My ten-year-old son, Bobby, recoiled as I put my hand on his shoulder. He threw a baffled look at me as he walked away, around the front of his mother’s beat-up junker to the driver’s side backseat. His warranted loathing still hurt, still after all of these years. I didn’t blame him. Madison, his mother, glared over the steering wheel at me with narrowed eyes far older than her thirty-one, while her new boyfriend appraised me with a fake smirk across his greasy face. I didn’t feel anything as I watched them pull away to end this joy-forsaken visitation.

Back in the house, I was hungry and went to the kitchen. When I reached into the cupboard to get food even I could cook, my hand brushed the half-filled whiskey bottle and stopped. I looked up, startled by the cool glass, and found myself looking at my reflection; the soulless Monster I became leering back at me, waiting eagerly for my next relapse. His cool eyes were laughing at me as I slammed the door.

Hungry, I spent the night in the dark, sitting in the threadbare, formerly green recliner: my only living room chair. It was squalid misery, and far better than I deserved. I could barely make out the calendar on the wall; two weekends from now might as well be lifetimes. Outside, a lonely dog howled mournfully. Inside, this mutt stayed quiet. I continued to ignore the book the judge gave me, abandoned on the ramshackle end table beside me.

---

The mechanic shop was far busier than useful. Once I wasn’t drunk at work anymore and the shakes stopped, my calloused hands flew like angels and the work blurred like through a bottle.

“Hey, Bill, how goes?” Tom, my best friend, runs the shop; if it was anyone else, I’d be homeless or dead.

I smiled. “Well enough, you?”

“You got a hot date or something tonight? That’s the fourth car you’ve fixed. You're making the other mechanics look bad”. His laugh was infectious, and all of the other grease monkeys in the garage grinned back across engines and out of pits.

Four? Fuck, four? Shit, when I work fast I get sloppy; my mouth felt too dry, my hands clammy. I needed a drink. “Are they okay? I swear, Tom, I was paying atten-”

“No, Tom, they’re good”. He put his hands up, his smile gone, his voice calming. “You good?”

“Bad visit with Bobby.” I shrugged. “I don’t blame him”.

Tom nodded. “Change is hard. Hardest thing I ever did was quit drinking, same as you.”

“You were funny when you’re drunk. I wasn’t.”

“You just think that cuz you were drunk too.” I didn’t say anything to that, cuz he was probably right.

After work, I started cleaning my trailer. I was surprised there was still money in my account after paying child support to Madison, so I got the power turned back on. The lonely living room lamp threw its sad light on the book. I had nothing else to do, so I started reading.

---

Two weeks flew by like nothing. The shop had never been busier but I buzzed like a damned saw. At home, I started to fix all the broken shit I found while cleaning: the coffee table the Monster smashed, the angry holes he punched into the walls; broken pictures of Maddy, Bobby and me. The book had talked about yoga or some bullshit but I figured fixing stuff would work the same. I hoped Bobby would be happy his bed didn’t wobble anymore.

He was sullen and silent when he was dropped off instead of crying and screaming. They all were quiet. Madison didn’t even look at me, staring off into the distance like she did when we were together, white knuckles grasping the wheel. Her new boyfriend’s leer was less fake, quite at home in the passenger seat. Bobby, of course, had to take the long way around the car from the driver’s side. If he saw anything I fixed, he didn’t say. He didn’t say nothing the whole weekend. I left him be.

It wasn’t an accident when I found the bottle in my cupboard after he left. And it wasn’t an accident when I put it back unopened, neither. It hurt so much to have him ignore me, and even more that I couldn’t drink it away.

---

I finished the judge’s book in the next two weeks. I had to bring it to work and ask Tom about a lot of the words. “Behavior Therapy” this and “Dialectical” that, why can’t they just make it simple: you drink because of these trigger things, and it’s all connected somehow. But I read it with the help. I was afraid the guys would laugh because of the book, but only the young guy, Hayden said anything, and he must have gotten a talking to about it cuz it was just the once. He came to say he was sorry afterwards, and I told him we were good and I’d done the same at his age.

When Bobby came over again, it was more of the angry quiet. I walked him to his room, the same room he had when they lived here, a lifetime ago. “It’s cool if you don’t want to talk to me. I don’t blame you none. When you get hungry, let me know. Work’s been good, I’d like to go to Mama’s Burgers like we used to if you want.”

“I would, Dad”. The soft words were the first he said to me in a month; they were louder than any thunderclap I’d heard then and since.

We drove in silence; I was just happy to get my license back. It was so strange seeing him in the front passenger seat instead of the back one.

It was awkward conversation at best, fumbled silences at worst. I almost ordered the Monster’s hangover special; I wondered if he saw the shame on my face as I saw the fear on his. I ended up with the house special, and ordered him his usual: single-patty, double cheese, double ketchup, double pickles, nothing else; gravy on the side for the fries. After that, we just talked about safe stuff: Little League, school, and computers. I don’t remember the last time we talked. Part of me wondered if we ever did.

I had my hand on his shoulder when his mom’s jalopy chugged up to the curb. I got scared when I felt Bobby’s shoulder tense up, like he was going to pull away again, but he didn’t. I wondered why Madison keeps bringing her loser boyfriend when she picks up my son.

I almost threw out the bottle that night, if only to see the smugness wiped clean off the Monster’s face. His greasy smirk was the last thing I saw before I slammed the door shut.

---

The next two weeks dragged by like a loaded truck with a broken axle. I did something unthinkable: I went to the library, got a card, and signed out a book from the judge’s “Recommended reading” list. It made a lot more sense, and I was mostly through it before Bobby’s weekend. There was some sort of 3D printing thing at the library that weekend and I signed us up for it. He’d love it, I hoped.

Bobby jumped out of the car as soon as his mother's smoking heap heaved to a stop. He was crying when he ran past. As I followed, two faces were watching me through the cracked windshield: my ex, her eyes round and full of fear; and his, cool and smug.

I ran back in to find my son; I heard sobbing from his room. I ran in. He was sitting on his bed, his face in his arms. I reached out to hold him. That’s when I saw the bruises, angry and purple, on his face.

He didn’t need to tell me the story, but I listened anyway. I should have known -- his mom has a type. Between the sobs, he managed to get it out. “They were fighting again, like they always do, like you and Mom used to do, screaming and smashing things. It always makes me angry and when he started hitting her, this time I told him to stop, and he started hitting me.”

For a moment, I didn’t know if he was talking about his mom’s new boyfriend, or her old one.

My heart broke when he looked at me, his tears damning me. “Why, Dad, why is it always gotta be like this? Why are you monsters always hurting me and Mom? Why Dad? Why can’t it stop?”

I tried to make it stop. I stopped drinking. I started reading. I finally got my license back, and work was going well, and the library. The Monster was just a fading reflection instead of the man. I was trying to be the father my son deserves and not the father I’d gotten.

I thought about that, what my son deserves, and I made my decision. I called his grandma, his mom’s mother, who hated me, and told him what happened and that I was bringing him to her house for the night. She squawked something back that sounded affirmative.

It was a long drive to his grandma’s house. So I brought something for the drive back to his mom’s apartment, something I’d need. When he saw it, I saw the fear in my son’s one good eye, and then he looked at me hard and nodded.

In the reflection in the bottle, a wolfish grin spread across the Monster’s face.