I handle a few more calls and am shocked to see the board all lit up. There’s no break. Then it comes up on the second screen. NO NAME. And Bex’s voice changes, careful with it. “Older gentleman. Says he’s called before. Won’t leave a name.” She waits. “Your call. I can cut him loose.”
The line blinks. Bex stares at me through the glass. Paige watches me over the top of her laptop. All I have to do is nod. He’s a dial tone. He goes back to wherever he is, I finish my show and drive home.
I don’t nod.
“Put him through.”
Bex holds my eyes through the glass. I nod anyway. She puts him through.
“You’re on The Love Line.” My voice comes out easy, smooth.
“It’s me,” he says. Slower than before. Rougher. “You know that by now.”
“I know it.”
“I won’t keep you.” A wet breath. “I called to tell you I’m done calling.”
“You’ve called three times.” Something in my voice goes hard. “Every time you tell me you’re going to do the hard thing, and every time you don’t. So do it, or don’t. But quit practicing on me.”
“You’re right. I’ve been practicing.” No fight in him at all, which is worse. “It’s the only nerve I ever had. But I’m out of the time I’d need to get brave. The doctors gave me a number, and it’s come and gone.”
“Then say it to him.” The host is still in the chair, and the host has a job. “Not to me. Not to a phone receiver. He’s the one who’s meant to hear it.”
“He won’t take my call. He’s got no reason to.” Another of those breaths. “This is the only door left, and I don’t even believe he’s behind it. I think I’m talking to a kind stranger and letting myself pretend it’s him, because the pretending is the last thing I’ve got that still works.”
I should cut him off. Go to break, kill the line, any of the ten things a professional does when a call comes apart on live air. My hands stay where they are.
“So here it is,” he says. “I had a son. A good one. Better than I had any right to make. And I broke him for sport, because I couldn’t stand that he was softer than me and stronger than me at the same time. I did it on purpose. For years. I called it making him a man.” His voice drops to almost nothing. “It was jealousy. A grown man jealous of a boy. My boy.”
Here it is. The first true thing he’s ever said about what he did. I’ve wanted it for thirty years. Now that it’s in the air itchanges nothing at all. It also changes everything. Both at once, and I can’t pull them apart.
Through the glass Bex is on her feet, I hold my hand up. I move my head, barely, no. Paige is by my side, holding my hand.
“I’d give what’s left,” he says, “the week of it, the days of it, to hear that boy call me one thing. Anything. I won’t. I know I won’t. I gave that up a long time ago, on purpose, same as everything else. I only wanted to say it out loud one time, somewhere it wouldn’t hurt anybody who didn’t have it coming. So. Thank you for letting an old man?—”
“Sterling.”
It comes out of me before I know it’s coming, in a voice that isn’t the host’s and isn’t one I know, into the mic, out to every kitchen and truck and phone in the county. On the line my father makes a sound I have never once heard him make.
I know I’ve opened a door I didn’t intend to and I’m not sure I can shut it now.
TWENTY-TWO
Josie doesn’t make me talk about it. For two days she lets me be quiet. She hands me coffee. She asks if I ate. She doesn’t ask about my father, and I love her for that. We watch TV, I hold her while she reads, and she rubs my back when something triggers me and I’m close to losing it.
Paige is the same. She cut the feed after I said my father’s name, knowing that no one needed to see my visceral reaction to the silence that played out. He couldn’t even acknowledge that it was him on the other line or accept the fact that he’s not as subtle as he thinks.
The calls stopped after that one, thanks to Bex. She shut down, ended the show, and asked Paige to make sure I got home okay. Even Bex knew without knowing the full story knew I needed a break. Thankfully, she canceled the next two shows, said she’d air re-runs from our first week, and told me to take as much time as needed.
Paige did the best thing she knew how to do, she called her mom.
My wife . . . my Jojo . . . the woman I knew was worth more than any relationship with my father came running. We sat there in my studio, staring at nothing, with her arms wrapped aroundme. She never told me things would be okay. Deep down, I knew they wouldn’t.
This man . . . this father of mine . . . the last time I saw him he had accosted Peyton in the grocery store. He was mean, belligerent, and didn’t deserve my time then.
He still doesn’t.
Yet, he’s occupying my thoughts, and I don’t want him there.
