Tom, A Dad's Story -- Part 1

[smokesmoke]

Tom’s the name, Tom Leary, which used to be O’Leary three generations back. Proud Irishman even without that O, thirty-six years old, making good money as a journeyman plumber to support my second wife and four kids. Yeah, they are great kids, three girls and then there’s Tom Junior, who we call TJ.

TJ was the kid I really wanted, though I love my girls. If he hadn’t come along, I bet we would have seven or eight kids by now, I wanted a son bad and so did Jennifer, that wife I told you about. And neither of us minded the work to get to number four, I tell you, the making part was fun and Jen loves babies so everything was good. Then came TJ and we decided enough was enough, she got her tubes tied and tried to talk me into ge4tting a vasectomy, but I couldn’t get myself that far.

Enough of the personal stuff. Everything is good, like I said. The girls are old enough, 16, 15 and14 that we have to worry about them a little, dating and not getting pregnant and all that, but they are good girls, straight A students and inclined to behave like their mother tells them to.

There is plenty of money, even with four expensive kids. Sure we’ve had a couple rough times the last year or so, but I’ve managed to keep pulling the cash in, keeping good food on the table, even building on a two room addition. The girls needed their own bedrooms, and TJ, well it seemed fucking weird for a boy to be sharing a room with his sister. He’s 11 and I know he’ll be needing his own room, though he doesn’t know it yet.

Yeah, I kind of worry about TJ. Baby of the family, doted on by both of us mother and father, and growing up around three girls. He was a small kid, still is, no growth spurt yet. He loves school, which is good, but sometimes I think he loves it too much. Likes being a teacher’s pet, likes bringing home good report cards and all that, and wants to play in the school band.

Well that’s okay, I like music, and everyone has to have their thing. It doesn’t bother me too much that TJ has never shown much interest in sports. I’m not a big jock myself. Sure, I toss the ball around sometimes with old buddies, but my biggest sport is watching ESPN with a couple of cold Heinekens and a pack of Marlboros.

Yeah, I smoke and I’m going to tell you, I love it. Not going to quit. The girls hate that me and the wife are smokers, they used to try to get us to stop, but no way. The best they got was Jennifer switching to Virginia Slims Lights, but me, I’m sticking my reds.

So TJ isn’t much on sports, he likes music, and I got to be honest. I love that kid, but sometimes I think he’s a bit of a sissy. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like he acts like a girl. He doesn’t play with dolls, well not much anymore. When he was a tot, what with only sisters to play he with, he did play house and that kind of crap with them, and we all thought it was cute and fine. I made sure that I got him trucks and building toys and I’ve pushed him to get into video games big time. Those things are good for a kid, you know. Builds competitive spirit.

He doesn’t have many friends, and this bothers me. Jennifer says he is not lonely, he seems happy enough. I was disappointed when he didn’t want to join scouts, but when I thought about it, hell I couldn’t blame him. All that uniform stuff and the rigidity, no I never liked it too much myself, and I hated that my dad made me do it.

And the friends that he does have, well this bothers me more. There’s Melanie, and Patty, and Trina, you get the picture? The only male pals he has – I’m not going to sue the word boyfriends – are kind of like TJ. Small, quiet, studious. Goody two shoes, if you come down to it.

And yeah, that brings up the Irish in me. I want my boy to be a good kid, but I’d like a little spirit. No, not a hell raiser, but I want him to fit in, to be able to hang with other guys and do boy stuff.
The kids all finished up school last week. Now the girls are working, they all got part time jobs, but TJ is too young, so he stays at home, plays video games, gets together with his friends now and then. And Jennifer loves it, the little guy vacuums the house, he gets the food ready for her to cook dinner with, and last night, damned if I didn’t come home to stacks of fresh laundry, all folded and on the shelf in the laundry room.

“Hey TJ,” I said, “What’s this?”

“Uh, I kind of did the washing,” he said. “I know mom is wiped out when she gets home, so I kind of like helped out.”

Not bad news, but he was at the time standing at the kitchen counter, chopping onions, and wearing a goddamned apron.

