, towered behind the altar covered in white. Behind the altar stood the gold sacristy which housed the gold challises from which the wine was drunk and the unleavened bread was served. To either side of the altar stood statues of the Virgin Mary and of Saint Peter and a large table with lighted candles in red glass decanters. Along the walls, stone carvings depicted the Stations of the Cross. The floors were white and brown terrazzo. Behind us and above us was a wide and deep choir loft with a monstrous organ with hundreds of brass pipes and a passageway which led up to a set of winding steps to the bell tower. The church was truly glorious and I could tell by Sarah’s reaction (eyes as wide as the white wafers of bread in the sacristy) that she was awed.