After flip flops leaves, I don’t have an excuse to hand around the diner anymore, so
I
jump in a cab to head to my family’s
apartment on the W
est Side
.
I didn’t want to see him tonight, or any night, really, but it was a foregone conclusion that I would go home.
I had flown in from LA that morning and
while
I had successfully avoided my house all day
, I was going to have to face it eventually
. I had even walked around the city for a few hours
that afternoon
, something I hadn’
t done since I was a kid
. I glanced at my phone and briefly considered finding a hotel room for the night.
Diana would kill you,
my brain countered. The thought of an angry Diana was sufficiently terrifying to put me off of that idea. I would just avoid my father.
A
fter all of his producer and studio friends had disappeared
after the comic book
movie
flop, my dad took a nosedive into alcoholism. I would come home every day to find a bottle of whiskey
lying on the counter,
completely empty.
I suspected, probably correctly, that there was another empty bottle just out of my sight.
The days turned into weeks and months and years.
My mom
, who had never been much for family time anyways,
pret
ended like nothing was wrong
and
started taking
jobs that kept her away from
the city
for longer and longer periods.
When she
was forced to take
theater jobs
in New Yo
rk, she kept an apartment close
to the theater.
“
For convenience,
”
she told me once
.
Convenience, my ass.
I was seven
when it first began
.
Eight when I realized my mom had completely checked out
and that the
prenup
was the only thing keeping her from legally ending all ties with any of us
.
Once I was ten, she dropped all pretense of wanting to spend time with us and became a stranger.
My older sister Diana had filled in, taking me to get ice crea
m or to go skating in the park
and making sure that all of the field trip permission forms were signed and that I had new shoes
on my feet
. I
think
Diana
thought
that
if we spent enough time together, I could ignore what was happening in my own house.
Even at age seven
,
I saw
my family crumbling around me
.
My father had always been somewhat of a mythic figure, powerful and imposing. He
was a
director;
he was supposed to be in charge.
In a matter of days after the movie opened to terrible reviews and
Razzie
award nominations,
h
e lost control of himsel
f
and became a person who couldn’t make it through an hour without taking a drink
.
It wasn’t like she could keep me from
seeing
that.
***
I found out about the cancer
almost
two years
earlier,
when
I was
in LA
playing the part of the main character’s stoner friend
in a low-budget horror movie that went straight to DVD
.
My mom had called in a favor for me after
Sophia
had broken me
into a million pieces
. It was
the first thing I’d asked of her since I was seven
.
“
I need to get out of here,
”
I told her.
“
I can get you on a film set,
”
she replied
.
“
Whatever. I’ll do whatever
.” I was
desperate.
To my
surprise, I liked making movies
, even if I was covered in blood the whole time and even if I had to spend about a week lying perfectly still and pretending to be dead
. If nothing else, it was
a temporary distraction from all things
Sophia
Pearce
and
the
Jensen family
.
I liked the fact that movie sets were their own little worlds, seemingly removed from the
realities of life
. I liked the stories. I liked the characters.
And I really liked the girls that came along with the making of movies. At the time, I was even thinking about staying in LA permanently.
To everyone else’s surp
rise, I wasn’t all that bad at the whole acting thing
.
On the second-to-last day
of shooting
, Diana called
me.
“Dad’s sick.”
“No shit.”
“Really sick, Chris. His liver.”
“Again, no shit.”
“They think
he has
cancer. You should come home.”
“You think I give a shit about that
asshole? Fuck him, D.
”
“I need you
. Mom’s off somewhere
and she says that she isn’t willing to lift a finger to help him.” Diana
mocked
mom’s high-pitched voice.
“
Chris,
I can’t do this alone.”
She
was
business-like
, a bad sign. There
was
no tease in her voice, no
asking if any of the girls had come around yet
. My usual response was that
LA girls most ce
rtainly knew how to come around
.
I sighed.
I knew I would be getting on a plane. In all of these years, Diana had never asked for anything. She was six years older than me and had taken the brunt of the responsibility for our father, putting him in rehab and AA so many times that I lost count.
I had another sister, Callie, who had left for boarding school and then college and made it home maybe once every other year. We had never been close, exactly. Not like Diana and me.
