Daddy (standard:other, 2958 words)
Author: Finn McKool	Added: Apr 12 2003	Views/Reads: 3279/2306	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A short story I wrote a while ago. Thought y'all might like it.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


"Hey sleepyhead. Wake up! It's getting late." 

I'm sure I muttered something intellegent back like, "Hmmum buh fzzz..."
because she giggled at me. I rubbed my eyes, and the blur began to 
focus like a movie projector. There was your mother. She was sitting on 
the edge of the bed, smiling at me. That's what I remember about her 
most, boy. Her smiling at me. All the different times, and all her 
different smiles. But that one most of all. I started laughing and so 
did she. 

My aunt let her in, and I'd left the venetian blind, which passed for a
bedroom door open. She had apparently been whispering and nudging me 
awake for the past ten minutes. But it takes a lot of whispers and 
nudges to wake the dead. 

We spent that whole summer together. Laughing and smiling and getting to
know one another. It was beautiful. But as always summer once again 
turned to fall and she whisked away back to Florida. It was like one of 
those old schmaltzy fifties pop songs, "I don't wanna say good-bye, til 
the summer, but darling I promise you this, I'll send you all my love, 
In a letter, and seal it with a kiss..." Hokey stuff, but that's how it 
was. Hokey's a good thing when you're not even in high school. 

And we did send letters, sealed with kisses. I have every one of them
still to this day. I stumble on them occassionally and have to read 
them. Whether out of remembrance or masochism I'm not sure. Maybe a 
little of both, or maybe they amount to the same. 

The next summer wasn't the same. Nothing so beautiful could be repeated
no matter how hard you try. But that summer was just plain no damn 
good. Aside from nearly losing Dave to a car wreck, and watching his 
family get evicted because they couldn't pay both the medical bills and 
the mortgage, your mom just wasn't there. She came back, and stayed 
with her grandmother. But I think she was only in town for a collective 
two weeks the whole summer. She spent a lot of it the next town over 
with her pa. 

But I tell you one thing which happened between me and her I'll never
forget. Our first real kiss. It was right when she first came back. She 
stormed into my garage with that no-nonsense look on her face. You know 
it well I'm sure. She said she had to speak to me. Alone. Not knowing 
what the hell to think, I just said o.k. and followed her behind the 
garage. I got the feeling I was in trouble. So did Dave and his girl. 
They were snickering at me as we walked out. We walked behind the 
garage and she pushed me against the wall. Then she tried to stare me 
down for a second, but all the sudden that serious look on her face 
melted into one of her smiles. The mischievious one with the sparkling 
eyes, and pursed lips. Then she just kissed me. We burned. Oh God how 
we burned. All we did was kiss, but I'm surprised we didn't set the 
garage on fire. All those young hormones flaring. It was my first real 
kiss. Apparently I was a natural and a little too good at it. She 
accused me of cheating on her later. She had decided that I kissed a 
little too well for that to be my first time. I had to have practiced 
on someone else since she'd been away. Had I? No, no, no. She had been 
it. The first and only. 

But, like I said, after that, I saw very little of her. And then she
left. I started high school. We decided that three months on and nine 
off was a little too much to take. Especially with the whole new world 
of high school opening before us, with all its strangeness and promise. 
I don't know about her, but I thought there'd be all kinds of future 
girlfriends waiting for me there. One's that didn't leave for nine 
months of the year. Just shows you how young and dumb I was doesn't it? 


Damn. You wanna beer? I know I do. All this reminiscing bullshit's about
done me in. I ain't got nothin' but Budweiser, but then, that's all the 
beer I've needed. Especially on a front porch in the summer. Want a 
cigarrette? No? Good. I'll smoke'em until the day I die, and I'd not 
talk any man out of'em but, it's not a good habit to pick up. 

You're a lucky kid, you know that? I didn't have a daddy. He picked up
and split before I first saw daylight. But you do. You got a daddy. 
Your mom married him not three months after she left me. They still 
together? They are? Good. Then you came along, but you know all that, 
don't you. 

Man. I was scared she was lyin'. Ever since the day over the phone when
she told me she wasn't pregnant, but we also wasn't dating anymore. 
Kind of a "good-news/bad-news" thing. It was cloudy outside that day. 
September. Fall was on the way, and it was a mellow fall like usual, 
but some days it just didn't pay to be out of doors. Fifty degrees, 
yeah sure, but that wind would cut like a knife in fall. And the sky 
was solid gray. It was like a painting. No sun, no light. Like 
everything could be seen on its own merit, without sunlight. No glow 
behind the clouds. No sun halos. Just gray clouds. And, I guess them 
gray clouds been following me ever since. Just gray. Not black or 
white, but gray. Not beauty, nor ugliness, just tolerable gray. 

I remember the last time I saw your mother. She was big with you. Huge.
It was at her grandmother's funeral. Her whole body done swelled with 
her happiness bringing you into the world. Bet she's real pretty now 
though, isn't she? She is? I knew it. Your mom always said that that 
was the way with women in her family. They'd balloon up to unheard of 
heights and then, after the pregnancy, they'd be thinner and prettier 
than ever. Motherhood just suited them that way. They became lovelier 
for it. I knew that the second time we started dating. The best time. 
The final time. I suppose that's the part you really wanna hear about. 

