She stares at me, tears welling in her eyes. “I can’t kick him out.”
I reach over and squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to—I will. But you can’t give him a new key. If you do, I’ll change the locks again and call the cops on him and say he tried to attack me. You know he’ll be drunk or high if he shows up. That means if he tries to leave, and the cops are here, they’ll pop him for DUI. You want him in jail? Maybe he should go to jail and be forced to get clean and sober.”
“He might never come back,” she whispers.
I hug her, because I think I finally understand her motivation, even though it’s later in my life I stumble across a more likely truth. “Mom, if he’s not willing to get better when he has us and has every reason to try, then he’s not going to do it. Kicking him out will at least help you and me have peace. We cannot keep living like this. I’m worried that when I leave for college, he might hurt you one night, and I won’t be here to protect you.”
He hasn’t laid a hand on her—yet—but some of their more recent fights have turned pretty heated on his part, and he’s punched a few walls.
I already know where he’s staying during this latest series of disappearances, and I have a plan. Tomorrow, I’ll pack all his clothes after Mom leaves for work and drive them over to where he’s staying, and dump them.
At least he can’t drain their bank account. Mom cut off his access to that years ago, and was able to salvage most of the balance of the insurance settlement before he smoked it, or shot it up his arm, or drank it.
Or spent it on some whore.
She did that mostly because she knew she had to take care of me and keep a roof over our heads. It meant she could keep her job working for a local grocery store, which didn’t pay a lot, but she didn’t need a second job to make ends meet.
We had to be careful, but there was enough there to create a pre-paid college fund for me that meant I could get my education and not feel guilty about her future. She wisely invested in retirement funds, thanks to my father’s pre-accident tutelage about those kinds of things, and she got a life insurance policy and named me the beneficiary.
She took one out on Dad, too, for all the good it’ll do us.
Mom finally nods, crying. I cry with her. After she goes to bed, I change the locks and swap out the key on her keyring.
Late the next morning, when I knock on the door of the shitty apartment where Dad’s latest “girlfriend” lives, I realize it’s a different woman than I saw him with at the movies. He takes a never-ending string of low-paying jobs that will hire someone with a sketchy employment history and increasingly sketchy personal grooming habits.
She looks me up and down. “Who are you?”
“I’m Paul’s son.” I toss the first garbage bag inside. “I’ve got three more. They’re all his clothes. Congratulations, you now have custody of him.” I also shove an envelope at her. “Trespass warning. Locks have been changed. He shows up, he’s getting arrested.” I turn to grab the other bags from where I staged them on the stoop before I ever knocked.
“What?”
“What part of that don’t you understand?” I toss the second bag inside.
The paperwork is bullshit—I copied it from a legal website. I know it probably won’t stand up in court, especially since Mom and Dad are still married.
But he might not realize that. Especially if he’s strung-out or drunk.
The woman’s already ripping open the envelope to read the paperwork. “Hisson? I didn’t even know he had a kid.”
Yeah,thatmakes me feel better. “Terrific. He’s got a wife, too, if you weren’t aware of that. They’re still legally married. But feel free to tell him I’ve been telling people he’s dead for years. Because I have.”
I grab the last two bags and heave them in. “He shows up at the house, he’s getting arrested. I’ll also tell them he’s fucked up, and they’ll add a DUI to his charges. So whatever you have to do to convince him to forget he ever had a wife and kid, I suggest you do it. He’s your problem now. Have a nice life.”
I turn to leave, almost expecting her to call after me, but she doesn’t. I hear the door shut and when I get in my car, which was Mom’s old one before she got a new-to-her one last year, I glance back almost expecting the door to open again and for my father to race out to talk to me.
In fact, I realize I’m hesitating now, even though I’ve started the car.
This is his last chance to put in the bare-minimum to show me some sign of love remaining within him.
Nothing.
I wipe the tears from my cheeks as I drive away.
It wasn’t until years later, when I meet Liam and tell him about my history, that he offers additional insight I never considered at that time. Being a lawyer, he obviously has a different skillset than me.
While talking about our pasts, I once again stew over why Mom wasted so many years staying married to the man instead of moving on.
“Maybe she was worried about him demanding cash in the divorce,” he says. “Maybe she stayed married knowing it would financially hurt you if she filed. Because the settlement was in his name. He could have claimed it wasn’t a marital asset, but a personal one, and a court likely would’ve sided with him. Not to mention the attorney fees it would have chewed through. By leaving everything alone, he couldn’t touch the finances the way she had it set up, and she didn’t have to pay him anything.”
