Joey stretched out on the living room carpet, taking a few moments to think about this before coming out with the inevitable question:
‘So, this Sean is my dad?’
When this subject had come up in the past, I’d gone for a brief explanation about how his dad had needed to work in America when he was a baby and hadn’t been able to come back yet as he’d been really busy and plane tickets were so expensive. Lame, yes, but the truth was even lamer. How do you tell a child that his father abandoned him, fleeing to another continent and choosing never to return?
‘Yes.’
‘You gave up swimming for him?’
‘No… I think I would have had to do that anyway. Sean maybe sped up the process. Or helped me realise? He also gave me a safe place to go. My parents were really, really angry and I couldn’t stay with them.’
‘So, what happened? Why didn’t you stay together?’
‘We were very young. I’d never had a serious boyfriend before and kind of rushed into it because I was looking for an escape. Then, as time went on we just realised it wasn’t going to work long-term.’
Sort of true. Iftimeactually referred tothe moment I told him I was pregnant.And, to be fair, him disappearing off to America a month later did help me realise that things weren’t going to work.
‘Has he never tried to contact us? Or did you stay in touch, but things fizzled out, like with Fenton’s dad after he went to Scotland?’
Whew. Can this wait until morning?
I looked at my son, trying hard to balance a cool, casual mask on top of a lifetime’s accumulation of desperate hope.
I guess that’s a ‘no’ then.
Telling him that his father had got in touch with me a whole seven weeks earlier was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done.
Answering the stream of questions: why now, where did he live, why didn’t he ever call or email or visit before, what was he like, was Joey like him, did he have any other children… that was even tougher.
Joey understood why I hadn’t instantly responded to Sean’s emails. I tried to keep my answers based in fact, brief and to the point, not filling in gaps with assumptions or attempted explanations. Even if that made half of my replies ‘I don’t know’. But if I didn’t know, there was only one man who did.
So, the crunch question:
‘Can I speak to him?’
‘Look, this has been a huge amount of information to take in. Can we sleep on things, take a couple of days to process before we make any decisions?’
Joey propped himself up on his elbows, all the better to glare at me. ‘How is there any way in this universe that I would come up with the decisionnotto contact my dad?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Okay, but I want you to have considered some of the potential outcomes, so you’re prepared.’
‘Seriously? You don’t think that in the past thirteen years I might have considered every single possible option, Mum? You think I might just have considered, in one of the endless, infinite variations I’ve imagined, the strong possibility that a man who hasn’t got around to contacting his son in all this time might be a total loser? Or that he might make a great show of being the world’s best dad and then disappear again as soon as he gets bored, or spooked about the responsibility, or a more important phone call comes along? Or he might try to buy my affection with stuff, or scammefor stuff because he’s a waster? Or that it might hurt you for me to start a relationship with him? Or might end up really, really hurting me?’ Joey fluffed up his hair, so like Sean’s, with vigorous hands. My heart was being wrung inside out. ‘I don’tneeda dad who’s been nothing to me. But I deserve to decide if I want to know him. Considering he’s not, like, a serial killer or a terrorist or anything.’
I blotted the tears currently streaming down my face. They were instantly replaced with another torrent.
‘Can we take some time to at least think about how we do this?’
I offered Joey the soggy tissue, but he swiped at his eyes with his sleeve instead, before nodding.
How long could I eke outsome timefor?I wondered.How long would it be fair to drag this out, given Joey’s been waiting over a decade?
‘You’d best get to bed. School tomorrow.’
‘Training tomorrow.’ He gave me a pointed look as he clambered to his feet.
‘Well, see how you feel.’
‘How I feel has nothing to do with whether I train or not.’
