The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out by William Dameron

Author:William Dameron [Dameron, William]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2019-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

REALITY TV

On my birthday in July, the last one we would all celebrate together, the girls presented me with an oversized box covered in red, white, and blue paper. “What on earth could this be?” I asked while unwrapping it, sounding so much like my father. The girls stood next to me. Claire watched my face expectantly, and Olivia worried at one of her fingernails. When the last bit of paper was torn off, I stared at the box, and Claire stated the obvious.

“It’s a TV for your new”—she hesitated, searching for the right word—“place.”

All of our attention was sucked in by the size of the large tube television, as if it were a small planet and we were trapped in its orbit. They had chosen an item for my new home and then gave it to me as a gift. I wondered how difficult it must have been for them, knowing that I would soon be alone in a strange place, looking at the television, instead of spending time with them.

The gravity of the moment was surpassed only by the weight of the television itself. When I tried to lift up the box, it would not budge.

“How did you get this home?” I asked.

“We had help,” Katherine replied, “the guy at Walmart and then our neighbor.”

Katherine looked at the girls, and I pretended not to notice as she raised her eyebrows and tilted her head in my direction.

“Happy birthday, Daddy,” Olivia said, pecking me on the cheek. She ran back up the stairs, and then Claire followed her.

“If it’s too big, return it for something smaller. Do whatever you want. You seem to be doing that a lot these days,” Katherine said, and walked out of the room.

I was left alone in the family room with the TV. It stared blankly back at me.

When my father left my mother, my brothers and I sat in the family room, watching TV. There was only one television and one telephone on the first floor, and they existed ten feet away from each other. Mom stretched the telephone cord as far away as possible, to the middle of the kitchen, but we still heard her sob and scream at Dad, “What am I supposed to do?”

We didn’t say anything to each other, my brothers and I; we just sat there, staring at that stupid TV, too frozen to change the channel. We pretended to watch a documentary about a boy walking across the desert with the Giza pyramids looming on the horizon. He didn’t talk or say hello to anyone, just kept walking, and there was some narration, but all I can remember is that lonely boy walking on a dusty road.

“Your father wants you, but he doesn’t want me anymore,” Mom cried, wiping her face with a kitchen towel, and I remember feeling surprised that he said he wanted us.

The birthday present from the girls remained in our living room for a few days, startling us whenever we passed, like a silent intruder, until I decided that it took up too much real estate, physically and emotionally.

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