Disclaimer: If I did own Fight Club, that'd be pretty amazing. But I don't. And the text in italics down there is from Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, page 208. Yep.
Because every once in a while, somebody brings me my lunch tray and my meds and he has a black eye or his forehead is swollen with stitches, and he says:
"We miss you Mr. Durden."
Or somebody with a broken nose pushes a mop past me and whispers:
"Everything's going according to the plan."
Whispers:
"We're going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world."
Whispers:
"We look forward to getting you back."
I'm back, all right.
My dad's back. He doesn't like to admit it, but I know that he is. Because Mom says so. Daddy's home. It's been just me and Mom for the past seven or eight Christmases—she tries to act like nothing's wrong.
Right.
After school, I come home and dump my backpack full of useless information at the foot of the stairs and sit at the window and wait. I'm not sure what I'm waiting to see. A taxi. Maybe a bus. He'll walk right up the steps to our door, perhaps. I have to stay on my toes. I can't miss it.
Some days Bobby comes over, and he sits with me, staring at nothing. A UPS truck speeds by, comes creaking to a halt, and a man in too-short brown shorts lumbers out of the doorless truck, clutching a package. My heart races for a split second; could it be him, him in disguise? As a surprise for Mom and me?
He drops the package at our neighbor's door, slips a receipt into the screen, rings the doorbell, and walks away. The keys turn in the ignition, and he's gone. Not my dad.
We'll have to wait.
Mom comes and sits next to me sometimes, a plate of cookies by her side. They're always burnt, so I never eat them. She doesn't, either.
You look just like your father, she tells me.
"Really?"
She nods. With a fat lip and a bloody nose, you two would be twins.
"Why?"
She pauses. …Dad knew how to get his way.
"Oh."
She takes a draw on her cigarette. Oh.
After two straight weeks of waiting, a yellow taxi with a broken back window rolls up into our driveway, coughing smoke and most likely destroying our already-destroyed ozone layer. A man with spiky dark hair emerges and stretches slightly. He looks just like me.
He's me. He's Dad.
I'm at the door before he's even approached the steps, and I fight the urge to run up and hug him. Mom told me that Dad was never the hugging type.
So I wave. I wave, and he sees me. He doesn't smile, but he does smirk, and he holds his hand up.
Hi.
Marla, he says, his voice a long drawl. Hey. They embrace in front of me for a few seconds. I feel Dad muss my hair.
"Hi, Dad."
How've you been, kid?
"Okay."
'S good. Mom been feeding you?
"Yeah. She always burns her cookies, though."
Dad laughs. No surprise there.
He jams his small bag into Mom's arms. I'm going out.
You'll be back soon?
Maybe.
And he's gone. Mom dumps his bag next to my backpack and lights another cigarette. She really really loves cigarettes, maybe even more than she loves Dad.
You never know.
I go up to my post in front of the window again and watch Dad walk casually down the street. He's walking down towards Lou's, a place Mom talks about on the phone, but a place I've never been allowed to go to.
Maybe I'll go now. Try and get some father-kid bonding in, like the other kids at school do with their fathers.
I wonder what that's like. I wonder if it's even worth it.