Nature vs. Nurture

I probably wouldn't have been as annoyed by the sound of the doorbell if I hadn't just gotten the football game on and sat down with a beer. With my wife and three daughters out shopping for homecoming dresses I had the rare opportunity to spend my Saturday watching any and every college game without interruption. Such an occasion deserved (at least in my mind) my full attention. I headed to the door secretly praying for the instant and painful deaths of all Mormons and door to door salesmen.

Preparing to get rid of my unwanted guest in a hurry I opened the door with a flourish only to have my bad mood get a lot worse.

"I don't suppose you've become a Mormon, have you?" were the first words out of my mouth as I perused my ex-wife for the first time in over 18 years.

To say Vivian was a little confused by my opening salvo would be a bit of an understatement as she simply stood there with her mouth open. I noticed a 500 series Mercedes in my driveway and the small boulder she was still wearing as a wedding ring and figured she had remained married to Dr. Gerry Spalding.

Vivian seemed to have recovered somewhat from her bemused state as she finally replied.

"No Thomas, I'm not a Mormon" she stated, looking uncomfortable as we both took the sight of each other in, "why in the world would you ask that."

"Well" I replied seriously, "it's about the only thing that could make this worse...why are you here Vivian?"

Vivian seemed suddenly unsure of herself and I took the opportunity to compare this latest version with the Vivian I had known for all those years. At 44 Vivian was still a beautiful woman, her long blonde hair now a stylish shoulder length and her figure now a fuller version of the lithe young woman I had fallen in love with my first year of college. The laugh lines that had always been around the corners of her mouth now seemed to point a little downwards and the green eyes that had originally captured me seemed a little sadder but other than that she was simply an older version of my first love.

"I was wondering if I could talk to you about Benjamin...?" Vivian ventured, her eyes meeting mine in a kind of quiet supplication. I noticed she was twisting her fingers and for the first time understood just how nervous she was about coming to see me.

"Why in the world would I want to talk to you about Benjamin after all these years?" I asked incredulously.

"Well he is still your son!" Vivian stated in a rush, as if trying to sell me on the statement. Her eyes dropped from mine as she saw the instantaneous burst of rage appear.

"My son!" I roared..."you have the nerve to come here after what you did to me and say that..." I was actually sputtering, flecks of spit coming out of my mouth as anger consumed me.

"I knew this was a bad idea..."Vivian mumbled, as she turned from me..."I just had to try..."

Amazingly I could hear my wife's voice in my head...my Allison who had taken me from the broken bitter wreck I had been and helped me to rebuild my life into something that I could be proud of...it was like she was standing beside me and calming me..."Talk to her...finish it."

Before Vivian could get off the porch I called to her..."Viv...wait...we need to talk."

She turned back to me as I waved her towards the open door..."Let's go inside and sit down..."

Vivian cautiously came towards me and through the door, taking in the ambiance of a middle class family home built around 3 precocious young women. I led her into the kitchen and started to make a pot of coffee as she sat down at the kitchen table.

"Still cream, no sugar?" I asked as I busied myself making our coffee. At her nodded assent I finished up and handed her a mug. Sitting myself across from her I got the ball rolling.

"So tell me what's going on..."

"Well" started Vivian cautiously, "As you probably know Ben has always been a handful but he's become much worse these last few years..."

I cut her off before she continued, "How on earth would I know that Ben is a having problems?...I have had no interest in you or Ben from the time you moved out when he was less than a year old to today."

Vivian appeared a little startled by my statement although why I had no clue. Between her and her wealthy Doctor boyfriend my access to Benjamin had been a battle I could not (and did not want to) win.

"I just thought you would try and keep up with what was going on in his life..."Vivian slowed to a stop, seeing by my expression that this tact was getting her nowhere...

"I just want to say how sorry I am for how I handled our break up" she tried again...going back to staring at her fingers still nervously twisting. "It was never my intention to hurt ..." she peeked up to see how I was handling this clear line of bullshit. Whatever she saw on my face seemed to convince her to start over again.

"Anyways, for the last few years Ben has been in trouble over a variety of things... theft, getting in fights, and lately drugs..." she sighed as if in preparation for what she was about to tell me..."Two weeks ago he got in a fight and beat another boy very badly...there were drugs involved and a weapon and...well... now that he is over 18, they want to charge him as an adult..." There were tears in her eyes as she looked back up at me..."Gerry has cut him off and won't even hire a lawyer to defend him...he says he deserves to be in jail for all the...the...the other things..." Vivian stopped and I offered her a napkin to dry her eyes...

"I know I have no right to ask you after everything that happened but I can't bear the thought of him in that awful prison, he's really a sweet boy...He's just..." I let Vivian slow to a halt...her breathing ragged as she tried to control her emotions...

Vivian looked at me, awaiting my response as I took a sip of my coffee...I stared at the wall briefly as I pondered what to tell her...

'Vivian, do you remember the movie "Trading Places"?" I asked looking out over the calming vista of my backyard...

