'The Magic Kingdom'

Chapter 1
The Lonely Dad

Patrick sprawled on the couch in a near stupor, staring at the flickering TV set. As the credits for Gilligan’s Island rolled, he jabbed the remote at random, but all the channels seemed to be featuring TV evangelists in various stages of excitation. Sunday morning, he sighed to himself.

Finally, he managed to find a cooking program featuring an attractive lady with an Southern drawl dispensing tips on baking the perfect red velvet cake. But as she was about to pull the fruits of her labor out of the oven, the program was interrupted by an obnoxious ad for incontinence pills. Swearing, he flicked the TV off and pulled out his phone.

The emptiness of the house weighed heavily on him. His son had recently left for college. Patrick hadn’t expected it to be much of a change, after all, the boy already spent most of his time hanging out with his friends and only occasionally returned to raid the refrigerator and pick up fresh clothes.

But now, he was totally gone. There was no more ear-splitting garage rock pouring out from his room, no astounding clutter of sneakers along the hallway, no more seeing the back of his head sticking out from the armchair while B-grade science fiction movies played on the TV. Just a deafening, overwhelming silence.

To make matters worse, his wife had moved out shortly after his son departed. That was no surprise, their marriage had been diseased for years, and they had only stayed together for their son’s sake. There weren’t any bad feelings between them, there just weren’t any feelings left, after decades where he had devoted his entire life to work.

Looking back, he wished he could return and be with his son in his formative years, playing catch, taking him to ball games, and other quintessential father-son activities. But somehow, not only had he failed to do any of these, he had even managed to miss most of the kid’s birthday parties. And now his little boy had grown into a young man overnight, and vanished out of his life into his own.

Patrick twiddled with his phone, hitting the refresh button on his email over and over again, desperately hoping for some work emergency to rescue him from the tedium. He missed being in the office, where the secretaries smiled at him and the staff deferentially called him “Vice President”. Long weekends like this were especially tough.

Wandering aimlessly thru the house, he blubbered at the display case of basketball trophies and faded family snapshots. Attempting to pull himself together, he walked back into his den, turned on the computer and refreshed his mailbox again. A spam message appeared, advertising last minute air fares to his son’s college town. Impulsively, he clicked, and within a half hour was speeding towards the airport.