“You did it all?” I asked, fingering the carefully rolled t-shirts and dark blue jockey briefs in the stack that was my stuff.

“Yeah,” he said. “I even washed some of the sister’s stuff, too.”

He blushed when he said that, like he was guilty. I don’t know why, but I didn’t like this. Didn’t quite mind him handling my underwear, but didn’t like it all that he’d had to handle the older girls’ panties and bras. Too familiar.

“Well thanks,” I said.

But after dinner, I talked with him while we watched TV.

“What’s lined up for tomorrow?” I asked. “You seen any of your pals this week?”

“Melanie and me might go shopping with her mom,” he said. “And Trina’s having a barbecue Thursday night.”

“Anything going on at the rec center?” I lit my third after dinner cigarette, pulling in smoke to calm me down.

“Not really,” TJ said.

“Don’t they have swimming classes this year?” I dragged hard.

“Yeah,” he said, “I think they do.”

“You interested?”

“Not really daddy,” he said.

“You should learn to swim,” I said. “It’s fun, it’s a good thing, and it would give you something to do. Plus maybe in August I was thinking of renting a cottage up in the mountains, it would be good if you knew how to swim.”

“Yeah.” Tom looked intently at the TV and away from me.

“Well let’s think about it,” I said.

He watched TV, I smoked.

In bed, after a little roll with Jennifer, I asked her what she thought about TJ and his summer. “Oh,” she said, “he’s such a good kid, isn’t he? Helping with the cooking and the cleaning and my god, he even did the laundry today.” She smashed out her long white cigarette, rolled over.

“Yeah,” I said, taking my last drag. “I think he needs to have some fun, though. Get together with kids his own age. What do you think about swimming lessons?”

“Maybe.” She yawned. “You know, you worry about him too much hon. He’s happy.”

I butted out my red, smoked down to the filter. “Yeah, I know.”

I worried as I laid there, not happy at all with the way things were going. And the next day it got worse.

I came home, I always get home two hours ahead of Jennifer, and I’d made up my mind. I was going to spend some quality guy time with my son. Maybe it wasn’t totally my fault, but maybe I had some blame on me. I needed to get him interested in the world, in making friends, in doing stuff that boys do.

No one was around, so I went to my room, peeled off my t-shirt and jeans. Looked at myself in the mirror as I lifted the toilet seat. Not bad, no I was in good shape. No paunch, so sags, a good flat stomach, nice and hairy. Lifted up my arm, sniffed at my sweaty pit. I sat down, lit up a cigarette and relaxed. Much as I love Jennifer, there’s something special about private moments like this, half naked, taking a slow dump, thinking about life, smoking a cigarette.

As I sat there, I reflected on how good life was. You’ve heard all the bullshit, but I go through this a lot, thinking how good things have turned out. I’d come from a poor family, six brothers and two sisters, and I remembered how it used to be when I was a kid. I’d be lucky to have any private time, and the best parts were in the summer, when I’d be the first one home on Friday afternoons, how I could have the bathroom to myself, and how I’d started sneaking cigarettes in there. It wasn’t so dangerous, of course, because two of my brothers, the older ones, already had permission to smoke, one of my sisters smoked too, on the sly. No one noticed the smell, no one noticed the odd cigarette missing from their pack.

I loved it, loved smoking and I loved getting away with something. Now, hey I didn’t have to worry, I was a man and I could do what I wanted. And I did.

I’d just flushed the toilet when I heard the front door shut.

Must be TJ, I figured. The girls were still at work, Jennifer too. I pulled a pair of shorts over my briefs, lit up a cigarette and walked down the carpeted stairs.

“Hey, “ I said.

"Hey dad,” TJ returned my greeting, and before I could say anything else, another little voice piped up.

“Hi Mr. Leary.”

I looked twice, saw a thin blond boy standing by the open door of the refrigerator. Well at least it was a boy, I didn’t have to feel like a big dumb clod standing there bare chested, but when I looked again I felt a vague roiling in my gut. This boy, this was Zack, a kid built out of pipe cleaners who looked and acted like a junior Lady Gaga.

