Don't Fail Me Now(42)

“I guess.” He puts his hands behind his head, his elbows spreading out like tetrahedrons. “It just feels weird to rag on a guy I never met.”

“I could rag on your dad,” I say. “I hear he’s so old, he was a waiter at the Last Supper.”

Tim laughs. “He’s only forty-four, but I could see that.”

We shift in the darkness for a few minutes. I can see the moon upside down through the window, a waxing gibbous. I hate that every time I see it, I think of him. It’s really inconvenient. Couldn’t he have pointed out some star that would eventually explode, like everything else he touched?

“Hey, I’m sorry about this morning,” Tim says. “That was really embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I was serious when I said I’ll pay you back.”

“I said don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t make me come back to Taco Bell and put it in the tip jar,” he says.

“There is no tip jar, and please don’t ever come back,” I groan. I think of what Yvonne would have to say about Tim if she met him. I think of what she probably has to say about me right about now. “Plus, I probably don’t work there anymore.”

“You quit?” He says this kind of breezily, like hocking nachos was just a hobby of mine I did for fun.

“No,” I say. “But this isn’t exactly approved vacation time.”

“Wait—you didn’t tell them?”

“That I was going on a vision quest to find my sperm donor? No thanks.”

“Isn’t it more than that?” he asks.

“Maybe for her,” I say. “Not for me.”

“But didn’t he live with you when you were a kid?”

“I was six when he left.”

“So you must remember him.”

“Of course I remember him, but that doesn’t mean he deserves my sympathy.”

“Michelle,” Tim says, really serious all of a sudden. “He’s dying.”

“I know,” I say, mocking his tone. “Everybody dies.”

“Come on, you can’t be that cynical.”

“It’s a biological certainty,” I say. “You can’t argue with science.”

“But he’s your biological father.”

“You keep saying that like it means something,” I say. “Like that makes him important. But just because your dad shits rainbows in between monitoring his gold card statements doesn’t mean all dads are inherently awesome.”

“I guess I just don’t understand why you’re still so angry,” he says.

“You don’t understand why I’m angry? Do you need a bulleted list?”

“No, no,” he says. “That came out wrong. I meant . . . if you were really ambivalent, he couldn’t make you so angry. I know he deserves it, I’m just saying you don’t have to pretend you don’t care. Not with me, anyway.”

“You sound like a shrink,” I say.

“Sorry. I guess five years of therapy rubs off on you.”

I bite my tongue, literally and figuratively. I’m not sure what to say to that. The first thing I feel is more anger—it seems so bougie and frivolous to dump your problems in some doctor’s lap instead of handling them on your own. But maybe that’s just my jealously showing. Because I also can’t help but think about what might have happened if Mom had been able to afford real, extended care instead of the quickie court-ordered one-offs that judges threw at her almost as an afterthought: Here, this will look good on your record. Talk to someone for an hour. You’re fine now. What if we could pay someone to figure out what’s wrong with Cass or Denny? What if I had someone to talk to who would really be listening? I look at the silhouette of Tim’s profile, eyes open and glinting in the moonlight. I feel an anxious wave rising deep in my chest, but instead of letting it flatten me I decide, for once, to jump in.

“You know what I think about?” I say. “The fact that every single day for the last eleven years, he’s woken up in the morning with a choice. And that every single day for eleven years, he’s chosen to not be my dad. That seems even worse than how he left my mom with two little kids and a drug habit he gave her.” I blink back tears and keep going. “I mean, he could have picked up the phone anytime. Or written a letter, or even shown up out of nowhere just to say . . . I don’t know, something. He could have sent money so he’d know we’d be eating, and that Cass would have her medicine. But he never did. Not once.”

“What about now?” Tim asks. “He’s trying now. He could have just died without telling anyone.”

“Are you kidding? I wish that’s what he did!” I say, the tears finally spilling over my lower lashes, running messily down the sides of my face into my ears. “He doesn’t love us. This isn’t an epiphany about all the mistakes he’s made. This is the Hail Mary of a sick man afraid of going to hell.” I wipe my eyes with the heels of my hands. “I hope Leah understands that.”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Seeing him won’t do anything for us, except make the mental image we have of him even more depressing.”