Offside (59 page)

Thomas Gardner—my father—never knew anything about me.

“She never told you,” I said quietly. I tried to picture my mom—the woman who tucked me in at night and played the piano when I couldn’t sleep—as a band groupie who got pregnant with me after a drunken one-night stand. I shook my head. The picture didn’t fit who I knew at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t decide if I should tell you how it was or not. I toyed with the idea of telling you we were madly in love or something, but I thought maybe you’ve been lied to enough.”

I rubbed my eyes and shook my head again.

“I want the truth,” I told him. “No more bullshit.”

“Right,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is that…um…enough for one sitting?”

His voice cracked, and when I looked up at him, I thought he was going to lose it or start crying or something. He looked totally distraught, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

“Are you okay?” I asked, confused.

He laughed, but there was nothing humorous in the sound. He dropped his head into his hands again.

“I swear, Thomas,” he said, “I swear if I had known before then I would have done something…I would have insisted…but what your dad said made sense, at least at the time. I didn’t want to hurt you. I
don’t
want to hurt you or make any of this worse. I don’t know shit about kids…but you’re not really a kid now anyway…but I wasn’t there for you. Not for any of it. Shit.”

“What did he say?” I asked. “What did Dad say to you?”

“You sure you want more?”

I could only nod. My throat felt tight, and I had to keep swallowing over and over. I sipped at my ice water and stared at my own hands for a bit.

“When I saw you, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, you had obviously just lost your mother, and I was in shock as soon as I laid eyes on you. I remember walking toward you—you were sitting on an overstuffed chair—and then stopping. I didn’t know what I could say to you. I was at a total loss. I think I had pretty much planned on leaving at that point and maybe trying to reach out to you later, when your…your dad came up to me.”

“He must have known…recognized me somehow...or just saw the resemblance and drew his own conclusion. I don’t know. But he stopped me from getting any closer to you, said he knew who I was and not to upset his son any more than he already was. I remember just kind of looking up at him—at Lou—and I think I asked him if you were mine. He made it pretty clear that he was the one who had raised you and that I needed to leave. I wasn’t about to make some sort of scene at a funeral home, and as I said—he had a point. I didn’t want to upset you. He took my number and said he’d call me in a few days.”

“He didn’t call. It was about two weeks later when I ended up calling him instead. He said you didn’t know anything about me and that frankly, neither did he. That’s when he asked what my name was, which I thought was weird since he said he knew who I was before. I told him, and he flipped. Then I figured it out—Fran never told him my name, but she…she named you after me. He lost it—just for a minute. Then he started laughing and then calmed down again pretty quickly. I knew he had to be…to be grieving. I figured maybe that was just his way.”

I had my own opinions about that.

“After a while, he agreed to meet with me,” Thomas Gardner said. “I flew back to Portland, and we met for dinner. He told me a lot about you—how much you…”

He paused and looked away for a minute.

“What?” I prompted.

“How much you loved playing soccer,” he finally said. “How you were some kind of goalie prodigy or something and that you wanted to play pro. He said your mother didn’t want you to know me—that she never wanted me to know about you. He said if I came into your life, then it would just make everything harder for you. You had just lost your mother—your life was in enough turmoil.”

“I couldn’t really argue with that,” he continued. “I didn’t want to be a disruption. We communicated every few months, and he’d mostly tell me about your soccer playing. He even said once that you had a sketchbook and you liked to draw, but I think that was kind of a slip on his part.”

I met his eyes for the first time in a while. He offered me a half grin, which was just another opportunity for me to freak out. Every time I looked at him, it was like looking into the mirror.

“I felt really…proud,” he said quietly, “when he said that. Like…maybe you got something from me besides hair that won’t stay where it’s put.”

I chuckled a little and ran my hand through my unruly hair.

“It’s not as bad if you keep it shorter,” he said.

“Nicole likes it a little bit long.”

“She seems really good for you.”

“She is,” I said. I immediately felt defensive. If he even tried to hint that I shouldn’t have her in my life…

“Easy,” he said as he held his hands out in front of him. “It was a compliment. I’m glad you have her and that you’re staying with her and her father.”

I relaxed a little, but my thoughts and emotions were still all over the place. He knew nothing about me, and my mom didn’t want me to know about him. Then why would she name me after him? Why?

I’m the product of a drunken hook up.

I swallowed again.

“Anyway,” he went on. “As time went by, I kept asking him when the right time to tell you would be. He kept putting me off. There was always something big going on with your life—a tournament, a scout, and then this…um…
Reel Messys
, or something?”

I laughed.

“Real Messini.”

“Yeah—that was it.” He nodded vigorously. “There was always something important, and he didn’t want you to have your life turned upside down right before something big was about to happen. He told me how playing pro was your dream, and he said if you eventually made that team, it would be huge. If something about your parentage came out then, it would be a scandal or whatever.”

He sighed.

“I didn’t want to agree, but he…he convinced me it was the right thing to do. I agreed that if you went pro, I’d back off—stop trying to see you. I trusted his judgment. I mean, he knew you and lived with you. He was your father, really. I knew that. I know that. I’d never try to replace him, Thomas—I swear.”

He looked up at me then so intently, I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. My real father….real father…real father. What the fuck did that mean? The guy who hit me? The one who told me everything was my fault and wouldn’t even let me touch the piano because it had been hers? The man who smacked me every time I dared mention her name? For a long moment, we just looked at each other. Maybe he couldn’t take any more of the silence, because he eventually spoke.

