Dead to Me, Ten Years Later

When my father kicked me out of the house for not following his path, I returned ten years

later to buy his business and fire him. It was a Tuesday. I remember that

because Tuesdays were trash days in our neighborhood, and the smell of wet cardboard and

suburban refuse was heavy in the air. I was eighteen years old,

holding a duffel bag that contained three pairs of jeans, a handful of t-shirts, a laptop with a

cracked screen, and exactly forty-two dollars. My father, Richard Sterling,

stood in the doorway of the house that had been my entire world. He was a big man,

not in terms of fat, but in presence. He took up space. He sucked the oxygen