days, he stops at Lacey’s on the way to his home from work to say hi and bye to Clayton. He does this when he’s fucking Lacey, and he does this when she doesn’t want to look at him. He does this when they’re fighting (and, thanks to Facebook, I know when they’re fighting even before Lacey tells me) and he does this when they’re reconciled, as Lacey puts it, ‘again madly in love.’ When he can’t come – he calls. And he calls to say goodnight to his boy every single night.
Alex, who is also a great father, does not call to say goodnight when he’s not going to be home for bedtime.
Of course, he sleeps in the same house as his children every night. I don’t expect it.
I try to recall if I call to say goodnight on those nights when I’m out late. I used to, all the time. These days, now that they’re older? Maybe not.
I resolve to start doing so again.
Back to Clint. This must be part of his attraction, to Lacey and others. Can they tell, do they pick up this thread, this power – can they tell this man will make a great father? Not as a beautiful physical specimen only, but in those post-conception essentials? That he will rock your baby to sleep, and teach your toddler to throw a ball, and take your six-year-old to cheesy Disney movies he himself hates?
I think they can. I could – I knew Alex would be a fabulous dad, that was part of what I loved about him, always, love about him the most, still. I could see him holding my babies, not just making them.
Never part of the dynamic for Matt and me, never. Yet he, I have no doubt, would make a wonderful father to someone else’s child. His wife’s, perhaps. This I also know, even though the part of him that belongs to me, fits into me is not the man who will be a father.
But it does not surprise me that they are still childless.
—it’s a hard thing when you understand what someone is, perfectly.
I deliver the kids to school safely, drop Annie at my mom’s for the morning, run back home and pretend to be a housewife for two hours – laundry, fucking laundry, who finds joy and fulfilment in pairing socks? – then meet my dad for our sacrosanct father–daughter lunch. First Thursday of every month when we’re in the same city, third Thursday of the month too, when we can fit it in – our ritual since I was…twelve? Thirteen? It was at one of these lunches that I officially lost what little religion I had been brought up in. Confessed to my first kiss (but not my first fuck, although I did think of telling him…but that would have been too much, even for my dad). Told Dad I had to leave John, but couldn’t figure out how to do it. Laughed to him about – well, all of them. Scott. Raj. Pretentious Jason and overly ambitious Aldrin. That weird guy from Ghana who really wanted me to pierce my tongue and clit. Tried to explain to him why I was going to marry Alex.
Never told him a word about Matt.
We face each other across a wobbling round table in the basement of The Unicorn. Dad’s staring at a steak sandwich. I’m poking at an awful Caesar salad.
‘What the fuck was I thinking?’ I say. ‘Fish and chips. Fish and chips. The only thing we ever order here.’
‘Sometimes change is good,’ my father says. I give him a suspicious look.
‘But not when it comes to pub food,’ I retort. ‘You know what? I’m not eating this. I’m going to order fish and chips. You?’
He cuts into the steak.
‘Not so bad,’ he says.
My dad. Stellar dad, incredible – and incredibly patient – husband. But will never, ever admit he made any sort of mistake. As he masticates the sandwich, I’m filled with gratitude for his place in my life – for his awesomeness as father. As grandfather. And I wonder if this will be one of our very rare really honest conversations – or one of our companionable silent lunches when we just chew and enjoy each other’s company without talking – or one of the painful, shallow ones, in which one or the other of us has something profound to share but can’t figure out how to breach it, and so we talk at length about nothing.
I wish to share…nothing. I feel my angst and turmoil and mindfucked state retreating inwards where I can wall them off. And I tell him – that Lacey thinks she and Clint are ring shopping, but I think they’re just ring photographing. That I can now do four unassisted pull-ups (‘But then I want to die.’). That Henry’s got a loose tooth. That Alex is in a mad pre-Christmas rush – ‘Everyone wants to try to close before Christmas. But it means all these late nights.’ And how much I’m dreading the annual law firm Christmas party. ‘I swear, they get worse every year.’
Dad laughs and nods and sighs in all the right places. If he can tell that I’m withdrawn and not talking about anything real, he doesn’t betray it. And that’s why I can always be with him. My mother will also sense it, discern that I am in angst and turmoil. But she will poke, and poke, and poke until I run away screaming. Dad never will. I can stay with him even when I retreat.
Today, I realise I’m not the only one who retreated. He’s sitting across from me also full of something he can’t share.
I take one of his big, callused hands in mind. Kiss his knuckle.
‘What was that for?’ he says.
‘I love you,’ I say. ‘Always.’
And I see a glistening in the corner of his left eye. No. No fucking way is my dad about to cry. No.
It’s gone.
‘I’m going to have to retire next year,’ he says instead of crying. I let go of his hands, fold both of mine under my chin.
‘No, really? When did you get so old?’ I tease.
‘Sometime between my third and fourth grandchild,’ he teases me back. ‘You know how proud I am of you? How much I love you, all of you?’
This, again. So out of character.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ I close my eyes. Fuck. Fine. I’ll do it.
‘Everything OK?’ I ask. ‘At home? With you and Mom?’
I have had the nerve to ask this question…oh, three times in my life. Once when I was sixteen, and realised, after coming home from summer camp, that my parents hadn’t spoken to each other at all in the four days I had been back. Once when I was nine months pregnant with Cassandra and hyper-sensitive, and suddenly noticed, acutely, painfully, with a tinge of horror, that even when they were allegedly joyously anticipating the arrival of their first grandchild, my parents weren’t so much speaking to each other as shouting at each other. Or rather my mother was shouting. My father…hiding. And once, five years ago, when my dad started smoking again and my mother put herself on a ridiculously restrictive diet…
The answer, always: ‘Well, you know how it is, Jane. She’s not the easiest woman in the world to live with. She goes through her episodes. But I love her. And always will.’
No answer at all. And yet answer enough that I am always afraid to ask.
Dad is looking at his hands, his terrible steak sandwich. I wait for ‘You know how it is’. Instead:
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What?’
