Black Sheep

"Shit, Marl, I’m sorry. Should I have told you when you suggested we meet here?”

“No. It’s okay. I knew he came here a lot...what’d he have to say?”

“Well, I asked him about you. I realized afterwards maybe I shouldn’t have. I just wasn’t sure what else to talk to him about, you know? He was pretty funny. He cracked a couple jokes. It was a pretty short conversation. I just asked him to get you to call me and then I felt really stupid for saying that after.”

“What’d he say when you brought me up?”


“Nothing really. That he would get you to call me. I thought maybe he didn’t know that I knew. He didn’t seem angry or anything.”

“How did he seem?”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“Sad.”

“Sad how?”

“Alone.”

I am getting the shit kicked out of me.

“Can we not talk about my father anymore?”


“Okay. I’m sorry. What do you want to talk about? What do you want to do? We can do anything you want.”

...

“Look, you can pretend that you’re not totally fucked by the fact that Dad died and things were left between you how they were but I know the truth.”

“How is this different for me? He was horrible to you, too.”

“I know that, but I made my peace with him. We...were okay when he died. In our own fractured way.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me right now.”

“Doing what?”

“Attacking me. I’m drunk all the time? Fuck you, Matt. You’re a fucking drug addict.”

He grabs me by the shoulders.

“Marla, listen to me. You can insult me all you want but you are fucked right now and you aren’t going to get better anytime soon. You can’t duck this.”

“I’m not ducking it.”

“No, but you’re trying.”

I can feel my eyes getting wet. Not now, not tonight, when things are light-hearted.

“Its just...why could you two work things out? Why didn’t he want to with me?”

“Well, we never worked them out, not really.”

“You know what I mean. ”

He nods. He stands before me, strong, silent. He looks exactly like my father did to me before I got lost in his malformed soul.

“How am I supposed to deal with this, Matt? I always somewhere thought if I got married, or if I had a kid... one day out of the blue, things would just work themselves out. That can never happen now. Things ended how they were. Broken. That was the end of our story.”

“I know.”

“No, no, I don’t think you do. When Dad was terrible to you, it pretty was one-sided.”

“I wasn’t easy.”

“No, but you were...”

“I was sick, you can say it.”

I swallow. I don’t want him to feel ridiculed. I don’t think I’m better than him.

“I let it happen like this, I had a hand in it. I ruined my relationship with Dad, too. Do you understand that guilt?”

Matt takes me by the arm.

“You’re not guilty.”

“I fucked everything up in a spectacular way.”

We stand in silence for awhile. He takes a smoke out, his hands shaking. Halfway through he looks back at me.

“Hey, Marla?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m here, you know. You need me and I’m here.”

I nod.

I sit on the concrete for the next fifteen minutes and slowly finish my drinks. I tell myself that I have to believe what my father always told me.

The belly of every black thing is white.

“What are we going to find out next? That he was a secret agent?” he asks.

I don’t have it in me to laugh.

“I just feel ripped off, you know?” I hear the sounds of weeping, heart beating, heartbroken, heartbreaking, my voice cracking. “Why didn’t he tell me he was married in Belfast? I would have understood how angry he was. Things could have been different.”

Matt hugs me.

“Don’t tell anyone I’m crying.”

“I won’t.”

“Are you crying over Dad?”

"Over it all.”

My brother stays with me for a few more minutes and I watch him as he walks back into the bar. The shock of his face reverberates off the sidewalk and hurts me, so I decide to leave, too.