Our phone rings and rings.
My father’s been trying us for days.
I refuse to take his calls.
Judith grabs it, screams into it:
“Leave them alone, Joe!”
Slam!
But it rings on and on.
I hate that sound. I pick it up.
My dad says hi as if we’re pals.
“Once I thought I had a father,
but now I realize
you’re just some stranger’s boyfriend,
not a father at all,
nobody I want to know. Ever!”
This time I slam it down.
Who’s worse,
a mother who unabashedly detests you
or a father who swears he adores you
but treats you as if you’re someone
he might have seen on a bus?