I picked up my coconut cupcake—the one heaviest in buttercream love—and made my way to the next room. There on our navy floral couch, still pajamaed and groggy, sat Dad. I surveyed him carefully, knowing how sour his moods usually were in the morning and early afternoon.
“Hi, baby.” He smiled, motioning for me to sit beside him. I was relieved and surprised that he was so upbeat so early in the day. He must be making today special because of my party, I thought as I took a seat.
“Happy birthday.” He bent toward me to press a big smooch on my temple. He squeezed me in his bearish way, and I smiled a closed-mouth smile, leaning into him. I peeled the oily paper lining from my cupcake and set about savoring it.
He had just gotten up, half an hour before the party guests were due to arrive. Twelve thirty in the afternoon wasn’t an unusual wake-up time for him. Nights spent drinking beer can after beer can after beer can after beer can, can, can, can, can don’t lend well to early rising the following day. I didn’t know that all dads weren’t consistent in buying two six-packs of those red-and-white cans at the liquor store up the street and coming home to drink and chain-smoke in front of M*A*S*H until the sun came up. It was normal for us. Still, I wondered why he was so thirsty all the time. I wondered if it was just so delicious, he didn’t want to stop. One time, when he left the room and I saw his beer can open on the counter unattended, I rushed up and took a swig to see if it tasted as good as Nesquik. It didn’t.
Weeks before, Mom had told me that Dad had lost his job. Understandably, he was crushed. He moped around the house even worse than he’d done regularly. For years, he’d held a meaningful, well-paying position as a technical illustrator at Wang Laboratories, a computer company close to where we lived in Methuen, Massachusetts. Always an artist, creative and dramatic, he was brilliant. I remember going to work with him on days before school started and sitting at his desk, coloring in the black-and-white illustrations of the many small parts inside a computer. Even as an adult, reading instruction manuals whenever I get a new camera, computer, or phone and seeing those precise pictures of the inner technology and parts, I’m reminded of the contentment I felt in his office with a box of crayons, working away at what you’d think must have been the driest of coloring-book material.
“Almost party time,” Dad reminded me.
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled through my cupcake, dropping crumbs in my lap.
He ashed his cigarette and turned forward.
As I neared the end of the cupcake, I thought of the big cake in the dining room. I felt relieved that my birthday cake sat still intact and safe. Just six months earlier, Dad had eaten Anthony’s the night before the party, drunk and with his bare hands. I thought of how devastated I’d be if that cake were mine.
From the kitchen, Mom hollered, “Rob, you should get dressed, honey. People are going to start showing up any minute.”
Dad exhaled a cloud of smoke. He stubbed his cigarette into the translucent green glass bottom of one of the four heavy ashtrays we kept around the house. He rocked back and then forth, rising on the upswing to heave his 350 pounds to standing. The weight proved to be all he gained after losing his job.
“Whooo boy!” he exclaimed emphatically. “Let’s get ready, baby.” He smiled at me.
I stuffed the last of the cupcake into my mouth before I repaid his exuberance by getting up myself. As I rose, I watched him—a solid five-foot-ten frame stretching outward in an all-encompassing yawn. He had silky jet-black hair, golden skin, and almond eyes that cracked open as he smiled. He barely had a top lip. The pronounced structure of his face—high cheekbones, deep-set eyes—was so handsome, it proved striking, unforgettable.
He bent to kiss my forehead, hard and purposeful, once more. I trailed him as he headed into the kitchen.
Coming up from behind Mom, he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, pressing his nose to her hair, breathing her in. Her body softened, nuzzling backward into his chest. She craned her neck back, turning so that she could smile looking into his eyes. He glanced down, assessing her lips before planting a kiss squarely upon them.
They loved each other, of that much I was sure. As the story goes, they met in high school, the day he hopped into her car with a big group of friends. She eyed him from the rearview mirror, unsure what to make of him. He was overwhelming, taking up nearly all of the car with his ego. Joke after joke spit from his mouth at the expense of their mutual friends in the backseat. Mom glanced back, unamused. By the end of the drive, she thought he was a jerk, she tells me now, and she’d written him off after that first afternoon.
Weeks later they saw each other at her all-girls-school dance, each with a date. What made it hard to completely dislike him was the fact that she found him gorgeous. Toward the end of the evening, Mom found herself staring toward the left of the dance floor, where a classmate of hers stood all alone. The girl looked uncomfortable, less a wallflower and more a weed in olive-green taffeta. Seeing her there, swaying by herself without even a single suitor all night, with her gaze wandering the room for someone—anyone—Mom’s heart felt heavy. She thought to ask the girl to dance herself, and before really mulling it over, Mom picked up the hem of her dress and took a step toward her. Suddenly Dad passed in front of her, headed straight toward the girl. Mom watched as he approached. Something he said into her ear made her laugh, made her nerves gently unravel. A smile spread across Mom’s face as she realized he’d asked the girl to dance. And she couldn’t peel her eyes away as they swayed there on the dance floor to Marvin Gaye.
