We’re Happy Without You

My heart sank as my son passed the kitchen on Father’s Day with nary a look in my direction. An unfortunate persistence of the status quo. He added a new flare to the morning, humming the same deliberate tune recently adopted by my (not-soon-enough) ex-wife-to-be: the instrumental We’re Happy Without You. 

I yearned for distraction, arranging stevia and a stir stick in neat, orderly rows as my beans percolated. I’d told myself to stop caring but my fortitude weakened. Despair at his indifference waved over me without permission. 

He had exited from her room, my bedroom too only two weeks prior, with a determined glance in any direction other than mine. We’re Happy Without You. He had a habit of coming into our bedroom in the morning to talk with her about the most recent tennis-or-whatever match or what clothes he should wear for his training or match that day. He stopped asking me for such advice after my answer became all too rote: You’re perfectly capable of picking your own clothes.

He’d returned a month ago for summer break after his freshman year. He plays tennis for a Division III high-academic college in Ohio, and not once did we get a call from the school or his coach that he showed up to class unclothed. I saw this as vindication of being right to make him take responsibility for his own decisions; my wife took credit for “supporting” him up to this point.

Maybe I’ll get just a small nod, I thought. I’d been his father for nearing ten years, after all. But any hope I’d allowed fleeted as he rounded the corner to his room. He’d barely spoken to me in two years. Single word responses or thumbs-upping a text was the most I grew to expect. Yet, only an hour before this I’d contemplated buying him a birthday card while lying alone in the guest-room twin-bed watching stupidness on YouTube. I struggled to find a reason why I still should get a card. He hated me.

Sometimes I passed him while he watched video-game videos on his phone on the couch. The nice couch in the living room that looked like a locker room when he was home with strewn blankets and clothes and half-empty water bottles lying about. The ignored simple hellos or questions about his part-time job continued to taunt, so I’d stopped asking. 

Happy Without You.

I wanted to allow myself to see beyond this little play of theirs, to respect his point of view. A son should protect their mother, no matter what. I had protected mine – well, nearly to the end. 

Would a card change anything? Father’s Day with no card or mention, his nineteenth birthday in three days, my fifty-fourth in seven days. Divorce filed two weeks prior, my mother passing the day before that. This month sucked. 

I met my son when he was nine. My favorite line. By her accounts, his biological father didn’t have the stomach for parenting, evidenced early in her first marriage that ended four years before we met. He lives across the country and he hasn't seen my son since he was ten. I’m the only one who wanted the job.

Does being fired actually make you unemployed in this? Or does the job persist regardless of love?

Parenting isn't easy and I was good at the heavy lifting. Unwillingness to apply himself at school or training–check, I’m there to talk it out or meet with the guidance counselor. Going to five therapists over four years to deal with him hiding knives under the bed, check. Smart kids tend to struggle, and this kid had all the horsepower of a thoroughbred. 

My own internal catchphrase started to find a melody. You deserve to be happy.

But I failed at the one thing my son ever wanted from me. Playing video games for hours on end. I still can’t last more than five or ten minutes. 

Maybe I didn’t deserve anything.

Nintendo came before tennis. Mario Brothers. Super Mario Brothers. Mario Kart. Then PlayStation and Overwatch. My son’s obsession with video games was singular. I just couldn’t find a way to sit there and mash buttons for as long as he could, and certainly not up to his standards. It wasn't enough to just play, he required that I put up a fight. He was particularly good at these games and I was not.

He got this obsessiveness and competitive streak from his mother. A Division I athlete. A failed college athlete with boxes of high school awards and records to support her delusions. I didn’t want that burden for him.

It wasn't long before he stopped asking me to play with him. Over the years, I drove him to and from daily tennis practices, tournaments nearly weekly at every tennis facility from the Keys to north of Palm Beach, and he always geared up and isolated from us with his noise-canceling headphones, right in the seat next to me, no matter my or her attempts to connect with him. Take those away, and he would close his eyes and go to sleep. They both had a knack for that. Thirty seconds max to deep sleep.

I can’t reconcile if I could have done anything better. Would our marriage have survived if I forced myself to learn some combos? We’re Happy Without You.

I’m not a sports guy. 

I stopped saying that phrase years ago, instead muddling through with nods and smiles when prompted about whatever football, basketball, or worst of all, baseball topic might have entered the conversation. Surprising how often this happened in business and social situations. My wife thought the phrase made me sound unmanly. Not feminine, per say, but not like a “real man” that others would respect–despite my training in martial arts for over a decade and earning a black belt in Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do at the age of forty-one. Think Chinese gung fu meets western boxing meets Filipino stick-and-dagger fighting meets the UFC. I was no professional fighter, but my training was practical and I loved to box. 

But if you don’t love to sit down with a beer and watch hours of basketball or baseball, or be willing to spend thousands on court-side seats, then you don't fit into her mental box of manhood.

