CalvinDude.com

Note: This is a slightly modified version of an original story I wrote in 2003. All characters and events are fictional.

I think in code. It used to be BASIC, then C++. More recently, it’s PHP, the powerful server-side language that runs many web applications. It’s a script language, so the programs aren’t long and difficult. Mostly, it’s just simple logical branching. IF…THEN…ELSE.

It’s easy to think in code if you start properly. And the world becomes easier to cope with after a time. It’s all a matter of context and syntax. If you can put the right words in the right order, everything works out like it’s supposed to. If you can’t…

Syntax Error in Line 14, error parsing code.

It’s obvious that whoever invented syntax error codes was an android, not a human. A human would have just said, “Hey idiot, you left off your stupid semi-colon again.” A computer just gives you generic parsing errors and line you need to fix. It’s dispassionate, detached. And somehow….

Nicer.

If ($computers == $people){
$my_problems = “Solved.”;
}

The nose of the car edges out into the street. I blink at the sun that fills my eyes. I have the sun-shade pulled down low, but I need to see under it so I don’t run out into traffic and get killed. Just for kicks, I think in pseudo-code instead of a specific language: If car coming, don’t move, else pull out and drive like an old man. Yeah, problem solved.

The street is clear, unless a car is hiding in the sun. I pull out and don’t hear horns blaring, so I accelerate. If you can call it accelerating when you’re in a 1987 Volvo.

I hear the sigh beside me and look to my right. Amanda is there, her legs curled up under her. “You have your seatbelt on?” I ask, as my parental duty requires.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, pointing to the strap that keeps her in place should my Volvo decide to make a bee-line for the concrete barrier that divides the two lanes going beneath the underpass that, at least, blocks the sun for a moment.

“How are you feeling?” I ask, certain I know the answer, but needing to talk anyway.

“I dunno,” comes the expected response. “How am I supposed to feel?”

How indeed? “Well, what did you talk about?”

“Stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah. Stuff.”

I can tell where this conversation is headed. I’m just not that good at coming up with conversation starters for fifteen-year-old girls. That’s the reason why God invented mothers.

If ($myself == $mother){
$my_problems_with_teen_daughter = “Solved.”;
}

But maybe that wasn’t quite accurate. Not that Amy had left us an option of discovering the truth on our own.

It’s my turn to sigh. As we head out across the flat nothing that is Nebraska, Amanda says, “I hear ya, pops.”

If ($nickname == $pops){
$self = “Old”;
}

I sigh again.

We travel all night long. Long past the time the sun dips below the flat horizon we constantly head toward. More pseudo-code: If traveling, Go West Young Man. Wise advice indeed, but who are you calling “young”?

West is home. The Rocky Mountains of Wyoming. A place that Amy used to love, back when we used to love each other. Back when Amanda had a mother. And a father who didn’t have to be a mother too.

If ($problem == $feminine_nature){
$solution = “Call Granny”;
}

Granny was getting a lot of calls. She had raised me to be a man, not a mother. But Amanda wasn’t a boy, and my understanding of women ceased the day I tried to figure out Amy. Women made no sense. I think God did it on purpose.

Amanda snores softly next to me. I can see her face in the pale green dashboard light. In that light, she looks so much like Amy. Just like she ought to. It was better for her to get Amy’s looks than mine. As if she could have.

But as she lays there with an innocence that Amy never had, I can feel the heavy weight on my heart again. I try to stare at the white lines, zipping past on the left side of the car, but even counting them doesn’t clear my mind.

There’s no code for what I think. It simply is.

Amy and I had met seventeen years ago. She was fresh out of high school, and I was a junior in college. We both happened to have the same philosophy class. I happened to make sure I sat by her every day.

Things clicked, and the relationship evolved. Eventually, I was spending so much time with her that I had failed three classes. But I didn’t care. Classes weren’t important when I was with my woman.

Amy talked often of running away to Mexico. She wanted someplace new. Someplace tropical. Somewhere out of the endless windy Wyoming skies. She didn’t want to have to buy a special wardrobe just for winter. One that made her look seventy pounds heavier.