Vivian was back to being confused as she replied..."You mean the one with Eddie Murphy? You used to make me watch it as part of our Christmas movie marathon...what does that have to do with...?" I raised my hand to stop her...

"Aside from being one of the greatest movies ever made there was a strong philosophical question at the heart of the movie..." I continued knowing that Vivian was more than a little bewildered as to where I was going with this...

"Mortimer and Randolph Duke had a bet about Nature vs Nurture. They wondered whether it was simple genetics or upbringing that enabled a person to be successful so they set up a little experiment to see which one of them was right."

I could see that Vivian was becoming more confused by the second so I thought I should bring a little focus to the story.

"Now those guys were billionaires so it was easy for them to set up that kind of experiment...for a normal guy like myself it would be almost impossible to set something like that in motion. Hypothetically speaking however, a normal guy like myself, in the right set of circumstances could arrange for an experiment of his own..."

Vivian's patience had obviously run out along with her last sip of coffee as she exclaimed "Thomas, what the hell are you talking about?"

I thought it best not to make eye contact as I continued..."Let's say a normal guy, deeply in love with his wife and excitedly awaiting the arrival of his first born child hears of a terrible, terrible rumor...one that seems to indicate that the woman he has spent the last 8 years of his life worshipping and building his life around was in fact having an affair with a doctor where she worked." At this I heard a gasp from Vivian.

"Let's say this poor sap refused to believe those rumors...believed so strongly in the strength of character of his wife that he would not accept this disgusting innuendo until the wife of said Doctor showed him transcripts and pictures proving that not only was his wife a duplicitous whore but that the child she was carrying was that of her lover and that...since she and her prick boyfriend couldn't get married until he finished arranging for a divorce from his present wife...she was planning on passing the child off as her husbands until she and her boyfriend could be together...the Doctor even laughingly mentioned getting child support.."

I looked over at a shocked and distraught Vivian and stared directly into her eyes as I said "Of course this is all hypothetical...people that shitty don't exist in the real world..." as Vivian began to quietly sob I continued...

"Now imagine this poor sap looks at the choices available to him and doesn't like any of them... what if this dumb son of a bitch just emphatically detests every avenue left open to him."

"Every night he comes home to a seemingly loving wife and watches her stomach grow and as her stomach grows his love for her dies. Day by day, inch by inch he feels his heart grow cold..."

I looked over at Vivian to see what she thought of my story but she continued to weep quietly, elbows on the table, her head in her hands.

"But then, in the midst of his agony a beautiful Christmas movie gives him an idea. Suddenly his miasma of sadness is pierced by a sense of purpose...and from that day on he moves towards his goal with a drive that surprises even him. He may not be as smart as a Chief hospital administrator (although between you and me Vivian, he did pay her way through grad school) or an ER physician but he was still pretty smart..."

"Let's say, hypothetically speaking of course, that he made friends with all of the nurses and staff who would work the hospital nursery and even the Neo natal care group...hell he might even be at hospital Christmas parties with them while accompanying his wife...he may see them numerous times as part of the birthing classes...he may even have met a few of them for coffee as a "Nervous dad-to-be" in need of support..."

"Well Vivian I don't need to tell someone as smart as you that a person like that, with the help of a vengeful Doctor's wife, could possibly get a chance to do something great...to prove at last the great hypothesis of Mortimer and Randolph Duke."

I think at this point Vivian began to get an idea of where this story was winding (I had mentioned earlier she was smart) and suddenly her weeping slowed and stopped.

"Suppose this great visionary then managed somehow to keep from his wife that she was literally tearing his heart from his chest every day as she defiled every single memory the couple had... doting on his support at home while planning to eviscerate him personally and financially as soon as she and her ass hat lover could arrange to be together."

"Once again Vivian, this is completely an imaginary tale...monsters like that were invented to scare small children...I'm sure neither one of us could think of someone so heartless, so profane that they would do this to someone they professed to love..."

Vivian interjected with sadness in her voice..."I thought I was in love...I completely lost myself in him and I didn't..."

Once again I stopped her with a quick shake of my head..."Shush now Vivian you're ruining the story...and I'm just getting to the good part now..."

"Well, our hero...driven by his singular scientific purpose...now had everything in place...he simply needed to get things started...fortunately for him his wife no longer cared for him at all or she would have seen the darkness that occasionally enveloped him and drove him down into deep depression...only his sense of scientific duty kept him going."

Vivian was now staring at me with a look akin to horror as I laid out my tale. Her hands no longer twisting with nervousness and her tears now lay dried on her cheeks as she waited in morbid fascination to hear the rest.

"Our hero was under a little pressure as things needed to happen quickly now...he soon found out however that some old wives tales just had no value...for instance you can feed your wife Chinese food 4 days in a row and she still may not go into labor a couple of weeks prematurely. Acupuncture however..." I saw a look of sudden recognition come over Vivian as her hand unconsciously moved to her stomach...

