+Bad Catholics+ Frank Iero

+32+

In the short time I had been alive, I had only seen my father cry once. 

There was a lot that was said in regards to the type of person he was. Some of the most memorable adjectives were heartless, wicked, depraved. Void of a soul. The local paper used that one quite a lot. 

The strangest thing I found about it all, even to this day, is that those words were never hidden from me. He never forbade me from knowing what everyone around us truly thought about him, even though they didn't even know what his face looked like besides vague, inaccurate police sketches. My peers at school, our neighbors, the clerks at the grocery store. They hated him. With more fervor than I had ever witnessed in books, or history, or anything else I had consumed in my life. I didn't know that it was possible to feel a feeling as strongly as they all did.

And I of course had to wonder- should I hate him, too? The things he had done were certainly deserving of it. He lied and cheated. Tore families apart- my own included. The answer appeared obvious, but like everything else in my life, it wasn't that simple. The hands that have stolen someone's last breath were the same hands that brushed my hair. The voice that made innocent people cower in fear was the same voice that read Where the Red Fern Grows to me as my eyes grew heavy with sleep. I was only nine years old when I had this thought. Simple wasn't even close. 

And so, one day, I asked him. It was late at night, and I couldn't sleep. I laid on my back, wide awake, thinking about how awful a person could be for potentially hating their own dad, or potentially loving a criminal. I remembered how terrible that felt- like there was no option in which the outcome wasn't me being a terrible person. That's the one thing I feared more than anything, was having all of those words used in the news to describe him being used to describe me, too.

I remembered hearing the side door close and the deadbolt lock, the chain strung up right after. His footsteps made their way down the hall and past my bedroom, the reading chair in the corner of his room creaking with his body. I heard him sigh through my wall. 

He looked tired when I crept into his room, but he still smiled, and asked "What is my darling Daisy Mae doing up at this hour?"

I wanted to return the smile, but I couldn't. He just looked so normal to me, sitting there under the tall stained-glass reading lamp that stood next to his chair, regardless of what I knew he was likely doing before he came home. I couldn't picture the person I saw sitting there doing the things he had done. He motioned for me to sit on his bed across from him and I did, folding my hands in my lap quietly. I could feel my bottom lip quiver during the moments of silence we shared while he waited for me to answer his question. 

"Am I a bad person?" I finally let out, unable to think of any other way to articulate the thoughts running through my head. When I looked up at him, I knew that he knew. 

His smile disappeared as he turned his head away, rubbing the back of his neck. Seeing someone that always had the right things to say, unable to say anything at all, made me feel guilty. I felt like I shouldn't have asked him that. But finally, he turned to look at me again, and in addition to a soft new smile was a single tear running down his fatigued face. 

"You are the smartest person I know, Daisy," he said. "When you're older, I hope you understand that if I could be just your father, and nothing else in this world, I would."

That was all he needed to say for me to let myself love him for just a little while longer.

.

"Ten bucks."

"What?"

"Ok fifteen, but you're really pulling my leg here."