A smile escaped me as I remembered that day. “The professor got in my face and told me to look harder.” I looked at her point-blank, imitating his deep, gruffly voice. “?‘Mr. Marek, if you’re not angry, then you’re not paying attention.’ And I shot back with ‘Well, I don’t want to be angry all the time. Ignorance is bliss, and I don’t care about fuckups who got sent to prison for their own mistakes’ and all that bullshit. I thought I was so smart.”
I felt utterly ridiculous, quoting my twenty-two-year-old self. Back when I thought I knew everything.
I continued to explain. “He wanted us to question the how and why, and I couldn’t have cared less. I wanted to make money” – I shrugged my shoulders – “go to parties, and have fun.”
She continued listening, not moving a muscle.
“And then,” I continued. “I remember like it was yesterday. He looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘Tyler, if you’re going to be a burden on the world, then just die now. We don’t need you.’?”
She blinked, looking a little shocked. “Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “He shut me up. And he made me open my eyes,” I added, remembering the moment my outlook on life changed.
“I was a nobody,” I explained. “Expendable and useless… I was a loser who took and never gave.”
I glanced up, seeing the waiter approach, and waited for him to take the plates away.
“Would you like coffee?” he asked.
I shook my head, waving him off.
“And so” – I looked at her again after he’d gone – “in my last year of college, I finally started studying. I read books about prisons, poverty, religion, war, gangs, economics, even agriculture,” I explained, “and the following fall I went back to school for my graduate degree, because I wanted to make more than just money. I wanted to make a difference and be remembered.”
Her eyes dropped, and a small, thoughtful smile peeked out as if she understood just what I was talking about.
“I realized that if I wanted to effect change,” I told her, “and be a person others could count on, then I needed to start with my own kid. He was two years old at that point and had seen me…” I shook my head. “Very rarely,” I confessed. “Brynne, his mother, didn’t want to have anything to do with me, though.”
I took in a hard breath, the weight of regret making it hard to talk. “She took the money my father sent every month for Christian’s sake, but I’d burned my bridges with her. She told me that our son had a father who loved him already and I’d only confuse him.”
“And you agreed with her,” Easton ascertained.
I nodded. “I was scared off,” I admitted. “I was working hard to contribute to the rest of the world, but when it came to my kid…” I dropped my eyes, shaking my head at how easily I’d talked myself out of his life back then. “I was too afraid of failing.” I raised my eyes, meeting hers. “So I didn’t even try. I saw her husband with my kid, and I didn’t know how the hell I was going to compete with that. I wanted to be in his life, but I’d still just be the weekend daddy.”
At the time, it had made sense.
I’d wanted him to know me, but what if I didn’t live up to his expectations? He’d already had a full-time father and a life that was familiar.
What if he still hated me?
No, there was time. Later. When he’d grown up enough to understand. Then I could be his father.
“As he grew, I tried to keep in contact with him,” I consoled myself out loud. “I never pressed for any kind of custody, because my traveling was sporadic and unpredictable, and Brynne let Christian go with me from time to time as long as that’s what he wanted,” I explained. “But he started having friends, sports, extracurricular activities, and so I let him have his life. We grew even further apart.”
“But he’s with you now,” she pointed out, sounding hopeful.
But I couldn’t summon her optimism. Under the same roof, I felt more distanced from my son than when he wasn’t there.
“I was supposed to pick him up for dinner one night last June,” I explained, “and he stood me up. He went to a baseball game with his other father.” I accentuated the word “other.”
“I got pissed and went to collect him, and Brynne started yelling at me on the phone to leave them alone,” I went on. “I was just making everyone unhappy, she told me, but he was my son, and I wanted him with me that night.”
I blinked away the burn in my eyes, remembering how fucking sick I’d gotten of her telling me he wasn’t mine.
“And I was pissed, because I had no right to be pissed,” I told Easton. “Brynne was right. I was the outsider. I’d given him up. And I was making everyone unhappy.”
The waiter brought the bill, and I dug my wallet out of my breast pocket and handed him a couple bills.
“Keep the change,” I said, and didn’t watch him leave.
Easton leaned her chin on her hand, her eyes never leaving me.
I picked my napkin off my lap and dropped it on the table.