Page 44 of Say He's Ready
“At who?”
“You.” The word sat there. “You made a deal with me,” he said. “I did my part. I’ve been doing better in school. I went to therapy even though I didn’t want to at first. I talked about mama even when it hurt.” His voice stayed even; he was working hard to keep it there. “You said no reneging.”
“Malone, come on, cut me some slack. I almost lost you.”
“Poppycock, you always get what you want dad.”
He wasn't yelling. That was the part that got me. He said it the same way he said everything, matter-of-fact.
“You got to be quiet about mama for three years, and nobody said anything. We just had to live like that. You got the store.” He looked up at the sign. “You get to decide when things are done, and everybody just goes along with it.” He looked back at me. “I don’t get to do that. I have to talk about my feelings in therapy and sit with stuff and not deflect. How come you get to send her away, and that’s just how it is?”
“Because I’m your father,” I said. “And some things are mine to handle. Some decisions have to be made, and no, they don’t feel good, but it must be done.”
“You didn't handle it, though. You just stopped it. You hurt her and yelled at her for wanting to have fun.”
“Malone, I hear you,” I said. My voice came out lower than I meant it to. “I hear everything you’re saying. And you’re not wrong,” I crouched down so I was at his level. “But I need you to understand something. Being right doesn’t mean you come at your father sideways. You can feel what you feel, say what you need to say, and still show me respect. That's not negotiable. You understand me?”
He held my eyes. Nodded once.
“Say it.”
“Yes sir.”
“Alright.” I stayed crouched. Looked at him. “For the record, I apologized to T. I never said I wasn’t wrong, but the damage had already been done. I know that was cowardly to push her away….”
“I just miss her thats all. Talking about her makes it worse. She was the only one who didn’t make me feel crazy. Coocoo is what the kids say.”
“Son, trust me. I’d take it all back if I could. But what do you say about her that you haven’t told me?”
He thought about it for a second. “That she made you different. And that different was better.” He shrugged one shoulder. “And that I don’t understand why you stopped it if it was better.”
I stood up. Put my hand on top of his head and he let me leave it there.
I had tried to call her. Once, three weeks after the hospital, when Malone was asleep, and the house was quiet, I picked up my phone, found her name, pressed call, and listened to it ring twice before it went somewhere that wasn't her voicemail. Just nothing. A dead end. I sat with the phone in my hand for a long time after that.
She blocked me. I knew it when it happened. Understood it even. It was the Teaghan thing to do — protect yourself before somebody else gets the chance to do it for you. I couldn’t blame her for it. I had given her every reason. I’d been like everyone else, even if it wasn’t intentional.
What I didn’t know how to say to my son was that understanding something and knowing what to do about it were two different things. That a man could know he was wrong and still not know how to fix it. That I had been standing in front of this store every day, watching it become something, and thinking about the fact that she told me to build it before I believed I could. Her name wasn’t on the sign, but her fingerprints were all over the reason the sign existed.
“Come on,” I said. “Let's go see if they got the back room finished.”
Malone fell into step beside me. We walked into the store together, and his sneakers squeaked on the new floors, and he started telling me something about the history of hardware stores in America that he had looked up on his tablet, and I listened to every word of it.
I hoped I had a chance to make this right; my son was depending on it. But in the meantime, getting my shit together was all I could control.
Teaghan
All it took was two close calls with Houston for me to block him. I had to.
His apology on the jail steps wasn’t wasted. I heard it. And I meant it when I said thank you and walked away. But what he didn't say sat right next to what he did. I couldn't unknow that. I asked him one honest question standing on those steps, and he told me he didn't do what-ifs. I took that as my answer. Right people, wrong time. No harm, no foul. I put his name where I couldn't reach it on a Tuesday night when I got home, woke up the next morning, and kept moving.
Life already had plans for what came next. It was always like that.
Mothering Medicine was still closed, but it wasn’t sitting still. I was thankful for that. I had been in conversations with contractors about the new layout — a bigger intake space, a garden area on the side for kids who needed somewhere to breathe that wasn’t a waiting room. I was handling the community funding myself, no state position, no favors owed to anybody. Just me making calls, building the case, and refusing to let the building stay dark any longer than it had to.
I was full of I miss…
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I drove to St. Agatha’s and sat with kids that nobody was fighting over. I helped with homework some daysand calmed parents down on others. I had also been doing home visits for former patients whose families couldn't wait for the building to reopen. Quietly, off the books, because I had never been able to watch a child go without and do nothing about it. I wasn’t starting now.
