The Waiting Game

The Ninth Letter

I first told you about my dad on our first date. I didn’t mention a lot of things about him, but I told you that he’s pretty deadbeat, that my parents divorced when I was four and that it was because something big happened. You didn’t ask and it took me a while to be able to tell you. I didn’t want to see what your reaction was going to be when I told you that my father is in and out of jail.

Sure, it might have been for stupid things, like traffic violations and smoking next to No Smoking signs, but there were other charges on his rap sheet that were worse than that. I just never wanted to talk about it.

I hated him for it. I hated that he was never there and that I didn’t really grow up with much of a father figure in my life. He was in and out. We couldn’t trust him to keep plans. Devon started to lose his patience and he wouldn’t let me go without him, so eventually we just stopped going. My father stopped coming to pick us up.

I kind of took that for granted.

I know that he wasn’t a great dad. I’ll never say that he was, but he was still my father, and I still should have felt something for him. It should have been enough to keep me going to see him, maybe even make me want to call him to tell him about stupid things every once in a while. It took me six months before I even got the opportunity to tell him about you—he had been in jail again.

I regret not getting to know my father better.

He wasn’t that great of a guy overall, but there isn’t a way that he didn’t care at all.

I really think that he just had a problem with showing it.

I like to believe the best in people sometimes. That’s one of my weaknesses. I want to believe that horrible people can be better, that they can be good.

I just never really believed in him as much as I should have.

I never really believed in him at all.

~*~

I knocked on the door of the unfamiliar building, immediately yanking my hand away and shoving it into my front pocket, nervously rocking back and forth on my feet, ball to heel, chewing on my bottom lip. I glanced around me, as if checking to make sure no one was watching, but it was pretty much because I was afraid to watch the door, nervous about what I was about to see.

The door opened and with it came the strong smell of tobacco.

His father usually looked the same every time I saw him. This time, though, he just looked old.

Norman Mueller squinted at me through bloodshot eyes, his hair unkempt and his face unshaven as if he had not anticipated to even leave the house today, and probably hadn’t gone into public for several days before that. His shirt was rumpled and strained with what I thought was probably beer and he was wearing a pair of sweatpants that had holes in them. He stared at me for a long moment and I stared back, none of us saying a word.

And then he said, “You’re his girl, right?”

It was some consolation that he couldn’t say his name yet, either. I nodded slowly, watching for his reaction.

He reached one hand up and brushed it across his face, looking exhausted, before he cut his gaze to me again. He nodded a couple of times before he sighed heavily, stepping back to allow me room to enter. “It’s messy but I don’t want to talk about this outside.”

I understood that.

I stepped over the door lip and into the apartment, immediately being overtaken by the smell of pipe smoke and stale beer. My nose wrinkled in an automatic reaction to the smell and Norman chuckled at me, shaking his head as he led the way through the entrance room of the small apartment, heading toward where the living room was set up. After a moment of hesitation, I followed.