Less Than Nothing (32 page)

They’re supposed to give a shit.

“I suppose I deserve that,” he says.

“What do you want?” I don’t sound angry. I sound resigned.

“To talk.”

I nod. “So talk.”

He looks around. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

Jeremy snorts, but I ignore it. “I don’t think so. I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

His face cracks, and he looks like he might cry. “Please.”

I find something deep inside of me, some energy, and muster it, fueling it with anger to give me the strength to deal with this.

“You abandoned me when I was ten years old. Left me with an alcoholic. You never contacted me once in seven years, and you expect to walk back into my life now that I’m making something out of myself, and pick up where you left off?” I spit by his feet and glare at him.
“Who are you?”

Jeremy pulls at my sleeve. “Come on. Let’s go.”

My dad shakes his head. “I…I can explain.”

“No. No, you can’t. You can’t say some words and make everything right. All you can do is make excuses, and I’m tired of excuses.”

He nods. “I shouldn’t have come to New York. I wasn’t going to come to the theater. It was a bad idea. I watched you on TV tonight, and that song…I changed my mind. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.” His voice breaks, taking a small piece of my heart with it. “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

“Great. You said it. Now we’re going,” Jeremy snarls, and my dad nods again and turns. Jeremy takes my arm. “Come on, Sage. Let’s go.”

I watch him walk off, like he did so long ago, defeated, the weight of the world on his shoulders, older than his years. I close my eyes, a battle going on behind my lids, and when I open them, it’s my turn to shake my head. I turn to Jeremy. He bites his lip. “You don’t have to do this,” he says.

For once, Jeremy’s wrong. “I do.” I look up. My dad’s almost to the corner.

“Fine,” I say, my voice loud on the street. “One cup of coffee.”

He turns around and looks as though he’s imagined my words. I tilt my head toward Jeremy. “Come with me.”

We walk to where my father’s waiting, and I eye him with suspicion. “There’s a café that should still be open a block away.”

Jeremy convinces the hostess to give us the booth at the rear of the dining room, and he sits next to me, my father across from us. I look into his eyes and see a little of me there – the way they fix on objects, the hesitation. We order three cups of drip coffee, and there’s an uncomfortable silence while we wait for the drinks. They arrive, and he pours a long white stream of sugar into his, followed by an ocean of cream.

It’s like looking in a mirror.

I clear my throat. “These aren’t big cups. So talk.”

“First the apology. Nothing I say can ever make up for not being in your life for the last seven years. I know that. I can’t undo it. All I can do is try to make amends, and be there for the rest of it.”

“You’re making a big assumption there,” I say.

He sips his coffee and puts the cup down. I notice his hand’s trembling slightly.

“I am. But hear me out. Then if you don’t want me anywhere around you, I’ll understand.”

“Fine.”

“When I left, I couldn’t handle your mom’s drinking anymore. I wanted to get my head straight. It was ugly in there, everything twisted around, and I was…I was still too damned young. Thirty-one. Now it seems like a lifetime ago.”

He looks like he’s fifty. He’s only thirty-eight. What the hell happened?

“Anyway, I left. I went to stay with my cousin in Fresno. He was mixed up in some bad shit. Drugs. Meth. He was dealing. Long story short, they raided his house, and I got charged along with him. The jury didn’t care that I wasn’t in the life. I was his cousin, the house was a lab, so I went down hard. I got ten years. Served six. I just got out five months ago. When I made a few dollars, I went back to Clear Lake, but you were gone.” He wets his lips. “That new guy your momma hooked up with is a real piece of work, isn’t he?” He shakes his head. “They didn’t know where you’d run off to. And your momma…she was in a bad way. The drink’ll do that to you. But she didn’t look like the woman I married.”

I digest this and try to make sense of it. My dad’s alive, and he’s an ex-con. A felon with a story about how he didn’t do it. Like every other felon. Innocent as lambs, each and every one, misunderstood by the system. Victims.

“I thought you were dead.”

His eyes narrow. “I guess I don’t need to ask if you got my letters.”

I shake my head.

His voice is quieter now. “I suppose I don’t blame her. Jailbird for a dad. In her head, she probably thought she was protecting you.”

“You…you wrote?”

“At first I was embarrassed, but once that passed, after the first year, I did. I sent you letters every damned month.” He waves a limp hand. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t excuse anything. I left. I failed you.” He clears his throat and looks me dead in the eyes. “Why did you run away? Did that guy…did he–”

“No, Dad. Nobody touched me in the bad place. He was an asshole, a mean prick who liked to hit. I got tired of being hit. I left. End of story.”

I can see in his cobalt eyes that he’s both relieved and angry. I absolved him of his deepest fear, but it’s not a satisfying resolution. Like most things in life, this leaves a stain, a taint. It was his gift to me, and I returned the favor. The cycle’s complete.

“Your song tonight was incredible, but it upset me a lot. I read about your troubles. Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’ve been through worse.” A thought occurs to me as I drain the last of my coffee. “Where are you staying?”

“A fifty-buck-a-night hotel down by the Bowery. You know the area?”

I nod. “Yeah. How long are you in town for?”

“No specific time. Probably a week. That’s all I can afford.”

I yawn. This has all been too much for me. I need sleep. I don’t want to make any decisions when I feel out of it.

“Give me a number there, or you call me. We can talk tomorrow.”

“Better if you give me yours. They don’t have phones in the rooms.”

No, for fifty bucks, he’s lucky there’s running water. I think of Lucifer’s and shudder. I give him the number, and he borrows the waitress’s pencil to jot it down on a paper napkin.

Jeremy pays the bill, and we stand. My father walks to the entrance and waits. I glance at Jeremy, whose face is a blank. Out on the sidewalk, my dad gives me an awkward hug. “You were great tonight. I’ve never been prouder.”

