“What?”
“There’s no shame in it, Dillon. I mean, I’d be freaking out too if I were you.”
“I’m fine. Ain’t freaking out.”
Five minutes later, I start freaking the fuck out. Start wishing we’d picked somewhere with table covers just so I could hide the fuck underneath one. Ramona reckons swanky restaurants are some vulgarity crime against humanity, but even she’d ripped the fact that we was having a meet in a McDonald’s. “Couldn’t you at least ask for an upgrade to Pizza Express?”
Ain’t necessary to describe a McDonald’s. Plastic furniture and A&E lighting. Don’t never see a dimly lit McDonald’s.
She reaches across the table and taps my clenched fist. Last night’s red, porcelain fingernails now more like patent leather. I count to five then turn round in my seat to check out the entrance.
“No, nobody’s there,” she says, “That’s not what I meant.”
Even though we in a Maccy D’s, we in a Maccy D’s in London’s Wall Street district – right by an entrance to Liverpool Street Station, i.e. no truants, no twisteds, no trainers, no teenage parents with ketchup-blotted toddlers. Nearest we get to violent gang factions is when a posse of old men hobble in, rocking blazers and berets and bravery medals. Guess he’s an old man too now, though not as aged-out as this crew. Plus he probly never won no medal for diddly nothing and he deffo didn’t fight in no battle. Why is it that wrinkles don’t camouflage scars? Not for custody anyway. Still, I can live with calling him the Old Man. Can be comfortable with that. All the other options are so over-emo, they’d make me vomit in the back of my throat. (Pops, for instance.) (Or Papa.) (Don’t even mention Dad or Daddy.) (And obviously you can forget the fucking F-word.)
Take another hit of my milkshake.
That time I tried to cover her scars with the opposite-of-stretch-marks.
When my Old Man finally shows, ain’t no apologies for his thirty minutes lateness. No apologies for not calling or texting ahead. No apologies for making us meet in the corporate capital of cow-genocide when we meant to be Hindu. No apologies for anything at all. Just stands there in the entrance/exit like he expects some standing ovation for showing up. Shoots me a nod just one notch up from nothing – like he’s trying his Keanu Reeves-best to de-emotion this shit. Then he heads to the counter to order his meal. Ramona’s like, “What the fuck? Who the hell gets their food before saying hello?” But I’m too busy judging to care. Some new or maybe old moustache. The kind he should keep tidy with scissors, not a beard trimmer. New or maybe old glasses. Who the hell still has gold rims? And still a full head of hair. Phew, thank you, high five, fist bump, actual tequila shots. Ain’t no need to note that he’s gone greyer over the past ten or so years. But thing is, I always thought of him as being old. So even though the man’s clearly aged out, he’s basically become closer to how I always thought of him anyway. Realise I’d been hoping he’d have a matching-grey beard. First I’ve known of me wanting him to have a beard. Still, he’s donning some telltale newspaper – we talking the kind you actually gotta pay for. Rolled up under his arm like as if it’s making some holy cross with the sleeve of his battered raincoat. Yup: to round off the whole Divorced Dad look, he’s rocking a regulation lonely-old-man’s beige raincoat. Some poncey yellow scarf that snubs his throat – like he’s wearing half a McDonald’s arch.
“Seriously, what the fuck?” Ramona goes again. “Is it shyness or is he just clinically chickenshit?”
Ain’t no reason why me and him lost contact – way back in them plastic-action-figure days. Those Saturday afternoons just came round less and less regular. Done and done, no big deal – all my non-Disneyfied friends went through the exact same thing. They call it the “post-divorce divorce”.
So don’t be a pussy about it.
Don’t start listening to Coldplay.
“Dillon, doesn’t he realise how lucky he is to even be getting face time with you?”
Ramona didn’t even need to ask why me and him weren’t in touch. Way she saw it, custody arrangements when parents split are the same as antitrust agreements when businesses merge: you promise the regulators you won’t fuck up the market, but a few years later everyone just forgets all that shit.
No big deal at all.
