I would rather have had someone shoot me in the head with a nail gun, repeatedly, than have to watch the two of them cuddling on the couch together all night. After they went to dinner, I got in my car and drove to Boston. As I drove, I thought about not going back to Cousins. Screw it. It would be easier that way. Halfway home, I made up my mind that yeah, that would be for the best. An hour from home, I decided, screw them, I had as much right to be there as they did. I still needed to clean out the gutters, and I was pretty sure I’d seen a wasp nest in the drainpipe. There was all kinds of stuff I needed to take care of. I couldn’t just not go back.
Around midnight, I was sitting at the kitchen table in my boxer shorts eating cereal when my dad walked in, still wearing his work suit. I didn’t even know he was home.
He didn’t look surprised to see me. “Con, can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He sat down across from me with his glass of bourbon. In the dim light of the kitchen, my father looked like an old man. His hair was thinning on top, and he’d lost weight, too much weight. When did he get so old? In my mind he was always thirty-seven.
My dad cleared his throat. “What do you think I should do about this thing with Jeremiah? I mean, is he really set on it?”
“Yeah, I think he is.”
“Laurel’s really torn up about it. She’s tried everything, but the kids aren’t listening. Belly ran off, and now they aren’t even talking to each other. You know how Laurel can get.”
This was all news to me. I didn’t know they weren’t speaking to each other.
My dad sipped from his glass. “Do you think there’s anything I can do? To put an end to it?”
For once I actually agreed with my dad. My feelings for Belly aside, I thought getting married at nineteen was dumb. What was the point? What were they trying to prove?
“You could cut Jere off,” I said, and then I felt like a dick for suggesting it. I added, “But even if you did, he still has the money Mom left him.”
“Most of it’s in a trust.”
“He’s determined. He’ll do it either way.” I hesitated, then added, “Besides, if you pulled something like that, he’d never forgive you.”
My dad got up and poured himself some more bourbon. He sipped it before he said, “I don’t want to lose him the way I lost you.”
I didn’t know what to say. So we sat there in silence, and right when I finally opened my mouth to say, You haven’t lost me, he stood up.
Sighing heavily, he emptied his glass. “Good night, son.”
“Good night, Dad.”
I watched my father trudge up the stairs, each step heavier than the last—like Atlas with the world on his shoulders. He’d never had to deal with this kind of thing before. He’d never had to be that kind of father. My mom was always there to take care of the hard stuff. Now that she was gone, he was all we had left, and it wasn’t enough.
I had always been the favorite. I was our father’s Jacob, and Jeremiah was Esau. It wasn’t something I’d ever questioned; I’d always assumed it was because I was the firstborn that I came first with my dad. I just accepted it, and so did Jere. But as we got older, I saw that that wasn’t it. It was that he saw himself in me. To our father, I was just a reflection of him. He thought we were so alike. Jere was like our mom, I was like our dad. So I was the one he put all the pressure on. I was the one he funneled all his energy and hope into. Football, school, all of it. I worked hard to meet those expectations, to be just like him.
The first time I realized my father wasn’t perfect was when he forgot my mom’s birthday. He’d been golfing all day with his friends, and he came home late. Jere and I had made a cake and bought flowers and a card. We had everything set up on the dining room table. My dad had had a few beers—I could smell it on him when he hugged me. He said, “Oh shit, I forgot. Boys, can I put my name on the card?” I was a freshman in high school. Late, I know, to figure out your dad isn’t a hero. That was just the first time I remember being disappointed by something he did. After that, I found more and more reasons to be disappointed.
All of that love and pride I had in him, it turned to hate. And then I started to hate myself, who he’d made. Because I saw it too—how alike we were. That scared me. I didn’t want to be the kind of man who cheated on his wife. I didn’t want to be the kind of man who put work before his family, who tipped cheaply at restaurants, who never bothered to learn our housekeeper’s name.
From there on I set out to destroy the picture of me he had in his head. I quit our morning runs before he left for work, I quit the fishing trips, the golf, which I’d never liked anyway. And I quit football, which I loved. He’d gone to all my games, videotaping them so we could watch later and he could point out the places where I’d messed up. Every time there was an article about me in the newspaper, he framed it and hung it in his study.
I quit it all to spite him. Anything that made him proud of me, I took away.
It took me a long time to figure it out. That I was the one who had put my dad on that pedestal. I did that, not him. And then I despised him for not being perfect. For being human.
I drove back to Cousins on Monday morning.