“Be careful going home. That area’s a killer,” I say.

He looks like he’s going to say something else, but then closes his mouth and stares down at his shoes.

Jeremy and I turn and go in search of a cab, leaving the man who raised me for ten and a half years alone on the sidewalk, to find his way through the dangerous streets, just as he left me.

The next morning Jeremy and I are loafing around on the sofa, I with my mandatory coffee, he with his tea, eating chocolate chip bagels heated in the microwave and watching the morning show on TV. I’m starting to get used to sleep deprivation. Last night was another in a long string of sleepless nights, but I don’t feel that bad.

Jeremy mutes the sound and scoots closer. “So? What momentous conclusions have you come to?”

“How do you know I’ve come to any?”

“Because you’re not doing that brow furrow thingy that makes you look like you’re trying to move objects with your mind.”

“I’m thinking that having lunch with him can’t really hurt.”

“Hmm.”

“You obviously don’t approve.”

“No offense, but I smell a rat. He bails on you, not a word for seven years, and now that you’re a celeb, he suddenly wants to kissy kissy. Nothing about that strikes you as suspect?”

“If he was in jail…”

“Why don’t we have Norman look him up? He’ll be in the system if he’s telling the truth. Can’t hurt. Trust but verify, right?”

“You think he’d do that?” I ask.

“Of course he would. He’s an attorney. He’d skin his mother alive and eat her chunk by chunk if you paid him.”

We agree that Jeremy will have Norman check, and my phone rings. A New York number I don’t recognize. Adrenaline courses through my veins as I answer.

“Hello?”

“Sage?”

It’s him.

“Yes.”

“You made it home safely.” A statement, not a question.

“Yes. Listen, Dad, I know you want to talk some more–”

“I’ll understand if you’re not up to it.” He sounds dejected.

“I have another appearance this evening, but I can have lunch.”

His voice increases in urgency. “Name the place and time. I’ll find it.”

I give him the address of the wrap place, and we agree to meet at 1:00. When I get there, he’s waiting outside like he’s afraid I won’t show. I can see how much this means to him by his expression when he sees me.

He hugs me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Jeremy’s warning is playing through my head, and my natural skepticism’s in overdrive. We get a table and order, and when the waitress leaves, he folds his hands on the tabletop and leans forward.

“Thanks for coming.”

“No problem.” I’m not feeling like a great conversationalist right now. I wait for him to make the first move.

“How are you and that boy doing? I guess you’ve split up for good, huh?”

I nod. “It’s for the best.”

“Want to tell me what happened?”

I debate saying it’s none of his frigging business, but that seems mean. I can see his nerves are frayed, and my urge to hurt him like he hurt me is gone, replaced by pity. I give him the condensed version, and he nods along. When I’m done, he shakes his head.

“Sounds like he’s got some real demons.”

“It’s just so weird. He’s great most of the time. I mean, really great. And then he goes and does something like this. I just…I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Our food arrives, and he stares at it like it’s a bowl of ants before gingerly picking it up and taking a bite. Apparently it beats prison food, because he’s done in the time it takes me to eat a quarter of mine. Any doubts I have about where my dining habits come from are put to rest.

He leans back in his chair and considers me. “You and this boy. Do you still have feelings for him?”

“That’s not important. After what he put me through, I’ll get over it.”

“You say he hasn’t seen his bro for three years?”

“Yeah.”

He’s silent for a long time. “I’m not trying to defend him, Sage. But I can see where a lot of stuff landed on him all at the same time. Having to tell his brother about his other brother’s death…All I’m saying is that there’s a big difference between the kind of drinking your mom does and what you’re describing.”

Just like there’s a world of difference between Ralph’s casual violence and Derek’s defense of me. I know all this. But it doesn’t change anything. “Water under the bridge, Dad. We’re competing solo now, so it’s a done deal.”

“I know. I’m just…you don’t seem happy. I’d be walking on clouds if I was winning a big contest like this. You seem down.”

Of course I do. The guy I thought was the one turned out to be a rat bastard. That’ll do it every time. I don’t say anything.

“I had a lot of time to think, Sage. About everything. Prison’s good for that. You see everything in there, every kind of person, but the ones you know will be going back once they’re released have a certain kind of attitude. They’re not sorry. They don’t learn, and they don’t care who gets hurt. All they think about is themselves. It doesn’t sound like this Derek falls into that category. He protected you, he talked you into entering this contest, and he helped get you here.”

“And then he blew it.”

“I know that. We all blow it sometimes, honey. Everybody. Even you. God knows I have. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you think there’s still something good there…well, who am I to talk? I stuck it out with your mom for a long time before I left. She put me through hell. But I stayed until I was afraid I’d hurt her if I didn’t leave. Point is, I didn’t quit the first time, or the tenth time, or the thousandth time. I agree you have to protect yourself, but I’m not sure what I’m hearing is as much protection as it is that you’re pissed off and your feelings are hurt. All I’m going to tell you is that’s a lousy way to make decisions. Take that from someone who’s made more than enough bad ones for both of us.”

I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I change the subject and ask him how he made enough money to come to New York for a week. Turns out he took the bus, and he has a job in California helping a carpenter.

“It’s honest work, and it pays okay. Not many people will take a chance on a felon. I’m lucky to have the job. He gave me the week off because he’s between projects, but in another couple of weeks we’ll be buried again. He’s a good guy.”

My dad makes as much in a good week as I now do in a couple of days. This trip is probably burning everything he managed to save over the last four months. My demeanor softens as he insists on paying, and I can see he’s really trying. It’s too little, too late, but he’s trying.