So while I watch him wait in line, I check myself again to make sure I ain’t gonna be some sappy, sentimental spunkwash about this. Make sure I haven’t started listening to Green Day. That I don’t even wanna know what his favourite fucking colour is. And for definite none of that backslap/that’s my boy/thumbs up/attaboy crap. Or anyshit that even starts to sound like My advice to you, son … Whatever you need, son … Let me buy you a beer, son … Let me teach you how to ride a bike/tie a necktie/shave without slicing your pus-filled zits/wank while shaving without spraining or slitting your wrists … You remember that useless cuntfart at school who needed a probation officer and a course of CBT just cos he lacked a source of paternal authority? That waster wasn’t me. Or that gibbering dicktard who probly still lacks direction and still can’t make decisions? Not me either. Cos just as Mum once said after getting paid a backhanded compliment by some uptight sack of sanctimony-in-a-sari: “A father’s just an optional piece of furniture.”
My Optional Piece of Furniture is still transacting at the McDonald’s counter. See him there in the actual fact flesh – still feels like seeing him on a screen. Proper HD this time, though. (How is it that I clock more of this guy’s facial features than I ain’t ever done for Mum?) Man seems to be chatting to himself. Over and over again – like he’s repeat-playing some special hamburger mantra. Fuck’s sake, surely he’s rehearsed this lunch enough times before? Not as often as I have, maybe, but once or twice at least; at least once. In the eight years and two months since we last met for lunch. The small talk, the smaller talk; the football scores. Me, I plan to just begin with and end with just asking the question. Then thank him for the answer. Then get up and go. Cos surely he’ll have an answer? It ain’t some deep and meaningful drama-queen question. Ain’t even remotely soap-opera or emotional. Ain’t about me waiting beside the house phone for a birthday card or beside the letter box for a birthday fucking phone call. It’s just about his career – his blacked-out news stories. So, once again, just ask him the question, thank him for the answer, then get up and go. Okay, give him your fucking mobile number if you really gotta be all Drake about it, whatever feels right. But then thank him and go.
Cos custody arrangements are the same as antitrust agreements.
No big deal at all.
When my Old Man finally rocks up to our table, he announces, proper loudspeaker-style, “I realise it’s depressing to be meeting in McDonald’s, but I find all those coffee chains round here too plasticky and commercial.”
Stares at Ramona instead of sitting. And then back at me – though not to thumbs up/high five/attaboy/backslap me. More like that bear from Goldilocks, the one who says, Who the fuck been sitting in my chair?
“Oh, this is my friend Ramona,” I go. “We just happened to bump into each other just here. Not here in McDonald’s – I mean in the train station.”
When she’s done looking disappointed in me for not braving up about the fact that I’d needed her help to brave up, Ramona stands up and tries rebooting the situation. Shakes the Old Man’s hairy hand. Says she’s pleased to finally meet him. Calling him shit like “Mr Deckardas”. Hopes she ain’t intruding. First time she’s ever met one of my relatives and it’s some relative I don’t hardly even know myself.
“Nonsense,” he goes. “It isn’t as if we’ve booked a table for two here.”
Ramona stays standing as my Old Man sits down. I thank him for agreeing to meet me and for making the time. Then he starts thanking me for meeting with him – for making the time to meet with him. Each of his sentences just following each other like the carriages of one of them not-in-service Tube trains: “I know it must have seemed strange for us to be talking again on the phone out of
the blue like that, Dylan. So the first thing I want to say is I’m sorry if I unsettled you by calling you—”
“But wait,” I go, “You didn’t. I mean, I was the one who—”
“—So I want to quickly set one thing straight, son: there’s nothing the matter, nothing wrong – I’m not dying or sick or anything like this. I just thought it was high time that we started meeting each other again.”
Hadn’t even occurred to me he might be dying or sick – that he’d be anything other than fine and dandy. After that, my Old Man goes total mute button. Like those people who’ve offered their blessings and get-well wishes and then can’t wait to bail.
I ask him if I can ask him a question.
(Cos, hey, even soldiers request permission to speak.) (Cos politeness, etc.) (Cos Mummy taught me good manners.)
“Are you sure that you foned me and not the other way round?”
“What do you mean, son? Of course I phoned you.” Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, some kinda twitch action starts blinking back to life. I full-on proper forgot about his twitch.
