Father's Day (17 page)

J
ASON MET
R
ITA
Vega at an Irish pub in Hicksville.

She was playing pool with a few girlfriends. When it was time for more drinks, she came to the bar with her money out. The bartender was stacking glasses in the back, so she made small talk with the man at the bar who had a tattoo on his neck. Her hair was long and very dark.

By the end of the night, she'd written her number for Jason in lipstick on a cocktail napkin.

They saw each other once the following week, then a few days after that. She learned to ride on the back of Jason's motorcycle by locking her arms around him and leaning in to curves. Sometimes they went to Jones Beach. Their favorite time was twilight. They took walks on the sand, with Jason stooping to pick up shells because Rita collected them. Once he found a giant clam with so much seaweed it looked like hair.

“That's so weird!” Rita said.

“You think everything's weird!” Jason said, and tried to chase her with it, but was laughing too hard to run.

In late summer, they would collect driftwood from the dunes and build a fire. Rita brought things to eat, like hot dogs or meatball sandwiches. When it was dark and they were the only ones left, Jason would spread out a blanket. When they got underneath, Rita let him take her clothes off, then touch her, then slowly get on top.

All Jason could hear was the sea, then Rita saying his name over and over as though she were calling him, but he was there.

She had been born in Costa Rica and came to Long Island as a little girl, where she was raised Catholic in a Spanish neighborhood. Jason sometimes heard her praying at night in a low whisper. She had a tattoo on her arm of her grandparents' names, and often painted her nails black or sometimes dark green.

Back then Jason was working in a furniture warehouse, packing plywood parts and hardware into cardboard boxes for people to assemble at home. It paid just over minimum wage but included benefits and a product discount. The manager didn't mind that Jason had been in prison—said he believed in second chances.

Rita was working as a waitress at an Italian restaurant where the food was served family style. Jason sometimes stopped by the restaurant when Rita was working—ordering appetizers and beer until Rita's boss said that family style wasn't designed for one person and Jason could meet her in the parking lot when her shift ended.

Family,
Rita said, was to her the most important thing in the world, so when she found out Jason had a younger brother, she wanted to meet him, get them talking again—but Jason was against it.

Rita liked scary movies, drive-through restaurants, and free refills. Sometimes they just sat in the car and talked about nothing.

If anyone hit on Rita in a bar while Jason was in the restroom, he would come out, put his arm around the guy, and say,
“How about me instead, baby?” Which made Rita laugh and gave the guy a chance to laugh too.

Rita didn't mind that Jason had a criminal record. And when he talked about how things were for him growing up, she held his hand. He had never cried so much in front of anyone. Rita said it meant he was learning to trust.

She planned to attend community college after she'd saved enough money and her English was better. She wanted Jason to get his high school diploma and open a custom motorcycle shop—said he was wasting his life in a factory job.

Jason listened to her. Thought about it. Had to admit he'd be happy working with bikes.

“It's us now,” she would say, and always went with him to Dairy Barn when they ran out of milk or beer.

One day Rita said she'd show him Costa Rica. He could meet her grandmother and grandfather. Swim in a turquoise sea. Pick fruit to eat. Take walks along the road in wet weather, because rain makes the jungle sing, she said.

After six months together, Jason told Rita she should move in with him, because she was always there anyway and her landlord was an asshole.

Jason wanted to meet her mother and father, but Rita said they were quite religious and didn't even know about her tattoo, or that she went to bars.

Jason was in a band then, and Rita came to his rehearsals.

One night when he got home late from work, Rita jumped up off the couch and said she was ready to quit drinking and smoking, and maybe Jason would be too.

He laughed, thought it was a joke, lit a cigarette right
there. But Rita didn't laugh, or punch his arm, or grab his hair and kiss him.

The next night they argued about it. Jason lost his temper.

“What's gotten into you all of a sudden? Is it this God shit?” he said, and stormed out.

A few days later, they were watching a movie on TV when Jason lit a joint. Rita asked if he would smoke on the patio, but he told her it was his house and he had a right to smoke in it. She started crying and locked herself in the bedroom. Jason shouted at her through the door then tried to kick it down.

A week after that, Jason came home very drunk. He was already angry about something and Rita said she'd had enough. When Jason went to the refrigerator to get another beer, Rita blocked it with her body and tried to kiss him. Jason reached behind her and pulled on the handle with such force that Rita flew forward and hit the edge of a cupboard. When she ran to the bathroom holding her chin, Jason just stood there.

