Chasing Forgiveness

  I, on the other hand, have my grandma and grandpa, my dad, and my little brother. It’s wonderful to have that, but still I’d rather be like my friends and have a mother. I don’t think I’d take her for granted.

  Grandma grabs me tightly and kisses me, smearing lipstick on my cheek. “Oh, we’re so proud of you, Preston,” she tells me, like she always does. Dad hugs me next, and Jason, who is still the most loyal friend in the world, stands back, waiting for the affection to end. Jason’s grown quickly and is taller than me now, but I’m much more solid.

  Grandma takes my one second-place and two first-place ribbons from the day and puts them in her purse for safekeeping. “You’ve got so many of these, I don’t know where you’re going to put them.”

  “Maybe you can give them to me,” says Tyler. I tell him that he’ll have his own one day, but it’s not much consolation. Tyler just smiles, like he always does, and quietly accepts it. Maybe I will give him one.

  As we walk off the field, Grandpa turns to me and asks, “Where will you be sleeping tonight?”

  Dad answers before I do. “At home,” he says.

  “Oh,” says Grandpa, “at your place, then.”

  I suppose Dad’s place is home, but I sort of have two homes. I’m not sure which one is my real home.

  The apartment Dad, Tyler, and I moved into last summer wasn’t home at all—it was too small, and we all spend most of our time at Grandma and Grandpa’s anyway—after all, they were just down the street.

  Then Dad bought a townhouse a little farther away. That was my real home for a while, until Grandma and Grandpa bought the townhouse right next door.

  It’s funny, but it seems Dad just can’t put any distance at all between him and my grandparents. Not that he’d ever want to.

  My room in Dad’s house is just on the other side of the wall from my room in Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Jason jokes that I can bang on the wall if I hear myself playing my music too loud.

  “Get to bed early tonight, Preston,” says Grandpa as he and Grandma leave. “If you want faster times, you need a full night’s sleep.” Then he turns to my dad. “You make sure of that, Danny,” he says. Dad nods, taking his orders cordially.

  Dad’s very good about doing what he’s expected to do. He works long days and comes home to spend all his evenings and weekends with Tyler and me. He’s a model father and very “morally upstanding,” as Grandma would say. He had better be, because he knows that if he weren’t, Grandma and Grandpa might take Tyler and me away from him. Although no one ever talks about it, we all know that Grandma and Grandpa are still our legal guardians. We only live with Dad because they give us permission to.

  On the way off the field, I pat Dad on the back, preparing to head off with Jason. “We’re going to get pizza,” I tell him. Dad is not pleased.

  “What about the barbecue?” he asks. “What about the movies, Preston?”

  It had completely slipped my mind that Dad had planned a little family night—his famous barbecued ribs and a trip to the Cineplex—just the three of us.

  “Naah,” I tell him. “I think I’ll just have pizza.”

  Dad is disappointed, but he just lets it go. “Maybe we’ll all go get pizza,” he suggests.

  “Naah,” I say. “You can barbecue. Save some for me.”

  Dad is disappointed again, but still he just lets it go. He turns without the smallest fight and heads toward the car with Tyler. “See you tonight,” he says.

  I think for a moment, then say something I know I really shouldn’t. “I’ll probably be home late,” I tell him.

  He turns, and for a moment I think he’s going to shake his head and impose a reasonable curfew on me, but instead he just deflates. “I’ll leave the porch light on,” he says, then gets into the car.

  Even though I’ve gotten exactly what I asked for, I feel lousy and I wish I were back on the track running again.

  • • •

  “I don’t see the problem,” says Jason. “Your dad’s a nice guy, he gets along with your friends—he lets you do what you want.”

  “Yeah, but that’s part of the problem,” I tell Jason over pizza—but he can’t quite understand. He didn’t know my father before. First of all, Dad used to be much, much stricter. I guess it’s good that he lets me make my own decisions—I mean, I’m old enough now where I should be able to—but I’m amazed at the things he lets me get away with. Breaking curfew without explanation—not calling when I don’t come home for dinner. I mean, I know when I do things wrong, and although I won’t tell him, there are times when I know I should get in trouble for it—but Dad just pretends he doesn’t see or pretends it doesn’t matter. Even on the rare occasions when he does punish me, the punishments are so wimpy they don’t mean a thing. It’s almost as if he’s afraid of me. I don’t know what there is to be afraid of.

