CHAPTER

39

My father’s speech left me in tears, and to my surprise, it also left Leah in tears. I jumped onto the stage and hugged my father, and unlike every other hug we had ever shared, there was nothing hesitant in it.

The three of us went to a bar across the street, a bar where there were many older and many younger people, and none of the three of us looked out of place. Leah talked about some plays she had seen, which she said she was disappointed by for their lack of political engagement, then she started talking to my father about a conversation she had with one of Ismail’s lawyers about a possible appeal, and then she looked at me and stopped herself. She said she was going to bring whiskey shots for all of us. I had never known that my father had been left alone with his mother while she was dying, and knowing this made his shielding me from my mother’s mother dying make much more sense to me, so I asked for more details, and I also asked for more details about both of his parents, since I had heard very little about either one. Eventually, Leah returned, and she toasted Adam and his enthusiasm for breastfucking. She drank her shot, slammed the glass on the bar, and clapped her hands together.

“Well, thanks so much for this incredibly shitty night, guys.”

“What’s the matter?” my father asked. He put a hand on her shoulder that she pushed off.

“Sometimes I think the problem is me, sometimes I think that I should just accept that the love of my life is a terrorist, because the government says he is, and they wouldn’t say that if he wasn’t. I thought that at least you understood, Isaac. I thought you understood what it means that Ismail is still in prison for no reason. I thought you understood how terrible that is.”

“I do.”

“So how can you be so chummy with the son of a bitch who put him there?”

“Don’t use that word about Rose.”

“Are you serious? I wasn’t even thinking about Rose, it was just a random, totally inadequate insult for Venter, but are you serious? It bothers you that I would use the word ‘bitch’ to describe the woman who abandoned you with an infant son who obviously grew up very, very wrong?”

“My wife is my wife, my son is my son.”

“A clock is a clock, right, Venter?”

“Venter is my son,” my father said. “That’s all I need to know.”

“That can’t excuse everything. That can’t excuse the fact that he destroyed Ismail.”

“Maybe if the world were a fair place it would not, but it isn’t, and it does.”

It took me a second to realize that this was the nicest thing my father had ever said about me. It took me a little bit longer to realize that, when Leah walked away and my father did not follow her, this meant that he had chosen me over her, his misguided son over the surrogate daughter with whom he had bonded over the past several years. This did not strike me as a wise choice, but it was one that meant a lot to me.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “Do you think we can find a diner around here that serves pound cake?”