“What'd I do?” he kept shouting. “What'd I do?” Then he looked down and saw spots of blood on the tiles. “What'd I do?”

In the morning they both cried about it. Jason said he'd change, try and drink less, not get so angry. But another night, instead of picking Rita up after her shift, Jason rode his motorcycle over to a bar his father used to like because they stayed open past closing. The jukebox was loud, and the music made him feel invincible. By the end of the night, he couldn't even walk, so the bartender let him sleep on an old couch out back near the ice machine. In the morning, Jason had breakfast in a diner on Jericho Turnpike and went straight to work.

When he got home that night, Rita's stuff was all gone. He sat on the bed taking shots of whiskey. Then he smoked a pack of Camels, waiting for something to happen, but nothing happened, and he fell asleep in his clothes.

In the morning he reached his arm across the bed and realized that Rita was gone. That he had lost her.

He went to all her favorite bars and restaurants. No one had seen her. Jason's disappointment hardened into rage, and he began riding faster and more dangerously on his motorcycle, drinking in the parking lot before work, and talking viciously to the people who cared about him.

When the factory floor manager called Jason into the office for a chat, Jason threw a chair at him, then walked out.

Things got worse. One by one, the bartenders at his favorite spots told him not to come in anymore. He kept getting in fights, hurling insults at people he didn't know.

One afternoon he ripped his telephone out of the wall and tossed it into the yard. One of the neighbors' children was learning to ride a bike, and saw it land in the grass.

Three months later, a letter arrived.

Jason recognized Rita's handwriting and cracked open a fifth of whiskey. When the bottle ran dry, he washed away the bitter taste with a twelve-pack of beer, making a list in his head of the things she had done to spite him. The more he drank, the more imaginative he became, until the string of her offenses was so long that it choked the sentences inside the envelope before he'd even opened it and read them.

When he dropped his beer on the floor, some terrible fury tore through his body, and he ripped up the unopened letter, then burned the pieces until they were nothing.

In the morning he ran his fingers through the ashes of what remained, then cursed and cursed as he stumbled through the house looking for something to break the dryness of his mouth.

When another letter came a month later, Jason was already drunk, and he convinced himself that opening it would be like tearing open an old wound. Nothing could come of reading it but misery, he told himself. She had only been
pretending
to love him, after all. He remembered her getting upset when he lit a cigarette in his own house. He remembered the day she blocked the fridge. How could he have a woman like that in his life? What was she hoping to prove with these letters? And what more was she capable of? This letter was thicker than the last one, so Jason burned it whole on the grill, with a fork in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other, humming a song by Guns N' Roses.

Jason thought he was over her, until a year later, he went to a concert at Jones Beach with a few of his friends. They got there early with coolers and camped on the sand. After a few drinks, Jason went off by himself. He stood looking out to sea, at the endless water, remembering how Rita had held his hand. The shape of her body under the blanket. The softness of it. Her laughter at being touched, the sound of his name in her mouth.

He had told her things about his life. About what had happened to him in prison. Even his father fixing the chain on his motorcycle a week before he died.

He had told her about Steve, the success his brother was having and how much he missed him.

Halfway through the concert, Jason got so drunk that se
curity had to carry him out. He screamed at them from the parking lot, then tried to get back inside. They watched him writhe outside the gate, watched the veins in his neck push out.

Jason wanted to ride home and set fire to the couch, or rip the sink off the wall, but couldn't find his bike keys.

While he was on the ground looking for them, he saw something move. It turned out to be a seagull, but next to where it landed was a pay phone. There was a quarter in the pocket where Jason kept his cigarettes, and he felt for the shape of it.

When he put the coin in and dialed Rita's number, there was a click and the coin disappeared. He waited, then pushed down on the metal tongue; nothing happened. His coin did not come back. Two security guards were still watching through the fence with their arms folded. Jason took the phone receiver in both hands and brought it down with such violence that the earpiece split in two.

“That's your fuckin' heads!” he screamed, hoping they would come out into the parking lot and fight with him. Then he felt very thirsty and wondered where he could get a drink. As he was searching for another coin, one of his friends appeared.

“Jason, man, I've been looking for you everywhere, asshole.”

“Can't find my keys,” Jason told him. “Musta lost 'em. Got no money, neither, can't find my wallet.”

