Father's Day

by Simon Van Booy

  When they arrived at the Hard Rock Café Paris, Jason couldn’t believe it. He wanted a picture of them next to the sign out front. “I’m thinking about starting a Facebook page,” he said. “So I can post pictures of us in Paris.”

  Harvey said it was a great idea.

  The maître d’ who agreed to take their picture had dreadlocks and a pirate beard. He told them in English there was a wait for tables, but the bar was empty.

  The bartender was surprised when Harvey spoke to him in French. He showed them a list of nonalcoholic cocktails, but Jason wanted root beer. Harvey ordered white wine and the Nachopalooza to snack on.

  Jason was still turning the Father’s Day gift in his fingers.

  “If you guess it,” Harvey said, “I’ll get you a Hard Rock Café Paris glass to match the New York one you have at home.”

  “It smells good,” he said, sniffing the small package.

  “That’s because it’s been in my pocketbook,” Harvey explained. “Perfume is not a good clue for what this is, trust me.”

  “Is it breakable?”

  When she said no, Jason pushed on the little parts, trying to discern the shape, and something jabbed through the paper and stuck in his thumb. Blood seeped from a small puncture and shone under the bright lights. Harvey waved the bartender over and asked in French for a Band-Aid. When he returned, Harvey noticed a tattoo on the bartender’s arm of a human heart with the words STILL BEATING.

  “You owe me a matching glass,” Jason said. “It’s a fishing lure.” When he actually unwrapped it, the lure glittered, and there were bold colors on the shaft below the fake eye.

  When their drinks came, Jason ordered the Texan burger and ribs.

  “I’ll take the salmon,” Harvey said. “To go with your present, Dad.”

  The walls of the restaurant were decorated with rock-and-roll artifacts. On his way down to the restroom, Jason saw a Stone Temple Pilots jacket, and oversized platinum and silver discs signed by the members of Pearl Jam, Led Zeppelin, and Tool. “Great Balls of Fire” by Jerry Lee Lewis was playing, and after that “Cryin’ Like a Bitch” by Godsmack, which Jason was surprised they would have on, as the dining area was full of families with children in high chairs.

  After their food arrived, a father and son came in and sat near them at the bar. The boy, who looked like he was around eighteen, asked the bartender in French what beers they had on tap. Then he told his father in English, but the father was tired and didn’t care. “Just gimme whiskey,” he said. “That’s all I want.”

  Harvey listened to their conversation as she ate. The boy talked about the history of Paris, then joked in French with the bartender. The father just stared at his glass, holding it up when he wanted another. When the father went downstairs to the restroom, Jason leaned over to the man’s son and said how impressive his French was. The boy blushed. He told them he was attending school in Paris for a semester, and that his father was visiting a few days from Winnipeg, where years ago he played professional hockey.

  “Well,” Jason said, “you’re braver than me, to come and live in another country.”

  The boy blushed again. “It’s not that hard, really.”

  “Nah, c’mon,” Jason said. “It’s a big deal. You ought to be proud of yourself.”

  When the father came back from the restroom, he said he wanted to leave and took out his wallet. After they’d gone, the bartender cleared their glasses and wiped the bar down.

  “It was nice of you to do that,” Harvey said.

  “Do what?”

  “You know.” She smiled. “Don’t pretend.”

  Jason looked at the fishing lure on the counter. “I know what it is,” he said, “and I can tell you how to use it. But I’m stumped as to what it means.”

  “Think about it, Dad.”

  “I’m thinking,” he said. “But I can’t see.”

  XLI

  ONE SATURDAY MORNING Jason heard Harvey crying in the bathroom.

  He didn’t know what to do because she wouldn’t tell him anything through the door. When he noticed there was blood on the handle, he told her he was going to call 911 if she didn’t let him in. Harvey opened the door a crack, and Jason pushed his way through.

  “There’s blood on the door handle!” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Harvey said, pushing past him. “Why are you so annoying?”

