The man who was not my father

My birthday, along with so many other details of my life, had gotten caught up and swallowed by his addiction.

I pull up to a spot by the door. A few cars dot the parking lot, a man and woman follow a child through the double-glass doors into the coffee shop. The one I imagine is the father, places a protective hand on the little girl’s back and an arm around the woman’s waist. They are normal. They are happy. I can barely stand to watch them. I sit and wait. Unsure of what he’ll look like now, 32 years later, I recall his overgrown, dirty-blonde hair and the half-smile, hoping perhaps to hide crooked, neglected teeth. Maybe it was the drugs or the malnourishment that goes along with addiction. He was poor, too; his mother left them. She abandoned all five of her children, leaving them in the care of her husband, while she went off and married another man, and had his children. Having four children of my own, I let the gravity of that weigh on me while I continue to wait, to think of her disappearing, simply standing up one day and leaving. Did she pack things, or simply walk out into the bright sun of the afternoon in the middle of vacuuming the carpets? Perhaps she waited until she heard the laboured snoring of a man she no longer loved and slipped out in a shroud of darkness? I heard a rumour somewhere, though I no longer recall what it was. My brother kept in touch with my father’s side of the family, even after he left. I had a pair of pink corduroys, and a white shirt with pastel-coloured silk bows. The one birthday present he ever bought for me. The silk was a synthetic fabric, not real. My father was broke, all his money went to drugs and to support his wife, the new one, the one who looked like my mother. I wonder if she was an addict, too, as I look at the time on my phone. He’s late, not alarmingly so, but after all this time I thought he would be punctual, as if such a thing might make up for the last time when he left us.