Maggie Ok we’ll be back right after lunch. You have the number to the restaurant in case
anything happens.
Mike yeah, don’t worry if ben and carol act up I’ll slap ’em around a little bit. Just kidding dad.
Jason let’s go honey
Mike divorced, boy
Ben yeah
Mike you know ever since he started punishing me I’ve had my doubts about the man
Carol now hold it, ok? This could be a mistake. I just can’t believe this about our
wonderful dad.
Mike c’mon carol the evidence is right here!
Ben yeah!
Carol well it could be a big mistake.
Mike carol, it’s obvious
Ben yeah!
Carol what’s obvious?
Mike that dad’s divorced. We’re living a lie. You know I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if dad
Wasn’t his real name.
Carol I just, I can’t believe this. Especially after all the times he’s told about their huge
wedding and how grandpa Ed fainted when he got the bell.
Ben and how it was the happiest day of mom’s life
Mike and how dad toasted her and said that she was
Mike and carol the only woman he ever wanted to marry.
Ben yeah
Mike I mean if he lied about this, then
Carol well, we don’t know that he lied, he just didn’t tell us
Mike same thing
Carol not exactly
Mike well it was a lie last year when I cut school and didn’t tell them
Carol no no, see that was different. Now see, when they asked you how school was you
said “extremely pleasant”
Mike which it was
Carol no , it wasn’t
Mike it was too
Carol it wasn’t
Mike it was.
Carol wasn’t
Ben what’s your point?
Mike my point is if dad kept this divorce such a big secret what else didn’t he tell us? and how
do we know that what he did tell us was the truth? I mean we already know the wedding
toast was a lie. so how well do we really know this man?
Ben I’ve known him since I was a kid.
Carol mike, you’re getting carried away
Mike oh I am? Well listen to this, I think that if he was married before it probably means he
had another wife.
Carol brilliant
Mike and if he had another wife it probably means that he had other kids
Ben oh no.
Mike and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were living somewhere on long island.
Ben man, dad wouldn’t want to live far away from his kids
Carol what kids?
Ben the ones he goes and visits when he says he’s gonna get a haircut
Carol ben
Ben nobody gets a haircut as often as dad.
Mike this is true.
Carol mike
Ben I got it. Dad’s other wife cuts his hair while he plays with his kids! So they couldn’t live far
away. I bet right on this street. Maybe they come over here when we’re at school. And wear
our clothes! And play with our stuff! That’s why my room gets so messed up!
Carol you’re crazy. And mike, you’re worse. I mean I can’t even believe I’m related to. . . .
That’s it! It all makes sense. It’s true!
Mike what?
Carol dad did have kids with his first wife. At least one. And when they split he kept that
child and when he met mom they swore an oath never to tell him that he was the painfully
slow half brother of me and ben!
Mike so who is it?
Mike ahh, hhaha look at this!
Carol what did you find?
Mike it’s a picture of dad’s first wife
Carol let me see. Well how do you know it’s his first wife?
Mike it’s the only woman’s picture we found after an hour of looking.
Carol so?
Mike so? Look at this, it’s even signed. To my dear Jason. I know a place. Love, Petula.
Ahhh
carol you sure don’t look like your mother.
Mike ok I just say, we gotta find out more about this woman
Carol well where else do we look?
Mike well you know, if I were dad and I wanted to hide the mementos of some tragic mistake, I
know where I’d stash them
Carol well where?
Mike what’s the one room in this house that we’re not allowed to hang out in?
Carol their bedroom
Mike the other one.
Carol not dad’s office
Mike well, I guess we know who the smart one in the family is now
Ben hi
Carol yeah, I guess we do know who the smart one in the family is
Ben thanks, but I haven’t found anything yet. Most of these are dad’s patient files and
They’re locked.
Carol: oh ben! You’re getting peanut butter all over dad’s stuff!
Ben so I’ll lick it off.
Carol: Ben, why are you eating that anyway?
Ben: when I get bummed, I get hungry
Carol well I don’t want any part of this because it’s wrong, okay? I’m gonna go ransack
their bedroom.
Ben you know mike? I’ve been thinking. I don’t think dad ever did get divorced.
Mike no?
Ben: I think that book was all a big joke I mean the people that gave it to him were all
doctors. You know what nutty guys they are.
Mike: yeah, but I found a picture of his first wife and get this, her name was petula and she had
a fake mole painted on her face.
Ben: wow!
Mike: yeah, I’ve seen it!
Ben: I need another sandwich
Mike hey hey hey, what’s this?
Ben what?
Mike oh no!
Ben what?
Mike carol, look what we found
Carol what?
Ben another stupid wife
Carol you don’t know this woman was married to dad
Mike then why did he hide it?
Carol well I don’t know. I ‘m just saying that I don’t want to jump to any conclusions
without a complete search
Ben please carol, stop looking before you find any more wives!
