by David Amsden
“Oh God, that’s right!” I said. “You’re married now! I completely forgot!”
It’s a bizarre thing, when you realize you can’t even remember if your father is married or not.
“I am,” Dad said. “I sure am.”
“And how’s the kid?” I said. “How old is he now?”
“Two,” Dad said. “Ray is two years old, and he really is great. You gotta see him sometime. He really is a lot like you.”
A year or so ago this would have killed me. I would have ended up smiling, excusing myself, then finding something sharp to dig into the back of my hand. But I’m trying not to get all hung up on things like this anymore. I mean, overall I think being angry is a good thing—it tends to mean you probably just love everything around you a little too much. But it’s not worth getting angry about things that have nothing to do with you, things that don’t matter, like your father’s kid, and him comparing it to you all the time. Trust me. It’s just not good for you.
“Well, that’s good,” is all I said. “And Melanie? How’s she doing?”
“You know,” he said. “She’s a handful. She’s turning into a beautiful girl though.”
“Really?” I said.
“No joke,” Dad said.
“She was a tough one,” I said. I used to hate that girl, as you know. Now I just don’t care about her at all. “So what’s up with Mary?” I asked.
Right then his face gets all still, like very serious. It was funny. You could tell he wanted to say something, but before he could open his mouth the waitress came by. She was nice-looking, wavy brown hair, and the kind of freckles on her face that just made you want to take her to the beach, somewhere sunny. You know, just so you could watch them multiply.
Dad’s like me in the sense that he immediately cheers up in the presence of a nice-looking waitress. He was all perked up now, his face lit up, really alive. I didn’t blame him. The women in the town he lived in in Jersey were all pretty much cyclopes.
So he went wild with the ordering. I didn’t even have to slyly egg him on, to get him to spend a thousand dollars. My plan was brilliantly passive-aggressive. Dad was ordering oysters and lobster tails and scallops in some hundred dollar sauce. He ordered eggs with crabmeat. He ordered every side dish. He even asked to hold on to a menu, in case there was something he’d missed. The waitress seemed genuinely amused. Dad’s good that way. With women he doesn’t know, he can make them feel incredible. It’s a talent. I can do the exact same thing.
“And I suppose we need another round,” he added.
“Hey, you know who I saw not too long ago?” I asked as the next round was delivered.
“Who’s that?”
“Shirley,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “She still look incredible?”
“She does.”
She’d called up Mom during my last year of high school because she was in A.A. and one of the steps is to call up all the people you screwed over and take them out to dinner or whatever. She was something like forty, but looked fantastic, she really did. She was going to college, was bartending at some fancy hotel bar in D.C. It’s funny, how hardcore drunks always end up as bartenders. We ate, the three of us, at a Mexican restaurant, some chain on Rockville Pike, and Shirley ordered Mom’s margarita, with some fancy tequila, and smelled it to make sure the proportions were right. I knew about the cocaine and everything at this point, and I remember being amazed that her nose still worked so well.
“Shirley,” Dad sighed. “I can’t believe it.”
I guess I was curious about Dad and Shirley, and about Dad and cocaine, because I never really knew what the deal was and at least would like to be able to tell you something about it. I guess that’s why I brought her up with him. But suddenly I wanted to change the subject. That’s the problem with me. I never know what I really want until just after it’s happened. So I’m sorry.
“So,” I said, “can you believe I actually live here? In New York?”
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “How’s school?”
“It’s all right.”
“It’s important,” Dad said, all serious in a way that made you want to laugh. People who didn’t get degrees when they were young are always telling you how important they are, like their lives would have been so different if they’d known that at the time. But if you grew up around people like Dad, you know these types don’t really have any idea what they’re talking about.
That’s why I didn’t bother telling him I had dropped out, but just changed the subject again. I brought up women again, New York women in particular, because you could always sidetrack Dad by bringing up women. He probably commented on every one that walked by, about their height, their walks, how their skin looked so tight they probably couldn’t even blink right. I don’t know why, but I found myself telling him that I go out with women like that all the time. It’s not true. I guess I wanted to make him jealous.
But now, as the oysters came, and as we started in on our third round, I was getting antsy to bring up Mary again. For some reason I was very curious about Dad’s marital issues, even though I’d barely known he was married.
“So what’s up with Mary?” I said.
“It’s a tough thing,” Dad said. “It’s really a tough thing.”
Just then I knew exactly what was going on. You could tell by how vague Dad was being. People are always vague like that when they’re the ones at fault. But that’s not saying they still don’t want you to pry it out of them.
So I asked—
“Is it what I think it is?”
“That depends,” Dad said.
“What’s her name?” I said.
Dad picked up his martini, and in one sip he finished it off, old school, just sort of funneled it coolly down his throat, waiting until it was in his stomach to swallow. His eyes got glossy now. Dad’s eyes can get like that in a second, glossy and dry-looking at the exact same time. It’s disturbing to witness. He wiped his upper lip. There used to be a moustache there, when I knew him. I couldn’t get over that.
