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My Dad by Neal Sillars copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved

Neal Sillars was born in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city, in 1968. He is employed as a lecturer of Spanish Language and Culture in a Scottish college of higher education. He lives in Lanarkshire (Scotland) with his Spanish wife Dolores and two daughters Mairi and Carmen. As well as writing, his passions are travel, history, and good cuisine. Although most of his life has been spent in his native Scotland, he has also lived for three years in various parts of Northern Spain.

He is an MA graduate of the University of Glasgow (Philosophy / Hispanic Studies) and is currently completing the final draft of a thriller, "Revolutionary Tax" set in Spain. He has also written a novella and has recently completed collection of short stories, "Univers Parallèle".

I reckon I take my good looks from my dad. Not that my mum’s ugly or anything. I don’t mean that. Just that I look quite like my dad. I have the same mousy-brown hair, the high cheekbones, the almost square jaw and the mischievous smile with accompanying dimples. I must be about the same height as my dad too.

I have a photograph of him at about the same age as me now ’ about nineteen or twenty. We look like we could be brothers. Of course, his clothes look a bit weird. I suppose that’s the problem with clothes in photographs. You can look really good when you have a photograph taken, but twenty years later, you look like a complete idiot with zero dress sense. I think you should always wear classic styles when you get your photograph taken. That way your kids don’t look at your image later and feel embarrassed by your style of dress. If you were to put decent clothes on my dad in the photograph, he would look like me.

Hairstyles and glasses are just the same. My mum has a photograph of my auntie Jean and she looks like an owl. Her dark brown hair is falling down the side of her head in a drab, loose perm and she’s wearing enormous, round glasses with red frames. She looks ridiculous. If you could remove the ridiculous specs and that hairdo, she wouldn’t look so bad. You might even say she was pretty. You can get software nowadays to do that sort of thing. Just cut and paste. I like to cut and paste. You can change things. I could change this story by cutting and pasting. I could cut the next paragraph and paste it above this one. That way you’d get a different story ’ different first impression. Funny that, isn’t it?

I don’t remember ever seeing my father. I must have been really young when he left. I must have still been a baby. My mum refuses to tell me anything. I have a photograph of him that my gran gave me. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen. My mum doesn’t know I’ve got it. My gran found it once when she was cleaning out the wardrobe in his room about ten years ago. She had finally given up on him ever occupying the room again and had decided to make it into a guest room. Not that she gets many visitors. It’s a photograph of him with my mum at the beach. I think it must be Ayr or Prestwick or somewhere like that. It looks cold, wet and windy in the photograph. Dreich would be a more efficient description but that’s Scottish slang, isn’t it? They’re both wearing coats and their hair is blowing about wildly. I wonder who took the photograph? Maybe my mum was pregnant with me when the photograph was taken.

I’ve given up asking my mum about my dad. She has blotted him out. For her, he doesn’t exist. He does though. He exists. I’ve got a photograph of him. I know I look like him so that must be a constant reminder to my mum. I suppose even if he were dead, he would still exist in me. He’s in there, in my DNA. Eternal life. My DNA must go right back to Adam. Besides, if he were dead, my gran would know. I know he’s not in contact but someone would let her know if her son had died. Wouldn’t they?

When I ask my mum about him she just goes into a stinker of a mood and begins to bang and clatter about the house. I don’t like causing her that grief so I let it go. But I do have rights. My gran has run out of information on him. She’s told me everything about him.

"He was a wee bit wild ", she says.

But she says it with a glint in her eye. I know she respects the rebel spirit he has. I find it attractive too. I’m not really a rebel. I could be though. I bet my gran was in her day. It’s been the best part of nineteen years since she’s heard from him so I suppose it’s been difficult for her, too. She doesn’t really know what else she can tell me. I think I’ve drained her of all her memories. I know all that anyone can possibly know about someone in a photograph. My only other source of information has been my gran.

There seems to be a gagging order on everyone else in the family. They’re not-mentioning him out of existence. I still crave more information though. I need more.

My gran has always taken a keen interest in me. I suppose she feels responsibility or guilt or love or something like that. They all boil down to the same thing. Maybe I’ve replaced my dad as her baby in her mind. I think she’s maybe embarrassed too, about what happened. She’s Old School. She doesn’t say it but she’s angry with my dad for leaving us the way he did. He abandoned us.

I went to the pub with my uncle Pete a couple of weeks ago. He normally never talks about my dad, but he did when we went for a pint. We’d never been for a pint before. Not together. In fact, he thought I’d never been for a pint before. I played along not wanting to disappoint. After a few beers, I asked uncle Pete straight out about my dad. He was awkward at first. He asked what I wanted to know about him for.

"We’re all the family you need", he said, "your mum, your gran and me."