It was spring my senior year in high school. Spring break even. I just
walked outside, and there she was, exactly the same. Just older. She 
was matured, and young and alive and beautiful. She made everything 
around her seem black and white. She just sucked up all the color 
around her. Spring couldn't match her. And that was how it began again. 
She was just there. In my life like she'd never left. Like it'd been 
two weeks or months instead of years. I helped her clean out her car. 
We talked. We went in to my mom's house and watched a movie. A western. 
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I think it was. The one with 
Redford and Newman. And during the movie, for no apparent reason, she 
grabbed my hand, just like I'd been hoping she would, without any right 
for me to hope. But she did it. Just like we were never apart. She 
asked me to take her to her prom in the next town over. She'd moved up 
here a year ago. I said I'd go to hers if she went to mine. 

God, what a great night prom is. Her prom was fun. I enjoyed myself. But
it was for her. It was her school and her friends and her world, as it 
should be. I damn near got in a fight with some redneck slapnuts. One 
of them was her ex and had a stalking streak in him. So, naturally, he 
was none to keen on seeing her on my arm all night. But all he did was 
stare. I think he figured he'd been beat. Not by me, but by her and by 
himself. That's a hard thing to realize when you've been dumped. I've 
had to learn it a few times myself. 

My prom was better. We went to dinner at a swank resteraunt downtown.
Her, me, and all my friends. Then we strolled into my prom. My tux was 
cooler this time. It was a white jacket, and black everything else. A 
James Bond special. Which was odd, cause when we walked in, the band 
took a notion to play the James Bond theme song. We danced and laughed 
and talked and danced some more. And afterwards was the motel room. It 
was the best night of my life that I can remember. Even waking up the 
next morning to the rude, and intrusive sun wasn't too painful. All I 
had to do was look at what was naked and nestled in my arms. 

I bet you wanna know where you fit into to all this. "Yeah, that's sweet
old-timer, but cut to the chase!" I understand. Well, there were more 
hotel rooms and nights in the back seat of my little ol' car. We both 
lived with our families, of course, so we had no opprotunity at home 
for privacy and intimacy. We never used protection because she was 
unable to have kids. That used to tear her up inside. She'd cry about 
it, when we talked about it. Or when she thought about it. You know how 
women are. They see something that reminds them of something sad. They 
cry. For her it was an old diaper commercial with all the babies in it. 
One day she told me why. 

You weren't her first child. Did you know that? See, some other dipshit
had gotten her pregnant when she was fourteen or fifteen. She called 
him and told him about it, all in a tangle of sweat and tears. But he 
was cool. Cool as a fan. He sounded even pleased! Lord, he sounded just 
about ready to crow. He told her to come by his house that night, his 
folks were outta town and he'd make them dinner and they could talk 
about what was to be done. So she goes of course, and she walks into 
the house, and its just all quiet. It was a disturbing quiet. The kind 
in movies when you know something is wrong. But, it wasn't a movie so 
she just goes walkin' around, callin' for the dude. 

She walks into the kitchen, and she finds him. He greets her with a
baseball bat to the midsection. Apparently he was no longer pleased. I 
don't know how but your mother managed to call her sister and get in 
the car, unaided. The guy just walked out after he'd hit her. Nothing 
ever came of it. No one was told. 

But the baby died, needless to say. And your mother thought she couldn't
have children. Then you came along. Don't you see how lucky you really 
are? 

But that last September between us. She told me she was pregnant. Or
thought she was. She was going back to Florida to visit her mother, and 
would find out for sure there. So she comes back, says she's not 
pregnant and that we ain't dating anymore. She's fallen in love with 
some old sweetheart, your daddy. The rest you know. Nothing else 
matters. How I felt, what I did. They were inevitable and 
inconsequential. Of course I felt destroyed, and haven't done anything 
of any worth since. Not that I was ever bound to, you understand. But 
that was it. 

I know. Not the story you were looking for. I told you. You wanted me to
be a hero. You wanted me to be a villain. I was killed in a war. I was 
a no-account coward who ran away. Somethin'. But I never could have 
abandoned your mother. And I couldn't have abandoned you. I knew all to 
well what that was like. Too many Father's Days when the teacher asks 
you why you ain't makin' anything for your daddy. And the look on her 
face when you explain you ain't got no daddy. Bastard's just branded on 
your forehead. No ridicule. Just pity and shame. To avoid that I woulda 
stuck with you and your mom come hell or high water. And your mom knew 
that. So she lied to me. She was right to. You dad had his shit 
together. He was on his way to making good money at twenty-two. He was 
on the road to a carreer. I was on the road to a bar and a spot on the 
line, rolling cigarrettes for Phillip Morris. The road to no where. 

And she loved him more than me, I reckon. Loved him for being a better
man at twenty-two than she knew I'd be at thirty. Like I said, she was 
probably right. 

So there ya go boy. I'm sure you still have questions. But if you think
about'em real hard, they don't matter. What matters is you got a daddy. 
And he ain't me. 


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