Dining Out

I can remember the exact moment when I realised that my dad was a bad man. It's not a nice place to be at any time of life but as a young kid, it's the worst, I think, because you don't really have the analytical tools to deal with it, tools that, over time, you've gathered and honed with the experience of living. Then you can craft it, whatever it is - the disappointment, the betrayal, the fear, or all of these things combined - into something manageable, that you can look at, at least, and live with.

Finding this out at the age of seven, that your dad is hated and that you hate your dad, just leaves you with a heaviness in your stomach that you carry around. Sometimes, it gets lighter at birthdays and when some praise is showered on you. Sometimes, it's a boulder and it presses on your innards, deep and sustained, like when scorn is delivered through a barbed comment or a snarl escapes through a contorted mouth.

It never goes. It just sits, and eventually, it wants to burst out of you. It's been tick - tick - ticking for years, just waiting, knowing that you can't contain it forever. It knows that you're dreading the shredding it will cause but that ultimately, you know and it knows, it will out. It's just picking its moment.

It exploded a few years' ago for me although I still harbour its remnants. It was long overdue but that's another story for another time.

*

The incident happened when we were on vacation. It was all of us: Mom, my father, Jamie and me, and of course, our full security detail. You can't be the kid of a vice president and not have an entourage.

The details of the actual night are unclear to me, the preamble to the event. I have pieces which I can grasp at that I think happened but who knows if that's how it was? However it went down, I can still reel from the shock of what happened - if I let myself. My therapist advises me to shut it away now that I've confronted it but it's not that easy. It's noisy and it demands attention and it prods at me, emerging at times when I least expect it, resulting in cold clamminess and what feels like a fist clutching my lungs and contracting my breaths. I cope with it.

We were in a different country, Britain, so I was already feeling uncertain. People said strange words which sounded like English but like no English I knew. I was shy and reserved, but I was seven. I can remember being excited but also bored. Daddy was in demand. Going off with men in suits, on the phone, talking, shouting, laughing, when we were travelling anywhere, texting on his phone when he wasn't doing the other things. It was me, Jamie and Mom only for the most part on that vacation, until that last night.

My father wanted a family dinner out.

"Get the press there. I want them to see the Tiller family togetherness. Let's counteract this image they're creating of me."

He chose a restaurant which sold fancy food. I don't know why. Must have been a status thing because he was a steak and eggs kind of guy. "If there's nothing died on that plate, take it away!" he would say and I would watch as my mum would plant an approving smile on her face but her shoulders would declare the cringe she was trying to contain. I was conscious of tension at moments like this but whose dad doesn't act like a dick sometimes?

When we pulled up in our big, black cars, it was quiet. There were people about, nothing significant, but the press weren't there as requested, at least, I don't think they were. They were definitely there when we came out, them and others.

I reckon I would have remembered if it had been chaos to get in. I can only remember the chaos to get out.

We'd had a good day up to that point. My father had had to go off, saying that he'd "see us later" and told Mom to "make an effort and make sure the boys look smart - polos, shorts. No fucking Crocs." I don't know if he swore but I know I didn't wear Crocs that night and I was smarting from that because I loved those shoes. They were like friends, not footwear - comfortable, easy to get on and I had these little things clipped to them so they were uniquely mine. They were cool.

Everything was more relaxed when he wasn't around. We went to a zoo, I think, that day. I had an ice-cream which was white swirls with a chocolate stick in it. No flavour, just soft white, with a saccharine sauce, strawberry flavoured. The cone turned to pulp as the ice-cream melted in the heat of the day and with the heat of my hand. That day was hot all round.

It was a good day. Mom laughed a bit and let us run around more freely than she would have if my father had been there. We were still accompanied but there was a distance between the life that held us, restricted us, and the life that we should have been having as kids.

I played hell when I couldn't wear my Crocs.

"You can't wear them, chicken. Daddy says."

In my seven year old mind, I didn't care what my father said at that time. I think I would have done if he'd delivered the message himself, he'd have made me care, but coming from Mom, I felt like I could persuade her. But no, she was having none of it and I can remember wailing until my throat hurt and my nose ran.

"He wants you to look smart. Don't you want to look smart?" I didn't care about looking smart! I was seven years old! But then she said the phrase which to this day makes that boulder rock and roll in my stomach.

"Don't you want to make Daddy proud?"

