I worry so much about this because, honestly, most of my memories of Mac don’t feel real anymore. Half of it is the natural progression of someone’s memory—your childhood years becoming duller and more vague, which is normal, I know. But the other stuff, the memories that should be the freshest in my mind because they happened more recently, are all fucked up. I feel like I’ve already begun to forget Mac, because I spent the last few years avoiding spending a lot of time with him so he wouldn’t see how bad my drinking had gotten. The time I did have with him was hazy in the way my drunken memories all seem to be. So how the hell can I try to be a father myself when I barely remember the one I had?
I’ll bet Dylan remembers everything. He has a great memory. But whatever he remembers, whatever words of wisdom our father told him and not me, or us both that I don’t remember, is off-limits. He’s off-limits to me now. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that he’ll be off-limits to my kid, too. And that’s really sucky to realize. It strikes me that I have, at best, half a family to support and love this kid. Juliana has Mama A, her brothers, and Anja. How do Mom and Gemma compete with that? How do I compete with that? Linds is going to have a fucking field day with me next time I go in to see her, I swear to God.
My car starts to skid as my thoughts continue to race, and I throw the parking brake on. Only then do I realize where I am. I must have gone into some forgotten sort of autopilot, and driven myself some place that used to be reliable and safe. The place the man I’ve been dwelling over called home before he died.
Mac’s old house isn’t much to look at from the front, though it’s got a certain charm with a fresh layer of snow on it. He’d done a ton of work on the inside after we moved in. Mostly little things like painting and replacing doorknobs and handles on things at first, but later, when he had more money, the appliances and the counter tops. He even made the two little rooms Dylan and I each ended up with into one massive room by knocking down a central wall. By then we were fifteen and hated the idea of sharing a room, but it grew on us. Mac said it would build character and a bond between us. I suppose he wasn’t entirely wrong about the character part, in a way.
My car idles in front of it until I see the light in the living room snap off. It’s getting late, so whoever lives there now must be heading to bed. I wonder if he or she is married. Maybe has a kid or two of their own, whose toys clutter up that massive room like my junk did for the longest time. Maybe their partner hates the kitchen, the work of keeping the stainless steel appliances wiped clean of fingerprints. Maybe they both love it. Maybe they don’t so much cook as much as they ‘experiment,’ like Mac always did. Maybe they hung up a pot rack in the same place Mac did.
Maybe… maybe….
It strikes me that of all things I don’t remember, I do still remember Mac’s phone number. It was a simple pattern of threes, zeros, sevens, and nines that in my head will always be his, even though his voice will never again be on the other end of it. That still hurts—hurts the way it did the first day I realized it. I used to be able to drink away the hurt. Now I have to breathe that pain in and out until it subsides. Maybe it’s one of those things that never will.
I flicked the windshield wipers off while I idled, and it’s gotten cold enough that the snow has started freezing. Before I have to get out and scrape and increase the odds of some hyper-vigilant neighbor calling the cops on the weird guy in the idling car, I turn the wipers on full blast and release the e-brake. This is never going to be the place for answers. At least, not anymore.
"Please tell me what to do,” I whisper anyway as I drive off, like maybe Mac hopped in my passenger seat when I wasn’t looking. “Mac, what the hell am I gonna do?”
Fairmount Cemetery, where Mac’s buried, is only a few miles away. Despite the late hour and snow, I’m tempted to drive there. Maybe if I stand at his grave long enough, some corporeal version of him will appear out of nowhere and point me in the right direction. I used to think people who talked to headstones were nuts, but I can see now where they’re coming from if they have the same fleeting thought as me. It could work. Maybe I’ll catch a mysterious witching hour and I won’t just be talking to the falling snow.
The thought is every bit as ridiculous to me as it probably is to anyone else, but I cling to it all the same.
My phone trills a minute later. I want to ignore it, but I at least check who it is. I expect Anja, maybe Lukas—it’s my mom. I push the button to turn on speaker and answer with a gruff, “Hey, Mom.”
