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"Jesus Christ," Brandon muttered. "Their name is Petersen. They're not even Jewish."
"Ain't he a college-type? Same fuckin' difference," said Sterling bitterly as he pushed a big, calloused hand through his short hair as if feeling for a mane that wasn't there anymore.
Brandon sighed and mirrored his father's action. I shivered. It was clear that some things were bred in the bone.
"You want to know why I keep it? To remind me of where I came from," Brandon said. "And of how far I've come. That kid from the shittiest fuckin' home in the worst neighborhood in Boston can still make something of himself."
Something precious, I thought with approval. Something sterling. And it fit, too. I couldn't imagine him any different.
"Yeah. Well." The old man shrugged and scratched at a nick in the top of the table. "It's a nasty little trick, you ask me." His blue eyes squinted at his son. "I heard you pussied out of bein' mayor."
Brandon frowned. "You knew about that?"
Sterling cackled, low and cynical. "Of course I knew. You think I ain't been followin' my own son over the last twenty-five years?" He sat back, surveying Brandon like he was looking in the mirror. "You look just like me at your age. You got the blond hair like your ma, of course, but otherwise it's like seein' myself take over the world." He snorted again. "Another fuckin' life, huh?"
"Yeah," Brandon said. "I guess."
"So why're you here?" Sterling asked suddenly. "You ain't been to see me in over two decades. Why now?"
Brandon took a few breaths, reviewing the words I knew he had practiced with Dr. Jefferson all week. I kept my hand on his thigh, there if he wanted to take it.
"For a long time, I couldn't...I didn't..."
Sterling said nothing, just watched with something close to glee as his son stumbled over his words. I narrowed my eyes. What a horrible person this man was.
"I came here to tell you..." Brandon started again, trailing off once more.
"Spit it out, Teapot," Sterling said again, the teasing tone of his voice bordering on cruel. He looked at me with gleaming eyes––the brightest I'd seen them since we'd met. "You wanna know why we called him Teapot, cutie?"
I didn't say anything, which Sterling took as an invitation to continue.
"Brandon here used to have a speech impediment. When he was three, four, five, six. Any time he'd get worked up, he'd start sputterin' like a damn teapot, whistlin' and spoutin'." Sterling started to toot like a teapot himself. "Woo!" he cried out even as his muscular frame started to shake with laughter. "God, it was annoyin'. Cute sometimes, but fuckin' annoyin'."
"Yeah, well," Brandon muttered. "You'd be scared shitless too, if you were me, waiting for your dad to come home after the Sox lost. I was too busy wondering if it was going to be the belt or of the yardstick to be thinkin' about my fuckin' speech patterns."
By this point, those speech patterns had basically all but abandoned the r's in his diction. "Bar" was "bah," "yardstick" was "yahd-stick." It had taken Brandon exactly ten minutes of sitting with his birth father to regress almost completely back to his adolescence. Suddenly he grabbed my hand so hard my knuckles cracked.
Sterling stared at his son with a gaze like cold steel. All signs of levity, however crass, were gone. The standoff lasted several minutes, and I glanced at the clock, noting that already, half the hour had passed.
"Yeah, well," Sterling said, finally breaking first. "Someone had to toughen you up. I knew what kind of life you was headed for."
"Yeah, but that wasn't the kind of life I ended up having, Pop," Brandon said bitterly.
Sterling just raised an eyebrow. "You think I don't know you were runnin' around with them Westies? You think I don't hear news from the old neighborhood in here? Boy, I know everything about you––always have, always will."
"Not everything."
Sterling narrowed one eye, looking remarkably like a pirate. "Come again?"
Brandon sighed and ran both hands through his hair again. "Goddammit. I didn't come here to fight with you."
"Then what did you come here for, Teapot?"
Brandon closed his eyes, exhaled strongly, then opened them again, full of renewed determination.
"I came here to say that what you did to me and Ma was wrong," he said clearly. "You beat us and abused and abandoned us, over and over again. If you hadn't, maybe she wouldn't have needed drugs the way she did. I wouldn't have had to leave and find new parents, wouldn't have been as fucked up as I was. Ma might still be alive if it weren't for you."
John Sterling shook his head and grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. But surprisingly, he didn't argue. The creases in his forehead deepened as he took the words like lashings, and his jaw tightened, but he didn't say anything against a single one.
