CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Each of the old steps on our front porch creak as I land on them in my hurried attempt into the house. I skip a few, using the wooden handrail to pull myself higher.
I spent the few short blocks of my walk in complete introspection unlike anything I’ve ever done. Even more than the semester I took an Intro to Psychology class, and the professor made us spend an entire unit analyzing our childhood. I had quite a few issues to work through, if you hadn’t guessed.
But today is different.
Today all of that self-help mumbo-jumbo worked. I’ve spent the last twenty-four years promising myself it didn’t matter or bother me that my father didn’t want me. But that was all a lie because this afternoon I do feel great.
Splendid.
The best I’ve ever felt my entire life.
My father is an asshole.
Like a huge self-centered manipulating, delusional, asshole. There is no other way to describe him.
And that’s not my fault.
I wasn’t needy or ugly as a baby. I didn’t have the wrong blood flowing through my veins. It wasn’t me who didn’t live up to his standards. It had nothing to do with me.
My father is an ass.
I shrug, stopping at the front door even though no one can see me. I’m not going to waste any more of my precious time worried about it. Today I’ve lost an entire extra person made from self-doubt and anger.
I’m ready to live.
After I have a chat with Grant, that is.
The heavy wooden front door bangs on the wall as I shove it open. A piece of paint flakes off and floats to the ground reminding me I want to ask our landlord if Drew can repaint it before the summer ends.
My tummy clenches in anticipation, but I soldier on. This conversation can either go very well or very badly but either way Grant and I will figure out our issues today.
Right now.
“Honey, I’m home!” I call the word out to the open expanse but no one responds. The first floor is eerily quiet for six p.m. on a Wednesday night.
Just like any good San Francisco resident I brought a jacket with me this morning but didn’t need it on the way home. I throw the fleece over the back of a dining room chair and my eye catches on a folded up newspaper placed on the edge of the table.
We don’t subscribe to the newspaper, but there it sits with a bright green Post-it note stuck to the front. I lean over to get a better look and read the note hastily scratched in black pen.
Saw this and had to pick up a copy. Thought you’d be interested. ~ Drew
I rip off the Post-it note to see a picture of the Del Fray warehouse underneath. On top of the picture a bold headline states, “Local businessman saves community jobs.” I quickly read through the short front-page article detailing Grant’s family business, which recently purchased the plant and has decided to keep the jobs at a local level. The write-up makes Grant sound like this magnanimous man who out of the kindness of his heart decided to save jobs rather than ship them overseas. For a second I bristle at the way the article has been written like we all owe him something, but then I realize we do.
Grant could have easily brushed it aside and moved his jobs overseas like the original plan. But he didn’t. I don’t know how he pulled it off or what made him change his mind, but he did. And in doing so he helped out more people than he realizes. The family-owned mom-and-pop diners who provide lunch to the people who worked in the factory, Travis can stay in school and finish his education, the product supplies the factories uses. The trickle-down effect of his choices will help people beyond the hundred or so jobs he saved today.
I snatch the paper off the table and run upstairs, the old steps groaning. Grant’s bedroom door is closed but I don’t let it stop me. The door swings open and Grant sits up in bed obviously caught off guard. At first I worry I caught him doing something bad for real this time, but he’s fully clothed with a phone to his ear.
I hold the paper to my chest and mouth the words, “Is this true?”
Grant nods his head at me his eyebrows pushed together, but a smile forms on his face. “Yes,” I assume he’s talking to me until the sentence continues, “I can be there tomorrow, Finn, but my night just got a little busy.”
My heart beats and grows with each passing second until I resemble the Grinch, whose heart grew three sizes in a matter of minutes. The bullshit we’ve been dealing with for the last two weeks doesn’t matter anymore. I have a shitty dad, a mom in jail, and enough emotional baggage to fill a 747, but for whatever reason the man in front of me still likes me. Half the time I don’t even like myself, yet Grant does. We couldn’t be a more mismatched pair, but we work. For weird unknown reasons our pieces click together.
Grant does not have time to talk on the phone with Finn while I am having an emotional breakthrough. You can’t pay for this kind of therapy. Jumping on the bed I push him down and straddle his hips. The paper crinkles in one hand while I use the other one to grab the phone from him.
“He’ll call you back, Finn,” I say hitting the red button on his smart phone and tossing it on the nightstand beside his bed. It bounces off and clatters to the floor.
