lot.”
She watched me try to hide my embarrassment by stuffing my face with my sandwich.
“So what kind of name is River, anyway?”
I took a long drink from my Coke. “You mean, who names their kid River? I assume you aren’t asking about my country of origin.”
“Right. How’d you wind up with a stupid name like River? That’s what I’m asking.”
“My dad. He wanted something different. Unforgettable. Which is pretty ironic considering he went on to basically forget about me.”
“He left?”
“Yep.”
“Like, went out for a pack of smokes and never came back kind of left?”
“Close.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“I think there’s two kinds of men.” She fixed those black, shining eyes on me. “The stayers and the leavers. My dad? He’s a stayer. I got lucky like that. Five kids and two jobs he works sixty hours a week, mostly on overnight shifts, but he still comes home in the mornings. Your dad? He’s a leaver. That’s just who he is. And that’s about him. Not you.”
I’d heard every single version there was of how I wasn’t the reason my dad left—from Mom, Leonard, my friends, a therapist I was forced to see briefly with permanently smudged glasses and an office that smelled like patchouli. Daphne wasn’t going to shed any new light on the shitty dad card I’d been dealt.
“Is he a deadbeat?” she asked.
“No, actually. His checks come on time. My mom never even had to fight about it because he offered more than any court would have ordered him to pay. He thinks he can buy a clean conscience.”
Sometimes I thought it would have been better if he
had
gone out for a pack of smokes and never returned. Then I could have invented my own narrative about what happened to him—he was kidnapped, he was a secret agent for the government called on a special mission, he’d suffered amnesia and lived a new life with a new family, but every now and then found himself dreaming of a little blond boy with sad blue eyes, and when he woke he couldn’t shake the feeling that this boy was real.
But thanks to the powers of modern technology, there was no mystery about Thaddeus Dean. I could Google him. I could look at pictures of him. I could watch videos of him giving speeches with a little microphone attached to his headset like he was the captain of the
Millennium Falcon
.
Most of my sandwich sat untouched. I wasn’t all that hungry anymore.
“Well, at least he sends money,” Daphne said. “I know plenty of people whose fathers don’t.”
I nodded.
I’d always tried to focus on how things could have been worse. We were able to stay in the house and Mom didn’t have to quit a job she loved to find a better paycheck. And then she met Leonard and they married and had Natalie, the greatest gift of all my life, and none of that would have happened if Thaddeus Dean hadn’t decided he was destined for a different life as the nation’s leading expert on interconnectedness in the digital age with a much younger, childless woman he’d met, no joke: online.
I found myself sharing all of this with Daphne even though I’d pretty much stopped telling people the story of my father. I let those who didn’t know better assume Leonard was my biodad, though anyone with eyes should have seen through that. I hadn’t even talked about my father that much with Penny, though once, we Google-imaged him—he’d grown a beard and had started wearing wire-rimmed glasses.
“He’s kind of handsome,” Penny said.
“I guess so.”
“Like you. But you’re way hotter.”
“So when’s the last time you saw him?” Daphne asked me.
“When I was about five. At first he used to see me once a month. Then twice a year. Then…”
“Does he live far away?”
“Nope.”
He’d moved to San Francisco a few years ago to run some technology think tank. Before that, he lived in London and Sydney. I knew all this from checking his online trail now and then. Mom and I never talked about him
She watched me try to hide my embarrassment by stuffing my face with my sandwich.
“So what kind of name is River, anyway?”
I took a long drink from my Coke. “You mean, who names their kid River? I assume you aren’t asking about my country of origin.”
“Right. How’d you wind up with a stupid name like River? That’s what I’m asking.”
“My dad. He wanted something different. Unforgettable. Which is pretty ironic considering he went on to basically forget about me.”
“He left?”
“Yep.”
“Like, went out for a pack of smokes and never came back kind of left?”
“Close.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“I think there’s two kinds of men.” She fixed those black, shining eyes on me. “The stayers and the leavers. My dad? He’s a stayer. I got lucky like that. Five kids and two jobs he works sixty hours a week, mostly on overnight shifts, but he still comes home in the mornings. Your dad? He’s a leaver. That’s just who he is. And that’s about him. Not you.”
I’d heard every single version there was of how I wasn’t the reason my dad left—from Mom, Leonard, my friends, a therapist I was forced to see briefly with permanently smudged glasses and an office that smelled like patchouli. Daphne wasn’t going to shed any new light on the shitty dad card I’d been dealt.
“Is he a deadbeat?” she asked.
“No, actually. His checks come on time. My mom never even had to fight about it because he offered more than any court would have ordered him to pay. He thinks he can buy a clean conscience.”
Sometimes I thought it would have been better if he
had
gone out for a pack of smokes and never returned. Then I could have invented my own narrative about what happened to him—he was kidnapped, he was a secret agent for the government called on a special mission, he’d suffered amnesia and lived a new life with a new family, but every now and then found himself dreaming of a little blond boy with sad blue eyes, and when he woke he couldn’t shake the feeling that this boy was real.
But thanks to the powers of modern technology, there was no mystery about Thaddeus Dean. I could Google him. I could look at pictures of him. I could watch videos of him giving speeches with a little microphone attached to his headset like he was the captain of the
Millennium Falcon
.
Most of my sandwich sat untouched. I wasn’t all that hungry anymore.
“Well, at least he sends money,” Daphne said. “I know plenty of people whose fathers don’t.”
I nodded.
I’d always tried to focus on how things could have been worse. We were able to stay in the house and Mom didn’t have to quit a job she loved to find a better paycheck. And then she met Leonard and they married and had Natalie, the greatest gift of all my life, and none of that would have happened if Thaddeus Dean hadn’t decided he was destined for a different life as the nation’s leading expert on interconnectedness in the digital age with a much younger, childless woman he’d met, no joke: online.
I found myself sharing all of this with Daphne even though I’d pretty much stopped telling people the story of my father. I let those who didn’t know better assume Leonard was my biodad, though anyone with eyes should have seen through that. I hadn’t even talked about my father that much with Penny, though once, we Google-imaged him—he’d grown a beard and had started wearing wire-rimmed glasses.
“He’s kind of handsome,” Penny said.
“I guess so.”
“Like you. But you’re way hotter.”
“So when’s the last time you saw him?” Daphne asked me.
“When I was about five. At first he used to see me once a month. Then twice a year. Then…”
“Does he live far away?”
“Nope.”
He’d moved to San Francisco a few years ago to run some technology think tank. Before that, he lived in London and Sydney. I knew all this from checking his online trail now and then. Mom and I never talked about him
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