“So then why didn’t you come to find me?”
“Oh, I did.Found you alright.You were standin’ not ten feet away from me in the diner in downtown Wisper.Your brother, he’d just gotten his driver’s license, so he took you for a milkshake.I didn’t know you were mine, but the man at the diner, he struck up a conversation with you boys, and he asked you how old you were.You said twelve.And then he got back to work behind the counter, but right before that, and I’ll never forget it, he said, ‘Tell your mama I said hello.How is Mervella?’
“I damn well knew that name and never met another with the same.I looked at you and your brother and counted back in my head.Math told me you were mine.And I saw the differences in your features.
“I wasn’t surprised Bax didn’t recognize me; he was so young when I knew him, but as soon as the man said your mama’s name, the little boy I’d known him as revealed himself to me.He had Mervella’s eyes, too, like you do, but the shape was different.His build was different, too, slimmer than yours, lankier, at least back then, but you were broader in the shoulders.And you’ve got my nose.”
He touched the bridge of his nose and smiled.“Yours is a little more crooked than mine, though, but still the same if you really look.And Iwantedit to be true.I knew the way I’d loved your mama and the way she’d loved me—I knew it had to have some great purpose.”
I shook my head.Yeah, the grand love story was great and all, but he seemed to be forgetting the more important part.“My nose is crooked because Noah Lee broke it.”
My father didn’t have anything to say about that.He stared at me, but pain showed on his face like a dark sky before a storm.
“You knew?You knew what kind of monster that man could be?”
He cleared his throat.“I did.”
“You knew you were my dad, and you knew he abused the woman you loved, but you… what?You just turned around and walked away?”
“I s’pose it seems that way to you.I tried not to.Sat out in my truck for hours, tryin’ to figure what to do.You and your brother left, and I followed you to the edge of town.Y’all turned left, and I turned right.At that moment in time, I was sober, but it never lasted.And seein’ you, hearin’ you speak and knowin’ in my gut you were mine… Well, it ended that particular bout of sobriety.
“I went home and drank until I forgot again.Forgot how much I loved your mama.Forgot how pure our love had been.And I forgot that you might need me.All I remembered was the pain.”
He really was my father.We’d been built the same inside and out.
“Okay, so then when you got sober ten years ago?”
“Thenyouweren’t in the best place, and then you disappeared.I tried keepin’ tabs on you, but you didn’t keep steady work or friends.You flitted in and out of your own life, and I lost track of you for a while.”
“And you didn’t think learnin’ that my dadwasn’tNoah Lee, that I didn’t share DNA with that asshole, that it couldn’t help me?”
William stayed quiet a moment, rubbing the palms of his hands over his thighs, the jeans below them stained dirty and worn soft.
“I came to tell you once.Caught up with you and followed you into the bar in town, the kind of place I’d vowed never to see the inside of again.I approached you at the bar, started to try to talk to you but you were so drunk, maybe high, too, and you turned, faced me, and said, ‘Fuck off, old man.G’on back to the rodeo.’”
“I’m sorry for that,” I said.“And you’re right.If you found me at Manny’s Bar, I’m sure I was wasted, but you couldn’t stand up to some young punk?You couldn’t tell me to shut up and sit down?”
“Would you have listened?”
Thatshut me up.No, I would not have listened.I would’ve hit him.Shit, if I’d been high enough, I might’ve killed him for talking to me like that.
He nodded.He knew just as well as I did that his words back then wouldn’t have done any good.
“It wasn’t long after,” he said, “that I lost track of you.You never went back to that little apartment you used to rent over on High Street; I checked once or twice a month, if I could get a break at my job, but I never saw you again.And then the last time I was there, I saw the landlord haulin’ out some old furniture and a bunch of trash, and when I asked, he said the old renter had skipped out so he was puttin’ the place back on the market.
“I tried a thousand times to call your mama.It just… Well, just ’cause a man is sober, it don’t mean that all the things that made him a drunk go away.I expect you already know that.So, the shame of leavin’ your mama and all my misguided pride, it wouldn’t let me call her.I never did.And until you showed up here today, I never saw you again.”
Goddamn.Everything he said made so much fucking sense that I was struggling to stay pissed off.He was describingme.Misguided pride had helped me make a lot of bad decisions too.
Jabbing my thumb over my shoulder at the painting of Merv, I said, “But you loved her.There’s no other art on these walls.It’s painfully plain that she’s the love of your life.So, if you were keepin’ tabs on me, you would’ve heard that Noah died.Why couldn’t you call her then?”
Raising his arm quickly, he swung it around his living room.“What did I have to offer her?”
But Avery Jane and Stu had taught me that all a man needs is love.
“There’s a simple answer,” I said, and when the words left my mouth, their weight lifted off my shoulders.“When you figure it out, maybe we’ll see you.You know where we are.Oh, and by the way, you have a grandson now, if you care.”
I stood.I wasn’t disappointed.Maybe a little, but I’d learned a long time ago not to expect too much from fathers.
