My Old Man

by Amy Sohn

  “Richie?” I said. “You hate it when people call you Richie.”

  “No I don’t,” he said, glaring through his good eye. He perused the menu and said, “I guess I’ll get the spaghetti and meatballs without the spaghetti.”

  “He’s on Atkins,” Liz said.

  “Since when are you on Atkins?”

  “Since a few weeks ago. It’s one of the reasons I’ve dropped so much weight.”

  “But you love pasta!”

  “I know, and pasta’s the reason I’ve been overweight for the past thirty years. Now I avoid the white devil.”

  “I think you’re avoiding the wrong one,” I said.

  “Come on, Rach,” he said. “Hitting me with the ball wasn’t enough? You gotta keep hitting?”

  “I swear to God it was an accident!” I said, but he pursed his lips like he didn’t believe me.

  Powell got the spaghetti puttanesca, and I ordered linguine marinara. “Did you know that ‘puttanesca’ means ‘whore brew’?” Powell said. “It’s because that’s what the whores used to eat in Italy after they worked.”

  “Why didn’t you order that, Liz?”

  She shook her head at me solemnly. “So much bitterness. I saw it during the game, the way it chokes you up. Don’t you think Rachel should go into therapy, Mr. Powell?”

  “She doesn’t need therapy,” my dad said quickly. “Therapy is for people with really bad childhoods.”

  “What do you think I had?” I said.

  “You think I was a lousy parent?” he gasped.

  “You had a terrible temper. I was afraid to spill milk or you’d throw a fit! You were a completely reckless authoritarian.”

  “I wasn’t authoritarian,” said my dad. “I was just more mercurial. And you were not an easy teen.”

  “Don’t take it too hard,” Liz said, patting his hand. “The ideal parent wasn’t perfect, as any therapy neophyte knows, but, in the words of the great Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller, simply ‘good enough.’ In therapy we learn to be accepting of good enough. You were good enough but she’s obviously playing out some sort of incestuous attraction to you by dating Hank.”

  “What?” my dad sputtered.

  “It shouldn’t upset you. Obviously I have some father issues too or I wouldn’t be with an over-the-hill Yid myself. Rachel has a serious persecution complex due to what she’s just described as your authoritarian parenting. She’s working it out through masochism.”

  “What do you mean masochism?” my dad said.

  “Look at her wrists.” They were still bruised from the rope, just slightly red, but Liz had amazing powers of perception. I grabbed my hoodie and slipped it over my arms but my dad leaned over and pulled them out to look. A look of concern crossed his face and then he glanced at Powell, nodded slowly, and said, “Well. As long as it’s consensual.”

  I didn’t know which was more upsetting: that I was eating post-tennis lunch with my father, his mistress, and my fifty-one-year-old lover or that in the process my dad had discovered my penchant for being strung up to the ceiling. There are things you don’t want your parents to know, and there are things you really don’t want your parents to know.

  “So what’s your safe word, Mr. Powell?” Liz asked.

  “The phrase conjures visions of a sick house,” he said, “but please. Enlighten.”

  “It’s a word that lets you say stop unequivocally, that signals the game is over. Ours is Itzhak.” She and my dad exchanged a glance and then giggled simultaneously. She leaned back in her chair like she was some anoractress on late-night television talking about her dog. “You see, Richie was working me with this pink vibe I have called the Mini Pearl and he was so good with it I started calling him the Pearl man and then he said, ‘I’m such a Pearlman I’m Itzhak Perlman,’ and now whenever one of us wants the other to stop we say, ‘Itzhak.’ ”

  “You’re using the name of a patriarch as your safe word?” I said.

  “What’s wrong with that? All the men in the Bible were totally kinky promiscuous swingers.” She was right. Abraham’s first son was born to his concubine, and Solomon, David’s son, had seven hundred wives. But it still grossed me out.

  “So what’s your word, Mr. Powell?” Liz asked.