  “Sometimes I break rules on purpose just to get him riled—just to get him mad enough to get on my case,” I tell Jason, “but he just doesn’t.”

  “So? That’s a problem?”

  “Yes!” I say, frustrated over the fact that he just can’t understand. “It’s like he’s had a lobotomy.”

  Jason takes me seriously. “Probably not,” he says. “They don’t do that sort of thing in prison unless you’re really bad off.”

  I angrily fling a pepperoni at his face. It grazes his nose, leaving some tomato sauce rimming his nostril.

  “Hey!” he says, throwing a piece of Canadian bacon at me. “What’s the deal?”

  “Just forget it,” I tell him. “You’re just cluelessly brain-dead.” I toss my pizza onto my plate. I really don’t feel like eating pizza anyway. I feel like eating barbecued ribs.

  Annoyed, Jason pushes himself away from the table and stands, pointing an accusing finger at me. “This is your problem,” he tells me, “not your father’s. I wish my father was as cool as yours is.”

  “Get a clue,” I tell him, fighting a losing battle to have the last word.

  “Get a life!” he responds. But I already have one. And when I think about it, it seems the only person around here who doesn’t have a life is my dad. I wish he did have one. Not one that I tell him to have and not one that Grandpa Wes and Grandma Lorraine prescribe for him—but one of his own. Maybe if he did, this weird feeling would go away.

  • • •

  God nails me for wishing Dad had a life.

  The punishment has a name. And her name is Sarah. She’s this five-foot-four bundle of redheaded energy who moved into our neighborhood from Chicago and slithered close when I wasn’t looking. She has three children of her own: a girl Tyler’s age, a boy a few years younger, and a toddler of undetermined sex that never stops screaming. On the annoying scale, her children rank somewhere between mosquitoes and thermonuclear war.

  I know Dad likes Sarah, but I try not to think about it. She’s nice enough, but she has no business being around my dad. She ought to just leave him alone, but I know she won’t and Dad probably won’t leave her alone either.

  While Tyler is out playing with his friends one afternoon, Dad calls me into the living room for a “talk.” He never looks at me when we have these “talks.” It’s part of this lobotomy thing. Now he looks away, and looks down, and looks at his hands. He just can’t look me in the eye.

  “I just wanted to ask you if you knew someone,” he says.

  “Who?”

  “Sarah Walker.”

  He must be blind if he thinks I don’t know her. “Yeah, I know her.”

  “Well, I was thinking of maybe taking her to dinner.”

  “So?” I say.

  “So I just wanted to know if it’s all right.”

  Well, what does he want me to say to that? Yeah, sure, go ahead. Go out with any woman you want. No problem; you’re a bachelor now. There are these demons in my brain, and they huddle together like linebackers, trying to tell me how I should run my defensive plays. They want me to tell my father no. If you’ve got such power o
ver him, tell him no, they say. If you’re that threatening to him, if he’s that afraid of what you’ll think or say or do, then TELL HIM NO because we don’t want him to ever look at another woman again. We want him to live like a monk for the rest of his life, say the demons in the huddle.

  “You can do whatever you like,” I tell him. “You don’t have to ask me.”

  “You won’t be upset at all if I see her?” he asks, not quite believing how easy it was.

  “No, it’s no problem,” I tell him.

  He smiles. “You’re quite a kid, Preston,” he says before he goes to call Sarah for their first date.

  Sure, I think, he can do that. He needs it. I don’t mind. Just as long as he never gets married. Just as long as he never asks me to call another woman Mom.

  21

  THE PTERODACTYL

  April

  Sarah is pretty, intelligent, fun to be with . . .

  And she doesn’t know.

  That is the state of affairs when we go out with her and her kids for a let’s-get-acquainted dinner six weeks after Dad started dating her.

