Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [24]
I was furious. I called Tucker to find out what was going on. When I told him Monique was in our parking lot trying to set up Beth, he denied it.
“No she’s not. She would never do a thing like that.” Tucker firmly stood his ground while defending his girlfriend and her actions. Little did I know that he too had a recorder running, waiting to get what he wanted from me on tape.
It had become pretty clear to Beth and me that Monique’s intentions toward our family weren’t sincere. She and her friends talked about taking us down and making some money in the process. We both totally believed that her goal was to sell us out. Beth never wanted her in our home, for fear of something leaking to the press that would surely be taken out of context.
Tucker was always fighting with Beth about her refusal to let Monique come to our home. There was constant bickering between the two of them. And then one day, it all came to a head. Tucker was working for us selling T-shirts at our family-run souvenir shop in downtown Honolulu. He quit for one reason or another almost every other day. He was perpetually angry for reasons no one else could really understand. And then one day he came over with a nasty attitude saying he was done for good. I don’t really know what exactly caused him to quit that day. It could have been anything from a fight with Beth to our shooing away his girlfriend.
Because Tucker was a felon, it was hard for him to find steady work anywhere else. He was on parole, so I felt it was better to keep him close. I have always ridden Tucker hard to keep him in line. When he first came to Hawaii after getting out of the joint, he was actually really well behaved. Everything was “Yes, sir,” “No, sir” and “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am.”
Looking back, I see that Tucker had us convinced that he was a totally changed man when he first got out. And, for a short time, he was really great. That is, until those girls started coming around. Once he began dating Monique, everything started spiraling out of control. We told him from the start that we didn’t like her, that we both believed she was a bad person. I tell all of my children, “You are who you hang out with.” And it’s true. You become who you hang out with. And still, Tucker refused to break up with Monique.
Beth would get frustrated with his half-assed approach to doing things, and that sometimes caused an argument between the two of them. He’d do whatever we asked without a major fuss, but he’d always only do it halfway. If I asked him to sweep the floor, he’d forget to pick up the piles of dirt. If I asked him to water the plants, he’d leave the hose unraveled and on the ground instead of putting it away when he was finished.
Tucker was a good kid when he was a youngster. Up to the age of eleven or so, he got good grades, never missed a single day of class, and was never in any trouble. It was around this time that he started going back and forth between my place and his mother’s house. He visited her regularly over the course of the next couple of years. He’d go for a week or two and come back a totally different kid than when he left. I was shocked when I saw him for the first time after coming home from an extended visit with his mom. He had left a clean-cut young boy and returned two weeks later a petty thief with his fingernails painted black.
Beth and I began to notice random items showing up around the house that we both knew Tucker could never afford to buy—like a fog machine! The only conclusion we could come to was that he was stealing the stuff. Although I tried to talk to him about his behavior, the more I spoke to him the worse his attitude became.
As they got older, Tucker, Baby Lyssa, and Barbara Katie had each figured out how to play mom against dad. It’s a pretty common trait among children of divorced parents. Add stepparents into the equation, and you’ve got a recipe for constant conflict and drama unless all of the adults find a way to work together and in the children’s best interests—something I should have done with their mother, but didn