I think Ronnie Van Zant had it right when he wrote that song. It’s a song about how simple is the better way to be. How a guy doesn’t need money or things to be happy, and how bad times will come and go like the waves. That’s just life. As long as a man can look inside himself and be okay with who he is, that’s enough. (Also, it says he should find a woman.)
The idea is right. My dad gets it, but my mom doesn’t. She wants college and a desk job for me. She wants me to have a house that’s bigger than our perfectly good house. She’s told me in millions of little ways since I was a kid. The clothes she buys are name brands from the consignment shop near her work: someone else’s preppy clothes meant for someone else’s pretty life. And this morning she left a University of Florida Gators sweatshirt on my desk next to the third copy of the common app she’s passed my way this month. It’s not even senior year.
Here’s what she doesn’t get: By Skynyrd standards, my life is good. I have a family and a job I’ll love once high school is done. The only part that isn’t there anymore is the woman part, although Ana has been hanging around my locker lately, and she volunteered to help me study for our next science test.
“Any word from Golden Gate?” Dad tries to say it casually. “She hasn’t come around in a while.”
“Dad. Come on.” I get back to work, lifting the thick coils of oakum I’ll use to caulk the seam. I wrap them in a loop from my elbow to my palm and around again. Dad has already set the caulking iron and the mallet on the bench. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
I’m dying to talk about her. It’s the only way to have her here: her name hanging in the air between my dad and me in my favorite place on the planet. But she doesn’t get to be here with us anymore.
I wish I could just get over her. But the awful truth is you don’t just get over a girl like Bridge. She can piss you off and pull your heart out through the soles of your feet, and when she’s gone, there will be this ugly, jagged space in you. You can try to patch it, but you know: You’re a different shape than you were before.
“A girl doesn’t spend nearly every day over here for seven years and just stop for no reason.” Dad keeps his eyes on the boat.
“She’s changed, okay? Reason enough?” My heart is flopping around in my chest like a beached fish. I cram the oakum between two wooden planks, pushing it into the seam with the caulking iron. The material will seal the seam once we finish the process. If I do it right, if I take my time, it will make the boat impenetrable. Nothing will be able to touch its insides. I hammer the caulking iron with the mallet. Tiny beads of sweat surface along my hairline.
When I glance up, my dad’s looking at me like I’ve just told him I don’t get Hendrix.
“People don’t change, son.” He gives me a look. “She is who she is. Whatever she’s done to piss you off doesn’t make her a bad person. People aren’t the things they do.”
I hammer harder. I don’t believe him. I think people are exactly the things they do. In sixth grade, I had to do an oral report on Ralph Waldo Emerson. The first thing that came up when I Googled him was this quote: “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” If that’s true, Bridge screamed, Fuuucckkk yoooouuu! on the dock that night.
I jump when Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. “Ease up on that mallet,” he orders.
I don’t for a few strokes.
“Drop it, Wil,” Dad says. “Now.” He rubs his hands together and takes a seat in the corner of the shop. He nods at the floor next to him. I sit. He’s solid, and if I could, I’d curl into him.
“You know, son, you and I are the same. We take it hard when someone does wrong by us.”
“I’m not pissed at Bridge,” I say through clenched teeth. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Dad asks roughly.
“It’s Mom, okay?” I bleat at the walls. I didn’t mean it. I just can’t talk to my dad about Bridge yet. Mom was the very next worry in my head and I didn’t shut my mouth quick enough.
Dad rubs the back of his neck. “Mom.”
“She put this UF sweatshirt out for me this morning, next to another app.” This isn’t her fault. But it’s out there now, and I can’t suck the words back in.
Dad takes a sharp breath.
“It’s not a big deal,” I backpedal. “I just—I don’t know why she cares so much about college.”
“She wants you the hell out of this place.”
His voice sounds like steel, but just in case I say, “Yeah, but I love it here. You know that, right? I want to stay and run the business with you.”
It’s quiet for a while. Then he coughs. “Next step?”
“Primer,” I say, and we both get up.
He hands me an upside-down Frisbee that holds putty mixed with primer. Carefully, I paint the seam.
“You boys ready for dinner?” My mother’s voice sounds from the doorway.
“In a second,” Dad grunts.
“It’s ready now, Wilson. I made dinner and it’s ready now.”
“We’re coming, Mom,” I say. “Just give us a second, okay?” The sunlight’s streaming in behind her, and she’s nothing more than a shadow.
She turns back toward the house. My parents are masters with silence. They can mold it into the sharpest blades, hurl it at each other so it slices deep. They can do much more damage with silence than they can with noise. Bridge always used to talk about how lucky I was, having parents who were married. It’s not that simple, I’d tell her, and she’d look at me like I was the dumbest asshole on the planet. At least you know where you came from, she’d say.
I’d shut up then. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like, knowing I had a father in Texas or China or maybe even a few blocks over. Knowing he was out there, part of me or me part of him or however that works. My own dad could be a jerk sometimes, but when you’re walking around with another person’s DNA in you, that means something. You don’t just cut the tie and bail.
Dad inspects the seam for longer than he needs to.
“Dad,” I press. “Come on. She’s waiting.”
He grunts and we wash up and go inside. Mom’s standing at the kitchen table in her work uniform: black scrubs and a nametag shaped like a tooth. Her lipstick is a neon pink that creeps past the corners of her mouth in a weird, constant smile.
“Smells good,” I say.
“Nothing special,” she says, hovering over a tray of lasagna. She’s lined an old plastic bowl with a paper napkin, the corners pointing at the ceiling. She empties a log of garlic bread into the bowl. There’s already a sweating pitcher of tea on the table.
Mom and Dad sit around the pine table my dad made my mom as a wedding present. Underneath one of the leaves, he carved their names and wedding date and the words We will go together, over the waters of time, which is from a poem. I never thought of my dad as a poetic guy, but those words are proof that my parents were real once. I used to hide under the table as a kid, usually when they fought, and close my eyes and run my fingers over the words again and again.