"An Involuntary Tightening of the Chest"

I am breathless by the time I arrive at the pond where Mr. McGee is waiting for me. He is sitting on a bench, throwing crusts of bread at birds who continue to waddle closer and closer to his nasty black cowboy boots. I want to like this man with the olive shirt and matching pants who whistles Michael Bolton’s How Am I Supposed to Live without You. If only he were just a freckled man with poor fashion sense feeding birds on an early warm evening and not the man who wants entry into the places my father touched.


“Are you armed?” He makes a clicking sound and winks.


“If I am, will you stop whistling that sappy song?”


Mr. McGee hands me a slice of stale bread. “You think I wanna hum that crap? That’s my kid’s doing. Plays it all day long.”


“Seth?”


“The only one I got. My little gay boy,” he sighs and smacks the side of his mouth again.


“He is gay, isn’t he?” I ask though it sounds more like a statement. I feel my ears burn as Mr. McGee makes a squeaking noise and pantomimes cleaning a window. “Next topic: your mother’s birthday dinner. May I come?” His brown eyes remind me of a puppy’s. There’s something pathetic about them that makes me want to trust him, even like him in spite of the funny face they’re in.


“Why are you asking me?” I hold a bread crumb over the head of a pigeon. Its thick neck juts all over for it, desperate. The will of my fingers determines hunger or heaven for this sad creature. For this moment, I am G-d. I wonder if this is what Sam thought when she took my father’s life.


“I try to make it a habit not to eat the food of people who don’t want me around. Call me crazy, I’m just not a big fan of food poisoning.” He throws a chunk of bread at the very pigeon I am enjoying torturing. I am no longer G-d and it is all Mr. McGee’s fault. He is staring at me. This lanky man who is shaking up any little form of control I have in my life is just staring at me.


“What?” I glare.


“You look a lot like your dad, you know that?” He is considering me like I am a piece of art. All I can feel is my life force rushing to the surface, and the involuntary tightening of my chest. Who is this strange man with floppy hair to have access to my familial genetic structure? I’d like nothing more than to take his polyester clad body and hurl him into the man-made pond. But I am too hungry to hear more about my father.