Page 46 of After Him, There Was You
Consider that before he was your dad, he was a man.I thought to myself, replaying Zeke’s words of wisdom.
“Where does this leave us?” I asked, staring at him as he wiped the tears from his eyes, using his bare hands instead of reaching for the box of tissues next to his bed.
“Can we start over?”
“Are you willing to stop drinking?”
“Damn, you’re just like Jacquelyn,” he jokingly stated, laughing through the tears, causing me to do the same. “Yes, I’ll stop drinking if it means having a clean start with you.”
“Okay.”
Exiting the hospital room, I felt as if a load had been lifted. After a two-hour conversation, catching up on life and realizing I had more in common with my dad than I ever wanted to admit, I felt optimistic about our relationship.
Taking a deep breath filled with hope, I looked up so I could safely cross the hall. Making the first move too soon, I collided into a hard chest, and in one sniff I knew who I was in the presence of.
“Eva,” he stated, surprise evident in his tone. “Sorry about that. I know better than to walk and look at my phone at the same time.”
“It’s okay,” I noted, shrugging the collision off.
“What are you doing here?” Trevor asked, sliding his phone into the back pocket of his jeans before ushering me to the far side of the hallway so we wouldn’t be in anyone’s way.
“I was leaving from visiting my dad.”
“You were?” he asked, staring at me as if he wasn’t sure who I was, or as if I’d suddenly started speaking a foreign language.
“Yes, I did.”
“How did that go?” Trevor inquired, with a look of concern etched on his face as he folded his arms across his chest.
Trevor was well aware of the dysfunctional dynamics which had always been present between my dad and I, so his manner was no surprise to me.
“It went well actually. I can’t say that I’m daddy’s little girl, but I understand there are reasons behind him being the person he was. I never realized his habit has been a coping mechanism for him all these years.”
“Are you willing to accept whatever reasoning he gave you for his ways and how he treated you?”
“To be honest with you, I don’t know. What I can say is, I won’t go out of my way to avoid him, but I still need for him to show me change. I made it clear that if he wants a relationship with me, he needs to act like it and drinking and driving is not his way to act like it.”
“Does this mean you’ll start taking the boys around him?”
Thinking about his question, I reflected on the conversation I had with my dad.
I could agree that grandparents played an important role in your life, especially during the childhood stage, but Egypt and Tyger didn’t have a shortage on grandparents because they had Trevor’s parents who they loved, and they had my mama. Keeping away one alcoholic grandfather was something Trevor and I agreed on because what good would his presence do them if he was always under the influence? In my opinion, the only thing he could give them was a good laugh at his expense.
There’s nobody who can make you laugh more than a drunk or a crackhead.
“If I see a consistent change in him, then I’ll think about it,” I concluded. “If the time comes, we’ll sit down and figure out what’s best for the boys.”
“Got it,” he stated with a nod of approval.
“You know what I’m doing here, but what are you doing here?”
“Oh, yeah,” he stated, looking down to the ground, stroking the waves which adorned his head. “I was here to see Vivian… She had a miscarriage,” he informed me, making my heart instantly break for him.
Without giving it a second thought, I stepped in and embraced him in a hug. The moment instantly brought to memory the miscarriage Trevor and I suffered. It wasn’t long after I had Egypt that we got pregnant again. In fact, it was at my eight-week checkup, where I thought my doctor was going to release me to go back to work that she informed me there was another baby in there. Three weeks later, we miscarried. It wasn’t something I opened up about or truly healed from, and aside from Trevor, Tara was the only person to know about the angel baby I carried in my heart.
“How is she doing? Are you okay? Do either of y’all need anything?’
“She’s doing good, and I’m doing great,” he answered, causing me to take a step back. “I’m not saying it like that… Well, I am saying it likethat.The baby wasn’t mine. I was only here to check on her as a friend. As luck would have it, she couldn’t get ahold of the baby’s father, so—”
