Page 170 of Only After We Met

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Trust

I missed this.

From: Ginger Davies

To: Rhys Baker

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Trust

Me too ??

109

Rhys

I’d been home almost two weeks before I realized I’d only drunk one beer since I got there. I realized it one afternoon as I was opening a can before sitting down with my father on our back porch. We were each in our chairs watching the hours pass in silence as a cold breeze blew.

I didn’t remember the last time I’d felt so good. I didn’t remember feeling so clean. I didn’t remember what it was to simply be with myself, with nothing to distract me, hype me up, or put me to sleep. It seemed easy now, with all the music behind me. I could hear myself in the silence.

We’d established a kind of routine. After that first, emotion-filled day, we didn’t talk again about the past. We didn’t dig any deeper. We didn’t bother about what he’d done or what he’d said to me; we preferred to think about the years we had spent together. It was different, but it certainly wasn’t worse. I slept well, as long as I wasn’t up till the crack of dawn talking to Ginger. I’d get up relatively early and have breakfast with Dad in the kitchen, just like when I was little, watching him read the paper and complain everytime we told him to eat a little more.The world is going to hell in a handbasket, he’d say—he’d said that as long as I could remember. I told him that one day as I was pouring milk over my cereal, and he just smiled and nodded before resuming his tirade.

Then I’d go with Mom to get groceries or run errands. I tried to take care of the cooking while she helped Dad shower, but I always did something wrong—I’d lose track of time, or the meat would be raw, or the potatoes a little undercooked. They would chuckle about it as they ate. It was fine.

I’d clear the table, talk about whatever with my mother while he slept, and in the evening, when Dad came downstairs to take his medicine after sundown, we’d go sit on the porch. We wouldn’t do anything, just sit there until the mosquitos started buzzing around us and Mom would shout that dinner was served.

The afternoon my father and I had a beer, I remembered a melody, one that would be on the radio soon, when the new single came out. I tapped my fingers softly on the arm of the chair with printed cushions my mother had sewn.

My father looked at my hand.

“I see you’ve got more scribbles on you,” he mumbled.

“They’re called tattoos.” I was amused, not offended. “You like them?” I asked.

“No.” He was blunt, as always. “What do they mean?”

“Stuff.” I shrugged and took a sip of my beer.

“Come on, don’t make me beg. I get the musical note. But that other thing, what is it? A banana? A smile?”

“It’s the moon. It’s her. So’s this one.” I turned my hand to show him the anchor.

“Who’s she?”

“Ginger.”

“She’s special, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it serious?”

“It’s complicated.”

He raised his eyebrows. “More complicated than me dying?”

“Fuck, Dad, no…”

“Then it’s not complicated.”