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It had been years since Vince had uttered even two words to his father. The man who had hated him from the moment that he was born, Walter Daniels never showed Vince any sort of affection. Vince was constantly blamed for his mother’s death, even though a now grown Vince knew that wasn’t true. She had a condition that ultimately took her life in childbirth and that would have happened with any child. The older and more mature that he got, Vince understood that, and he tried to reason with himself that the man was simply projecting his grief on his son. It didn’t make it an easier pill to swallow, considering he never had that father figure who showed him any kind of compassion or love, but at least he understood why his father did the things that he did.
Still, it had been years since they had talked, mostly due to Vince’s hectic work schedule and the fact that, no matter how powerful and successful his son was, it was simply never enough. It was easy to simply cut the man out of his life forever than to deal with the constant struggle of wanting to appease a man who would never be appeased. He simply continued his work; no matter how dubious it actually was, his father never knew that. Whenever Walter saw his son in the papers or on television, it was always with a charming smile, a carefully calculated and crafted answer coming out of his mouth. In a way, Walter was proud but Vince never knew that. He would never know that either. It wasn’t all that rare for Vince to receive calls in the middle of the night; in fact, it was almost an expectation. Vince almost always had his hand in something and this was no different. However, the call came up on his caller id and he wasn’t sure of the phone number. Most of the time, he’d let it go to voicemail and deal with it in the morning. He wasn’t sure why it was different that night but something compelled him to answer. The woman on the other line was somber, identifying herself as someone from the hospital and then delivered the news. Walter Daniels was dead. Vince simply nodded to the phone, not saying anything for a moment, but feeling absolutely nothing. It wasn’t that he was shocked, it was simply that he didn’t care. However, he knew he needed to act like he was shocked, put on some act of the grieving son for the world to see. It would be exhausting to be something that he wasn’t but he did it almost every day. At this point, it was practically second nature, it didn’t mean that it was any easier for him. When he arrived at the hospital, the somber woman from the phone greeted him and took him to the room where his father was lying, cold and dead. Vince reached out his hand for a moment, briefly touching the man’s hand, before nodding to the woman. She left him there for moment, alone, shutting the door on the way out. With his hand still on his father’s he quickly pulled it away, feeling compelled to punch him in the face, but it would do no good. The man was dead and he couldn’t feel the pain that he had put Vince through all of those years. “Walter Daniels, I’m fucking glad that you’re finally dead.” When he attended the wake and funeral for his father, he played the doting son who was grieving. He received well wishes from people he didn’t want to talk to or associate with because that was what was expected of him. It was the polite thing to do. At the funeral, Vince spoke of a man that people thought they knew of Walter; devoted husband, loving father, ethical businessman. It was all bullshit, though. At his core, Walter Daniels was a man who never amounted to anything after his wife died because he was so overcome by grief that he couldn’t properly function. He was a weak man, a man that Vince would have never associated himself with under normal circumstances, but had to because he was the man who raised him. There had been times when Vince wanted to have the man killed but he could never bring himself to do it. Even he would never stoop so low to kill a man who had already killed himself years ago, even if his body was still present. When they lowered the casket into the grave, Vince stood stoic and silent, glancing around at people who were crying for a man who was just as weak as they were. For as long as Vince could remember he was told that he’d never amount to anything, that he was never good enough. His father, and people like him, were the ones that were never good enough. Now he was gone, dead and buried, and Vince felt powerful, like a weight had seemingly been lifted from his shoulders. When he returned to his car he smiled for a moment, looking in his rearview mirror. “Rest in hell, old man.” |