I became a father late in life. I’d always wanted to have a son, and when it finally happened, after fifteen years, I was surprised by how different it was from what I expected. It was even better than in my wildest dreams. I remember the summer A.J. was born, how I would sit on the couch with him curled up on my chest, sleeping, drooling all over my shirt. He was a happy baby, an easy baby. Slept through the night by the time he was three months old, got through his teething without too much fuss or trouble. Every time I try to unspool the past and pick out the specific moment when things went wrong for him, I fail. I can never find it. Maybe it was when Helen started coddling him, and I didn’t put my foot down. Maybe it was when he was on the playground, and stuck to himself instead of playing with the other kids. Or maybe it was years later, in high school, when he turned into a bully. It’s hard to love a bully, but Lord knows I did, with all my heart.
I tried to help him. He didn’t listen to me, though, at least not when it mattered. Like when he wanted to start his doggie-daycare business, I told him straightaway that the timing wasn’t right, what with the recession and all, but he thought I was just stingy, that I didn’t want to lend him the $50,000 he was asking for, and he got his mom to pressure me into giving it to him. He lost it all, of course. I think that caused him a lot of embarrassment. And some anger, too, because of the way he lost it. He would get into nasty fights with his wife, and go out drinking, which is how he ended up with a DUI. We never talked back then; I found out about all this later, from his mother. So when he called me late one night, I was shocked. I’d just come home from work, and I was cracking open a beer when my phone rang. “What’s wrong?” I asked. I thought it was an emergency—that’s how unusual it was for me to hear from him directly.
“Nothing’s wrong, Dad.”
He didn’t say anything else, didn’t ask how I was doing, or why he was calling. Maybe he had tried to reach Helen, but she was in Kansas City that weekend for her niece’s funeral. Whenever she was away from home, she would leave me instructions on the fridge about what I should eat and how to heat it up. She wrote in beautiful cursive, and I remember staring at the plans she had for me that night. Tuesday: baked ziti. Set oven to 350 and heat for 15 minutes. I walked out of the kitchen and crossed the living room, where the collies were sleeping, and stepped out into the backyard with my beer. It was a clear night. “The stars are out tonight,” I said, just to fill the silence.
“I was thinking…” he said, and got quiet again.
I sat on a lawn chair, not caring that it was covered with dust and sand, and took a sip from my Budweiser. “How’s Annette?” I asked. “Everything okay between you two?”
“We’re okay. It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“I sold my store sign today.”
I should describe this sign, because A.J. built it himself. He’s always had an artistic streak—he can draw almost anything—so when he opened his doggie-daycare business, he put a lot of heart into the signage. He built a five-foot collie out of painted steel, with a bone in its mouth that glowed at night, and mounted it on the roof of the building. It caught the eye, and his customers always talked about it when they came in, it made for a conversation starter. I knew what that sign meant to him, and I was surprised that he’d parted with it. “Who’d you sell it to?” I asked.
“Some guy who wants to melt it. Got forty bucks for it.”
“Well, that’s good.” I was trying to sound encouraging, though of course forty bucks was a drop in the bucket of money he owed to the bank.
“Dad,” he said, “what do I do now?”
He sounded so scared, it reminded me of the time he was four years old and the doors to the elevator in our hotel in Las Vegas closed behind him and we got separated. It took us twenty minutes of riding up and down that damn elevator before we found him. He was crying, and holding on to his crotch to keep from wetting himself. Afterward, he held Helen’s hand all day, he wouldn’t let go.
I took a sip from my beer and wondered if he really cared what I had to say. He’d never before asked my opinion about anything, but as the silence stretched I realized he was serious. “Why don’t you come back home?” I said. “You could work for me, save on your bills, get back on your feet.”
“And you would be okay with that?”
“Of course, I’m okay with that. You’re my son.”
He moved back in with us later that spring, along with his wife, his daughter, her hamster, and his collies. Overnight the house got smaller and busier and louder. Much louder. It took a little getting used to. Annette managed to find a job at a title company in Palm Springs, and A.J. came to work for me, but they were still behind on their credit cards and some of their bills. It wasn’t easy, is what I’m trying to say. We were all under a lot of pressure, both at home and at work. Still, for the first time in our lives, A.J. and I spent entire days together. We talked a lot, he would ask me all sorts of questions about the business. It made me feel like we finally had a connection.
Of course, he shouldn’t’ve been driving that night. But Helen couldn’t drive much, on account of her tremors, and our daughter-in-law wanted nothing to do with the bowling alley. That didn’t leave us with much choice, if we wanted to run our business. And I can tell you, he only took the car a few times, when there was no one who could drive him. What happened with the guy next door was just an accident. It wasn’t A.J.’s fault, but I knew with his record they’d make it seem like it was. All I know is that my son isn’t a bad guy. At heart, he’s a good kid. I wish I could close the gap between the way things used to be and the way they are now. Maybe that’s why I’m trying to tell this story.
A.J.
A couple of days after my arrest, someone tipped off a reporter and she went through my social media accounts, clipped a couple of comments and quotes out of context, and turned me into a brute. The readers of the Desert Sun ate it up, of course. It’s funny, everyone goes on and on about celebrating diverse cultures, but the minute you bring up white culture, the oh-so-enlightened liberals turn on you and call you names. Someone sent a letter to the editor calling me a racist, which is what they call anyone who’s a straight white man these days. Everyone else can be proud of their heritage, but not me?
What was infuriating to me was that after I posted bail and came out, some people started acting like I was a monster, a creature with horns and fangs. But I wasn’t. I was just like them: I loved my family, played with my dogs, bought lottery tickets whenever I filled up at the gas station, then spent days fantasizing about what I’d do if I won millions of dollars. If anything set me apart from everyone else, it was only that I took charge of myself. When I graduated from college, for example, the country was in the middle of the worst recession it had seen in a century, but I didn’t sit back and play the victim, the way so many others do all day long. No, I borrowed some money from my folks and started my own business in Irvine, a doggie daycare.