Chapter Three: One-On-One
Smoke
I was alone with my son for the first time. Naomi dropped him off this morning and we’d watched one of his superhero movies, one about a man that built a metal suit to fight bad guys. I wanted to like it, but there was a reason I hadn’t seen it before, even though it had been released years ago. I just wasn’t into fantasy and these movies were all about that.
Now, it was mid-afternoon, and we were in my garage. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce him to my favorite pastime. Riding my motorcycle.
Well, polishing the motorcycle.
Growing up, my dad had instilled in me a belief that cleanliness was next to godliness. He’d been an officer in the army and he ran a tight ship at home. The man was the reason my own house was kept in the same condition to this day, and it carried over to other things, like my bike. I took a lot of pride in keeping it looking good.
I had a couple of microfiber rags and a bottle of spray polish I was using to wipe down the gas tank and side panels. The two of us were sitting beside the bike together. I had walked Gavin through the process, trying to get him interested in something I had always found so fascinating, but I could tell that it was another missed connection between us. He had helped me polish the chrome parts of the bike and degreasing the chain, and he listened to me talk about the moving parts, explaining the difference between chain-driven, belt-driven, and shaft driven bikes, walking him through the way the moving parts worked differently on the various machines. But it became the reverse position we were in when he’d been running through all his superhero movies. I had tried to be interested, just as he was trying to be into motorcycles.
But some things couldn’t be faked.
I couldn’t help wondering if he’d be interested in bikes if he’d grown up around them. If he’d grown up around me.
A familiar bitterness flooded me. I appreciated Naomi’s apology, but it was hard to move past what she’d done. I felt like I’d been robbed of something precious and now, I couldn’t even find common ground with my own son.
“You know, I got my first bike when I was twenty one, about a year after I met your mom. I had thought it looked like so much fun to ride a motorcycle, but honestly, I’d never even ridden on one when I bought it. It was just a little Honda, a two-fifty. Not much power and I dropped it at least a half a dozen times while I was learning.” I smiled. “I even broke off one of the side view mirrors, but damn it, I learned to ride.”
I realized too late that I had cussed, but it was too late to take the words back. I just had to hope Gavin hadn’t picked up on it.
“You had to teach yourself? You didn’t have a dad either?”
“No, I have a dad. He’s just not a rider. And you have a dad too. You have me, and you will have me from now on. I’ll teach you whatever you want to know. How to tie a tie. Drive a car. Whatever.”
“So, is your dad my...grandpa?”
“Yeah.” I gave him a small half-smile. “I suppose he is.”
I didn’t have a close relationship with my dad. He was always an uptight man, the kind that disapproved of anything he deemed as frivolous. I was the type of man who enjoyed a good time, I liked to live life on my own terms. To say that our opposing philosophies caused friction would be an understatement.
I stood from the concrete floor of the garage so I could wipe down the small windshield on the motorcycle, getting rid of any bug guts splattered there.
Gavin stood too, but he made no move to continue to help me. “Do you think that maybe I could go inside and watch some TV until mom picks me up?” he asked, looking toward the door leading into the house.
I suppressed a heavy sigh. “Yeah,” I said, keeping my eyes on the windshield. “Go ahead.”
Gavin didn’t hesitate to disappear inside the house.
I took a break from polishing the bike. Walking over to the workbench I’d built myself when I bought this house five years ago, I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my toolbox. It was old, battered, and half-empty. I’d stashed them there as a backup so long ago that I couldn’t remember when. But they’d work. I could take the edge off of my nerves and God, that first puff would feel so damn good…
But no, I was already screwing this whole fatherhood thing up. The last thing I needed to do was derail my progress to quit smoking. So, I turned to the small trash can next to the bench and tossed the pack inside.
Not one to leave a job undone, I picked up my rag to finish polishing the bike.