Dinner with Dad

 

 

“DID YOU get my text?”

I walk through the door that same afternoon and find my sister standing at the kitchen counter, nursing a Diet Coke and decapitating carrot sticks with her big white teeth.

“No, what?”

“Dad wants to take us out to dinner tonight.”

I groan.

“It’s for our birthday, Theo. He said he has a surprise for us. Maybe it’s… a new car!” She makes her voice sound like a game show host and wiggles her fingers. I smile. She used to be funny like that. We used to crack each other up before she started caring so much about being cool. Now it’s rare for her to risk acting silly.

“I doubt it’s a new car, Tabs.”

She shrugs. “A girl can dream, can’t she?”

“You don’t even drive.”

“It’s not about the car, Theo. It’s the thought that counts.”

“I don’t want him buying us stuff.”

“Well, I do.”

“Just because he buys you stuff doesn’t make up for him being a shitty father,” I say with a rush of anger that takes me by surprise and leaves me with a prickly heat on the back of my neck.

She glares at me, her lower lip jutting out like it used to right before she’d start wailing to our mom to tell on me for being mean or hitting her, usually because she hit me first. I feel bad for saying it, not because it isn’t true but because I don’t want to hurt her feelings. My sister still has some faith left in my dad. I should let her hold on to it as long as she can.

“He’ll be here in forty-five minutes. Don’t be an asshole tonight and screw it up for me,” she says tartly and takes her Diet Coke downstairs with her, slamming the door on her way out. Outside my bedroom window, I see her cross over to Chris’s house. His front door opens and she disappears inside. Before the door shuts, Chris pops his head out and glances up to my window. I feel caught and slowly back away, pretending I wasn’t already looking for him.

I quickly shower, then survey my closet to find something to wear because whenever we go out to dinner with my dad, it’s always to some ridiculously fancy place where the servers all fall over themselves to kiss your ass. I’d rather my dad put that money toward helping my mom with the bills, but he likes flaunting his wealth in front of us. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

I pick out the shirt I wore the last time I saw my dad. It was Easter, when my grandmother came down from New York and wanted all her grandchildren in the same place at once. My dad hosted a luncheon at his McMansion in Todesta, this weird Stepford planned community. His wife, Susan, was running around like crazy, trying to make sure everything was up to whatever impossible standard he’d set. I mostly kicked back and chilled with my great-uncle Theo, my namesake, who’d been sprung from the home for the day.

Uncle Theo has dementia, but even before that, he was a salty old bastard. At the party, he kept asking me to bring him more potato salad and whistling at the women when they walked by. Then, when my grandmother said it was time to go, Uncle Theo pitched a fit and called her a cocksucker.

Cocksucker.

He said it with such gusto that a little spittle came out and dotted his chin. I tried to persuade him to go quietly with a tub of potato salad, and he turned on me too. Called me a cocksucker. Like, in his eighty-plus years of living, that was the worst insult he could come up with. Chris cracked up when I told him that story, and we each took turns saying it like my Uncle Theo. Cocksucker.

I really should go visit Uncle Theo in the home, take him some of that potato salad he likes. Talk about being lonely. I hope they just take me out back and shoot me when I get too old. I don’t ever want to end up in a home, alone, slowly losing my mind and forgetting the names of the people I once loved.

I button up the one nice collared shirt I own. It’s way too small, tight along the back so I can’t pull my arms forward all the way. The cuffs only make it halfway down my forearms, but I don’t have time to go somewhere to get another one. I roll up the sleeves, grab my tie, and head out to the kitchen to see if my mom can knot it for me.

My mom sees me and tries to hide a smile behind her dainty little hand. My mom and sister are cute little things, and I take after my dad—tall and gangly and slightly awkward, though I’m pretty slim, whereas my dad has been packing a little extra poundage around the middle lately.

“Theo, you can’t wear that,” she says, shaking her head with sympathy. She feels sorry for me, either because I’m growing faster than she can keep me in clothes or because I’m the idiot who didn’t realize it.

I glance down. “Is it really that noticeable?”

“You look like you’re twelve years old. Lift up your arms.” I do, and the shirt comes up above my navel.

“Go put on something else.”