Don't we all want to make Daddy proud? Pieces of me still to this day reach for it but that boat has sailed and maybe that's for the best. At the age of seven, I would have loved to have had my daddy look at me with a beneficent smile, emitting a glow that reflected his God-like power over me and his everlasting love. But in my experience, that was the stuff of Disney cartoons and hope - a fucking fairytale.

At seven, it would have been better than the zoo and the ice-cream combined and I wasn't a naughty kid so the tantrums ended and the Crocs stayed home. I was still sad but Mom may have slipped me some candy too as that night evokes strawberry laces for me and memories of their yummy plasticity.

It's at this point where my recall comes in patches.

We're in the restaurant. The staff are attentive. My father is lauding it over them, not discourteously but with his power conveyed in his looks and his demands. To us, he is Papa Bear. I love Papa Bear. He's a giant of a man who likes to wrestle, tussle and tickle, a protector who talks to us like young men, offering advice and jokes and a camaraderie that makes you feel like you are part of his team. Papa Bear is a hero. He doesn't stay for long unfortunately and he didn't tonight. Usually, his fur coat is thick and nothing can penetrate it to poke his pressure points but tonight was different.

The Indian waiter. That's where it started.

Jamie and I were furiously colouring - we weren't allowed our tablets, not wholesome enough for the image we were projecting - so we were using the crayons to create a psychedelic pirate. I don't know why it was a pirate. I wonder if Mom provided them to keep us occupied, to ease and grease the night, like a guide avoiding well-laid traps.

Papa Bear had been laughing along with us when he'd stopped suddenly in mid bark. Even at that age, I could sense a mood shift, my arm hair rising with the tension.

I looked at him and he was scowling. Not at me. I remember the soft brown eyes of the waiter, smiling at me as he placed down my pizza. They'd made them especially for us boys and it looked delicious. I thanked him like I'd been taught and moved my crayons to the side.

"You are welcome," he said and I can hear it in my head now. Funny voice. "Velcome" he said but not like a German. It was softer. It was exotic, musical, spiced. There was a flurry as he left the table although he walked back to the kitchen with steadiness and smoothness. My father summoned over one of his men, had a quiet but firm talk where instructions were given and that waiter didn't serve us again that night and Papa Bear disappeared.

The mood shifted. I ate my pizza, Mom securing a napkin so that only my face, which could be easily wiped, was marred by my eating. That pizza was delicious but to this day, I've never eaten pizza again. We weren't allowed dessert. The colouring had been done.

Looking back now, I wasn't aware of the noise growing outside the restaurant. My father had wanted press and they had found us as had other people. I remember Mom talking to us more and more as my father grew distracted and agitated. She was calm but there was an underlying note to it, a strain.

"Well," I remember my father saying, "just how the fuck are we going to get out of here?"

His man tried to explain about the access, that he'd had reservations about this restaurant for that reason, that there was only one way out and that was the way that we had come in. Back access must have been limited. These quaint English places weren't built for vehicular access and quick unobserved escapes by the celebrated.

"Don't come to me with your fucking excuses," my father growled and I felt my heart reverberate with the anger of it.

"We could sit it out, John," my mom said and it was like she'd lit a taper.

"I will not be holed up here, made prisoner and taken siege by the ignorant," my father said, quietly and controlled. He was a great rhetor; a fucking racist, misogynist monster but he could deliver a speech. I suppose that's what happens when you educate those with a heart full of hate. He was glaring at Mom and I could see her visibly shrinking under his gaze, as if its power was like a death ray, at a weaker strength but still able to penetrate and reduce.

"You will not talk again," he said to her, his wife, his life partner, the mother of his sons, his most intimate. It was barely audible but we three, four including him, heard it. I can remember feeling contempt for them both in that instant although I wouldn't recognise it as such until therapy: him for his vileness towards her and her for her complacency. I know now that complacent is not what she was. She was fucking scared.

And then, the next bit is all a bit of a blur because it was frenzied and rushed. The roaring noise from outside was starting to encroach. There was movement inside, from secret service agents mobilising, quickly, darting and pointing, fingers on earpieces. Shoulders were stretched and weapons revealed. Banging, not guns but hands on glass.

"We need to go, sir," and a black suit grabbed me and Mom cried "No!" and we were heading for the entrance to the restaurant, to the double doors. You couldn't see the street anymore; it was being blocked by people and they were crushed up to the glass, hammering with their fists and I could see their tongues and their teeth and the whites of their glaring, angry eyes.

