Then I didn’t tell them because I was madly finishing up my dissertation and planning for my dissertation defense where my committee would decide whether or not to award me my PhD. That was three weeks of fifteen-hour days where I guzzled coffee all day and NyQuil at night, terrified I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
The thing about my father is that he’s like the world’s most accomplished boxer: there’s no predicting which direction the hit will come from. After I passed my defense, I thought of every angle I could—every way in which telling him “hey, I just got my PhD” could be met with something more negative than all the things he’d been saying ever since I decided to go to college and then grad school in the first place. It seemed like a pretty safe announcement. So, that night, I stopped by my dad’s house, knowing I’d catch at least one of my brothers on the couch, drinking my dad’s beer. And if one of them knew something, all of them knew.
My mistake was showing up a little tipsy after drinks with some of my grad school friends, on my way to meet Ginger at her tattoo shop. I’m usually able to keep it together and take whatever my dad and brothers throw at me. And I’d certainly learned long before that if they saw me get even the littlest bit upset, they were like sharks smelling blood in the water.
My dad and Brian, the youngest of my three older brothers, were watching the Phillies when I got there and they barely looked up when I came in. My other brother, Colin, came into the room a minute later and didn’t acknowledge me at all. I told them about passing my defense at a commercial break. Brian looked up, confused, and said, “Didn’t you do that last year?” Typical. My dad said, “Well, that’s great, son. I’m glad you’ve gotten that out of your system. Now what?” Colin didn’t say anything at all.
It was nothing, really. He even said the word “great,” when I’d anticipated the possibility of something like, “Ah, so now you’re a snob officially.”
“Now what?” I said, and I could hear the nasty edge creeping into my voice that tries to scare people away before I fall apart. “Now I thought I’d take a few weeks off after working nonstop for the last twelve years.”
Brian looked up again, taking in my suit, and said, “Whoa, Danielle, what are you all dressed up for?” My brothers had called me Danielle before they ever knew I was gay, but learning I was gay had made it more pointed.
“Don’t call your brother that,” my dad snapped. It wasn’t out of protectiveness for me or anything, he just hates to be reminded of how I’m not the to-the-garage-born specimen of beer-swilling, sports-watching, car-fixing masculinity that he wishes I were.
Then the game came back on and they forgot I was there.
Needless to say, I didn’t tell them about the job then, either. And, okay, I may have gotten a little choked up as I slammed the door and walked to Ginger’s shop, but I blame it on exhaustion. The upside was that when I told Ginger about the latest installment of the Mulligan family assholism, she gave me an emergency tattoo to distract me. The fact that I woke up the next morning and saw that I’d asked her to tattoo “Let Sleeping Bears Lie” above my left hip suggests that I was feeling a bit more sentimental than I’d thought.
Which brings us to last night, when I finally told my dad I was leaving Philadelphia and moving to the middle of nowhere in Northern Michigan.
“Well?” Ginger asks again.
“He was fine with it,” I say.
“Which means?” Ginger presses.
“I told him about the job and he said great, at least I wouldn’t have to borrow money from him.”
“Not that you ever have,” Ginger chimes in, a familiar chorus.
“Not that I ever have. Then I told him it was in Michigan and he seemed confused.”
“Understandable.”
“I don’t actually think he ever considered the fact that jobs exist outside the county of Philadelphia.”
“So you never told him when you went to Michigan for the interview?”
“Nah. I think I told Sam I had an interview because I borrowed a tie, but that’s it.” Sam, my oldest brother, is married to Liza, a really sweet woman—god knows what she sees in him—who does things like invite me over to dinner once a month because she cares about family and stuff. Sam… goes along with it. “Anyway, he just did his handshake-shoulder-pat thing and said good luck.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah. Well, no, he looked under the hood of my car and gave me twenty bucks for gas.”
“Which is, like, your dad for ‘I love you,’ though, right?”
“Yep. Just think: some kids only get told things like, ‘I love you, son,’ or ‘I’ll miss you,’ which aren’t actually useful for anything, whereas I get a tune-up and gas money. Lucky me.”