I go back to my room and ransack my closet, but all I come up with is a faded striped shirt that looks like it’s been worn about a million times before. I come out with it on. This time it’s my sister who gives me shit.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says all snottily. She’s wearing this slinky black number that makes her look about thirty-five years old. Makeup, straightened hair. Man, her boobs have really grown too.

“Go borrow something from Chris,” she says dismissively.

“No.” The last thing I want to do is go over there and ask for a favor.

“Dad’s going to be here any minute,” she huffs. “There’s no way he’s going to let you go out with us dressed like that.”

She’s right. I pull off my shirt and throw it on the table, run back to my room for an undershirt and tie, then jog downstairs and over to Chris’s house. Maybe he won’t be home. Then I can say I did everything I could to make it happen. Maybe I can skip dinner with my dad altogether.

I knock twice, and Chris answers the door almost immediately.

“Hey.” He looks me up and down and seems to pick up on my urgency.

“Can I—”

“Yeah, of course.” He opens the door wide and leads me upstairs to his suite of rooms, which includes a bedroom, a game room, a palatial bathroom, and a walk-in closet that’s about the size of my bedroom. I follow him into the closet, and he surveys his collection of menswear. I don’t bother looking. I’ll take whatever he gives me.

He pulls a blue shirt off the hanger and hands it to me. “This one’s a little big on me,” he says. “Matches your eyes.”

It does match my eyes, almost exactly. It’s kind of weird that he noticed, but I appreciate his efficiency. I toss the tie on the bed and pull the shirt on, buttoning it up as fast as I can, including the cuffs. I tuck it into my pants and redo my belt, glance up in the mirror. It fits. Fantástico!

“Damn, Theo,” he says. “When’d you get so handsome?”

That sets off a burning sensation deep in my belly that radiates outward, a telegram to the enemy line. I imagine a block of ice around my crotch, deep-freezing everything within it. I chalk up his comment to him messing with me because it’s dangerous to read into things like that.

I loop the tie around my collar with shaking hands and fumble it because I’ve only worn a tie a half-dozen times in my life. I know my dad’s about to pull up to the curb any minute, and I want to look like I have my shit together even though I feel like the opposite.

“Stop,” Chris says. “You’ll strangle yourself.” He comes over and carefully unravels my tie. I go still—fugue state—just staring at him, my upper lip sweating a little because he’s so close I can smell him, taste him. I inhale deeper even though I know I shouldn’t, and it sets my every nerve on edge. His tongue is doing that little pokey thing out the side of his mouth as he knots my tie. Please, not now, I tell my junk, which doesn’t seem to care that I’m begging. These pants are thin, and with terror I realize a huge hard-on has been erected in Chris’s name. There’s no hiding it. I bend my knees a little and curl inward so I don’t sexually assault him, praying he doesn’t have the sense to look down.

“There,” he says, patting my shoulders. His gaze flickers to my mouth, and I wipe the beaded sweat from my upper lip. Our eyes meet, and it feels different—time slows and gravity presses down on us more urgently. It’s like we’re meeting again for the first time. Does he see me differently now? Does he want me too? I still my breath so as not to spook him, but he only flashes his cocky grin and turns me toward the mirror.

“Not bad, huh?” he says as if to defuse the situation.

“Yeah, not bad.” I clear my throat and tamp down the disappointment threatening to consume me. He’s right, though, I do look pretty hot. Maybe that was all it was between us, a friendly appreciation. I’d totally get with myself, I think, and then laugh on the inside because I already have, many times over.

“Thanks, Chris.” I sigh a little and feel like I’m never able to express my gratitude to him. He’s gotten me out of so many jams. Then, because I don’t want my feelings to erupt like my uncontrollable boner, I get back to business. “Is this one of those shirts that needs to be dry-cleaned?” A lot of his nicer clothes have all these rules for washing. I keep throwing his old clothes into our dryer, and they come out looking like doll clothes.

“Machine wash. You can keep this one.”

“I’ll bring it back tomorrow, clean.”

“Fine,” he says, not wanting to argue with me about it.

I tell him goodbye and gallop down the stairs, exit his house just as my dad is pulling up to our driveway. He honks the horn because he’s said before he doesn’t want to deal with my mother, which I guess means knocking on the door and greeting her like a decent human being.

