The Summer Son

As ever, I owe more thanks than I’ll ever be able to account for in this space. My friend Jim Thomsen can always be counted upon to read my work before I inflict it on innocents. His observations and suggestions are appreciated and needed. To my “pre-readers,” Crystal Walls, Laura Biafore, Amy Pizarro, Carol Buchanan, R. J. Keller, Kristen Tsetsi, Linda Vandiver, and Jill Munson, thank you for being test subjects. Your feedback was an immense help.

My high school English teacher, Janelle Eklund, has read two drafts of my novels, and I pray that she gets to read many more. And to the faithful readers who asked for a new book, I am indebted to you for the encouragement.

Alex Carr and his editorial team at AmazonEncore produced a beautiful book, and Sarah Tomashek is a marketing whiz of the first order. That
The Summer Son
has made it from my hands to yours is due in large part to AmazonEncore’s belief in it, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Finally, all my love to my mother, Leslie; my father, Ron; and my stepfather, Charles. This book is for you.

T
HE FIRST CALL CAME
on Tuesday night. I yelled at Cindy from the garage to pick up. On the fourth ring, I dropped the armful of newspapers I was packing into the recycling bin and ran to the extension in the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Mitch.”

My guts coiled.

“Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

Seven words into the call, we hit the wall again. I counted on hearing from Dad once a year, somewhere around Christmas. I would return the favor of a call in March, on his birthday. We left the rest of the holidays and landmark dates to languish in the inertia of silence. To hear from him outside our usual calendar rattled me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to press ahead and find out what prompted the call.

“So,” I said, fracturing the uncomfortable silence that had settled over us. “What’s been going on?”

“Nothing much. Just sitting here, watching TV.”

“Not much happening here, either. You caught me cleaning up in the garage.”

“If you’re busy, I’ll go…”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just thought Cindy and the kids were in the house, but I can see now”—I pulled back the kitchen curtains and saw my wife standing at the grill on the patio—“that they’re outside.”

“What are they doing?”

“Looks like Cindy’s grilling up some dinner. Avery and Adia are playing on the swing set.”

“You’re busy.”

“No, Dad, I’m not…”

“I’ll call back another time.”

He was gone.

We had two more calls, on Thursday and then again Friday, both around the same time. On each call, Dad caught me in the middle of some mundane chore—on Friday, I was plunging the hall toilet—and then used the fact that I wasn’t sitting around waiting to hear from him as an excuse to cut things short.

Friday night, as my wife and I lay clinging to our own sides of the bed, ignoring each other in favor of our books, Cindy set hers down and said, “You have to find out what’s going on.”

“With what?”

“With the national debt. What do you think? With your dad.”

I marked my page and put the book away, then grasped the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.

“How do you propose I do that?”

“Call him first.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The man clearly wants something, and he just as clearly is not going to say what it is. So ask him.”

“Just like that? Come on.”

“Mitch,” she said, turning to make me look at her and see her exasperation. “I don’t care how you get him to talk, but you need to find out what’s eating at him. The man has some sort of burden. You need to lighten his load, if you can.”

“Dad, what do you want?”

It was Saturday, and the direct route that I had decided to take with my father seemed ill considered the moment the words tumbled from my mouth.

“What do you mean, what do I want?”

“I mean, you’ve called three times this week and haven’t had anything to say. Is something going on? Do you need anything?”

In the uncomfortable few seconds of silence that followed, I pictured the frothing on the other end of the line, twelve hundred miles away. Dad didn’t do slow burns. His words came with sharp edges and aggression.

“I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you.”

“OK,” I said, backpedaling to a conciliatory tone. “Is there a reason for the calls?”

“I need a reason?”

“Well, hell, Dad. That’s the way it’s been for thirty years. Why change now?”

“You know what, Mitch? Go screw yourself.”

He hung up.

I held tight to the dead receiver in my ear. I closed my eyes and waited for the sting to subside. When it did, I gently set the phone into the cradle. In the living room, Cindy thumbed through a magazine as the twins played on the floor.

“Any other genius ideas?” I asked.

Cindy smirked.

I stomped out.

“You’re going to have to go see him.”

This was late Sunday afternoon. It was the first thing Cindy had said to me since the previous night, which had been sullied by another quarrel and my wife’s proclamation that I had become a disappointment to her. I suggested that she join the club; by this time, I was damned disappointed in myself. For seven months I had been throwing the same weak pitch, blaming her for the trouble we found our marriage in. When I uncovered her little dalliance, I might have had a case, but my moral high ground had eroded. My inability to let go of grudges was rivaled only by my blindness to my inattention to her and the twins. For months now, she had been fighting for our marriage, and I knew I hadn’t been meeting her halfway to halfway.

I had been stewing about the most recent fight, about my mounting failures, and about this mystery Dad had dropped on us. In my anger, I wanted to close every door. Cindy, on the other hand, insisted on opening a window and seeing if her ideas—about our marriage, and about Dad—would fly.

“You’re kidding, right?” I said. “I can’t wrench a conversation out of him on the phone. What do you think he’s going to say if I tell him that I’m coming?”

“So you don’t announce it. You just go.”

“Just like that?”

“Sure.”

I shook my head.

“No. That’s crazy. He doesn’t want me around. He’s made that abundantly clear.” I had seen my father twice in nearly thirty years, both of the instances pushed along, in part, by Cindy. What made her think I could even get past the door?

“Mitch,” she said, and her tone demanded that I face her. “You have to. I want you out of here. I need to think about things, and so do you.”

I threw it back at her. “I know why you want me out. This is just a good excuse to do it.”

“No, Mitch, I want you out because I want you back. The you I fell in love with—”

“You say that as if I’m the one who strayed.”

Cindy sighed.

“Believe what you want to, Mitch. You haven’t been here with us—not really—for months now. I don’t know what to do about that anymore. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve had almost nothing to say about this man, and when you have said something, it’s been how he has kept you on the outside and rejected you—”

“He has. Don’t act like he hasn’t.”

“I know he has. I know something happened a long time ago that still bothers you. But I don’t know what it is, and I can’t help you with it.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Yeah, Mitch, you do. We need help. You’ve been rejected, and you’ve rejected us. Are you so blind that you can’t see that? You keep your own wife, your own kids, at the end of your arm. You’re him all over again, it seems to me.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Maybe it’s not. But I know this: we can’t live like this. You’re a good man, but I’ve lost you.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere. Unlike you,” I shot back at her.

She shook her head.

“I feared this, Mitch. I did. Before we got married, I asked your mother about this thing between you and your dad. I was scared of it, because you would never talk about him. Do you know what she said?”

I stared at her.

“She said she didn’t know, that she could never get you to talk about it either. She said you closed something off inside and that was it. You were done. She told me that you were a good man and that I should marry you, that you were solid and loyal.”

“I
am
loyal.”

“Yes, you are. But you’re not here anymore, not in any way that counts. So you know what? Go see your dad. Set things right. Tell him off. Do whatever. Then come back and set things right with us. We’ll be waiting right here for you.”

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed—a little chuckle at first that blossomed into a full-throated gut-buster. By the time I realized that Cindy was right, that I had to get on an airplane to see my father and that, furthermore, I had to do it not only to uncover whatever the hell his problem was but also to save my marriage, I couldn’t catch my breath. She walked out of the room, and I couldn’t even find the words to tell her that the joke was on me.

When I reeled myself in, I made a promise to myself. I didn’t know if I could fix things with Cindy by walking away from her, but I damned sure could try to make that old man square our accounts. He owed a lot of people, but I was the only one left to collect. I told myself that I didn’t care about him, only about what he owed me, whatever that was.

I even tried to believe it.