I told him I needed to know more for my own sanity. I think that must have worked because once he got talking, he really told me quite a lot about his brother. Pete doesn’t refer to him as my dad. He calls him his brother. I suppose that’s natural because Pete and my dad are brothers. It seems silly to say, but I never thought about them like that before. Pete’s always been there at Gran’s house and my dad hasn’t. I’ve always called Pete "uncle" in the same way kids here call all friends of the family auntie and uncle. When I was growing up, I had loads of aunties and uncles and didn’t really know the difference between that and real aunties and uncles. All my neighbors on the estate were aunties and uncles.

My auntie Jean explained what real aunties and uncles were to me once but I didn’t want to believe her. I felt robbed. That would have reduced my aunties and uncles to her and Pete. That didn’t seem fair. I like the idea of big families. Maybe that’s because it’s always just been my mum and me in the house.

Pete told me my dad went to America. Boston he thinks. I asked him why he went but he didn’t have an answer. He just got up and got another round in. When he came back he wanted to talk about the football. He had come to his senses at the bar and was now observing the unofficial code of silence again. He had tickets for the game and wanted to take me. I didn’t really want to go but I accepted anyway. I’m not really interested in football. Not now anyway. I went to the game hoping Pete would tell me more about my dad. He didn’t want to discuss it. I think he regrets telling me what he has. Pete’s got a loose tongue with a drink in him. That’s what my mum always says. I wish I could get the chance to lubricate my mum’s vocal chords. She doesn’t have a loose tongue though. Even when she’s drunk and talking nonsense, she clams up when I ask her about my dad.

"What do you want to know about him for?" she asks, "That’s ancient history!"

The thing is, it’s not history for me. I want to know. I have rights. He’s half of me. I need answers.

My gran didn’t know anything about Boston. She seemed angry. I think I might have got Pete into trouble. I don’t think he’s ever told her about Boston. If he gets an earful I suppose it’s his own fault. She’s his mother for God’s sake! She’s got a right to know.

I know my mum already gave Pete a good rollicking about talking to me about my dad. I don’t think he’ll make the mistake of taking me for a pint again. It’s too dangerous. Still, it’s his fault. How long has he known my dad went to Boston and never even bothered to mention this? I think he’s jealous of my dad. Pete never married, you see. Never had kids. He still stays at Gran’s house. My dad got married. He married my mum. Pete was the best man. So my gran told me anyway. I’ve never seen any photographs of the wedding. We don’t keep fancy photo albums in the house. My mum was already in the club when they got married.

"That’s what you did in those days," my gran told me.

Maybe they did but it seems a bit stupid to me. They couldn’t have been married long before my dad disappeared off the face of the earth, so the vows couldn’t have meant much to him. I don’t think my dad could face up to the responsibility of a wife and baby. He was young though, about my age. He couldn’t have loved us. If you love, you don’t abandon.

Auntie Jean is my mum’s sister. She doesn’t have a good word to say about my dad. She says he was a waster and that he’s probably dead by now the way he drank, though I don’t think Jean is very objective. I suppose she just reduces my dad to someone who left a wife and baby. Jean can’t see beyond responsibility. He must amount to more than that. He must be more than a lack of responsibility. Maybe he’s made up for that mistake since he left. In Boston.

Logan International is a modern airport. It’s clean, bright and well organized. It only took me six hours to get here and that was going via Amsterdam. I’d never flown before but it was no problem. There were free drinks all the way from Amsterdam to Boston, though I didn’t have much. You can’t smoke on the flight so it would be torture to have a session. If you’re a smoker, you always smoke more when you drink. It’s better not to impose purgatory on yourself so I just had a couple of vodkas and watched the film. Besides, I didn’t want to arrive drunk in a strange country. The plane was much bigger than I had anticipated. It had three sections of seats. The outside sections had two rows of seats the whole length of the plane. The center section had a few rows.

I sat in the center and had four seats to myself. It wasn’t a busy flight. I had expected more people. There was an electronic sign that showed our progress. That made time pass more slowly. I kept flicking from video screen, to progress board, progress board to video screen. Each green light on the board took an age to light. Sometimes it seemed as if we were hovering over the Atlantic and I kept standing up to peer out of the window at the side. The cloudscape was featureless and denied the sensation of motion. I stopped looking at the progress board and the flight went quickly. By the time the second film finished, there were only two green lights left and we had to fill in white cards for American immigration.

I should have told my mum that I was coming to Boston. I’m sure she’ll be worried sick about me by now. She would have tried to stop me though. No doubt Pete will get the blame. My mum will work out I’ve come here. My gran wouldn’t stop me. If she were younger, she’d go and look for my dad. I know she would. He’s her baby. Her ’wee wean’.