"At last, in the hospital for the "Happy Day" the husband waits patiently for the birth of his non-son...he had made sure to find out the sex of the baby. Even though his wife had preferred the sex of the child be a "surprise" he had experienced enough surprises for a life time."

"As someone who has worked in hospitals most of her life Vivian, you probably know that security was a lot more relaxed back then...our hero was almost surprised at how easy it all was...having arranged for a little celebration with joke Cigars and cupcakes for everyone involved in the birth, our hero was able to distract everyone long enough to allow his accomplice to get to work. Theoretically his helper could be a doctors' wife who felt that her inability to have children may have led to her scumbag husband knocking up a slut he worked with." Vivian noticeably winced at my description as I continued...

"Imagine the level of excitement our hero must have felt Vivian... he was about to complete Mortimer and Randolph's experiment at a much more basic level, changing out the newborn baby of two very well educated professionals for that of a 16 year old heroin addict...he was finally about to..."

It was the crashing chair that let me know that Vivian had fainted and although I may not have rushed right over to help her I did eventually get her back into her seat with a cold glass of water.

Although I wasn't sure that Vivian was completely with me at this point (her glassy, unfocussed stare and the repeating tic in her cheek were my indicators) this story needed to be finally told to its completion.

"As I was saying Vivian, our hero had finally achieved his ultimate goal. It should have been a moment of great celebration and for a brief moment it was. But then he made the mistake of looking into the room where he saw his soon to be ex-wife recovering from her 12 hour labor. A massive wave of affection and nostalgia washed over him and, just like that, he was done with it...the thought of taking away something that was so important to someone he had loved so much was suddenly too much to bear and he resolved to undo it all right then and there..."

"But...and Vivian you are going to want to hear this part because it is really important to this hypothetical tale...just as he was about to end his experiment something happened that enabled him to fulfill his destiny and set in motion events that have continued for 18 years until you arrived here today. Just as he was about to walk over to his wife and tell her everything he noticed a doctor in scrubs walk into the room from a different door..."

Vivian looked worried as I continued on;

"As he watched he saw the doctor walk over to the woman on the bed and give her a kiss on the forehead, the hero was back to being a poor sap as he watched his wife turn to her lover with pride in her eyes as the two of them shared the moment of the birth of their child..." I looked back at Vivian and saw that her eyes were squeezed shut as if she was trying to mentally undo history...

"At that moment Vivian, our hero was reborn. Like a phoenix from the ashes any feelings he had once held for his bitch of a wife were completely and irrevocably erased in a riot of fire. At that point his commitment to the legacy of the Duke Brothers was solidified and his path clear."

Vivian was staring at me with horror filled eyes as she at last found her tongue..."How, how could you do something like that to me Thomas...to my poor baby..." her look entreated me to explain to her so I did my best.

"Well Vivian when you are dealing with DNA on a baby you're talking 100%, 50% or 0%...I wanted the baby to be 100% our DNA, you wanted him to be 50% our DNA and he ended up being 0% our DNA. Really none of us got what we wanted." I smiled encouragingly hoping she could see my clearly sensible logic.

I could see that Vivian's brain was trying desperately to work its way through the many, many permutations created by my revelation. As I pointed out previously, other than morphing into a terrible person she was always very sharp. It only took her a few moments to get to the heart of the matter.

"The only way you could know the result of your experiment is if you know how both kids turned out...you just found out how Benjamin is doing..." she didn't finish her sentence, instead looking at my questioningly...

"Well, hypothetically speaking, the experiment didn't work quite the way our hero anticipated...turned out the 16 year old heroin addict's son was already set for adoption. Hypothetically speaking he grew up happily in a middle class family and is presently in his second year of college where he is hoping to end up in law school...if he follows through and becomes a lawyer than he turns out, in the hero's humble opinion, worse than Benjamin."

I don't think Vivian agreed with my take on the situation and I could see the wheels turning as she tried to think of a way to get what she wanted...

"Do you know where he's going to college?" She asked hopefully...

"Not a chance..." I said, "You want to put your DNA into a registry and see if he reaches out to find his birth parents you are welcome to...other than that you are never going to get another word from me...this is all hypothetical anyways," I concluded with a smile.

"Plus," I added "you have a son you've raised for the last 18 years. Let's not forget about Benjamin."

"Of course, of course" Vivian murmured as she slowly wandered towards the door...

Knowing how long her "loyalty" to me and our marriage had lasted once she got a look at something she considered better I had a strong feeling that Benjamin would soon be on his own...

Walking out the front door Vivian turned back to me..."Thomas, for what it's worth, I really am sorry...until you explained to me ..."

I didn't let her finish..."Vivian it's OK...I'd like to think that the last 18 years of fighting between you and Gerry while raising someone else's troubled child has made us even..."

Vivian began to respond to my guileless smile with one of her own before she thought through what I had said and her smile turned into a frown...before she could ask how I knew what was happening in their marriage I was already turning back to my TV and closing the door. Maybe I could catch the second half.