Father's Day

by Simon Van Booy

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t born then,” she said. “So we were strangers.”

  The last one, at the end of the hall near Jason’s bedroom, was a baby picture. “Look how little you were,” Jason said. “Look how tiny.”

  But Harvey just looked past Jason toward the sound of the TV. “I think SpongeBob is on. Wanna watch it with me?”

  WHEN SPONGEBOB HAD finished, Harvey got up and went to her room.

  After an hour flicking through the channels, Jason heard banging on the drum set and listened at her door. Then he went to the freezer, took a joint from a Ziploc bag, and sucked down a few hits on the patio.

  She was trying to beat out the rhythm he’d taught her last week, but kept stopping to rest her arms.

  Jason poured grape juice into a tall glass inscribed with the logo of the Hard Rock Café New York, then carried it to Harvey’s door and knocked. “Want some juice?”

  As she was gulping it down, Jason told her not to use the drumsticks until she got the rhythm going with her foot. “Try it,” he said. “One, two, three, four . . . one, two, three, four . . . one, two . . .” He took the glass away, then counted and watched her foot flap on the steel pedal.

  “Now bang the drum on the count of three, like this,” he said, doing it in the air. “When you have that down, use the other drumstick to hit this one.” He pointed. “But don’t do the third one until— Harvey, are you listening?”

  “Just let me do it my way.”

  Jason had told her all this before, but she kept forgetting. He wondered if memory needed to grow and strengthen, like the other muscles.

  But then suddenly, Harvey was doing it on all three drums. Jason made guitar noises that he thought went along with the beat.

  When Harvey lost the rhythm and stopped drumming, Jason clapped and told her to take a bow. Harvey said she didn’t care, but was blushing. Jason could feel the buoyancy of the marijuana inside him, thoughts unraveling too quickly to remember.

  He told Harvey he’d be right back, then returned with a portable CD player and some cookies. Harvey stopped drumming and watched him plug it into the wall.

  “I’m going to put on some Nirvana,” he said. “Try and play along as best you can.”

  For a while he watched her arms flail as she tried in vain to keep rhythm. But after listening to the same song a few times, she got some good beats going, and Jason sang along as the words came back to him.

  When Harvey got tired, she put her drumsticks in the empty juice glass and just sat there until the song ended. Night had fallen, and cool air was pouring in through an open window.

  “That man in the song is like me,” she pointed out. “He said he tried to have a father, but instead he got a dad.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said. “I guess so.”

  “Maybe he got adopted too?” Harvey went on. “Wanda said once you get adopted, that’s it.”

  “What do you mean, that’s it?”

  “Like, you have parents once you get adopted. You’re no longer like Annie.”

  “Annie?”

  “You know, that kids’ movie I hate.”

  “Oh yeah. Daddy Warbucks, right? I hate that movie too.”

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, while Harvey was in school, Jason dug out some old tapes of British punk bands, then played them for her in the car on the way home. “This is the original grunge,” he told her. “These guys didn’t give a shit.”

  Harvey said it sounded like people having a fight. When they got back, Jason showed her pictures of 1980s punks in old music magazines. “That could be you someday,” he said, pointing to a woman with an orange Mohawk and a spike through her nose.

  “But I want to work at Jiffy Lube,” Harvey said. “Or rescue animals on TV.”

  After she’d brushed her teeth and put on pajamas, Jason told Harvey there was a shortage of girl drummers in the music world, and she definitely had something.

  Late that night, Jason woke up and saw Harvey standing in his bedroom doorway. His window blinds were open, and the falling moon made her look porcelain.

  “You okay, Harv?”

  “I had to pee, and I wanted to see if you were up.”

  “I was sleeping. Did you have an accident?”

  “No. I just wanted to see if you were awake.”

  “How long have you been standing there? Did you have a bad dream?”

  “No, I had to pee.”

  “Want me to tuck you in again?”

  “No, it’s okay. Just don’t forget that parent-teacher night is coming up.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to go.”

