Van doren double decepti.., p.1
Van Doren: (Double Deception Series: PREQUEL), page 1
VAN DOREN
DOUBLE DECEPTION SAGA
BY
CHARLES ELLIOT
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Table of Contents
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 1
I
t was anyone’s guess as to how the dynamic of a neighborhood might shift when that gleaming black Cadillac—a 1990 Brougham—came rolling around the corner one autumn afternoon in 1991.
Woodstock was an old neighborhood in Portland, with a classic feel and idyllic quiet that permeated through the lives of the people who lived there. But something had stirred its serenity when that car came gliding underneath the shadows of large trees lining the streets.
An elderly man watering his garden suddenly felt the moisture pool underneath his shoes as he stood strangely transfixed by the sight. From the house across, he would have seen the curtains being pulled back as a woman peaked curiously around the gray draperies. She, in turn, might have seen the couple in the road pause at the sight of the car, with the woman involuntarily grabbing her husband’s hand.
A dozen such scenes were halted, its actors distracted from continuing. The car eventually stopped at a beautiful house that had been vacant for a couple of years, mainly because the property value had made it near impossible for anyone to afford.
But that had changed.
A firm hand gripped the estate agent’s sign, pulling it out of the grass where it was pitched at an odd angle. Duke van Doren shielded his eyes from the sun as he turned to look up at what would become his new home. He was an imposing figure, standing more than six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a chest inflated with pride. Any other man may have been content with the new venture. But Duke’s sneer didn’t seem to emulate the same kind of elation.
A woman climbed out from the car next. She was a delicate, willowy creature. Yet, her face had a certain hardened resolve that didn’t give off the same sense of fragility. What she lacked in frame, she certainly made up for in spirit. It gleamed in the depths of vigilant eyes that took in her new surroundings. She was the one to notice the social subtleties unfolding around them upon their arrival. With a faint smile, she nodded in curt acknowledgement to new neighbors who may have caught her eye, before hooking her arm through that of her husband’s. They walked into their new home, where their lives and leisures could be hidden from the scrutiny of others.
It wasn’t long before the gabled house with its old balusters and dormer windows morphed into something different. Renovations were soon started, which retained the vintage feel of the neighborhood and yet, breathed a new energy into the building. Even the garden reflected the touch of a homebody who was not about to let the Portland climate dictate her gardening skills. It became readily apparent that the van Dorens were an influential family. But it was a wealth that wasn’t native to the city. Most suspected, but hardly really knew, that the couple had relocated from a far more luxurious life somewhere in a more cosmopolitan area.
That suited Duke van Doren well. He had every intention of maintaining a low profile. Attention was the last thing he wanted to attract. His history was filled with the accolades that any man who valued power might esteem. But power and influence both came at a price. He had been a decorated veteran of the Cold War and a renowned, often ruthless, politician. Both had the potential to gain him equal amounts of popularity and contempt. He was forced to keep up appearances as a businessman, deluding the public knowledge of his success.
For Duke, the decision to move had only made sense. There was already enough scrutiny felt from certain circles regarding his decision to move from Washington DC to Oregon State. He was under no false impression that his actions weren’t being watched. If he was to preserve what he had already built, then he didn’t need any more eyes on him.
In a life separated from his public image, his secret business affairs had brought him into contact with a dark political underworld where he became inextricably tangled in the trade of illegal arms. His name was on the lips of a number of seedy criminals. And even in the government, he had enemies who suspected him of his illicit dealings. Duke cared little for the judgment against him. It was only physical evidence that could make such judgments count. Yet, he was no fool as to the consequences. He could not afford his enemies an opportunity to gain any leverage over him.
So instead, he chose to remove himself from the immediate scrutiny of people he regarded as weaker men. He would fall under the radar, becoming a suburban man providing for his run-of-the-mill family. He would not surrender his business. It needed him to survive. In fact, he was the business itself. It moved with him, and he would reestablish it wherever he went—even if it was a remote corner of the country—far from the eyes of any political watchdogs.
The stir caused by the new neighbors soon faded in importance in the minds of those in the community. Life went on, with everyone knowing as little about the van Dorens as when they first moved in.
An entire year passed, and finally it appeared as though the van Doren couple were set to start a family.
