To Live in a Jello World

This is a story I wrote for workshop in Iowa in 2019. It’s about what it means to become a parent when you’re not even sure who you are as a person yet. It’s about whether or not it’s possible to love someone else if you don’t yet know (or love) yourself.

***

We are the absent fathers. The ones who promised you birthday parties and fishing trips and Disneyland. The ones you waited for by the window, whose face you searched for in the stands. We are the ones you jumped off the couch for every time the phone rang, just in case it was us. It wasn't.

We didn't come.

Where was your good-for-nothing father all those times you waited for him? He was here with the rest of us, in our land, far-far away. He was here with our comfortable couches and our pizza for dinner and our beer and our beer and our basketball games. We have no time for guilt or missing our children.

We don't miss you.

Or at least, we try not to. Some of us use the only phone we've got to call our children, even though the phone is by the sign that says IT'S TOO LATE in glowing blue letters. We call anyway, forgetting for a moment the meaning of ABSENT, of LATE.

I am among them, Charlie. I call you just to say I love you, but your mom picks up the phone. She's immediately angry.

"Enough, Antonio," she says. "Don't call here anymore." Her voice is tired because she's said this many times before. But even absent fathers have to call and check in sometimes. If we don't, we might disappear completely.

I tell her that I want to speak to you. She hangs up the phone.

Others here are more lucky. Some talk and talk for whole minutes, twisting the phone line, grinning. We call them sentimental, tease them, mime that they are crying babies. They do not care. They grin and laugh and sometimes even leave the land. They go to visit their children. From woman to woman, if the mothers vary, and if just one, they go to her and take her silence, her anger, pretend it is nonexistent if it means they get to see their kid for a few minutes, run around the yard.

Some leave the land to visit, but they always come back.

We send money and we send letters. I have tried to write to you, Charlie, but it only comes out in pieces that do not add up to much.

Dear Daughter,

I remember when you were so small that I could fit you in the palm of my hand. You were smaller than this piece of paper. Now you are bigger, would probably take two hands to hold.

I love you,

Dad

We make campfires, big ones. We sit around it and talk so that the night never gets too quiet. Some talk about the basketball games we've played: who won, how much, who should never play again. And some—the phone talkers, the letter writers, the ones who go and visit— they talk about love in roundabout ways. How their sons look exactly like them. How their daughters do too. How their girlfriends still love them. They call them that, girlfriends, even if they haven't seen them in years. They say it doesn’t matter because they have caused them to moan in bed, and that moaning means there will always be some kind of love between them. Especially since there is a child between them and children are forever.

I am with them, Charlie, speaking of the things I am trying not to miss.

I wouldn't say your mom was my girlfriend, not now and not even when we were close. I would say instead that we circled each other until it was just me and her in the middle for a while. Is there a word for that, a silent word for being alone in the middle with someone good?

I met her at a gas station. Typical romance stuff, she was in front of me in line, and I was staring at her ponytail, the way it curved like her hips. Okay, I was staring at her hips, Charlie. Your mom was so beautiful.

I'd just gotten out of a tough time with someone else though, and I was tired, wanted to buy my pack of beer and my cough syrup and go home. I was thinking of home, Charlie, of playing Playstation until my fingers were numb, not of this girl with the ponytail and the nice hips.

I wasn't thinking of her sleek shoulders in her jean jacket.

I wasn't worried about her is what I'm saying, wasn't thinking of loving again, but when it was her turn in line, she put her pack of cigarettes on the counter. She dipped her hand in her jacket pocket and out again.

"Shit," I heard her whisper, which is adult language for "Mistake", though maybe you are old enough to know that already.

"I'm sorry," she said to the man at the counter. "I don't have my wallet."

I told you, typical movie stuff, the beginning of all those stories of people who fall in and out and back into love. It is the same story again and again. It was ours.

I told her I'd get them for her.

She turned around, glanced me up and down. She had a beautiful face too. Soft eyes. She told me not to worry about it, but I insisted.