  When she finally emerged from her room an hour later with a bundle of bedsheets, Jason jumped up from the couch.

  “Are you okay? What’s going on? I’m kinda freaking out here, Harvey. What was that blood on the door handle? You cut yourself?”

  He followed her into the laundry room, but she screamed at him to get out, so he watched between the hinges and couldn’t believe it. There was blood all over the sheets. Just as he was about to burst in, he remembered something Wanda had said, and realized what was happening.

  After brewing fresh coffee, he set a mug down outside Harvey’s bedroom door and knocked. “Black, Harvey—just the way you like it.” But she opened the door and said she needed a ride to the drugstore.

  In the car Jason told her he was sorry.

  Harvey was staring straight ahead at the road. “What are you sorry for?” she said bitterly. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I should have mentioned something. It just totally slipped my mind.”

  “It’s none of your business, and I knew from school, anyway.”

  “In class?”

  “Dad!”

  When they got there, Jason said there was twenty dollars in the glove box. “Get some candy too, if you want, or a Polly Pocket or something.”

  After ten minutes, she appeared with a small shopping bag. She put the change in a cup holder.

  “I think we’re gonna need pizza tonight,” Jason said driving home. “And you can choose the movie. Whatever you want, I’ll watch, even if it’s got subtitles.”

  Harvey just sat there holding the bag, staring straight ahead.

  When they got back, she locked herself in the bathroom again. The coffee in the jug was cold, so Jason made another batch. After half an hour, he couldn’t wait any longer and knocked to see if she was okay. The door unbolted and she rushed out holding a small box. But in her haste to get past her father, Harvey dropped the box, and little white things rolled all over the floor.

  “Keep what you need in the bathroom cupboard if you want,” Jason said. “Then you’ll be ready for next month.”

  Harvey covered her mouth. “Next month!”

  A FEW WEEKS later, Jason found a box of toys in the hallway. “What’s all this stuff?” he shouted through her bedroom door.

  Harvey shouted back that she didn’t need them anymore, that she was too old.

  “But these are your toys!” Jason said. “It’s the Polly Pockets we used to play with. And—what the hell—is that Duncan?”

  Not long after, Jason started paying attention to whom Harvey was talking with on the phone, and checking her Internet browsing history. Mrs. Gonzales advised him to set a curfew and enforce it strictly—which he did, but in exchange for Harvey keeping it, Jason increased her allowance and bought her a basic cell phone.

  By her next birthday, Harvey was cooking dinner a few nights a week, and Jason no longer had to wait in the parking lot with the weekend edition of Newsday while Harvey spent whole afternoons in the mall with her friends.

  THE SUMMER BEFORE high school, Jason took some vacation time from work, and they went to Montauk for a week. One of Harvey’s girlfriends came for a couple of days with her parents, and they all spent time at the beach, and had breakfast every morning at John’s Pancake House.

  It was the first real vacation they’d ever been able to afford. Jason had given up on his Internet business and was working full-time at the Stop and Shop, if only for the medical benefits and retirement package. The manager, Dale, rode a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide and sometimes paid Jason to help him with mechanical
jobs. Jason worked mostly by himself at night, stacking shelves, listening to music through headphones.

  A few weeks into Harvey’s first semester of high school, she came home and went straight to her room.

  When Jason called her for dinner, she shouted that she wasn’t hungry. But when it was on the table, he knocked, and Harvey told him she’d come down later. Jason didn’t know what to do, and so just kept knocking. When she finally opened the door a crack, he saw she had a black eye.

  “I walked into something,” she said. Then she started to cry. “I knew you would freak out.”

  “I ain’t freaking out,” Jason said, biting his lip. “I’m cool.” Then he went downstairs and put dinner back in the oven until she was ready to eat. He had made taco pie, because Harvey loved taco pie.

  An hour later when they’d finished eating, Jason grabbed the newspaper and told Harvey there was a good movie starting in twenty minutes and ice cream bars in the freezer.

