The Violin

My father was angry when I went down that evening, I could tell by the way he was reading the paper. I sat at the kitchen table and waited, but he kept on reading. I couldn’t think why he was angry, except that I’d stayed out all night, but he knew I was at a party and it was only a couple of blocks away.

It didn’t make sense.

“Hi,” I said.

He lowered the paper and lit another cigarette, then leaned back with his elbows on the chair arms and stared.

“Where the fuck were you last night?”

“I was at the party.”

“I’ve told you before to let me know if you’re going to be out all night.”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

I was telling the truth. I’d been out all night so many times, and sometimes I phoned and sometimes I didn’t, but he seemed okay with it either way. That was the thing about my father, I never knew where it was coming from or what it was about, only that he would get angry about something eventually and I would have to face it, and usually no amount of explaining would make any difference.

“I’ve told you before,” he said.

“I know. But it was three o’clock in the morning before I knew I was going to stay out. I didn’t think you’d want me to phone that late and wake you. And you knew where I was.”

He hit the table with his fist and shouted. “I don’t care. I want you to let me know, you understand?”

“I’m sorry, alright?”

“Right, make sure you let me know next time.”

“I will, I promise.”

He picked up the paper again and took a puff on his cigarette, but he was still mad for sure, I could tell by his clenched jaw and his hooded eyes. Once he got mad he stayed that way and there was nothing I could do. It didn’t stop me from trying, but I’d never once succeeded in convincing him that his reasons for being mad like that weren’t fair or just. I sat quietly with my head bowed, waiting for the emotional heat to dissipate somewhat, and after a few minutes the expression on his face relaxed a bit.

“So,” I said. “Do you want to know what happened?”

I was aching to tell him, I could feel it all over and the way I was smiling, I’d convinced myself he’d be as happy about the news as I was.

“What?” he asked.

I told him about meeting Kate, the girl with soft brown hair and sea-blue eyes who was in town to dance in a modern ballet.

“I think I’m in love,” I said.

He gave me a look as though he was willing to appease my need to tell him this, but beyond that he didn’t care.

“That’s nice,” he said and went back to his reading

I could sense there was something else and I wondered if maybe he was jealous I’d found love. But it was barely a thought, hardly a whisper of an idea, rather something vaguely sensed, and as with so many other things like that with me, it might have been a projection. What I really wanted was for him to approve and applaud and congratulate me.

“I really am,” I said. “I stayed with her the whole night. This is big. Her name is Kate and she lives in Toronto. She’s beautiful. It’s the real thing.”

He looked at me a–squint as he puffed his cigarette and the smoke trailed upwards past his eye. “Yeah? That’s nice, I’m happy for you.”

“Of course, the thing is she lives in Toronto.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He waited a moment to see if there was anything else coming out of me but I didn’t know what else to say, and he raised his paper.

“Um,” I said.

He started reading.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

He lowered the paper again, blinking at me in a tired way. “What is it?”

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “She went back to Toronto this morning, but she invited me to go visit. It’s this one chance because her father’s away, so I could stay with her and she could show me around. It’s this one chance over the next couple of days. After that I won’t have another. I promise I’ll look for a job when I get back, I promise. I’ll do that, I just want to take this one chance to go and see her, you know?”

He was giving me that look, as though I’d done it again, the horrible thing, this time backing out on something I said I would do, which was find a summer job after graduation. He’d been bugging me to find a job since I was thirteen years old and I’d hated him for it. She had kissed me and told me I could stay in her bed, of course I had to go, and I was in love too, that was everything, that’s what I was counting on, but he didn’t care. After all the movies and the poems about love, and here it was, at long last for me.

“At this point I don’t care what you do,” he said. “Do whatever you want, I’ve had enough.”

Moments like that when it showed in his face he was giving, these were the moments I took as approval. He could see I wanted it and I was going to do it, but he couldn’t let down his initial disapproval, so he changed to disappointment. I was going to do it anyway, so he’d let go, but he’d begrudge me for it.

The next part was a bit trickier.

“The thing is,” I said. “I’d have to go out there. I’d have to take a bus. And she said she’d pay the ticket back, so I only need a one way ticket. It’s like eleven dollars. But it’s the only way I can go.”

Now he was angry and trembling with it, a sudden realization and condemnation, as though I’d committed some kind of major offence.

“No way,” he said.

I had to push through it, I had to get him to hear me.

“I promise to pay you back,” I said. “I swear I’ll pay you back as soon as I get back. I’ll get a job right away and I’ll pay you back. I swear. If there’s one thing you ever do, that you ever give me money for, let it be for this please. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever asked you in my whole life. I swear I’ll pay you back.”