And what if I hadn't, Charlie? What if I had not pushed?

There would be no you. And there would be no me, a father and far from you. And her, she wouldn't be your mom, just a beautiful woman with a jean jacket and a ponytail, and if I ever ran into her again, if we were ever in line in some gas station somewhere else, she would look at me with a fresh face, a face that held at least one chance instead of how she looked at me near the end, as if all she was thinking was you piece of shit shit shit. She wouldn't trust me again if someone paid her, Charlie.

But back then, we were strangers. And I insisted without knowing why I was insisting. And she let me buy them for her, perhaps simply because she wanted to smoke and I was offering. The moment was as easy as that, as quick.

When we got outside, she offered me one of the cigarettes. I took it, thanked her. "You bought them," she said. "Thank yourself."

I smiled. "True."

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Antonio."

She nodded. "Nice to meet you, Antonio."

We leaned on the wall of the gas station and smoked together. "What's yours?"

"Mary," she said, still looking forward, the cigarette small between her long fingers. "Like the virgin?"

She turned to me and laughed. "I guess, but you've gotta know that's a weird thing to say."

"Sorry.”

She laughed some more. I put my bag by my feet, relaxed a little. She was a trusting person, your mom. I could tell already. She didn't ask the questions that maybe she should have.

We watched the road, smoked.

She told me she was a waiter at Beef, this burger joint nearby. She asked me if I’d been there.

I said that I had.

"I've never seen you," she said, not looking at me.

I didn't know what to say to that, so I told her I worked at Marco’s. No, I wasn't delivery, I just made the pizzas.

"We're both food people then," she said. "We both know what that's like." I nodded, though she wasn't looking so she didn't see.

Once we learned we had something in common, it was easier to talk about other things. She told me she was saving up to go to vet school, so I told her about Bulldog, my roommate's cat, how he was limping. Did she know what it could be?

She asked me how far away my place was and I told her it was just nearby, a few blocks down. She wanted to come over. For Bulldog, not for me, she said, but after she stretched out his leg, checked his paw, pulled a little thistle out, much to his discomfort, she stayed to have a beer, to play some Madden.

She yelled when her team won. She dropped the remote in excitement. She beat me again and again at a game I played every day. Collapsed on the couch and said she had to go. Gave me her phone number. Said we should play again soon.

I liked her, Charlie. She was enthusiastic, easy to read. But isn't it the selfishest kind of selfish to say yes to being with someone when you know you'll be no good for them? I knew I'd be no good. I didn't call her.

She showed up at my apartment anyway a couple of days later, walked over after work, a bag of burgers in hand, fries.

She smiled when I opened the door. Said she didn't know any other adults who still played Playstation.

It became a habit. Every once in a while, she would come over after work, with enough days in between to give me space, to give herself some maybe.

Sometimes, we'd sit on the couch and play Madden. Sometimes, we just sat there and talked. We exchanged work stories: What customers had been difficult, who had tipped too little or too much.

We talked about her family, her friends, her closest and most loyal.

We talked about her dreams. She dreamed every night and she remembered all of them, would tell them to me one by one: Once, she had a dream that instead of using words, everyone screeched at her like bats, and the screeches made her laugh and cry and kiss, depending on what they sounded like.

Once, she had a dream that the whole world was blue and the air was the texture of Jello. Everything she touched took forever to reach and nothing felt like it should.

"I'd open my mouth and it’d get filled with the shit. It went up my nose like thick air." She gestured to show me. "I don't know, it was like I was breathing but I wasn't breathing. I thought I would drown." She paused. "What do you think it would be like to drown in something sweet? It seems like it'd be all the more terrifying because it tasted good."

I nodded, told her I kind of understood what that was like, to live in a Jello world. She said, “Me too, I guess.” She didn't ask me what I meant.

There were weeks when nothing asked for too much risk, when your mom and I just sat around for a couple of hours every now and then, talking about dreams and playing Playstation. We didn't go into my room, but stayed on the couch, innocent, the smell of pizza, burgers, fries strong around us— easy things to want, to have.

