It was what he expected from a parent, from a human being who had chosen to cause him to exist — to cause him to emerge into the world, helpless, needful of guidance, hungry for teaching, a sense of self rooted in the premise that at the very least, his parents gave a shit.

His father gave as a father much as he gave in each and every other dimension of his life — his work, his pursuit of whatever passed for dreams in his mind, his marriage (at least, the one of which he, Chris, was a product), and, when that marriage had died — specifically, when he gave the knife that he had one day thrust into it, thrust; and then pushed, steadily, farther and farther, year after year, unrelenting as its life blood escaped by droplets, then rivulets, and, finally, by a steady gush.  That gush was — according to familial folklore, which was as murky and non-objective as the thoughts and motives in his father’s brain — his affair with a German woman ten years his junior, whom Chris’ aunt insisted, to that day, had been with him in a most non-platonic fashion on the N train platform.  His father denied this affair, of course, when Chris had finally confronted him, and this was no shock.  It was the least pertinent of the fusillade of denials, accusations, insults, that his father — more accurately, his stepmother, for whom his father served suitably as scribe in this recent electronic war of words — had unleashed upon him in the last three years.