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That night the rain came down in sheets, and there wasn’t much he could do even if he wanted to. Terry Jr. was upstairs in his room, and when Ron had knocked Terry had told him to go away, and so he concluded that there’s not much step-fathering to be done from the other side of the door, anyway.
He retreated into the living room with Samanta, and she told him (again) that Terry will come around, and she told him (again) that he is enough just as he is, and that she loves him very much. And it makes him feel warm inside like when you have soup on a cold day and he also told her that he loves her very much, and she smiled, which was always nice.
She rests her head on his shoulder and they sit on the couch and he thinks that he should be watching whatever was on tv, but all he can do is look at how the shadows play in the dark corners of the room, how the rain pounds the roof and he can hear the floor creaking from where Terry Jr is walking around upstairs.
And though his life is very different now, it still doesn’t feel like his. It feels like you could take a pair of scissors and remove him from the scene entirely. Like maybe there are some black dotted lines around him to connect the dots and make him real, or he’s a color by number piece in some children’s coloring book.
He sees himself in his mind's eye, sitting on the couch with his wife, the tv casting them in a fluorescent hue. Their purple couch that they got on sale and the lights are off and the world outside is a cloudy gray swirl. The world is just as he knows it, but he himself is colored in like some clumsy drawing, a preschooler without fine motor skills, just a scribbled bunch of pale blues and tans, two black dots for eyes and a very wobbly smile. He feels like that, sometimes.
The world around him is very real. He knows this by the way the couch feels under his hand, by how his wife’s curly hair tickles his nose, and that Samantha will confirm it for him if he asks, and he appreciates that very much. He appreciates her very much. She is very warm and soft and pretty, and he wants to tell her as much, but she’s busy watching her movie and he doesn’t want to disturb her even though his arm is going a little numb from where it’s pinned.
He doesn’t mind it.
He wonders if Terry would like to join them, but then he gets the strange feeling that he’s asked that already and got the door slammed in his face. Maybe Terry changed his mind, though, or he’s waiting for Ron to ask him again. Maybe he just wants to keep being asked, just so he can keep saying no. And maybe that’s better than not asking at all.
But he doesn’t want to disturb Samantha, so he stares in the direction of the TV like he’s watching it, and he thinks about how if the signal goes down he might have to climb on the roof in the rain to fix the antenna. He thinks he saw that in a movie, once. And Samantha would thank him for it and Terry would come down from his room and sit on the couch next to him, and they would all be together because something was broken and he fixed it.
He closes his eyes, content with the mental image. He thinks it is a very step-fatherly thing to do to take a nap while watching a movie, and to his relief, sleep finds him quickly. Like maybe if didn’t fall asleep in front of the tv at 8pm he wouldn’t really be a dad, and that’s why Terry Jr doesn’t like him and then he’d have to leave and---
But he’s asleep before he completes the thought.
Everything was washed out in his memory, like the tide surged forward a little more every time he revisited it, but no matter how much color it lost, the scene always stayed the same. It was like watching through a sepia lens, like this was some old coyote western and they were all just playing roles.
And in the theatre of his mind he takes a seat. He likes to think of it as the movie theatre he went to on his 30th birthday, where he watched a movie he liked but didn’t understand and couldn’t remember the name of now. He imagines himself taking a seat there, and watching on the big screen as he sees the lakehouse his family used to visit in the summer.
It was a happy place not because he particularly liked the lake, or the mud, or the mosquitos, but because his father Willy would take the boat out for hours at a time, and he would sit at the kitchen table and make pierogies with his mother. He liked the repetitive work and he liked the silence, and his mom let him hum without telling him to be quiet and sometimes she put the radio on in the other room so they could hear it without it being too loud.
Everything good about the lake was kept inside that house, the sounds of the radio wafting in from the other room and flour on his palms and in the air. And in the evening they would eat dinner out on the deck and Ron would fidget in the hot humid air and his father had said one evening that it was about time he brought Ron out on the boat with him and taught him “how a real man lives.”
Ron didn’t particularly want to live on a boat, but if Willy wanted him to and that’s where all the Real Men lived, then he didn’t have a choice, and so he went.
There were many rules to living with Willy. There were rules like “shut the fuck up” and rules like “why are you so quiet, boy?” and then there were rules like always say Sir but never speak without being spoken to, but also don’t be too quiet. He quickly learned that Willy would be angry whenever he wanted, and he always wanted to be angry.
And oftentimes when he asked things like “where’s that good for nothing boy?” and “How many times do I have to tell you?” He didn’t really want an answer to those questions, and even if he did, then Ron was just being “smart”, which was confusing because some people said that being smart was a good thing.
Everything about Willy was confusing and frightening, and even questions like “What’s wrong with you?” and “Who told you that?” would probably end better if he had an answer, but he never did. He didn’t know what was wrong with him and didn’t know how to fix it, anyway.
But Willy woke him up very early the next morning, and he stumbled out onto the dock rubbing his eyes and carrying a bucket of tackle, and he was careful not to drop anything but Willy gave him That Look anyway, even though he was trying his best and didn’t even do anything wrong yet.