Mary asked about me too sometimes, but I always turned it back to her. I didn't like talking about myself. There were too many parts in my story that wouldn't make her feel good, and I wanted her to feel good. I didn't want to bring her down, make her feel so heavy that she wouldn't come back. She distracted me, kept the syrup away. I couldn't lose her company.

One day, she told me that she wanted to live in Paris, just like they say in the movies, and just like the movies, I took her hand and told her I would go with her. Enough of a confession for her to lean in and kiss me. We kissed all the way to my room.

We didn't do it for weeks and then it became all that we did. Isn't that funny, Charlie? How we can stop and go in an instant? How we can choose and not choose? The moment we chose my room for the first time, it was almost as if there was no choice but to do it again and again. I'm not complaining. Those were the golden days. Those were the days when no one would've been able to convince me that things would not turn out all right. But looking back, it's funny to me: how not having something can be fine until you've had it once. We spent a lot of time in my room doing what adults do when they want to bad enough. What I'm saying is we did what we wanted.

Your mom started coming over every day after work, no more pretense of wanting boundaries, wanting space, she left a toothbrush there, a clean set of underwear, makeup. It was like she was dressing the room in her name, saying, Remember me, Antonio—I am your girl, I am your girl, I am your girl.

Sometimes, when the fathers talk about love, we tell our When she told me she was pregnant, stories. By this time, the ones who never leave the land, who never call their children, have run out of basketball things to say, so they join us.

You wouldn't believe some of their stories. Some of these guys don't even remember the woman who told them she was pregnant. They say things like, When she told me she was pregnant, I didn't even know I had slept with her or When she told me she was pregnant, I laughed because my girlfriend was going to kill me or When she told me she was pregnant, I called her a liar. I would never call your mom a liar, Charlie. If she was anything, she was true.

We were sitting on the couch in my apartment. I handed her a beer and she started to cry. It was the first time I'd seen her do it—her face growing glossy and crumpled.

She said it wasn’t ideal, having a baby just yet. It was early between us, and there were a thousand things she wanted to do before this one. She wanted to be a vet and go to Paris and see every national park, Yellowstone and Yosemite.

She wanted to make enough money to buy another cat and a new car maybe because hers kept breaking down and she wanted at least three more boyfriends before she settled down, maybe a girlfriend too. She was still growing, that's the point she was trying to make, she wasn't sure of how she felt about anything, wasn't prepared for it all to fall down on her in such a serious and permanent way.

Because this would be permanent, she said. And it's not that she couldn't do all that she wanted and do this too, it's just that this would make the rest harder for her, and it was already hard enough.

She closed her eyes when she said that last part. Said it again, It was already so hard.

I set the beer on the table. I held her. Told her that I would support whatever she wanted to do. That I got it. It was early, that I didn't know who I was either. She held me tight. Sighed and said she'd already decided. She wanted to have you.

She said a baby wasn't first on the list of what she wanted, but it was what she had, and didn't that mean something?

But I've sat in school, Charlie. I know how they say not to get rid of life, but isn't life also going to Paris? Isn't life also Yosemite? Isn't life choosing when to grow a child and when to say no no no not yet? I wanted to hold her softly by her shoulders and whisper not yet, to say we weren't ready, that I wasn't ready even if she was.

Didn't it mean something to be terrified? I wanted to say, and not terrified in the way of anyone becoming a parent, a thousand times more scared than that.

I am unprepared, I wanted to tell her. I am truly incapable of doing this with you, but she was clutching me tight, laughing, saying, We're going to be parents, Antonio. We're going to be parents. And who was I to tell her no?

That night in my bed, we did not make love. She fell asleep and I watched how her eyebrows grew relaxed, her breathing as steady as the low tide, and I wanted to be as quiet as she was then. I wanted to be steady, but I couldn't. I had forgotten how to close my eyes and sleep.

