Trophy Son(38)

Adam stood and walked to his bag hanging from the back of a chair at the suite’s dining room table. I rolled back to look at the ceiling again and rubbed my temples.

The suite mini-fridge would hum to life every three minutes or so, marking time with sedated frequency. I looked down at the carpet that had a pattern of blue concentric circles which seemed to my dehydrated brain to move like a cinemagraph. Watercolors of beach scenes each available for €200 were spaced across the beige walls.

Adam returned to stand in front of me with a bottle of pills in each hand. One was Advil. The other was something prescription.

“What the hell is that?”

“Just an idea, my man. This one is Advil.” He tossed it in my lap.

“And that one?”

“This one, my friend, has helped me to curb many a low. One pill, no downside, will right the ship.”

“What is it?”

“This one,” he said again, “is cool water over a hot brain.”

“For Christ’s sake, Adam. What is it?”

“Valium. Basically, Valium.” He tossed that bottle in my lap too. “Serve one pill with one beer, lay down on the sofa, enjoy.”

“It doesn’t screw me? No hangover or side effect?”

“It’ll help you rest, that’s all. You need to rest.”

I shrugged which he took to mean get me a beer. I took the pill and drank the beer without putting any questions to myself.

We turned on the PlayStation for a while until I didn’t want to play anymore. I wanted only to sit back and lower my eyelids by half. Cool water over a hot brain. He was right.





CHAPTER

26

I paused in front of my parents’ front door. Still my front door, really, since I had only hotel rooms to call my own other than this house.

I knew Dad was home. I knew he’d be pissed. I braced myself, opened the door and walked into the living room where he was seated with his back to me, reading a newspaper.

“Hey, pal.”

“Hey, Dad.”

He glanced up to me and smiled, then lowered the newspaper. He slowly stood up, the way a person does unconsciously and he turned to face me square. He looked in my eyes, then a few inches higher at my Mohawk haircut. My head was shaved bald on the sides with a three-inch-thick band of hair down the middle, dyed blond. My hair was jet black so I thought making it blond would be an interesting change. “What have you done, Anton?”

“I got a haircut.”

“For the love of God, son.”

I was ready to defend a punch or shove but he didn’t even step toward me. He stepped backward and couldn’t seem to catch his breath. “Anton,” he said.

“I wanted something different.”

“Oh, Anton,” he said again. I detected no anger. Disappointment, maybe. Sadness. He kept his eyes on me but felt around behind him for a piece of furniture to support himself. His hand found the sofa and he guided himself in.

“Dad, it’s a haircut, it’s nothing. Less than a pierced ear.” The idea for the Mohawk had come to me in the barber’s chair, seemingly out of thin air, but with only a few minutes’ hindsight I knew it had come from something real that had been lurking.

“Anton,” he said. “I think, maybe,” he searched for the words then whispered what he came up with, “I am failing you.”

Now my eyes stayed on Dad and in the same unconscious motion he’d had a moment before, my body found the chair behind me. “What are you talking about, Dad?”

“You’re so unhappy.”

I had told him I was unhappy a thousand times. We had fought about my unhappiness, physically and verbally, through the years but he never grasped or accepted it. What finally reached him was a Mohawk haircut, a minor act of self-mutilation. “Yes,” I said.

He began a silent cry. Wet eyes spilling to tears that blurred his view of me. “Anton, I have always been hard on you, of course I know that. Harder than on Panos. But you have a gift.” He said the word gift louder, like he was calling to it upstairs.

I said nothing. I’d never seen this from my father before. He was a stranger to me.

His body language changed to defensiveness. A man on trial and he gathered his strength. “I had it different from you. I didn’t grow up with millions of dollars and a secure future, options I could just choose from. I had to go get it.” He said this with force, trying to relive a moment of conquest. “I had fire in my belly because it’s human nature to put fire in the belly when it needs to be there. But what about when it doesn’t need to be there? What about you? Your mother and I talked since she was pregnant with Panos about how we would give you kids an edge, some fire. Despite all the comforts and advantages you’d have, how would we make you value effort and goals?”

He was giving me a parenting confessional. Was it an apology? I still said nothing.

“We wanted to give you the fire in the belly that we had growing up. And then you had this gift too. It was obvious early on.” He raised his hands to say, come on, anyone could see this gift and would have acted on it. “Did we do everything right? No way, of course not. I know that.” He nodded. “We tried our best.” He fell silent.

“So you don’t like the Mohawk.”

He smiled. “No, son.”