We know Bobby Goren cleaned out his father's apartment after he died, but how much contact did the two have once Bobby reached manhood? For purposes of this story, I'm assuming little to none. Told from the man's POV…
After the Fall
The man found himself on his street again, trying to recall how he had made it here. Trying to recall why he had felt compelled to stumble across the entire city in the sub zero temperatures or blistering heat month after month, year after year to find himself in this same alley. And why he continued to do it religiously for the better part of the last eight years.
The man hid in the shadows, ducked in the alley across from his apartment. The man never wanted him to see, the man always hid, clean and sober, or dirty and drunk. The glow of his cigarette often the only indication that a living creature inhabited the pile of rags his clothes often resembled.
So the man watched, from the sidelines as he'd always done, never speaking but secretly proud of everything the boy had been able to achieve, of how strong he was. As much as he marveled at the boy's strength; he resented it, it should have been his. The man stood back and watched the boy go about his life, as though the man never existed.
He knew he had no right to be angry, but he couldn't help the resentment building inside him, hating himself for not being there, but hating the boy for rising above everything that life had thrown at him when the man was too weak to deal with anything without the aid of a bottle and his fists.
The man wondered where the boy's strength came from. He knew it certainly was not from his mother, a woman who made his alcoholism look more like a Sunday hobby than an addiction. He wondered how the boy could have grown up in that little house in Canarsie, watching his mother vanish before his very eyes. The man hadn't had the stomach for it. The man had walked away.
Perhaps the boy just locked everything inside, kept it under lock and key deep within his soul. His soul surely must be about full of repressed emotions by now. The man figured, there was no way the boy could hold onto so much hurt and sadness and have it not engulf him.
The boy had spent his entire life looking after other people, so that when it came back to himself, he didn't know where he stood, how to deal with his own needs. The man wondered if the boy ever felt loved, even back right at the beginning, when he'd been so innocent, when he had been loved. He had to grow up so quickly, any ounce of innocence cruelly ripped away by the age of seven and the constant tearing away of his soul every day since.
The man figures, what's the point? Why try and figure out problems that have plagued him for decades, when it's easier to hate the world and find solace at the bottom of a bottle. The boy survived. The man didn't.
So one again, the man left, stumbling down the path in the dark, his thoughts slowly dulled by the sweet amber liquor he'd spent most of the day consuming, but his emotions as intense as ever. People say they drink to forget, but he drinks to remember, to remember to hate someone other than himself, to remember to feel something more than an empty nothing.
The man slowly walks on, retrieving a small flask from his tattered overcoat, holding it in his hand for a second, as though considering his choices, before shaking his head and gulping down a mouthful of scotch. Glen Livet. The man still had the ability to buy the good stuff. The man had also noticed it was the boy's choice as well.
Perhaps, he thinks, he'll make it to the door tomorrow, perhaps then the man will try to talk to his son.
Maybe everything will change, and he will forget the man had abandoned him at such a young age, maybe he'll forget the man took the easy way out and the boy will forgive the man.
He takes another swig of his alcohol.
Things had a way of seeming so much more attainable when you have the warmth of alcohol swimming through your system.
But, the man knows, he won't make it to the front door, let alone face a lifetime of mistakes. He's no father now, nor has he ever been.
As the man's slumped form staggers into the darkness, occasionally silhouetted by the dull streetlights, Bobby peers out his living room window.
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