Occasionally in our own home if my mother was away.
And I’d hear him call whomever his flavor of the week was, and I’d hear exactly what he said when he asked her to come over—the little twat has me by my last thread. I need relief—and once again, it was my fault that my father was a philanderer.
Because I dared to make noise or ask for something or simply exist.
I dared to annoy him enough to want to fornicate with a woman who was not my mother.
“Did Lana say you’re a terrible father because of tonight?” Bea asks.
“Of course not. She never says such things. Even when she should.”
“Did you go out of your way to try to read it in her body language?”
That was rather pointed.
And correct.
“How many trips to the headmaster’s office and police station did you make as you were raising your brothers that you would ask that question?”
“Enough.”
“So that’s to be my fate when I’m in town.”
“Not necessarily. I know lots of families who never had to talk to the principal or the police. I think that’s actually more normal. And the guinea pig was almost the worst thing my brothers did. At least, on purpose. And then there’s Daphne, who’s spent a number of nights in jail because of activism, which is completely different from spending nights in jail because of busting through a private gate in a burger bus to try to make kids eat fried fish on a stick.”
“I never had run-ins with authorities when I was young. I suppose that’s one thing my parents did well enough for me. Put the fear of consequences into my bones.”
“But at what price?”
I take another drink.
That’s the killer question.
“To them, or to me?” I inquire back.
“Either.”
I lift my head to study the stars again. “I never wanted to be a father.”
It’s something I’ve said to myself, but never aloud to anyone aside from Lana, and to her, it was more of aso you’re getting rid of it, which, again—not my finest moment.
Yet here, in the dark, with Bea, I feel as though I must confess it.
For me.
“Do you still wish you weren’t?”
“No.” I shake my head. “My boys—even when they make me angry, when I have to fight how I was taught to parent in myown childhood—they are the best part of me. They’re my chance to do better in the world than I had done to me. And I find I’m not doing better. I’m simply doing different, and now they’re criminals.”
“They’re not criminals.”
“They’re well on their way.”
“They’re pushing to see how far they can go.”
“Lana would have seen through why they weren’t eating and realized they were plotting something before she’d finished a full bite of chicken herself. But they’re stuck with me as their primary parent this summer, and I’m oblivious to what they’re up to despite the hours we spend together, have spent together their entire lives, because I’m so afraid of being my parents that I’m inept in the exact opposite way.”
“They’re good kids at heart, Simon. Eddie looked way more guilty than my brothers ever did when Daph and I found him with the dog. They’ve had a lot of change this summer, but I think they’ll be okay.”
