The Old Man

If you had asked me to pick the three people least likely to show up at my door, I probably would have picked, in no particular order, Vladimir Putin, Brad Pitt and my father. Putin and Pitt didn’t show up tonight. I’ll give you one guess to figure out who did.

I stared out the peephole for ages. I recognized him instantly, even though I hadn’t seen him since I left home six years earlier. He looked different. Older. I couldn’t get over how much gray I saw in his beard. I was still staring when he rang the doorbell again, and I was yanked back to reality; I suppose I had to answer the door rather than just staring at him through a small hole.

I pulled the door open slowly, giving him time to run away. He didn’t. I didn’t say anything. We stood face-to-face for what felt like an eternity until David came down the hallway and broke my trance.

“Hey Angela,” he called from down the hall.

“Hey David.” He had reached the doorway now, and stood awkwardly in the hallway wondering if he should step past us and into the condo. I looked him in the eye. “David, this is my father, Pete. Dad, this is my roommate’s friend.”

They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before it occurred to me to invite them in. The three of us seated ourselves awkwardly in the living room. Missy called down from upstairs. “David? Is that you?”

David leaped at the chance to leave this tense scene. “Yes, it’s me. Can I come up?”

She poked her head out and gave me a strange look from behind my father’s head. “Sure,” she said. “Come on up. I’m just doing my hair.” She mouthed, “Are you ok?” and I nodded. David was sure to fill her in when he got upstairs.

My father and I were left alone in the living room with nothing but our silence to share. “So,” I said, and then stopped. I could hear a clock ticking. “So how did you find me?”

My father coughed and cleared his throat. “Your old landlady gave me your forwarding address.” Ah, that explains it, I thought. Helen never could keep a secret. I should have known better than to give her my forwarding information, but she was a friendly woman and I thought I might want to keep in touch with her. I never thought that she might be giving my information away.

“So what brings you here?” I didn’t feel like wasting time with pleasantries. It was all too bizarre not to want to get down to details right away.

He cleared his throat again. “I had some things I wanted to talk about with you.”

“Are you dying?” I asked the question a little too abruptly and callously.

“No!” He paused, as if wondering what might be going on in my head. “I wanted to tell you that I was getting married.”

“Oh.” I suspected that I should feel something, anything, but I was empty inside. I barely knew this man who supplied half of my genetic material. Was I supposed to be happy for him? Sad? I didn’t know what to feel, so I felt nothing.

“Is she nice?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, a little too emphatically. “She’s the best.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Let’s see.” He began to count backwards. “Four months.”

“And you know her well enough to marry her?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. I’ve never known anyone that well. What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?” he asked.

“Knowing someone like that.”

“I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t know. It just takes its shape. It is what it is.”

His attitude seemed so resigned, so laid back. I wondered what had happen with the uptight basket case that had been my only parent for most of my life.

“Are you still working two jobs?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, just the factory. Day shift.”

I nodded. “Good. Because with that two job system, you don’t have any time to find a wife. Or a kid, for that matter. I was lost in that house for years.”

He shook his head sadly. “I did a terrible job with you and your sister. I just hope that I’m better with Carol’s babies.”

“Wait a minute. Is Carol the girlfriend? Is she pregrnant?”

“Yes, she’s my friend. And no, she’s not pregnant yet.”

“Yet? Oh for god’s sake….” I tried to put my selfish feelings out of the way and present something rational. “Do you know how old you are?”

“54.”

“And she’s how old?”

“36.”

Great. Just lovely. An 18-year difference and the possibility that she might still be fertile. Great. Susan must be having a coronary.

“So what are you looking for from me? My blessing? Fine, you’re got it. It’s all about your happiness now. Mom’s been gone for 14 years.”

“What I want is for you to come to the wedding,” he said.

“Hmmm… I really don’t know about that. I’ve never been a big fan about watching others make lifelong promises and exchange metal bands.” In truth, weddings were, in my opinion, an excuse to make a really extensive Christmas list of cool toys and goodies, and ask other people to buy them for you. Great scam, but hardly worth the big party associated with it.

“It’s very important to me,” he said.

“Why? I barely know you. I don’t know her at all. And I’m not on speaking terms with my sister. So what incentive do I have to join this little soiree? Because it seems to me that it’s just an unnecessary trip to the suburbs.”

“I’m still your father,” he said gruffly.

“No. You’re really not. You’re my genetic donor, but you have never really been a father. There’s nothing fatherly about you.”