In addition to taking care of me,
Diana
had completely put all of D
ad’s problems onto her own shoulders. Even when I was a little older, when I could have at least tried to help her, I was too angry at my father for leaving us when times got a little tough, for allowing us to be completely on our own,
to even think about dealing with rehab and recovery and a bunch of bullshit that would never work anyway
.
She
was
the closest thing to a mother that I had.
“I’ll be there. Just give me a couple of days.”
So, I flew home and
went straight to the hospital
, even though I still refused to see my father
. Diana looked just the way she had sounded on the phone, business-like.
She pulled me into a quick hug, and then drew me back to take a long look.
“
He’ll need to stay away from drinking. Go through chemo.
It’s in
Stage 3
, which isn’t good news
. They think it’s ba
d, b
ut they don’t know how bad
.”
Because she needed me
, I went back to
Sampson and I
snuck around my house like a ghost for the next three months. I watched Diana
take a leave of absence from her job at a magazine to come home.
I watched as she destroyed her relationship with her live-in boyfriend.
I watched her lose everything in the world that mattered to her, and I promised myself that would never be me.
I
heard
the disappointment in her voice when she told
me about doctor’s appointments
and treatment options and recovery plans
.
Three months later, after successfully avoiding any attempts at conversation by my father, I allowed myself to hope, for just one second, that he had changed.
The bottles had started to disappear,
and I was foolish enough to think that maybe he was
making an effort and maybe he could turn his life around.
And
then I came home to find him sloppy drunk
and lying on the marble floor of the entryway.
Disgusted, I headed
to Diana’s room and found her crying softly
.
“They’ve done al
l that they can. Now we wait,
”
she told me.
“
For what?” I had asked her.
“For him to die, Chris.”
I
let her continue talking.
“
I know…he isn’t, he hasn’t been…
”
H
er voice trailed off, and her hand rested gently on mine.
“Shit, Diana, he hasn’t been anything except the reason our whole family fell apart.”
She
sigh
ed
. “But…”
“He’s the only father I have? Is that what you were going to say? Too late.”
I hadn’t wanted to come back, to see him. He had been gone for ten years. What was I supposed to do? Come home and be a good son while he died?
So, I left Sampson the next day
, got on a plane to LA, and told my agent that I was ready to work. Diana flew out to see me every couple of months over the next year, and tried to talk about it, about him, but I quieted her with a look every time. Disappointment
clouded
her eyes.
I
t was almost a ye
ar and a half
before I got the next phone call.
“They sent him home, Chris.”
“That’s good, right?”
“He has days, weeks. Maybe a month or two. I need you, and you better show up this time.
For real show up.
”
The news doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t feel anything, but I couldn’t refuse her.
“I’ll be there.”
***
I hand
the
cab
driver some bills, and
take
the too short elevator ride up to
the
penthouse ap
artment. He’ll be passed out, I think
. The next time I’ll have to see him, he’ll be in a casket.
Incorrect assumption. A
s I walk
in, there he
is
, sitting on the couch
under a blanket
.
“Your agent
called,” he states in a monotone
. “Said to wake you up and have you call him whenever you get home. Your phone was off or something.”
It’s probably the longest conversation we’ve had in ten years, and
I do
n’t respond at all.
I
nstead
, I
gi
ve him a long, even stare. He’s shriveled up and gotten smaller, and is nothing more than a shell of an old man. I nod my head, and he sighs and retreats under the blanket. I can’t offer anything else.
I move
quietly
into my old room, which looks
exactly the same as when I had left.
There’s nothing of me in this room,
just pieces of furniture and picture windows overlooking New York
.
I had stopped thinking of it as home as long time ago, and the nearly empty room reflects that.
My bags had been shipped by the studio, and they’re sitting neatly in the corner of the room.
After flopping onto the bed,
I look
at my phone.
17
missed calls and 28
text messages
. Had I been
gone that long
?
I glanced at the time. 3 am. Apparently, flip flops had been
more distracting than I realized
.
I thumb through the messages.
Sam
had sent a few.
9:49
W
ord, man?
10:26
U at
Sophia
’s? Bad news, son.
1:33
Call me.
There
were t
wo from Christine,
one of which
included
a picture.
Against my better judgment, I decide to open it. She’s
unbuttoning her shirt, showing one of her perfectly rounded breasts (a boob job was practically an entrance requirement for Sampson)
and giving me what I think is supposed to be a sultry look
.
C sumthing u lik?