More Than You Can Chew

by Marnelle Tokio

  “It did and I’m leaving on the 4:30, back to New York,” my father says in his so-make-it-fast voice.

  Great, he just got here and he’s already leaving. Fine, the sooner the better. They start talking about the weather and all I can hear is blah, blah, blah. The air vent has thirteen slats.

  “Marty, are you with us?” Jackie asks, calling me back.

  “What?”

  “I need you to stay here in this room,” Jackie says, leaning forward.

  “Yeah,” I lie. I wrap my arms around my knees.

  “Say yes, Marty. And sit properly.”

  “Yes, Mar…yes, Dad. Sorry.” My feet hit the floor. My hands fall in my lap.

  “Marty, why do you think you’re here?” Jackie pulls her starter trigger.

  “I don’t know.” The three words Jackie hates. They tell her I’m not leaving the gate.

  “Try,” Jackie coaxes.

  “Because I’m sick.” Let the games begin.

  “Yes, you were admitted because you’re sick. You’re here to get better. But I’m asking why you are here today, right now, in my office?”

  “Did I have a choice?” I say, my eyes locked on hers.

  “Okay. You win. Now try this one. Why do you think your father is here?”

  “Good question.” Wish I knew the answer.

  “He had a choice, Marty.”

  “Therapists aren’t supposed to make statements,” I fire back.

  “My office, my rules. I know you think he does things just because he’s paying for them. But why does he keep paying?”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Why does he pay, Marty?”

  I move to sit on my hands. I stare at the floor. No answer there. I’ve been played. I hate Jackie. And I hate myself for losing control. The hating is an escape. Jackie lets me go.

  “Okay, Martin, I’ll ask you. Why do you pay?”

  “Because I have to,” Dad says, shifting in his chair.

  The words come out of his mouth and stick in my throat. They choke me till I start crying.

  “Why?” Jackie ignores me.

  “The insurance has run out and nobody else can.”

  “Why not just leave? Walk away?”

  What the hell? Well, there you go, Martin. There’s your out.

  “I guess it’s my turn,” he replies. He clears his throat and begins to search his jacket.

  Yep, find your keys. Get in your car. Get on your plane. Have a nice life.

  Jackie is cool, unaffected, professional. She waits till he finds what he is looking for. Not keys, but a crisp, white linen handkerchief. Never used. “Your turn for what?” she asks.

  He finally answers, “My turn to break down.”

  “Is that what you think has happened to Marty–she’s broken down?”

  “I don’t know…I’ve made some mistakes and I guess she has paid for them.” He holds the cloth to his eyes like a blindfold.

  I can’t have heard him right. Did he say he made a mistake? Did I pay for something? My heart is racing. I’ve been somewhere like this before. A long time ago.

  Daddies don’t cry, I mouth silently, looking at my dad.

  “I’m sorry, Marty, I can’t hear you,” Jackie says, as if nothing is wrong.

  “Daddies don’t cry,” I say out loud….The water breaks.

  “Go on, Marty.” Jackie waits. Dad looks up.

  “The last time I saw my dad cry, he went away. I was three. He was leaving me. I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that daddies didn’t cry. I don’t want him to leave. I…I need him.”

  “Tell him that,” Jackie says, nodding towards Dad.

  I can’t speak. How am I supposed to talk to this stranger who crumbled before my eyes? I’m used to Martin the wall. The wall I bang my head against. The one that hits back with violent silence.

  I calculate what Dad’s tears are costing. Multiply the number of tears per minute by the amount that you get when you divide sixty into one hundred and fifty. But the tears are coming too fast to count. I figure even Einstein couldn’t calculate what those tears cost Dad.

  Jackie wraps us up gently. She does all the talking about the time being up and that she hopes to see my dad again. I don’t speak till we are all standing on the other side of the crying room door.

  “I don’t want you to leave, Dad,” I say.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he replies.

  “I mean today. I don’t want you to leave today.”

  “I have to.”

