Cry Father by Benjamin Whitmer

she knows that he knows what she’s up to. They were married too long.
    She puts her hand on his arm and squeezes. “I’m sorry.”
    “How’s about you take the rest of the day off work?” he says. “The rest of the week, maybe. How’s about we get a couple of bottles of bourbon and a hotel room. Hole up for a few days. Just the two of us.”
    “There is no two of us,” she says, her hand still on his arm. “There’s no two of anybody if you’re one of them. I had to learn that the hard way.”
    Patterson doesn’t bother arguing with her.
    She lets go of his arm and sips her drink. “Do you still write to him?”
    “All the time,” he answers without hesitation. Then he adds, “Sort of.”
    “Sort of, meaning you don’t write to him all the time?”
    “Sort of, meaning I’m not sure it’s him I’m writing to anymore.”
    “I had the same problem,” she says. “It’s why I stopped. I was just writing down things that happened to me.”
    “I’m talking about my life,” he says. “But I’m not sure who I’m talking to.”
    “Part of me wishes I hadn’t stopped,” she says. “I didn’t understand it until I stopped.”
    “Understand what?”
    “That the conversation had two sides. That his answer was in my trying to see everything I was doing through his eyes. But there are things now that I don’t think it would be fair to share with him.”
    “He wouldn’t care. I write shit all the time that no kid could understand.”
    “That’s fine for you. He’s still the only thing in your life. That’s why you live up there on your mesa punishing yourself.” She smiles at him. “I need to get back to work.”
    “That’s a no to the hotel room?”
    “I’m too old to survive a hotel room with you,” she says.
    “And here I’ve been feeling like I’m about the safest thing in my life,” he says.
    She taps the packet of pictures and stands. “Then you probably need to change company,” she says.

Justin
    I first met your mother in that sports bar. I don’t know if I ever told you that, but I did. I never meant to meet anyone like her, either. I didn’t have any interest in a wife. I know I haven’t told you that, and probably shouldn’t, but it’s true. The truth is I was plenty happy with things just the way they were.
    With Avrilla, I made what I thought was big money, didn’t have any expenses but getting drunk, and traveled all over the country on their dime. Eighteen years old and I was walking the French Quarter in New Orleans, working my way through every bar on Rush Street in Chicago. Hitting the peep shows in North Beach, keeping company with some of the toughest men on the planet. It was a party. A party interrupted by backbreaking labor, the kind that you’re lucky to survive, but a party. Settling down wasn’t on my mind at all.
    But then I was heading through Taos after a season of clearing power lines in Georgia, and I stopped for the night at the Super 8next door to that sports bar. And when I walked over later, there she was, playing pool with two of her girlfriends. I had a couple of drinks at the bar and one of her friends asked me to join in on a game so’s they could play doubles. So I did. Standing back against the wall most of the time, watching them play. Watching her.
    She was something else, your mother. Enough younger’n me that it hurt a little to look at. Brown eyes that tended black when she was excited or pissed off. A perfect little mouth made to be bemused. I had a pretty good line of shit at the time and I ran it on her. She didn’t mind so much that I didn’t spend the night at her house instead of the motel.
    After that I passed through Taos as often as I could. And when Laney found out she was pregnant with you, I quit Avrilla and got a job on a local landscaping crew, moving in with her. We had all the usual fights new parents have when you were born, but it was easier on us than it is on a lot of people. We were pretty good at going