I know next to nothing about my father. Only that he died at age fifty of a heart attack that wasn’t unwarranted, considering his affection for fast cars, fast women, smoking, drinking, and artery-clogging food. He was born in Tolka, the son of a butcher and a teacher, and shot to fame writing “Belle’s Bells,” a Christmas song that exploded all over the charts in Ireland, the UK, and the US, giving Mariah Carey and George Michael a run for their money. The Christmas song was his first and last brush with labor, or anything similar to a career, but it was enough to secure him a house in Dublin and an annual budget for food and booze.

He was a womanizer. The kind to bed everything that moved. He met Mom at a bar in Paris while she was backpacking with friends and he was trying to find his muse again. They had a one-night stand, and he gave her his address so she could write to him if she ever happened to be in Ireland looking for a good time. When she did write to him, informing him I was in the oven, he invited her to come live with him, but Mom never did. Instead, he sent child support money every month. Sent me gifts, letters…but everything was always carefully monitored by my mother. I hated that she controlled our relationship.

So I rebelled. From a young age.

I’d tried to get in touch with him on my own over the years.

I wrote him letters my mom wasn’t aware of—sent him pictures, emails, poems I’d ripped from books at the library. I begged Mom for crumbs of information about my mysterious sperm donor. I never heard from him, and I thought I knew why. He knew how much of a bossy bitch Mom was, and he was afraid if she found out we were talking behind her back, she’d cut off his communication with me completely.

Dad agreed to only talk to me through Mom, and never on the phone, out of respect for her. He once wrote to me that he was ashamed of his voice, of what had become of him. He’d said he slurred now even when he wasn’t drunk, and his voice shook all the time.

I didn’t care what he sounded like. I just needed his voice in my ears.

I wanted a dad.

Not even a particularly good one.

Seriously, any sort of dad would do.

My father died two months before I graduated high school. I was walking into the kitchen to get a glass of water when Mom got the phone call. I plastered my back to the hallway wall so she couldn’t see me.

She wasn’t sad. Or angry. Or broken. She just grabbed the vintage, corded phone, lit a cigarette, and sat down at the dining table, flipping her hair behind her shoulder.

“So he finally kicked the bucket, huh?” She coughed. “Only sad thing about it is I’ll have to tell Rory. She doesn’t deserve this heartache.”