2
JASON
My father is doing his best to get close to me and I should appreciate it, but it feels like I just can’t. I’m still pissed off.
I don’t think this feeling will ever pass.
I’m mad at him, at the world. Sometimes I surprise myself that I’m angry even with my mom, who of course, I shouldn’t be. It’s irrational, I realize.
It’s not her fault what happened, but I can’t seem to forgive her for abandoning me.
I can’t carry a grudge with someone who is no longer here, and so I take it out on him, even if he is not responsible for her death, but he’s the only one left and I don’t have anyone else to hate.
He’s the one who got me started in music. I was maybe four years old when he put his guitar in my hands.
That was our way of communicating, seeing as he was never very good at the traditional method of using words.
My mother would watch us, smiling to herself. She was always smiling. I never saw her unhappy, not even once. He didn’t seem like such a bad father as long as she was there to watch over everything—to make sure we were communicating, that he showed interest in me and forced himself to be present.
My mom told me about Dad’s experience growing up in his family, the life of solitude that he lived until the time they had met.
She wanted me to comprehend that it wasn’t all his natural character, but I was too young to understand that then, even if she did try to explain it in simple and loving terms that not all families are the same and sometimes mistakes are made, but that it doesn’t mean one can’t make a change for the better some day. And she believed that my father was better.
I’m not so convinced.
One ordinary morning when she didn’t open her eyes, Dad fell to his knees, hands in his hair—broken with the desperation, the scream he wasn’t able to suppress.
I remained in silence behind him and watched him sink into obscurity, instant by instant.
I was the first one to realize that she was dead. It had been months that she was sleeping downstairs to avoid climbing the stairs to go to her room. We had set up a bed in the living room where I could stay next to her on the couch. I would stay up watching her most of the night.
We knew they were her last weeks, and I didn’t want to leave her even for a moment. I wanted to watch over her, to be there in case something irreparable happened.
That damned night, however, I was so exhausted that I just passed out and when I woke up, she had simplygone.
There was nothing I could do; but I wasn’t able to say goodbye, to hold her hand and tell her how much I loved her.
From that moment everything has only gotten worse and there has never been love in our family, no smiles, no light. All this has been going on for five long years.
Now he wants to make it right and I’m obligated to give him a chance, even if I’m not sure he deserves it. I have to do it for him and for me because we are all that is left. I have to do it for her too. She never would have wanted this for us.
I push open the door ofOnly4You, the pub my friends and I opened up three years ago so as to give us some kind of income after our dreams of becoming musicians were laid to rest forever because of an accident.
We were a band at the beginning of our career, and were already famous in Ireland.
We had a new contract waiting to be signed, a promising future finally ahead of us—the big jump. But the road never is what you expect it will be, or how you hope it will be. And on one summer night, it all ended for us.
Brothers Liam and Neil had a car accident. Rain, Aaron’s sister and Neil’s girlfriend, was also in the vehicle. Neil died, Rain lost her memory and was unwell for a very long time, and Liam left town.
There were just the three of us left: me, Aaron and Patrick. We had to take care of Rain and try and put the pieces of our lives back together. Our dream was destroyed, the press was all over us, and so we decided to invest the money we had in this pub and a house for us to live in here in Howth, a city by the sea in the middle of nowhere, far from Dublin, with its chaos and its people.
We set aside our dream to have the chance of a quiet life full of peace for Rain, who took nearly two years to get better. I don’t regret our decision. We all found a reason to go on and now that Liam is back and has found love, I have to say we’re all doing pretty well.
The pub is already open and I head straight to the bar counter for another night’s work when Aaron calls me and asks me to meet him in the back.
“Hey, Aaron, need a hand?”
“No, I’m alright, I just wanted to…talk.”
