Page 83 of Waiting for Tuesday

His face grew somber, and he cleared his throat. “When I brought you into the bedroom that night, your mom was sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping her head. I laid you down, went to get her some Tylenol, but when I came back, she was talking funny. Slurring her words. That’s when I knew it was something more serious.

“I should have called an ambulance. I should have known better but by the time I got us to the hospital, it was too late. She died an hour later of a brain aneurysm.”

There was so much pain in his eyes I couldn’t breathe. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if the memory was too painful to keep them open, and I suddenly felt empathy for my father for the first time in my life.

“It’s no excuse for the way I treated you, but I was lost after that. I was twenty years old, had a baby I needed to take care of all on my own. Your mother and I didn’t have family to speak of, so it was just me and you.” He met my eyes. “Believe it or not, those days were some of the best of my life.” He closed his eyes. “And some of the worst.”

I looked away, unable to bear the pain any longer. I picked up a handful of photos and flipped through them one at a time. They were all of me. Me and my mother, me and my father, the three of us together, all taken just days after my birth. So many photos taken in such a short amount of time.

“I loved you, Johnny. She loved you. I just needed you to know that.”

I stopped flipping and stared at a photo of the three of us together, huddled in in the middle of a hospital bed. “What was her name?” It was a question I’d wanted to know for as long as I could remember, but I’d had no one to ask until now.

“Kate.”

I looked up at him. His face twisted in pain, and his hand gripped over his mouth. “I’m so sorry you never got to meet her.”

His pain tore at me. I lowered my gaze and flipped to another photo—me at two years old, riding a wooden rocking horse. My throat grew so thick I could hardly talk. “I remember this.” My gut twisted in knots. I was so confused. I’d hated this man. I hated him for twenty-three years because he was the man who had left bruises on my tiny, defenseless body. But right now, I felt sorry for him.

I turned over another photo, where yellow bruises could still be seen on both of my skinny arms as I gripped a teddy bear. “I remember a lot.”

I slid the photo across the table, and he picked it up, running his hand over the picture of the little boy who still smiled because he didn’t know better. “I was a drunk, Johnny. It’s no excuse, but it was only then that I did it.”

“Don’t?”

He shook his head. “I was angry. I was angry about so many things, and I took it out on you. I was angry about trying to make it alone, losing your mother, having to take care of my boy alone. And when I drank?” He stopped talking, because there was no need to continue. We both knew our past.

He gazed at the photo a moment longer, and then turned it face down on the table before he looked back up at me. “I sobered up when you were taken from me and put in that shitty foster home. I got you out, had you placed with the Eaton’s. You were all I had left, and I would do anything to get you back. I got a new job, was working sixty hours a week, I was working hard to make a life for you. For us.

“But when I saw you with that family… They had so much I could never hope to give you.” He leaned forward, pushing his hands through his hair. “With them, you had a mom. And not just any mom… A mom who looked like Betty fucking Crocker. You had siblings, and a father who ran around with you on his shoulders… One who would never dream of hitting you.

“When I left you?” He paused, gathering his words. “When I left you, it tore my heart out, but I did it for you. I did it to give you a chance. To give you the life I never had. To get you away from me.”

He scrubbed his face with his hand and looked at me. “I disappeared because I was a chicken shit. I could have been there, but I was too stubborn to realize you could have had both.”

My chest tightened painfully. “Why are you telling me this? Why now?”

He shook his head. “Because it’s taken me this long to grow up.”

* * *

The floodlightsslowly flickered to life as I looked through the photos in the front seat of my truck. My father had left hours ago, yet still I sat in the same spot, looking at the same photos over and over. They were parts of my life that existed; yet, I didn’t remember most of them.

Photos of my mother, barely more than a child in a wedding dress, pregnant with me, then holding me like I was the love of her life. She died only three days after birthing me. And my father, so young, lost, and overwhelmed. A young man trying to do the best he could as a single father. He gave them all to me—insisted I take them. Said he’d had them long enough…

“Ah fuck…” I wiped over my face, feeling drained and raw. I spent most of my life hating my father, but it was evident from these photos that he spent all of his loving me. He’d been in and out of prison his whole life, yet somehow he’d managed to keep this box.

But out of all the photos, what got me the most were the ones sent to him from my mother. Every Christmas, every birthday, high school, and college graduation. And the letters. Telling him about my life… Telling him how proud they were of me, and thanking him for trusting them enough to be my parents.

I picked my cell up off the passenger seat and dialed a number I vowed to use more often after tonight.

She picked up the phone on the first ring. “Hello?” The sound of her voice was familiar and comforting.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hey,” she said. The faint sound of running water played in the background before she shut it off. “I was just thinking about you. You okay?”

I nodded, gripping the bridge of my nose before answering. “I just saw my father.”

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