  Powell regarded Liz coolly, his head tilted slightly back, and then folded his hands and said, “You see, this to me is the essence of what is wrong with your generation.”

  “What?” Liz said.

  “You’re the first generation in history whose parents had more fun than you did, and you feel the need to punish yourselves for their sins, so you make sex as unpleasant and formulaic as possible. You can’t allow yourselves any spontaneity or enjoyment of the act because if sex suddenly became fun then it would cease to be sex.” Was that what he thought of me? Why was he saying this in front of my father? Did he think I was unspontaneous when I’d let him hang me from his pipe?

  “We have fun!” she said. “Right, Richie? Just the other night Richie came over around nine and—”

  “I’m not saying you kids are frigid,” Powell said, extending his hand. “I’m saying you grew up so oververbalized, with the political correctness on college campuses and the sex education in the schools. The thing between men and women used to be about what wasn’t said but with your generation it’s all gotta be out on the table.”

  “You can’t blame us for coming of age during AIDS,” said Liz. “If we’re vigilant about condoms, it’s because we were taught to be. You guys all slept around in the seventies and now a whole bunch of people are dead. So we pay the price.”

  “Not really,” Powell said, shaking his head. “We had to worry about herpes and pregnancy but most guys pulled out and for the most part it worked. Only the junkies and figs are dead. But your generation can’t fathom the idea that casual sex could happen without punishment. In order to buy into the raging fallacy entitled Safe Sex Education you’ve been taught to sterilize sex so that there’s nothing sexy about it anymore. Everybody’s gotta ask permission.” He made a goofy childlike face and raised his voice so it was high and wimpy. “ ‘May I kiss your mouth?’ ‘May I put my hand on your breast?’ It’s ridiculous. Sex is about women finally shutting up. When I met a girl on a dance floor in the eighties I didn’t ask permission to fuck her in the bathroom. Right, Richard?”

  “Absolutely,” my dad said, like he was the Steve Rubell of his day.

  “You got married in 1971,” I said. “How would you know?”

  “I—dated a few women before Mom.”

  “She said you were a virgin when you met.”

  “Is my daughter the sweetest kid in the world?” my dad said.

  “Maybe I’m seeking support from the wrong guy,” Powell said.

  “Who had the puttanesca?” the waitress said, arriving with the dishes.

  “I worry about you children,” Powell said, addressing Liz and me, after the waitress had set down the food. “I really do. You’re so terrified of sex that you spend more time talking about it than having it. It’s like a protracted adolescence.”

  “I’ve been fucking since I was thirteen!” Liz said.

  “TMI!” I said.

  “Why should she be ashamed of her sexuality?” my dad said, putting his hand on her back and rubbing up and down. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

  “You know, Hank,” I said, dabbing my mouth even though I’d only eaten a few bites of my linguini. “I think you were right about our generation.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think what distinguishes us from others is that we suffer from both too many boundaries and too few. We don’t know how to be sexual without broadcasting it for the entire world to hear.” Liz was eyeing me nervously but that only revved me up more. “We don’t know a sexuality that can exist in private because our sexuality has been a part of the public discourse since we were adolescents. Sex has become such a disconnected act. The orgasm exists in total isolation from the individuals involved.”


  “Do you really feel that way?” Powell said.

  “Absolutely. That’s why we need so many crutches. But it’s not just young people this affects. It’s everyone. It’s not enough for two people to be together. They always have to whip out a box of toys.” My dad was starting to look a little ill. “It really upsets me. It makes me crazy. I mean, when I think of what we do with all these machines as a sublimation of real sexual connection, when I think of the total lack of respect for personal privacy and the use of exhibitionism as a substitute for intimacy, all I can say is, ‘Oh broooooooother!’ ”

  They all got pale and frightened, like I’d suddenly whipped out a gun. My dad pawed at his eye with the ice napkin. Liz’s eyes were as narrow as a pissed-off Bangkok whore and Powell was regarding me with something beneath contempt. It was quiet for a long time and then my dad looked down at his plate, peeled off some twenties, and put them on the table. He set down the napkin, replaced it with the bag of frozen peas, and rose to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said, and walked out.

