Father - A Short Story

Father

"Why is he not the same? Why doesn't he like the guitar? He should like the guitar! Arthur liked the guitar— he loved the guitar! So why doesn't little Arthur!"

Such were the complaints I would hear at night when I would sneak out of my room and up the stairs and press my ear to my mother's door. Tonight I knew what in particular had upset her- I had told her earlier that day after my first guitar lesson that I had disliked it, and wished to discontinue with them. She had frowned and seemed in a poor mood for the rest of the day.

I didn't always know what I had done wrong. Sometimes it seemed like a little thing, like how I wanted my hair cut or what toy I wanted to play with. Yet it always made her so upset, so I would often do as she wished just to make her happy.

Tonight she seemed particularly upset with my disinterest for the guitar, judging by her complaints to my aunt, who also lived with us in our little house crammed into the cheaper part of the city. I was only seven at the time, but I was always able to notice her sad glances at me when she thought I wasn't looking.

I would turn away from the door, tired of listening, and walk down the dark hallways back towards my room. I would glance at the plethora of framed pictures, all crammed into the shabby walls. Most of them were of two men, and none had my mother in them.

I was never quite sure who those men where. I always assumed that the younger of the two was my father, and the older my grandfather. My mother always refused to tell me exactly whom they were— she would only ever talk about them, and even then it was rare. All I knew for certain was that they were both dead, killed in the same accident aboard some space station or another. I also knew that I was named after the younger man who I assumed was my father.

~~~

When I was fifteen I took an interest in writing. I would get comfortable on the ancient armchair in our parlor and spend long hours writing on my tablet.

One day my mother walked in on me writing. Usually she wasn't home this early from her work at the laboratory. "What are you doing?" She cried. "Shouldn't you be doing something for your robotics assignment? Or practicing guitar?" She berated.

She hadn't let me give up the guitar, despite my dislike of it, and had been strangely insistent on me joining the robotics club that year. "I'll do that later. I'm working on something right now." I replied curtly.

Mother collapsed into the other armchair with a frustrated sigh. "Your father loved the guitar and was the best in his robotics club, you know." She insisted. "Every Sunday he would come home from work early and play the guitar for the family. He would play the loveliest songs..." She tried to get me to look her in the eye with her own stern glare, her gray hair accenting her stern jaw. "And from his robotics he became the chief engineer of the 13th space station. You are smart enough, I know you are."

Her words had become rain to my ears. I had heard this and stories like it so many times that they were all just incessant raindrops. "I like writing, though," I protested simply.

She leaned forward in her chair. "Writing gets you nothing. Gets you nowhere other than through school. It's not a living. You need to learn music and engineering and math- your father was great at that too, you know."

Throughout those years of my life, many similar conversations were held between my mother and I.

I would often retreat to the hallways cluttered with photographs, studying my father and grandfather in them, thinking about what my mother had said and wondering why she was so insistent I be like him. I looked at the pictures of my grandfather playing guitar and my father as a little boy, listening to him. I looked at the pictures of my grandfather building a robot with my father when the latter was my age at the time. The pictures were mostly taken in or around what appeared to be a large mansion.

Along a different part of the hallway, framed awards and plaques were hung. All of them were from my father or grandfather, reading - Arthur W. Rhydian, First Place High School Robotics Competition -, or - Owen C. Rhydian, Station 13 Engineer of the Year Award -.

At the end of the part of the hallway with the awards, there was a door. It was always locked, and mother was always extremely firm about keeping it that way. She would say it was just junk and old documents and didn't want me to go messing around with it.

~~~

I wouldn't open that door until ten years later.

By then I was twenty-five and made a frugal living writing science stories from the comfort of my own little apartment. I had long since gone my own way, rejecting engineering, my mother giving up on me and wasting away in our dreary old house. Yet I was happy- happier than I ever would have been fiddling with wires and metal and calculating engine efficiencies. I still wasn't the fondest of guitar, but due to my mother's persistence I was very good at it. I had also taken up art as a hobby, and did very well as a chemist for a primary job, though those didn't make very much in 2220. Yet perhaps the one thing I did that made my mother proud was my interest in genetics, something that she herself did for a living.

I received a call from my aunt one day to hear that my mother had died of old age the previous night. After the funeral and mourning, I was given the keys to my mother's house where I had grown up.

I went through room-by-room sorting through the things, until finally I got to the room that I had never been allowed in when I was little.

At first glance, it was exactly what she had said it was - junk and old documents, all piled into disorganized stacks and boxes.

I began to rifle through some of it, and found a box with a bunch of old pictures. I furrowed my brow upon looking through them.

They were much alike the pictures that lined the hallway walls, except these had my mother in them.

In these pictures she looked very much younger than when I knew her, but she was still very much an adult, and in the very same pictures with the same little boy whom I had assumed to be my father. In fact, she looked more along the lines of the age of the man who I had thought to be my grandfather.

At this I was immensely confused. I proceeded to sort through the documents— most of them were indeed average papers that one might have lying around. But one of them caught my eye- it had the logo of the local funeral company on it.

I picked up the packet of two papers loosely held together by a paperclip and looked over the first page. It read:

Certificate of Death, Arthur W. Rhydian, January 2nd, 2195, Aged 19.

I flipped to the next page.

Certificate of Cloning, Arthur W. Rhydian, created December 4th, 2195. 

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

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