Who's Your Daddy? (13 page)

“Keep dreaming, kid.”

He laughed, but it was halfhearted. The creases in his forehead and the way he avoided my eyes told me he hadn’t just come out here to talk cars.

I rested the heels of my hands on the side of the car, keeping my fingers clear of the paint so I wouldn’t get grease on it. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just…you know…” He shrugged. “Coming out to hang out. See what’s going on with the car. You know.”

I stood and picked up a shop towel to wipe my hands. “Something on your mind?”

“So is this where I have to talk about my feelings like one of your patients?”

I laughed. “Not if you don’t want to. But if you tell me what’s bothering you, maybe I can help.”

Ryan sighed and dropped onto the stool beside his father’s workbench. “My dad, I guess.”

“Oh?” I balled up the shop towel and tossed it into the trash can a few feet away. “What about him?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute or so, and I didn’t push him. Much like Donovan, if Ryan really needed to talk, sometimes it took him a while to find the words. And just like his father often did, Ryan bit his lip and fidgeted, squirming like he couldn’t figure out what to say and wouldn’t be able to get comfortable until he said it.

Finally, he looked at me. “It’s just, I don’t know, it seems like the last few years, things have been…different.”

Just wait until you hear how different things are going to be.

I pushed those thoughts out of my head. One thing at a time. Leaning against my car, I said, “Different? In what way?”

“Like, I don’t know.” He tapped his foot against the leg of the stool. “Seemed like when I was younger, we’d actually talk once in a while, but now all he ever asks me about is my homework or when I’ll be home.”

“Have you tried talking to him about other things?”

“Kinda. But whenever I go to talk to him, we end up yelling at each other, and then I don’t want to talk to him anyway.”

I thumbed my chin. “So, what do you want to talk to him about?”

He shrugged in that exaggerated way only a teenager could do. “I don’t know. Just, stuff. Anything.”

“Anything in particular on your mind?”

“Not really. I’m, you know, it just seems like all we do is yell at each other.” He paused. “Just seems like, I don’t know.” He looked down at his hands. “Like the only thing he and I have left to talk about are homework and curfews.” The hands that held his attention wrung in his lap. “I mean, that’s more than Mom ever says to me, but still.”

“What do you and your mother talk about?”

“Nothing.” He looked at me. “She’s too busy with Hannah or the baby and whatever asshole she’s seeing this week.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Donovan had his faults as a father, but at least he behaved like a parent. Julia apparently thought she was still seventeen, even after having three kids by two different men. Becoming a parent had matured Donovan in a hurry. I sometimes wondered if it had stunted her.

I shifted my weight. “Does she get on you about homework or curfews or anything?”

He shook his head. “She’ll scream at me if I have a bad grade at the end of a semester, or if I come in late at night and accidentally wake the baby, but that’s about it. Oh, and she hates Kristy.”

I bit my tongue. I wasn’t crazy about the girl myself, and neither was Donovan, but Ryan wasn’t looking for a lecture about his taste in women. “Does your mother give you a curfew?”

“No. I mean, she has a few times, but she’s always asleep when I get home anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.” Bitterness seeped into his voice as he added, “She just doesn’t like it when I wake the baby.”

“And she doesn’t give you crap about finishing your homework?”

He snorted. “Please. She’s afraid I’ll ask her for help on something.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Uh, and if you did ask her for help?”

“Either she doesn’t know or she says she’s too busy.”

“I see.” I watched him for a moment. “You ever ask your dad for help?”

Another shrug. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Just, I guess I figure he’ll get mad at me for not knowing something.” He dropped his gaze, and some color flooded his cheeks. “Like he’ll think I haven’t been paying attention in class or something.”

“
Have
you been paying attention in class?”

“Usually.”

“Usually?”

He shifted in his chair. “Okay, sometimes I don’t. I get bored, and…” He finished the thought with a semi-apologetic shrug.

“I understand,” I said.

“You do?”

I nodded. “I used to get bored in classes, and I’d space out. Daydream. Think about anything other than what the teacher was talking about.”

“Yeah, that’s what I do.”

“That’s also how I ended up repeating first-year algebra.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I was bored to tears. Stopped paying attention. By the time I realized I’d missed something important, I was so far behind, I couldn’t catch up. So, took it again the next year.”

Ryan looked at the floor but didn’t speak.

“Listen, I know some of these classes are boring and tedious, but take it from me: pay attention.” I absently tapped my fingers on the car. “And if you do need help on something, whether it’s because you weren’t paying attention or you just don’t understand it, you can ask your dad or me. Any time. You know that.”

He sighed. “I guess it’s hard just to go to him about anything. It’s like, the only time he talks to me is when he’s bitching me out for something.” He scowled. “And when I try to talk to him, he doesn’t listen.”

“Okay, so, aside from schoolwork, what do you want to talk to him about?” I asked. “If he walked in here right now and wanted to sit down and just talk, what would you want to talk about?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Just…stuff, I guess.”

“Nothing in particular?”

“I don’t know, the kind of stuff me and you talk about, I guess.”

I nodded slowly. “Guy stuff, basically?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “I don’t think Dad even knows what I want to do after graduation. He’s so fucking hung up on me getting there, it’s like he’s counting down the days until he doesn’t have to give a shit anymore.” He did have a point. Of course Donovan cared about his son’s future, but there were times when the stress and conflict between the two of them got to him. Sometimes all he could think about was just making it to graduation or Ryan’s eighteenth birthday without one of them killing the other.

