The first thing Bauer does when we get in the car is call his wife and assure her we’ll be home in time to make dinner.
The strangeness of that word, home, throws me off so visibly that Bauer doesn’t try to talk to me for miles.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a real home, not the kind I just left with noisy breakfast tables and pancakes with warm syrup. Mom and I moved around a lot and while she made sure we had something over our heads each night—even if sometimes it was only the roof of a car—it was always just a place to sleep and nothing more.
I suppose I came close when I stayed with my grandparents but no matter how many home-cooked meals they served or stuffed animals they filled my room with, can a place really be a home when you know that every night spent there might be your last?
I used to tell myself I didn’t need a home, that four walls and a roof meant nothing when my true home was a person, the one person who loved me and always came back for me no matter how long she’d been away.
That kind of thing was easier to believe when I was a kid and I knew where my mom was even when she had to leave me.
Had to leave me.
That’s how she always said it. Ethan, I have to leave you for a little while. Had to like it was against her will, as though some kind of outside force was driving us apart when she wanted nothing more than to be with me. I’m not good for you right now. But I’ll get better and this won’t happen again.
“You ready to let me start now?” Bauer asks, pulling me out of my memories. “Dinner’s gonna come a lot sooner than you think.”
I really don’t think I am. Those things that my mom said wouldn’t happen again? Messed-up choices she made or let happen when she was high? Bauer was around for more than a few.
“I’m sorry, Ethan. Not for me, but for you. You were just a kid and I—” He shakes his head. “I was human shit. Pure and simple. It was wrong what happened to you, what I let happen. I should have been better.” His eyes are red and wet when he lifts them to my face. “And I shouldn’t have left you.”
I start to scoff, but he’s staring at me like I’m supposed to be hearing more than he’s saying.
“You don’t remember me from when you were little, do you? I used to think that was better for you. I told myself that for years after I left.” He sniffs and drags the heels of his palms over his eyes. “But then I got clean, met Tara and Os. I started to understand what it means to be a father, that I’d been one long before Tara got pregnant.”
I eye Bauer and the increasingly agitated way he’s moving. Something is wrong. All my muscles tense in agreement. “Look, I get that this is part of your program and everything, but I’m really not asking you for anything more than a place to sleep till that call comes in, so whatever—” I gesture between us “—void you think you have to fill for me, don’t.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say to you. It’s only a void because of me.” He slams a hand against his chest and then lets all his air out. “She never said, but I knew from the first time I held you. You look just like my dad.” He pulls his hair back from his head. “And I hate to tell you this, kid, but this hairline is hereditary.” He drops his hand. “Well, you gonna say something?”
I’ve been moving away from him as he speaks, pushing my back against the window until there’s nowhere else to go. “You’re lying,” is my brilliant response. I remembered guys before Bauer, lots of them.
“We weren’t together long that first time. She was serious about staying clean for you and I wasn’t serious about anything. So she took you and left. I did send money whenever I had any. And then years later we fell in again together.” He squeezes his eyes shut, maybe remembering how he was then with me and comparing that to how he is now with Os.
My chest starts rising and falling, pumping my blood faster and faster. “Are you shitting me with this right now?”
“No.” He holds my gaze. “I’m not.”
“So what now? Do I get to move in? Get matching PJs with Os for the family Christmas card? Hey, maybe I can even get Tara to adopt me. You know, make it all official before I change my last name to whatever the hell yours is!” My voice tears out of me, loud and harsh. “I mean that’s why you’re telling me this, right, Dad?” I laugh under my breath. “’Cause you’re my dad now and not some asshole who used to put that shit in my cereal and laugh while I staggered around the kitchen until I fell and sliced my arm open.” I raise it to show him the scar I still have. “Or how about that time when I was, what, four and you guys left me alone without anything to eat or drink for days and I had to live off ketchup packets and water from the toilet. Or when you left after introducing her to the guy who used to lock me in a closet whenever he came over.”
He looks away long before I finish, wincing with each new memory I hurl at him. I wasn’t sure he even remembered all that stuff but I can tell he does.
“You want me to keep going, Bauer? ’Cause I can. You know I can.” He looks like he’s gonna throw up, but it’s nothing to how I feel. “Accidents,” I say. “Mistakes. That’s what she called them. Because she’s my mom and she would never hurt me when she wasn’t sick. And since you’re my dad now, I guess that’s what I have to tell myself about you too.”
“No, I don’t need any pretty lies,” he says, and he’s crying though his features haven’t moved. “And I don’t need you to forgive me. I need you to know I’m sorry.” He looks half his size when he stops talking. “I—”
“Hey Bauer?”
He glances up at me, all hopeful. “Yeah?”
“All I came out here for was to find my mom. She’s not here, so I’m leaving and you can get out of my car.”