He slapped his chest hard, so much it stung. Burned. But nothing hurt worse than what Tommy had taken him through. The abysmal void that was never filled, only grew wider, deeper, and darker. “I felt like a damn fool, tellin’ kids at school that my father had been a famous baseball player.”
“All fathers make stuff up like that, Axel. It was just a joke.” The man offered a choppy, stilted laugh.
“It wasn’t a joke to me, Tommy. You told me that with a straight face. You told me I wasn’t throwin’ the ball right, and that you could teach me because you were a professional. Then came the long, elaborate story—a bunch of bull. You didn’t even get in the minor leagues. You can barely hold a catcher’s mitt right. The kids were makin’ fun of me at school ’cause Danny’s papi came over, tellin’ the truth about it all. They said you were a high school dropout, trailer trash, and a loser. My friends and peers accused me of lying, but all I was doing was repeating what you told me. I believed you! For five seconds, I was proud of you! Not because of the lie you told about being famous, but because that was something I thought we could bond over. You teaching me how to play baseball. You never said another word about it, and you never tried to help me get better at it, either. That’s when I realized the kids at school were right. You’d lied…”
“All right, Axel! So you want me to admit I was a bad father? Okay, fine! I was a horrible father! Ya happy now?! Does that change anything?”
“…You never came to any of my games. You’d lie and say you were sick or had to work, and come to find out, you was at the damn bar by eleven in the mornin’, or on top of some woman that wasn’t my mama. Your wife at the time.”
He glanced over at English, who was looking down at her phone. She’d removed herself from their space. Somehow, someway, she’d drifted away, allowing him to feel as if she was close, but not in the midst of it all. She looked undisturbed—at peace, even. It was unnerving, yet comforting.
“You believe everything your mama told you, as usual. Your mother lied on me, Axel. I am not trying to say I was perfect, but neither are you! And neither was she!”
“Mama never outright, deliberately lied to me, Tommy. I can trust her.”
“Whoop dee fuckin’ doo!” Daddy cracked up laughing, rolled down his window part way, and let the ashes fly out. “Is the air bothering you, sweetheart? Is it too cold in here now?” he asked English.
“No, sir. I’m fine. Thank you,” English responded, not looking up from her phone.
“Go on, Axel. Go off and yell at me, ’cause you best believe, I won’t be speaking to you for a long while after this shit! I have had it with you!”
“Do ya promise you won’t be speaking to me again, or is this just one of your many thousands of lies? If you never opened your lyin’ mouth again, that would be the best damn gift yet!”
“Axel, baby, come on. Let’s try to—”
“Come on nothin’, English. He doesn’t want to speak to me once I get him home and he’s done using me. It’ll be only a few weeks before he’s ringing me up again, pretending like none of this happened, asking for some money so he can buy a bunch of scratch off tickets, or booze. And let me make something clear,” he went back to addressing his sorry excuse for a father, “you can bash mama all you want. She never tried to pretend to be someone she wasn’t.”
“Here you go again…”
“You’re damn straight here I go again, because we’re not going to talk ever again after this, remember? So I’m going to have my say. Mama isn’t perfect, but she’s honest, and she tried to be a good mother. No, she is a good mother, despite the hard times we had, some of them on account of you. I know who she is! Mama’s favorite color is green. She had a mutt dog named Furball that she loved to death. Her mother, my grandma Maybelle, had eleven children, and five of them died before the age of twenty-five, due to workin’ in the coal mines.
“Mama went to college three times but didn’t finish because she was raising two children and had no money. She’s good with numbers, and wanted to get an accounting degree. She’s never been farther than Ohio, but would like to go see Las Vegas one day, just for fun. She thinks it looks pretty on TV. I know a lot about mama, and barely anything about you, and that’s the whole problem.”