  After she went back to bed, Jason tried to fall asleep, but a car brushed the wall with its headlights, and he sat up and looked at the alarm clock. For a few moments, he wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing, then got up and went to make sure Harvey was back in her bed.

  As he passed the hall closet going back to his room, Jason remembered what Harvey had told him as she stood in the doorway about parent-teacher night.

  He flicked on the closet light, then found her backpack and sifted through its contents—empty chip bags, bits of wool, a rubber ball, a torn comic, shoelaces, Pokémon cards—until seeing the note sent home from school. Parent-teacher night for Harvey’s grade was to take place in her classroom in a few days’ time. Harvey’s time slot was seven P.M. As Jason returned the letter, he noticed a colorful piece of card stuffed into a side pocket.

  He took it out and looked for a long time at what Harvey had drawn, and at what she had written. Then he went to the bathroom and stared at his face in the mirror, saying the word that had stood out to him most, saying it over and over, as if hearing it for the first time.

  XXXIII

  THE NEXT DAY, after dropping Harvey at school, Jason drove out to the cemetery where his brother and sister-in-law were buried. He found the headstone using a map outside the custodian’s office. Then he stood in the grass wondering how deep the bodies went. In one pocket he’d brought a drumstick he got years ago at a Satanic Hell Slaughter concert, after drunkenly wrestling it from someone who’d drunkenly wrestled it from someone else. In his other pocket was Harvey’s second-grade class picture, which he’d placed in a freezer bag to keep the rain off. He set both items on the grass, where the stone disappeared into the earth. Then he stood back and read their full names.

  “You probably don’t even know I’m here,” he said. “But here I am.”

  He sat in the grass for a while, then lay back so there was nothing but sky.

  Closing his eyes, Jason imagined he was stuffed in the casket with them—trying to move his arms, a nest of hair at each cheek—unaware if, on the surface of the earth, it was day or night, summer or winter. He wondered if—even for a split second—the dead knew they were dead, or if any shred of memory remained.

  After he was officially granted guardianship of Harvey, Wanda said that if he kept smoking, he might not live to see her graduate from high school. Over time, Jason had considered her warning, and the more concerning consequences of what would happen if he died within the next twenty years . . . What if Harvey took up with the first asshole who told her she was pretty? Who would be there to save her when things turned nasty? Who would care enough to knock the guy’s teeth into the back of his head? If saving Harvey meant another stint in jail, so be it. If it meant fighting to the death in a parking lot, so be it. But if he was prepared to die for her, shouldn’t he be prepared to live for her too?

  Jason sat up and looked at the grave where Steve’s grown-up body was buried, imagining his own name there alongside his brother’s. Then Harvey’s name chiseled underneath. It would happen one day for sure, though what tortured him the most was not the certainty of his death but the possibility that Harvey would be alone; that they might never find each other again, once this life had ended.

  WHEN HE GOT back from the cemetery, Jason threw his cigarettes in the trash, then took the leftover marijuana from the freezer and flushed it down the toi
let.

  He would miss getting high in the evenings—but had known for a long time that he would lose custody of Harvey if the police found out, or if the courts demanded a urine sample, which Wanda said they could do at any time.

  On the way to pick Harvey up from school, Jason stopped at the drugstore for some sleeping pills, thinking he’d pop one, or maybe a half-one, if he got anxious from the nicotine withdrawal, which was already clawing at him.

  He wandered the aisles looking for nicotine gum but all he could find was cough medicine and dental floss. An employee stacking small boxes of lipstick stopped what she was doing and asked if Jason needed help. There was a tattoo on her wrist of a bird in a cage.

  “Trying to quit then, huh?” she asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “How long’s it been since you had one?”

  “About an hour.”

  The woman laughed, then led Jason to a locked case behind the registers. She took out a few different no-smoking kits and explained the differences between gum and the patch. When Jason picked out what he wanted, she rang him up and put his purchases in a plastic bag.

