Not That I Care Read Online Free Page A

father. He wouldn’t let me go to Mass with him every day, but on Sundays I would pray to Saint Christopher with all my might. Saint Christopher, protect us , I would say, my hands gripping each other tight as I knelt beside my father in the pew. Saint Christopher, protect us , because I had read that on my father’s medal, the one he put on every morning as soon as he came out of the shower. I’d sneak in while he was showering to touch it. Down on my knees, I’d run my fingers over the raised saint’s face on the front like getting my morning blessing: Saint Christopher, protect us . Then I’d quickly run back to my room so nobody would catch me being so corny.
    That Fourth of July had been pretty disastrous, I guess, though at the time it had felt just sort of normal for us. We’d all gone to the fireworks at the high school, and Ned wanted to spread the blanket on the parking lot side because it would be louder there, and Mom was like, No, let’s go on the grass where it’s more comfortable and not as loud . Well, it turned into this huge thing, the two of them pulling the blanket like tug-of-war, when Dad yelled, “Who cares? Why do you two have to fight about everything?” Everybody turned around and looked at us. I was standing behind Dad’s leg. He stands with his legs spread far apart and his feet turned out.
    “Eddie,” Mom stage-whispered.
    “Oh, please,” he said and walked away from them, mumbling, “I’m so sick of being the bad guy.”
    I ran after him. He stopped and knelt down to look me in the face. “Go back to Mom,” he said.
    “I want to go with you.”
    He smiled his winningest smile at me, I remember it. “I’ll kiss you when you’re sleeping. Go back to Mom now.” He turned me and gave me a little shove on my back. A firework exploded over my head, startling me. I ran back to where Mom and Ned had been. They weren’t there. I wandered around all through the show until I found them during the grand finale on the blanket in the parking lot.
    The next Saturday, Mom stood alone in the kitchen while Dad had a talk with me and Ned. He told us this whole story of how the past few weeks he’d been driving around from construction-site inspection to construction-site inspection, as he’d always done, but realizing he didn’t know who he was. “I can’t recognize myself,” were his words. “I don’t know who I am.”
    “You’re just Dad,” I reminded him. “You’re Eddie Miller.”
    I thought maybe he was losing his memory or his mind. I hoped Mom was in the kitchen calling a doctor. Ned sat beside me on the couch with his arms crossed and no expression on his broad, stony face.
    “No, Maggie,” Dad said. “I mean, I’m having some problems, inside myself. I’m having a problem with God. It’s hard to explain, or understand. But what I think I have to do is get away for a while.”
    I shook my head. “Where?”
    “What I’ve always dreamed of being is a movie actor.”
    “Really?” I asked.
    “When I was a kid, my father lost his job and next thing, he’s dragging the lot of us across the world—I’d never been outside County Cork before. Right? I was just a kid, sixteen years old, when I got here, knowing nothing and nobody. Your mother taught me to play cards and chew gum and next thing I knew I was a father myself, with a wife and a couple of kids and my summer construction job is suddenly my career, and it just feels, I’m choking. I honestly feel like I’m suffocating. So I have to go. I have to, Maggie, before I just, until I, well, I have to go find myself. I can’t be a very good father, can I be, if I don’t know who I am?”
    “What a ludicrous excuse,” Mom said, poking her head out from the kitchen. “For their sake, I’m trying to keep my thoughts to myself, but come on, Eddie. Movie actor? You never acted in a single . . . you wouldn’t come see me in the high school play! You said it was for zips, acting!”
    Dad sighed. “Jo? You