Tabs struts down our driveway like it’s a catwalk and claims the front seat of his Tahoe without question. I climb into the back. Dad reaches back to shake my hand, and I do it with what I hope is the right amount of pressure, even though it’s kind of weird to greet him after months of no contact with a handshake. Tabs kisses his cheek and calls him Daddy. It’s like she’s a grown woman at home, but when we get around my dad, she turns back into this little girl. Then I think, I’m probably not the only one who’s emotionally stunted because of his neglect. I make up my mind to do whatever I can to make the night go smoothly. Tabs deserves this.

Tabs keeps up the conversation on the way to the restaurant, thankfully. I sit in the back with my long legs stretched out, letting the cool air-conditioned air wash over me, and think about Chris tying my tie for me and all the other strangely intimate things we do for each other and wonder if that’s normal or if there might be something more behind it. It’s a constant cycle of reflection and self-doubt, which keeps my head spinning like a weather vane in a storm. I imagine a conversation between Chris and me would go something like this:

Me: Hey there, buddy, remember that time we jacked each other off?

Chris, suspiciously: Yeah, what about it?

Me: That was amazing, and I’d like to do that with you on the regular because, guess what, I’m gay and not only that, I’m in love with you and I have been for a while now.

Chris: I’m not gay.

Me:….

Chris: Why would you even think that? Do I seem gay to you? Wait, you like me? No, love me? What the….

“Pretty quiet back there,” my dad says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

“Just enjoying the ride,” I respond lightly. I’ve got to get Chris out of my head. Hypnosis? Electroshock therapy? Lobotomy?

We arrive at the restaurant, and a valet takes the car. Dad tips him with a crisp bill, and I think, what a waste of money, because there’s a parking spot literally ten feet away. He could have paid me the money to park his car for him. Dad comments on my height now that we’re standing shoulder to shoulder. He’s pretty tall and I’ve finally caught up with him, which I guess makes me pretty tall as well. Everything is changing—my body, my emotions, my sanity. I wish it would all just slow the hell down and let me catch my breath.

“You two must have been busy this summer,” Dad says, trying to excuse his absence in our lives for the past six months, acknowledging without acknowledging how long it’s been since we last saw him. I would let that shit hang over us like a silent, brooding storm cloud, but not Tabs. As if on cue, she immediately starts filling him in on everything she’s been up to while I duck my head and follow them inside.

The restaurant is swanky and artfully lit, with high-end furniture and attractive servers. A model-looking hostess leads us to our table, and a server brings us waters almost immediately. Tabs fills the silence with idle chatter—maybe she’s nervous too. My dad orders a Coke instead of a drink, which is good. One of the rules of his visitation is that he doesn’t drink when we’re with him. My mom is strict about that.

“So, Theo,” Dad says rapping the table in front of me with his knuckles to get my attention, an irritating habit of his. “Your sister tells me you got a job.”

“Yeah, mowing lawns on the weekends.” Me and my squad, tearing up the neighborhood. Edging the shit out of Palm Beach’s lawns and keeping everyone legit with their HOA’s.

“Manual labor, huh?” The tone of his voice isn’t one of admiration for an honest day’s work, more like distaste. “You know, I could have gotten you a job at my office.”

Working for my dad sounds like one long, drawn-out panic attack. The few times I’ve been to his office, it’s this whole dog-and-pony show where my dad puts his arm around me and jokes around like we’re best buds in front of all his employees. How about those Dolphins, son? It’s the reason I stopped going to him to have my teeth cleaned—it felt fake as hell.

“It’s cool, Dad. I like being outside.”

“You’ve gotten pretty dark,” he says, like it’s a bad thing. My dad’s a little racist. So are my grandmother and Uncle Theo, for that matter. I’m not sure what he thought might happen when he impregnated a Puerto Rican. Maybe that his Aryan genes would be that powerful.

“The sun will do that,” I say.

“You could wear a long-sleeve shirt and a hat,” he says, like it’s a brilliant solution no one has ever thought of before. I’m tempted to tell him only middle-aged white dudes do that, but I hold my tongue.

My sister cuts in. “Theo’s saving up to buy a car.” I nudge her under the table. She kicks me back harder with the pointy toe of her shoe. Right in the shin. I hate it when she volunteers information about me to him. She’s probably angling for him to one-up me, which he does.