  “Nice one,” Liz said. “He’s never going to live that down.”

  “What about me?” I bellowed. “I’m the one who’s never going to live it down!”

  She leaned forward and clapped Powell on the shoulder. “Mr. Powell,” she said, “I heartily enjoyed the match.” And then she was gone too.

  Powell spent a long time spinning his fork in his pasta and set it down on the plate. “What does the world need prophylactics for anyway,” he finally said, “when it’s got you?”

  Tabouli

  or Not Tabouli

  POWELL walked my bike and me back to the neighborhood but when we got to his street he turned and said he needed to get home. “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” I said. “I thought that night you came over that things had changed.”

  “Never take anything for granted.”

  “What happened? I know I made a fool of myself back there but it wasn’t an easy situation.”

  “That’s not why I’m going home,” he said. “It’s this work. I got a lot riding on The Brother-in-Law now that Lopez is interested. I don’t have time to be your family therapist.”

  “I don’t want a therapist! I just want to be a guy again. The way I was before. I want to ride you and have sex with condoms. I want to sleep over.”

  “My home is my haven. The only girl allowed to sleep over is the one I made.”

  “What—is that Aphorism Number Six?”

  “No, I just made it up. But come to think of it—”

  “I can’t believe you’ve lived this long with all these idiotic expressions. I would have thought one might have killed you long ago.”

  “Have a good afternoon,” he said, and turned down the street.

  THAT night I went over to my mom’s. The house was empty. The living room was well kept but the pictures of my dad were gone and the one with the three of us skiing in Vermont had been relegated to the back, behind the five-by-seven framed photo of my mom with her folk dancing group.

  Sitting on top of the coffee table, next to a pile of her papers, was a book called Surviving Infidelity, written by two psychotherapists. She had dog-eared one of the pages so I opened it up. The section was called “Poor-Risk Partners” and it began, “The poor-risk partner is most likely to have serial affairs or one-night stands. Many such partners have serious personality problems, often with a long history of poor interpersonal relationships starting in childhood. In fact, his history may be one of having erratic and stormy relationships with family members, bosses, friends, and members of the opposite sex.” I should have known when I saw Mars and Venus in the Bedroom that soon she’d be reading Surviving Infidelity. John Gray was like the gateway drug to divorce.

  I went into the kitchen and stepped on the garbage pedal. No Kleenex there. I wondered if she’d even been crying. Maybe her postmenopausal zest had made her take it with a kind of inhuman strength. She’d found a way to rise above it all and keep her head screwed on straight when no one else in our family could.

  I checked the fridge to see if she had changed her diet but it was mostly green vegetables from her farmer’s market and some focaccia, but nothing too out there like macrobiotics. I decided that was a good sign. A wife is exponentially more likely to end a marriage if she’s eating nonprocessed food.

  I looked at the calendar on the wall to find out where she was. The boxes were so crowded it was hard to read anything. Dinner with Carol, Koffee Klatsch, Women’s League for Israel, Dutch Folk Dance teacher here, with an arrow over three days. Maybe her key to coping was never to be alone. I moved my finger along the activities until I got to Tuesday. “Knitting Hands,” it said. “Introductory Meeting.”

  Knitting Hands was the knitting store on Atlantic Avenue and Bond, in Boerum Hill. It had opened a few years before and was one of the only businesses on the street that was doing well, maybe because so many young women were going retro. When I opened the door I saw a dozen women of all ages, sitting around a table at the back of the room moving their needles and knotting their brows. No one had gotten more than a few rows finished and they were all saying things like “Is it supposed to grow?” and “Which side should I hold the yarn on again?”