Carol mike, will you help me down with this box
Mike yeah, man where did dad get all of these clothes? What’s he doing with all these sweater
vests?
Ben he probably gets father’s day presents from his hundreds of other kids too.
Mike hey look at this. My first issue. This is when from when mom started working at
Newsweek.
Carol oh wow, she saved this from 1969.
Ben mom saves everything. Cards, letters, mike’s first C.
Carol guys, guys, there’s something very strange about this. Year: 1969. that was the
year dad supposedly did his internship in phoenix.
Mike so?
Carol so the second year of mom and dad’s marriage
Ben the year they lived in the trailer park and ate beans all the time
Mike so what?
Carol so how could mom be in New York working for Newsweek and be in phoenix eating
beans at the same time, hmm?
Ben I need another sandwich
Carol what else is in here?
Mike just the usual stuff. Baby pictures, first flowers, a charm bracelet.
Carol an old letter to mom
Mike ooh ooh. Read it.
Carol no! we shouldn’t
Mike c’mon
Carol it’s from Grandpa Ed dear Margaret Catherine in all the confusion of the past few
weeks I haven’t found the time to tell you that your mom and I love you very much. There’s
no reason to lose heart just because that ex-husband of yours turned out to be a lunkhead.
Mike so that means mom was divorced too. Good thing ben wasn’t in here. He’d be eating
the furniture.
Ben (burp)
Maggie hi guys
Kids hi
Carol where’s dad?
Maggie oh, we split up. For the afternoon.
Kids ohh
Maggie he dropped me off and then went for a haircut
Ben argghhhh!
Jason hi honey
Maggie hi, oh I thought you were getting a haircut?
Jason I did
Maggie it doesn’t look like it
Jason of course it doesn’t . that’s why they charge so much. Where are the kids?
Maggie oh well they’re all sitting side-by-side on the couch. Jason it’s eerie. They aren’t
yelling. They aren’t fighting. They aren’t even watching TV.
Jason this is a bad thing? Yo Rambo.
Ben hi, what’s the name of your barber?
Jason uhh, Linda.
Ben not petula with a fake mole.
Jason no
Ben yeah right?
Maggie Ben, don’t eat too much. You’ll spoil your appetite.
Ben oh, not a chance
Carol well why don’t we just ask them about these divorces?
Mike carol, after everything we’ve learned here do you really think they’re going to tell us the
truth?
Carol well we gotta do something before Ben ends up with a harpoon sticking out of him.
Mike ok listen, guys, I’ve formulated a plan
Carol what?
Mike now when we do something wrong, only mom and dad don’t know quite what it is, they
usually get us into this conversation about other junk just to trick us into saying too much so
let’s just do that to them.
Carol they never do that to me
Mike well carol, that’s because you live a very sad, uninteresting and boring life. Now do you
want to talk about that or do you want to talk about this plan?
Ben the plan!
Carol yeah
Mike alright, ok now I’ll work on dad and carol, you work on mom
Ben who do I work on?
Mike losing weight
Mike dad, do you have a second to rap with me?
Jason you want to rap?
Mike yeah, is that the right word
Jason yeah sure if you’re Sammy Davis jr.
Mike nah nah you know what I mean. talk, chat, have one of our meaningful dialogues. Nice
haircut by the way dad. Uhh no no, you know what I mean. just a chance for the two of us
guys to get together to see how the heck we’re doing. I mean you’re my only dad right?
And I uh am one of your three only kids, aren’t I?
Jason so what kind of trouble are you in mike?
Carol mom!
Maggie hi honey. What’s up?
Carol nothing’s up. why do you think something’s up? I mean does there have to be
something up just because I want to come in here and talk to you? I mean I want to hang
out with you and I want to . . .
Mike so hey dad. Did you hear that I’m dating a new girl now?
Jason well mike you,re always dating a new girl. Because nobody will go out with you
twice.
Mike no no no, dad this one is special. Her name is petula.
Jason she wouldn,t be a barber would she?
Mike a barber? Why do you ask dad? Do you know any petula who’s a barber? One with, oh,
say a mole painted on her face?
Jason no. Ben mentioned it.
Mike oh I see.
Jason mike, are you enjoying this conversation?
Mike ok um, alright here it is. I’m having a little problem with my social life dad. And I
figured that a guy like you has probably dated around a lot.
Jason yeah, well it was a long time ago but uh, yeah
Mike yeah. You probably even went steady a time or two right?
Jason yeah.
Mike heck, you probably even married a few of em right?
Jason what?
Carol did you know that most divorced people never have to set the table?
Maggie what?
Carol well it’s a well known fact that they eat most meals hunched over a sink.
Maggie oh carol.
