Danny drives down the tree-lined streets of the tony neighborhood where his parents live. His van’s window is down because even though it’s only midmorning, the day is hot and humid.
Danny parks his van in front of his parents’ home, a big two-story house with a large front porch with columns flanking the front door. He cuts through the grass and takes the porch steps two at a time.
He raps on the door and waits. He can hear a lawn mower down the street and somewhere kids are playing and laughing. He feels a pang of nostalgia for his own childhood, a time when life was simpler and easier.
When his father comes to the door, Danny expects to be invited in, but instead George Edwards steps out onto the porch and closes the door behind him. His hair is grayer than the last time Danny saw him. His eyes look weary.
“What do you want, Danny?”
Danny frowns. “How about a ‘Hello, son, it’s good to see you’?”
His father crosses his arms and leans against the porch railing. He repeats his question. “What do you want, Danny?”
Danny huffs. “It’s nice to see you too,” he says sarcastically.
When his dad doesn’t say anything else, Danny says, “Look, Dad, I need a loan. I just need some help getting on my feet. I promise I will pay you back.”
“No.”
“I’ve cleaned up my act,” Danny says. “I’m staying out of trouble, making important changes in my life. Nancy and I need a little help, that’s all.”
“No,” his father says. “I’m done helping you.”
Danny opens his mouth to object, but his father doesn’t give him the chance.
“I offered you a place in the family business,” his father says. “But you didn’t want to be an electrician. Then I offered you a job at the grocery store I own. You didn’t want anything to do with that either.”
Danny doesn’t have a defense. He’s always preferred easy money to hard work and started selling marijuana in high school.
“May I also remind you,” his father says, “that when you dropped out of high school and married Peggy, I gave you a house—a house, Danny!”
Danny lowers his head. After he divorced his wife so he could be with Nancy, he and his ex-wife had sold the house, and he’d used his share to get in the door of the cocaine business.
“Look,” Danny says, trying to sound sincere, “I understand why you don’t want to help me. I’ve screwed up in the past. But I’m really trying to do the right thing here.”
His father takes a deep breath, and Danny feels relieved that he’s finally gotten to the old man.
“I hope that what you say is true, Danny. I hope you’ve cleaned up your act. But I won’t help you anymore.”
Danny’s hope evaporates.
“You’ve hurt me too many times in the past,” his dad says.
With that, his father opens the front door and walks back inside. Danny can hear the click as his father throws the dead bolt.
“Well, to hell with you,” Danny mutters, “you old son of a bitch.”
He climbs back into his van and begins driving through Kankakee. He isn’t ready to go home and face Nancy. He knows the city well, and he guides the van through the nicest neighborhoods. He looks at the big houses, with vast green front yards and shiny sports cars parked in the driveways.
His parents were never millionaires, but they were well off. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He wishes now he could reverse the decisions that led him to where he is today. If he had finished high school, he could have gotten his electrician’s union card. He could be running the business with his older brothers. Or the grocery store—he could be managing it now.
But selling drugs was too easy.
He passes a particularly opulent house with an expansive front yard and a wraparound front porch. There is a red Ferrari parked in the driveway in front of a detached garage. Three barefoot boys are running through a sprinkler, a teenager and two younger boys who look like twins.
A man wearing glasses, a polo shirt, and a pair of khaki shorts steps out on the front porch. The guy has a smile on his face like he has it all.
“I wish I had that guy’s life,” Danny says to himself, and he drives on.