Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 26

Michael



The leather interior of my dad’s Navigator makes me feel like a dwarf. I’m not short, but compared to how cramped I feel in the hand-me-down Honda, there could be a conga line in here.

“Go on, lean the seat back,” my dad tells me. “Get some rest.”

At the push of a button the seat glides down soundlessly.

I jerk back to consciousness with my mouth feeling pasty and my stomach roiling with the confusing motion of rolling along while everything in my sight is stationary. For a few seconds I don’t understand any of it.

Then my nap amnesia wears off. Dylan. Casey and Mallory at home with the girls.

“Where are we?” I ask Dad.

Now I understand what woke me up. We’ve slowed dramatically, and can see little through the windshield but taillights and snow so thick it’s like a wall.

My father is tense on the wheel, his mustache twitching, eyes narrow as he searches for passage.

The appeal of a big vehicle has never been clearer.

“We’re only to Ann Arbor,” he says.

He was right to drive me. I never could have been alert enough to manage this alone. I’d have caused a hundred-car pileup by now.

I consider telling him this, but he knows he’s right. It must be nice to have such confidence.

My cell phone rings, and I snatch it up, visions of disaster at home flicking to life.

It’s Evelyn. My boss.

“Hello, Evelyn. Sorry I didn’t come in today.”

“That’s fine, Michael, we understand. Any news?”

“Yes, he’s in Cleveland and we’re going to get him now. He’s fine.”

“Thank God,” she says, but she says it without emotion. I know her mind is already on the very next thing she has to say. “Look, I hate to talk to you about this over the phone, but rumors are swirling, and as we always tell our readers, it’s best to get the truth at times like this.”

“Yes” is all I can manage.

“We will be offering you a severance package, Michael. Please know it is not in any way personal or a reflection on the work you’ve done for us. There were any number of factors involved, and the decision making was an arduous, complicated process.”

“I’m sure it was. So who else got the ax?”

“Michael—”

“Evelyn. Just tell me.”

She rattles off the list. I notice Kate’s not on it. I would like to be glad for her, but she has no children to support, she’s beautiful and charismatic. She’d bounce back, probably higher than she is now.

“When’s my last day?” I ask.

“We’re keeping everyone on through the end of the year.”

“December 31?”

She pauses. “Yes.”

Happy goddamn New Year.

I become aware of my father sneaking looks at me.

Evelyn and I exchange businesslike pleasantries, and she thanks me for my years of service, but I’m not really listening as the conversation winds down and I hang up, still wondering why I didn’t make the cut.

Kate must be the rising star of the Herald, what there is left of it, anyway. She’s been using Twitter and has gathered quite a following of loyal readers who hang on her every post.

I never could figure out that damn Twitter, and it made me want to gnaw off my own hand every day when I read the comments posted beneath each of my stories on the newspaper’s Web site, from such insightful pundits as “Tigerrrfan32” and “Gdawg.” They picked apart the content of my stories, the syntax, even what I did at council meetings, reading hidden agendas into my every action: when I looked bored, when I was taking notes, whom I interviewed first after a meeting.

My dad begins to pull off the road.

“What are you doing?”

He nods toward the signs advertising places to eat. “Can’t see anything anyway. We might as well stop to eat and hope the snow lets up. Anyway, I want to talk to you, and I can’t do that very well while I’m driving.”

“We need to get to Dylan, and we’ve got sandwiches in the car.”

“I can’t see anything, Mike. We’ve got to stop. So we’ll eat.”

Minutes later we’re at a Wendy’s. My dad orders a baked potato and a salad and a glass of water.

I order the biggest, most cheese-drenched sandwich I see and a large fries. Plus a Diet Coke.

My dad raises his eyebrows at me, and I ignore him.

Dad leads the way and chooses a seat in the far reaches of the restaurant away from the counter, where the employees are joking around now that we’ve walked away. Except for a couple other storm refugees, we’re the only ones in here.

I drench my salty fries with more salt.

I have to acknowledge I might be doing this just to bug him.

Dad spreads his napkin carefully over his lap and picks at his plain potato. Not even butter.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you anyway,” he says, squeezing his packet of fat-free Italian dressing.

“What about?” I ask, as if I don’t know, and take a giant bite of burger.

“So you’ll go to grad school.”

I chew the burger carefully, and decide not to reply. I’m just too tired.

“I’m not supporting you forever.”

I swallow hard. “You’re not supporting me now.”

“I could get much more in rent for that house than I do from you, and you haven’t purchased your own car in years. And I know you need the help, but the time has come to face facts, Mike.”

“Do tell.” I gaze out the window, but there’s nothing to see. Just bright dots piercing the white: headlights, taillights, gas station signs.

“Your career is a dead end. Journalism is dying, especially print journalism. You can’t make a living as a blogger; that’s a joke. What are you going to do, teach? I’m sure all the local colleges will be buried in ex-journalist résumés first thing Monday. It’s time you got a serious education.”

I swipe fries through a pool of salt on my paper placemat and dunk them in ketchup.

He goes on. “I will loan you the money for grad school provided you choose a field with some promise, something that can support three children and however many more you’ll have with your new girlfriend, in the proper fashion.”

“Ha. Proper fashion?”

“So you don’t have to ask me for money so that you can pay for the fancy jeans Angel wants to wear so she can fit in, for Dylan’s band trips. So you can save for their college educations and your own retirement. So you can own a real house.” Dad points at me with his plastic fork. “The way I raised you. The way your kids deserve to be raised.”

“I work hard.”

“Of course you do. But you also married an unstable woman who couldn’t hold down a job and kept having kids with her while she ran up debt.”

“Nice way to talk about your grandchildren.”

“I love my grandchildren. That’s why I’m doing this.”

“Threatening me?”

“Telling you that I’m charging you the market rate for rent in that house, and letting you buy your own car, and letting you figure out yourself how to pay for your own life. Unless you go to grad school for a decent job. In which case you’ll have all the help in the world.”

“Blackmail, now. With my children in the middle.”

“It’s your children I’m thinking of. I’m not going to subsidize your fantasy world any longer. I always said reporters don’t make enough money, and if you ever could, you certainly can’t now.”

“Unbelievable.”

“I’d think you’d jump at the chance.”

“So I just found out I got fired, and we’re going to fetch my runaway son, and this is when you decide to dump this on me?”

“Giving you time to think about it. You know, you could be an engineer. Your math grades were always excellent.”

“F*ck you.”

His mustache twitches. I think he might actually be smiling.

I throw down the burger. It slides apart, spilling condiments all over the tray. “Fine. Raise my rent. I’ll drop off the Honda this weekend. We’ll figure it out ourselves. I am done.”

If only I could storm off and slam a door.

Instead I reassemble my sandwich, and then discover I have no appetite for it anymore. In fact, I feel ill.

Dad is still eating his salad, so I’m forced to sit there, listening to the tinny speakers in Wendy’s play “White Christmas.”

A young couple comes in then, hanging on each other and laughing. The boy is thin and tall, with piercings. The girl’s cheeks are pink with cold, and her dark blond hair trails out from under a funny-looking knit hat. She’s got her arms wrapped around the boy underneath his unzipped jacket. They’re both white on one side of them with wind-whipped snow.

They gaze at each other as their giggles subside, then their faces meet and they plunge into a romantic kiss, the kind that happens in movies over a violin crescendo.

The fast food workers hoot their approval.

My dad snorts his disgust.

I stare down at my half-eaten meal and think about how much that girl looks like Casey, and wonder what she’s doing right this minute.