He left, after that.
Five years later, his parents were dead.
Car accident, of all things.
His father was drunk, of course. Ran off the road into a tree.
They’d been arguing before, a witness said. She’d seen them yelling at each other in the parking lot of IHOP, and he thought that was the saddest fucking thing he’d ever heard in his life. That his mother’s last hours had been spent arguing with her drunk husband in the parking lot of IHOP.
He went back for the funeral.
Not many people came.
They didn’t have any other family. Everyone else had died or didn’t give a shit.
There were some friends of his. Some people from the neighborhood. The priest his mother had given Confession to every week. They hugged him, they shook his hand, they said things like “They’re in a better place” and “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
He almost laughed at that last one.
He stood above them, their coffins closed. It was quiet, everyone else gone to give him some privacy, some time to say good-bye.
They didn’t know that he’d said good-bye a long time ago.
He looked down at the cheap wooden boxes that held his parents and said to his father, “You bastard. You fucking asshole. I will never be like you.”
Then he left.
Which is why, now, he’s so angry that he’s angry, he can barely stand it. He looks away from the balcony door where he saw a bird—Not a starling, he thinks, never a starling—and she’s scrunching up her face again, that way she gets when she’s really revving up for a fight. He’s so tired, he really is, and he wonders how they ever got to this point. He knows he’s partially to blame, maybe even mostly so, but not all. Not completely.
And that’s what makes him angry. That she’s putting this all on him, that she’s not seeing that maybe they were both in the wrong.
His palms are burning and twitching and he’s thinking, Okay, yeah, maybe I can kind of see what dear old daddy was about, because it’d shut her up, wouldn’t it?
And he’s angry about that.
Angry at her for being such a bitch.
Angry at himself for being such a coward.
Angry at the situation, this fucked-up situation where their daughter is six months gone, buried in that little patch of ground in the children’s section of the boneyard. There are little stone lambs and angels spread throughout, because kids need that shit, right?
And he’s angry because he’s barely thirty-two years old and is standing in the ruins of a crumbling life he never wanted to begin with, holding the remains of something that was never meant to be. He was never meant to be married. He was never meant to be a father. He was never meant for any of this, because look what it’s become.
God, he’s so fucking angry.
/> A cell phone is ringing somewhere in the background, but they both ignore it. Him, because he’s trying to rein in that anger before he does something he can’t take back.
Her, because—he knows—she’s about to launch into another tirade.
He remembers when they used to be friends.
He knows there won’t be any coming back to that.
“This is always the problem,” she snarls at him. “You never fucking listen to me.”
So, they’re still doing this, are they? Round and round it goes. It never ends. “I’ve been listening,” he says, and he marvels at how calm his voice is. “I always listen.”
“Bullshit,” she says. “All I do is talk at you, never with you. You’re not here anymore. You’ve checked out. You don’t give a shit about me. You probably never even gave a shit about her.”