by Cameron Hawkins
I was sitting on stained wicker seat on the edge of a red floor rug in front of a glowing TV. The rug was flecked with dust and stray threads. Odd brown floral patterns marched around the border. The chair creaks. Its legs are pockmarked by the teeth of a two thousand dollar, pure bred disaster. We tried to tame the foot high beastie. He had even learned how to ring a small brass bell dangling from a glittering bit of gold ribbon to gain access to the back yard, but still we found foul patches of moist carpeting. We finally had to give the thing away to someone who didn’t care that their dogs ran their home.
The name “Subterranean Lava Dragon: Volvagia” faded in across the screen, superimposed over a volcanic cavern. The system’s controller barely reached my hands as I hunched over my perch at the edge of the floor rug. Koji Kondo let loose his boss music magic as I attempted to crush the skull of the increasingly evasive wyvern. I was armed with a comically large hammer. The foul conglomerate of panels which composed the creature had invoked frantic button-mashing. You’d think if Link could sprint with a sledge twice the size of his torso he’d be able to swing it with a bit more ease. I was dealt another heart’s worth of damage.
With a last labored attack, Volvagia erupted into gouts of fire and I collected my prize: a levitating heart-shaped gemstone which left in its wake a lovely glow. I had Link give the portal back to the entrance a wide berth. I’d always worried about taking a misstep and losing my opportunity at extra life.
As I was gathering my prize, a voice called down from the hall, a half-flight of stairs above the room I was sitting in. The wicker bristles jabbed at my fingers as I stood up. My mom walked into the room.
“Cameron you’re not in trouble. Your dad and I just want to talk to you about something. It won’t take too long”
“Oh, okay.”
She didn’t make lasting eye contact as she turned away. We ascended the miniature stack of steps. The hallway was thin, with beige walls trimmed in white. Two pairs of doors stared their opposites down and one presided over the lot, left open to expose a king sized mattress atop an ornate dark wooden frame. The headboard sported marks akin to those of the wicker chair, but these were inflicted by a barbaric younger brother. An armoire and twin night stands accompanied the dark stain of the bed frame. The grey light of day was muted by partially clasped shutters. The lights were off. My dad sat on a wicker chair and I sat at an angle to him on a thinly upholstered faux leather bench. The stitching held nothing together, raised and ridged only on the surface.
My mom sat directly to my right.
My dad was not breaking eye contact. He was upright in his chair, hands clasped. He did not seem aware when my mother began speaking, remaining deadpan with eyebrows knit.
“So… I don’t know if you have noticed, but your dad and I have been having some problems lately.”
I had noticed. They fought on a regular basis. He was always right, but she was never actually wrong. He deflected blame and never cared much for anybody else’s opinions and he had a way of manipulating us into doing what he thought we should be. He was proving to be a burden on his household, and I felt that this was progress.
But at the same time, he was my dad, and I knew he had good in him. We had fun, we went to shows together, he always walked in the door at about seven in the evening while my mom and two brothers and I sat around the long-suffering kitchen table, stained with permanent marker and marred by even more teeth marks. He knew when my youngest brother, Ryan, the Biter, was faking it and he had a bank of the best subtle off-color jokes.
But that certainly did not compensate for his wrongs. Once, I had written a list in red ink highlighting exactly what I hated about him. I planned to slip it beneath his door in the middle of the night to be discovered in the morning, but I didn’t have the courage. I remember telling my mom after a particularly harrowing encounter that I only ever learned how not to be a father from him. I still think that one is true. So I knew what was coming next. This was one of the Talks that all parents have sketched out in their possible parenting set list, but hope to never deliver.
“Mom and I have decided that it would be better if I moved out for the time being, so we can take a break. We’re going to counseling and we’re working this out,” he said.
My mother did not ratify this as she stared at me. I stared at the ground fidgeting with my fingers. My throat was dry and my shoulders sunken.
“It’s only temporary for now. We’re going to see how it goes.” He was quiet, more so than he had been when his father had died.
My mother spoke. “How are you feeling? Do you have any questions?”
I didn’t speak for a stretch.
I said no. I said I was fine, because I suppose I was. I was on board. I didn’t want him to be in my house anymore. But you can’t say that to your dad. That was not something he needed to hear.
We sat there a bit longer, silent.
“Okay, well, I love you. I’m still here for you if you need me,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“It’ll be okay. We need to go talk with your younger brother. Are you sure you’re okay?” my mother said.
I said I was.
“Okay. You can go back to your game now.”
And so I did. I walked back down the thin hallway and the short stretch of steps. Across the annexed bonus room and the ugly red rug. I sat on the brown wicker chair. And I stared at the floor.
In an hour or so, I heard my dad’s truck start up and pull out of the drive, rumbling its way down the street. Soon after the noise was gone.
That night, my mother took my brothers and me to a forgettable animated movie and dinner, stopping in to a Target where we bought the Bourne Trilogy box set. We didn’t say anything to each other despite our mother’s best efforts. We were fine. No, we didn’t have any questions. Should we have questions? There seemed to be an awful lot of precedence for questions. We went home that night and watched our newly acquired thrillers. And the days went by.
We never talked about my father leaving the house and we became accustomed to his absence. It was nice. There were no longer any spousal conflicts, my brothers and I weren’t made to do anything we didn’t want to, no more screaming across the house at whichever sports game was on the television, and, at that point, there were no enforced custody arrangements. The only real stress I had on my mind at that time was the possibility of financial strain. Perhaps we would have to move to a smaller house, or perhaps I would be forced to conduct some taxing appeasement campaigns for some funding. In other words, it could be worse.
Of course, after several months and a handful of extraordinarily uncomfortable family holidays, my parents did finalize their divorce. The court ruled for partial custody. Every other weekend and national holiday I would be staying with my father up until I was eighteen or I graduated high school, which ever came last.
I found the first real sadness in my dad’s poorly kept apartment. It was miserable there, the loneliness laid thick about it. He still had framed pictures of his former wife hanging on his walls and propped up on his bedside table. He stilled referred to her as “Mom,” in that unsettling third person parents tend to drop in to. My mother hadn’t even given him the courtesy of “Michael” in her cell phone contacts. Rather, the entry read “Kid’s Dad”. She told me she already knew too many Michaels.
My brother’s and I slept on air mattresses in sparse rooms when we stayed with our father. The dinnerware was mismatched, as though it had been purchased by a man wearing a blindfold traipsing through a Home Goods. Any furniture in the apartment was either of the flimsy flat-pack variety or of the extraordinarily ugly variety. It did not feel like a home, it felt like a facility.
And when I found myself feeling overwhelmed by the emptiness, I shuffled off to the bathroom with the broken toilet and had a good cry about it, as I was prone to do. It seemed like none of this was supposed to happen. But if this wasn’t supposed to happen, what the hell else was?
After about twenty minutes, I got over myself and left the bathroom to sit out in front of the TV on the beige love seat. My dad must have figured I was the restroom reader type.