Everything Changes

twin odors of aftershave and flatulence, a noxious combination that actually stops me in my tracks for a minute. Norm is sitting at my desk, shoes off, belt undone, his belly bumping up against the desk like a docked dirigible. He’s bent over a large, warped journal with frayed edges, scribbling copiously and humming atonally to himself. I watch him for a moment as he sits there unaware of me, trying to discern some hidden truth in his posture, trying to connect this bloated man with the version that was frozen in my head when I was twelve years old, trying to justify the intense longing and sadness I’ve always felt with respect to him. It’s not happening, so I clear my throat. “Zack!” he says, closing the journal and spinning around on his chair. “Hello, son.”
    “Jesus,” I say, stepping into the room and opening the window. “How can you stand to be around yourself?”
    He smiles good-naturedly. “An unfortunate side effect of my Frappuccino habit.”
    “What are you doing here, Norm?”
    “Oh,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind. I just figured I’d get some work done while I waited for you.”
    “For all you knew, I wasn’t even coming home tonight.”
    My father flashes a simultaneously sad and defiant smile. “After all these years, do you think a few more hours are really going to make a difference to me?”
    I don’t want to sit down, because that will somehow ratify his presence here, but a sitting position seems to be the only thing that soothes the fire burning in my crotch, so I sit down on the bed. “So, what’s up?” I say.
    Norm stands, pulling up his pants, and starts tucking in his checkered button-down shirt. “I’m hungry,” he says. “Let’s go get some dinner. My treat.”
    “No, thanks,” I say. “I just want to go to bed.”
    “Come on, Zack, it’s just dinner. It’s no big deal.”
    “Yes,” I say hotly, and you don’t think of your voice as coming from your groin, but when I raise it, I feel a sharp bolt of pain there. “It is a big deal. It’s a huge fucking deal. Because we don’t do that. Ever. We aren’t that father and son. We never have been. And you can’t just materialize, showing up at Matt’s gig, sitting in my room, at my desk, like it’s our fucking routine or something, as if you’ve been around for the last fifteen years, as if you gave a damn about us before today—” And then I have to stop, because goddamn if my voice isn’t breaking and I can feel the tears threatening, and I cannot, under any circumstances, give him that, because he’ll be fucking dancing in the streets over his breakthrough, will be celebrating the connection he thinks he’s made, will be so impressed with himself, thinking that he was right to come back and knew just what to do to reach out to me. I’ve had a shitty day, I’m on edge for a thousand different reasons, and the last thing I want to do is inadvertently validate this absurd notion he’s always subscribed to that a few grand gestures will accomplish what should take years of building or rebuilding.
    “You’re right,” Norm says, standing awkwardly in front of the bed, nervously patting down the anorexic strands of his hair. “It is a big deal, and I in no way meant to minimize your feelings. I apologize.”
    “Forget about it,” I say, feeling nonplussed by my reaction and annoyed with his recovery speak.
    “Zack,” Norm says. “I’ve always prided myself on my ability to read people, and I’m going to tell you what I’m reading in you.”
    “Please don’t.”
    “Obviously, there’s a lot of hostility toward me.”
    “Wow. They should give you a talk show.”
    “I said it was obvious,” he says. “But there’s more. I’ve been disliked before—”
    “Say it isn’t so.”
    “—So I have a pretty good idea of what it feels like. But I am suggesting that what I’m getting from you is very scattered and unfocused. It’s as if you’re too distracted to hate me properly. I mean, look at Matt,” he says admiringly. “Now, that boy can hate.”
    “You’re criticizing the manner in which I dislike you?”
    “No, I’m analyzing it. And what I come up with is that while you certainly do have your issues with me, as well you should, they’re not foremost on your mind. You were drunk at Matt’s show last night, not fun drunk, but desperately drunk, if you take my meaning. You looked to me like a man with way too much on his mind.” He smiles at me. “You