  Maybe she’s like some of my old girlfriends, I think—the ones who knew about Dad but pretended they didn’t. Maybe she’s waiting for Dad to tell her. Dad promises he will—he’s just waiting for the right time. “She has a right to know,” he says, but it must be pretty hard to work up the guts to tell her.

  The demons huddling in my head secretly hope that when she knows, she’ll run in the other direction and never look back. But otherwise I want my dad to be happy.

  We eat at a fancy restaurant that I know Dad can’t afford, and the table is clearly divided by family lines—us blonds on one side of the table and Sarah with her redheaded kids on the other. I try not to talk too much during the meal, because I don’t feel like it. Tyler’s good at that—speaking only when he’s spoken to. He can spend whole meals making patterns in his spaghetti or trying to spear peas one at a time. He’s a natural at disappearing at a table full of people, but I’m not. I have to shovel food into my mouth constantly—otherwise I’ll feel uncomfortable keeping quiet.

  Davey and Dina, Sarah’s two older kids, are dressed up like Tweedledum and Tweedledee in matching color- coordinated outfits. Mercifully she left the bawling toddler with a baby-sitter.

  “Mommy, the chair is too hard,” complains Dina.

  “Mommy, can’t we sit at the table by the window?” complains Davey.

  I keep my mouth filled with breadsticks.

  “You’re such a good athlete, Preston,” says Sarah, already on her third glass of wine. “I’ve seen you at the football games. Number thirty-two, right?”

  “Preston’s also a state champion in track,” Dad brags. “He runs in invitational meets all across the country.”

  “Really!”

  I shrug. “Seattle, San Francisco, Tucson,” I say, my mouth filled with breadcrumbs.

  “I hurt my leg once running,” offers Davey.

  “Sarah’s athletic,” says Dad. “She bowls. You oughta see her—she’s very good.”

  “We all bowl,” says Dina. “We’re all very good.”

  Tyler tunes all this out. He spends the first part of the meal refolding his napkin in a variety of fascinating shapes, like squares and rectangles.

  Dina drinks a whole pitcher of water before the salads arrive, then says she has to go to the bathroom, but returns quickly. “The bathroom’s too disgusting,” she announces. “I’ll wait.”

  Throughout the meal, Dad acts like a used-car salesman, trying to sell us on Sarah and her kids, and trying to sell Sarah on Tyler and me. Actually, I don’t mind Sarah, considering the circumstances. She seems nice enough—she’s friendly and outgoing. But Dad is pushing way too hard, and I’m starting not to like it. And I definitely don’t like the way Dad looks at her. He has the same smile—and the same warm eyes—he used to have when he looked at Mom. I can’t stand it, and I have to look away.

  Most of the conversation seems to revolve around Davey and Dina and what tragic situations they’ve had to endure, like the tragedy of divorce, and the tragedy of losing bowling competitions, and the tragedy of the chicken pox smack in the middle of Christmas vacation.

  “It was the worst vacation of my life,” announces Davey tragically.

  When the conversation slips to our family, it is invariably some talk about me and sports—Tyler barely gets mentioned at all. But as always, Tyler seems not to mind. It’s not my fault—it’s just that other people seem to talk about me whether I want them to or not. And Tyler has learned to thrive in my shadow. He enjoys disappearing into his world of napkins and peas and spaghetti designs. Sometimes I wish I could.

  “Mommy, my meat is too rare,” complains Dina.

  “Mommy, this chicken smells funny,” complains Davey.

  It is sometime during dessert when Dad mentions Sarah’s singing.

  “Oh, I only sing for fun,” says Sarah with false modesty. “I’m not very good.”

  “I heard the demo you made. It’s pretty good,” I say.

  And then Tyler suddenly emerges from behind his ice-cream sundae.

  “I know someone who sings better,” he says.

  I reach my foot over to step on his to try to shut him up, but I miss.

  Sarah keeps her eye on Tyler. “Who’s that, Tyler?”

  Dad appears almost as ready to wet his pants as Dina is.

  “My grandma,” says Tyler. “My Grandma Lorraine.” Dad and I breathe a loud sigh of relief that almost comes out in perfect harmony. Relaxed again, we begin to talk about Grandma—her singing and her piano and organ, and all about how she found God when she was ten.