I don't know where my father was. Perhaps he went out first before us as the doors parted and the secret service men acted as a battering ram and protective wall in equal measure.

It was the loudness I remember the most. I can't tell you what they were chanting but I can tell you the tone: fury. There was so much fury. And there were sirens, British sirens. I knew their warning cry. It's a sound that crosses borders. Flashing lights and roaring. Shouts in American accents of "Get back!" and "Let us through!" Screams and shouts and chaos.

I was so frightened. I've seen footage of the incident from those who posted and I look so small, so vulnerable. Why isn't Daddy there? Where was he? I see Mom and she's shielded by a black suit, as is Jamie. I suppose as I was the smallest, it seemed wisest to pick me up rather than trying to herd me. I'm crying. I want my mom. I'm reaching behind to her. She's passing me her strength through her eyes, with her look of love. I've still got my napkin stained with tomato sauce and a crusty bit of melted cheese. The crowd surges and a hand reaches for it and rips it away. I scream.

I remember there was a shout before the spit landed but I couldn't recall it exactly. The internet, however, is a depository for all things, nasty or good and on replaying it, I heard it: "Fucking Nazi spawn!"

You can see it, the spit, flying through the air before it lands on me. I looked down and it was there on my polo shirt. Thick, bubbly, white almost and translucent in places, with traces of yellow. On my shirt. Someone's spit. Think it was probably British spit but counteracting systemic hatred against your fellow man is an international movement so who knows? A bit like sirens: it crosses borders.

And then I'm bundled into a car and my father's there but he pays me no mind, even though I'm sobbing because he's ranting and raging about the situation, words like "These fucking British" and "Why weren't there more cops?" and "I'm the vice president, for fuck's sake! I shouldn't have to run!"

The drive to our accommodation was long. I sat and I cried. I made sure I did it quietly. I was ignored. My father was busy. I wouldn't have known what to do if he'd tried to comfort me. Papa Bear was exposed for the charlatan he was. I wouldn't have melted into him. I'd have been stiff as a rod, wary and reserved.

Do you know he didn't even wipe the spittle off my shirt? He raged about it, swearing in indignation and ferocity but he never reduced himself to removing it, from taking the scorn and revulsion from someone else and erasing it from the clothing of his own flesh and blood. He knew it was there but it was not his concern. The fact that it had happened? Yes. But the physical act of clearing it up and making his son feel better? No.

The next person to touch me was my mom as she lifted me out of the car. I held her like we'd been molded together. I'd never felt so safe and so loved. I could feel her heaving with tears of relief but that lasted moments, that memory. I must have sparked out, exhausted.

The next thing I remembered was waking and feeling scared. Jamie had his own room so I shouted for Mom but she didn't come. I got up, bleary-eyed. I could hear her. Why wouldn't she come?

When I found her, that was the moment that my life changed for good. You could say that a metamorphosis was already in motion but I didn't hate my father up until that point. I was scared of him, wary of him, and I didn't like the way he talked to my mom but I hadn't shaped these emotions into anything tangible up to that point.

I don't think I knew how to hate until then but I sure knew afterwards. He didn't see me. I don't think he ever knew that I saw him with his hand on her throat, pinning her against the wall. She'd challenged him, I guess. She never did tell the truth of it, even after he was assassinated. She was scared, yes, but she was always spirited. He didn't want her cowed all the time. Where was the sport in that?

I'll never forget the look in her eyes as she saw me peeping through the gap in the door. He was still holding a whisky tumbler whilst cutting off her air supply and leaving the imprints of his fucking fingers on her neck. Bastard.

Just like before though, she transmitted love to me through her frightened, wide eyes. If I'd have gone in, was there a chance that a new target had arrived? He let her go. I saw her slumped like a ragdoll.

I went back to my room and cried myself to sleep and my hatred towards my father seeded itself.

But I am not my father's boy. That hatred, it's with me still but it has nowhere to go now and slowly, as time drifts and life moves, it is dissipating, like a black mist, particle by particle, like his ashes. He had greater capacity for hate than me and was eager to spread it around. I'm not like that.

He's in my thoughts always because I can't help wondering about what sort of man, leader, father he'd have been, if only he could have loved to the same measure.