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“You’d have to have a heart to fail.”
That one gets him to sigh. “Pigheaded. You get that from me.”
Stop reminding me.
“I hear that a lot.”
Half of me wants to ask him a million questions. Force him to lay out all of the prejudice and abuse on his deathbed. There will be no making amends, but if I have to live with the hole he put in my chest, then he gets to die with it.
The other part of me wants to take that vase on the table with the wilted flowers and smash it over his head.
Emotional versus physical pain.
Which one will do you in?
“What do I owe this visit from the first son to abandon me?”
My throat closes before I can make the words. This man never once called me his son unless it was to spit the word out like a poison on his tongue.
“You abandoned me first.”
This is where the anger originated. This is where I first felt the helplessness.
Why couldn’t you just love me?
You had one fucking job.
“You weren’t happy. If you thought that other family could give you something I couldn’t, the best thing I could do was let you.”
“You’re my fucking dad. I shouldn’t have needed to leave to get what any kid needs from their parent.”
“You shouldn’t have. But that’s the hand we were dealt.”
That hot temper I remember, the one I’ve heard so much about from Blair, doesn’t roar to life. No matter how much I prod the bear, he just sits there like a log on a lake.
“I caught wind that you did a stint in rehab.”
A hot breath burns in my throat.
“Who told you that?”
He waves his hand about like it’s irrelevant. “Someone here or there. Kids from the neighborhood like to gossip. Even when they’re away.”
“It’s not really any of your business.”
Dad sighs so heavy it wracks his entire, boney body. “No, but it’s a shame.”
My mouth feels dry, so I wet my tongue over my lip and taste blood from a fresh crack.
“What is?”
“That you got so much of me and so little of your mother.”
A mother that I barely remember.
A mother that everyone but me got to grieve because I was too damn little. Instead she was always treated like a memory. Never a tangible person I should have known.
Never a culture that should have been taught to me.
