The story illustrates a relationship between clearly depressed father and his son. We glimpse the father’s deep depression on line 5 “… and he hadn’t been happy in a while”. The father might be depressed because of his own actions, on line 20 “and at some point he saw her watching them, leaning against the kitchen counter in her bathrobe, and when he looked at her she shook her head and looked away.”. We get the impression of it because of the woman shaking her head, when watching him. The story contains indication of the fathers previous actions on line 16, where he feels like a stranger when entering the house, “wiping his shoes and ducking his head like a visitor…”. We can furthermore get an approval that the woman he thinks about on line 15 was his wife, “For a long time he hadn’t wanted her back, hadn’t wanted much of anything really.”.
It appears as if he feels some sort of guilt in relation to his son, because of the divorce with the mother. We learn that the father because of his hope that “maybe—maybe he could make this right.” he truly desires to make it right again with his son.
Throughout the story is the father a bit overprotective in relation to his son, line 17 “… he threw him over his shoulder, careful not to hit his head on the corner of the TV…”. Even before this, the father describes his son, as wearing “miniature jeans”, as having “little hips” and asking him about his feelings and his needs. This points out even more, that he truly appreciate his time with him and that he needs to make it right again.
In addition to the rest of the story, is the trip, companied of the son, extremely important to the father. Even though he sometimes consider turning back, he remember that he has promised his son this trip, line 39 “For a moment he considered pulling out, explaining… but there was nowhere else to go. And he’d promised.”. The fathers awareness of his son is illustrated as him being overprotective as on line 17, but also further