“A car, huh? How much you got saved?”

“A couple thousand,” I say like it’s no big deal, secretly proud that I’ve been able to amass that much cash on my own. Like a boss.

“I can ask Susan about the Range Rover,” he says, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

My sister practically bounces out of her seat. “Really, Daddy?” she whines like a puppy. “Ohmygod, that would be sooo amazing.”

“How about it, Theo?” My dad levels his gaze at me, and it seems like a test. He wants the same reaction from me. In some weird way, it’s like he needs to be needed. I think about all the things he should have been there for—teaching me how to ride a bike, how to drive a car, telling me what an erection is, which Chris had to do. What the hell is this? I asked Chris one day because I thought my dick was broken, and Chris explained it to me, without even laughing or making me feel stupid about it.

My dad stares at me, waiting for a response, and I feel trapped.

“That’s really generous of you Dad, but I’ll probably get a junker.”

“Too good for the Range Rover?” he asks snidely.

“No, I just want to do this on my own.” I also don’t want to owe him anything. There’s no such thing as no-strings-attached with my father.

His eyebrows raise, and he frowns so that his chin puckers. “Maybe you could talk to your mother about your child support, then. Wouldn’t mind getting that monkey off my back.”

I swallow down my rising tide of anger and study the design on the silverware. My mother hasn’t had it easy since their divorce. After being cheated on and discarded like yesterday’s headlines, she had to battle my dad’s army of lawyers for child support. Her English wasn’t exactly perfect at the time, which my dad took advantage of. Then it was the constant badgering over the years from my dad, trying to make my mom feel like a freeloader when she works harder than anyone I know. And for all that he’s put her through, she never says a bad word about him, always defends him, which is a hell of a lot more than he’s ever done for her.

What was it he used to call me? Oh yeah, mama’s boy. And that was before the divorce.

Our server arrives then to take our order, and I’m thankful for the distraction. After the server leaves, my dad switches the topic to sports.

“How’s soccer going?” he asks. Soccer is the one thing he used to show an interest in. He never came to my practices—that was my mom—but he’d come to my games. He was the dad on the sidelines yelling at the refs and telling the coach how to do his job. But near the end of middle school, Dad’s participation in our lives dropped off dramatically, which for me included soccer.

“I decided not to go out for the team. I’m more into skateboarding now.”

He squints at me. “Skateboarding? That’s hardly a sport.”

I rub my forehead; a headache’s coming on. Maybe he’ll ask me if I have a girlfriend next. No, Dad, but I’m getting really good at giving head. I can’t even imagine coming out to my dad. What a nightmare.

“That’s too bad about soccer,” he says. “I was looking forward to going to a few of your games this year.”

I started almost every game last year. My dad didn’t make it to one of them. Chris did, though. I almost smile at that, thinking how I could always count on him to show up, even if my dad didn’t. My dad stares at me, perhaps waiting for me to apologize or tell him I’ll go out for the team, but I do neither. I gave up trying to impress him a while ago.

“I’m trying out for the dance team, Daddy,” my sister says, trying to fill the silence. I feel bad for her. Needing his approval like that, wanting his attention bad enough to make everything nice for him. “You and Theo could come to one of our basketball games.”

Dad frowns. “I’ll have to check my schedule.” My sister and I exchange a look. We both know what that means.

My sister, God bless her, tries again. “I saw on Facebook that the baby’s a boy. Have you and Susan picked out a name yet?”

Dad fiddles with his tie. “William,” he says without meeting my eyes. William is my dad’s name. I got named after my great-uncle and his uncle before him. For whatever reason, the Theodores in our family don’t spawn. But I wasn’t named after my dad, which is strange, being firstborn and all. Maybe his heart was never in it to begin with. My sister looks at me with sympathy, which is worse. So much worse.

“When’s the baby due?” my sister asks with a little less enthusiasm.

“Sometime in December,” he says, and all I can think is, I hope he does a better job with this one, for the kid’s sake.

