“Would you say his discipline was fair?”
Luke thought about how it had felt to be stuck in his room while Matt and Ben were hanging out with friends in Piccadilly Gardens. “Back then, no. But now, in hindsight, as an adult, yeah. He was. I should have done the same for Izabel.”
Neil took a sip of his mug of tea. “It’s interesting that you say that. You drew a line in your answer which made me think about the concept of time. There’s back then and now. Where back then means you were still a child experiencing the negative effects of discipline. And now, as an adult, you understand the lesson he was trying to teach.”
Luke studied the therapist. “That’s fair.”
“I’ll come back to that in a moment. Tell me more about your dad. Did you admire him?”
“Easiest yes. How could you not? He was a firefighter, put his life on the line every day. He loved us, not in that obligatory way, but on a deep-down level that you could feel. And he had our backs. I remember my French teacher giving me a hard time, and at parents’ evening, when the teacher started to tell Dad about it, he asked the teacher what he’d done to actually help me. Like, had he tried to figure out why I was being disruptive? Was I bored? Was something worrying me? The teacher was gobsmacked.”
“Did he believe it was the teacher’s job to keep you in line?”
Luke laughed as he shook his head. “God, no. He kicked my arse when we got home. But he then sat me down to get to the bottom of it. And the truth was the teacher always made me feel stupid as shit for not being able to conjugate verbs. Made fun of me every time I tried. So, I switched off. Stopped trying.”
“What happened?”
“Dad got me a French tutor we couldn’t afford, I worked hard because I thought it would help when I became a pilot—being able to speak foreign languages—and I was moved up a set, so he was no longer my teacher.”
Neil paused, and Luke fought back the urge to keep rambling about his dad. The silence felt questioning. Oppressive, even. “Tell me about one of your dad’s flaws.”
“Why would I speak ill of the dead? Bit fucking weird, isn’t it?”
“You’d be surprised the number of things I’ve heard in this room about dead people. This is about you and your feelings and memories. They are real and valid and meaningful, regardless of whether the person is dead or not.”
Luke filtered through memories of his dad. At the sideline of his football tournament, driving him and Matt to school one rainy day, blasting Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” because Luke loved the drum track. They’d banged on the back of the front seat and air drummed. The day he’d surprised him with the Von Dutch trucker hat he’d wanted for getting his first Saturday job at Debenhams. Going to pick their mum up after a night out with friends because he didn’t want her getting in a taxi alone.
“He always knew the right thing to do,” Luke blurted.
“And that’s a bad thing.”
“Of course not. I’m sitting here and all I can think of is good.”
“I want to come back to the concept of back then and now. Is it fair to say that back then is seen through childlike eyes? And now is seen through an adult gaze?”
His stomach flipped at the sudden direction switch. “You mean, like, maturity?”
Neil tapped his fingers to his lips. “Yes, I suppose. I was thinking about how we process information and make decisions. Like, if I put a plate of candy on the table and told a child not to eat it, the chances are, if I left the room, they would. But if I told an adult not to eat it, they’d probably leave it alone. Back then, through a childlike gaze, certain actions lack consequences. And now, as an adult, you understand the concept of consequences more.”
“Okay. But what’s that got to do with Dad’s flaws?”
“What if I said that the lens of a child is an unreliable narrator? Memories are filtered based on our life experience to that point. All you remember is how good it was. It’s so very easy to elevate the dead to sainthood. Even if it’s ill-deserved. No person is flawless. Your memory erases the flaws.”
“That’s not true. You didn’t know my dad.” Anger started to bite at the edges of his control.
“You’re right, I didn’t. You mentioned your best friend, Matt, on our call. What’s his flaw?”
“He can be so obsessive about the band to the detriment of including everyone else.”
“Your lead singer?”
Jase.
Fuck.
“He’s impulsive.”
“The others?”
“Do I have to answer?”
“No. This is therapy. You don’t have to do anything. But it might be helpful if you could.”
“Fine. Alex is too trusting. And Ben needs to get off his arse more.”
Neil templed his fingers and placed them to his lips. “Izabel’s flaw?”
“Hates conflict so she sometimes lets people walk all over her.”
“Your own?”
“Holy shit. It would take the rest of the session.”
“Humour me.”
“Fine. I get angry and fight. I hold grudges. I’m selfish. That good enough?”
“Do you believe your dad is better than your sister? Than your best friend? Than you?”
Luke tugged his hands through his hair. “Hell, yes. He was better than all of us.”
Neil grabbed his notebook and scribbled something quickly. “You may believe that, but I’d suggest a reframing. He was a human being. And there isn’t a human being on this planet who’s so perfect they don’t have a single flaw. Did you know you can Google Mother Teresa’s flaws and pages and pages of articles pop up even though she is a saint? Why do you think you’ve created this vision of your father that allows no room for him to be an imperfect human being like everyone else?”
While his initial reaction was to stand up, kick the table with the fucking monstrous plant on it over, and leave, the words reverberated around his head.
An imperfect human being like everyone else.
“I want to argue, but I think I hear what you’re saying. I just don’t know . . . it confuses me that . . . I can’t think of a time when he wasn’t the best dad in the fucking world.” Tears stung the corners of his eyes as grief he kept buried bubbled up.
“He was, Luke,” Neil said softly, his tone so even and comforting. “To you, he absolutely was the best dad in the world. That doesn’t have to change. And. And you can accept he was as imperfect as the rest of us. He still left you. And you tried to fill his shoes, but you were never going to be able to, Luke. You can’t fill the shoes of someone you idolised because the bar you are holding yourself to isn’t real. You can’t live up to a false representation of him.”
Was that what he was doing? His head spun.
“Do you mentally punish yourself for not being him, Luke? For not being able to fill his shoes when he died?”
The fingers were back, squeezing his throat, but he took a deep breath, forced them to loosen their grip. He blew out a breath. Then, another. He heard a crack, and then the opened bottle of water appeared in his hands.
“Sip it, Luke.”
He did as Neil instructed, focusing on his breath as he did so.