by Jeff Zentner
I sense her watching, quiet behind me.
I go into my room and shut the door. It’s cramped with piles of clothes, comics, graphic novels, books, but most of all, VHS tapes. Hundreds. Titles scrawled on them in black marker in my dad’s slapdash writing. They take up every square inch under my creaky bed.
I slump onto the floor, still reeling. I had no emotional plan for if I actually found him. All I wanted was some closure that I didn’t have to dig up from within myself. I stare at the message from the PI for a while, my dad’s email address glowing in it like a blinking red light on a far-off radio tower.
As though my fingers have their own agenda, separate from my mind’s, I begin typing.
Dear Dad,
Actually, I don’t know if I’m allowed to call you that anymore. Or if I want to. Or if you want me to. But I don’t know what else to call you. It looks like you don’t even have the same name anymore. I guess if you wanted me to call you anything at all, you wouldn’t have changed it. I’m a little bummed out with the name you picked, by the way. There’s nothing wrong with the name Derek Armstrong, but you definitely could have picked one with more flair. Of course, maybe that was the point. To avoid being noticed.
I don’t know why I’m writing this. I don’t know what to tell you. I could say I miss you, but that’s not as true as that I used to miss you. I could say I’m not angry with you, but that’s not as true as that I’m not angry with you anymore.
Mom is better now. I don’t tell you that because I think it’ll make you come back. I just think you should know. She got on some medication that helps stabilize her moods, and it works pretty well for her as long as she takes it, which is most of the time. She got on it after you left. I don’t think she wanted to, but she knew she had to. I guess if you left to try to get her to do something about it, it worked.
It turns out that I inherited brain chemistry or something from you guys, and I had a lot of bad days too after you left. I’m better about taking my medication than Mom is.
I’m about to graduate, and then I’m going to Jackson State Community College. I work about twenty hours a week at Comic Universe. I’m not dating anyone, and I don’t have a ton of friends, especially since Jesmyn, one of my best friends, moved to Nashville, but it’s fine. I mostly hang out with Mom and my best friend, Josie.
Speaking of Josie, there’s something I’m excited to tell you. She and I are horror hosts on our own show called Midnite Matinee on TV Six here. Every Saturday night from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. You can stream it on the TV Six website. We’re doing pretty great. We’re already syndicated in Topeka, Macon, Greenville, Des Moines, Spokane, Fargo, and Little Rock. Which I guess means you probably haven’t seen us by accident like I hoped you would, since you live in Florida. Or at least I think you do.
We use the movies you left behind. I wonder sometimes if you miss those too. I wonder if you miss them most of all. I’ve taken good care of them if you ever want them back. You know where to find us. We still live in the same place we did. Money’s always been tight. It probably was when you were here. I can’t remember ever being rich.
Like I said, I don’t know why I’m writing this. I don’t know what I hope to gain. I don’t even know if this is you. If it’s not you, maybe delete this and give your daughter (if you have one) an extra hug and tell her how lucky she is.
No, actually, I lied. I do know why I’m writing this. It’s because I hope you’ll watch my show. I hope you’ll see that you left me with something I love and will always love. I hope you’ll be proud of me.
I type Love, Delia but scrap it. I try Sincerely, Delia but ax that too. I give “Your daughter, Delia” a shot.
I delete the whole email.
I cry as quietly as I can for a little while, and then walk out to join my mom, because I dislike feeling any more abandoned than absolutely necessary.
“Dude, shut up,” I say.
“What? I’m for real,” Lawson says.
“No, you are not. That is nonsense.” I get out of his truck and shut the door.
He follows suit. “Why?”
“Because pancakes”—I say pancakes with somewhat more contempt than even I think is due—“are not anybody’s favorite food. They’re never more than someone’s fifth favorite food. It’d be like if toast was your favorite food. It’s not allowed.”
“You’re messing with me, like you were about never having been to a restaurant.”
“Not this time.”
“They’re delicious.”
“They’re disks of cooked flour that you put butter and liquid sugar on.”
“I know what they are.”
“Sorry. You have to pick a new favorite food.”
“I can’t just pick a new favorite.”
“Brown flour Frisbees with cow grease and sugar sludge.”
Lawson claps his hands over his ears. “No! I can’t listen to you ruin pancakes for me. You don’t hate pancakes.”
“No, I don’t. They’re my eleventh favorite food, which is where they should be for a normal person.”
“I can’t believe you called butter ‘cow grease.’ I’m gonna need a minute to recover.”
“That went too far. I’m not proud.”
Lawson looks up as he opens the door of Five Guys for me. “Now that’s a Friday-night sky.”
This turn for the poetic catches me off guard. Unless this is some weird joke. He does love pancakes and have a gross air freshener and listen to crappy music. “Do what now?” I ask.
“A Friday-night sky. You ever notice that you only see some kinds of skies on certain nights? That’s a Friday-night sky.”