“I worked two jobs so you and your sister could have good lives and go to good schools. I did everything for you.”

“You were never home. I was alone. Mom was gone because of me, and you were never there.”

“Angela, listen to me. It wasn’t your fault. She was dying. Cancer is unstoppable if it’s got someplace to go.”

I knew that he really believed it, but to me, the most important thing, the one thing I never got, was a hug. All I wanted at age six was to be loved. Instead, the guilt that accompanied my mother’s first departure came from all angles, especially from my father. Your mother leaves you and your father rarely comes home: what’s a kid to think? I was certain that I had done something terribly wrong to make the adults stay away. Eventually, the other kids stayed away, too. I grew increasingly convinced that I was broken, some sort of bad luck charm that made people leave. This feeling was reinforced by my second-grade best friend; she moved away and never wrote again, in spite of swearing that we would be friends forever. I was never the same after that. I didn’t trust anyone.

“Angela? Angela, don’t you know that I’ve always loved you and tried to do the best for you? It broke my heart when you left home.”

I said nothing, but wheels inside my head where turning at breakneck speed. All I could hear was one phrase repeated over and over, as though by some deranged parrot: It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault.

“Dad?” I said, quietly. “Dad, I’m scared.”

“About what?” he asked.

“Everything. Everything is changing. The world is always different. And it seems like the only thing that doesn’t change is me.”

“You change. You’ve changed lots of times since you moved out. They may be small, incremental changes, but that’s not the point.”

“I don’t know that I do,” I said, fearing the status quo as much as anything. “I feel like I’m exactly the same as I was at 18, 20, 28….”

“That’s not how you gauge change. You measure it when you learn something new or have fun with friends. It’s less scientific than some methods, but interesting nonetheless.”

I didn’t want to listen to his philosophies on life, but then something occurred to me: I had never listened to them before. I wondered if he had ever talked to Susan and not me. Somehow I doubted it. She wasn’t the type to listen to life philosophy. She was a creature of experience, pure and simple. Listening to someone else’s ideas was not her strength, nor was it mine.

“So, professor, how do I change my life?”

“Start small,” he advised. “Maybe it’s just as simple as trying something new. Like attending a family wedding.”

“Nice try,” I said.

“I’m serious. Angela, this isn’t easy for me. I know I wasn’t the best father. I know that. But I want you to be the best person you can be, and hopefully, at the very least, you can be friends with me.”

I looked him in the eye. “You really mean that, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why do you want to be friends with me?”

“Because I’ll never be able to go back and be the father that you needed and wanted. Nothing can change that. But I can try to be the friend that you want going forward.”

“Why now?”

“Because I realized that life can’t be lived in the past or in anticipation of the future. It has to be lived in the present.”

I went pale. “Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “Actually, I do know. I had a dream last week where a wise old man told me those words. Life can’t be lived in the past or in anticipation of the future.”

I started to shake. “What’s wrong?” He looked deeply concerned.

“A few nights ago…” I stopped to collect myself. “A few nights ago, I wasn’t well. I was sick. Hallucinating. And I had a dream where a wise old man told me the exact same thing.”

He looked at me with disbelief. “No, that can’t be.”

“I’m serious!”

“So who’s trying to tell us something?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking. “It’s a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“You tell me,” I said. “You’re the one who drove more than an hour to get here, tracking me down at two apartments. What’s it a sign of?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Life’s too short to waste it with work and petty arguments. That’s why I’m here.”

“Always look on the bright side of life, as the Pythons would say?” My teeth were chattering. I was really rattled by this conversation.

“Maybe that’s the essence of it all,” he said. “You’ll get what you look for. Look for bad, you’ll see the bad. Look for good and you’ll see the good.”

I thought of my childhood, sitting on the banks of the creek. It was a polluted mess, filled with old tires, shopping carts and miscellaneous garbage. But when the sun was at just the right angle in the late afternoon, you could look into the water and see the reflection of the trees and sky. At those moments it was the most beautiful body of water, a peaceful mirror reflecting the beautiful parts of the world.

“Don’t look in the creek. Look at the reflection,” I mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” What if I had withdrawal symptoms because I expected to have them? What if my job sucked because I expected it to suck? What if my relationships didn’t last because I expected them to fail?

Tonight I would start something new. Like Moses bringing down the tablets from the mountain, I had my own principles of living that I needed to try out. I couldn’t wait for my father to leave so I could be home alone with my thoughts. All I needed was a piece of paper and a pen.