I went into the kitchen, took the beer still on the table and sipped from it. It wasn't enough. I'm telling you, I was afraid, Charlie. I am not made of father material. It was never something I wanted. I wanted to play Madden and eat pizza. I wanted to buy a woman her cigarettes, smoke one with her. I am no family man, a man responsible for anything. I went to the cabinet, I confess. I took the syrup and sipped and sipped.

Sometimes, we tell our When she told me she was pregnant, stories, and sometimes, when it's late and everyone is particularly tired, we tell our I knew it was over when's. Always with this one, the laughter fades. Some of the fathers who never leave the land get up from the fire and go to bed. It is harder to talk about endings, Charlie. It is not like love, like pregnancy, which, even if accidental, tends to have some sort of silver lining.

We don't like to feel like we are lost, like we could have just stopped and asked for directions, but were persistent in making wrong turns until we wound up here, our lives before so far away and imperfect that we will never be able to go back to them like we once could have.

We could have listened. We could have turned around. We could have We could have — this is the thing about endings. They make you feel like if your choices had just been slightly different, the end would not have happened or, at least, would not have hurt this much.

Pain makes us fathers itch. It makes us quiet, so we tell our I knew it was over when stories quietly. We can barely hear each other over the fire, which is always low by then, crackling. We miss parts of the story because of the crackle. Nod our heads anyway, say I'm sorry to hear that.

Mary came into my apartment and sighed. She was frowning and she was tired and she missed smoking cigarettes. Maybe I should have told her that it was okay to say no to this, should’ve said not yet when I had the chance, but it was too late now, you were a bulge.

She walked over to sit by me on the couch, but then she stopped. "God,” she said, “can you go one day without a drink?"

There was one beer on the table, nothing out of control.

I had been sipping the syrup since I got off work though. I don't know if she knew about it back then. Surely, she could smell it on me. Surely, she knew the difference between the smell of beer and the smell of medicine. If she did, she never said anything. If she would have, then maybe I would've told her that the syrup was the only thing that steadied me, that I sipped it constantly to survive, but she didn't so neither did I.

When I heard her unlock the door, I slid the bottle underneath the couch. There are things you tell and things you keep to yourself. I guess this would be mine.

Your mom was tired and though I was in the room with her, though I was patting the couch beside me telling her to come closer, I was very far away.

She could not get to where I was without finding the syrup, without understanding what I had been doing and doing it with me. She would have to sip with me and that would hurt you because you were in her and were not sick. She would never do anything to hurt you, Charlie, so we could not be close.

The truth was we had not been close in months, and maybe it was as simple as she missed me, as she wanted me to put my arm around her and tell her we'd be all right, but I was incapable. I was scared. I needed her to hold me like she needed me to hold her and this is what I mean about endings, Charlie. If we could have just seen each other's fear instead of the other's anger, maybe we would have made it. I don't know.

She yelled at me. She said she was tired, that I was a mistake, that if she had just known me better from the beginning, we never would've made it to here. She said that no one could remember to take a pill every goddamn day but that you'd think I'd be able to remember not to buy cheap condoms. Cheap condoms break, Antonio, she said. God, you are going to make one hell of a father.

I knew she might have just been irritable from the pregnancy, from the not smoking and the still working, so I nodded my head, tried to understand.

She said I was trying to trap her and all kinds of other things, yelling, crying.

I nodded, even though she was completely wrong: I didn't want to trap her, I wanted her to be free. I wanted to be free with her. Laughing underneath the sheets like we used to, not angry or afraid or anything bad back then when our faces were so close.

I wanted to yell it at her, We were so close! We were so close! I am afraid and you are afraid, this is not really anger, but I didn't know that back then. My body was too heavy to jump up and yell with anyway. It all felt slow from where I was, like we were underwater. I laughed at that, at the idea of swimming with all our clothes on, with hair that did not get wet. I touched my dry hair and I laughed, Charlie, because I was high and I was scared and I was far from her. She grew furious at my laughter, the kind of mad that creeps into the eyes before sinking into the depths of a person.

She picked up her bag and she left.

