Usually, it’s a quick “hi, how are things” with Mom, and then it’s my turn. There’s a lot of small talk … what’s the weather like, what do you think of the Broncos this year (he knows I’m a big Denver Broncos fan), have you got a girlfriend … that kind of stuff. And silence, there tends to be a lot of silence. Mostly because my answers are pretty short, and he runs out of small talk material fairly fast. But it’s like he thinks the conversation has to go a certain amount of time to qualify as a dad-kid moment, so there we are in the silence. I’m usually waiting for the thing to end, and I sometimes get the feeling that he is too.
This time, no small talk. First, he talked to my mom. Like I said, for a long time. Mom wasn’t saying much, and the look on her face was serious through the whole phone call, so I figured the old man was phoning from jail or something. I was knocking back a Dr Pepper and pretending to be reading the crap out of an Edgar Allan Poe short story for English, but since I was only maybe six feet from Mom, I could totally listen in on the call — at least her part of it.
Which, as I said, wasn’t much. A few one-syllable responses and two longer ones. “Yes, he has a passport,” and “No, he doesn’t have asthma.”
Great, the old man is sending me to Greenland or somewhere that you shouldn’t go with asthma, and my totally amazing summer of intensive self-improvement is about to become a totally un-amazing two months of intensive boredom.
4
I was wrong about Greenland.
5
Mom handed me the phone. I shook my head no, but she passed it to me anyway.
“Hi.” I didn’t say hi Dad for the simple reason that I didn’t call him Dad. Ever. I know I said that before, but you’re supposed to repeat important stuff, so I’m repeating it.
I was also wrong about the small talk. One question, that was all. “How’s school?”
“Yeah, fine.”
Then it was straight to the big stuff. Big stuff for him. Crap for me.
“I want us to spend some time together, Nathan.”
“What do you mean by ‘some’?”
“I guess it’ll take a few weeks.”
It’ll take? What does that mean? What’ll take?
“I have some plans — some stuff I wanted to kind of … do.”
I heard him inhale, then exhale on the other end of the line. Like the doctor tells you to do when he’s got the stethoscope on your back. “Deep breath, then let it out slow.” You wanna piss him off, you let it out fast, all in one whoosh. I’ve done that a couple of times. To see what he’d say. But our family doctor, Dr. Phillip Lam, has no sense of humour. He just moves the stethoscope to another part of my back and says it again, “Deep breath, then let it out slowly.” I always do it right the second time. No sense messing with the guy if he doesn’t get that he’s being messed with.
“I can promise you a summer you’ll never forget.”
“This blows.”
“You can’t know that until we’ve done it.”
“Done what?” I looked over at Mom, who was avoiding eye contact.
“Several things. You might learn something and you might even … like it. If you let yourself.”
He was using the same argument Mom makes when she wants me to try some really gross zucchini concoction.
“What exactly is a kid my age going to do with someone … your age … that is going to make this summer something I’ll never forget?”
“What’s age got to do with it?” His voice had a little edge to it. Good. I’m pissing him off.
I took a swallow of Dr Pepper. “What’s your favourite TV show?”
There was a pause. I guess he didn’t expect that question. “I don’t know, I guess LA Law or maybe Law and Order. Why?”
“Mine’s The Simpsons. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
Another pause. “Tells me we shouldn’t watch a lot of television this summer.”
Yeah, the old man’s hilarious sometimes. A million laughs. Except I didn’t laugh. And that was it. End of conversation. He said he’d call me the next day, and he hung up.
I was still holding the phone in my hand as I looked over at my mom. “Feel like telling me what that was all about?”
She turned, wiped her hands on her apron, and looked at the chair across from me. But she changed her mind and didn’t sit down.
“I think it’s better coming from him.”
“I got nothing from him.”
“You will. He’ll tell you about it in his own way.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but I could tell from the way she was shaking her head that she wasn’t going to tell me what the old man had in mind for my summer. I went back to Poe and re-read the same three-line paragraph four times.
I looked over at her and she was cutting up an onion. I figured that was a good time to ask her. If she started to cry, she could pass it off as that whole onion-tears thing.
“What’s he like?”
She didn’t answer.
“I guess the better question is what was he like?” In all the years since the old man had left, I’d never asked Mom about him. Guess I didn’t care to know. And she’d never talked much about him.
Sometimes I wondered if she missed him or was pissed off at him or still loved him or what, but she never said, and I didn’t ask, mostly because I didn’t want to have any part in a conversation that had the old man as a topic. I was sure of one thing. I was pissed off at him for her. A dental freaking hygienist.
Mom gathered up the outer skin of the onion and stepped on the pedal thingy that lifts the lid on the trash can. Green metal job with a silver lid. Been sitting in that corner of the kitchen as long as I can remember. I figure that lid has been up and down a few thousand times. She dropped the onion skin into the can and let the lid back down.
“He played professional baseball.”
“You’re kidding.” Definitely not the first thing I expected to hear. Not a ball player. A professional ball player.
Mom was back at the counter chopping the onion. I closed the Poe book.
“He only played one year, somewhere in Florida. Of course it was before I met him. Just the one year, then he got hurt. Quit baseball to … do other things.”
‘What other things?”
“It would be better if all this came from your dad.”
I noticed she was chopping faster than usual. “Why?”
Mom shrugged and scooped the chopped onion into a casserole dish. “It just would, Nathan, you’ll have to believe me on that.”
“What’s the guy like a spy or something?” It was a pretty lame joke, but I wasn’t trying very hard.
Mom smiled and shook her head. “No, and I’m not trying to be all secretive. I just think he’d like to be the one to tell you about himself. Maybe he’ll do some of that this summer.”
“Maybe?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think he will.”
“But you’re okay with me going away with him for the summer.”
Mom turned to look at me. “He’s not an evil man.”
“Well, he sure as hell ain’t no