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“Things are real good. Jenny Monroe and I are dating.”
“Jenny Monroe?” Dad never liked the Monroes, probably because they gave me options when Dad would’ve preferred I didn’t have any. “No shit.”
I shake my head and laugh, squinting up at the sky. “Thanks. I’m excited.”
“Good for you, then. I hope she’s kinder to ya than your mama was to me. You know, she’s never picked up my calls, your mama? Not come to visit me even once? I’m in prison, for Christ’s sake. Show some compassion.”
My chest tightens. I’m gripped by familiar anger, a well-worn road carved down the center of my heart over decades. I’m sick of being on it.
I’m sick of how that anger scares me. Dad’s angry too. And he’s let that anger take over his life.
I take a deep breath through my nose. “What do you want, Dad?”
“I hate to ask again, but I need some money. I’m telling you, they don’t feed us nearly enough?—”
“How much would it take for you to never call me again?”
A pause. “Now, son, that’s not very kind, is it? I know I ain’t been perfect, but I sure did try. When your mama left, I was on my own raising you?—”
“Joe Monroe was the one who raised me right. What happened to the money I sent you last time?”
A pause. “She abandoned me, son.”
“You abandoned us long before Mom left. Tell me what happened to the money I sent you.”
“Well, I spent it, didn’t I! You got a boatload of it. What does a few hundred dollars matter to you?”
It hits me like a freight train: how much I miss the man my dad was before the accident. Before the years of drug abuse magnified all his worst qualities: the narcissism, the rage.
I want more than anything to be able to introduce my happy, functional family to Jen. She deserves excellent in-laws. Not some piece of shit inmate who’s going to hound us for money and attention for the rest of his miserable life.
The whole thing is just... yeah, really fucking sad.
“You know what, Dad?” My voice wavers. “I’ll send you the money. Better yet, I’ll send you money every three months from here on out. But until you get the help you need—and let me be explicit, that means going to see that counselor and straightening yourself out—don’t call me again. I love you, but talking like this really upsets me.”
Dad harrumphs. “It upsetsyou? How do you think I feel, being forced to call my son to beg for cash?”
This conversation is digging up way too much baggage for eight A.M. on a Friday morning. I don’t realize how light I’ve felt lately until this old heaviness returned just now. It’s like wearing a weighted vest, the kind people use to amp up their workouts.
Makes it hard to breathe.
“No one forced you to go to fucking prison,” I say. “That was all on you.”
“Now I told you, that whole car wash thing was not my fault?—”
“Of course it wasn’t. Nothing is ever your fault. Someone else pointed a gun at those poor people and stole their money.”
I don’t realize I’m shouting until Jen opens the door and peeks her head out. Her brows are pulled together, her mouth curved in a frown.
Jesus, now Dad is upsettingher.
Or, really, I am. I haven’t lost it around her until... well, now.
Shit.
Shit shitshit.
“Abel? You all right?” she asks.