That familiar knot of anxiety and dread tightened in his stomach as he climbed onto the boat. The fog was still on the water as the sun hadn’t risen enough to burn it away yet, and the floor rocked and swayed under his feet. The air was cold on the water and he finds himself missing his mom and her comforting silence and wondering when he would get to meet the Real Men.
Finally Willy found a suitable spot for them, and without a word he snatched his line from Ron’s hands and cast it into the water, and Ron didn’t know what he was supposed to do so he sat on the boat and waited.
It was almost nice.
Every so often Willy would snap at him to do something and Ron would say Yes Sir, and then Willy would tell him to stop fucking mumbling so much, and by then Ron would be done doing whatever it was he needed to do and Willy would turn back to the lake.
It could be nice. It would be nice if Willy wasn’t Willy, or if Ron wasn’t Ron. Maybe if he knew how to live like Real Men did, or act like a real son, or be real at all. Maybe everyone else knew something he didn’t, and that’s why Willy was mad at him all the time.
But even in Willy’s worst moments, it at least felt good to be acknowledged. Even if Ron was a “sunovabitch” or a brat, at least his father talked about him at all. At least he existed in Willy’s eyes. And for his father, that was the best that Ron could hope for. And maybe, if he just tried harder, if he just fixed whatever was wrong with him, it would make Willy happy.
In the bucket Ron was holding there was a big fancy lure at the bottom of it. It was his father’s favorite. It was his prized possession. That lure made him happier than his son ever did. And sometimes, after Willy had a few drinks (just a few), he would say that someday Ron would have it. And it made Ron happy to know that he could hold a piece of his father’s happiness, even in a roundabout way.
Willy lands a fish onto the deck and grabs it with a quick, sure hand. With one solid motion he slams it against the front of the boat with a loud thud, and Ron holds himself very still and doesn’t flinch because Willy mocks him when he does.
His father, having brought the fish down hard and knocked the life cleanly out of it, grunts in satisfaction and lays the fish on the cooler next to Ron.
He has a moment to look at the fish. It’s eyes are glassy and gel-like, and it’s weird to think that there once was life and now there’s not. He remembers the crack it had made against the side of the boat and he feels bad for it, that it had to die and that Willy had killed it.
Willy grabs the knife at his belt and saws the fish open at the stomach with rough jerking motions, and Ron flinches back violently as if the knife had cut him, too. He sees the red, gooey insides of the fish and something twists in his stomach again at the sight of it. It was wrong , wrong for the fish to be dead and wrong for Willy to have killed it.
The fish was innocent, it was just living it’s fish life and maybe it also had a fish mom that cared about it. It didn’t have to die and then it had in such a senseless, violent way, at the hands of his father, hands now pink with fish guts.
The sight of it has Ron bent over the side of the boat, shuddering as he vomited into the water. He resurfaces when Willy yanks him back over the side of the boat, his lip curled with disgust.
“Fucking useless,” his father snarled, slamming the cooler shut and sweeping the guts into an empty bucket. “Last time I take you anywhere.”
Rons hands are shaking and the air smells sour and wrong, and his mouth is dry as Willy takes his favorite lure from the tackle box and fixes it to his line. “Thought I could do your mom a favor for the day,” Willy mutters, “give her a break for once. But, God, I forgot what you’re like .”
Ron leans his back against the boat as Willy casts him a withering look. “What are you, mute?” he snaps, before turning and tossing his line back out into the lake.
The morning sun had broken through the clouds and had begun baking down on the top of Ron’s head. Sometimes he likes the heat of it, but right now it makes the air stuffy, and he knows that if he moves a muscle he’ll have done something wrong.
He wishes he could jump off the boat and swim back to shore. He thinks the water must be nice and cool. But it would make his father mad and there was no outrunning Willy. He wouldn’t be safe at home, because the boat would come back to shore eventually. The boat would always come to shore. And Willy would always be there.
That was something he knew, something tied into the core of his being. Willy would always be watching him, and he would always be mad, and there would always be consequences. No matter how long he lived or where he went, those things would always be true.
But he likes to think that maybe if he could just do the right thing for once, say the right thing or be the son he was supposed to be, then it would make Willy happy. It seems like it would be easy to make Willy happy, but Ron never knows how to do it.
A loud splash breaks Ron from his thoughts, and he looks up to see his father braced against the side of the boat. He has a wild light in his eyes, a sort of frenzied, toothy grin, and he’s shouting, but not angry shouting.
The boat lurched under the force of whatever was at the other end of the line. Willy was shouting joyously, still, and the water was splashing violently, and if someone as strong as Willy couldn’t reel it in, then it must be a very big fish.
Ron felt lighter, and he grinned. A big fish would make his father happy. And Ron wouldn’t get sick this time, and they could be happy.
Willy is leaning over the side of the boat with a manic glint in his eyes as the fish continued to thrash. Ron inches closer, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that could make his father look so happy.
