Watcher (18 page)

I picked up the box of Kleenex I'd thrown and put it on the desk before going to look for Lavender. I found her curled up on the couch, facing the television. She turned when I came in, jumped up and hurried over, her face questioning.

“I have to go,” I said, even though I had lots of time. I nodded slightly toward the kitchen, where her dad was making something to eat.

Lavender grabbed my arm and pulled me out the door, stopping in the hallway just outside.

“What happened?” she demanded.

“I'm meeting up with him.”

“
No way
! That is
awesome
!” She threw her arms around me and gave me a quick, hard hug, then stepped back and looked at my face. “Are you excited?”

“I really don't feel anything right now,” I said, surprised that it was true.

“I bet you're kind of in shock,” she said. “Just look at everything that's happened in a few days. You saw your dad's pictures, then we followed that guy to his place, and now you've talked to your father and you're going to see him.”

I tried to smile but my jaw felt too tight. I told her again that I had to go.

Lavender offered to walk with me to Suleiman's. I said thanks but I really wanted to be by myself for a while. I had to get my head together.

She understood, or said she did. I've noticed it's not always the same thing with girls, but I kissed her and she kissed back normal, which seemed like a good sign. It wouldn't have mattered anyway — I really couldn't be around anyone right then.

I wondered again why I didn't feel more anger. I decided Lavender was right — I was a bit in shock.

When I got to Suleiman's, I didn't go in. There was no way I could make myself sit there until he showed up. Instead, I paced a bit up and down the street and wondered if I'd recognize him after seeing the pictures the other day. He must have changed a certain amount in the years that had passed since then.

I should have asked him what kind of car he'd be driving. That would have been a help. After all, he didn't know what I looked like, either.

That realization made me mad. And it was right then that I felt a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off automatically and turned to see him standing there smiling.

“Porter,” he said.

Dad
.

“Yeah,” I said. I wondered how he'd known who I was, but then I could see I looked a lot like him.

“I've waited a long time for this day,” he said. His eyes were starting to fill up. I barely managed to keep from asking him right then and there where all this fatherly emotion had been all the years he never bothered with me.

“Did you want to go inside,” he asked, nodding toward Suleiman's, “or maybe take a drive, find somewhere a bit more private to talk?”

I said that was a good idea. The chance of getting some straight answers out of him would be better somewhere that other people couldn't overhear.

chapter twenty-six

I
t was so strange, being in the car next to him, driving along. I bet a million other sons were sitting next to their fathers while they drove somewhere right at that moment. And for them it was just a normal thing to do. For me, it was totally surreal, like something happening to someone else.

I've never been hypnotized but I bet it feels pretty close to the trance-like state I found myself in. All of the questions and anger I'd been trying to sort out quieted, like they were resting, as we drove. A totally peaceful, relaxed feeling flowed through me, and I found myself sinking back against the upholstery and watching my father's every movement as he drove. For some reason I got so drowsy that a couple of times I almost fell asleep.

I think he must have been aware that I was staring at him non-stop. For sure he saw that every time he glanced over at me (which was often) I was looking right at him. I didn't care if it looked rude or stupid, I just let myself gawk, unembarrassed. He'd disappeared out of my life for twelve years — I figured I had the right to take a good look.

He didn't say anything just then, except to ask if I was hungry or thirsty. I said I could use some water and he stopped at a gas station and got us each a couple of bottles.

He pulled back out onto the street and headed south, then took an exit onto the Gardiner. Before long we'd stopped at a place along the water — a little park-type spot with benches and trees.

We got out of the car like that was something we'd decided in advance, and walked along the path to a fairly secluded bench. There was no one else around, which was good, and even if someone came by we still had some degree of privacy.

I turned to face him, took a gulp of water, and waited. I'd decided that I'd let him go ahead and talk first, see what he had to say for himself, and then hit him with the questions.

“I can't tell you how happy I am that you called,” he said when he finally spoke. “I've waited and prayed for this day ever since your mother and I separated.”

He stopped to clear his throat. “Lynn … how is she? Does she know about this?”

“Lynn's fine,” I said. “And no, she doesn't know I called you.”

“Are you two still close?”

“We're okay,” I said. “What do you mean,
still
?”

“You were always playing together when you were little,” he answered. “You used to pester her until she'd get down on all fours and let you ride around on her back. Then, you'd holler “Giddy-Up” and kind of bounce up and down because she wasn't wild enough for you. You liked to ride on my back because I'd do the bucking bronco thing.”

He smiled sadly and his eyes drifted back in time. “You were a little wild man when you were small. Used to practically give your mother a heart attack by launching yourself off the furniture — the couch, coffee table, bed. You crashed into the wall once and never made so much as a peep about it — just jumped to your feet and headed for the chair to get up and go again.”

“How old was I?”

“I'd say you started with the wild-man stunts around eighteen months, and kept them up ... well, for as long as I was around. I didn't get much in terms of information about what you were doing after that. I guess you know things didn't go smoothly between your mother and me after I moved out.”

“I know she hates you for what you
did
to us,” I said. I looked at him hard and waited to see how he'd react.

He hesitated before he spoke again. “I was hoping you'd still have some good memories.”