Cassandra van Doren bore her husband a legacy—two sons. Cassie, as she was affectionately called by her family, often thought to herself that she had never seen her husband happier than the moment he realized he would be a father. It filled her with a certain glow as well. Among the new acquaintances they had made, Cassie was often seen as a gentle and subservient soul who only wished to be a good wife and to make her husband happy. But Cassandra had more nuances to her character than her husband ever did. Duke had become prone to absurd pretense to obtain clout and hide who he truly was.
Even while acting none-the-wiser, she knew that his apparent joy at fatherhood merely stemmed from an opportunity to feel in control of something once more. Or rather, somebody—even if it meant that it would be his own blood.
It had been a hope that was left shattered many times after a number of failed attempts at pregnancy. She alone carried the secret of their struggle, shared with her in confidence by one doctor who noticed the apparent power dynamic of their relationship. The truth was that her husband had consistently shown a low sperm count that drastically lessened their chances of becoming parents for the past five years.
He wouldn’t dare blame her. He wouldn’t think of himself as the problem either. Not ever.
Thus, in knowing how fragile a man’s ego could be, she decided to withhold the information from him. She knew that Duke’s confidence hinged off of his belief that he was infallible in some way. She wanted him to maintain that because his reputation depended on it. Duke van Doren was only a force of nature if he continued to believe it.
When the arrival of twin boys was seen as a certainty, she merely took it as a miracle better not questioned.
Duke was a stolid man with a rigid and unwavering belief system. He had a clear idea of the type of men he wanted his sons to be. Through the trials of war, the ruthless competition in business, and power plays in politics, he was hardened to such a degree that he firmly came to believe that only the fittest would ever survive in the world. There was thus no question in his mind of the upbringing his sons needed. They needed to be molded into true paragons of manhood—formidable individuals who could hold their worth in order to carry forward the van Doren legacy.
Yet, those beliefs somewhat tainted his outlook on reality, and he marked the birth of his sons as the first great trial that they had to endure.
Cory was born first. His birth was normal and uncomplicated. He came into the world with a healthy set of lungs and flaming temperament that alrea
However, Joshua’s birth was not as effortless. Due to minor birthing complications, Cory’s brother was born much later. He didn’t let loose the same echoing cry that his father seemed to view as the first impressionable mark a man leaves on the world. Mostly limp, and with barely audible mumbles escaping his throat instead, he was a cause more of concern than of celebration. A seed of contempt had already been planted in Duke van Doren’s mind.
It didn’t help his case that he fell ill in the hospital with pneumonia either, despite being relatively healthy at birth. When it was labeled by the nurses as a hospital-acquired illness, his father merely thought that Joshua was clearly not strong enough for what the world had to throw at him. Joshua’s initial weakness and susceptibility to pneumonia, compared to his twin, was due to twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome.
No one quite understood Duke’s reaction at the time. Due to some unachievable and misguided ideal held for others, the event marked the beginning of Duke’s severe disdain for his second-born son.
His mother, on the other hand, was a born nurturer who was deeply affected by Joshua’s illness. She coddled the boy, hoping that contact comfort and an abundance of motherly warmth would imbue Joshua with the strength he needed to persevere. Yet, Duke instantly saw it as a path for his son to become meek and soft in temperament. A boy needed to be raised by his father to truly stand the test of life. Who else would teach them how to conquer over the many burdens of manhood?
Regardless, even he couldn’t prevent his wife from smothering Joshua. The more fervently he pushed to harden the boy, the harder she appeared to push back—willful as women were prone to be, in his opinion.
It was an easy assumption for him and the only one he was willing to make. The truth was that he never understood his wife. Certainly not in the way she possibly understood him. Duke van Doren’s relationships with other women had always been complex, to say the least. Like many men, the estrangement to their nature grew from his first schema of a woman—which was almost entirely encapsulated in the image of his mother. Their empathy, tenderness, and more sensitive qualities frightened him. He felt that they concealed something deeper. After all, it was with these same qualities that his mother manipulated within his own father until it eventually brought him to ruin. Duke knew his mother had used those whiles to sway his young and impressionable mind as well. Yet, he managed to escape into the idle simplicities of childhood and his own stubbornness as a teen to avoid becoming susceptible. The consequence, however, left him without an understanding of the other sex, and per implication, his own wife.
It only meant that Cassandra had her own agenda for choosing a husband in a man who may have been utterly inattentive to her desires. But what could it be?
