During the day he moved like he was walking through water.nNot really present. He'd sit at the kitchen table for hours, staring out the window at nothing. When one of us tried to talk to him, it was like he had to swim up from somewhere deep just to register the sound of our voices.
Once, I came home from class and his truck was in the driveway with him sitting inside it. Just staring at the house like he couldn't bring himself to walk into it. I went inside. Hours later I woke up at one in the morning, looked out the window and he was still there, head against the steering wheel.
At night, you could hear him crying. Deep, guttural sounds that came through the walls, muffled but impossible to ignore. Sometimes for hours. Simone would crawl into my bed some nights, pressing her hands over her ears, and I'd hold her until she fell asleep, pretending I couldn't hear it.
My father had always been the strongest man I knew. He'd taught us everything about being a man. About protecting family, about loving a woman, about standing up and providing. He'd been our king.
Now he was disappearing a little more each day, and none of us knew how to help him.
Months later, I was the one signing Simone's permission slips, mailing checks to pay utility bills, maintaining lists of what was needed around the house and grocery shopping. I'd practiced his signature on a yellow legal pad until I could do it without stopping to think, first because he kept forgetting to sign critical WadeHouse invoices, employee payrolls, and other expenses, then because I'd stopped trying to remind him. I’d make necessary calls and pretend to be my father. I learned that nobody on the other end would question a calm Black man's voice if it was steady enough.
Zion’s school called about his constant fighting. Pops was supposed to meet with the school, but he didn't leave his room. So I went. I sat across from a vice principal who looked at me and asked if my father was coming. I told him he was unavailable. He looked at me with sympathy, or pity. Everyone in town knew my parents, and I could tell he was trying to give us as much grace as he could as I argued the case for Zion to not be suspended. I signed his alternative discipline plan and walked out of that office a nineteen-year-old, feeling forty.
One night I was studying for a final when I heard raised voices in the kitchen. Uncle Reggie's first, frustrated and tired.
“Zay, you got to pull yourself together, man. These kids need their father.”
“Don't tell me what my kids need.” Pops’s voice shot back.
“Then start acting like you know. You think Niecy would want this? You think she'd want you wasting away while Julian's trying to hold you all together?”
“Don't.” Daddy's voice broke in the middle. “Don't speak on what she'd want.”
“You need help, Zay. I done looked into it, and there are professionals out here that are experienced in this kind of thing. Some even got nice relaxing retreat-like place you could go to.”
“I’m not crazy, Reggie! I don’t need a damn shrink! You don’t know what I’m going through!”
“I know what it looks like from the outside. And it looks pathetic.”
“Pathetic? Easy for you to tell me to move on when you treat Althea like she's dirt. Don’t know how to treat the wife you have, tryin’ to tell me how to feel about the wife I lost. Fuck you! IloveNiecy. She’s the air Ibreathe.” His voice broke. “You wouldn’t know nothin ‘bout that.”
“You take that back!”
“I won’t!”
Chairs started scraping, and the sound of grunts and bodies colliding tore through the house. By the time Zion and I got to the kitchen, the two of them were throwing punches and Reggie had Popspinned against a wall.
“You're lost! We need to get you some help, Zay!” Reggie pleaded, shaking him. “Let us help you, man! Think about your kids!”
Pops looked over at us with bloodshot eyes and his expression crumbled. Shame and the understanding of what we were witnessing. He shoved Reggie off and walked out the back door without a word.
Didn't come back for two days.
That became a pattern. He'd disappear for a day or two, then show up looking even more broken down than when he’d left. Each time, there was a little less of our father and a little more of a stranger wearing his face.
One day when Pops had been gone for days again, I got a call from Lydia, the office assistant at WadeHouse.
“Julian, baby, you need to get over here right now. We tried Reggie, he ain't answering.”
“What's wrong?”
“Your daddy. He been locked in his office since yesterday with a bottle. We can't wake him up.”
I rushed over and found him slumped over his desk. Empty liquor bottles next to a stack of unsigned contracts that had been waiting on him for weeks. The staff was standing around in the hallway pretending not to look, Lydia wringing her hands, because an artist had come in for a meeting and she didn't know what to do with them.
“How long?” I asked Lydia.
“Since about ten in the morning yesterday. He came in, didn't speak to nobody, locked the door.” She lowered her voice. “Julian, what we supposed to do? We got artists coming in. Meetings on the books. Deals supposed to be signed.”
