Black Sheep - A Novel Excerpt

Three weeks before he died I sent him an email, my first attempt at contact in two years. Women’s intuition, I guess.

'Hey Dad', I said. 'Is this still your email? Can you tell me the meaning of life yet? That’s really the only thing I’m still struggling with'.

I added a ‘Ha-ha,’ for good measure.

I have one photo of my father in my apartment in Hollywood. It’s tacked on my fridge next to a Dalai Lama magnet, which I bought because I thought it would make me seem smart. Cast in shiny Kodak paper, that photo is a beautiful and horrible memory. I know it was taken when I was small, from the period I like to remember. He’s thin, he’s wearing a flannel shirt and bluejeans. He has salt and pepper hair.

“Hair you and your brother gave me,” he always liked to say.

He’s jumping over a small wrought-iron fence, one that I recognize from my elementary school. I picture him running late for some school event. Some stupid thing Matt and I were singing Easter songs at.

My mother took it.

There’s sometime in his face. His most common expression was one of furrowed skepticism, but that’s not how he looks here. He looks surprised. His mouth is open, like he’s saying something to us. He looks happy, a part of something, one of us.

That was as good as it got.

I wondered if I should take it down. If I should throw everything out that reminded me of him, if that would make things easier.

Then I thought, what if I have a daughter one day? She’ll want to know about her grand father. What will I have to show her? This picture? Will I tell her that romantic love had nothing on what we shared? Will I tell her that I probably only loved her father because he was in some ways, a version of my own? Will she know, how all kids know things they are never told, that once my father broke my heart it never really healed?

Like a good captain, he went down with his ship. He never wrote me back.

I was positive he reply, “Easy. The meaning of life is whatever you want it to be.”

In times like these, thoughts come easy. Answers do not.

I guess everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.