For the first time in many family dinners, I don’t feel worried or stressed because I’m still riding on the high of what a great time I’m having with Mikey. It meant a lot to me last week when we looked over my projects together. It was nice sharing that part of my life with someone outside of my clients. Even more importantly, it felt good not just to be appreciated by anyone, but to be appreciated by Mikey. I know we still have a few weeks of work left, but I’m already thinking about how I’m going to miss him when he returns to California.
As Dad and Miranda’s conversation settles, Conner scrapes his fork across the bottom of his plate to collect some scalloped potatoes. The sound hits my ear just the wrong way.
“Oh,” Conner says, as though he remembered something important, “what was that shit doing in the back of your car?”
Fuck, shit, fuck.
Before I left Kate’s house, I loaded up boards, boxes of screws, nails, and some other shit we either don’t need or that we bought the wrong sizes of at some point for the renovation. I’m planning on returning them to Home Depot on my way back to Kate’s place. Mikey said he’d do it, but I figured since I was already coming here, taking care of the errand would give him more time to spend at the house working on the ceiling repairs.
I certainly wasn’t thinking that Conner would have taken a peek and asked me about it in front of Dad.
“What kind of stuff?” Dad asks me, his fork and knife in his hands before him as he stops eating to wait for an answer.
“It’s just for this project I’m working on.”
“Another one of your projects?”
“No. Not related to that at all.”
“Then what is it?”
It’s almost like he knows what I’m up to, even though he can’t know anything. But it’s that sort of father’s intuition that seems to act outside of the boundaries of logic and reason.
“Scott?” he presses.
How can him just saying my name make me feel like he’s got me handcuffed to a chair and a light in my face as he demands answers for some crime I’ve committed? No wonder Mikey totally lost it when his dad was talking to him like that at dinner that night when he blew up and ran off. Moments like this make me want to fucking explode.
“I’m helping my friend with some repairs on her house,” I blurt out. “That’s it.”
He sets his silverware down and wipes his hands on the napkin in his lap, his face scrunched up in confusion. “Repairs on a house? What do you know about fixing a house?”
“A lot now.”
“Scott, please at least tell me you’re getting paid for this.”
“Why would I be getting paid? I’m helping a friend.” I won’t feel ashamed or let him intimidate me, not about this. Just like with my graphic design work, I’m proud of the work I’ve done. “We’re getting it done pretty quickly,” I add. “My friend Mikey and I work together really well, and I’ve learned a lot about houses… stuff I never really knew before. It’s kind of fun.”
“So, like, on an average day, how many hours do you dedicate to thisproject?” Dad asks.
“Um… maybe six or seven.” I’m intentionally misleading with that estimate, especially because I know if he heard eight or higher that he’d freak.
He purses his lips and tilts his head back. “How are you paying your bills?Areyou paying your bills?”
“I have a job that I keep on top of. That’s how I pay the bills.” My words are laced with anger and resentment. I’m liable to pull a Mikey at any moment. “I wouldn’t be doing it unless I could keep up with that.”
He sighs, and I hear the disappointment behind it, that same disappointment that’s so familiar to me. “Sometimes I think you’re just trying to make me worry about you. Is something wrong? Do you need help? Scott, I try to talk to you and help you when I can, but you have to talk to me.”
“I do talk to you, Dad. I don’t need any help, but for some reason, you always think I do.”
“You can’t tell me that there’s not some reason why you’ve taken on some construction job—for free—if there isn’t something going on. Are you rebelling against me? Are you trying to slap me in the face after everything I’ve done—?”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
”Why are you raising your voice?”
“You just barked down my throat about helping my friend out in my free time, which you have no control over, and that doesn’t affect my income at all, so excuse me for getting a little defensive. I’m sorry if it annoys me when you don’t let me live my life the way I choose.”
“I have never stood in the way of anything you chose.”