My son refused to ever hit the bag with me in the garage. Don’t listen to Cliff, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

I’m not a sports guy. And I’m okay with that.

My wife, on the other hand, despite her inability to socially survive on her college team, was a natural athlete, earning twelve varsity letters in high school for three sports amidst countless awards and newspaper mentions and still-unbroken records. I’ve seen her sink successive threes while in her forties with alarming consistency and accuracy. I taught her how to throw a roundhouse kick-punch combination on the bag while we were dating and her kinesthetic awareness was no less than astonishing. She picked up the technical nuances in twenty minutes where most of the people who I trained with needed three months to make the bag groan with a real “thud.” 

My wife made up for the sting of her failures vicariously through her child. His losses on the court registered on the Richter scale in our home. South Florida is the tennis capital of the world and kids train like champions from the age of seven. He was destined to lose a lot.

You deserve to be happy, Cliff.

My wife, ex-wife to be, and I shared not more than basic politeness at this point while living under the same roof. “Excuse me” had been our longest conversation since I’d filed–until the other day when she knocked on my bedroom door. 

“Yes?” I answered from the bed to no response. I asked twice more then got up and opened the door. 

“Did you throw out the chicken?” Her voice flat, her clothes hanging loose over her thinned frame. 

“Yes, it was bad,” I said.

Our responses to stress contrasted like our parenting styles. She obsessed with over-exercising and an aversion to eating while I exercised every New-York-neurotic-jew’s right to binge on sweets and bagels. One hammer, one hugger. Except he’s only ever hugged me ten times.

“Oh. That was mine,” she said.

We walked into the kitchen. I couldn’t say who followed and who led. 

“I thought that was the one I opened last week,” I said. 

My husband-programming kicked in. I opened the fridge to look for more meat. “It smelled bad so I threw it out.” Our fridge had grown an invisible divide between her food and mine. I pulled open the freezer and bent down to scan through my incredibly organized frozen section. “There’s still some frozen. Here’s a couple packages of thighs.” I looked at the clock. “You can put this in water and maybe it will be ready to make for lunch.”

I valued my husband-skills. Taking care of the household. Cooking all the meals. Doing everything I could to teach our son, her son, the values my father taught me. From staying calm during conflict to how to load a dishwasher for optimal effectiveness. I lost count of how often she thwarted this pride despite my persistence.

“Don’t listen to Cliff, do it however you want.” 

I wish this phrase was common to hear as I left the room, showing even the appearance of veiled disdain. No, she would say this to him in front of me, repeatedly, in many variations. Despite my continued rational pleas in private for her to show me respect in front of him. 

I allowed this. My fault. I should have left years ago. I should have listened to the initial red flags. I should have listened to my cat, who didn’t like her and she didn’t like him.  I should have not taken her back after I broke up with her before the engagement. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I thought I’d found my true best friend.

I was wrong. You deserve to be happy, Cliff.

In the kitchen, with frozen chicken packets in my hands, she didn’t respond, turning her attention to the Nespresso, already a capsule in hand from her hidden stash since our shared pods depleted a couple days prior. 

A few minutes later, with coffee mug in hand, she left the kitchen and I felt foolish for allowing myself to live in a memorized behavior no longer valid or valued.

We’re Happy Without You.

I made myself a coffee, optimizing my time outside the guest room. I refused to order more pods just for myself, instead relying on all the less-desired tiny espresso pods from all the sample packs, misordered pods, and the “sure, let’s try it” weird flavors from over the years. Waiting to press the button three times to fill espresso into a standard mug had become the least of my worries. Despite logic, my heart still held on to a fragile hope that this would all be resolved before the remaining pods ran out.

Divorce is slow. And the really hard parts had not even begun. The lawyers had the remote control and charged to change the stations. 

I spent my time scouring apartments.com and a couple days touring very small apartments. I wished that I could afford to keep up the big suburban house with $600 monthly electric bills, an overpriced association fee, the pool guy, and a mortgage and a HELOC, all at the same time as a new tiny downtown apartment for myself. But that’s just not in the cards. And boy do I miss the poker game at the house. Stopped that after our nuclear argument that pushed me over the edge to finally file.

I sipped my coffee and walked to the guest room, the one smaller than my son’s room. Should I get him a card? I still wondered, flopping on the bed and waking up the cat.

We’re Happy Without You. You deserve to be happy, Cliff.

On the eve of his birthday I stood in the kitchen with card in hand as the garage opened. I presumed that they went out for a celebration to someplace overpriced in Boca with her whole family. My ex-family. 

He passed the kitchen on his birthday with nary a look in my direction. I left the card on the counter and returned to my segregated quarters of solitude. 

I wished life had easier answers. I’m not sure what I deserve.