Chapter 2
FRANKIE
Fourteen hours earlier
My phone vibrates on the very nice tablecloth in the very nice restaurant. Without looking at it, I know it’s from my mother. It’s probably something like, Remember, opening your heart to forgiveness is freeing.
Is it, though? This dinner does not feel like freedom to me.
Against my better judgement, I agreed to have dinner with my father. It’s a sign, my mother said, that you’re both in Vegas at the same time. It’s neutral territory, and you’re both grown-ups.
The flaw in her logic is that my father does not see me as a grown-up. “Just remember, Frankie. You can make whatever choices you want, however misguided they may be. But you cannot escape the consequences of those choices.”
He’s baiting me, I know that, but I fall for it anyway. “And what would be the consequences of me staying in California for my training?”
“Do you want children?”
He does this, answering questions with questions of his own. Leading you into a trap. I can only imagine what it’s like to be one of his players and deal with this every single day, with no out because it’s your job. Shudder.
When I don’t answer, because that’s none of his fucking business, he continues.
“At some point, you’ll look up and realize that you abandoned your mother.
And since you’re hell-bound on a career that will make it very hard to be a parent yourself without significant support, that gaping wound—and geographical distance—will come back to bite you in the ass. ”
Oh, how wrong he is. I will always mourn the loss of my relationship with my mother, but going no contact with my father was the best thing I did for myself. This dinner is just reinforcing that choice as the right one.
And now I’m really regretting not going out with my friends. They’re currently at a burlesque show not justifying their residency match requests to someone who they will never, ever actually impress.
“It doesn’t occur to you that if I have children, it might be with a partner who wants to be a stay-at-home parent?”
He laughs.
Because the concept of a father being involved in raising his children is so out of his realm of comprehension. Right.
I stare at him.
He scowls. “You’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“You would support some deadbeat asshole who doesn’t want to work?”
My mouth drops open. Snaps shut. Because my mother has never had a job. She didn’t even go to college. She is entirely financially dependent on him, and that’s exactly how he likes it, because it means she can never leave him.
Not that she’s ever shown any interest in doing that, either. That’s just my own pipe dream for her. My mother likes her hockey wife life just fine, she just wants there to be less strife between her daughter and her husband.
I realized that when I was sixteen years old, and I vowed to myself that I would never let myself get trapped in a similar dynamic. Being married to someone like my father is my worst nightmare.
A stay-at-home dad type would be my ideal, and I’d support him happily.
But I’m not justifying that choice to my father, so again, I just stare at him.
He sighs. “Just move home, Frankie. Stop being so stubborn.”
“Where is home exactly?”
His always hard-to-read expression is, of course, hard to read. “Don’t play dumb. It’s unbecoming. If you’re intent on training to be an emergency room doctor, the least you could do is be closer to your mother. She wants you to consider Buffalo for your residency.”
“You’ve been the coach there for a year and a half. I’m twenty-seven. How is that my home?”
“It’s where your family lives.”
Only my father could make that word sound so violent. Family. Like it’s a threat. I have to fight not to physically recoil.
“It has good hospitals,” he adds, although we both know that’s not something he cares about, and then adds the faintest of praise. “It’s a nice city.”
By that, he means he has an easy commute to the arena.
But I’m still stuck on the casual way he suggested that a city I have never lived in is my home, simply because it’s where he’s currently employed.
“I was raised in—” I start ticking the cities off on my fingers.
“Chicago, not that I remember any of that. Minneapolis for a year. Then Edmonton, LA and Toronto. The place I remember most is LA, did you know that? That’s probably why I decided to go to school on the west coast. This is my home.
I have one memory of sledding with you, either in Minneapolis or Edmonton.
That’s it. And then the rest of my late childhood was a blur of moving.
First, because you needed to keep playing hockey, even if it meant a new team every year.
And then because you wanted to have a coaching career. ”
I stumble over the last two words, because that would mean discussing Boston, and we don’t do that, even a decade later.
“So I don’t think it’s a huge ask for you to respect my career choices. But here we are, at a dinner I was reluctant to agree to, and you know that.”
“I know that your mother wanted this to happen, and I’m disappointed that you wouldn’t do that for her. Why do you always need to be like this?”
“Like what? Stand up for myself? I don’t like to be lectured, and you like to lecture, and it always goes like this.”
“Are you done?”
Hardly. “I’m not moving to a city where I’ve never lived, just to be close to a parent who has never in his entire life made any effort to be close to me, or to understand or listen to me. I’m not putting Buffalo on my match list, end of story.”
He doesn’t have a reply for that.
Of course he doesn’t. He never does.
I want to push my chair back and storm out, but that would give him a win. It would prove that I’m too emotional, too childish. He likes to give me enough rope to hang myself with, but I’m older now. More mature.
I’m going to be a doctor in a few months. And while I don’t need my parents to support my choices anymore—I—
With a choked little growl, I pick up the menu and glare at the choices in front of me.
Agreeing to have dinner with my estranged father was a mistake.
But it’s not one I’m going to exacerbate by causing a scene.
And he’s already pulled out his phone, so the part of dinner where he pretends to care about my life and gives me a lecture that he thinks passes for advice is over.
He can tell my mother that he tried, but I’m hopeless, and intent on living in the hellscape that is Los Angeles for the rest of time.
If I don’t order dessert, we can be done with this charade in forty-five minutes. I’ll find the nearest bar, order myself in a glass of Prosecco (pretending it’s expensive champagne), and re-commit to not doing this again for another three years. Or even better, maybe never.
My father and I have never, will never, have anything in common.