“Of you? How could I after what you did to us?” My voice was flat but I could feel the anger surging back.

“Porter, I don't know what you think you remember, but I promise you that I never did anything to hurt you or Lynn.”

“Don't you dare call my mother a liar,” I said through clenched teeth. It was all I could do not to get up and walk away, but I reminded myself I wasn't through with him — yet.

“I don't know what to say, Porter,” he told me. “All I can tell you is that your mom was hurt and angry when we broke up. I expected everything to be worked out like it would be in most cases where a marriage has ended, but it didn't happen that way. I was awarded visitation — and I've lost track of the times I went back to court trying to enforce it — but I never got so much as one weekend with you and Lynn. And the worst thing was that you and your sister were put under tremendous pressure by the whole situation.

“Nothing that was ordered in court helped — everything spun more and more out-of-control until I felt I had no choice but to step away. Nothing I did worked, and eventually I ran out of things to try. The day finally came that I gave up — not on you and Lynn, but on expecting anything to change through normal channels. From then on, I just prayed about it and trusted that it would all work out somehow, someday.”

His tone and everything seemed so sincere that I almost bought it, so it was a good thing I'd gone over the things I wanted to say earlier. I wasn't going to be taken in and fooled, like some little kid. I had questions to ask, and he was going to hear them.

“Yeah? So then why didn't you ever send us anything, or pay support?” I asked.

“I sent gifts and letters to both of you, in care of your Aunt Jean, until about three years ago, when they started coming back. I guess Jean had moved then and when she did I lost the one place I could still send things for you. Your mother had a court order blocking me from having your address.

“As for support — I've never missed a payment. I assume you've been told otherwise.”

“I never got any presents or letters from you,” I said.

He paused. “The last thing I sent you was a Playstation. That was for Christmas about three years back. Some of the other things I can remember are a Blue Jays baseball jersey, roller blades, a compass and binoculars —”

“I don't know about any of that,” I interrupted, but my stomach was churning. Everything he'd listed I'd gotten but … those gifts had been from Mom. I pushed away my confusion by saying, “And what about child support? Mom told us you
never
paid a cent to support us.”

“I never
missed
a support payment,” he said. “Not once. And I was only too happy to be able to pay it — to contribute
something
to you and Lynn — since I wasn't able to be with you.”

“Then I guess you'd have some kind of proof of that,” I said, unable to hide my disgust. I knew he was lying, and I didn't care that my voice made that clear to him.

“Sure I do,” he said. “They give me receipts every month. In fact, I think I have one in my wallet.”

We looked at each other and I could see he was holding his ground, wanting me to believe him without seeing the receipt. He was going to force me to demand it.

“So, show me,” I said, but it made me feel as though I'd lost something by saying it.

He reached into his pocket without ever taking his eyes off me, pulled out his wallet, and flipped it open. He glanced down, found a white stub of paper sticking out of one of many slits, slid it out, and passed it to me without opening it.

I took it and unfolded it because for some reason I had to play this thing out right to the end. It was a receipt from the courthouse for child support, dated that month. I realized at that moment that he was telling the truth, and that he'd paid every month all along.

My mother had lied. She'd lied about support payments and she'd lied and pretended the gifts he'd sent were from her.

My mouth was dry and I tilted up my water bottle and drained it before passing the receipt back.

“You never even tried to see me … us,” I said. The anger was forced now, though, and sliding off fast. Or, rather, it was turning around and heading somewhere else.

“Porter, I'm sorry you think that, and I can't change the way things were, but I swear I did the best I could. Maybe there was something more, something I didn't try, but short of kidnapping you, there was no way I could think of that would have let me see you when you were small. The two of you were trained to say things. You told social workers and psychologists I'd abused you. You told me you hated me and never wanted to see me again. Once, your sister even made a terrible claim that I'd touched her inappropriately, of all the sick things! Thankfully that was proven false during the investigation, or I might have been charged and jailed.”

His voice rose just a little in anger and anguish as he recited the events from the past. “There was only so much I was willing to put the two of you through — only so many lies I'd see you coached to tell, only so much pressure I could stand to see you under. It was clear the courts were blind and the social workers untrained in that particular area. Two of the psychologists saw that you were being poisoned against me, and they made some recommendations to the court, but the court orders that resulted weren't worth the paper they were written on. Your mother kept sidestepping, making up new stories about what a monster I was … and dragging you two along through it all. It was so unfair to you and Lynn … so hard on you. In the end, I had to stop trying and just have faith that it would all right itself some day.”

He talked for a while longer, until I realized I didn't need to hear anymore. Sanning had been right. I
had
wanted to see my father. There had been questions and doubts in me that I hadn't even known were there, memories of the truth that were pushing their way to the surface.

I stopped him, holding my hand up and saying, “I guess I always knew the truth on some level. I don't know why it wasn't clear all along.”

It took him a few minutes to be able to speak again.

“How could it be clear? Two beautiful children were taken from someone who loved them more than life itself, and programmed to think he had hurt them and that they couldn't trust him. That's pretty heavy stuff for a child to sort through.”

The word
child
triggered one of the questions I'd made a mental note to ask him.

“You have another kid?” I asked.