  “Come back and let me know how it goes,” she said.

  “I’ve been smoking for a long time,” Jason said. “So it’s not gonna go well.”

  “You have to really want it.”

  “It’s still gonna be tough.”

  “Well, you look pretty tough to me,” the woman said, then turned because a man with some severe hip disability was trying to get through the door with his walking sticks.

  “At least you’re not like that,” she said with a laugh. “Can you imagine?”

  AFTER BUNDLING INTO the backseat with her school bag, Harvey buckled in and told Jason she was starting a dog club with her friends.

  “But we don’t have a dog,” Jason said.

  “No—we’re the dogs. I’m a greyhound called Bryan that got rescued. You can be a dog too if you want.” Then she noticed that Jason was chewing something. “What’s in your mouth?”

  “Gum.”

  “Can I have some?”

  “No.”

  “That’s so selfish,” she said. “You never think about me.”

  XXXIV

  WHEN HARVEY WAS asleep, Jason lay in bed going over what he might ask at the parent-teacher conference. He still had the black turtleneck he’d worn for his court interview, and that would cover the tattoo on his neck.

  Other parents would probably be there, waiting for their time slots, so his plan was to get in and get out. Over the past year, Harvey had pleaded with him to organize playdates with girls from school on an ever-changing roster of best friends. Eventually, he gave in and contacted their parents over email. He would drop Harvey at the curb, then watch her go up the front steps and ring the bell. When the other parent waved, Jason took off, then returned a few hours later, honking the horn, which meant it was time for Harvey to come out. He had never met any of the other parents in person.

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON after school, Harvey sat on Jason’s bed eating pizza, watching him pick out clothes. When he found the black turtleneck, it was in a ball at the bottom of his closet with moth holes in the front. His only other option was a black button-down shirt with the tie Wanda had brought over. Jason had no black pants to match the shirt, so he put on some dark blue sweatpants, which from a distance Harvey said looked dressy.

  Jason had never left Harvey alone in the house, but she assured him that she knew which channels on the TV she wasn’t allowed to watch, and promised not to eat anything in case she choked.

  When it was almost time to leave for the school, Harvey got up to pee and found Jason standing at the mirror sticking Band-Aids over the tattoo on his neck.

  “What are you doing that for?”

  “What do you need, Harv?” He said in a voice that meant he was about to get irritated.

  “Can I have some root beer?”

  “You shouldn’t drink fizzy drinks so late. Remember what the doctor said.”

  “What about chocolate milk?”

  “Sure, but get it before I take off.”

  “Okay, but I need to pee.”

  Jason stepped out of the way, then closed his eyes until Harvey got off the toilet seat.

  When he was about to leave, Jason noticed Harvey’s Converse All-Stars sitting by the door. “Jesus, how many times I got to tell you to put your shoes away?” She sprang off the couch, but Jason waved her back. “Actually, just stay there until I get back,” he said, fingering the Band-Aids. “Does this look stupid?”

  “A little.”

  “Then what do I do?”

  Harvey shrugged. “Keep them on, I guess.”

  “What if someone asks what happened?”

  Harvey took a slug of chocolate milk. “Just tell them you accidentally cut your head off.”

  WHEN JASON RETURNED home a few hours later, Harvey was asleep on the couch with the television on. When he nudged her shoulder, she stirred.

  “I only had to pee once,” she mumbled. “And I didn’t eat anything, in case I choked.”

  “Good girl.”

  “Did you meet my teacher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she say I was good?”

  Jason carried Harvey into the bedroom and set her down on the mattress. “Arms up,” he said, and she put her arms up so he could get her pajamas on.

  “What about my teeth?”

  “It’s too late now. Just brush twice in the morning.”

  When she was under the covers, Jason stood there looking at her. “You’re a great kid,” he said.

  Harvey opened her eyes. Her fingers on the edge of the blanket. “And you’re a great man.”

