“Oh, Sebastian,” he says again. “Son, what are you doing?”
He seems unafraid. He hasn’t twitched since I pulled out the gun. He shows no signs of ducking or dodging or leaping for me. If anything, he’s settled back into the worn love seat even farther, hands placed on his knees. He shakes his head.
“Talk to me, Sebastian. If you’re planning on doing it, talk to me first.”
“Why? What makes you think you deserve conversation?” My throat clogs as I speak. I clear it vehemently, disgusted with my body for betraying its human frailty.
“Not saying I do. It’s just… don’t you think we should at least say good-bye?”
I should say, I’ll say that with a bullet, and then pull the trigger. Arnold in Commando. Sly Stallone in Cobra. Eighties tough-guy action movies, unapologetically laden with testosterone and helpless women and groan-inducing comebacks.
And I remember, suddenly, with no warning, the day Dad left. I was six. I clung to him, to his leg. A tear splashed onto the dirty brown leather of his boot. I said, I don’t want you to go. And he said, I don’t want to go either.
And I couldn’t understand it. If he didn’t want to go, then why was he going? Couldn’t he just not go, then?
But I didn’t say anything. Because it seemed so simple. It was too simple. And for years I wondered if I’d been wrong, if I should have said something. If I’d spoken up, if I’d said, “Then don’t go,” then maybe he would have said, “You’re right! That’s it!” and stayed. And maybe then we all three could have gotten better together, and he wouldn’t have become my personal boogeyman, and the curdled love I felt for him wouldn’t have blackened into hate.
“You left. You left us.”
“That’s not what I did.”
“Don’t lie to me!” I scream. “You went away! She died and I killed her and you left because of me!”
He shakes his head fiercely. “No. I left because of me.”
I don’t even know what that means. It’s adult crap, something adults say to throw us off. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of him. Tired of me. I want it over. I can end it. It’s my choice; I’m in control. It’s always been my choice, and I’ve always been in control.
But instead I hear myself say, “Why did you even have that gun?” There’s a note of pleading in my voice, and I can’t shake it out. “Why was the stupid thing in the house in the first place?”
The gun wavers, even stabilized by both hands. I don’t want it to waver; I will it to remain still. Even shaking, the gun sight never leaves my father’s face.
“I had it because I had it,” he says, his voice heavy and drowning. He’s slumped down even farther; there’s no way he could get up and come at me without taking two bullets.
“Because you had it? What kind of crap excuse is that?”
“Because that’s what we do here,” he insists, a note of admonition in his voice. I have a gun trained on him and he’s admonishing me. “We have guns. We take care of them, and they take care of us, like a good dog, but this dog turned, Sebastian, this dog went rabid and snapped and—”
“The gun didn’t turn. The gun didn’t do it. I did it.” The Magnum is getting heavy; it was never designed to be held at full extension like this for so long. I flex my muscles to keep them limber. “I did it. Like what I’m doing now. Don’t blame the gun. Blame me. Blame you.”
“You don’t blame no one for an accident, Sebastian. That’s why they’re accidents.”
“Bull. You left the gun out. I used it. It’s our fault.”
He shakes his head slowly, gnaws at his lower lip. “That what you think? That what you’ve been thinking? All this time? You think it’s right to blame a four-year-old for something he can’t even understand?”
“You told me to go away. Not to touch the gun. I didn’t listen. My fault.”
“You’re right,” he says, now not even looking at me, not even looking at the gun, just staring down at his hands, twisting and turning over themselves in his lap. “But not about it being your fault. But, yeah, it’s someone’s fault. Damn thing never should have been there. I never should have had it. I wanted to protect us. From what? I don’t even know. It’s Brookdale, for God’s sake. What was I protecting us from? Fucking raccoons?”
When he looks up at me, not blinking or flinching at the sight of the gun still leveled at him, his eyes are red and wet.
“You don’t get to cry. Not for her.” I struggle for a moment, the gun too heavy. Then I recover and my aim is true. “You don’t have the right.”
“Maybe not. Can’t help it, though. In the morning, your mother would bring her into the bedroom. To nurse her. For breakfast, you know?”
“I don’t care.”
“And she’d lay her down in the bed next to me,” he goes on, as though the person with the gun hadn’t said a word, “and I’d look over at her and she’d look over at me, and she would stare for a second and then she’d break into this huge smile. Like she was thinkin’, Oh, this guy! I remember this guy! And I swear, it was the best part of my day. Everything else, no matter what happened that day, it was downhill. Had to be. Because I had the best thing in the world first thing in the morning. Such a lucky bastard. I got the best thing in the world when I opened my eyes every morning.”
Against my will, I think of her, of Lola. I shove the memory away, but it comes back, and maybe that’s the way it should be. I should be thinking of her when I do it. My vision blurs with tears, but it doesn’t matter—the shimmery shape of my father is still at the end of the gun sight.
“Best thing in the world. And someone rings the doorbell and I don’t even think, Sebastian. I don’t even think!”
I blink, blink, blink. Tears drop. My father’s hands are clenched into fists and he beats one of them on the arm of the love seat. Thum. Thum.
“I just go answer the goddamn door! Like I’m a robot! Ding-dong! Coming, master! Fuck! Leave the gun right there. I was cleaning it and I was done and I’d loaded it because, hey, it was for protection, right? It was for protection, and what good is it if you have to load it in the middle of the night? And I just left it there and went to the door, and it was some goddamn Jehovah’s Witness, and by the time I got rid of him…”
My father is in my sights, but all I see is Lola. He is warped by tears into Lola.
“I’m headed back to the gun, thinking, Oh, crap, I can’t believe I did that. Thinking, That was close, and I hear… Oh, shit.” He shakes his head viciously. “No,” he says. And again. “No.” And over and over, and my lips move with his, silently repeating his No.