  For the first half hour of the film, he said nothing, then during a long commercial break, he couldn’t help himself. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it—and I’m trying to be really cool—but at some point you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Don’t speak to me like that,” Jason told her. “I would never say that to you, so don’t say it to me.”

  “Do you even know how it feels to have a black eye? Do you?”

  Jason laughed.

  “But this is not your fight, Dad.”

  “If you don’t tell me, Harvey, I’m gonna just steam into school with you tomorrow and start crackin’ heads.”

  “Yeah, that’s really cool—then I would really die. Look, it’s not a big deal. It’s just this one girl.”

  “A girl?” Jason couldn’t believe it. “A girl did this?”

  Harvey had always done well in the classroom, but in the past month she’d forgotten a few homework assignments and even failed a couple of tests. The lunches Jason made her were coming home uneaten, and when he confronted her, she wouldn’t talk about it.

  When the movie was almost over, Harvey confessed that there was actually a group of kids who were making her life miserable. They were all kids who’d been to the same middle school. Their leader was a girl named Jordan. She called Harvey names and made fun of her style, which had become Gothy in the past year, with black fingernail polish and black clothes.

  “Now they’re telling everyone I’m a lesbian,” Harvey said.

  “Are you?”

  “Dad!”

  “It doesn’t matter if you are, I’m totally cool with it. Lesbians are awesome.”

  “I’m not a lesbian.”

  “But if you were, Harvey—”

  “Dad!”

  A week before, someone at lunch told Harvey that Jordan had said Harvey’s real parents were murdered by a serial killer—that the killer was never caught, but police knew he rode motorcycles and was a cripple.

  Harvey got the black eye when a door swung back that Jordan had pretended to hold for her. Everyone laughed, Harvey said. But Jordan pretended to be concerned. “Oh my God,” she said, “what if Harvey’s really hurt this time?”

  Harvey wanted to know what her father was going to do. “Please don’t go down there, Dad. Please.”

  Jason said he was going to write to the principal. That an official, signed letter was the correct way to handle this. “What’s Jordan’s last name?” he asked. “Just so the principal gets the right girl.”

  After the movie, Harvey went out to the patio with her iPod and headphones. When Jason was certain she couldn’t hear, he looked up the girl’s last name online and got her phone number.

  A man picked up, and Jason explained to him what had been happening.

  “I can’t control what my kid does,” the man said. “You know what I mean, guy?”

  Jason asked again, calmly, if he would speak to his daughter, because it seemed like Jordan was being a little tough.

  “It’s a tough world,” the man said. “What can I do?”

  Later on, when Harvey was in bed, Jason took a hammer into the backyard and smashed up one of the lawn chairs.

  THE NEXT DAY Jordan told the whole school that Jason had called their house and cried on the phone to her dad.

  Harvey came home and said she wanted to die. “I asked you not to interfere,” she screamed. “I pleaded with you just to let me figure this one out by myself.”

  “It’ll blow over,” Jason said, trying to calm her down. “You’ll see.”

  “I just want to die!” she screamed. “My whole life has been one disaster after another!” Then she ran to her room and slammed the door.

  Jason slumped into the couch and put on the TV. Harvey had said she wished to die. His daughter wanted to end her life because of a bully.

  Halfway through dinner, Jason’s hands were shaking so much he was unable to hold the fork. “Put your shoes on,” he said.

  Harvey looked at her food.

  “Put your shoes on, Harvey. We’re going out.”

  Her eyes followed him to the closet. “Why are you putting on your motorcycle jacket, Dad? It’s eighty degrees.”

  “C’mon, Harvey, what are you waiting for? Move it.”

  A part of her wanted to block the door. And Jason had expected her to block the door the way women did in Westerns, when their fathers or husbands were leaving for a showdown. We could relocate to Pennsylvania, she might have said. Make new friends there. We could have a bigger yard and go walking in the fields at dusk with all the lightning bugs . . .