“Why are you so smart?” he was now saying. He sounded all relieved, practically excited. “When did you get so damn smart?”
“I knew it!” I said. I was excited myself. “I thought so on the phone. I could just tell.”
The waitress must have had some fine-tuned radar that alerted her when someone’s drink was empty. Because Dad had just finished the martini, and here she was, coming over like she was on wheels, asking about another round. I’m a waiter too, and a pretty good one. I don’t work at that tourist trap anymore, but a much more classy place. Still, I always forget to ask people about their drinks. It just slips my mind. They always end up having to ask me.
“When did he get so smart?” Dad was asking the waitress. “Can you help me figure out when my son got so smart?”
“I have no idea,” she said. She looked pretty much my age, but you could tell she had a different background and just didn’t get it. My problem is I can tell this right away, with pretty much everyone I meet.
“This is my son,” Dad was saying. “This is my son.”
I just looked at the waitress and smiled. Like don’t worry, everything’s okay. She didn’t seem to know how to talk to Dad anymore.
“The oysters, by the way, are terrific,” Dad was saying.
“Thank you,” she said. I think she was still looking at me though. “I’ll be right back with another round.”
“I could marry that woman,” Dad said.
“I heard you were already married,” I said. I was eager to return to the subject at hand. “She’s younger, isn’t she?” I asked.
Dad sipped his martini. It didn’t seem to bother him that there was nothing left. He was also nodding. He was saying yes. Yes, she was younger—
“Like thirty-five?” I said. Dad was forty-three now.
“Oh, a little younger,” he said. The martini glass was still right up against his lip.
“Thirty?”
“Younger.”
“Jesus, Dad!”
“I know it, feller.”
“Well how old is she?”
It was making me kind of sick to keep on guessing. If she turned out to be fourteen, I’d rather hear it from Dad than from my own mouth.
“She’s young,” Dad said. “She’s great, though. She really is.”
“How old is she?”
Dad looks at me here and smiles. Actually, he was looking past me, but my head was in the way. On his mouth was the kind of smile certain people get—charismatic types, mainly—when they’re nervous, when they just want someone to smile back but know their odds are pretty slim. For a second I thought he was about to start laughing.
But then he was talking again.
“Twenty,” he was now saying. “She’s twenty years old.”
I didn’t really lose it. That’s the strange thing. You can find out your father is going out with a girl exactly your age and you’d be surprised how little affect it has on you, especially if you don’t really know your father anymore. I just sort of nodded at him, said Jesus Christ a few times, and waited for my drink to arrive. I don’t think I was smiling. I ate a piece of bread. I looked around at all the people in the restaurant. Look at them: they really are all so clean-looking.
The food at this place really was spectacular, I have to say. Dad, in his zealous state, had ordered so much that our entire table was cluttered with a million different entreés and side dishes. Dad used to work in restaurants, so it was nice to see that he was pleased with the food.
God, it really was incredible. He was telling me all about this little twenty-year-old girl of his. Her name was Jenny. He had gone to school to become a vascular technician, but he’d met Jenny at his job before that, the one at the Ding Dong Deli. She worked there too, had the shift before his, but sometimes she’d stick around.
Telling me all this, Dad was getting all relaxed and excited, disturbingly so. Dad was telling me that because he had the graveyard shift the place was often empty for hours. And since Dad never knows when to shut up, he went on to add that sometimes he’d lock the door and they’d have sex all over the deli. He kept referring to Jenny as very athletic. He couldn’t get over how fit this young girl was, and me, I just couldn’t get over any of it. I mean, what do you do when a guy like this happens to be your father? Where do you go from there?
“So Mary’s goin’ crazy,” he suddenly said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how she was always a little insane?” he asked.
Can you believe he actually just said this?
“Of course,” is all I said.
“Well, she started suspecting something,” Dad said, “and she started examining the phone bills.”
“Jesus,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I know,” he said. “So she suspects something, because there were all these calls to Jenny. But I’ll tell you, it’s really special with her. It really is.”
I believed him. The whole thing sounds so absurd, I see that now, and it wasn’t that long ago that I saw him, a few months really. There’s Dad, telling me about some girl who happens to be my age, telling me what it’s like to get with her in the yogurt aisle of all places, and, still, it seemed normal enough.
Dad was still going, talking about Jenny—
“I mean, I’ve tried to end it plenty of times, especially once Mary started flippin’ out, but I just can’t.”
“Dad,” I said. “Your life is such a mess.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s pretty funny, huh?”
“It’s hysterical,” I said. “Why don’t you just get a divorce?”
“How’s your mother?” he asked.
“She’s great,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about Mom, though. At this point, Mom has nothing to do with him. “Seriously Dad, you should get a divorce.”
“Where’s that waitress?” Dad asked. “You see our waitress?”
Look at him! Just look at him!
