loved you. I love you still. Turning my back on you has been the deepening loss of my life. I doubt twenty years can ever be made up. The fact that I can see you now and I can keep up with you from afar only makes me love you more. I want to get to know you, but I’m not even going to try. There are reasons for this I don’t even want to say. I don’t want to make trouble for you. I want you to know that I am watching you. That sounds creepy. But it’s not in a creepy way. Think of me as beside you, walking with you, wherever you are. I don’t think you’ll ever need me, but if you do, I’ll be there, I promise.
Love, Joseph
No contact information. What a bunch of crap.
“You look green,” Ruby said.
“I’m tired. I’ve been doing three jobs, smiling for the cameras, dealing with my mother, who is having an attack over a twenty-year-old dress—and by the way, you have not gotten away with not telling me what’s up with that—and now this . Dad, who wrote us now. Why? Because I was in the goddamn newspaper? Again? Why didn’t we get these when Thomasina Wente died and Ruby was all over the place as her surviving lover?”
“You were special to him, Laura,” Mom said.
“Fine. I’m a special snowflake.” She stood up. “Ladies and gentleman, good night.”
**
Laura clicked the door behind her and crouched in the narrow space between her bed and the wall. She hadn’t turned on a light and had no intention of moving from that safe little space. She huddled over her phone and dialed Jeremy.
“How are you?” he said by way of greeting. She heard the sewing machines behind him and knew he was paying overtime at 40th Street.
“My mother just made an ass out of herself at Bernard Nestor’s, and when we got home, we had three letters waiting from Dad.”
“ Your father?”
“Mine. The asshole who left because he was gay, which is the worst excuse ever. Like no one has a gay father. Like he invented it. And now we have these letters, and mine is two pages long, and guess what? He calls me Lala, which I don’t remember being called because, here’s the killer, he didn’t leave when I was a baby. He left when I was six.” She left out Crapcrotch and the panic attack and Jimmy’s backhanded comments.
She heard a click. He’d gone into the office.
“Lala. I like that,” he said.
“No, you don’t. There’s nothing redeeming about the man at all, not even his little cutie-pie nicknames. He wasn’t like your father, who was there for you.”
He sighed. “It’s not all hearts and rainbows, Laura. Maybe I made it sound like that.”
Jeremy had always made his father sound like a prince, a stellar human being, an honorable, upright, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth man of the people who had been born ready for canonization. Jeremy always spoke of the man with a hint of regret, as if he had already managed to fail his father’s memory with slim achievement and slight moral rectitude.
“Straighten me out then,” she said. “Because I’ve been jealous of you having that dad for years already.”
“Okay, but you asked.”
“I won’t sue you for any changed opinions.”
He paused, and Laura imagined him doodling something on his pile of scrap paper.
“He made custom suits on the side. It drove my mother crazy because there’s no money in it, even at four grand a pop. Fabric was so expensive, and the horsehair, forget it. So, this was a few months before he died. He had this client that needed his the next week, but the factory had a big order coming up, so Dad had to be on the floor. I was cutting at the time. I guess I was twelve. He laid out the fabric for the pants and asked me to cut it while he went to the floor. He complained about my mother nagging him to do a thousand waitress uniforms when he was trying to make art. He was... frustrated. I wanted to get him out of there because he was making me nervous, so I promised to pin the pattern and just, you know… I told him,
Love, Joseph
No contact information. What a bunch of crap.
“You look green,” Ruby said.
“I’m tired. I’ve been doing three jobs, smiling for the cameras, dealing with my mother, who is having an attack over a twenty-year-old dress—and by the way, you have not gotten away with not telling me what’s up with that—and now this . Dad, who wrote us now. Why? Because I was in the goddamn newspaper? Again? Why didn’t we get these when Thomasina Wente died and Ruby was all over the place as her surviving lover?”
“You were special to him, Laura,” Mom said.
“Fine. I’m a special snowflake.” She stood up. “Ladies and gentleman, good night.”
**
Laura clicked the door behind her and crouched in the narrow space between her bed and the wall. She hadn’t turned on a light and had no intention of moving from that safe little space. She huddled over her phone and dialed Jeremy.
“How are you?” he said by way of greeting. She heard the sewing machines behind him and knew he was paying overtime at 40th Street.
“My mother just made an ass out of herself at Bernard Nestor’s, and when we got home, we had three letters waiting from Dad.”
“ Your father?”
“Mine. The asshole who left because he was gay, which is the worst excuse ever. Like no one has a gay father. Like he invented it. And now we have these letters, and mine is two pages long, and guess what? He calls me Lala, which I don’t remember being called because, here’s the killer, he didn’t leave when I was a baby. He left when I was six.” She left out Crapcrotch and the panic attack and Jimmy’s backhanded comments.
She heard a click. He’d gone into the office.
“Lala. I like that,” he said.
“No, you don’t. There’s nothing redeeming about the man at all, not even his little cutie-pie nicknames. He wasn’t like your father, who was there for you.”
He sighed. “It’s not all hearts and rainbows, Laura. Maybe I made it sound like that.”
Jeremy had always made his father sound like a prince, a stellar human being, an honorable, upright, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth man of the people who had been born ready for canonization. Jeremy always spoke of the man with a hint of regret, as if he had already managed to fail his father’s memory with slim achievement and slight moral rectitude.
“Straighten me out then,” she said. “Because I’ve been jealous of you having that dad for years already.”
“Okay, but you asked.”
“I won’t sue you for any changed opinions.”
He paused, and Laura imagined him doodling something on his pile of scrap paper.
“He made custom suits on the side. It drove my mother crazy because there’s no money in it, even at four grand a pop. Fabric was so expensive, and the horsehair, forget it. So, this was a few months before he died. He had this client that needed his the next week, but the factory had a big order coming up, so Dad had to be on the floor. I was cutting at the time. I guess I was twelve. He laid out the fabric for the pants and asked me to cut it while he went to the floor. He complained about my mother nagging him to do a thousand waitress uniforms when he was trying to make art. He was... frustrated. I wanted to get him out of there because he was making me nervous, so I promised to pin the pattern and just, you know… I told him,
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