Carol you wouldn’t think it was so funny if you were divorced
Maggie well it sure would save me a lot of time in the kitchen
Carol well fine, duck the question!
Maggie carol, what question am I ducking?
Carol mom, how can I make it any clearer? Bet it feels weird eating at the table, huh?
Jason well that makes it unanimous. None of my children are making sense.
Maggie tell me about it. They’re either staring at me like I’m back from the grave or telling
me interesting facts about divorced people.
Jason well there’s something up. Mike was just asking me how many times I’ve been
married and I . . . wait a minute. They know! Oh look! Just like I told you! They’ve been
into everything down here. They even found the stocking you gave me for the intern’s
comedy review.
Maggie that’s not mine.
Jason sure it is. Mike, carol, Ben.
Maggie no I wear tall. This is petite.
Jason we’re getting off the subject here. All right kids, your mom and I want to talk to
you.
Carol I’ll bet!
Mike we’re listening.
Maggie Jason, I’ll handle this. Umm, I, um.
Jason I’ll handle it.
Ben If this is going to take a while, I’m going to call for a pizza.
Jason sit down Ben. Now, your mother and I were married in 1968.
Mike now c’mon dad we already know that weren’t even living together in 1969.
Jason well yes.
carol and we know you were divorced
mike to somebody named Petula
Maggie who?
Jason I don’t know.
Carol and we know that you got divorced too.
Mike mom, don’t try to deny that you were married to someone your dad called a lunkhead.
Maggie that’s right. The lunkhead’s your dad.
Jason thank you.
Ben that explains it all. I feel much better
Mike no no, that explains nothing
Maggie kids. This is, this is difficult to explain. But see your dad and I went through a
period where we thought it was impossible to have two careers and a marriage.
Jason it was. I was doing my internship in phoenix and your mom had the new job at
Newsweek.
Maggie yeah, and so we, we split up. Well when you spend your life living working for a
goal, it’s hard to give it up just like that.
Jason impossible
Maggie so we went our separate ways. It was the worst time of my life.
Jason me too. See, we didn’t disagree about anything. In fact, it got so at one point my
lawyer stood up in court and he blurted out “well why don’t you just save everybody a lot of
trouble and stay married!”
Maggie well we looked at eachother and realized that at once how stupid we’d been
Jason as well as what was really important
Maggie and the divorce never went through
Jason thank god
Mike alright, well then explain who this babe is.
Jason well this babe is petula clark. She was a popular singer in the 60’s and I was a
member of her fan club. Ok, president. For a very short time ok.
Mike see, I told you there was nothing to worry about.
Carol well why didn’t you tell us this before?
Jason well we weren’t trying to keep this a secret on purpose. It’s just that we were
waiting for you to be old enough and then by the time you were ben came along. And after a
while it just seemed the whole thing was ancient history. It really didn’t matter at all.
Maggie what matters is how much we love eachother and you. Each of you. Everyday of the
last 17 years.
Jason and I like to think that it’s because we came so close to making a mistake like that
the last 17 have been so good.
Maggie it made us learn the fine art of compromise. And we care enough to give each other
a little room and the right to his own point of view.
Jason and like I said at the wedding. You’re the only woman I ever wanted to marry.
Carol so the toast wasn’t a lie
Jason no
Ben so you guys split up just to get it out of the way?
Jason I couldn’t have said it any better myself Ben
Ben wow, I’m gonna have a family history that’s going to make Stinky Sullivan smell.
Carol well, I just think that that is just the most beautiful, most romantic, thing I have
ever heard. God bless you.
Mike look, I told them they were getting carried away.
Jason sure
Mike and I speak for all of us when I say that I am really glad you guys got back together
when you did
Maggie so sweet mike
Mike yeah, if you had waited one more year I’d have been carol
Jason maria flaggenhoffer.
Maggie excuse me
Jason yeah, I just remembered, maria flaggenhoffer. That’s who gave me the panty hose.
She’s a proctologist. Now.
Maggie fine. Honey, I’m not jealous.
Jason well alright. I just wanted you to know where I got them just in case. It’s a pretty
good story though.
Maggie I don’t care.
Jason no?
Maggie no, particularly when I see that she was a bit thick in the thigh
Jason oh no, not maria, she was . . uh well yeah she was 15 pounds overweight . what am
I saying? 25 pounds if she was lucky.
Maggie Jason! What’s passed has passed.
Jason good, yes
Maggie and from the look of her picture she looks like a nice person.
Jason oh yeah she was
Maggie a fun lady I guess
Jason oh yeah, she had a great sense of humor hahahaha yeah, she loved to laugh
Maggie and you gave her plenty to laugh at I’ll bet
Jason ahhh Maggie
Maggie oh you’ve got a lot of nerve
Jason Maggie! Oh c’mon she was 35 pounds overweight.
Maggie sure.