Left for Garbage

spankings, and an innocent kids’ game with a flashlight in his sister’s bedroom has now become sexual abuse.
    I refuse to believe that the incredibly decent boy I’ve always known , who grew up to be a son to be proud of, is a pervert. I refuse to believe this because I know my son, and also because if it were true, then it means there is something … something monstrous, sick and unnatural in Margaret and me which has been passed down to our children. It would mean that anything is possible, and if that were true, then Deeley is, as some say, better off where she is, and that I will no more believe than these disgusting tales about my boy.
    God knows , as do I, that the stories about me are lies, so why should I buy the ones about my son? For that matter, why should anyone? Denise will say anything - and Salvatore … and yes, Margaret, too … will encourage her to.
    Seel’s not an idiot; he’s much smarter than me. W hy would he be so fervent and public in his support of his sister if he had some kind of unnatural relationship with her? He’d have to be insane to do that. I’m Denise’s father, too, and I’m trying here, I’m trying, to be fair to her along with my son, but its increasingly difficult. It seems that either way I go, and no matter what I say, one of them is heading for a disaster.
    Almost from the beginning I’ve been unhappy with the way Denise’s defense team has conducted themselves , and now that I understand the defense they have chosen, I’m sick. As Margaret points out, they serve Denise’s interests and no-one else’s, and I know that’s right for my daughter, I do know that, but my God, what they are saying, what they are going to say … I’m afraid, I am. What happens after this for me, for Seel, for Margaret, even for Denise? How far down the road to hell can you travel before there is no turning back? And then maybe there are other things, things I don’t want to know or understand, like why the police asked Seel to take a paternity test. Surely they could not ask for such a monstrous and humiliating test on Denise’s innuendos alone? I’ve overheard them say that they wouldn’t believe Denise if she told them her own name, so why …? What is it they know or think they know?
    Early on , when I heard these insinuations and began to finally grasp what the police and later the general public thought about my family, I wanted to die. And I tried to. I drove to that dirty motel and swallowed some pills which made me pass out before I could shoot myself, and all that came of it was waking up in an asylum and giving the media a new ugly story about us. After that we all had our assigned roles: there was Denise, the lying baby killer; Monster Maggie, the matriarch; weird, possibly perverted, Seeley; and me, Keith, the man so weak and so much of a born loser he couldn’t even manage to successfully kill himself.
    I get it. Hell, I’d even laugh if it weren’t me. We’re a kind of low-rent Adams family reality show.
    Still , my suicide attempt, for all the scorn it brought down on me, was helpful, at least for me, because the people at the hospital were very kind to me. They made me to see that I can’t live my life, or end my life either, because of what other people do or because other people, like strangers and Margaret, think I’m a lost cause. I have to learn to like Keith, like myself, and if I can do that a little bit at a time, then I won’t care so much what other people, and Margaret, do and say to me and about me.
    My health insurance had expired , so they couldn’t get me any aftercare, but they recommended I attend AA meetings after I got home since they are free and there is something there for everyone. I go twice a day. I even got a thirty day pin, and a lot of hugs and affirmation from that group.
    Margaret says it’s even more pathetic than usual , my AA meetings. She said, “Jesus, Keith, only you could be such a loser as to join AA when you don’t even drink. I mean, really, what will the press say? How much worse can you make this family look?”
    As usual where I’m concerned , Margaret misses the point. I don’t have to claim to be an alcoholic at AA to be accepted when I stand up and say, “Hi, my name is Keith, and I haven’t tried to kill myself for x amount of days.” They all respond with “Hi, Keith”, and at the end of every meeting, when they all say, “Keep coming back”, it makes me feel good. When I’m there I’m not