  “Did you have to leave when I was little?” I’m feeling brave because Jackie is still with us, but she says nothing. The session is over.

  Dad sighs. “That’s a long story. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll change my flight to a later one and you will come out to lunch with me.”

  Morsel for morsel. What a dealmaker.

  “No offense, Jackie, but I’d rather pay for lunch than for you,” Dad says.

  “None taken. I think it’s a good idea.” Jackie smiles.

  “Hurry up and change, Marty. I’m starving.” He pushes me down the hall.

  I turn around and look at my dad. He is grinning.

  “Ha-ha! Very funny.” I turn again and leave them in the hallway. I push the elevator button–there is only one. Up. The doors open; I step inside.

  I arrive at my floor and decide to spread my un expected good cheer to the residents of the other units. I don’t know why. I just know I’m alive; they should know I am alive too. Through the safety glass of the loony bin gates, I yell, “Just ’cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that somebody isn’t after you.”

  A commotion starts with a lot of “I told you so’s” and yelling of “Get away from me; I know who you really are–who you really work for!” Jesus is standing in the hall, looking to God for guidance. He falls to his knees and pees himself. I imagine God giving the command, “Thou shalt bend thy knee and wet thy pants!” That can’t be all he said because Jesus looks heavenward again, nods his agreement, turns and narrows his eyes at me through the glass, and yells, “Sinner!” and then he cries for me. Maybe Jesus is the one with the most on the ball.

  I walk down the hall to the druggie and dry-out unit. It isn’t a locked unit, so I open the gates to their hell and yell in my best evangelistic voice, “Alcohol Devil be gone!”

  Only one person yells anything and that is, “Fuck off!”

  By the time I get to my unit doors, I have run out of things to say. As I pass the nurses’ station, Dennis is filling in some report and holds up his pointer finger, indicating I should stop and wait till he finishes something. I keep walking and hold up my middle finger.

  “You’re a real little spark plug today, huh, Marty?” Dennis yells after me. News travels fast. Faster than I can walk.

  “My dad cried.” I throw him a bone.

  “And that puts you in a good mood?”

  “Duh!”

  “Why?”

  I stop at my door to think about that. And then tell Dennis the truth. “It means he’s human, unlike you.” I jump inside my room and slam the door shut to make sure I get the last word.

  I change into a white summer dress; sit on the bed and wait.

  I start thinking about what happened in Jackie’s office and about going to lunch. Going to lunch with Dad. It’s too much. My mind wanders to when I used to train horses.

  —

  When you are trying to gentle a horse, you perform the niceties: “How you doin’, boy?” Pat, pat, rub the back, scratch the top of the head where the halter goes, talking the whole time. What you’re really saying is, “Don’t worry, boy, nothing is going to happen, nothing to be scared of, we’re not going to do anything.” Once he gets used to that, you say to him, “Well, since we’re here and all friendly and everything, why don’t we just go for a walk or something? Gee, the ring looks like a good place. Not enough room for me to run around, and I don’t need the exercise, so I’ll just stand in the middle and you can run around me
, okay?” So the horse does this for a while and thinks this is not so bad. And then you say, with surprise in your voice, “Oh, boy, look at that. A saddle. A saddle just sitting on the fence, with nothing to do. Let’s go look at that for a bit. Let’s smell it, check it out. Not so bad. A little scary maybe ’cause it’s something new, but new is good, right?” And the horse goes, Okay, if you say so, I trust you. You haven’t hurt me yet, so you must be on my side. You go, “That’s right and you know what? I think this saddle would look better on your back than on this fence, what-daya say?” The horse looks at you like you’re nuts, but if you’re not afraid of it he thinks, I’ll go along, after all it is just going to sit on my back, right? So you put it on him and he shakes a little bit. You rub him and talk to him and you are being so nice that he wants to impress you, so he stops making a fuss. That’s when you grab the cinch and yank it up tight around his belly so he can’t get the saddle off. If he starts to throw a fit, you hop the fence and let him fight it out, let him buck and kick and scream and roll on it and rub on the fence with this thing that was supposed to be okay, but then turned into something else. And when he’s had it out with the clingy, smelly thing on his back, he stops and puts his head down. He’s deciding whether to forgive you or not. And finally he comes over to the fence and you climb back into the ring and make up. He looks at you as if to say, I can’t believe you did that to me. I trusted you. Then you rub his neck, and apologize and tell him how brave he was and how good he is, and you hold his head until he lets you kiss him on the muzzle without him trying to bite you first. You take off the saddle and put it on the fence. And the horse says, Thank God that’s over. And you don’t tell him that tomorrow you are going to do the same thing, only this time you’re going to get on top of him and ride him through his tantrum till he gives up, till his spirit breaks if necessary. And after you break his spirit, you break the news. (And you don’t let him see that it breaks your heart to do this because you have to at least appear to be the boss, so he’ll do what you tell him and not question you.) You look him in the eye and say, “We’re not friends. This is work. This is the way it has to be. I wish it could be different, but it can’t. You’ve got your job and I’ve got mine. Let’s get to work.”