I stop, look up, and study the sky for a moment. “Looks like a normal sky to me.”
“Friday-night skies feel…more hopeful. They always smell good too.”
“You’re smelling french fries.”
“I swear. You never noticed Friday-night skies?”
“No.” This is not entirely true. As he’s been carrying on about them, I realize that I’ve noticed Friday-night skies too. But it’s not a terrific idea to agree with a dude too much at first, in my opinion. Better to see sooner than later how they handle your thinking differently than they do. Not that I’m envisioning a bunch of other dates with this guy. But habit’s habit.
We order cheeseburgers and approximately a laundry basket’s worth of fries and sit. I brace myself for awkward conversation. At times like this I try to imagine I’m the host of my own talk show and I have to interview awful celebrities and seem really engaged and make it entertaining for my public. Good practice for my TV career someday.
“All right. Come clean,” I say. “You left with my dog costume on purpose.”
He laughs nervously. “What? No!”
“Mmmmmmmmm-hmmm.”
“No, for real.”
“Mmmmmmmmm-hmmm.”
“I genuinely left on accident with the costume and got out to my truck and then I remembered.”
“But you didn’t turn around and walk a hundred feet back to the building.”
“I figured your camera guy probably locked it.”
Arliss probably did. “You couldn’t have just left it by the back door?”
“It might’ve gotten stolen.”
I fold my arms. “Stolen.”
He shrugs.
“Because that is definitely a thing that happens in our society: dog costume theft. It’s reached epidemic levels.”
“You never know.”
“You legitimately sometimes know. You really do occasionally know.”
“People will sell anything to buy drugs.”
“That is a true statement that still makes you zero percent less ridiculous.”
He grins the grin of the busted. “I don’t get to eat like this much,
” he says, holding up a fry appreciatively like a fine cigar.
“Because of training or whatever?”
“Yeah, my life is sorta one chicken breast and protein shake after another.”
“You hate joy.”
“Makes me a better fighter. That brings me joy.”
“Mr. Dedication up in here.”
“Speaking of dedication, I wanted to ask you at the studio, but I didn’t get a chance. How’d you end up doing a TV show?”
I finish a big bite of cheeseburger. “Delia and I have this mutual friend from school, Jesmyn. Actually, she moved to Nashville, but anyway. Delia was friends with her first. So I was in one of our school’s musicals with Jesmyn, and we started talking, and I told her I wanted to go into TV someday.”
“Acting or—”
“I wanna be like Mindy Kaling and write and be on my own show.”
“How long have you wanted to do that?”
“Like, my whole life. I can’t remember when I didn’t. I used to make movies when I was little on my mom’s digital camera.”
“I interrupted, sorry. You were saying about you and Delia?” Lawson says.
“So Delia grew up watching shows like ours with her dad. And she’d mentioned to Jesmyn that she wanted to start doing a horror show on public access, but she needed someone to do it with because she was scared to do it alone. She originally asked Jesmyn, but she’s more of a musician, so Jesmyn sent Delia my way.”
“Obviously it worked out.”
“In the beginning, I was just doing it to be on TV. Honestly, it surprised me what good friends we became. We didn’t have tons in common at first other than the show. But now we’ve influenced each other in a bunch of ways.”
“How so?”
“Mmm…for one thing, I would never have gotten into cheesy horror movies if it weren’t for her. I always liked horror movies, but not the kind we show. And I guess she’s picked up my sense of humor.”
“And you guys talk alike.”
“Apparently so.”
Talking about Delia has reminded me to check in on her. She might give me a graceful out to the evening. I mean, I’m having fun, it’s fine, whatever, but still. I take a big bite so I don’t have to talk, and I text her.
Me: Why is it totally ok to melt cheese on scrambled eggs but you can’t on boiled eggs?
A few seconds pass.
Delia: OMG you’re right. The thought of melting cheese on boiled eggs makes me wanna vom.
Me: First off you gotta make the boiled eggs hot and that is the grossest thought.
Delia: It IS. Hot boiled eggs would feel very off-putting. Is Law-man making you eat eggs for dinner???
Me: Nah, I was just thinking about it because I’m eating a cheeseburger and thinking about stuff we melt cheese on.
Delia: Sorry, I’m still thinking about hot boiled eggs and trying not to yak.
“That Delia?” Lawson asks.
“Oh…yeah. Sorry.” I put my phone down. I didn’t notice him looking at me.
“You had this little smile on your face while you were texting.”
“She and I are always cracking each other up. You have friends like that? The Idiot Twins?”
“The Idiot—” he says quizzically, and laughs. “Oh, Hunter and Colt? I’m barely friends with those guys.”
“Kudos. How do you even know them?”
“Scout camp when we were kids. They used to go out in the lake and one would fart in the water and the other would try to catch the bubbles in his mouth.”
I snort involuntarily and clap a hand over my mouth before I can spray him with bits of bun, meat, and cheese. “Yeah, that is real gross.”