Learning to become a better husband was perhaps beyond Duke at the time. But she believed fatherhood had the potential of bringing out his better qualities.
Unfortunately, if anyone from outside had to judge, being a parent was an equally challenging line for Duke to walk. Still, from his own point of view, he may have entertained a different notion as to his capabilities. It was very likely that he never saw himself as being overly strict, nor even restrictive of his sons’ freedoms. That just happened to be his default. From the way he acted, it didn’t appear as if he once considered whether he was perhaps too heavily involved in ensuring that they became carbon copies of who he himself was.
Instead, others were left to shoulder the impact of his temper and mercurial nature. He hardly noticed his sons wincing at his acerbic remarks, or his glaring disapproval. He acted without the slightest consideration of the reaction he would receive in return. Tears were left to dry in the heat of his scorn. Emotions were trampled upon if they didn’t embody an assertiveness. And hardly a day went by without the cacophony of his shouts shaking the foundations of his home that quaked with conflict.
Again the van Dorens attracted a strange curiosity from their neighbors, who wondered what truly transpired under the rule of its patriarch.
Duke’s deluded and unreasonable perception of the world didn’t make things easier for his sons while they grew up.
Duke instilled the twins with many emotions that their young minds were perhaps too young to understand. Fear was one of them, arising from his authoritarian treatment of them and the brutal punishments he doled out in the face of their failure or disobedience.
Over time, the twins experienced the belligerent shifts in their father differently. Cory, who was the favored son, almost came to see his behavior as a misshapen form of love. The simplicity of what his father wanted, as opposed to what he didn’t, was an idea he grew receptive to. It hardened him as well. Reward or punishment merely relied upon how well one rose up to meet the challenge.
Cassandra watched it unfold. The twin’s mother wondered whether it hadn’t simply been a matter of timing that made the boys react so very differently to their father’s brutality. Cory seemed to please his father just enough to win a small slice of his approval—something that both of the boys secretly craved. Everyone wanted to win the favor of those in power. It was not because of their adoration of him, but simply because it kept his wrath at bay.
Joshua’s experience was not one of seamless adaptability to his father’s expectations. For a mind just shaping itself around the ways of the world—in which he was meant to discover his own sense of autonomy and willfulness—he found that he could never please his father, no matter how hard he tried. His brother, who succeeded, especially in more physical pursuits, would always be the benchmark—a mark either missed or attained. Instead, Joshua was always subjected to shame, doubt, and a guilt over not doing things the way he was meant to.
His father became a figure he feared, instead of someone he revered.
One too many slights on his pride made Duke label his second son as a disappointment, and made a bully of him instead of a figure his son could look up to. Joshua’s mother tried protecting him as much as she could, but the scars ran far deeper than even her tender heart could see. She made her own stance firm, however, sending a clear message to her husband to not overstep the lines of his parental power.
Cory sympathized with his brother, but felt driven to the same anger every time his brother’s failure at something resulted in their father's frustration. Mostly because it was a wrath they both felt at the end of the day. Often, he wondered why his brother couldn’t simply rise up to the challenge. His father’s ideas started to indoctrinate him, and in his own way, he became a bully much like his father. It hardened him to his brother’s suffering, so much so that by the time they were teens, they were also practically strangers.
Part 2
U
nbelievably, the oppression that prevailed in the van Doren household appeared to reach a sort of Golden Age when the boys transitioned to high school. The torments of childhood could not hold up against the tortures of adolescence. The impressionability and malleable nature of the twins' young minds gave way to the confusion of being teenagers, creating a new sort of vulnerability in the boys that would even more drastically alter their personalities. However, each reacted differently to the new challenge set to them.
Handpicked, as it appeared, as his father's protégé of manhood, Cory could show little resistance to the forceful alpha mentality with which Duke wanted to inoculate his son. From an early age, Cory had felt foreclosed to adopt this mindset himself. Yet, being milder in his tempers and emotional reactivity, he never managed to achieve the mercurial moods of his father. Duke’s influence worked its way on his spirit regardless, albeit in other ways. Cory soon learned to easily distance himself from emotions that held him back, or endure through personal hardships on a sort of unwavering grit alone. Above all, he would refuse to show meekness or uncertainty in front of others. That, his father had said, was the greatest danger to a man’s status. An irreparable image.