My sister asks more baby-related questions, most of which my dad can’t answer because he doesn’t have a clue, which only makes me worry for William IV, to think my dad could potentially screw him up too. I hope Susan can keep my dad’s alcoholism and wandering eye in check. My dad has a bad case of white male privilege, worsened by the fact that he grew up with money, which has given him the impression that whatever he wants in life, he can just reach out and take it, regardless of who else’s life he’s screwing with.

Maybe it’s better that my dad didn’t raise me. I’ve seen what that looks like on guys my age. Some of the guys on the soccer team have it. Huge assholes. The kind of asshole who fakes a foul, then picks a fight with the player on the other team when it doesn’t get called. The kind of asshole who would rather be red-carded than back down, then throws a hissy fit on the sidelines because he can’t play and it’s all someone else’s fault.

It’s why I switched to skateboarding. Skaters are a kind of asshole I can deal with, hating on shit because they don’t have enough confidence in themselves. Most of them skate to be alone with others and have a problem with authority. All of them seem to have a high threshold for pain. Get in where you fit in.

The server delivers our meal. I ordered salmon, even though my appetite is nada. I would have ordered a grilled cheese if I thought my dad wouldn’t have a fit about it.

“You still hanging out with that neighbor of yours?” Dad asks me, slicing into his rare steak and taking a big, bloody bite.

“Chris. Yeah.”

“Now that’s one strange kid.”

“He’s not strange.” That’s the last word I’d used to describe Chris. If anything, I’m the strange one.

My dad continues, “You think he might be….” He lowers his head so that it accentuates his double chin, draws his eyebrows together a little, and scrunches up his nose like he’s smelling someone’s farts.

“Might be what?” I ask, feeling hostile and aggressive without even knowing what he’s talking about. My dad can talk shit about me all he wants, but he better leave Chris out of it.

“You know….” Dad leans in closer. “Gay?”

I’m stunned silent. The way he says it, like it’s so repugnant he can’t even say the word. In a parallel universe, someone is laughing their ass off at my situation. But all I want is to find the nearest body of water and drown myself in it.

My sister answers before I can, “Oh my God, Daddy, noooo. Definitely not. He’s got, like, a million girlfriends.”

Dad shrugs, a little smirk on his face. He thinks it’s funny. “You never know,” he says while masticating his meat. “Kids these days.”

I stand up suddenly, dropping my napkin onto the floor.

“Enough,” I declare to the entire restaurant. I practically shout it from the rafters.

“What’s your problem?” Dad asks.

I glance at my sister, who’s giving me a death stare like I’d better not screw this up. I stride away from the table as fast as I can without actually running, make my way blindly to the bathroom, grapple for the sink faucet, and splash some cold water on my face, getting water on my shirtfront and not giving a shit except to wonder if it will stain Chris’s shirt.

“Fuck,” I mutter at my reflection. I’m going to puke. And I’m all dizzy and shit, my stomach cramping into the size of a golf ball. So much rage buzzing through me, I feel like a lunatic. I definitely can’t go back out there. I come out of the bathroom and look for another way out of the restaurant so I don’t have to pass by them. Seems the only way out is through the kitchen. I push through the swinging door, keeping my head down. The staff is too polite to stop me, just kindly tell me I’m going the wrong way. I find the back door and pass through it, loosening my tie along the way. I don’t know how the hell to get it unknotted, so I just end up ripping it off my head and shoving it in my pocket. I take in big gulps of fresh air, trying to calm myself down and work up the nerve to go back in. Right around the time I think I’ve gotten myself under control, I get a text from my sister:

Dad says to get your ass back in here or he’s giving your trust fund to Sabine.

Sabine is my seven-year-old half sister, my dad’s love child with his second wife, the one he cheated on my mom with. I’m being held hostage. Screw him, I think. I don’t need his money. And I don’t need his bullshit.

Instead of texting my sister, I pull up my contacts and call Chris.

“What’s up?” he says, like he already knows something is wrong. I hardly ever call. We usually text.

I should have brought my skateboard, but I didn’t. I could walk home, but this is an area I’m not familiar with, where the houses are all cookie cutter and the streets look the same. I’m not sure I could find my way out if I tried. Oh, and look at that, it’s starting to rain.

“Can you come get me?”

“Sure thing. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“I’m in Todesta.” I glance around, looking for a street sign to give him an address.

“I know where you are,” he says.

That’s right, Find My Friends.