I classified this story as a romance, but it has a long, slow lead up to a fairly quick conclusion. Like most of my stories, there's no graphic erotic content.
As always, the resemblance of any character in this story to a real person is purely coincidental. The persons described as participating in sexual activities are all over the age of eighteen.
And I always appreciate constructive comment and feedback. Thanks for reading.
THE DISAPPOINTING SON
I was a disappointment to my elite parents from the moment of conception. They had wanted a single child and my mother had delivered a large, healthy, brilliant baby boy at age 32, to the delight of my 36 year old father. When mother discovered that she was pregnant again ten years later, she was horrified. She had a career; partner in one of Philadelphia's largest and most prestigious law firms. My father had a career; cardiac surgeon at one of Philadelphia's university hospitals. They should have been past all of that. Later, after I began providing evidence that I would not live up to my parents' expectations in terms of academic, athletic or career success, I once overheard my mother tell a friend that she seriously considered ending the pregnancy without even telling my father. She was prevented only by the fortuitous discovery of the positive test results by my maternal grandmother, who expressed her delight with sufficient enthusiasm as to make my father and my grandfather aware of my impending arrival before my mother could arrange to delete me from the gene pool.
My father accepted the pregnancy without enthusiasm, expressing a hope that the child would be a daughter so that he and my mother would have one of each. Given his career and the lack of participation in the raising of my older brother, the addition of a new child to the household would have only limited impact on his life. He'd just extend the term of the nanny's contract to deal with the new baby.
Mother handled my delivery with the same efficiency and detachment that she handled her cases. She set an appointment for a cesarean delivery on the Friday afternoon of a three day weekend. On Tuesday morning she was back at the office, a bit worse for wear, but proceeding as if there had been no interruption to her schedule.
It would be fair to say that as a young child I barely saw my parents. The nanny cared for me on a 24/7 basis, turning me over to my mother only on those rare Sunday afternoons when she and my father were home. They routinely left the house before I awoke and never returned until after I'd been put to bed. For all intents and purposes, the nanny was my mother.
Because of the age difference, I had equally little relationship with my older brother, David. Ten years is a large difference and by the time I was more than a toddler, he was a freshman in one of the Philadelphia suburbs' most prestigious (and expensive) private schools. We were little more than ships passing in the night.
Unfortunately for my parents, our nanny fell in love with a man and quit the job about the time I turned five. Rather than hire another nanny, mother and father turned me over to the care of the couple they employed as their chauffeur/handyman/groundskeeper and his wife, their cook/housekeeper, adding "keeping an eye on Richard" to their other duties for a small increase in salary. Mr. and Mrs. Parker were a middle-aged couple. Mr. Parker had retired after a career in the navy and the two of them had accepted their jobs caring for my parents' house and grounds. Childless, they lived in an apartment over the detached four car garage that was located on the estate that was our home. In effect, for the next thirteen years, they were more my parents than the two people whose genes I carried.
From a very young age, I liked making things. Early on, I'd build fortresses out of blocks or cushions off the furniture. As I grew older, I began to follow Mr. Parker around, watching him fix things on the property, riding the mower with him, helping (?) him wash the cars and learning how things worked. He was good natured about having a little shadow and extremely patient in teaching me to do things with my hands.
When I reached elementary school age, my parents enrolled me in the same prestigious and expensive private school that my older brother was attending. He was entering his junior year when I began first grade, so we didn't have much in common except the stupid uniform. To be honest, my parents should have saved the tuition and let me go to the local public school, which was quite good. I'd have done no worse and they wouldn't have dumped tens of thousands of dollars down a rat hole. But I had no voice in the matter. I was to be a prisoner of the school for the next twelve years whether I liked it or not.
In a school where anything less than an "A" grade was a badge of shame, I was a consistent "C" student. If the subject matter didn't interest me, I invested enough effort to get by, but not the effort necessary to excel. On those rare occasions where the subject matter did interest me, I buckled down and worked hard. On those (very) rare occasions when my parents showed enough interest to attend parent/teacher conferences, they always heard the same litany: "Richard is a very bright young man who doesn't exert himself or take advantage of his gifts."
My brother had been the class salutatorian, captain of the lacrosse team and president of his senior class. He'd left the school on his way to an Ivy League undergraduate degree followed by an Ivy League law school diploma and a clerkship for a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge, before joining my mother's law firm as an associate. About the time I was frittering away my junior year, my father introduced him to a woman who had done a residency under his direction. They struck sparks, moved in together after dating a few months and were married the summer before I graduated from high school. Needless to say, as the family disappointment my brother did not invite me to be part of the wedding party. I was fine with that.
The summer I turned sixteen changed my life in a good way, although redirecting it in manner that appalled my parents when they discovered what I was doing. That spring, Mr. and Mrs. Parker asked me what I planned to do over the summer. My parents had a beach house in Avalon, New Jersey where I could spend the summer, but I wanted to get a job. Mrs. Parker's brother, Bob Wilson, was a builder of very high end homes on the Main Line and she pulled some strings to get me a job as a gofer working for him. I was too young to allow to actually swing a hammer or lay block, but I could follow him around and run errands. It was fantastic training. I finished that summer even more determined to build things.
Before the following summer, I called Mr. Wilson and asked him if I could work for him again. I followed him around like a shadow, even attending meetings with clients, contractors and suppliers. I was learning a great deal about doing business in the construction trades that wasn't taught at that exclusive school I was attending.
Matters came to a head the winter of my senior year when my parents asked me which colleges I intended to apply to. They realized that with my grades the Ivies were out of the question, but surely some college would take me since I was certainly going to be paying full tuition.
I told them I wasn't planning on attending college the next fall. Once I graduated, I intended to go to work for Bob Wilson, learning how to build a high end house from the ground up. I'm surprised the ensuing explosion didn't register on local seismographs.
My parents told me in no uncertain terms that if I wasn't attending college in the fall, I was on my own. They gave me a choice - a college dorm room or a place of my own paid for by me without any support from them. I had until the end of July to decide.
So I decided. Bob Wilson agreed to hire me immediately after graduation, paying me at the same hourly rate he paid laborers. I found a small apartment over a garage not far from his offices. Using the money I'd saved from the last two summers as a down payment, I bought a used pickup truck so I could get to the job sites. And I began my new life in the construction trades.