  Jason watched his daughter put on her shoes and do up the laces. She knew where they were going but somehow couldn’t bring herself to do anything to stop it, as though she were tethered to her father’s will—as though, after so long together, they’d come to share a single fate.

  WHEN THEY WERE in the car, Jason started the engine. For a moment they just sat there listening to the lull and tick of moving parts.

  “You ready?” he said.

  Harvey nodded. “I’m afraid.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” Jason said, pulling out of the driveway. “I’m going to see to that.”

  There were no trees on the street where Jordan Magliano lived. The yards were all patches of lawn broken up by strips of gray concrete. It was dinnertime. Meals were being served. Televisions were being watched, and the sounds of voices and audience laughter filled each house. Iced tea in plastic cups. Garlic bread. Bits of sausage ladled onto plates with sauce. Video games on pause.

  Jason didn’t have to read the numbers. There was a van in the driveway with a sign on the side:

  MAGLIANO HOT & COLD

  BEST HVAC LONG ISLAND

  (516) XXX XXXX

  They parked at the curb. Jason glanced at his daughter’s black eye and imagined the man he’d spoken to the night before: tall, loud, cocky—the kind of guy people call big man or big guy. Fuck up anyone he wants—makes him feel powerful. Honk at him and he’ll get out of his van and fuck you up. One of those guys. Jason could hear his voice too, threatening Harvey, calling her white trash, a freak—a freak of nature who’d killed her parents. He could see himself revving the engine with his service van outside the school. Jordan in the passenger seat dying with laughter as her dad scares the freak girl, threatens to run her down, then pulls forward blocking her way . . .

  Harvey is saying something. Jason turns to look at her but sees nothing, hears nothing, only breath rushing through his teeth and tightness in his muscles. He gets out of the car, pulls the billy club from his pant leg. With two swings, the back windows of the van shatter, the pieces falling inside. Then a few quick blows to the metal sides of the van; the panels dent easy, and the paintwork flakes onto the driveway. If Jason had his old flick-knife, he’d scalp the tires, but instead he rips off a side mirror and stamps on it with his good foot. Then he pops out the driver’s-side window, spits on
the steering wheel. Next come the headlights. The glass is tempered, but eventually, they give—and he crushes each bulb with a hard poke. The front grille cracks with five or six blows. As he turns to swing at the windshield, Jason glimpses a small face watching him from an upstairs window. Then the front door of the house flies open and a heavyset man appears. He is wearing blue jeans and a New York Jets T-shirt with cutoff sleeves.

  “What the hell are you doing to my van?” He shouts.

  Jason tosses his club to the ground. “Why don’t you come over here and find out what I’m doing? You dumb motherfucker.”

  The man hesitates, then moves toward Jason from the doorway. But before he can get off the porch, the face that was watching from upstairs has turned into a boy, and the child has wrapped his body around his father’s leg.

  “Leave my daddy alone!”

  His voice is so high, it’s breaking. “. . . you leave my daddy alone!”

  The man shouts at the child to go back inside, but he won’t let go.

  Jason just stands there, staring at the boy in his pajamas. He knows those eyes, that look, the desperation to protect, the fear masquerading as courage.

  Then suddenly Jason can’t move, and lets his body slump down on the driveway.

  By now, neighbors are out on their lawns.

  Then the police come. They block the road with their cars and draw weapons.

  Jason is cuffed. Harvey brushes away pieces of glass and sits with him on the concrete.

  When the police lock Jason in a cruiser, Harvey asks to sit in the backseat, but they won’t let her. The neighbors are staring at her black fingernail polish, her dyed black hair with red streaks, her fishnet tights and Dr. Martens boots.

  Then Jordan and her mother get home. They have to park their car down the street. Jordan knows even before they get there—this is somehow her fault.

  After half an hour, the police lead Jason around the back of the house, still in handcuffs. Harvey follows without saying anything. Jordan is there too, standing off to one side. The little boy is back in the house watching TV.