“So me and her, we dated for a while. A long while. Then, one day, we got to talking, and I told her how much I loved her, and she looked at me and told me, ‘I don’t love you. I never will,’” he continued. “I’ll have a sausage-and-pepperoni pizza with the salad,” he said, turning to the waitress, who had been awkwardly standing next to our table waiting for my dad to finish his story so she could take our order.
I placed my order, and the waitress left.
“So what’d you do?” I asked.
“I told her I thought that I could change that. Maybe she didn’t love me right now, but she would eventually.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said okay. And we stayed together. And we fought. We fought a lot. And then I realized I had made a big mistake. She had given me her youth, and it was gone, and I didn’t know how to get out of it. And then she got sick. And she was dying,” he said, taking a deep breath, thinking for a moment, as if he were replaying something in his mind he hadn’t thought of in a long time.
“So I made good with her, and I stuck by her. And then she died. And I felt horrible. Because I felt like here was this woman who didn’t want to be with me, she told me that, and I ignored it. And she was spending the end of her life with someone she didn’t love. And now she was gone. And part of me felt relieved that I was freed out of this relationship, and that made me feel so terrible, I couldn’t deal with it.”
My dad sat back in his wicker chair for a few quiet moments. The waitress arrived with our food, and he picked at his salad before looking up at me.
“People are always trying to tell you how they feel. Some of them say it outright, and some of them, they tell you with their actions. And you have to listen. I don’t know what will happen with your lady friend. I think she’s a nice person, and I hope you get what you want. But do me a favor: Listen, and don’t ignore what you hear.”
A few months later, I began writing this book. I sat down with family and friends, rehashing many different stories about me and my dad. We recalled things he said, and things they said, and we pieced together as best we could everything that’s in these pages. As I was finishing up in December 2009, my dad called me one day while I was out buying groceries at Trader Joe’s.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, what’s happening?” I asked.
“I know what your last chapter is,” he said.
“Oh yeah?”
And then he told me he wanted this story to be the last chapter. I told him that this anecdote and the advice that accompanied it had meant a lot to me, but I realized how personal it was, and how private he was. I asked him why he wanted it to be the last chapter, and told him that the request seemed out of character for a guy who a month prior had told me that he’d consider pulling his shotgun on any reporter who came too close, asking questions about this book.
“Well, I figure this book is about you and me. I mean, I’m the star, but you’re in it, too.” He laughed. “And when I told you that story, you were hurting. So I guess I want people to know that maybe I’m not the warmest human being on the fucking planet, but I love the shit out of you. The story I told you, the reason I don’t tell nobody is because I never had a reason to. You’re a pretty together kid.”
“Thanks, I appreci—”
“Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got a big fucking mouth, and you ain’t the prettiest to look at, but I love you, and I want people to know that when it comes down to it, I’d do things for my family that I wouldn’t do for nobody else.”
A week or so later I finished the book. I was at the end of an all-nighter and strolled into the living room, where my dad was eating breakfast and reading the paper.
“I’m done! I finished the book,” I boasted.
“I cannot believe someone is going to publish something you wrote,” he said.
“I know. Crazy, right?”
“You have never, ever in your life, had anything published. Ever. You’ve never had one goddamned word of yours published anywhere!” he said, still in disbelief. (My dad has never counted my online writings “published”—or publishable.)
“I mean, not one fucking thing! Not a thing! And now YOU, you’re going to have a book in stores and shit?! Jesus H. Christ. Un-fucking-believable. To think—”
“OKAY, I GET IT. I’ve never published anything, I’m the luckiest person on earth. I don’t deserve it. I get it,” I shouted.
“Oh shit, sorry, son, I didn’t mean to bust your balls there. It’s just, well, it’s fucking unbelievable, that’s all.” He paused and offered me a seat on the couch next to him. “Congratulations, I’m proud of you. Have some Grape-Nuts.”
He poured me a bowl and handed me the sports section. It was quiet for a few moments as we ate breakfast and read the paper.
“It’s just, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it,” he said, looking up from his paper again and shaking his head. “I mean, they gave you money to do this. YOU. Amazing.”
