God, using the word was to describe my father. He’s dead. It’s like realising the monster under your bed can never come back.
And you have no idea what kind of white knight you are, what kind of hero, for taking it out of my hands, for not making his death one more thing he could hold against me.
Because he’s still here. Do you know that? Can you understand? I don’t think you can. You come from such a well-adjusted home. Mother, father, brother, sister. Learn your duties, do what is expected of you, run the family like a man ought to. And you did all of it just as you were meant to, didn’t you? How can you understand what it’s like to be the pariah, the prodigal son whose return was never desired but was forced again and again without joy or celebration? Kill the fatted calf? No, simply beat him until he understands just how futile escape is.
If you could have seen him, in all his glory, before he went blind, before he became too weak to do anything except play chess! If you could have known the giant that haunted my nightmares regularly.
Do you know how he taught me to play chess? And yes, I was the only child he taught. Why? I have no idea. He hated me more than any of my brothers. He hated me for not looking like him, he hated me for my name, he hated me because my mother doted on me when she’d never shown emotion about anything in France. But for some reason he taught me. He taught me how to play through a series of punishments, each one more cruel than the last, made sure I understood what the repercussions of failure were.
He made my brothers beat me with riding crops, with whips, with the flats of their swords. But he never lifted an instrument against me. No, he liked to use his fists. I don’t know what it was, but no boy should ever be used to the feel of his father’s fist crashing into his jaw. He broke my nose more times than I can remember.
And here he was now: old, pathetic, crying out for the son he claimed to love, who did not love him. What can you have thought of the two of us? You, who worships your father with such abandon and love?
Did you see, in those last moments of his life, who he really was? Of course not. And yet still you did it when I asked, when I begged.
God, I love you so much for it and I have no way to tell you, to explain it. The words are here, obviously, and caught between my hand and my mouth. That’s where they’ll stay. Maybe one day I’ll figure that out.
