within me, a hunger in my gut that grows fat on my fears, biding its time. And I wonder where my father got it from. Mom tells me that Ed was a surly bastard who had flashes of goodness, glints of gold in a pan full of dirt. He would buy a suit for a man down on his luck and take him job hunting but was incapable of saying a good word to his children. He sent all five of his kids to private Catholic school when he didn’t have to, so they could have a better education, but if they struggled he would beat the information into their heads. My uncle Michael remembers being sure that Ed was going to kill my dad one time when he chased him through the backyard with a shovel. It was so bad that my grandmother, who usually couldn’t be bothered, finally intervened to save her son’s life. Mom says Ed was like King Midas, who meant well but screwed up everything he touched. I want that to make it less cruel, but I’m not sure it does. How do you forgive a man who nearly killed his son? For the most part my looks are my mother’s and my personality is my father’s, but somewhere along the line I got tall and green-eyed. I tower over my blue-eyed parents, my sister, my mother’s parents, my dad’s mother. I don’t know where it comes from until Mom tells me that Ed was a very tall man, physically imposing. A looming silhouette in a backlit bedroom doorway. I don’t know the color of his eyes. Dad tells me that for his fifth step of AA, years ago, he decided to make amends with Ed. Even now, my father’s hesitant to blame the horrific nature of his childhood solely on my grandfather. He tells me, “It wasn’t dysfunctional in spite of me; it was dysfunctional because I was a part of it. I was drinking too, and some of those fights I started.” I can’t find it in myself to blame him because he couldn’t have been more than a teenager even then, but I nod anyway. “So you made amends with Grampy?” I ask. I can only bring myself to call Ed “Grampy,” like my sister and I used to, when I’m talking to my dad. Other than that, I haven’t called him anything resembling “grandfather” since I learned about everything that’s happened. Dad nods. “I went out to see him while he was working in the garage, apologized for everything I did.” “And what’d he say?”
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