Daddy Dearest

Chapter Four

Mr. Davenport POV

My two eldest children, along with Melody, are hanging out in the den, watching some obscure South Korean horror movie that was just released by the Criterion Collection on Blu-ray two weeks ago. Charlie spent eighty dollars on the damn thing. He explained to me that the disc contains all the movies in the trilogy and at least eight hours of extra features. My son, the horror movie connoisseur, has probably spent tens of thousands of dollars over the years, building his impressive collection. He wants to go into film studies after high school. Naturally. He also wants to be a medical doctor, oddly enough.

He started making movies with his friends in the sixth grade and they've only gotten better in quality the more experience he attains. The bulk of the screenplays he produces are written by Melody, the writer of the group. She is truly talented. She makes schlock seem clever and brand-new.

One of my best mates from uni is now the head of the creative writing department at Cambridge and I've been sending him some of Melody's writing samples for a couple of years now, basically the work she allows me to look over for critique. Henry thinks she is naturally gifted and has mentioned more than once the possibility of Melody attending Cambridge after her graduation from high school.

I've never discussed this with Melody nor does she even know I've been sending her writing samples to Henry Travers. She would be horrified if she found out. She is quite shy about her work.

At first my intentions were altruistic. I truly believe she has what it takes to be a fantastic writer, thus she deserves to get into one of the best writing programs in the world. It wasn't until recently that I realized I want her to go to Cambridge because I need her to get as far away from me as possible. It's the only way I can effectively get some peace of mind. One of these days, I'll bring it up to her and convince her that this is a golden opportunity she shouldn't miss.

With some help from Henry and a recommendation letter from me, she'll be as good as admitted. I still have some good will leftover courtesy of the critically-acclaimed novel I wrote right out of graduate school. It was, after all, short-listed for both the Pulitzer and the Man Booker Prizes for literary fiction. It won neither, but as I like to tell people, "It was an honor just to be nominated."

Waverly is in bed now and I'm supposed to be in my office on the third floor, working on my manuscript, but all I did while I was up there was pace around my office, in constant movement like a shark who would drown if it stopped moving. I felt trapped. I needed to get out of there. I needed a smoke break.

I was a heavy smoker while I was in uni, but Waverly helped me break the habit. I was nicotine-free for twenty years, but picked it up again when Madison was about three years old and I was struggling to get a new novel off the ground. The book came out to modest reviews and moderate sales. A major Hollywood studio optioned it for film rights, but so far, it's been in stuck in pre-production hell. I did not sign up to adapt the screenplay myself because my life was hectic at the time. Waverly and I weren't on the most solid ground and Madison somehow contracted bacterial meningitis. For a shaky couple of months, the doctors couldn't definitively tell us our little girl was going to make it through.

I sneak off a couple of smokes once or twice a week and I'm fairly sure my wife knows about it, though she has yet to bring it up. I'm gasping for one right now, but for some reason, I can't get myself to rise from this very comfortable armchair just right outside the den. I am sitting under an art deco-style floor lamp, attempting to read this epic fictionalized re-telling of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976, but I've been staring at the same page for the last twenty minutes. Intellectually, I know what it is I'm waiting around for, but I'm having trouble consciously acknowledging it. I suppose shame has something to do with it.