“You thought he was cute,” I’d assumed when Mom told me the story of that dance. She paused and thought on it, looking away as if an answer were just over her shoulder.
“No, it wasn’t that. I mean—yes, obviously—look at him! But that night, it was just—I hadn’t seen the girl smile like that before.”
She gave him a chance after that night. And eventually he grew on her. She found his gentle underbelly, and then she felt special, imagining he let only her see the intimate parts of him—the gifted artist, brimming with insight and intuition, with a deep-running sensitivity.
When I’d matured enough to ask Dad about how they met and fell in love, he didn’t wait a beat to tell me that from the moment he got into her car, he just knew. He explained to me the meaning of soul mates and then told me that he and Mom were such a pair. Her honesty, her sincerity—they disarmed him. “Just the way she talked to everyone,” he began a list that included the way she always offered to be the sober driver; how she’d invite everyone to the drive-in and bring homemade sandwiches, chips, Ring Dings, and Cokes; that she worked two jobs, one at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and one at Friendly’s; how she’d slip twenty dollars into her father’s pants pocket while he napped on the chair after his fifth night shift in a row; how she’d never gotten drunk after that first time she had gin, when she came home a mess and her father told her he was disappointed; and how Mom would undoubtedly give someone the shirt off her back.
Dad saw these things and loved them. He’d never met anyone like Mom. Five months after they’d begun dating, he tattooed her initials, MEC, with a razor blade and ink, on his forearm. He was that sure of her.
And I grew to recognize that spark they shared. It was wild and unruly at times but always unconditional. No one made her laugh in as high a pitch. No one made his eyes soften as they did when he looked at her.
Mom turned back to her preparations, pulling out of their embrace. “OK, but seriously, Rob. Time to get ready.”
“I’m gonna wear this,” he told her.
She smirked.
“What?” he asked, straight-faced. He backed away from her so she could stare at the full length of him, in his underwear, and turned slowly to show off.
We both laughed.
He slapped her butt, kissed her once more, and left for the bedroom.
I looked at Mom. She was still bouncing in a laugh, shaking her head as she walked into the bathroom. I waited to
hear her hair dryer purr. In seconds, she was midway through her familiar whistle, a tune she had shared with her father. The cupcakes caught me again, sitting on their porcelain plate. I smiled, knowing no one was around to stop me from taking another. I inspected each once more, zeroing in on the most generously frosted. My mouth tingled with sweet anticipation as I pulled the winner carefully from its center spot and began peeling back the pleated parchment cup. The first bite gave me a rush. Mom had a way with cake. Each crumb was stitched to the next, a soft and silky webbing between moist bites. I opened my mouth wider to fit more frosting, more cake. It was that familiar combination—the subtly fragrant cake mashing into a smooth paste with ultrasmooth vanilla buttercream—that I loved, that I craved.
I plowed through the rest. My tongue ran a tight circle around my mouth to help dissolve every remainder of richness. Finishing it brought a wave of contentment, a wash of relief. Two cupcakes—gone. Eaten.
But the number of treats I downed meant very little to me. What difference existed between two and one of anything? Calories, moderation, health—they weren’t even a consideration of mine. Not then. I didn’t pause to consider hunger and fullness; I just ate.
In an ideal world, a child learns eating as an intuitive practice. She seeks out and savors what she wants when she feels hungry. She stops when her stomach sends signals to her brain to say “Hello, hi, I’ve had enough.” Gentle bodily sensations are the sole systems she needs to rely on.
I learned none of that. Food was never simply fuel. It was never just about hunger, and it certainly didn’t stop at fullness.
My earliest teacher was Dad, and he ate ceaselessly through the night. In fact, he only ate at night. After drinking. In between slurps of his six-pack while lying in bed in front of Nick at Nite, he’d mmmm his way through a large steak-and-cheese sub and a bag of potato chips, our favorite kettle-cooked kind. When he’d finished those, he’d return to the kitchen to pluck his favorite from the freezer: a half gallon of some generic tub of whatever the grocery store called vanilla ice cream with chocolate chips.
He was markedly happier at night. Goofy and unbothered by anything. I learned to count the red-and-white cans that he’d crush between his big hands. I knew that three of them in the trash meant Dad would be fun soon. After four, he’d be hungry. Wanting to be with him while he ate, I’d get hungry, too. Eating was special. I’d lie there and nibble beside him in their king-size bed well past midnight, both enjoying and feeling guilty for all the space on Mom’s side—vacant because she was at work. We’d watch our nightly roster of shows: Andy Griffith, Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke Show. By one thirty, he’d have smoked a full pack of Kool 100’s beside me before falling into a deep sleep. Just as I drifted, too, I’d wake to see Anthony beside the bed, carefully pulling a lit cigarette from between Dad’s fingers and stubbing it in the ashtray. He’d then come around to my side of the bed and kiss my cheek before turning off the TV.