“It’s somehow way nastier than smelling it, even though both involve taking it into your body.”
“Let’s make a deal right now that we’re never, ever going to use the phrase ‘taking it into your body’ with reference to a fart ever again, because I find that very upsetting.”
Our shudders subside, and we eat for a while in silence. It’s not a tense silence, but it’s not an easy one either.
Lawson finally breaks it. “So what’s next for you? We graduate soon, right? You a senior?”
I sigh. “Yeah, senior. I applied to a few schools. I’m planning on going to UT Martin so I can stay close to Jackson. It’ll make it easier for Delia and me to keep doing the show. But…”
“But what?”
I wave it off. “Nothing.”
“You sounded like you wanted to say something else.”
“No, it’s that my parents are pressuring me to go to UT Knoxville instead. My mom knows a lady who works at Food Network, and they have an office in Knoxville—”
“For real? In Knoxville? Weird.”
“I know, right? Travel Channel has its headquarters there too, apparently. Anyway, she could get me an internship, but I don’t know.”
“Sounds like a cool opportunity.”
“Maybe you should be hanging with my mom right now instead. Y’all would get along.”
“I’m just saying.”
“I’m on TV here. That’s gotta be better than getting coffee for…Alton Brown’s secretary or whatever.”
Lawson pops a french fry in his mouth. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You know something I don’t?” I put only the thinnest of veils on my irritation. I did not sign up for an awkward quasi-date with some dude I barely met and who listens to bad music, only to get the same lecture my parents could give me.
He shrugs. “I know when you fight, sometimes the position that seems the best isn’t. You gotta think long term. Give up something now to get something better later.”
“Well, thanks for that helpful advice. It’s definitely never occurred to me to think more than several hours into the future.”
“I’m not trying to piss you off.”
“Who’s pissed?”
“I can hear it in your voice.”
“You’ve known me for how long now?”
“Long enough.”
“Anyway, Delia would be super bugged if I left. This show is like her whole world. I don’t think she’d be able to do it by herself.”
Another silence. This one is definitely strained.
I break it. “What about you? What are you doing when you graduate?”
He nods, considering the question. “College at some point, but I want to take a year off to work and train really hard. I’ll be in my fighting prime in a few years, and I want a shot at going pro. I really like my coach and my gym here, so I’m sticking around.”
“How long have you been at it?”
“Well, I started Tae Kwon Do pretty early before moving into Muay Thai—”
“What’s that?”
“Muay Thai? It’s this Thai kickboxing style where you use your whole body to put force into kicks and strikes.”
“Oh, like the way I eat pizza.”
“I got into that and Brazilian jujitsu when I was fourteen, which is when I started fighting MMA.”
“Why MMA, of all things?”
“I have three older brothers and a bunch of older cousins.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. Got my ass whupped a lot. Lovingly. But a loving ass whupping is still an ass whupping.”
“Couldn’t find a less painful thing to be passionate about than mixed martial arts?”
“Lots of less painful things. But nothing worthwhile.”
“What’s so magical about it? Why do it?”
He starts to speak and stops. He blushes. Then he looks me in the eyes and says, “I want to be a champion.” I’m taken aback by the quiet, unarmored confidence with which he expresses an otherwise pretty cheesy sentiment. So much so that I don’t even have anything clev
er to say in response.
He senses this and continues. “I want to be the best.”
“As opposed to a champion who gets his ass beat constantly and is the worst?” I knew it wouldn’t take me long to recover my game. “They give you this big trophy with a boot kicking an ass and on the ass it says ‘You.’ ”
“You’re funny,” he says.
He’s clearly sincere. I can already tell he’s not the ironic or sarcastic type. I’ve had boyfriends who were nothing but irony and sarcasm, and it grated after a while. Especially how they always thought they were funnier than me (they weren’t) and wouldn’t laugh at my jokes (which were funny).
So he gets a sincere smile from me. “You think?”
“I think.”
“You have better taste in comedy than in music.”
“Hey, now.”
“Here’s what you love.” I pump my fist. “Don’t you dare say that my hat ain’t fancy,” I sing in my best bro country singer voice. I was in show choir and I’ve been in some of the school musicals, so I’m not a terrible singer.
Lawson starts grooving along with my singing. “I’m into it.”
“And you better not say that my boots ain’t prancey and my buckle ain’t sassy and my Skoal can ain’t classy.”
Lawson grins. “This is my jam right here.”
“And you best not say that my jeans ain’t too tight and my truck ain’t too high,” I finish with a slow flourish and jazz hands.
Lawson claps and whistles. “Encore!”
I shake my head. “This is my life. Freestyling country music.”
“I’ll be your bodyguard when you get famous.”
“If I were famous for making country music, I’d want someone to kill me as soon as possible.”
“I bet we could make a country fan out of you.”
“I bet nope, never.”
“You like cheesy movies. I bet you could start loving cheesy music.”