  My mother was sitting near the instructor, a crew-cutted woman in her forties with a bony face. It was like I’d hallucinated the whole goddamn affair. I saw no tear streaks. She was so busy with her knitting that she didn’t even look up when I came over until I tapped her on the shoulder.

  Up close I could see that her eyes were bloodshot. There were lines extending out from her wrinkled lips. “How’d you know I was here?” she said.

  “I saw it on the calendar.” She frowned like she didn’t like the idea of me going over there unbidden. “So are you doing OK?” I whispered.

  She stood up, took my arm, and ushered me to the front of the store. “What am I supposed to do?” she said. “If I stay home I’ll just cry more—” Her voice broke a little and she covered her mouth to stifle the sound. “I figured I might as well go to the class. Nina kept insisting I come over to her place instead but I told her, ‘It’s sixty-five dollars, I don’t want the money to go to waste,’ and finally she gave in.”

  “Maybe I should take you home,” I said.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m learning to knit.” She blinked a few times and then she started crying. “We shouldn’t be talking here,” she said, eyeing the dreadlocked guy behind the counter, and pulled me out onto the street.

  “Can we go get some dinner or something?” I asked. “I wanted to find out how you are.”

  “I already ate. And I’m fine. Really. These attacks come but then they pass. I’ve been seeing a psychotherapist who specializes in”—her voice cracked—“my kind of issues.” My mother had started therapy before I did. It was such a role reversal. “Where’s Dad staying? Is he living with that—”

  I didn’t know whether to lie but I wound up not having to say anything because she took one look at me and said, “He is.” She shook her head bitterly. “I guess he has everything he wants now. Her, and you.”

  “That’s not fair. You think I want him living above me?”

  “I don’t know what you want.”

  She was still angry, still putting it all on me. “I can’t believe this,” I said quietly. “You still think this is my fault.”

  “I didn’t say that! But if you hadn’t become friends with that—”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “You do. Is this how bad it’s gotten? You’re even going to blame me for his infidelity? I can never win with you.”

  My mom and I were like a miserable married couple—stuck together for the long haul but unsure exactly how we’d wound up related. She resented me for my bond with him and I resented her for punishing me for something that really wasn’t my choice to begin with.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I said.

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “Then why do you act like you do?�
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  “Look,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, “I have a lot of thinking to do. I was angry the other night, which you should understand, and I’m still angry. I’m just beginning to sort everything out. I’m in process.”

  You know things are scary when both of your parents say they’re in process in the same month. “I just want you to feel like you can talk to me about this,” I said.

  “I appreciate that.”

  I reached forward and gripped her wrist. “Please don’t blame me. It’s bad enough that the two of you hate each other. I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “I’m trying not to blame you,” she said.

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  “Right now it is.” I lowered my hand. “It’s all right, Rachel,” she said wearily. “It’ll all be all right.”

  But of course I didn’t believe her. I didn’t think my relationship with my mother could have possibly gotten worse than it was already but I have a really lousy habit of looking on the bright side.

  ON Thursday night I had a good crowd—three yuppie guys drinking Bass at the end of the bar; a few hipster couples getting drunk enough to hit on each other; and some cute British soccer players, all in uniform, shooting pool and making noise. Jasper was by the spigots, in a good mood because he had gone on a date with Delia and at the end of the night she’d kissed him, though she didn’t let him inside her place.

  Powell hadn’t called since the tennis game and I’d been too embarrassed to call him. If only I hadn’t met him now, when I was so messed up. It was like going on a great first date when you were on the rag; you might be a much more agreeable person normally, but how was the guy supposed to know?

  I checked my total on the cash register and then I checked my machine. No call. I had to right things with him. He picked up on the second ring. “Hi,” I said.

  The music in the bar was loud and he said, “Who is this?”

  This wasn’t good. “It’s Rachel. I wanted to see you. I feel really embarrassed about the scene I made the other day. I think if we could just be together alone it would be different.”