“So you took the job at the assessor’s office instead.”
Dad stared at me with his shoulders suddenly raised. We had been making steady progress up to that point, and I worried I had driven him back behind the walls of his garrison. “Your mother talks a lot about me, apparently.”
I unfolded my napkin and laid it out smooth across my lap. “I don’t know. Not really. Sometimes I want to know about you and she’s the only one around to ask.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s her place to provide you with answers.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Right. Well. I’m here now. What do you want to know?”
“Well. Were you working for the assessor’s office when you met her?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was. Up in San Joaquin County. Local government was one of the few stable lines of work in those days. I did have some private sector jobs before that, though. But they were all dead-end, entry-level positions with a hundred people above me. So I quit them, and never looked back. Even then, with the entire country falling apart, I was determined to make my own way in the world.”
Kylee returned with our drinks. She set each glass down carefully with a paper napkin between it and the tablecloth. “This first round is on the house. Happy birthday.” I watched Dad raise his glass and sip the lukewarm bourbon. He didn’t react to the taste beyond a few gentle smacks of his lips. His eyes weren’t even on me, and yet I felt compelled to compose myself in the same way, as though I had been drinking hard alcohol every day of my life for years. There was a lime wedge on the rim of the glass, but, remembering Dad’s stern warning about mixing liquor and fruit, I ignored it and took my first drink of vodka with only ice to dull the edge. Somehow I managed to fight through the burn and swallow the entire mouthful without gagging. By the time Dad looked at me again, I had already wiped my tears off on the napkin.
He said, “While we’re on the subject of life decisions, I would hope you’d let me in on what you plan to do with yourself now that you’ve finished high school.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I took another drink to buy some time. As the vodka settled inside my otherwise empty stomach, a radiating numbness spread out from my chest and down through my fingers and toes. “I haven’t really decided what to do next. Most of my classmates are going away to college, but I don’t know if it’s right for me.”
“You didn’t apply anywhere?”
“Stanford. To get Mom off my back.”
Dad nodded slowly. “She’s proud of her alma matter. She should be.”
“She suggested I take the summer to work on my applications and reapply in the fall.”
“Right. But what do you really want to do?”
Instead of drinking this time, I raised my glass and held it off to the side with the ice rattling against the edges. I was already learning that drinking came with a performative aspect that could ease the tension in the room as effectively as the drink itself. At that age, thinking about the future not only strained my nerves, it distorted my whole sense of being, as if the very idea of some older, more perfect future-self negated the realness of whoever I was at the present. What I could never admit to Dad, or to any of the adults who took it upon themselves to judge the scope of my ambitions, was the same secret that made my heart race and chest tighten any time I thought about it for too long; namely, that I could not and could never conceive of myself as a grown adult, that I had no more desire to establish a career than to spend another four years inside a classroom, and that no matter how old I got or how healthy I remained, I saw no reason to expect I would ever live beyond my youth. That certainty of my own evanescence informed every other area of my life, such that I could never take questions like “What do you want to do with yourself” even remotely seriously. I was a transient in this world, in my own body, and as such there was no point in trying to plan for a future I knew would never come. All I could hope for was to arrive at a better understanding of the world, and of the limitless mysteries it contained.
I said, “I want to find God. I want to hear Him call my name.”
Dad took another drink. He looked at me without speaking. He drank again. “Have you fallen in with the end-of-days crowd since we last saw each other?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Hippies?”
“No, never.”
“So where’s this coming from?”
“I can’t articulate it properly. Or at least I can only describe it as an absence. I never had any real idea of God growing up. Mom’s never been religious, and hardly anyone I knew in school ever prayed or went to church. You’d think it wouldn’t bother me, since I don’t even know what I’m missing. But it does. Always has. It always feels like there’s an emptiness inside of me. I don’t know any other way to explain it.”
I watched Dad as closely as I ever had, looking and hoping for some small expression or gesture that I could latch onto and interpret. But he remained stone-faced right up to the end, right up until the moment he reached for his glass and, realizing there was nothing in it, started looking around for Kylee so he could order another round. He said, “Emptiness. You feel an emptiness inside.” He shook his head and slid the glass to the side of the tablecloth. “I suppose you think it’s my fault.”
I closed my eyes and held out my hands. “Dad, I never—”
“Empty. My own son tells me he feels empty. That’s a fine how do you do. I gave you everything. Even after the divorce, I continued to send your mother child support every month.”
“I know, I wasn’t—”
“You should try growing up around here. See how empty you feel then. Most of these kids never get beyond the ninth grade. Our waitress was living in a state camp before she started working here. She had two miscarriages in a single year. You want to ask how empty she feels?”
“Dad. Please. I didn’t mean it like that. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
“No, you feel empty. In spite of all the advantages you’ve been given.” Dad looked over his shoulder and, finding the bar still abandoned, sunk forward in his chair with his arms crossed over the table. He grumbled something I couldn’t hear and didn’t particularly want to. “You probably think I abandoned you. As if it was easy for me, putting up with your mother and all her abuse. And trying to start a business at the same time. Oh, yeah. It was real easy.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I was talking about how I feel about God, not you.”
“That’s no excuse for going around saying you’re empty. You have more to be thankful for than most. You have a good father and a mother. That should be enough. Love us and show some gratitude.”
“I know. I will. I’m sorry.”
“I try to do something nice, share a drink with my son to celebrate his achievements, and this is what I get in return.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I could have gone on apologizing a while longer if Kylee hadn’t decided to check on us.
“How we doing? You ready to take a look at some food menus?”
Dad pointed to his glass and then at mine. “Sure, and let’s do this again. Less ice for him this time.”
She grabbed our glasses off the table and left us in the same strained atmosphere she had found us in. It was all I could do to look at him directly, to feel the judgment in those eyes that were the bluest I had ever known. Other eighteen-year-old boys might have stood up and walked away, but I wasn’t driven to indignation as easily as them. There was still something I wanted from him. After all those years without him, I still wanted my father’s approval, and longed to know him as a part of myself, as any namesake would. To get there, I would endure his bitterness as best I could. I saw judgment in his eyes, but also a chance for enlightenment.