“Sweetheart, are you okay? Are you on your way home?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Anja called me. She told me you didn’t stay there after all because… Ezra, is Juliana really pregnant?”
“Yeah. She is.”
Mom pauses. The silence is thick and telling. Then, “You should come on home so we can talk. Or go back to Anja’s and talk to her.”
“No offense, Mom, but I’m not really ready to talk about this with you. Not yet.”
“What about with Ryan? He’s over on that side of town, why don’t you….”
“Mom, I don’t need to be fixed or babysat right now. I just need time to think.”
I try not to get terse with her, especially not after everything she’s done for me the last few months. But dear God, do I ever need her to just back the fuck off.
“Ezra, I think this is something really big and really scary and you can’t stew on it on your own. You need to talk to someone. This is a huge decision. I’m just trying to help.”
“I know, Mom. But I can’t talk to you right now.”
“Why not?”
“I’m driving. I need to focus. The weather’s bad. I’ll be home later, all right? Don’t wait up. I’ll see you and Gem in the morning.”
“Are you sure? Sweetie, I….”
“I’m okay, Mom. I’m not going to do anything stupid. I promise.”
She finally lets me go, and I surrender my body to autopilot again. When I come to, I’m at a bar. All my hard work to avoid a place like this, and my car is idling in a spot right in front. So much for my promise to Constance.
It’s cold. My car is running on fumes. That’s why I go in, or so I try to rationalize. It’s cold outside, warm in there. I sit down—the place is almost empty, it being well past the hour any functional adult would have paid their tab and gone home to bed, so I get served right away. I order a plain Coke, nothing in it. There’s a couple of tough-looking guys playing pool in the corner, an older woman at the other end pulling off a vapor pen when the bartender isn’t looking. What I don’t do is order a drink. My self-preservation astounds me.
The bartender asks if I want any food before the kitchen closes and I shake my head. I sip the soda, the bubbles rolling across my tongue, and drain it so fast I give myself a brain-freeze. I stare at the empty glass until the bartender refills it. I must look crazy enough that he doesn’t question me. I find a fixed mark to stare at. I’m probably the quiet, vaguely creepy guy at the bar, but my brain is anything but quiet.
You couldn’t be a father if you tried. You’ll fuck it up, like you fuck up everything, one half says.
Juliana needs you. She needs you to pull your head out of your ass and be there for her, argues the other.
You’re too selfish to do that, aren’t you?
You could be as good a dad as Mac was.
You’d never be as good a dad as Mac was.
“Shut up,” I say to myself, pressing my palms hard on the sides of my head. Doing that has caught the attention of the woman at the far end of the bar. Yep. Definitely the crazy guy at the bar.
I don’t realize how much time goes by until the tough guys finish their game of pool and leave. The bartender asks if I want anything else for last call. The woman mutters something to the bartender I can’t hear, and a second later, a single glass of whiskey appears in front of me.
“From her,” he says, and jerks his thumb at the woman with the vapor pen.
>
My mouth waters. My brain continues to scream so loud I’m shocked no one outside my head can hear it.
I grip both glasses in my hands. Then I toss back the soda, push the whiskey back towards the bartender, and throw a twenty dollar bill on the counter. When the bartender reaches for it, I say, “No change, thanks. And don’t charge her for that.”
I don’t look the woman in the eye before I stalk out of the bar. I don’t even dust off my windows before I rev my engine and drive off. I can navigate my way towards the closest gas station mostly by muscle memory of the area, and fill up my car with shaking hands. They tremble a little less from alcohol deprivation as I pump my gas and more from the cold that I’m only now really feeling with this much distance from the bar. I remember I gave my coat to Juliana, and I fish out the sweatshirt I brought to sleep in and throw it on before I get back in the car.