Yes, Amy was proud of her looks. And I was proud of the fact that she was with me instead of some other schmuck. Sure, she partied a little harder than most people and she sometimes ran away for a few days. She always came back.

If ($Amy == $enhancement_to_my_life){
$problems = “Overlook”;
}

But some problems couldn’t be overlooked. Like that little problem of when Amy told me she was pregnant. I knew who the father wasn’t. But my philosophy had already been confirmed:

If ($Amy == $enchancement_to_my_life){
$problems = “Ignored completely.”;
}

Amanda still doesn’t know she’s not mine. She still doesn’t know that she will never look like me. She doesn’t know that she will never find out who her real father is.

The sun is rising behind us as we near our home. Amanda stirs from her seat and yawns. “Have you been driving all night?”

“No,” I reply. “I stopped at a rest stop four hours ago.”

She nods, says nothing. I look at the familiar landscape in front of me. “It’ll only be another hour and we’ll be back.”

She nods again. Still says nothing.

I turn to her. “How are you feeling?”

“I dunno,” she responds. “How am I supposed to feel?”

“Well, I feel like we’ve already had this conversation.”

“Yeah, we did. You want to have it again tomorrow?”

Her mother’s wit has rubbed off on her. It must be the genes.

“No,” I say after a moment. “I was just wondering what you had to discuss with her.”

“’Her.’ Is that all she is now?”

It’s my turn to say, “I dunno.” What is Amy to me now? How long has she been gone?

If ($today == “March 17”){
$absence = “Nine years.”;
}

Nine years. Is that all? Only the better part of a decade.

“It’s just…I was so surprised to get her email. I still don’t know what to think.”

Amanda nods. “I know.” Her eyes go distant, looking toward the approaching mountains too. “I can still remember her. Just barely.”

I’m about to say, “That’s because you just saw her.” Something keeps me from doing so. She’s talking about that day. The day Amy left.

The day that Amy told me of her affair with Vincent. And how they were running away to Mexico, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. By the time I read this she’ll already be in Cancún. March 17.

Amanda had been six and in first grade. Mama was supposed to pick her up after school. Instead, she waited for three hours before I finally did. I would have been over faster…but like Amy had said, by the time I read this….

Amanda turns to me. “I still can’t believe she just picked up and left.”

“I know,” I say.

“She didn’t even say goodbye.” Amanda laughs. “Not even yesterday. That’s what I really wanted to hear, you know. Just a simple, ‘Good-bye. Nice to know you. Have a swell life.’ But there was nothing there.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. At least she wanted to talk to you, I think to myself. She only e-mailed me because she knew Amanda couldn’t drive yet. And she didn’t want to return to Wyoming to meet her either. It would be too inconvenient, so could I just drive to Omaha and meet her instead?

Amanda looks back at the mountains. “Mom said some pretty…” she starts. She turns to me. “…Pretty mean things about you.”

“Really,” I say. “That’s not surprising.”

“She said that you’re stupid and naïve. You cry in front of people. And that everyone takes advantage of you all the time. And….”

Her voice trails off. “Go on,” I encourage. “What else does your wonderful mother think of me?”

Amanda looks up. Tears are in her eyes. “She said you’re not my father.”

Ah that.

If ($That_Question == $asked){
$answer = “Lie.”;
}

But I can’t.

“She said that, huh?”

“Yeah,” Amanda replies, and then she utters a curse word.

I laugh. I can’t help it. Amanda does too. “I told her, ‘Well, he’s the one who takes me to Drama Club practices and he’s the one who goes to the school for parent-teacher conferences.’”

I smile. Bless you, Amanda. “What did she say to that?”

“She said that I could go live with her. She married some German doctor who was studying in Mexico and she says she’s rich beyond her wildest dreams.” Amanda looks at the mountains again. “She said I could have whatever I wanted.”

“Wow,” I say, looking over at Amanda.

“Know what I said?”

I shake my head.

“I said, ‘I only want my father.’ I said I want you, Dad.”

If ($happiness == $daughters_love){
$my_self = “Nirvana”;
}

The mountains are blurry ahead of me. I put my arm around my daughter, and I don’t care if she sees me cry.