The closer Joe got to his father, the angrier and more confusedhe became. The emotions came out of a place he didn’t know still existed, as if a long-dormant tumor had ruptured. He felt eighteen again, and not in a good way.
Joe sat down across from George. They had the table to themselves. Outside the murky, unwashed windows, the last moments of the sun died on the pine boughs.
“You can grab a tray and get some dinner,” George said, gesturingtoward the buffet line at the front of the room.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ve got to eat something.”
“No.”
George slid his tray before him-slices of dark meat coveredwith brown gravy, a mound of mashed potatoes with a hollowed-out, gravy-filled pocket on top. Joe remembered watching his father do that growing up-hollowing out the potatoeswith the heel of his spoon, pouring gravy in the depressionso it looked like a volcano about to erupt gravy.
George halfheartedly cut a forkful of beef and raised it to his mouth. He chewed slowly, painfully, as if his gums hurt. Joe noticedthat his hand holding the fork trembled as he raised it.
When he was through chewing, George washed it down with half a glass of ice water and winced as he drank. “You sure you don’t want something?”
“I’m sure.”
“Just so you know, I haven’t had a drink all day.”
“That’s why you’re shaking and drinking water,” Joe said.
“I did it for you. It wasn’t easy.”
Joe nodded. He could not make himself thank his father for not drinking for the day. He couldn’t think of a good thing to say about anything, and regretted that he’d come.
“It’s good to see you, Son,” George said softly, holding Joe’s eyes for a fleeting second before looking away. Joe noticed George was having trouble keeping his mouth still, as if his teeth wanted to chatter.
“I guess I’m supposed to say it’s good to see you too,” Joe said.
“But you can’t say that.”
“I can’t say that.”
Still not meeting Joe’s eyes, George nodded as if he understoodhow things were. He tried to eat a forkful of mashed potatoesbut it hung there, inches from his open mouth. With resignation, he dropped the fork to his plate. “I can’t eat this.”
The silence eventually turned into a kind of roar, Joe thought. He couldn’t hear his father when he broke it.
“What?”
“I said I thought about giving you a call lots of times.”
“But you never did.”
“Tell me about my grandchildren,” George said, his first genuine smile pulling at his mouth. “My daughter-in- law. What’s her name again?”
'Marybeth.”
'How old are my granddaughters?”
“Getting older all the time,” Joe said.
His father stared at him. Joe remembered that stare, those eyes, that set in his mouth that could curl into a grin or, just as easily, bare and reveal tiny sharp teeth.
“You don’t want to tell me about them,” George said.
“They have nothing to do with you. You have nothing to do with them.”
“I had hoped it wouldn’t be like this.”
Joe wanted to reach across the table, gather the old man’s collarin his fist, and bounce him up and down like a rag doll. “At one time, I had a lot to say to you. For years, I rehearsed what I was going to tell you if I ever got the opportunity I have now. I’d go over it when I was by myself like it was a speech. I had sectionsabout what you did to my mother, my brother, and me. It was a pretty good speech, and I’m not good at speeches. But now that you’re sitting right there, I can’t remember any of it.”
George shook his head. “It wasn’t all bad. I wasn’t a monster.”
Joe didn’t disagree.
“Your mom and I, we-”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Joe snapped. “What’s done is done. You can’t justify it now.”
“It was never about you,” George said. “You probably think that. It was about your mother and me. I never had anything against you or Victor.”
“You’re right,” Joe said. “It was never about us. Not a thing was ever about us.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it was.”
His father took a deep breath. Joe could hear it wheeze into his lungs. “Can’t we put that all behind us now? You’re a grown man. We’re both grown men. I was hoping maybe we could talk.”
“I’m not a big talker.”
“I’ve got some things I’d like to say.”
“Like what?”
“Like when I left, it was the best thing for all of us. Would it have been better if I’d stayed and continued to make everyone’s life as miserable as mine?”
Joe said, “At least that would have showed that you tried to think of someone other than yourself.”
“You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” George said, a familiarphrase from his father. What it meant to Joe was,
“I needed space,” his father said, “I needed to find out why I was put on this earth.”
Joe stared at him with bitter contempt. “What a load of crap that is,” he said.
George was startled.
“I get pretty sick of hearing people like you try to find good reasons for acting selfish,” Joe said. “It’s not about what you say, it’s about what you do. You cut and ran.”
“How did you get so hard, Son?” his father whispered.
“A few months ago,” Joe said, “I put the muzzle of my Glock to a man’s forehead and pulled the trigger. I think about it all the time, just about every night. I justify it to myself that he was threatening my family, which he was. That if I let him go he’d figure out a way to come back for me, which he would have. But it doesn’t matter what I say to myself, I still did it. I didn’t
George sighed and it was as if all of his spirit was being expelled.He seemed smaller than when Joe sat down. Joe watched his father think. He knew he’d made him angry. Fine.
George looked up. “I might have done some stupid things, but at least I never killed a man.”
Joe thought of Victor. “In a way, what you did was worse.”
“And here I thought tonight might be nice,” George said sadly.
“I’ve got a great wife and two great kids,” Joe said. “I learned how to be a good father and a husband from them. Without them I’d fly off the planet.”
“When Victor died-”
“Without them,” Joe said, refusing to let George turn the conversation, “I might have turned out to be like you.”
He stood up and walked out of the cafeteria. Joe wasn’t sure why he’d confessed, and it confused him as much as anything. George didn’t call after him.
Marybeth was cleaning up after dinner when Joe called, and the first thing she said was, “Three more days.”
Which reminded him he needed to make arrangements for them, reserve rooms or a cabin in the only place that would still be open, Mammoth.
He asked her if she could get on the Internet and research some companies he had learned about but hadn’t