“I've got your frickin' keys right here in my pocket. You're way too fucked up to do anything. I'll drive. I always wanted to take your chopper for a spin.”

“Help me use the phone,” Jason said. “I gotta call somebody.”

But his friend just stood there staring at the broken receiver. It occurred to Jason that Rita had moved, and he remembered her number had been disconnected for some time.

When Jason's friend pulled on his arm to get up, he said he didn't want to leave the parking lot until he'd had it out with the guards. But his friend convinced him the cops were coming. “C'mon Jason, let's hit some bars,” he said. “Let's go party.”

Jason thought about it and said he wanted to be dropped outside Rita's old apartment. He didn't care if she was there or not. He'd finally get to have it out with her landlord.

Then, on the Meadowbrook Parkway, his foot got caught in the back wheel of his own bike, and he flew off at sixty miles per hour, flopping along the tarmac like a rag doll.

W
HEN
H
ARVEY WAS
feeling better, Jason took her bowling to make up for missing
The Lion King
and McDonald's.

It was the middle of the day, and the parking lot was empty. Harvey had been wanting to go bowling for months, ever since she'd stayed up late to watch it live from Las Vegas on ESPN.

The woman at the counter was reading
Newsday
. “Whaddya need?” she said.

“Uh, we'd like to bowl,” Jason said ironically.

The woman looked up from the newspaper. Her eyes were very small and her cheeks had red veins in them. “Cash only.”

Harvey was so excited, she kept pulling on Jason's arms.

The woman asked for one of their shoes apiece, then carried them over to a cupboard. She returned with two pairs of tattered bowling shoes in red and cream. There was a vending machine with disposable socks, she said, and a long rack of balls on the back wall had six-pounders for kids.

“You want your names on the monitor?”

“No, thanks,” Jason said.

“Yes!” Harvey interrupted. “Yes, yes, we do.”

When Jason asked the woman to put him on as
DAD
, she warmed up and said each letter aloud as she typed it into a computer. “And what about you, hon?”

“Strawberry Shortcake, please,” Harvey said.

“That's too long. How about Shortcake?”

“Or Strawberry?” Harvey said.

The woman nodded. “Lane twenty-six.
DAD
and
STRAWBERRY
. Have fun.”

They took their bowling shoes over to a bench and laced them up.

Their lane was at the far end, near the lockers. There were blue molded-plastic chairs and a hook where they could hang their coats. Harvey was carrying their two remaining regular shoes, and when they sat down, put them next to each other. “There,” she said. “Now they can make friends, and you can't tell me to put them away.”

“It's birthday bowling today,” Jason said. “You can do anything you want.”

“Even curse?”

Jason looked up from what he was doing. “Sure. What is it you want to say?”

“Shit, stupid, bitch, shitting, hell, jerk, bitch, stupid, shit, jerk
.
”

Jason smiled. “Feels good don't it?”

There were names stenciled on most of the bowling balls. The one Jason chose said
SAM MORRIS III
.

Harvey went first. The ball was heavier than she'd thought. Jason told her to get a six pounder, but she wouldn't.

When she got to the foul line, she stopped dead and plonked her ball into the lane with both hands.

Jason looked at her. “Watch the pins.”

“Dad!” she kept saying. “Just let me do it
my way
.”

Their lane was near the café, and Jason could read the menu from his seat. “Want to get the share platter?”

Harvey shrugged. “I'm not hungry.”

“It's your birthday.”

But Harvey said she wasn't hungry yet.

A man inside the café was putting frozen french fries into little bags, then weighing each bag on a scale.

When her ball kept lodging in the side gutter, Jason said she could take his turns to practice, but Harvey just went on releasing each ball with both hands at the line, like a watermelon.

“You have to swing your arm back,” Jason said. “That gives it momentum.”

Harvey sighed and fell into a seat. “It's too hard,” she said. “And there's grease in the holes!”

“Grease?”

“Yes, Dad!” Harvey exclaimed, holding up her fingers. “Grease!”

There were disco lights and a disco ball on the ceiling, but no music because it was only lunchtime.

Jason had hoped to bring Harvey birthday bowling on the motorcycle, but he hadn't found parts for the swing arm yet, so all Harvey could do was sit on it in the garage. She had asked if, when it was finally done, she could get a black leather jacket, and a helmet with Strawberry Shortcake on the side? Jason said he'd seen SpongeBob helmets but that anything could be airbrushed at the chop shops in Queens, so maybe they could find a way.

