The Book of Lies

4

Darting between two oak trees, I race through the black park as the rain collects in little rivers on my face. I ignore it. Just like I ignore my heart kicking from inside my rib cage. All I see is him.

When I was little, I used to have fantasies about finding my dad. That he’d be released early, and my aunt and I would run into him at dinner or while I was getting a haircut. I remember being in church on the plastic kneelers, praying that we’d find each other again in some dumb Disney movie way. But those dreams faded as he missed my tenth birthday. And eleventh. And twelfth. Within a few years, the childhood dreams shifted and hardened—to fantasies of not seeing him again. I can still run them in my head: elaborate escape plans for ducking down, running, disappearing. I’d ready myself, checking over my shoulder as I’d pass the bagel place where he used to love to get breakfast. And a few years after that, those dreams settled, too, entering that phase where you think of him only as much as you think of any other dead relative.

For the past nineteen years—for me—that’s all he’s been. Dead.

And now he’s crumpled at the base of a palm tree as a slow, leaky rain drips from above.

“Cal! Med kit!” Roosevelt shouts.

I cut past the white gazebo at the front of the park, and my foot slips in the grass, sending me flat on my ass, where the damp ground seeps through my pants.

“Cal, where are you?” Roosevelt calls without turning around.

It’s a fair question. I close my eyes and tell myself I’m still in the poorly lit park, but all I see is the tarnished doorknob in that spearmint-gum-and-hairspray room where my dad and I said good-bye. I blink once and the doorknob twists, revealing the child psychologist assigned by the state. It’s like that Moby song. When you have a damaged kid, you don’t ask, “How you feeling?” You give him a crayon and say, “Draw something nice.”

I drew lots of nice.

“Med kit!” Roosevelt snaps again.

I scramble to my feet. Years of training rush back. So do decade-old escape plans. I should turn around now. Let Roosevelt handle it. But if I do— No. Not until—

I need to know if it’s him.

Ten feet in front of me, Roosevelt still has the flashlight tucked under his armpit. It shines like a spotlight, showcasing the bloody inkblot stained into the man’s silk shirt. As I barrel toward them, Roosevelt turns my way and the armpit flashlight follows. There’s no missing the terror on my face. “Cal, what’re you—?”

Like a baseball player rounding third, I drop to one knee and slide through the wet grass, slamming the med kit into Roosevelt’s chest and almost knocking him over.

“Cal, what’s wrong? Do you know this guy?” Roosevelt asks.

Grabbing the flashlight, I don’t answer. I’m hunched over the man, shining the light and studying his face. He’s got a beard now, tightly trimmed and speckled with gray.

“Shut it off,” the man moans, jerking his head back and forth. His eyes are clenched from the light and the pain, but his face—the double chin, the extra weight, even the big Adam’s apple—it can’t be.

“You’re blinding him, Cal!” Roosevelt says, snatching the flashlight from my grip and shining it in my face. “What the hell is wrong with—”

“C-Cal?” the man mumbles, looking at Roosevelt. He heard him say my name. But as the man turns to me, the light hits us both from the side. Our eyes connect. “N-No. You’re not— You’re—” He swallows hard. “Cal?”

It’s an established scientific fact that the sense of smell is the most powerful for triggering memories. But it’s wrong. Because the moment I hear that scratchy, stumbly baritone—everyone knows their father’s voice.

Our eyes stay locked, and I swear, I see the old him under the new him, like he’s wearing a Halloween mask of his future self. But as I study this middle-aged man with the leathery, sun-beaten skin—God, he looks so old—his terrified pale green eyes, his twisted Irish nose . . . it’s more crooked than I remember. Like it’s been broken again.

His hand shakes like a Parkinson’s patient as he tries to wipe flecks of blood from his mouth. He has to tuck the hand underneath him to stop it from trembling. He spent eight years in prison. It can’t be just his nose that’s been broken.

“You okay?” Roosevelt asks. I’m not sure who he’s talking to, though it’s pretty clear it doesn’t matter. Down on my knees, I’m once again nine years old, pulling crayons from an old Tupperware bin. To this day, I don’t know if it was my greatest fear or deepest desire, but the one thing I drew over and over was my father coming home.