  —

  I want to run to Jackie. Tell her I understand. Tell her I’m sorry she is not my friend. I want to tell her I’m ready to work. Because I understand. And everybody has to figure that out when they’re ready.

  “We’ll have a table by the window, please,” Dad says.

  The hostess leads us past the stuffed sailfish on the walls. The restaurant isn’t that busy. Too nice a day to be inside.

  “Take your hat off,” Dad says, as he sits.

  “Can’t…I’ll have hat head.” Sorry, Dad. I’ll need it when the crying starts. Don’t let them see you cry. Wear a wide brim, hat. Never cut your bangs. Only cry real hard in the shower…those are the rules.

  “Alright, what would you like?” Dad asks from behind his menu.

  “I don’t know.” From anyone else, that would be a normal answer. From me, it’s usually a stall tactic. But today, I really don’t know. I want to order an entrée that says I’m glad you’re here, thanks for coming today, I’m ready to try harder. “I’ll have a salad.” Great. I just said go to hell.

  Dad’s menu hits his bread plate and I drop my head. He can yell at the hat if he wants to. The waitress shows up. I can only see her up to the neck. Black shoes, black pants, white blouse, and a black bow tie. She looks like a referee for a boxing match. She doesn’t know she just stepped into the ring. Her hair and her voice are blonde.

  “My name is Sandy. What can I get for you?” asks Sandy, our golden retriever.

  Silence. Dad, and his manners, and Sandy, and Etiquette Emily What’s-her-name, and everybody in the whole restaurant wants me to order first. But I can’t. Dad inhales his frustration and exhales his order.

  “I’ll have the steamed lobster with linguine and grilled vegetables…and my daughter will have a salad.”

  I look up and smile at Dad. He smiles back. Kind of.

  “Your daughter, well, I thought there was a young lady under that hat! What kind of dressing would you like on your salad?”

  “I’ll have –”

  “Dress it up with a rib eye steak, medium well, with cognac butter on top and a baked potato with butter and sour cream.” I’m stunned. Sandy is confused. Dad clarifies. “You don’t have to put all of that on the salad. Just put the food on a plate. The salad on the side. Oh, and blue cheese dressing on the salad.”

  Sandy looks relieved. “Your father is a funny guy.” She laughs and scans his hand for a wedding ring. No gold. Not even a tan line. A pink frosted smile slides across her face. Sandy puts her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Can I show you our wine list?”

  “Sure.”

  She snuggles up to him with the list. Like she’s showing him the color of the curtains she picked out for their bedroom. Something in a nice Chardonnay.

  I reach over and touch Dad’s hand. He jerks it away like I burned him with a cigarette. It breaks up their party.

  “And what would you like to drink, honey?” Sandy asks.

  Now that I’m “the daughter,” I’m “honey.” And she’s already dreaming about being my stepmother.

