Oxford Magazine Summer 2015: Curious Kin

Lane Osborne weeks on end. It was Jon and me who listened to the raised voices, the slammed doors, the squeal of my father’s tires against asphalt the day he left.

Jon and I didn’t intervene. Didn’t take sides. Didn’t talk about it between ourselves. Didn’t do anything. Jon has been through this before with his own father, and though he’s never told me what to expect, there’s always been a quiet comfort in having him by my side. But now, he’s there, I’m here, and this is my situation to deal with on my own.

My father and I sip our refills as the bartender fiddles with the tinfoil wrapped tips of the TV antenna, taking a grainy football game to a whiteout of static and snow then back again. He mumbles to himself, “There, that’s better.”

But it isn’t any clearer than it was before.

My father doesn’t seem to care about the TV reception, but he’s interested in the game, rooting for the Bears who are trailing the Cowboys.

“That’s my hometown, kiddo,” my father says, pointing to the Chicago skyline rising above Soldier Field.

My father watches the Bears struggle against the Cowboys, cursing under his breath when things don’t go his way. But when the camera pans to show the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders rooting for their team on the sidelines he elbows me and says, “Not bad, eh?”

And perhaps this says more about our relationship than anything. My father has always treated me like a young man, like we’re best friends, but it doesn’t feel that way tonight. It hasn’t felt that way for quite awhile. I know we’ve had good times, happy times, but right now they somehow seem beyond the reach of my memory and imagination. My parents haven’t told me they’ll work things out, and, if asked, we would probably all agree the separation is for the best. It’s not our family I’m worried about, nor my parents’ marriage. It’s my relationship with my father I’m concerned with at the moment because it’s suffered in the separation too.

Before sitting down with the judge that day nearly a week ago at the courthouse, my mother told me what to expect the judge to ask. Then she coached me on the answers I should give. She’d told me I should say my father 21