I made him cry today

"Hello?"

"Hey Dad!"

"Oh, hi, how are you?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"Okay..."

Okay is an improvement. The last few days it's been "not okay" and "not good" when I called.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

He mumbles a bit.

"Waiting for your mother... Gail is with Bobby... I'm working..."

"Where are you?"

"...I'm in the family room... I'm working..."

He mumbles some more.

"How's Melissa? How's her mother?" he inquires.

"She's fine... She had a tough day at the film shoot she's working on. But her mother's good."

"Her mother's good?"

"Yep."

"And her father is good?"

"Yep, everything is good over here... Hey Dad?"

"That's good. That's good to here. Randall and Gail were here yesterday."

"I heard. And it was Gail's birthday, right?"

"That's right, and tomorrow... Aaron comes..."

"RIght..."

Silence.

"Hey Dad? ...I miss you."

Silence. And then with a high pitch tone and a trembling pitch, "Thank you... I appreciate...your sentiments..."

He mumbles some more, weeping on the phone. I stop him.

"Hey Dad? Listen. I...... I can't imagine how tough things are for you.... But I want you to do something. Whenever you're sad, I want you to look forward to talking to me... Whenever you're sad, I want you to think of me out there trying my best to be happy, and that I'm gonna call you everyday to tell you about it on the phone..."

No response. The silence endures.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, I couldn't quite understand. Could you repeat that?"

"........I said that whenever you feel sad, just think of me trying to get my happiness, and that I'm gonna call you everyday."

Silence lingers some more.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand..." He sounds muffled and quick and confused. "Tell your mother..."

"Dad, listen, I'm just saying that I want you to think of me when you're down. And I will call you."

With a whimpering voice, he tells me, "That's not easy..." And then he starts speaking in words that blur together and drip with tears and pain that I can hear running up and down his voice, his lips, every noise he makes. A soft upsetting ramble that surprises me. "....I'm sorry, I'm too upset to continue on the phone..."

"Dad? -"

"Send my regards to Melissa and her family. I'm sorry she had a bad day. I'm glad everything is going okay in Philadelphia -"

"Dad..."

"So I will say goodnight now. I'm sorry I can't talk. I will talk to you later."

"Dad? DAD?..."

"......"

"......"

"......"

The phone clicks off. That silent strong of white noise suddenly blasts into emptiness, and I find myself sitting on a bare mattress in the middle of my half-painted room, alone, before a computer on my desk which sits backwards and unsettled. The red paint on the base board dries all around me. Everything starts to swell up and breathing gets to be a slightly interesting task for me to achieve. I calm myself; this time the breakdown is fully in my control. It's up to me if I melt down or not. I read a text from Melissa. And then I turn to my computer.

Should I tell the internet what happened? Should I paste it up on my blog? I feel like I am doing a disservice to my family. To my father. To spell out my own angst is one thing, but to reiterate a conversation fresh in my mind that won't be subdued by time, replaced by paraphrasing and summarizing? This is criminal. This is using my own condition to attract readers. But I doubt this will attract readers. I just don't think it will. This isn't exploitation. It could be therapeutic. Or simply my loyalty to a practice of self-expression. An exercise. Fresh dialogue. Real. True. With a pulse. And dripping with tears.

So I type. The conversation, I remember, began with his faint "Hello?" And then I tried to sound chipper with a "Hey Dad!" And then he answered back less excited than usual with a "Oh, hi, how are you?" I said "I'm fine. How are you?" He said "Okay." And I recall think that that was an improvement.

He usually says "not okay."

That, or "not good."