The boat rolled under his feet, pitching abruptly to the side and sending Ron crashing forward. And he stumbles, and his father shouts, and he holds out a hand to brace himself, and then he hears another splash.
He catches himself on the edge of the boat and his first thought is that the fish must have been caught, because all that splashing finally stopped.
But his father isn’t on the boat and he looks over to see an outstretched hand sinking below the surface, quickly lost to the lake’s murky depths, and he understands that the fish has been freed and won’t be killed by Willy, because Willy is gone. One last bubble reaches the surface and Ron stares at the water, half expecting Willy to rise from it, spitting and furious that his son had let him drown.
And maybe if Ron was smarter or faster or a better son, he would have jumped in after. Maybe he could have stretched his hand out and grabbed Willy without losing his balance, but the water is too far away when he reaches his hand out. But he doesn’t reach too far. He doesn’t want to fall in the water.
Ron leans away from the edge. The lake is quiet and still. There is no more slashing, no more whooping and hollering, no more cursing. He waits for a long time, but Willy doesn’t resurface.
And then he waits a little longer, just in case.
But eventually, the sun bakes down on him and even he has to admit that no one could hold their breath for that long, even if they did hate their son.
Later, he will wonder if when he stumbled and flung his hand out blindly, if he had accidentally landed on Willy’s back. He doesn’t think he did, but maybe he was remembering wrong. Willy was always telling him that he remembered things wrong, that he never did or said the things that Ron remembered him saying. So maybe it was like that?
He didn’t think he pushed his father. But he also didn’t jump in after him, or try to grab him. He just stood there frozen, like he always did. And so maybe not killing him was just as bad as watching him die. Somehow, this had to be Ron’s fault. If he was just a better son. If he could gut a fish. If he knew how real men lived.
But he doesn’t know any of those things. He finds his father’s favorite lure had floated close to the surface, and so he lowered himself into the water and grabbed it. He shoved it into his pocket and began to swim.
He was afraid that Willy would grab him by his ankles and drag him under. But he was dead. He was dead and maybe he would live at the bottom of the lake forever, coughing up lakewater and complaining about his good for nothing son.
But no hands reach up to grab him, and Ron swims for the shore. And he was right. The water was nice and cool.
The theatre in his mind ends with a Looney tune's “that’s all, folks!” and a raucous applause from someone that isn’t him, and Ron watches as the curtain swings shut even though this is supposed to be a movie theatre, and when he blinks he is back on the couch with his wife Samantha, who is snoring into his shoulder.
And the movie she had been watching had also ended, and Jurassic Park is coming up next. He listens to her steady snoring and he thinks about how he never has to see Willy again, and never will. The life he has now is something he wants, and Willy will never be able to touch it. But the thought doesn’t comfort him as much as it makes him feel sad inside.
Samantha stirs in her sleep and pulls herself closer to him. “You’re going to Terry’s soccer game tomorrow, right?” she murmurs, her eyes still closed, and Ron loves her for it. He loves her so much it makes his chest feel weird, which he thinks is normal. Or maybe it’s a heart condition.
“Yeah,” he says, “We’re going to carpool.”
Samantha hums in affirmation. “That’s good,” she says, “it’ll be good for you to spend time with him.”
He rests his hand on the small of her back. He really hopes so, because he wants to be a good step dad to Terry Jr. He’s trying really hard, even though he doesn’t quite know what to do. He can’t be a real dad just like he couldn’t ever be a real son, and he can’t be who his father wanted or who Terry Jr. wanted, but he tries anyway. He tries because he loves Samantha and Terry, and he wants to be the kind of dad that’s the opposite of Willy in every way.
But he thinks, deep down, that he’s still waiting for Willy to tell him what to do. He’s still waiting for the consequences of that fishing trip, because there was no outrunning Willy, and one day he will crawl to shore more enraged than Ron had ever seen him.
But he rests his chin atop Samantha’s head and chases the thoughts away. His father’s voice curdled in the back of his head for a brief moment, but he blocks it out. There’s always that version of him somewhere inside him, that crude childish drawing, that boy in the middle of the lake, swimming for shore.
But right now Jurassic Park is starting, and Samantha is curled around him, and he hears Terry Jr laughing on a call from upstairs. And he thinks that maybe this life could be okay, if he can settle down into it. Willy can stay at the bottom of the lake. Maybe he’ll take the lure with him tomorrow and give it to Terry if their team wins.
Maybe Terry would like that, and Ron could tell him about how his father wanted to give it to him, and then the lure could mean Ron and Terry instead of Ron and Willy. He thinks that would be nice.
And if not, then maybe he could just throw the lure into a river somewhere, and the water could carry it back to that lake where Willy was, and he could take it back and know that Ron didn’t need it anymore, he didn’t need it just like he didn’t need him.
It probably wouldn’t happen that way, but it was a nice thought.
But the rain falls on the roof in sheets, and his family is safe and happy, and Willy is somewhere far away. So Ron leans back into the couch, and takes a deep breath, and something within him unfurls, and he is happy.