I didn't hear from her for a while. I texted her once and then again. I called her, left a voicemail attempting to say what I should have at the beginning: Isn't Yosemite life? Isn't Paris? Isn't it funny that if you'd just remembered your wallet that day, you never would’ve met me?

Zach, one of the fathers here, says that getting a woman pregnant allows her to see once and for all that you are a piece of shit and that it's too late to do anything about it. Part of your worthless ass is growing inside of her now, so she yells and she cries and she says she needs her space.

I figured now that your mom saw me fully, space must be what she wanted, so I stopped reaching out. And a while after that, it was almost as if I had kept my mouth shut when she said "Shit" at the gas station, like I had bought my stuff and went home like I'd planned. Maybe there was still time to go back. Maybe, if nothing happened next, it would be as if nothing had ever happened.

The proof, though, that something had was her underwear, her makeup, her toothbrush. Her extra uniform shirt that I sniffed sometimes; it still smelled like fries. There were her hair strands in my bed. I found them time and time again. They hid in my sheets until they brushed against my leg, my cheek. She was the proof that something had happened, her name all over my room, whispering, I was your girl once, Antonio. I used to be with you.

She and the fact that I could not stop sipping. It had been a problem before, but it was worse now. I thought of her and I sipped. I thought of you growing inside of her, my responsibility, and I sipped and I sipped. I could not stop, Charlie. Every night and sometimes day, I sipped enough to lie on the couch and feel as close to nothing as I could.

The couch had Mary's hairs too, but less. We had been friends on the couch. It was safe.

I stopped going to work. I called in sick, called in sick, called in dead.

My boss laughed when I said I was dead. He said to hurry up and get better, to come in as soon as I could, that they missed me. I laughed at that. Of the little they knew about me, Charlie, what was there to miss?

My boss called me twice after I stopped calling. I listened to my phone buzz, quiet underwater. Later, I listened to his voicemails: the first to see how I was doing and the second, weeks later, in his sorry voice, his pity voice: I hate to do this but, um, I'm going to have to let you go. Hope you're all right, Antonio. Hope the best for you.

Sometimes Bulldog came and lied on my legs. His softness was the only thing in those days that made me feel good.

Sometimes Jeff, my roommate, would come home, though rarely. He had a girlfriend that he was doing a much better job with than I was with your mom. He would say nothing when he came home, just walk by as if I was not there, would even come close and lift Bulldog off my legs, pick him up and carry him to his room without acknowledging that it was my legs his cat rested on, that it was my pulse that had attracted him.

Jeff and I, we were not close. I did not talk to him about the baby. What baby? I hadn't heard from Mary in weeks now, Charlie. Neither of you were real to me anymore.

We fathers don't just sit around and talk. We play games too: football and basketball and soccer. Sometimes, when we can't decide who will be on whose team, we hesitate.

Someone says, Raise your hand if you were there for the birth of at least one of your kids. About half of us raise our hands and just like that, we are a team. I always feel so lucky that I can raise my hand with those who were there, Charlie. I was there for you at least once, at least at the very beginning.

It was months later when your mom's friend Lisa called. I heard the buzzing somewhere on the floor below me. I wondered if it was my boss again, checking to see how dead was dead.

I was deep-deep in the syrup by then. It's funny, the harder you try to pretend that something didn't happen, the more you think of it. All I wanted was to forget you both, to forget everything and slip back into a normal life, but it was impossible, Charlie. I was very far underwater with no strength to swim. The syrup made my eyes heavy and every time I closed them, I hoped I could find a way to go back to blank, to empty, to start all over again. Understand that I didn’t want to disappear, just begin again.

It was a soft buzzing, the phone ring, but it was persistent, ringing again and again. I leaned off the couch slowly, picked the phone from the floor. I saw your mother's face on my caller ID. She buzzed. I sat up.

"Hello?"

Lisa answered angrily. "Finally, you piece of shit. Mary is having the baby, and if it were up to me—look, she wants you here so c'mon, but I swear, if you let her down, you will never see her again."

