I wish I still felt that way. Growing up and seeing your parents’ flaws is like losing your religion. I don’t believe in God anymore. I don’t believe in my father either.
My mother kissed her teeth when he gave her the ticket. She might as well have slapped him. “You and you foolishness,” she said, and stood up. “You can keep you ticket. I not going anywhere.”
She walked out of the kitchen. We listened as she walked the twenty steps to the bathroom and slammed the door with all her might.
None of us knew what to say. Peter slumped in his chair and hung his head so you couldn’t find his face under his dreadlocks. I just looked at the space where she’d been. My father’s eyes disappeared behind his dreaming veil. In his typical denial-of-reality way, he said:
“Don’t worry ’bout you mother. She don’t mean it, man.”
But she did mean it. She didn’t go with us. Even Peter couldn’t convince her. She said the ticket price was a waste of her hard-earned money.
On the night of the show, Peter and I took the subway alone to the theater. My father had gone ahead to get ready. We sat in the first row and didn’t mention the empty seat next to us.
I want to be able to say now that he was not good. That his talents were only mediocre. Mediocre would explain all the years of rejection. It would explain why he gave up and retreated from real life and into his head. And I don’t know if I can see my father clearly. Maybe I’m still seeing with my old, hero-worship eyes, but what I saw was this:
He was excellent.
He was transcendent.
He belonged on that stage more than he’s ever belonged with us.
Area Teen Pretty Sure Day Can’t Get Worse, Is Wrong About That
My dad’s with a customer when I walk in. His eyes tell me that he will have many things to say to me later.
I might as well give us some more to talk about.
It’s just after the lunch rush, so the store’s pretty empty. There’s only one other customer—a woman looking at blow dryers.
I don’t see Charlie cleaning or restocking any of the shelves, so I figure he must be slacking off in the stockroom in the back.
I’m not even nervous. I don’t give a shit if he beats my face in, so long as I say what I have to say first. I drop my jacket outside the stockroom door and turn the handle, but it’s locked. There’s no reason for it to be locked with him in it. He’s probably jacking off in there.
He pulls the door open before I can pound on it. Instead of his usual sneer, his face is a combination of tired and defensive. He must’ve thought it was my dad trying to get in.
As soon as he sees it’s just me, his face goes into full superior asshole smirk. He makes a show of looking over my shoulder and around me.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” He says girlfriend like it’s a joke, the way you would say a word like booger.
I stand there looking at him, trying to figure out not how we’re related, but why. He pushes past me, deliberately bumping into my shoulder.
“She dump you already?” he asks, after taking a quick look down a couple of aisles to verify that she’s really not here. His shit-eating grin is firmly in place.
He’s baiting me, I know. I know it, and still—I’m letting the hook pierce me like some dumb fish that’s been hooked a billion times before and still hasn’t figured it out yet that hooks are the enemy.
“Fuck you, Charlie,” I say.
That catches him off guard. He stops smiling and takes a good look at me. My tie and jacket are missing. My shirt’s untucked. I don’t look like someone who has the Most Important Interview of His Life in a couple of hours. I look like someone who wants to get into a fight.
He puffs himself up like a blowfish. He’s always been so proud of the two years and two inches that he has on me. It’s just him and me back here, and that makes him bold.
“Why. Are. You. Here. Little. Brother?” he asks. He steps closer, so that we’re toe to toe, and pushes his face closer to mine.
He expects me to back down.
I don’t back down.
“I came to ask you a question.”
He pulls his face back just a little. “Sure, I’d fuck her,” he says. “Is that what happened? She want me instead of you?”
The thing about being a fish on a hook is the more you try to get off, the more trapped you are. The hook just buries itself deeper and you bleed a little more. You can’t get off the hook. You can only go through it. Said another way: the hook has to go through you, and it’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker.
“Why are you like this?” I ask him.
If I’ve surprised him, he doesn’t show it. He just goes on with his usual shittiness. “Like what? Bigger, stronger, smarter, better?”
“No. Why are you an asshole to me? What’d I do to you?”
This time he can’t hide his surprise. He pulls out of my space, even takes a step back.
“Whatever. That what you came here for? To whine about me being mean to you?” He looks me up and down again. “You look like shit. Don’t you have to try to get into Second-Best School today?”
“I don’t care about that. I don’t even want to go.” I say it quietly, but it still feels good to say it at all.
“Speak. Up. Little. Brother. I didn’t hear you.”
“I don’t want to go,” I say louder, before realizing that my dad left his position at the register and is now close enough to hear me. He starts to say something, but then the doorbell chimes. He pivots away.