“What
do
you want to do after high school?” I asked quietly.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “So now you’re going to humor me?”

“No. But I am interested in what you’re doing and what you want to do,” I said. “Even if I haven’t shown that enough myself.”

“You don’t have to be interested,” he said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. “You’re not my dad.”

I flinched. “No, I’m not your father, but for all intents and purposes, I’m your stepdad. And I do care about you and what you’re doing, just like your dad does.”

Ryan watched his wringing hands again, and for a long moment, neither of us spoke. Then he whispered, “I want to go to law school.”

I blinked. “Really?”

He nodded. His cheeks colored as he looked at me. “I guess it sounds kind of stupid, it’s—”

“Stupid?” I shook my head. “Not even a little. I think it’s great. I just, I had no idea you were interested in studying law.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Thinking about it. It came up on one of those tests the guidance counselor gave me. It sounded kind of interesting, so…”

“Certainly an ambitious path,” I said. “Both of your parents should be proud of you. And they would be, if you told them about it.”

“Yeah, well, like I said,” he muttered. “Dad’s too busy getting on my back about stuff, and Mom probably just wants me to get a full-ride scholarship to a school out of state so I’m out of her hair.”

I pursed my lips. “So, if I’m hearing you right, your dad’s so strict you don’t feel like you can talk to him, and your mom is so disengaged you don’t feel like she cares enough for you to bother talking to her.”

“Yeah.” He paused, then nodded. “Basically, yeah. At least I can talk to you.”

I smiled. “I do what I can. There’s not much I can do about your mom, but do you want me to talk to your dad?”

“Don’t know what it would do,” he said. “You’ve talked to him before. Didn’t do any good.”

“Couldn’t hurt to try,” I said. “But only if you want me to.”

“Sure, go ahead. I guess we’ll see what happens,” he muttered. “Not going to hold my breath, though.”

I sighed. “He’s trying. But, look at the example he had growing up. No one ever communicated with him that way as a teenager.”

“So, what? He’s just doing the same thing to me?” Ryan scowled. “It was good enough for him, so it’s good enough for me?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. He doesn’t know
how
to do it differently. He
is
trying, son. I promise you he is.”

Ryan said nothing.

“Would you do me a favor?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“Can you meet him halfway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like with the curfew thing,” I said. “Accept whatever curfew he gives you without arguing. Be home on time. The more you do that, the more he’ll trust you, and he’ll start letting you stay out later.”

Ryan’s lips tightened. He probably teetered between arguing about an unreasonable curfew and seeing the logic I’d presented.

“There’s also the homework issue,” I said. “Have it done before he asks about it. Show it to him if he asks to see it. I’ll talk to him about lightening up if you’ll put some effort forth on your end.”

He mulled it over for a minute or two, then nodded. “Okay, I can do that.”

“And I’ll talk to him about everything else.”

“Cool.” He smiled. “Thanks, Isaac.”

“Any time.”

We exchanged a quick embrace before he went back into the house. Watching him go, I chewed the inside of my cheek. I wished I could convey just how much his dad really did want to get things right, especially after his own upbringing.

And I really, really hoped they could settle some of their differences before too long. Ryan already felt left out at his mother’s because of his half siblings. He needed reassurance he was part of this family before he found out about the baby.

Shaking my head, I went back to working on my car.

Donovan’s father was the whole reason Donovan and Carmen had clicked. They’d met at a mutual friend’s party and, after a few drinks, started in on the horror stories of their respective impossible-to-please parents. Donovan was too young of a parent, too low on the totem pole at the fire station and much too gay. Carmen had gone to the wrong university, taken up the wrong career, and married too young in the wrong dress at the wrong church to the wrong man. From what I’d heard, their parental-horror-story one-upmanship game had had fellow partygoers howling with laughter and cringing with sympathy until Paul decided his wife was getting too much attention and told her they needed to leave.

Maybe commiserating about defective parents wasn’t a traditional way to start off a friendship, but it had certainly given them something to bond over. It also gave her a place to vent whenever her ex was being a cunt, which was pretty much whenever he opened his mouth.

So, shitty parents had given Donovan some common ground with Carmen, but it hadn’t done much to help him bond with his son. After being raised by an emotionally distant single father who was outright abusive at times, Donovan could have easily been a complete dick to his kid, but he tried. God, he tried.

Sighing, I reached up and rifled through my toolbox in search of a wrench. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to convey to both of them that the dad Ryan desperately wanted was the same dad Donovan desperately wanted to be. If they’d both just cut each other some slack, they’d find more middle ground than they realized.

The next evening, Donovan came home around the same time I did. After a little wine and our usual dinner conversation about how our days had gone, we went about cleaning up the kitchen.

While we did, I said, “You talked to Ryan lately?”

He looked up from loading the dishwasher. “About?”

I shrugged. “Anything.”

He eyed me for a moment. “Something I should know about?”

“No, it’s nothing like that.” I paused, handing him a couple of salad bowls. “I mean, have you talked to him? About, just, anything?”

Donovan cocked his head. “What exactly are you getting at, Isaac?”

“Listen, he and I had a talk yesterday,” I said. “And he really wants to be able to talk to you.”

“Why doesn’t he think he can talk to me?” He stacked the bowls in the dishwasher, but looked up at me, his brow furrowed. “I’ve never told him he couldn’t talk to me.”