I'd figured it out once. Joey was 17 when I was born. He didn't know my parents then, of course. Wouldn't meet my mom for another seven or eight years. But sometimes I thought of that, looking at him cooking supper or reading Ang a book or struggling to tell me something that might help me in my fractured life. He was 17. Just a kid when I was born.
My age, in fact. Maybe some kid was being born right now that I'd have in my life through some twisted set of circumstances. You never know. Of course right now I could never handle a kid, a newborn. If Manny had had the baby it would be two. I don't know what I was even thinking. What kind of a parent would I be now?
And I'm just still struggling with Joey, with how much to accept him, how much to keep him at a distance. It's still kind of weird between us, our real link, my mother, dead for years and years. It didn't mean I didn't appreciate him or even love him because I did. I didn't generally say it and neither did he but it was understood between us. I could just see the concern he had for me. And I liked how he had begun to refer to himself more as dad than step-dad, even though I never did. But I accepted that because it was true, now. But I had another dad, and he figures into our relationship. I guess he'd have to.
There's the shadow of my father over us, his disapproval. Of course he disapproved. But what could I do? I couldn't stay with him. I guess I needed a different kind of father and I found one. But it hurt me to do it, it hurt to leave my dad even though I had to, I had no real choice. And Joey is kind of like a mother, he's soft and compassionate and gentle and understanding whereas my father had been hard and controlling.
Shadows, ghosts, memories. You know, your life fills up with these.