  “I want a Diet Coke,” I say, but she’s back to staring at her new fiancé.

  My father snaps her out of her fantasy. “Would you mind putting our order in? We’re in a bit of a rush. Thanks.”

  The only bells you’re going to hear today are the cook’s…honey.

  “You can have the Diet Coke, but I want the steak and potato eaten…all of them.”

  “Yes, sir.” I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, sir. Please can I have some more, sir?

  “Don’t ‘yes, sir’ me like I’m making you eat dog dirt. Your mother said this is the best restaurant in Seaport Village. She said you like it here.”

  “You talked to Mom?”

  “From Jackie’s office, while you were getting changed.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened back –”

  “S’okay, Dad. We call her office the crying room. I’m sure she has a tear-quota in her contract. But she’ll probably get a bonus for you.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m sorry that you remember me leaving. About what happened back when you were little.”

  I hold my breath, then let out the question that never has an answer: “What happened?”

  Dad turns away to look out the window. Studies the boats in the marina. “I don’t know. But we loved each other. Once.”

  Duh! Big revelation. “I figured that Dad. Why else would you get married?”

  “Because of you.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, and look right at him while he fishes the bay for an answer.

  “We were married in August. You were born that December. You do the math.”

  I count on my fingers under the table. August, September, October, November, December. “Was I premature?”

  “No. You were a week late.”

  “Oh.” Oh, my God. That’s a nice little seventeen-year secret.

  “Your mother was four months pregnant when we got married. We were from a small town. It was rough on her. She didn’t have a lot of support. Even from her own family. She was supposed to go to teachers college and I was already in art school. But all that changed.”

  “And I’ve been paying for it ever since,” I mumble.

  Dad turns back to the table. “What was that?” he asks.

  “I said, it makes a lot of sense.”

  “What does?”

  “Well, a couple of years ago I asked Mom about sex. I thought we’d have a little mother-daughter chat. She went ballistic. She said if I had sex, or if she found out I had had sex, before I was eighteen, she’d throw me out of the house. I never understood why she got so mad. She knew I was taking sex-ed at school; she signed the form…
now it all makes sense.”

  “She was just trying to protect you.”

  “I’m not the one who needed protection.”

  “Very funny.”

  Sandy shows up with the drinks. “Did I miss the joke?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I just found out when the rabbit died,” I answer.

  “Oh, I thought I heard ‘funny,’ not ‘bunny.’ I’m sorry your rabbit died. I’ll be right back with your lunch.”

  Dad chokes on his wine and Sandy scampers away.

  The food is coming. Dad’s lightened up. Roll with it. “So really, if it weren’t for me, you’d be a starving artist instead of a venture capitalist.”

  “Not likely, but speaking of starving…”

  Sandy is here with our lunch. “I asked the chef to pick out the biggest steak for you. You could use a little meat on your bones,” she says, and places a side of beef in front of me and a candy-apple crustacean in front of my father.

  The lobster face is staring at me across the table. Its eyes are bulging out at the size of my steak.

  “Can I do anything else for you?” Sandy asks me.

  “No, you’ve done quite enough. THANK YOU.”

  “More wine?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Well, enjoy your lunch then.”

  “Oh, we will,” Dad says, and narrows his eyes at me.

  Baked potato–two hundred twenty calories. Sour cream, two tablespoons–fifty-two calories. Butter, four pats–one hundred and sixty. One huge steak–at least a thousand calories. Diet Coke–one calorie.

  I take a big drink.

  “Dig in, Marty.”

  “Dad, I…”

  My father breaks his lobster in half. It looks like I’m going to be next if I don’t start eating. We’re getting along. I don’t want him to leave. I slice off a piece of steak, shove it in my mouth and bite down. Juice and butter squish out between my lips, run down my chin, and drip onto the front of my dress. My white dress. I swallow. What a pig I am.

  “I’m proud of you, Marty.”

  “For eating a piece of meat?”

  “For lots of things.”

  “Name one.”