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But I was pretty comfortable being the asshole.
“She love you?” Dale asked, cutting to the heart of the matter in the way he did now. The brutal honesty came with the drooling and the chess playing. Maggie the nurse said it was all a give and take.
“No,” I said simply.
Dale tried to shift in his wheelchair and jostled the chessboard, sending a few pieces flying.
I picked up his queen from the worn wooden porch floor and set it back in its spot.
“You outta…fix that. Her not loving you.” Dale said. The words got hung up around the F and I struggled not to just say the word for him. Maggie told me not to do that.
“I’m trying,” I said.
By lying and manipulating her.
I was a crass, arrogant fool. Binding her to me with pleasure, just like I did before. Hoping it would make her blind to my lies.
But I was in love with a woman who hated me, and it made me dangerous.
“I loved a woman,” Dale said. “Nina. She was beautiful.”
This Dale remembered. The stroke hadn’t taken away memories of Nina. Or it had only taken away the bad.
“Yes, she was,” I said and left it at that.
“You’ve seen her?” Dale asked.
“You have a picture inside.”
Their wedding shot. Nina in a minidress. Dale in bell-bottoms.
When I was a kid, after I’d taken care of our threadbare existence, I’d given my father what was left from his weekly pay. A thin envelope of twenties and fives.
“This all of it?” he’d ask, and I’d nod because talking sometimes got me in trouble.
“You lying to me?”
Most of the time, yes, I was lying to him. I’d gotten in the habit of squirreling away what I could, when I could. A tiny roll of ones, held together with a green rubber band that I kept in the toe of a pair of gym shoes I’d long outgrown.
It’s how I’d gotten that bike.
But to his face I’d say, “No, Daddy. That’s all of it.”
And off he’d go, drinking his way through that envelope. He’d be gone for the weekend, usually. Sometimes longer. But I was guaranteed at least two days of freedom.
Of deep breaths. And quiet.
I’d eat till I was stuffed and then I’d lie on the kitchen floor until I was unstuffed enough to eat some more. Sometimes I fell asleep there on the floor, exhausted by being that man’s son. The endless bracing and careful watching. The long hours around midnight waiting to hear his boots in the hallway outside my door.
I didn’t know where the old man slept those nights. And I didn’t care.
“She has dogs now. Her sister’s technically. But she has them,” I said to Dale, for no reason, except that Veronica with those two ridiculous dogs was kind of the cutest thing I’d ever seen. And considering how long I’d known Veronica King, I’d seen a lot of cute things.
Dale was the only person I told this stuff to. The only person to whom I talked about Veronica. And my feelings. He was the void I could shout into because he didn’t know who I was. Or who she was. He didn’t remember it half the time anyway.
Ironically, Dale was my only safe place.
“You like dogs?” he asked, and I looked at his face. His watery, blue, bloodshot eyes. He smiled at me and the drool gathered again.
Yes. I liked dogs. I’d had one when I was a boy. Cupid, a hound mix that had been personally affronted by squirrels. My father shot him one night when Cupid wouldn’t stop barking.
“Here,” I said and wiped Dale’s mouth again.
“Thank you,” Dale said, and I looked away from his blushing face, offering him what dignity and privacy I could.
Everything changed when I was about sixteen. Hank King offered me a job. Not on his ranch. In his office downtown.
I didn’t do much at first. Mail room stuff. I spent a terrible Christmas break answering phones. But I worked hard and Hank noticed. The man was an asshole of the highest order, but he had an eye for people who could make him money.
And I made him a lot of money.
You think this makes you something? My father had asked when I was a teenager and he found out about the King job. It doesn’t. It don’t change nothing. You’re my son. Mine.
He spent a few nights trying to beat that into me. And the few pockets of peace I’d found were obliterated. Dad didn’t let me pick up the paychecks anymore and there wasn’t money for rent. Or utilities. Or for much at the grocery store other than canned beans. I did what I could, but I was only making minimum wage in that mail room.
Hank King let us stay in this house free of charge. He said it was ours for as long as I worked for him.