“Lou was your real dad. I know that. I would never try to take his place.”

My mouth opened without any consultation with the cognizant parts of my head.

“He abused me,” I said quietly.

I kept my eyes on his as I watched his eyes go from hopeful insistence, to mild confusion, to slow comprehension, to absolute, cold fury.

“He what?”

The knuckles of his hand turned white as they put pressure against his water glass. A moment later, the glass broke.

In
Julius Caesar
, Shakespeare told us: “The evil that men do lives after them.” Somehow, I thought it was going to be a long time before some of the scars Lou Malone left were healed.

Now how was…um…
Dad
…going to take it?

CHAPTER 33

CLEAN SHEET

I just sat there while a busboy cleaned up the broken glass, and the server tried to wipe all the water up from the table. I wasn’t sure what to think, and I was on edge. My toes kept twitching on my right foot, which they did sometimes. It was something reflexive, Danielle had told me. Though she said it was a good sign, it drove me nuts when it happened. I couldn’t make it stop.

My…father…Dad…Thomas…I didn’t know how I should address him or think of him. In my mind, I had just started calling him Gardner. That seemed to work as well as anything else. Gardner was just sitting there, too, with his hands balled into fists and his sandwich almost untouched. He didn’t say anything until the server left.

“How?” His voice came out in a harsh whisper. “I mean…what? What did he do?”

“Blamed me,” I replied solemnly. “He blamed me for Moms’ death. He hit me sometimes.”

“Did he…is he why you’re in…that thing?” He waved a hand at my wheelchair as his face went deathly pale.

“No,” I said with a single laugh. “I did that one myself.”

“You saved that girl,” he nodded, remembering. “Nicole.”

“Yeah.”

“He hit you?” Gardner repeated.

“Yeah,” I said again. I looked down at my hands and used one finger to smear around a missed droplet of water. After a minute, when he hadn’t said anything else, I looked back at him.

He was, for lack of a better term, shaking. He was taking in deep breaths—like I sometimes do to calm myself—but then as he let them out, his whole body shook with the effort.

“Are you okay?” I asked quietly.

“Yes,” he breathed and then quickly changed his mind. “No! Shit! I have to get out of here…”

He stood up and slammed his legs into the bottom of the table, which knocked over my water and brought forth some more cursing. I might have found it funny, except for what he had said.

He had to get out.

Get away from me.

I felt my shoulders slump as my body tensed up.

“Shit! Thomas…I just…I didn’t mean…fuck!”

“It’s okay,” I whispered.

“No! I didn’t mean…I just need to get outside a minute…um…to smoke? I really need a cigarette right now.”

“Oh,” I said as I glanced up at him. He was pulling a pack out of his pocket. “Okay.”

I looked down at our plates, both really about as untouched as they could be, and didn’t really feel like eating anything.

“You had enough of this place?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Come outside with me?”

“Yeah.”

He shuffled around until he was out of the booth and then stood there for a second with his hand in his hair.

“Do you, um…need some help? I could push you…”

“No, I got it.”

He followed me as I made my way around the other tables, trying to ignore the stares. I wasn’t sure if my perception was accurate, but I felt as if they all knew exactly who I was. All the people there knew what I used to be.

Gardner ran around me to open the door. Once we were outside, he lit up.

“Do you…um…smoke?”

“Nah,” I replied. “I used to, sometimes. Nicole would kill me.”

“Gotcha.” He took a long drag and started to pace a little. “I didn’t…I…shit.”

I kept looking down at my hands. Eventually he stopped in front of me and bent at the knees so he could look up at me.

“Thomas…I had no idea.”

I shrugged.

“No one did,” I said. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not!” he said then sighed and ran his free hand through his hair again. “I should have…I should have pushed. I should have just come here. I wanted to—I did. I was just…Shit, Thomas! I was scared. I was such a pussy about all of it. I didn’t even know about you, and then what he said—it made sense…at the time. Now…now…shit!”

He took another drag and tossed the butt into the street.

“If I had known…if I had gotten ahold of you, you could have told me—I would have come for you.”

“I wouldn’t have told you,” I said.

“I might have…might have seen the signs.”

“I would have denied it,” I told him, finally meeting his eyes. “No one knew. I passed it off as soccer injuries. Tape up my ribs—go on with it. No one knew.”

“Tape up your…? Holy fucking shit!” Gardner stood up, nearly ripped his hair out, and then lit up another cigarette. He was really making me want one. “He broke your…ugh!”

He threw his cigarette out into the street and dropped down beside my chair again. A couple of people looked at us sideways as they came out of the restaurant.

“Fucking idiot…” Gardner was mumbling under his breath. “Should have fucking noticed something. Should have come here…should have…done something. Anything. Too fucking selfish.”

He looked up at me, his eyes flaming.

“God, Thomas—I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I told him. “You didn’t do it.”

“Yeah,” he barked out a laugh. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do jack shit.”

He lit up another one.

“I was so fucking selfish,” he said after a minute of hot-boxing the smoke. “I was almost relieved when he said I couldn’t see you. I don’t know how to be a father…I thought maybe it was best. I mean…sometimes I thought it was best not to be in your life.”

He looked back to me.

“I’m sorry, Thomas.” He reached out and touched the arm of my chair. “Really fucking sorry. I should have been here. I should have been here for you as soon as I knew.”