Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
Zach
Camila
Zach
Irene had gone to her guest room early, so Zach and his dad were drinking on his stone patio. “So about this job,” Zach said. “I just don’t know.”
Jerry looked up at Zach and sighed into his scotch. “Why not?”
“Because it would bore the shit out of me,” Zach said.
“Aren’t you bored at the shop?” Jerry asked.
Zach topped himself off and sat down. “Miserably. Which is why I’m going to sell it. It’s the smart thing to do. It’s becoming a money pit. Mom held on to it for too long. But I’m looking for another job in Pittsburgh.”
Jerry raised an eyebrow. “I just never pictured you wanting to live there.”
“Neither did I,” Zach admitted. “But it’s different being there as an adult. Everyone hates their hometown when they’re in high school. But the city isn’t so bad. I’ve made good friends there. I’m, I don’t know, seeing things differently.”
His dad stared him down behind his bright red frames. You know, they didn’t look half bad. Maybe Zach could update his plain frames to something flashier.
“Is it a girl?” Dad asked. “Or a boy?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I did meet someone. Her name is Camila,” he said, and he knew he didn’t imagine his dad’s relief that he hadn’t said a man’s name. They were going to have a conversation about that later, when he was more drunk. “I made this big declaration about staying in town and I’d feel like a liar if I took this job.”
His dad shrugged as if he didn’t think there was much wrong with that. “Things change. Opportunities crop up. If this girl cares about you, she’d want you to live your best life.”
Zach gagged at “best life.” “It’s hard to explain. But … I think my best life might be wherever she is.”
“Son,” Jerry said, “you can’t let your relationships define your life.”
Now Zach wanted to crush the scotch glass in his bare hand. “That would be your advice. You never have.”
Jerry looked hurt. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s generous,” Zach said. “You haven’t been there for me. Or Irene. And we’ve managed. Why don’t you trust my judgment about my own life? You trusted me enough to raise your daughter for you. Or did you just not care?”
Dad wasn’t a screamer like his mother had been, but he did look angry and like he was about to defend himself. Then he thought better of it. “I know.”
“You know?”
“I do know. If I’d been worth a damn, I would have fought for custody or stayed in Pittsburgh to keep better eyes on you both. I knew your mother was, well, the way she was, and I thought maybe I was the reason for it. It was an excuse. But I thought you’d all be better off without me, and that maybe she’d change without our awful marriage making her angry.”
“But she didn’t want to change,” Zach said, sadly.
“Except she did want to.”
He raised an eyebrow at his father. “What?”
“Andrea had her faults, and you lived at home during the worst of it. After I left.” He recognized that forced stoicism in the hunch of his dad’s shoulders. It was the same thing Zach did. He paused before saying, “Did you know she was working the twelve steps before she died?”
Zach didn’t mean to laugh. But the thought of his mom trying to get sober was high comedy. “Maybe she said that sarcastically.”
“Oh no, she was dead serious. She was going to meetings multiple times a week. She called me because she wanted to make amends for some of the more colorful things she called me during the divorce.” His dad looked like this was a cherished memory, and Zach wasn’t sure if he was feeling fond and nostalgic over the apology, or over the slight. “She was sober for six months.”
Six months. Zach thought back, and realized how that timing might line up. He remembered calling Irene a few months into his travels and her saying how things had been fine for a while, but she’d never told him Andrea had stopped drinking, for any amount of time. Maybe Irene was like Zach was at that age, finding any opportunity to leave the house. Maybe she didn’t want to get her hopes up and hadn’t made a bigger thing of it.
“She got sober right when I left the country, didn’t she?”
“She did,” Irene said, appearing outside in her pajamas. “She was worried you were never going to come back.”
His dad looked so sad. “That’s what made her want to change, I think.”
“Dad,” Zach said, shaking his head. “No. The last time I talked to mom, she was drunk out of her mind and saying the worst things to me.”
The shrug his dad gave him set his head ablaze. “Sobriety isn’t always a straight path. Not that I would know,” he said, taking another sip of his scotch. “When she relapsed, she relapsed hard.” He looked at Zach and answered the question before he asked it. “And I don’t know what caused it. I don’t know that anything had to. It was just … one of those things.”
One of those things. Zach didn’t know how to process this, and he sure as hell didn’t know what to say. He tried to imagine what his mother would be like sober. He wished so much he could have seen it.
He turned to Irene. “She stopped?” Zach asked, his voice strangled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Irene pulled up a patio chair and sat between them. “When she was alive, she didn’t want me to tell you. And after she died, well, you never asked.”
“I thought … I assumed she was as bad with you as she was with me.”
Irene shook her head. “You never want to talk about her. I’m not saying she wasn’t still a mess. But she did try. She’d try cutting back sometimes. She yelled less. We had some really intense conversations about her drinking before she decided to finally quit.”
Zach felt sick. “Here I thought I’d left you to the wolves.”
Irene shoved his shoulder. “Shit was bad, but it wasn’t your job to take care of me, Zach.” She turned accusingly at their father. “It was your job.”
They were quiet for long moments. “Either way,” Zach started, looking at his father, “everything with Mom is separate from everything with you. You think writing a check is showing affection. You think wining and dining me and offering a fancy job is showing up for me. You think remembering a birthday is an accomplishment. I get that mom dying must have reminded you of your fucking mortality or something, but it’s too little too late. I’m not a kid anymore. You missed it.”
“And I’m not either,” Irene added. “Even if Zach thinks I am.”
Jerry finished his scotch and set the glass down, folding his hands in his lap. He hunched over in shame. “I’m sorry, to both of you. I really am. And you don’t owe me forgiveness or even the time you’re giving me right now. I want to be here for you both however I can, for as long as I can. It is too little. It is too late. But if you let me — if time passes and you’re OK with it — I want to do better. But I just want you both to be OK.”
Zach stared at the silver fire pit. “I don’t think I realized how not OK I’ve been until recently,” Zach said. “I’ve always been so worried that I was just like Mom. I’ve spent my whole life trying to be literally anyone else, and I don’t know what’s me anymore.”
“You are like her in some ways,” his dad said. “But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. No one is ever all bad. Andrea used to have this … air about her. She didn’t care what anyone thought about her, but she was the first one to help if someone needed her. And God, was she fun. That woman. That woman knew how to be the life of the party. We don’t always get to choose our challenges, but we do get to choose our response to our challenges. And for what it’s worth, I’m proud of how you’ve handled yours.”
He gave his dad a hard look. “Dad. Are you seeing a therapist?”
“It’s Los Angeles, son. Everyone has a damn therapist.”