Whenever Jason's ball rolled into the gutter or struck a single pin, Harvey threw her head back with laughter. “This is
your face when you miss,” she said, gritting her teeth in mock rage. “It's so weird!” When she opened her mouth to laugh, Jason noticed that some of her teeth were dark and crooked.

There was music playing on the loudspeaker now, and a few of the disco lights threw blues and reds into their lane.

When a group of bowlers came in, Harvey said they had to be a team because of the matching sweat suits. They stood watching Harvey and Jason bowl for a few moments, then unzipped their bowling bags and started stretching out. Harvey pretended to stretch too, but couldn't stop laughing.

“When was the last time you went to the dentist?” Jason asked her.

“None of your beeswax, Dad.”

“Did Wanda take you?”

She seemed to be thinking about it but then got distracted. “My shoe is ripped.”

Jason felt anger balling up inside him. He was going to tell her she'd better answer because her teeth looked pretty bad, and you have to look people in the eye when they talk to you . . . but as he opened his mouth to release the words, the impulse to attack dissolved, and he remembered they were birthday bowling, and that she was probably worried about her teeth, but didn't know what to do and was afraid to tell anyone.

Sitting there with his fingers in the slots of a bowling ball, waiting for his name to appear on the monitor, Jason realized that something had changed. That
he
had changed and was no longer at the mercy of sudden, violent impulses.

On their second game, Harvey hit the pins a few times. The music was louder too, and she was dancing. Jason ordered apple
turnovers from the café, and they ripped bits off between turns. Whenever Jason got a strike, the monitor over his head flashed:

STRIKE DAD!

Harvey made fists and drummed on Jason's back. “Strike Dad!” she cried. “Strike Dad! Strike Dad!”

During the fourth and final game, Jason and Harvey found they were throwing more balls in the gutter. They'd been bowling for over two hours, and their arms had nothing left. The place had filled up and the café was overflowing with high school kids in backpacks sucking down soda.

T
HAT NIGHT, WHILE
Harvey was getting ready for bed, Jason said he wanted to brush her teeth.

“No way.” She scowled. “I don't ask to brush
your
teeth.”

The next day Jason went to get advice. From Mrs. Gonzales, who couldn't believe he'd never taken her to a dentist. “What about the eye doctor?” she asked. “You should take her there too. Hector needed lenses very early.”

Wanda had mentioned it a few times, but Jason figured that Harvey's baby teeth were going to fall out anyway, so he'd never seen the point in getting them checked.

The dentist recommended by Mrs. Gonzales was on the second floor of an office building in Westbury, not far from where they'd bowled a week earlier in Mineola. The waiting room was full of moms telling their kids to shut up. There was only one seat free, and Jason told Harvey to sit in it.
There was a pile of magazines on a low table, and a messy basket of children's books with cardboard pages that had been chewed on.

When they arrived, the receptionist asked Jason to fill out some paperwork. Jason pored over questions about Harvey's medical history—trying to remember if Steve had anything wrong with his mouth, because Mrs. Gonzales said stuff like this runs in families.

In the box for health insurance information, Jason wrote
CASH
, then felt in the pocket of his motorcycle jacket for the roll of bills he'd been saving to buy the swing-arm kit.

Jason was the only man in the waiting room. He had taken off his skull rings and was wearing the smart black button-down shirt and blue sweatpants.

When they were finally told to go in, Harvey had to get her teeth cleaned and her mouth X-rayed, so it took a while before they could meet the dentist.

When Dr. Sarah appeared holding transparent sheets, she asked Jason how long it had been since Harvey's teeth had been examined. Jason didn't know and explained that Harvey had lived with him for only the past few years.

Dr. Sarah made a note. She told Jason that from now on, Harvey should come in at least every six months.

“Does she floss?”

“No,” Jason told her. “We brush instead.”

The dentist said that Harvey was naturally missing a tooth, and felt she would need orthodontics right away. She also had two cavities in the upper teeth, which could be filled immediately.

Harvey gripped her father's hand as Dr. Sarah adminis
tered the first of two shots. Jason could feel her body shaking as the needle broke the gum.

When the dentist went to get something, Harvey sat up and tried to get out of the chair. But Jason held her down. After a while, Harvey said she couldn't feel her lip, and the doctor returned wearing a surgical mask.

