Page 133 of Give & Take

Because of me. They had a replacement dad.

The kids whisper as the server hurries away.

Mom speaks up for the first time, cutting them off. “Keep going.”

Dad looks over at her, and then he does start to cry. Tears spill from his eyes like a baby’s. “Oh Miriam,” he says.

But Mom shakes her head. She looks pointedly to me. “This is our son’s night, John.”

“You were saying?” Deanie says.

“Colored tabs?” Junior adds helpfully.

Dad grabs a napkin, mopping at his face. “Right.” He tucks it in his breast pocket, where it immediately falls out and onto the floor. “The point is, our lives—those are the rest of the documents. All that substance, all the special, minuscule moments—those are the notes and clauses. And by going straight for the tabs—I missed them all. With all of you.”

He looks at his six children in turn, each of us sober again.

“But most of all you, Raphael.” Dad turns to me,wringing his big hands again. “And that’s because you were your mother’s son. You treated her like she walked on stars. And I couldn’t handle that. I was—” he takes a shaky breath. “I saw the way you took after her. How you noticed all the pretty little things in life. How you’d make a day of counting sidewalk cracks and learning the life story of the bagger at the grocery store. I didn’t know how to…handle you.”

“Handle?” Mom says, breaking her silence. “John. All we wanted was for you to see the joy we saw. We wanted to share the pieces of our lives that overlapped with yours.”

“I thought I wasn’t good enough for that,” he barks. “I wasn’t charming or brilliant or kind. I couldn’t make Deandra smile the way you could.”

Deanie’s chin wobbles.

“I couldn’t make your mother laugh the way you did,” he says to me. “Or comfort her when she cried. All I knew was how to work to support you all. How to teach you all that providing for a family is the only way to show them love, because that’s all I knew.”

Mom opens her mouth again, but Dad shakes his head. “And that’s on me. I missed out on what’s clearly a most remarkable life, Raphael. On six remarkable lives. All because I was too focused on the tabs.”

For a moment, silence hangs over the table as this settles. I look at my dad, my head spinning. I can’t decide whether to be happy or pissed with him that it took him until now to figure this all out, when none of us are little kids anymore. It could go either way.

Instead, I let it all go. I see him for the sad, lonely man he made himself be, and I take in the goodness hecreated. The seven other people at the table who love each other, in one way or another. The brothers, who are as well-adjusted as I could have hoped.

Deanie, who’s going to do right, I know, by her own child.

And Mom. Mom, who looks at me and smiles so softly I feel my own tears backing up behind my eyes.

“Thank you,” I say to Dad. Maybe he doesn’t get forgiveness just yet, but I can be an adult and acknowledge this moment. “For coming here and saying that.”

Dad still looks morose. He knows it’ll take more than one impassioned speech to walk back the damage—maybe more than is possible to make up for. But I think he’s hating himself hard enough right now without needing anything else from me.

“Congratulations, son. Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it exactly right.”

The server comes back then, teeth bared like he’s approaching a wild animal. “Am I interrupting?” he says.

“No,” I say, my throat thick. My dad’s eyes are still on me. “You’re all good.”

I decide to wait to tell everyone my own news, that I’m not coming back home to California. One bombshell tonight is enough. I’ll tell Mom and Deanie back at Mom’s place, where I’m staying. Deanie will roll her eyes but be happy I’m closer, I think. Mom will cry but pretend not to. I’ll start working on her to move too, maybe.

Outside, I see my father walking, head down, toward his SUV.

“Dad,” I say. He pauses, shoulders still slumped.

I reach out and shake my father’s hand.

I wish him the best of luck in his life moving forward. I also thank him for being a Canadian citizen—Deanie and I have dual citizenship thanks to him. And since I don’t know when the next time I’ll see him will be, I tell him the thing I’ve always wanted to say. The thing I learned when reading all those classics and philosophers, that I’ve held as a tenet my whole adult life.

“It’s not too late,” I tell him at the door of the restaurant. “To be something different.”

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