“But—”
“Actually, excuse me a moment, Dylan, I meant to ask for some barbecue sauce.” My Old Man-shaped Optional Piece of Furniture turns to look for a waiter or waitress. A woman at the counter pretends like not to notice him, so he pretends not to notice her back.
I tell him I don’t think they do table service at McDonald’s.
Next, he tries calling over this guy who’s mopping up a puddle of freshly spilt milkshake. Each move of the mop exaggerated-style, like he’s stabbing the puddle with a spear or someshit. All the different milkshake flavours the colour of a different type of bodily fluid. The mop man cuts my Old Man a look then holds up his mop as if warning us to stay the fuck away.
I weigh up whether to go get the barbecue sauce for him, but then muster all my manliness to shut that shit down.
He aborts the whole barbecue sauce thing.
“So, you were in the middle of telling me something, son.” His twitch doing some kinda guitar solo.
“I was asking if you’re sure that you foned me?”
“Of course it was me – who else would it have been?”
“No, I mean are you the one who contacted me or was it me who contacted you?”
“I’m sorry, Dylan, I’m not sure I follow.” Checking about now like he reckons he’s on TV – like he thinks maybe someone’s playing one of them plebby prank-show pranks on him. “Dylan, of course I’m the one who phoned you. I phoned you, you picked up the phone, we agreed to meet and now we’re here.” He cuts a look at Ramona.
I try asking him again, even though I already know for definite that I was the one who called him and suggested this meet and that he was just the one who suggested we do the meet in Maccy D’s. “So, far as you’re concerned, it wasn’t me who contacted you?”
“Look, what is it exactly that you’re trying to say, son? That you were going to contact me?”
“That’s what I’m trying to ask you. Who tracked who down? Who came looking for who?” Try focusing on his right eye – the one that don’t twitch. Then I realise there ain’t no more twitch – like as if the calibration’s all off so that the twitch actually cuts out when he gets vexed or pressed.
Ramona asks if I’m sure I don’t wanna eat nothing. “I mean something proper, Dillon. Solids.” Holding my hand under the table now.
Ain’t about my lack of nourishment. Anycase, lunch ain’t even an issue for me – normally I can always eat something for lunch. The involuntary morning vomiting malarkey means normally by then I’m starving – though normally I take lunch on the late. Like, 3pm at the earliest – soon as the sickness in my throat clears and I can tap the hunger in my tummy. How to explain all this shit to Ramona without sounding like some wuss-ass feeble fuck-up with a sick note for every occasion? Or without telling her the truth about the woman I started puking in sync with.
“So I just wanna get this straight, ”I go to him – trying once again to fix this whole father–son screen-freeze problem. “You’re saying for definite that you—”
“Okay, what’s going on here, Dylan? If you didn’t want to meet me, you could have just told me on the phone – you didn’t have to agree to it just so you could come here with your girlfriend and make fun of me.”
He grabs his newspapers like he’s about to bounce – I gotta shoot out my hand and make actual body contact to stop him. His arm somehow bonier and podgier than I remember. “I ain’t trying to make fun of you, Dad – I swear on my mum’s life.”
Starts spluttering and coughing up my name, but I’m too busy dealing with how piss-easy it just was to say the word “Dad”. I try that shit once again. “Of course I wanted to meet you, Dad.” Is it okay if it’s easy to say the word Dad? “Just ignore everything I just said, Dad.” And now that I said the word Dad, I can’t exactly go back and not say it. “I’m just being a dumbass, Dad.”
“Look, about your mother, Dylan – I mean, how are you … doing? How are things now? These days, I mean.”
“Things are fine, but, Dad, like I said on the fone, I don’t wanna talk about her. It wouldn’t be right.”
“You know, when she—”
I tell him again that things are fine. Take some major slurp of my McDonald’s milkshake to show them both that I mean it.
“But you know, she didn’t even call me to tell me,” Dad goes. “Perhaps I could have been doing something to help. Instead of always hearing from other people – from our mutual friends. Not only telling me she isn’t well, but also that I’m not doing anything to help.”
“You didn’t tell me your mum isn’t well,” goes Ramona.
I tell her that it’s nothing – ain’t no biggie. I tell her my mum’s much better now.
