After the Hurricane(19)

Leaning against the side of the building, making sure no one could see him, he fished a flask and a pack of cigarettes out of his inside jacket pocket. Things like this, he hated them. He hated feeling jealous of his daughter. Look at this school, with its maple trees and soccer teams and meetings about what the children would learn. Look at his daughter, with parents, real ones. Or one. Most days he thought of himself as a father, but sometimes, when his skin was thinnest, he had to admit to himself that he was an imposter. He had no idea what he was doing. He lived in fear that everyone would know. He craved everyone knowing. He wanted to stand up in front of them, all these nice people, and laugh, mock them, tell them he had tricked them all, they had let him in among them, he had won. But it didn’t feel like winning.

He took a sip.

“Got another one of those?” A male voice to his left startled him. He turned and saw a man, also in a suit, that was something. He hated these men who came to the school in casual clothing that probably cost more than his best shoes. Hated the way they were so secure in their lives, their place in the world, that they didn’t need the armor he needed to belong. He handed over the pack, watching the man, who was he, “Something” Anderson, his daughter had been in Elena’s class for a few years now.

“It’s Paul, right?” he said, inhaling deeply on his cigarette.

“Yeah. Rachel’s dad.”

How strange, and sometimes a little wonderful, it was to be someone’s father, to be identified as someone’s father first. Not by his job or his school or his life, but by this child he had helped create, in a way, although really, it had been all Rosalind. It was still all Rosalind. His wife did everything for their daughter. She was the authority on how to be a parent. She read books on the subject, she knew the doctor’s appointments they were supposed to have, she met each horrifying new reality of parenthood like it was paradise. She had wanted to have more children, when just the one had overwhelmed him completely, but after several miscarriages it became clear that Elena would be their only one. Santiago hated himself for his relief, but it paled in comparison to other reasons for his self-hatred, and over time he had forgotten he had ever felt it, forgotten Rosalind had wanted more than the one. They both told each other they had one wonderful kid, and that was more than enough.

It was, really, often far more than enough for him. There were so many things, steps in Elena’s life, that he couldn’t understand. He felt sometimes that he had to study other parents to understand how to react appropriately to a child, even his own. Sometimes small moments filled him with wild outsize despair and sometimes he missed the point of big things completely. Recently, Elena had her first period and Santiago had wanted to die. His daughter, his child, bleeding, her body ready to give birth itself, from a biological perspective. It was insanity. Elena had come out of the bathroom terrified and mortified and he had stared at her, the unreality of her. She was a person, she would grow and grow and grow and someday have her own daughter.

It was horrifying. She was crying and he could feel tears in his own eyes, screams bubbling in his throat. What was he supposed to do about this? But Rosalind had just nodded, and shown her how to use a pad, or so she said. He hadn’t really wanted to know, and Elena had said nothing, the both of them pretending it had never happened, that it didn’t happen month after month. For years he had been involved in the diaper changing and the potty training but there came a point at which his daughter’s body was something beyond him. She was becoming a person, a woman, what the fuck was he supposed to do with that? He wished she could stay a child forever. The older she got, the more clearly she would see him. The more she would investigate him, find out all of the things he had hidden about himself from her. He would become small and pathetic to her. He wished he could make her blind.

No, you’re fine, you’ve done everything right, and she’ll never see any of that. You’re not any of that anymore, and no one will ever see anything you don’t want them to. He told himself this. Every day.

“These fucking things,” Paul said, distracting Santiago from his thoughts.

“Absolutely.” They shared a smile. Inside the expensive cafeteria, where Santiago was sure some of Elena’s tuition money had gone, other parents were locked in conversations with teachers, arguing the benefits of this or that, why the kids had to read Romeo and Juliet this year not next year, and why they absolutely couldn’t learn about the Holy Roman Empire yet and shouldn’t they be doing precalculus by now and what was the school going to do in biology, dissection was cruel, no, it was necessary, no, it was archaic. So many opinions, like they were experts.

Santiago took another sip from his flask, and then, hesitantly, offered some to Paul. He wasn’t sure if the man would have an opinion about him bringing booze to this event, and if he said yes, well, less for Santiago. Paul looked at the flask.

“What the hell.” He took it, and sipped, handing it back.

“Glad there is someone like me here,” Paul commented. Santiago looked at him. Paul was blond and stocky, his face slightly red. “I was already done with mine.” Paul took out a flask from his own pocket and waved it, indicating that it was empty. Santiago smiled.

“Helps,” Santiago said.

“Absolutely,” Paul said, echoing Santiago’s own words. “Denise doesn’t get it. She can be a real bitch.”