Page 50 of Badd Ass
“Dad had me talk to them. I told them I was with Dad voluntarily, so there wasn’t anything anyone could say. Mom and Dad had never divorced, so it wasn’t like he was violating a court visitation order.”
“So you spent a summer with your Dad’s biker gang.”
“Yep. It was amazing, honestly. Total freedom. Ride all day, hang out with the guys at night. Dad let me drink, kept an eye on me, and kept the younger guys from sniffing around after me. If it was a nice night, they’d just stop wherever they wanted, pitch some tents, light a fire, and camp on the side of the highway. Or there’d be a motel, somewhere not too ratty but not flashy.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
I shook my head. “It was incredible. He brought me back a week before school started. Just dropped me off, gave me a kiss, and rode away without looking back. And then I didn’t hear from him again until the first week of summer the next year. And guess what?”
“You spent your summers on the back of your Dad’s Harley?”
I let out a breath and nodded. “I sure did. Every year until I joined the Army.”
“How’d your mom take it?”
I shot him a wry grin. “Not well at all. That first time, I was grounded the whole first month of school, and she refused to talk to me. I mean not a damn word. Stopped getting me up for school, stopped making my breakfast, stopped doing my laundry, stopped packing my lunches, stopped driving me to school, stopped giving me allowances.”
“Damn, that’s harsh,” Zane said, chuckling.
“When you’re fourteen, yeah, it’s harsh,” I shot back.
He raised his hands. “Hey now, I was being serious. He’s your dad, and she was making you choose, essentially. I mean, yeah, he probably should have, like, called you or sent postcards now again, but he showed up. He was involved, just…his way. She shouldn’t have guilted you into choosing her over him.”
I felt oddly relieved that he understood. “Exactly. My mom is a world champion at holding grudges, I’ve learned. She doesn’t let go of things. You know how guys will joke about their girlfriends, like ‘she has flowcharts and graphs and flashcards for every single thing I’ve ever done or said’? That’s Mom. She never forgave Dad, and she never got over him, either. Never divorced him, never dated, never took him to court. I mean, why would she? He was gone nine months of the year and he sent her an envelope full of cash once a month, every month, without fail—and looking back, I think he had to have sent her a couple grand every month, easily. And then, for the three months of summer, she got to be completely alone, do whatever she wanted, no kid, no one to look after or clean up after. She got to spend an entire summer single, basically. I said she never dated, but I suspect she spent those summers I was gone dating while I wasn’t around to see. And me, well, she never forgave me, either. She saw it, like you said, as a betrayal. According to her, I should have refused to ever talk to him again, because he’d abandoned us both.
“And yeah, I was always a little angry with him for leaving like he did. I still am, in a way. But he showed up, and he invested in me. The summer trips were a birthday present, too. He’d let me do what ever I wanted, within reason. I learned how to drink around Dad, learned how to throw a mean right hook, how to ride a motorcycle, how to change a tire, how to change oil. I saw the country on the back of a Harley, in the company of my dad and a bunch of other amazing people.” I paused to take a drink of my beer, which had started to go warm. “Mom never forgave me. We established a status quo, but I was taking care of myself from then on. She did the grocery shopping and paid the bills, but I was responsible for myself. I got a job when I was fifteen and bought a car with my own money when I turned seventeen.”
“How are things now?”
I looked down and picked at the label of my bottle. “Well, Mom still lives in Elvira, Indiana, still works for the same dentist she has since I was in high school, still lives in the same house. I don’t see her that much. I refuse to set foot in that town, not after what happened to Isaac, not after the way even the so-called ‘good people’ turned a blind eye to what Jimmy Price, Kevin Lyle, Patrick McKnight, and Reggie Kowalski did. Those are all the sons of city councilmembers, F-Y-I. They’re the ones who killed Isaac and no one says anything. It’s just this dirty little town secret, except it’s not, like, someone’s a secret drug addict or someone got someone else’s wife pregnant. It was premeditated murder of an innocent kid. So yeah, I don’t go back. I buy Mom a plane ticket every December and she spends a month with me in San Francisco.”
“What about your dad?” Zane asked.
I sighed. “Two years ago, he was convicted of grand larceny, money laundering, possession of and intent to distribute schedule one narcotics, and possession of a firearm without a license.”
“Oh.” Zane blinked, processing. “So…he’s behind bars for a while.”
I laughed bitterly. “A while, yeah.”
“So when you were on those trips with him…?”
Another bitter laugh. “Those were his vacations, too. The rest of the year he and his gang were…well, your average gangsters. Drugs, guns, hookers, the whole nine yards, and my dad was one of the ring-leaders. He kept it from me all through high school and while I was in the Army, and then one day, bam, I got a collect call from him. He was behind bars and wouldn’t be getting out for something like twenty years, minimum. Turns out he’d been lying to me the whole time. I mean, I always kind of wondered where he got the money to send Mom, and how he could afford to just scamper off with me for three months and spend money on me like it was no big deal. The last week or so of our summer trips, we’d swing by Indianapolis before he took me home, and we’d go shopping. He’d buy me whatever I wanted and then we’d ship it all to Mom’s house. He’d drop several grand at a time without blinking. Should’ve been a hint, but I was just…”
“A girl being spoiled by her dad.”
I nodded. “Exactly. It was easier to not think about it, not ask any questions.”
“I notice none of the charges he was slapped with are violent offenses.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I think he had others do that kind of dirty work when it needed doing.”
“Do you ever visit him?”
“Nope. I will, eventually, but I haven’t forgiven him yet. It’s another betrayal, yet another way he abandoned me.”
“Understandable.” We both finished our drinks at the same time, and Zane pointed at mine. “Another?”
I shrugged. “Nah. You want to just…walk around?”