  AFTER MAKING COFFEE, Jason took his mug out to the front step and sat down. It was late, and his neighbors’ houses were already dark. He reached for his cigarettes but then remembered and let his hand fall. The coffee was so hot he could only take sips.

  The teacher had shown him Harvey’s schoolbooks. “Look how neat her numbers are,” she said. “Especially the eights.”

  Jason looked at the numbers, written slowly in pencil. There were math problems too, and green checks the teacher had made where Harvey got things right.

  Jason asked where Harvey sat. The teacher pointed to a wooden desk. Stacked on top was a metal-framed chair—like all the others, except that it was where Harvey sat, and where she waited all day to come home.

  “Harvey is so helpful,” the teacher went on. “If there’s a hat or a shoe on the floor, she picks it up and puts it away rather than just stepping over it.”

  “Yeah, that’s good.”

  “I think it’s very mature,” the teacher said. “Probably something she learned at home?”

  Harvey’s main lesson books had pictures of sheep and short sentences about wool. “She really responded to this subject,” the teacher told him. “Did you grow up on a farm, maybe?”

  She also mentioned that Harvey was the only girl the boys included in their games. “And I have to tell you,” she said, “Harvey talks about her father all the time in class—oh my goodness.”

  “What does she say about him?”

  “Well . . .” the teacher said, “We all know about the motorcycle you’re building in the garage, and that your tacos and meat loaf are amazing—but your chicken is a little dry, I’m afraid.”

  XXXV

  IN THE TAXI home from Leon and Isobel’s apartment, Harvey watched the flickering outline of her face on the glass. She remembered how she’d felt the moment the lights went out over dinner, when they were only four voices.

  Low voices came now from the car radio. They had lulled her father to sleep. Passing streetlight washed over his hands and his face. The shoes he’d bought for the trip were dusty from their day of walking at Versailles. His feet rested at a slight inward angle, which made Harvey realize that he was once just a child like Isobel.

  When they got home to her apartment on rue Caulainco
urt, Harvey made up his bed on the couch and slipped Duncan in as a surprise. Then she took off her makeup and set the dishwasher.

  In the middle of the night, Jason was woken up by a noise outside. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Then he saw Duncan on the floor next to his shoes and it all came back.

  The time flashed in pale green on the DVD player, and he counted six hours back, then reached for the TV remote. It was hard to see which button to press in the dark, but he held down the big green one, and after a few seconds the flat-screen lit up with people speaking French in a news studio.

  Jason flicked through the channels, but it was all foreign-language shows. In the end, he settled for a program about train journeys in Switzerland. He got Duncan and brushed him off, as a red train snaked through snowy mountains. The tattoo Harvey had drawn on Duncan’s neck had faded, but his eyes still opened when you sat him up, and closed when you laid him down.

  After the program, Jason went back to sleep but woke again at first light to the sound of rain. He put on his clothes, folded away the bedsheets, and sat waiting for the day to begin.

  When he couldn’t sit anymore, he went into the kitchen and stood by the window. Most of the neighbors’ shades were still pulled down. In the sky, an airliner moved in and out of gray clouds. Rooftops glistened.

  Then Jason stood outside his daughter’s room. The door was open a few inches, the way she liked it at home. He peered in at the shape of her body under the bedclothes.

  When she used to fall asleep in the car, he would lift her out of the seat, then carry her on one shoulder. Her favorite pillowcase was brown with owls on it. Harvey would close her eyes and rub her cheek on the fabric. In winter, Jason gave her a hot-water bottle. She used to remove Duncan’s clothes and bounce him on it.

  An hour later, when Harvey opened her eyes and pulled on her robe, she found her father sitting at the table with breakfast laid out.

  “Oh my God, this is amazing.”

  Jason selected a chocolate croissant for himself, then held out the plate for Harvey to take one. “Sleep well, Harv?”

  There was a box of macaroons and some éclairs with colored icing. Jason passed Harvey a paper cup of coffee.