She told me the name of the hospital.

"Are you there?" she said, but she didn’t wait for me to answer. "Look, hurry up, because if you don't get over here tonight, that's it."

She hung up.

I lied back on the couch. The hospital was close enough to where I was and I wanted to see you, even if seeing you would erase my attempt at forgetting. I wanted to see your mom too because seeing her face on my screen, feeling her buzz, listening to her friend whose angry voice sounded so similar to her own, all of it made me realize that I missed her.

I got up from the couch, slow as anything. Began to walk.

It was cold by then. I realized too late that I forgot my jacket. The wind crept and goosebumped me. I shivered. Took slow steps, wrong turns. I had to sit down every once and a while and hug myself, Charlie, but though sloppy and slow, I came to you.

When I found your mom, she was so red, her legs in stirrups, the veins in her neck bulging. It was just Lisa with her, your mom’s family too far away to come at a moment's notice. Lisa glared at me when I arrived then went back to watching Mary. Your mom looked at me and screamed louder, started to cry.

The nurse was cooing her, telling her she was doing great, saying she was almost there, and I felt so far from it all, like if I stepped closer to the bed, the bed would slide further away.

There was about an hour left by the time I got there, an hour of a screaming Mary, a cooing nurse, Lisa, staring and glaring.

You were slowly, slowly becoming something of your own, head first, tiny shoulders, baby chest slipping through your mother. You were becoming your own breathing, feeling thing, Charlie. When the cord was clipped, it was done, nothing holding you to anyone else anymore.

I'm telling you, it's a scary thing to be your own person. You are probably old enough now to walk on your own two feet, to run anywhere you want, toward people or away from them. Tell me, Charlie, how big are you? How fast? Do you run toward or away? Time flies in the land of absent fathers. We try not to think of it, so tell me, how big are you? How scared?

Your mom named you Charlotte after some woman who was nice to her once, some time before I knew her. Charlotte Ray, after Ray Charles, who she said was a good person despite anything not-so-good he might have gotten into. I don't know what she meant by that or how she could've known it, but I was far away and so nodded in agreement because it was the easiest thing to do. Your name would be Charlotte Ray then, Charlie for short.

The nurse took you away. Lisa too left the room after giving me another glare. I was left with your mother, like all those days in my room. I walked across the ocean floor, leaned on the bed where she lay.

She took my hand and squeezed it.

I had been quiet since I got there. I still felt that way, looking at her, sweaty, her brown eyes open, soft again.

I told her that I loved her. I'm not sure why. I think what I meant to say was I miss you or I'm sorry I'm so far away.

She turned toward the door, began to cry again in a happy way; maybe crying is something she does often now. I don’t know. The nurse was bringing you back. Mary turned to me and said, "Look what we made."

She brought you closer, you were beautiful, Charlie, but so so small. I asked if I could hold you. I don't know if the nurse could tell that I was so far or what, but she was hesitant to give you to me. Your mom told her it was fine, that I was the father, and so I held you. First, in the crook of my arm, but then, because you were so small, Charlie, I held you in one hand.

I stood from the bed with you in my hand and your mom told me to be careful, to use both hands, but I just wanted to show her how small you were, how tiny.

You were bigger than I thought though, Charlie, and with you in my hand, I felt smaller, like I was a baby, beginning again. I was starting again, Charlie, so I couldn’t quite walk, understand, it was still a slippery and wet thing to do. I was at the bottom of the ocean. Everything was too dark to be blue.

You slipped from my hand. I dropped you.

You were bigger than I thought but you were still so small, didn't know how to swim just yet. I dropped you, you fell down, down to the ocean floor, I'm sorry.

Mary screamed when you reached the bottom, an underwater sound. The nurse rushed to you. Charlie, you cried so loud.

For some, there are no stops on the way, just one big decision that’s strong enough to carry them all the way here. Coming home too drunk one time, bumping over the baby cradle. For a few, it was as simple as sleeping with someone else.

For me, it was not that easy.