I was almost crying at the end because the whole time he was shaking his head with that look of finality he got when he’d made his mind about me and something, and it was based on something final, some decision he would never ever reverse, and all that anger telling me I was no good and what I was asking was wrong.

“No way,” he said. “No fucking way!”

“But Dad, you never give me what I ask when I ask for something just for me.”

“You fucking phony, I gave you money before and you know that. I told you I’m not giving you any more money.”

“But Dad! This is so important. Please!”

He got all calm all of sudden, almost an amused look on his face, and his voice got all soft and lilting, as though he was laughing.

“No,” he said and shook his head.

“But Dad, Dad, Dad. Please?”

He wasn’t laughing. “No way. No way. Now leave me alone, alright? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I have things to do, alright?”

“I won’t leave you alone,” I said. “I need this, Dad. I need this.”

His eyes flashed and he resumed reading the paper with his clenched jaw, willing me away. It was the thing he did when he decided to shut me out, refusing to acknowledge my presence anymore, and all I could think was he never gave me what I asked for when I wanted. It kept going around and around in my head. The bastard dangled things in front, but when I really wanted something he clammed up as tight as a cow’s ass. My voice got calm and clear and full of insinuation.

“I ask for this one thing, this one time, the most important I’ve ever asked, and you won’t help.”

I was ready to scream.

He was blinking, or twitching his skin on the side of his eye, and I knew he could hear me, but he acted as though I wasn’t there, reading the paper, smoking his cigarette and taking sips of his beer.

“I need your help,” I said.

He turned a page.

“Dad,” I said. “I really need your help this time.”

He looked at me. “Why are you asking me? She said she’d pay for your ticket back, let her pay for it there.”

“She’s already gone back.”

He looked me full in both eyes. “The answer’s no.”

The whole thing exploded in my brain. Everything he had ever done and said, every name he’d called me: phony, manipulator, lazy, cheap, no good, and a liar. Everything he’d ever said and done and all the spankings, and that time he hit me in front of everyone at the housewarming party when I was ten, and every time he’d ever yelled drunk at two in the morning, and all the emotional head games and insinuations, and all those times he’d helped when he was feeling like it, not when I was needing it, when he was feeling generous and expecting me to love him with gratitude in those beneficent moments, and all those times I tried again and again to please him and get the dishes done on time or the vacuuming done the right way that year I stayed home from school, or the times he yelled at me about sleeping in, sometime every damn day, and everything in the last year, finishing that damn high school crap, and playing the violin again, and him telling me after all these years it was a waste of time after he’d yelled at me half my life to keep playing and practise. It all went down in my head at the same moment. I hated the way he was looking at me with accusation in his eyes and I wanted to scream and hit him and make him see, because I’d never made him happy, never really made him proud of anything for long enough to last beyond the moment, to make him say ‘Yeah, sure son, I’ll help, anything you want.’

I slammed my fists down.

I slammed the chair on the floor.

I stamped my feet.

I shouted, “You never fucking help when I need it!”

I slammed the back of the chair against the wall and ran out and went back upstairs to my room, because I had to go. I had to shake my body or something because the anger in me was too much, whether it was right or wrong I didn’t know and I didn’t care, because something had happened in my brain and I was exploding. We’d fought before, wrestling and yelling at two in the morning, down on the floor, and I sure didn’t want to go there again.

The moment I walked into my room I saw the violin case on the bookshelf.

I was twelve when I got arrested for setting the library carpet on fire. That night after he’d brought me home from the police he showed me the violin and told me it was proof he loved me, drunk there in my room sitting on the bed. Voice thick with feeling, he told me it was supposed to be for Christmas but he couldn’t wait to show me that he loved me, and tell me I was loved, that my parents loved me even though they were splitting up. I remember looking at the violin and not wanting it because I’d wanted to quit playing that thing for so long, and he wouldn’t let me.

I went over and grabbed the violin, my violin, by the neck, and I took it back downstairs, ran back down to the kitchen and walked in with my violin raised above my head. I’d made the decision. It was my violin. This was my act of protest, this was the only way I knew to show him I rejected every one of his reasons, all his characterizations, and all his decisions to give me only what he wanted and never heed a thing I asked.

This was my moment of taking a stand for freedom.

“You did this,” I said.

I slammed it down on the edge of the table as hard as I could, and the air exploded for a moment with dozens of pieces of splintered varnished wood.

There was a moment afterwards, a kind of calm moment of no feeling or anything, him staring at the pieces all over the table, pieces in the ashtray and the beer cup, all over his books, and the realization that this wasn’t a crack in the back of the wood. It would never be fixed, this old thing.

I was holding the rest of it by the neck, the wiry strings dangling with the bridge at the end. I tossed the wreckage on the table and walked.