Disclaimer: The OC and its characters are clearly not under my ownership.
Author's Note: Just a quick one-shot for Father's Day. I haven't given up on Best of Intentions. The next chapter is in the works. I'll finish that story if it's the last thing I do. As always, thanks for reading.
HUGE thanks to my beta crashcmb, whom I do not deserve...at all.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Disposable
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Even though it's southern California, there's the same cool breeze every year.The wind of February blows in and it reminds him of spring in the Bronx.
His father left in the spring, on a chilly morning, when the sun had to bake half the day away before kids could run free without jackets.
The kind of transition day, when not even the weather understands what it wants, swinging from forty degrees to seventy-five and cycling back to forty degrees by nightfall.
Mothers fought with children to wear long pants and children retaliated, stuffing shorts under jeans and shedding the extra layer before entering school.
It was the sissy boy kiss of death, on his block, to be the last child still sporting long pants.
On a cool spring morning.
In the Bronx.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
He's had one beer too many, triggering a moment of unguarded sentimentality, and Ryan catches him looking through a shoebox he usually keeps hidden.
Mercer's Shoes.
A local place that his mother used to take him to, every Passover, to buy shiny black loafers.
He keeps the dilapidated box because it makes him both sad and happy, and helps him remember everything, even the years he wants to forget.
The smell of his father's aftershave and the click of his mother's high heels.
His brother's constant teasing, his sister's long hair.
His parents' verbal fights that left searing, invisible scars.
"Hey," Ryan nods at him and Sandy smiles, scoots over and gladly makes room for his newest family member on the sofa.
"What's that?" Ryan asks inquisitively, pointing at the box.
"This?" he feigns disinterest. "It's nothing."
Ryan studies him.
This kid, such a watcher, Sandy thinks to himself. He'll catch things all his life that Seth will casually dismiss.
"That's a really old shoebox," Ryan presses. "What's in it?"
Sandy shakes the box slightly, "This is me, a lifetime ago."
Ryan peers into Sandy's lap, looks up at him, eyes squinted, head tilted. The message is clear. He wants a look inside the box.
Sandy sighs, reaches in, pushes aside a few things, and takes out a faded photo.
All of them, his first family, together and grinning, when time made them empty promises, sealed forever with a flash.
Ryan edges closer, takes the photo from Sandy's hand, points at the only grown man in the picture.
A question and a statement.
"Was that your dad?"
Curiosity and genuine surprise.
His phrasing hits a nerve.
"Yes," Sandy answers, "that…was my dad."
"You don't look like him," Ryan observes.
"He was an asshole," Sandy shrugs. "Believe me, I'm better off for it."
Ryan returns the picture to Sandy, digs into the back pocket of his jeans, and takes out his wallet.
No additional words.
No build-up.
Just his own fading photo of an extinct family.
"This was my dad," Ryan holds out the picture for Sandy's inspection.
A man with a mustache, sandy blonde hair, a younger Dawn, a grade-school Trey, an innocent, baby-faced Ryan.
"I never knew you had this," Sandy comments, wondering what else the teenager keeps hidden away from them.
"I never knew you had a box," Ryan counters with amused defense.
The beer is warming Sandy's brain. He lets out a yawn, stands up, tells Ryan, "Our lives can be unpredictable Ryan. But I suppose one door closes and another one opens my friend."
Ryan looks up at him, smiles bittersweet. "Seth won't ever need a box."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
February is over, it's coolness replaced by a clinging March humidity.
Heavy air, blown lighter by the ocean breezes.
Sometimes he and Ryan walk together on the beach.
No words, no build up.
Quiet evenings.
The same thoughts swirl in Sandy's head.
Ryan's father was a fool.
No amount of money could have been worth it.
Worth the price of never seeing this child again.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
His house is filled with new photos, more of them everyday.
Suits with crisp ties, candid poses at charity balls and mindless functions.
