He had her number in his hand right now and was thinking about giving her a call after the day, week, month, year, life he’d had. A few hours after his depressing coffee date with Jill—who had left in tears, though thankfully she’d waited until she got in her car for the real waterworks to start; he had seen her sobbing at the stoplight—he met his daughter, Robin, for dinner. He hadn’t seen her since he’d left his wife, only spoken with her on the phone. The kids had circled their mother and had shut him down, Benny much more than Robin, but that was to be expected. Benny’s wife, that obsessive, tightly wound, Little Miss Prim and Proper, was outraged that he had filed for divorce, as if no one had gotten divorced before, as if she knew everything there was to know about family and marriage and life, as if she were the moral arbiter of what was right and wrong when she was the one who had gotten knocked up even before she had graduated from college and she should consider herself lucky that she’d had a free ride practically since the day she had met his son. He could go on. He did not appreciate being judged.
“She doesn’t want you in our lives,” said Benny stiffly on the phone. “You’re my father, and I have made it clear that I will continue to have a relationship with you. I think things just need to cool off. She’ll calm down.” It was shocking to Middlestein that he would no longer be able to see his beloved grandchildren regularly. He hadn’t considered that such a thing would even be a possibility. He thought they would understand how he couldn’t live with that woman any longer. Surely they knew what he went through. Surely they could accept that he had been in pain. But they had not; they treated him as if he were a criminal, like he had murdered someone, when his wife, Edie, was the one killing herself, and taking him with her piece by piece.
His daughter was only slightly more reasonable, but first she had to get her anger out of the way. She had been like that since the day she was born: a screamer, a howler, and then she would slide, herky-jerky, into something resembling acceptance. He didn’t get her, he knew that much. He didn’t know why he needed to get her anyway. His father had never gotten him. Why did people need to be gotten so much? Why couldn’t they just accept that he had left his wife and respect his decision? Why did he need to justify his existence to anyone?
It seemed like that was all he was doing lately. What he wanted to say to his daughter was, I don’t have to explain myself to you. Up until now, he had been able to say that to her his entire life, and whether she agreed or not, he was going to take that action. Now the dynamic had changed. He needed her—what did he need her for, exactly? He needed her so that he could stay connected to his family. He needed her to speak well of him to Benny, so that he could see his grandchildren again. And, even though he shouldn’t have to explain himself to anyone, even though he was the father and she was the child and she should just listen to him, he needed to know she didn’t hate him so that he could sleep at night. Because lately he had been taking an Ambien or two before bedtime, and even sometimes mixing it with scotch, and who knew what would be next? For a while he blamed his insomnia on his new bedding. The sheets weren’t soft, the mattress too stiff. He was running out of things to blame it on, and he could not, he would not, blame it on himself.
They met for dinner, at a middling Thai restaurant near the train station, where his daughter, a thin girl (maybe too thin for her own good after a tubby childhood), a moody girl, a smart girl, began to rattle off his failures.
“She is dying, literally killing herself, and you have just abandoned her as if your life together, and her life in general, is of no consequence.”
She had her mother’s eyes, he noticed for the millionth time, black little balls of fury. Seeing the familiar, seeing her eyes, it had touched him; it had been sixty-plus days since he had seen anyone he was related to.