Dad’s cracking up now. His face all red, eyes the same color. He’s laughing so hard he’s not making any sounds, looks like he’s sweating. He’s slapping the table. I guess I look the same way, because I’m laughing too, just as hard, pounding the table too.
“They all shave!” he was saying.
“They sure do!” I said.
“All of them?”
“Pretty much!”
We’d finished our food at this point, had ordered a few more rounds of drinks. I lost track of how many, probably something like seven each at this point. I’m not such a big drinker, so I was pretty out of it. Dad didn’t seem to be in much better shape. I’ll be twenty-one soon, and sometimes I worry I’ll be sick of drinking completely by the time I can do it legally.
“I can’t believe it!” he was saying. “It’s really fantastic!”
“I know it!”
He really couldn’t get over it. We’d abandoned talking seriously about his marriage dilemma. I had told him a few more times that he should just get a divorce, but he didn’t really want to hear it. That was it. I mean, what more could I have said? What better advice could I have offered the guy?
So now we were just talking about women. I wish you’d have been there. I’ve never had a brother, but right now that’s exactly how Dad came off, like my older brother. We were talking in such explicit detail, the kind of talk that drives girls mad. Dad just couldn’t get over how they shaved themselves, girls my age, how the clipped their pubic hair to Astroturf. It was one of Jenny’s greatest attributes.
“It’s so much better,” he was now saying. He wasn’t laughing so hard anymore. But he seemed happy as hell. I couldn’t tell how I felt exactly.
“I guess it is,” I said.
“Women my age,” Dad said, “it’s like a jungle down there! You need a machete and a flashlight!”
What’s so funny about Dad’s saying this is that I knew exactly what he was talking about. Have I been clear enough on this? About me and older women? I don’t know what it is. I just find it easier to get them to go out with me than girls my own age. I suppose you might say I have some sort of fetish, if you were a psychoanalyst or someone with that kind of mind. Me, I just try not to think about it.
But I knew about their bodies. I knew how they were so much less timid when it came to taking off their clothes, how it sometimes freaked you out how they were suddenly standing there naked. I know how certain parts of them are more developed, more sensitive, how you can get them to whimper sometimes just by placing your tongue on the back of their knees. And I know about the skin on their hands, how maybe it is more wrinkled, okay, but it’s also softer, and I know how they’re more precise with how they touch you, more caring, even though you barely ever get aroused and end up thinking about Claudia of all people. I know how with older women you end up sticking your face so deep in their hair, just because you hope it’ll get dark enough that you’ll end up seeing Liz maybe. What’s wrong with you? I know how all you ever want with them is to apologize. You don’t even know why, but you always want to apologize, to everyone really. I know that. You’d say I’m sorry before you said hello, nice to meet you. I know this. Is it okay? Is it fine? Am I fine? Am I okay? I don’t know. I don’t know. You just want to say I’m sorry, you just don’t want to disappoint. I don’t want to disappoint anyone. I don’t want to disappoint you. I’m sorry. I know it’s not my fault but still. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—
“Hey, you okay?” Dad was saying all of a sudden.
“What?”
“Everything fine? You look like you might be—”
“What do you mean? I think so.”
“Just checkin’.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m just a little tired lately.”
“I hear that.”
“Real tired,” I said.
—so of course I knew what Dad was talking about, that’s all I was saying. I knew what it
was like when women his age slid their underwear down. Except that I kind of prefer it this way. I don’t know. I just like how it’s so much less obvious.
But I wasn’t about to bring any of that up with Dad. You tell me: what would be the point?
The waitress was coming by again, and Dad was asking her again when did I get so smart. He told her again that I was his son. He couldn’t get enough of this.
“This is my son,” he was saying. “Isn’t that funny?”
“Everything’s okay over here?” she said.
“Look at him!” Dad said. “That’s my son!”
“Can I take away some of these plates?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I have two sons,” Dad said.
“Hey, there, Dad,” I said.
“I have two sons—”
“Dad.”
“—and they don’t know each other,” he said. “They’ve never met.”
She looked about as uncomfortable as people get, but I didn’t care about her anymore. I was just looking at Dad, wanted to see how long he’d go on. She’d bring us more drinks no matter what, and right now that’s all that mattered.
And we just laughed, kept on laughing, more and more, until the whole place was pretty much empty and our laughter was practically shattering the windows. We talked about sleeping with twenty-year-old girls until there was absolutely nothing left to say. We didn’t talk about anything real again, but I wasn’t too worried about Dad’s future. You knew what it would be like for him, so there was no point feeling that bad. Feeling bad for people like Dad just ends up making you feel like an idiot. That’s really all it is with him. I mean, for the most part, there’s just no point.
The bill came now. The waitress was all quick to drop it off and get back to doing something else. I didn’t blame her. It must have come to hundreds of dollars, but throwing down all those twenties, Dad didn’t even flinch. Talk about anticlimactic, right? He just paid and asked am I ready to get going. I guess he had the money, or at least Mary did. I was fine with this.
“Wait a second?” I asked once we were outside. “Did you quit smoking?”