He puts his arm around his two boys, his wife takes a picture and always he asks himself, how could those men walk away? How could they allow any force to separate them from their children?
The longer he lives, the more Sandy can't comprehend.
Why were he and Ryan disposable?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
His own father is gone, so Sandy calls Ryan's, arranges a meeting, and takes a long drive to a penitentiary surrounded by dirt and dust and barbed wire.
Mr. Atwood, frozen in time, not in a picture, but in this place filled with hopelessness and regret and circumstance and for Ryan's father, one damning decision.
"I did it for Dawn and the boys," he explains to Sandy. "I didn't have a choice. We were desperate for money."
Maybe he really believes it.
Regardless, it doesn't explain no letters, no phone calls.
It doesn't justify abandoning your child.
Sandy leaves without his answer.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Did you see him?" Ryan finally inquires days later.
Asked softly, with reserve, his question lingers in the kitchen, slowly travels the length of the room to Sandy.
"Yes."
A mumbled, "Is he ok?"
A hesitant, insincere, "Yeah."
Sandy's been practicing this response. But it sounds so phony, even to him; he can't go on with it. He'll have to settle for telling Ryan the truth.
"He's miserable Ryan. He's in jail until he's an old man. His life, for all intents and purposes, is over. And he knows it."
Ryan nods, exits.
No more words.
Not another question.
Sandy wonders how Ryan can always just pick up and continue, how he can always function with so few answers.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ryan gives up his Saturday to help Sandy fix up his new office. Together they scrape years of neglect off the walls and spread on a fresh coat of paint.
They sit on the front steps of the building, sweaty, drinking bottled water and watching a smorgasbord of beach go-ers parade by.
"I've been thinking about my father a lot," Sandy tells him, "and yours."
Ryan puts down his drink, glances sideways at him.
Waits.
"Seth…and now you…I can't imagine ever leaving either one of you, for any reason. Separation, that's inevitable, time marches on, kids grow up, move on to their own lives, I understand that. But never seeing either one of you guys, or never talking to you two again, I can't wrap my mind around it. I can't comprehend how men can walk away, walk out of their son's lives. Even if they're forced to. To not even make an effort to find some way to continue the relationship. I can't fathom it. And I shouldn't be dumping this on you Ryan, but I wonder sometimes, if you feel the same way I do, if it ever bothers you."
"I don't think about it," Ryan answers bluntly. "It doesn't matter. I can't change anything."
Sandy thinks that maybe Ryan's so jaded that life's curve balls no longer sting when they hit him. Maybe he's a stronger person, or less reflective or desensitized or simply realistic instead of an idealist.
Maybe Ryan really doesn't give a shit or maybe he's more practiced at hiding the fact that he does.
Maybe he's too young to be having this conversation. Maybe he won't understand or search for his own answers until he has his first child.
"I'm sorry your dad left you," Ryan tells him, genuine empathy in his eyes, "but I don't care that mine did."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ryan and Seth tease him from the pool, mocking a flaming burger that's unfit for consumption.
Sandy flips the survivors and thinks about his father and how the man never met Seth and how he'll never meet Ryan and how once, a long time ago, on a chilly spring morning in the Bronx, he left his children behind.
Sandy calls the boys over.
Dinner's ready.
Ryan slaps him on the back, points to the grill, tells him, "This looks great, I'm starving."
The three of them eat together and Sandy decides that maybe it's time to just let things go, just stop wondering and thinking and searching for answers when, most likely, there are none.
He's abnormally quiet and Ryan asks him, "Everything ok?"
"Yeah," Sandy answers, nods, feels a sense of peace and acceptance slowly washing over him. "Perfect, actually. Things are pretty damn good."
He'll never abandon these boys.
He'll never choose to be without these moments.
He'll never be a faded photo in a beat up shoebox.
To hell with his dad and Ryan's father and both of their unforgivable solutions to life's difficult challenges.
He'll never throw one of his children away.
One man's trash is another man's treasure and one man's son has becomes another's.