Gran gave me the money to come. She warned me not to tell anybody. She doesn’t want the blame if it all goes wrong. I don’t care if it does. I just want to meet the man in the photograph and get on with my life. I don’t expect him to love me, to take on his responsibilities, to feel guilt. I don’t expect to find nineteen Christmas presents in his flat or apartment or whatever he’s got. I just want to put a voice to the face and move on. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering about a photograph father, a life of what ifs. Once I speak to him, I’ll be able to refer to him mentally as a person and not as an image on a piece of paper. I want to see him, not an image. Then I’ll move on.

I didn’t know where to start when I first arrived at Logan. I got through customs after having answered a variety of questions about myself and the purpose of my visit to an immigration officer. I think he thought I was trying to sneak into the States under false pretenses. He kept asking me if I intended looking for a job in America. He wasn’t happy because I didn’t have a hotel booked and couldn’t tell him much about my plans but he eventually let me through as a queue was forming behind me.

I hadn’t seen any smoking areas as I waited for my backpack, so when I picked it up from the black conveyer belt, I headed straight outside for a cigarette. There were yellow cabs waiting outside expectantly but I shook my head at the driver at the front of the line and held up my cigarette to communicate that I was only out for a smoke. After the cigarette on the sidewalk, I went back into the airport. I didn’t know where to go. I considered purchasing a ticket back to Glasgow but decided I couldn’t. I’d look like a real fool if I did that. Don’t panic! I popped upstairs to a wood-paneled bar and bought a beer. I thought about what to do next as I drank the cold lager.

Once I had finished the beer, I went back outside for another cigarette. As I was smoking, I looked back into the warm airport building and thought about home. Nobody would even know I’d come to Boston if I got a quick flight home. Nobody except Gran that is. No. Pride forced me to throw the stub away, pick up my backpack and put my hand out to hail a cab.

"The town centre please," I requested not really knowing where else to go.

The cab driver wasn’t talkative in the least. He just pulled out of the line of taxis and headed for the freeway. I took in the surrounding cityscape as we headed towards downtown Boston. I saw the Atlantic and thought of home, far away but on the same stretch of water. I wasn’t homesick though. I felt strangely comfortable. I had expected to feel more foreign but it wasn’t happening. Maybe it was because they speak English in America. Maybe it was television. Nothing seemed strange because I had seen it all before. A million times. I’d seen it a million times without knowing my dad was here. Maybe I’d seen him without even realizing.

There are lots of Irish bars in Boston. I went into a pub called the Black Rose. The doorman, a pleasant big guy, asked me if I was on holiday. I was still carrying the backpack. He had a Scottish accent. He recognized mine and seemed pleased to speak to someone from home. He had been in Boston for a while and seemed to know the ropes. He told me there was a healthy Scottish and Irish community in Boston. Lots of people came to work there.

Jim, the guy on the door, was just finishing his shift. We had a beer together and tried to work out if we had any mutual acquaintances. We didn’t but it turned out we had drunk in many of the same pubs. Small world, isn’t it? We would never have talked back home. We had no reason. Here, in Boston, we had something in common: home. Jim also had a job in the construction industry. He worked with a bunch of Scots and Irish. I asked him about my dad.

"Do you know Gerry Sweeney?" I asked.

I suppose it would have been nice if he had said yes but he didn’t. He said he would ask around though. Somebody was bound to know him. It was a close-knit community. Jim told me about a cheap hotel close by. I arranged to meet him another day to get an update on his investigation. In the meantime, I’d conduct my own. Do the legwork.

I’m in a bar in South Boston. Southy they call it. Jim came up trumps. An electrician he knows worked with my dad in the past. They were drinking buddies while the contracts lasted. I don’t really know what to say. I am sitting at the bar. My dad is right next to me, having a pint with another two guys younger than him. I think they’re Irish. They sound Irish. My mouth is dry and I find it difficult to speak. I can feel the tension in my belly and in my chest. I think I’ll just go home. Say nothing. I’ve seen him now. I’ve seen myself. The barman is standing in front of me. He is expecting me to order a drink. I suppose that’s reasonable.

"A pint of lager", I say.

The barman nods and begins to pour my beer.

"I recognize that accent", my dad says.

Funny, that’s what Jim said too.

"Where are you from?" he asks.

"From you", I reply, "from Gerry Sweeney."

Dad’s friends are looking at him, curious. He nods at his friends to excuse himself and puts an arm around my shoulder. He leads me to a dark, wooden table and we put our pints down in unison and sit down.

"Are you John?" he asks.

I nod.

"I can’t believe it! I really can’t believe you’d be this age already!"

I nod but say nothing. Doesn’t he ever think about me?

"Have they never told you son?" he asks. I look at him. My blank expression answers his question.

"I’m not your dad son."

"I’ve got a photo!" I implore.

"I can’t believe Pete and your mum haven’t told you! Not after all these years."

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