Chapter 7 #4
“Hi, Dad, how’ve you been?” she said in as cheerful a voice as she could muster. Calling him always depressed her. It brought up painful memories for her, of being ignored all her life, being considered a freak, and being dismissed.
“I’m fine. Who is this? Mickie or Billie?” They had similar voices.
“It’s Billie,” she said.
“Oh. Is something wrong?”
“No, everything’s fine. I wanted to say hello, and I wanted to know how you’re feeling about Christmas, if you want me to come home.”
“I don’t care,” he said gruffly. “I hate Christmas, you know that. Your mother liked all that nonsense, Santa Claus and Christmas trees. It’s a lot of hogwash. Is Mickie coming home?” he asked her.
“I don’t think so.” It was up to Mickie to tell him.
He sounded ancient as she listened to him, and he wasn’t.
He was in his forties, and he sounded seventy.
Hard work and bitterness, alcohol, and losing his wife at an early age had made an old man of him prematurely.
He had no love in his heart for anyone, and hadn’t been great to Billie’s mother either.
He was a hard man, and came from a hard family.
“I’m not going to make a fuss about Christmas if you come home,” he warned her. He never did. It kind of went on around him, like water around a rock in the stream.
“Would you mind if I don’t?” Billie asked him. He didn’t make it sound appealing. “I could come another time.”
“I don’t care. Where are you living now?”
“I’m still in L.A. I got a job here in June, so I stayed.” He didn’t ask what the job was, and didn’t care, as long as she wasn’t asking him for money. She never did, and hadn’t since she left home for college with her scholarship.
“Are you still living with Mickie?” he asked her.
“No.” They were both living with men, and he had no idea.
“We’re living in separate places. Well, I guess I won’t come home then, if it’s okay with you.
” The idea of spending Christmas with him was just too depressing now that she’d spoken to him.
She’d spend the whole holiday in her room, waiting to leave, while he drank himself to sleep every night and didn’t care if she was there or not.
“I could come in January or February, if you’d like. ”
“Do whatever you want. It’s all the same to me,” he said. Whatever human had been in there when her mother was alive had died long since, even before his wife. He was tough on everyone, except Mickie.
“Take care, Dad. I’ll call you sometime.”
“Say hello to your sister for me when you see her. Send her my love,” he added, which hit Billie’s heart like a wrecking ball.
He never sent his love to her, and didn’t have any, except for Mickie, his favorite.
There was no room in his burnt-out heart for Billie, and never had been.
He cared more about his cows and his dairy than about her.
She was too much like her mother, with her nose in her books.
“I’ll tell her, Dad. Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah, you too,” he said, and he hung up.
Billie sat quietly for a minute, recovering from the call.
There were tears in her eyes and she wiped them away.
The whole story of her miserable childhood was in that call.
He had no love to give anyone except Mickie, because she was beautiful and more like him.
Billie knew she’d been disqualified at birth.
She wasn’t a boy and couldn’t work on the farm with him.
She wasn’t strikingly beautiful like Mickie.
She was of no use to him whatsoever, and her getting an education had driven them even further apart.
She remembered Tom telling her when they were kids that her father was a jerk, and it had been a relief to know that he thought so too.
Her mother never admitted it, and always defended him.
But at least she defended Billie too. No one else had, except Tom.
And he had disappeared out of her life after West Point.
It was a huge loss at the time, and still was.
She walked into the living room of the apartment she shared now with Jason. She had offered to pay rent but he had refused and said he didn’t need her to, it was a lucky break for her.
He was sitting at the dining table with his laptop and notes all over the place for an article he was writing. He looked up and saw the look on her face. She felt like an orphan, and in a way, she was. Her father had no love for her and never had.
“Well, you can have me for Christmas, if you want me,” she said, looking forlorn.
“What happened?” He could see that something had.
“I spoke to my father. He’s fine if I don’t come home.
I think he’d actually prefer it. He hates Christmas, and he loves seeing Mickie, not me.
She’s the star. I’ve always been a huge disappointment to him.
He thinks I’m a freak. I went to college, which he considers a waste of time.
I’m not a boy, and I don’t look like her.
So I’m useless. It’s better this way. I didn’t want to go home, it would have been awful.
It always is. And it would have been worse without Mickie.
I wouldn’t have had anyone to talk to for a week.
He gets drunk at night.” It sounded like a nightmare to Jason, and he was glad she’d been spared.
So was she. She looked at him with a wintry smile.
“I’m happy I can come with you. It was just depressing talking to him.
It puts it all in my face again and reminds me of how bad it was.
The only good thing at home for me was my mom, and she’s gone.
She kind of forced him to pretend he was human when she was alive, but he never was.
I realize now how unhappy he must have made her, although he didn’t drink as much then.
But he’s not a nice guy sober either. He never was to me, or to her.
He hates education and everything she loved and taught me.
My sister has always been more like him. ”
“Well, I’m going to see to it that you have a fantastic Christmas,” Jason said to her.
“We love Christmas at our house. It’s going to be great, Billie, you’ll see.
” He pulled her onto his lap and put his arms around her.
She fit on his lap like a child, and he wished he could make up to her for the rotten family she got stuck with.
It made his heart ache for her, just thinking about it, and he was thrilled she was coming to New York with him.
He couldn’t wait to tell his parents and for them to meet her.