Guessed Lists

Fiction

Photo by ZHIJIAN DAI on Unsplash

Candy Andy threw me a going away party once. It was the best party I ever attended at the time, the parts I remember and the parts I was told.

I decided Arizona sucked, or Sarah Lumberry decided I suck or both things were true at once.

And I came back to Detroit 17 days later.

Candy Andy threw me a welcome home party, and it’s the best party I was ever at, ever, no caveats or restrictions.

People didn’t think I deserved a welcome home party as I had been gone shorter than some people’s vacations.

I found out later that Andy Lighman told people that I needed the Welcome Home and needed to be around friends because I was frustrated and probably heartbroken.

I’m staring at a blank piece of paper right now.

I wasn’t, in fact, heartbroken.

I didn’t at that time know how to be heartbroken. I was aware of the concept but never thought it could apply to me.

My best remedy for the frustration was trying to find someone new.

I found someone to fuck.

She got pregnant.

Struck me as someone who would shake that off like a dog shakes off water from a lawn sprinkler.

Katelyn Cappelletti told me she was gonna have the baby.

I immediately told her I wasn’t ready to be a dad, like I was one of those motion sensor novelty fish programmed to say one sentence.

She laughed in my 42 year old, eminently laughable face.

“No one is asking you to be a dad,” she said. “I’m just gonna ask you to be a semi-consistent check.”

Katelyn asked for one more thing.

I told her no problem.

Told her I’d have it for her before the sun went down.

I dropped my pen on the floor.

The sun went down.

I’m the guy who gave Andy Lighman the Candy Andy nickname in 8th Grade.

It was derogatory, and aimed directly at his effeminate nature.

It caught hard and just about every guy at Holden Hills High School called him that.

Andy took it, until one day he informed me that the recurring use of the nickname forced him to have a conversation with his father that he wasn’t particularly ready to have.

He had this conversation with me with his knee in my chest and his hand on my throat, next to the broken drinking fountain next to the statue of Frederick Watson Holden for whom the town is named.

I was scared nearly fucking incontinent that he was gonna beat the mouthy snot out of me in front of the whole lacrosse team.

Katelyn Cappelletti asked me to make a list of things that I believe deeply in, so that someday her child will know important things about their father and can make their own determination if they would like to spend time with me.

It seemed like an easy enough task.

After Andy’s father died suddenly, Andy thanked me for inadvertently giving him a reason to come out to him.

“I never would have done it voluntarily if he hadn’t hammered me about that nickname.”

Months later I looked up and realized we were friends.

When another Andy joined our circle, Candy Andy effortlessly readopted and embraced the old nickname I had given him.

The world changed.

Who he slept with was often less a topic of conversation than whatever chaotic burning hang glider of a relationship I was in.

I had smoked about five cigarettes and walked half a mile in my own apartment trying to think of really intelligent, really valuable things I believed in to tell Katelyn’s kid, our kid, when my phone rang and Jasmine Hill said “Please sit down, Barry. Andy Lighman died.”

You don’t need to know about the shit slinging tantrum I threw or remind me that I’m never getting my security deposit back.

I told Katelyn I’d make a list.

The sun is still down, but some time during the night I picked the pen back up and scrawled

Smoking is stupid

Always pay cash for gas

Let your gay friends throw your parties

I was pretty proud of the last one until it hit me hard and fast that Katelyn’s kid could be the gay friend.

And some asshole could give them a mean nickname.

The world has changed so much I’m hopeful that won’t happen to our kid.

But I wanna be there if it does.

I call Katelyn and ask her to make me a list of things I need to do to be a father right out of the gate.

“I asked you to make a list,” she said. “Can’t you even do that?”

“I’m trying but…”

“But what?”

“But I’m heartbroken.”

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