  “When she plays the organ,” says Dad, “it’s so beautiful, she could charm the angels themselves.”

  Tyler emerges from behind his sundae once more.

  “My mommy’s an angel,” says Tyler.

  This time I almost wet my pants.

  The uncomfortable silence is broken only by Davey sniffing the pudding on his plate.

  “Of course she is,” says Sarah, kindly and sweetly. “She’s an angel in heaven. Your dad told me.”

  But Dad didn’t tell her everything. I know that. I know by the way Dad looks away from her when she says it.

  I look at Tyler in this uncomfortable moment, and only now do I realize what’s really going on here. These little comments aren’t coming out because Tyler’s a bit out of it—Tyler knows exactly what he’s doing. Smiling Tyler is controlling all of us. Even now there’s that tiny Tyler smile on his face. The little devil! He couldn’t do any better if he had voodoo dolls to stick pins in. I have to smile, too. I never gave him that much credit.

  • • •

  “So what do you think of Sarah?” Dad asks us the second we leave the restaurant.

  “I don’t like her hair,” says Tyler from the backseat. “And she’s too short.” He thinks for a moment. “Other than that, she’s okay.”

  “How about you, Preston?” Dad waits for me to answer. I take a moment too long just to make him sweat, but then I get mad at myself for being so nasty about it.

  “Yeah, she’s great,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know her very well, but she seems okay.”

  “So you like her?”

  “Yeah, I like her.”

  “Do you like her a lot?”

  “I like her,” I say again. He’s pushing it.

  “At least she’s pretty,” mutters Tyler, as if that makes up for any problem in the world.

  We drive home the long way and Dad keeps his eyes too attentively on the road, making believe the road is all he’s thinking about. It’s just like the way I concentrate on the food on my plate when I don’t want to talk. Finally he says what’s on his mind.

  “I’m going to tell her about Mom this week. About the ‘accident.’ ”

  “Are you going to call it an ‘accident’?” The words slip out of my mouth before my brain has a chance to censor them.

  “I’m go
ing to tell her the truth,” says Dad, keeping his eyes on the road, but running a stop sign all the same.

  “Good,” I say, with my tongue now firmly harnessed. “She ought to know if you’re going to keep on dating her.” The word dating stumbles on my tongue. Dads don’t date. The two words just don’t go together.

  “I have to tell her,” says Dad, “because I think things might be getting serious between us.”

  Hold it! Hold it! Serious how? Serious as in love? Did that slip in behind my back when I wasn’t looking? Dating and love are two completely separate things.

  “Someday,” says Dad, “I might want to ask her to marry me.”

  If I were driving, I would have stomped on the brakes and squealed to a halt in the middle of traffic. Unfortunately I won’t be driving until next year. I turn away from my father so he doesn’t see my eyeballs bulging. But he catches my reflection in the misdirected side mirror.

  “I hope we get a bigger house,” says Tyler.

  “Preston?”

  Inside my head, the demons have broken the huddle and are laying siege to my mind. How dare he just decide this. How long has he known her, two months or so? How long has he been out of prison, a little over a year? How long since he killed Mom?

  But I deny any of these questions exist. I deny feeling anything. I am a disciplined athlete. I am in control of my body and mind. I feel nothing but happiness. That’s what I tell myself.

  “Preston?”

  “When are we going white-water rafting?” I suddenly spit out at him like an accusation.

  “What?”

  “I’m happy for you and all that, Dad—you and Sarah; that’s great—but when are we going white-water rafting like you promised?”

  I’ve caught him off guard. He stutters a bit.

  “Well, Preston . . .”

  “When do we go rafting and skiing and camping? When do we see the Grand Canyon? When do I get my dirt bike? When do we do all those things you promised?”

  “We’ll do all of them, Preston,” he tells me. “We’ll do them with Sarah.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I was just asking.”

  Dad promised me the world when he was in prison. I don’t want the world, I want my mom back, but he can’t perform that particular miracle, can he? So if the world is all he can give me, then he better get on the job.