The cemetery is gated. I have to park off the street and walk up and down the fence line, looking for a gap large enough to squeeze through. An apartment complex shares a part of the fence, and it’s easy to hop over a low patch there. It takes a minute to get my bearings, but the yellow glow of night snowfall lights everything beyond the gates enough that I manage to stumble my way down the unshoveled walkways without slipping. I get turned around twice, and have to duck down once to avoid the glare of headlights near the street so I’m not seen. But I find Mac all the same. Half-drunk as I might have been, I buried him. He’s always been right where I could find him—it’s just that I’ve only now thought to come and look.
I sink to my knees in front of his headstone and dust off the snow to see the engraving. My jeans are soaked instantly, but the cold is gone again, replaced by something else.
If I’d taken that shot of whiskey, it’d be that deceptive warmth that drinking gives off, even as it’s dilating your blood vessels and making you colder. But I didn’t take that drink. This is something else entirely. I settle in, content to talk to him for a long, long time, to make up for all the talks we never had, all the visits I haven’t paid since he’s been gone. Except it takes me forever to form the first few words.
“Hi, Mac… Dad. Hi, Dad.”
***
It’s early, maybe too early, when I trudge up the pathway to the front door at Mama A’s and ring the doorbell. They must be disoriented at having an early-morning visitor, considering the sun isn’t even up yet. I ring it twice more because I’m soaked and cold and kind of in a hurry to be let inside where it’s warm after spending more hours than I realized I had at the cemetery. Juliana pulls the door open, huffy, tired, and beautiful.
“I move a little slower these days.” She’s bleary-eyed and her shoulders are sagging, maybe from carrying all her weight up front. She’s wearing that cobalt blue thermal shirt. It was always too big on her back then, but now, with her belly distended as it is, it rides up past her belly button. I want to ask her how often she’s worn it since we’ve been apart, but that sort of small talk isn’t why I’m here. I like that she’s wearing it. I like the way her hair is kinked around her face when it’s tousled from sleep, too. A rush of longing surges through me before the gauntlet—the one I spent all night thinking about, talking to dead people at cemeteries, talking to myself at a bar like I’ve lost my damn mind—falls.
“I’m not marrying you because it’s the ‘honorable thing’ to do,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “Honestly, I don’t think it’s all that honorable anymore. It’s the twenty-first century, and it’s not like I defiled you. If Mattias and Lukas want to come after me with pitchforks, let them. But I’m not marrying you just because you’re pregnant.”
She blinks rapidly and shakes her hair out of her face. “Get in here; it’s freezing out there. Are your pants all wet? Where the hell have you been all night?” She looks me up and down, and I swear she even sniffs me. “Ez, please tell me you didn’t….”
“No. I’m stone-cold sober. And, um, cold. Very cold.”
“Get the hell in here already then, you idiot.”
She stands aside and shuts the door behind me, but I’m the one who decides on the kitchen as our destination. There’s almost always water and grounds in Mama A’s coffee maker, so a quick push of a button is all it takes for a pot to start brewing. I’m running on zero sleep and lots of questions, so it doesn’t really occur to me until after I hear it percolating that coffee is one of those things pregnant women aren’t supposed to have.
She hoists herself onto a barstool at the island and I lean against the stove while the coffee brews. She rubs her sleepy eyes with the palms of her hands and leans forward. “I didn’t ever expect you to marry me because it’s the honorable thing,” she says. “No matter how much I still want you, Ezra Mackenzie, I wouldn’t say yes if that’s why you were doing it. I’d only want you to propose if your heart was in it. And I’ve stopped pretending that you’d change your mind and start wanting me again.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask, agape. I shiver in earnest. “I never stopped wanting you. I’ve wanted you from the day I met you. I’ll probably want you until the day I die. I called it off because I was scared of how much I wanted you. I wasn’t any good for me so I knew I wasn’t any good for you. It broke my heart to say goodbye to you. Please tell me you’ve at least suspected that all this time.”
She smiles a misty sort of smile. It’s so lovely it’s everything I can do to not surge across the island and kiss her.