My first stop was the hallway of the hospital, where I paced and waited for someone to tell me it was okay to come back into the room. I paced and paced and finally, the nurse came out to talk to me.

I asked her if I killed you.

She looked at me for a long time.

"No," she said, eventually. "She just has a knot. She'll be okay."

I started past her then, headed to the room to tell Mary. You were going to be okay, Charlie! You were going to be okay. Maybe you could swim after all. But the nurse stopped me, frowning, "She doesn't want to see you. She's upset that you dropped her, which is understandable, right?"

I nodded, opened my mouth to say something, but forgot what it could be.

She squinted at me. "Are you okay?”

I nodded again.

“I mean, are you taking anything?’

I shrugged. "Just cough syrup. I'm sick."

Her mouth tightened. She told me to wait in the lobby, said she’d let me know if Mary changed her mind.

The second stop was the hospital lobby where I waited and waited for Mary to say nevermind, to say I forgive you, to say everyone makes mistakes at the bottom of the ocean, I get it, it’s fine. I waited for a long time, Charlie. I went back to the room. Maybe Mary just had to see me and then she would say it, that all was well, that you could swim, that we wouldn't have known if I hadn't let you try. But the room was empty. She had left with you and Lisa without letting me know. Maybe she didn't know I was still there, how anxiously I had been waiting.

I called and called her. She didn’t pick up.

Here, in the land of absent fathers, we like to say that nothing happens for a reason, that we are far away, but it's nobody's fault, not even ours. We like to say that there is no use then in missing our children, that we do not have to strive to be like the others, the ones who settle down, who pick good choices, who do not buy cigarettes for a pretty woman unless he's sure he can be good to her always.

Who is sure of anything, Charlie? Who is always good?

In all those months, I’d never been to your mother’s house. She said her roommates were annoying, she said she liked my place better, she said it was like taking a break from her life. I knew her neighborhood though, she'd told me what was close to where she lived, and so I walked around those parts, calling her, looking for her broken down car. No success. The third stop was that neighborhood, wandering, calling her name.

The fourth was my couch, where we used to sit and talk about her dreams, where she told me that she wanted to go to Paris and I told her that I wanted to go with her and we kissed. The fourth stop was the spot of our first kiss. I was sitting there when she finally called me back.

"Hey," she said. Her voice was tender. "I can't see you anymore. You're not good for the baby. I told you to use two hands and you..." She started to cry, but then her voice grew cold. "You dropped her and Lisa says you're obviously on drugs. Don't call me again."

She hung up before I could say anything. Before I could tell her that medicine is different than drugs, that I am hurting in a way that she'll never know, that I need it and I am good for you, Charlie, because you are made from me. You need to understand yourself. I can give you that. She hung up before I could say I could give you that, what you need, be your father, a good one, not one who disappears. I didn't want to disappear.

I lied back on the couch, dipped my arm to the floor until I found the syrup. I closed my eyes and sipped.

The fifth stop was the darkness. Deep and not quite blue.

When I opened my eyes again, it was to a land of people like me. The screw-ups, the thoughtless, the ones who feel too much. They were sitting around a fire and I joined them, soaking wet.

They welcomed me. Hugged me tight.

We are the absent fathers, they said. The ones who promised you birthday parties and fishing trips and Disneyland. The ones you waited for by the window, whose face you searched for in the stands. We are the ones you jumped off the couch for every time the phone rang, just in case it was us. It wasn't.

They laughed. They said I belonged here.

They're right, Charlie, I do. It’s truly as if I am in a nothing space, can erase my life and pretend that none of the things that have happened were real: not you, not your mom, not Clarissa before her, not my mom or dad or the way they cried every time they saw me. Everyone was always crying. Everyone was always leaving me. Even you.

Even you have left me when all I wanted was to hold you, to endure your baby cries. You slipped from me, you fell and fell, you did not want my touch. But I am your father, Charlie, which means we will always be together in some kind of way.

When the land starts to slip, I squeeze my eyes tighter, bring it back. What else do absent fathers do? What else?