Page 28 of The Last Guy On Earth
“It certainly can,” the man says, because that’s how it works at the Four Seasons. The customer is always right, even when the customer is a surly ten-year-old boy who’s missing his mom on Christmas Eve.
My father, who’s wearing saggy jeans and aMike’s Repair Shopsweatshirt while sitting in the center of a swanky restaurant, orders the Lobster Thermidor.
“Have you had that before?” Toby asks.
My father shakes his head. “No, but it has something to do with lobsterandcheese. So what’s not to love?”
I catch myself chuckling. But five years ago, if anyone had told me I’d be eating Christmas Eve dinner with my dad, I wouldhave questioned their sanity. My father abandoned our family when I was six. Then he’d taken a multi-decade detour into alcoholism before getting sober about five years ago.
At first, I wanted nothing to do with our new-and-improved dad. I don’t have a lot of time for people who never had time for me. But then he started showing up for my sister and Toby in a big way. So I grudgingly accepted him as a part of my life.
Then, last year, when my sister wreaked mayhem on the world and on my family, I no longer had the luxury of keeping my father at arm’s length. He’s five years into his sobriety and his redemption tour. And now that I’m legally somebody’s parent, I couldn’t get through the week without my dad’s help.
So here we are on Christmas Eve, like a real family. This new version of my dad is a calm and quiet man—a little like me in that regard. Honestly, we have a lot in common, which is amusing and sometimes terrifying. I worry that I’ve inherited his bad heart and his penchant for abusing alcohol.
And I worry that Toby will, too.
Given the chance, my dad would still be back in Detroit, tinkering with engines at the garage where he worked, and planning his retirement. He’s almost sixty-six years old. I pay him a salary as Toby’s nanny, which means he hasn’t had to start collecting social security yet. The unspoken plan is that I’ll retire when my contract is up in eighteen months, and we’ll revisit the plan for Toby’s care.
But here we are instead, twelve hundred miles from home, linen napkins in our laps as we listen to a string quartet play “Silent Night” in the corner.
Toby and I both order the steak, and, damn it, when the food shows up, it’s fantastic. The meat is tender as butter, and the green beans spike memories of the ones Clay used to make—with slivered almonds. He called themharicot vert, with a Frenchaccent, and I teased him for days. “Just saybeanslike the rest of us, you preppy fucker.”
Maybe it sounds like a harsh comment to give the guy who was feeding me. But that’s how we were with each other. Clay had a slew of names for me, too. “Jethro the grouch” and “you broody fuck” both come to mind.
I take another bite, and the beans are perfect—buttery, with a nutty crunch. Clay is the only person I’ve ever known who cooked the same kind of food you might find at the Four Seasons. Young, stupid me thought maybe all rich kids could do that. One time I asked him where he learned to cook, and he’d winced. “Our, um, private chef taught me,” he’d said. “I was ten or eleven when I started. Figured out that if I was helping in the kitchen, nobody would make me go do my homework.”
That vault where I store my memories of Clay? It keeps drifting open, damn it. And the more I think about him, the more unsettled I feel. The man fed me every day with his own two hands. For an entire hockey season.
And then there’s all the sex we had…
“Uncle Jethro?”
I look up and realize that I’ve been mowing down my food without speaking to anyone. Toby’s steak is half gone, so I guess that’s not so bad. “Yeah?”
“This is super good,” he says quietly.
“Isn’t it?” I agree. “What do you think we’d be eating right now if we’d stayed in Michigan?”
He flashes me a quick smile. “Little Caesars?”
“Possibly.” I snort. “But it’s the holidays, so maybe I would have gone all out. Extra garlic bread, maybe. Or a bag of Christmas Oreos for dessert.”
Toby gives me an eyeroll. “You big spender.”
“Amirite?” I wink at him and slide my fork through my mashed potatoes. I think they put a whole stick of butter in these, and I’m here for it.
“Mom and I used to make gingerbread on Christmas Eve.” Toby looks suddenly crestfallen. “If we’d stayed in Michigan, maybe we could have gone to see her. I could have brought her some.”
“We couldn’t have,” I remind him. And Toby should know this because we’ve discussed it already. “She’s in a treatment facility.”
“Even on Christmas?” He squints at me, as if maybe I’m pulling some kind of con on him. “That’s mean.”
“It’s not mean,” my father says, sipping his Coke. “It’s what she needs to get her life back on track. She’s lucky to get treatment at all.”
The glance I send my father saysthank you. I need his help driving this point home. Toby needs to understand that his mother suffers from a disease. But also that the treatment of it is dependent on her in addition to support and intervention.
There’s no telling if my sister will ever get her life together. And neither Toby nor my father have any idea how many strings I pulled to get my sister into a pilot program for addiction treatment. I wrote a few checks to the right politicians and sent some hockey tickets to a state senator. That led to a phone call, where he asked me about my biggest concerns as a citizen in the great state of Michigan.
