“My dude. When we get home, you are taking a shower and really washing your locs. When was the last time you used shampoo? What did I tell you about taking care of them?”
He gave her a sheepish look out the side of his face. “I don’t want them to come loose.”
“If you do it right, they won’t. That’s why I gave you the cap and taught you what to do.”
“Mom. It’s not a cap. It’s pantyhose.”
Marcella laughed. True, she’d made him a wave cap out of an old pair of black pantyhose, but that shit worked. “Okay, we’ll stop at Target on the way home and get you a real wave cap, okay?”
“Thankyou. Finally!”
“’Finally?’ All you had to do was ask, you dork.”
“You want to stay for supper?” her dad asked. “I’m low on groceries, but we could order something.”
Normally, Marcella would snap up an offer of free food and hanging out with her dad, who, though square as an Amazon box, was a lot of fun, full of dad jokes and enthusiasm for anything Ajax liked. But something had been leaning on Marcella’s head for a while now, and she’d decided she wanted to talk to her kid about it. Alone.
“I wish we could, but we’ve got to get back. Maybe next weekend? I’m not working on Sunday.”
Her dad grinned. “That sounds good. We can barbecue. Might be the last good weekend for it.”
“Perfect. I’ll see if Vonny and Chase can join us, too.”
“God, I’d love that. I hardly ever get to see both my girls at the same time anymore.”
There was a genuinely melancholy tinge to her father’s words, and Marcella was surprised. He tended to keep his feelings pretty close to his chest, especially negative or painful ones. Marcella patted Ajax’s back. “Pack up, tiger.” Then she went back to her dad and gave him another hug. He squeezed her tightly. “Are you lonely, Daddy?”
“Nah, I’m fine. I just love my family.” With a little sigh and another squeeze, he leaned back and added, “Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be, either. After working ten or twelve hours a day for almost fifty years, it’s hard to fill all my hours now.”
She had sympathy for him; of course it was difficult to shift from an onerously busy life to an empty one. But she also thought of her mother, clawing her way to retirement, living as skinny as she could to make sure she could build enough of a nest egg to beableto retire and continue living that skinny life, but with her time finally her own.
Her mother had been the one to ask for the divorce, and they were happier all around because of it, so Marcella didn’t begrudge her father his successful life or his melancholy in retirement.
She kissed his cheek and went to help Ajax pack up.
~oOo~
She and Ajax stopped at TGI Friday’s for supper. For a while, they continued the talk they’d started in the car, about all the flora and fauna he and his Paps had seen in the woods that weekend. He brought his Nikon DSLR—a tenth-birthday gift from Paps—into the restaurant and, in typical Ajax style, had a long, involved story for every photo he showed her.
Then, after their food had arrived, Marcella tried to ease the conversation in the direction of the topic she wanted to raise.
Not for the first time, or the tenth, or the hundredth in the years of her son’s life, she’d been thinking about Ajax and the hole in his life where a father belonged. This most recent contemplation was different in that it was Eight Ball specifically she was thinking about as the shape of that hole. Since he’d ghosted her when she was pregnant, showing absolutely no interest in being his son’s father—in fact, being actively hostile to the notion—Marcella had worried about the father question more generally—as in, did she need to find a father for her kid. Always, she’d landed on no—in the first place, a relationship predicated on the man’s rightness as a father before his rightness as a partner was doomed from the go. In the second place, Ajax had Chase and Paps as great father figures. And finally, Ajax had said more than once that he didn’t care if he had a father. He didn’t want one who didn’t want him.
But now Eight was back, sort of, and expressing an interest. Her son was only ten, but he was a levelheaded, thoughtful kid who had all kinds of opinions about the world. Was she doing him a disservice not to tell him his father was asking about him? Was he old enough to decide for himself whether to see him or not?
She’d been telling herself she was right to say nothing.
But that conviction flipped back and forth. As her boy’s mother, Marcella had learned that when she struggled to figure out the right thing to do, trusting him to understand was usually the best course. Sometimes, he even helped her work out appropriate discipline for himself.
So she moved the conversation to one of his friends whose father lived out of town and nudged the seemingly aimless talk until she could ask, “Do you ever think about your dad at all?”
Ajax looked up from his quesadilla. “I don’t have a dad.”
“No, I know. But you know what I mean.”
He shrugged. Playing with a string of melted cheese, he said, “I try not to think about him. When I do, I get mad, and that’s dumb.”
Her levelheaded kid. “If you ever had a chance to talk to him, what would you say?”