Chapter 2
That morning, I had woken up before sunrise.
I made coffee the way Helen used to like it, even though she had been gone nine years.
Then I stood in the kitchen and cooked my own birthday dinner.
Roasted chicken.
Mashed potatoes.
Green beans with almonds.
Rice pilaf.
A salad.
And a tres leches cake from the bakery Helen loved.
I told myself Brian might surprise me.
Maybe he would come downstairs and say, “Happy birthday, Dad.”
Maybe he would sit with me.
Maybe he would remember his mother.
Maybe, just once, he would look at me like I was more than an old man occupying space he wanted.
Brian was thirty-six.
He had moved back home four years earlier “for a few months.”
Then Melissa arrived with designer perfume, expensive handbags, and the kind of smile that measured a room for what could be taken from it.
They paid no rent.
Bought no groceries.
Covered no bills.
And every month, I told myself the same lie.
He is my son.
He will change.
Helen would want me to be patient.
That afternoon, after cooking, I went upstairs to rest.
When I woke, laughter was rising from below.
Too many voices.
Too many chairs scraping.
Too much celebration for a party no one had invited me to.
I came downstairs and stopped in the doorway.
More than twenty people were in my dining room.
Neighbors.
Relatives.
Brian’s friends.
Melissa’s friends.
People I barely knew.
They were eating the meal I had made.
And no one had called me.
I forced a smile.
“You started without me?”
The room softened into embarrassment.
Then Brian looked up from my chair.
“Oh, Dad,” he said. “We forgot you were upstairs. You’re so quiet these days, you’re basically already gone.”
A few people laughed.
Melissa laughed the loudest.
That was when I noticed she was sitting in Helen’s chair.
I could survive losing my seat.
But seeing that woman in my wife’s place hurt in a way I was not prepared for.
Then Brian disappeared into the kitchen.
When he returned with the bowl, I recognized it immediately.
It had belonged to Max, our old dog.
Max had been dead for six years.
Brian placed it in front of me and delivered his little line.
“That’s what freeloaders get.”
And while everyone watched, I understood something.
May you like
My son did not just disrespect me.
He had practiced it.
