Just half joking, his hands spread wide for the big present he half expected. Joey put an envelope into his hands and he opened it, feeling the paper birthday hat crooked on his forehead. He ripped into it and saw the amount of money before he saw anything else. 10,000 dollars. His eyes grew wide.
"Joey, you shouldn't have done this," he said, and he watched the fluid changing of expressions on Joey's face. There seemed to be something he was hiding, and he could tell that Joey kind of liked that he thought the money was from him.
"No, Craig, I didn't. It's from your father's estate. He specified it as a gift for your 16th birthday,"
His father's estate. His look darkened, he couldn't help it. More money. Like that wad of money he gave him to buy the new camera. Like the roll of bills he gave him to buy the new video game system, the new T.V. Something new of everything he had broke. He got that same feeling he used to get then, holding the money, feeling anger and forgiveness warring within him.
He grew quiet, the happy mood of the small birthday party ruined, at least for him. His father. Still trying to buy him, still haunting him. It had been two years since his death and he knew that all that…drama…wasn't really going away.
Up in his room that night, the check propped on the nightstand. He wanted to tear it up, had almost torn it up a couple of times but stopped himself. What did it mean? Was it some symbol of his father's love? Was it more of the same from when he had lived with him, trying to buy his forgiveness? He didn't like to think that he could be bought like that, but remembered that he had been for years. He'd been perfectly happy with the new whatever he had bought, with his father telling him not to worry.
He shook his head, seeing the check from the corner of his eye. It didn't matter. It didn't change anything. So his father was sorry about things, still sorry about it even though he was dead. Fine. He had had a lot of money and he willed it to him to buy him off, to say he loved him, to whatever. It didn't change anything. It didn't change his trouble with intimate relationships, his trouble relating to Joey, it didn't give him back those days he had slept in school, those nights he had stood on the other side of his locked door, terrified. It didn't change a thing.