Jason took her hand again. “Look at me,” he said. “Just look at my eyes.”

By the time Dr. Sarah had finished filling Harvey's cavities, there was no one else in the waiting room, and the receptionist had her coat on.

“How much?” Jason asked.

“Normally, we just bill whatever your insurance doesn't cover.”

“But I don't have insurance. I've brought cash.”

“Oh,” the receptionist said. “Let me go talk to Dr. Sarah.”

She returned a few minutes later with Dr. Sarah, who had changed into her everyday clothes.

“No insurance, Dad?” Dr. Sarah said.

Jason held up the role of bills.

“May I ask how much you budgeted?”

“Four hundred cash.”

The receptionist looked at Dr. Sarah. “What do you want to do? Should we call Dr. Romanov?”

“No,” Dr. Sarah said. “I'll explain it to him when he comes in tomorrow.” The receptionist took Jason's money and wrote out a receipt for four hundred dollars.

“Try and get some dental insurance,” Dr. Sarah told him. “Orthodontics aren't usually covered, but it still helps with scheduled visits.”

“Orthodontics is braces, right? Retainers and all that?”

“Right,” Dr. Sarah said. “But call that number I gave you earlier, and they'll explain the process, payment plans, and so on. Dr. Foster is the best orthodontist in the area. And don't wait, Dad—for Harvey's sake, make an appointment immediately. Tomorrow, if possible.”

On the way home, they stopped at McDonald's for milkshakes, and Jason sweet-talked the cashier into putting an extra toy in the bag.

When it was time for bed, Harvey's mouth was still sore from the shots. Jason stayed and read Harry Potter. Then he stroked her arm and her eyes closed.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
while Harvey was at school, Jason called Dr. Foster's office and wrote down everything they said. None of it seemed real. Jason kept looking at the numbers, couldn't believe it was going to cost more than their car was worth.

He decided to call Wanda and find out if Social Services would cover it. If not, there were other ways. He could rob a gas station—wrap one of his tools in a plastic bag and march right in there at closing. But then the car might be caught on a security camera, or the attendant might have a real gun and shoot him dead. He tried to imagine Harvey's face when the police came and said that her father had been killed. That he'd been shot in a robbery. That her dad was the robber.

T
HEIR FIRST VISIT
to the orthodontist was only a consultation. The doctor wore a striped bow tie. In his wait
ing room hung framed diplomas from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

Harvey told Dr. Foster that he looked like a wizard from Harry Potter.

“Is it the bow tie or the white hair?” Dr. Foster said.

Before leaving, Dr. Foster explained to Jason what was going to happen and what all the final costs were likely to be.

“My daughter is in good hands with you, right?” Jason said. “Because this is a lot of money for us.”

The next day Jason called Wanda again and went over what he'd learned. If he wanted help from the state, she said, he'd have to fill out some forms and go to certain dentists. Dr. Foster's name didn't appear in the directory of approved providers.

For the next two weeks, Jason drove around as many thrift stores as he could, looking for things he could put on eBay to sell quickly. He also asked Mr. Gonzales to try and get him hired on a construction site, but it turned out to be impossible with his prosthetic leg.

That weekend Harvey said she wanted to go bowling again or to Chuck E. Cheese's, but Jason told her it was too expensive.

“Other kids go.”

“I can't right now, Harv, I ain't got it.”

“So we're poor?”

“We got food, a TV, a refrigerator, a car, air-conditioning, TV . . .”

Harvey asked to leave the table, then carried her plate to the kitchen in silence and went to her room.

“And you've got your own bedroom!” Jason called after
her. “Your own private part of the house. I could rent that, y'know! Make a lot of money!”

Their weekly visits to Pizza Hut and Taco Bell ceased. Jason limited their grocery shopping to sale items. But Harvey just didn't get it.

“If you're hungry enough, you'll eat anything,” Jason told her as he loaded the cart with blackened half-price bananas. “Any kind of animal, Harvey—even insects.”

“Gross.”

“Even human flesh,” Jason went on. “I saw a movie where a father and son were trying to get away from redneck cannibals who wanted to eat their flesh. That could be us.”

In the weeks that followed, when Harvey mentioned what other kids had for dinner or did on the weekend with their parents, Jason just bit his lip and said, “Uh-huh. Okay, Harv, whatever.”