“I’m still no good for you,” I say instead. “I want you so bad it hurts. But I’m rotten for you. Look what I did to you. I may not have defiled you, but I sure as shit fucked you up. That was what I was trying to prevent and I did it anyway.”
Her face drops. “You didn’t fuck me up. You didn’t ruin me, or my life. Birth control pills aren’t foolproof, and we both know it.” She storms out of the room and I think for a second maybe she’s storming off for good, going up the stairs to shut me out. But she’s back a second later with a throw blanket and a spare hoodie that lives near the front door in case anyone ever needs it draped over her arm. She shoves both at me. “Get the hell out of those wet clothes before you catch hypothermia, if you haven’t already.”
I peel my jeans, shirt, and socks off, pull the hoodie over my head, and wrap the blanket around my waist. She takes my clothes from me to throw in the dryer and our fingertips brush. There’s a familiar electricity in that tiny, brief connection that I know she feels, too. While she tromps to the laundry room, I help myself to a cup of coffee and sip, letting the caffeine and warmth curl through my body.
We’re silent for a while when she comes back. “I just want to be honest with you,” I say. “You’re talking to a guy who has no idea about what and how it is to be a father—”
“No one knows how to be a parent, Ezra, for fuck’s sake,” she snaps. “No one. Do you think our parents, any of them, knew the first thing about what they were doing when we came along? If you think they had it all figured out, you’re deluding yourself. People who actually plan for this don’t even know what they’re doing. Don’t use that excuse on me. You’re better than that.”
“Can I finish my sentence, please?”
She purses her lips, sits back, and crosses her arms. Instead of over her breasts, they wrap over her belly now, and I wonder who it is she’s really protecting—herself, or the baby.
“What I was saying was: you’re talking to a guy who doesn’t know how to be a father. But the one thing he has going for him was that, once upon a time, he had a really good father. I was thinking about that last night after I left Anja and Mat’s house. I drove around and thought about it. I thought about Mac and what kind of guy he was. I don’t remember everything, and I’ll never forgive myself for forgetting as much as I have, but what I remember about Mac was how wonderful he was. I guess that’s normal, you know, when someone’s gone, only remembering the good stuff. He was just so giving, you know? Everything he did, he did for me and Dylan. He gave us everything he co
uld without spoiling us. He was proud of us, even when I didn’t deserve his pride. But it hit me at last that if I have nothing else to offer you and this child, then at least I can offer you that. I had Mac. Maybe I’ll be able to figure it out even half as well as he did.”
Her lips part, like she’s going to say something else. I don’t let her.
“I’m in,” I tell her. “I want this baby with you. I’m in for him or her. I want you, too, of course I do. I don’t know if we’re ready for that again, and maybe we won’t ever be. But I want this baby with you, and I’ll do everything I can to make his or her life as wonderful as Mac made mine. Us we’ll figure out later. If you’re okay with that, at least.”
She nods, and sighs the way someone does when they’re trying to keep themselves from crying. “You can stop saying ‘his or her.’ I know what it is, remember?”
My heart gallops in my chest. “You gonna tell me now?”
She purses her lips. “You’re really in? You don’t need another few days to think about it? One night wasn’t a lot of thinking time.”
“I haven’t thought about anything else since I left Anja and Mat’s place. It was enough. I’m sure.”
I circle around the island and search for her fingers with mine. My hands are still cold, or maybe they just feel that way with how she’s radiating warmth. “I also didn’t say hello to you last night, not really. So: Hello, Juliana.”
“Hi, Ezra,” she says, and our fingers twine together. Her bottom lip trembles. Her top is red from running her bottom lip across the Cupid’s bow. I watch her for the familiar wink/bat with her eyes that I’ve missed so. It surges like a bullet through my heart when she does it finally, especially since I can tell it was automatic, not intentional.
“I missed you so much,” I say, because I did. I want to kiss her. I don’t, but I want to.
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