“Well – next time tell her to take some echinacea.”
“You also, Dylan,” Dad presses on.
“What?”
“I mean it’s been the same thing with you: you’ve never called to tell me how you’ve been keeping. For instance, how well you’ve been doing in your studies. Your GCSEs and your A levels. Getting into LSE. Once again, I have to hear that news from my friends. Not only that you’re doing so well but also that you’re doing so without my help.”
Him hearing about my kick-ass exam results from other people used to be one of my recurring daydreams. Now that I know that shit actually came true, I have to check myself so that I don’t high-five myself or someshit.
“Still, no point dredging up what’s already done – I’m very glad you’ve done so well, son. It’s good you’ve gone to a good university.”
Ramona leans forward like she’s gonna set him straight – tell him how working your guts off to get to a good uni now marks you down as too educated and elitist by people who are sick of experts and that. “Mr Deckardas, I think Dillon has another question he wanted to ask you today.”
After that screen-freeze over who foned whom, last thing I wanna do now is ask him head-on about his blacked-out news stories. Man’ll think I only wanted to hook up with him so I could jump him with cross-examinations and challenges. I know from dealing with my side-effected mum that the best way to tranquilate these situations is to make your questions general and non-confrontational. So I ask Dad if he’d ever done anything different.
“Do I wish I’d done things differently?”
“No, I mean did you ever try out a different career, for instance?”
“Such as what, son?”
“I dunno – anything other than working in life insurance. For instance, were you ever, say, I dunno, a journalist?” Fuck it – obliqueness is overrated anyway.
“But I am a journalist, Dylan. Always have been.”
Now both of them hit me with that look. “Nah, Dad, don’t play around with me now – I always remember you going to work for some insurance company. And Mum and Masi have always said you worked for an insurance company. That’s how I first learned what insurance even was –
about forecasting and predicting and that. How is it all my family could keep telling me that if you’re actually a journalist?”
“All your family?” His raised eyebrows look more natural when he smiles. “You mean all your mother’s family. They all liked to say that I worked for an insurance company because they thought that sounded better paid and therefore more prestigious than journalism.”
I tell Dad that if he’s seriously really a journalist, then how come I never ever come across any stories written by him? I know this sounds like exactly the sort of confrontational vibe I’m trying to avoid, but just wait for the butt-kissing pay-off. “I mean whenever I google you, Dad.”
Man looks more spooked than suckered, though. No shitting – even his shirt collar shrivels. “Go on, Dylan. Continue.”
“Nothing, that’s it – there’s nothing on Google.”
He lets the convo just marinate on ice – like as if I’m somehow meant to elaborate on the word “nothing”.
“But anyway, even back when you were living at home, I’m positive you even told me yourself you worked for an insurance company.”
“I did. I do. But you were seven, Dylan, so I didn’t go into the nuances. I’m a journalist for a news service that sits on an insurance company’s website.”
I tell him that, actually, I was six.
“It’s a way of jazzing up their home page – making them look more dynamic. The reason you’ve never found anything I’ve written when you’ve googled my name is because we don’t have bylines on our news service. That’s all. There’s no mystery, Dylan.”
Twitch comes on again.
I now got no choice but to hit him with more specifics: “Dad, I have one more question. Did you ever work for a proper newspaper? Say, for just a year or so? Say, in 2001?”
Twitch off.
Starts having some kinda stare-out with his half-eaten Big Mac – like as if it’s only just hit him that Hindus ain’t meant to eat beef. Chucks it onto his tray, wipes his mouth, his moustache. Then just sits there for twenty or so secs before standing up. “If you want to think less of me just because I write for a website instead of a ‘proper’ antiquated paper, that’s up to you. But I’m a journalist, Dylan. And whether a journalist works for a newspaper, a TV channel, a news website or some other kind of website, the one thing we all have is deadlines. And I’m now very late to meet mine. You may have already noticed I’ve been running late all day today. So thanks again for agreeing to meet me, son. It’s good to know you’re getting on well – doing well without my help. And it’s been very nice to meet your friend.” Before either Ramona or me can even process this sudden-like TV-talent-show strop, he’s grabbed his raincoat and newspapers and bounced.
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