I grabbed a beer, I don’t usually drink on weeknights, but I needed this, and headed back upstairs while the two boys scrambled to the TV to watch an ancient rerun of the Golden Girls while they waited for ET to come on.

Jesus. I lit up a red from the stub smoldering in my lips and sat down on the bed. Yesterday the laundry, the apron and now a bunch of giggling and tee-heeing. My son was acting more like a girl than any of his sisters.

Zack stayed for dinner, I didn’t eat much and I felt mad that I’d missed an afternoon with my son. Desperate, too. And when the boys insisted on cleaning off the table so Jennifer could relax with me on the couch, instead of feeling good, I felt like shit.

Again in bed Jennifer was not clear on why I was upset. “He’s a good kid, Tom,” she said. “He’s not a jock, but he’s smart and he’s helpful and we can trust him.”

“I know,” I said. “But.”

“Don’t worry Tom,” She said. “He’s still very young, I’m sure he’ll change in a couple years.”

“Yeah,” I said, but that bothered me too. Eleven years old and his voice hadn’t changed.

Jennifer slept, I stayed awake, propped up on my pillow and chain smoking. That’s the thing about smoking, it is a good friend when the chips area down as well as a hell of pal when you are having a good time. It must have been almost one in the morning when I lit the last red from my pack that I wondered about TJ and smoking. Had he ever tried it? Hell when I was his age, I was sneaking one every chance I could get. Me and my best buddy, what was his name, oh yeah Joey Catano, we were puffing away on the way home from school when he could snitch a pack from his dad or I could filch a couple smokes from my brothers or parents.

Shit, we’d had fun, me and Joey. Did TJ have any friends like that? There were all his girl friends, of course, and there was this new kid, Zack, and I worried as I laid there, hoping that they were both asleep in their twin beds in TJ’s new room. Shit, at his age if I’d had a room and a buddy over, the air would have been blue.

Next day, I got home as usual, three forty five. TJ was, you guessed it, in the damn kitchen, reading a cookbook. I said hello kind of gruffly, but at least that nancy boy friend of his was nowhere to be seen. I went upstairs, took a crap and had a cigarette, and another one after a nice long shower. I’d decided it was up to me, I was going to have to help my son. I was going to be an example, and I was going to be a pal with him, but that did not mean I was going to start watching old sitcoms. No he was going to have to meet me.

“Thought any more about the swimming lessons?” I asked when I went downstairs.

“No,” TJ said. “Not really.”

“Well let’s say we go for it,” I said. “You’ll like it, you know.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning the page and making smoke notes on a piece of paper.

“It’s good to do stuff,” I said. “Get out of the house, meet some new friends, you know.”

I lit a cigarette as I moved over to the counter and sat down across from him. He looked at me, at my naked chest, at my face, and at the cigarette in my hand. I looked right at him as I sucked in a double drag, inhaling deep. He didn’t flinch as the smoke came out my nose and into his face. No, it didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he seemed almost interested, watched me as I took another drag on top of that exhale.

“Where’s Zack?” I asked. Not that I wasn’t glad that the kid wasn’t there. Timbuktu would have been the best answer I could have heard.

“Um, he had to do some stuff with his mom,” TJ said. “He seems like a nice kid,” I lied. “New in town?”

“No,” said TJ, “I’ve known him since fourth grade.”

“You think he’d be interested in swimming lessons?” I was selling the swimming stuff real hard.

“I doubt it.” TJ looked at me, blue eyes puzzled. I took a short drag off my smoke, felt those eyes watching me hard.

Shit, my kid was a hard read. He was friendly, but the distance between us was bigger than any I’d ever felt with any of my girls. It was like he was from a different planet, or at least a different family.. But maybe it was this family that was the problem. Three sisters, an adoring mother, all outnumbering his hardworking fun loving dad. I stood up, watched him intently reading the recipe and making a list of ingredients. I had to do something. I had to make him a man, or at least a solid boy who would be ready to accept manhood when it came. And I lit up another cigarette.

[craftcpc]

Can't wait for the next chapter....WOOF!!!!!