On weekend mornings, I’d wake up early and know Dad was hours from rising. Anthony was off at baseball, as usual. If it wasn’t baseball, it was football. And if not football, basketball, or street hockey. Always something, somewhere, until dark. Like Mom, he used an alarm clock and had keys to the front door. I’d walk to the kitchen, independent and capable, and climb onto the counter to get to the cereal cabinet. When I’d chosen from among Lucky Charms, Corn Pops, Cap’n Crunch, and Frosted Flakes, I’d pull the box down and go about fetching a bowl, a soupspoon, and the whole-milk carton from the fridge. I’d fill the bowl—cereal bobbing in milk to the rim—and make my way to the parlor. There I’d turn on the television and begin what would be hours of watching my favorite cartoons. One cereal bowl would empty without my noticing, and I’d replace it. Bowl after bowl kept me busy as I sat cross-legged on the coffee table, which I’d move a secure twelve inches from the TV. Eating with eyes fixed on the TV was a hobby, something I learned to do as a way to occupy alone time.
Once Dad woke up, it was another two hours before he’d be ready to start the day. So I’d play alone, making up a classroom or an elaborate game of house. I’d dress and re-dress my Barbies. I’d wash my Cabbage Patch Kids’ hair and style it, an act that eventually led them to premature baldness.
The lightness, the playfulness Dad exhibited at night was absent in the morning and early afternoon. He was noticeably colder and more serious. He smiled as if it took something out of him. He joked less. Though I knew he’d just slept, he looked as though he’d just plodded in from the night shift. I knew he was never in the mood to talk before noon. I’d learned that one Christmas morning when he’d looked at me squarely and said, “I need a few cups of coffee before we can do presents.” Mom tried to tease him, tried to get him to forego three mugs of black coffee with sugar, just so our excitement didn’t fade by the time he was done with them. It was Christmas, after all, she reminded him. He looked at her hard. Don’t test me, Mere. From the hunch of his shoulders and the way he had smoked slowly and methodically there in the living room, I knew how to treat him. Time and mood were always regulated by Dad. Our whole family was set to the thermostat, boiling or freezing, inside of him.
When he was ready—usually around four o’clock—he was willing to spend hours drawing whatever zany art project I dreamed up. We sketched—mostly underwater scenes. I found water fascinating, especially since I couldn’t swim. I’d become afraid after nearly drowning on vacation in South Carolina. Dad had pulled me from the ocean floor, and I came up bubbling, spraying salt water from my mouth like a hose.
When we were done drawing, I’d decide to throw my picture away, because it was never as good as his. Not even close. I couldn’t bear to see my illustration next to his, not when his was perfect. Later, when I was alone, I’d place his picture on the table beside me and strive to recreate it on a new sheet of construction paper. I wanted to make mine as good. I wanted Dad to like it. I got the sense that he loved whatever we did together just as much as I did. We crafted; we painted; we were wild. We even smashed eggs on the kitchen floor one afternoon when I told him I was angry. Mom wiped it all clean hours later.
In a way, his getting laid off from that job he loved meant I got all these endless afternoons and nights with him. I knew that it was a bad thing from the way he and Mom whispered about it. I didn’t understand it in the same way that I didn’t understand why I was bigger than my friends. Or why Anthony could catch a baseball with a glove and I could only catch it with my face. It was just the way things were.
Once school started, I was always late. Either Dad would have trouble getting up that morning, or we’d have trouble deciding on lime-green leggings versus purple leggings to go with the orange blouse he’d let me buy, a size too small, when Mom asked him to take me to Marshalls to get some clothes for school. When she later wanted to see my new outfits, I smiled and showed her a stack of paisley stationery, the orange blouse, two pairs of plastic dangly earrings, and one set of fake nails from CVS.
Other times we drove, just the two of us, in the family’s two-door Toyota Tercel to pick up his unemployment check before school started. I remember those rides vividly. I can feel myself in that passenger seat, Dad veering close to the car parked to my right as he tossed a red-and-white Budweiser can casually onto the floor of the backseat. I looked out my window as our car swerved to narrowly slip past that parked car, and I remember clearly the silver of my seat belt sparkling in my periphery. It hung, loose and unused, on the door. I turned to the bag in my lap, hot with freshly fried Dunkin’ Donuts. I picked up a cruller and bit into it, cracking the outer glaze into a yeast-risen center, and barely chewed before swallowing.
While Dad stayed home, close to a well-liquored fridge, Mom worked dawn into dusk, bleeding straight through weekends. I realize now that it would not be until her forty-eighth birthday that she would cut three jobs to two. I hated that she was gone. I despised every hour, every task she took on to keep us afloat. I knew she hated leaving at least doubly as much as I n
eeded her to stay. The nights she’d work and I’d lie in bed with Dad, I’d cling to her pillow, my face planted in its plush center as I went to sleep. It wasn’t her perfume or shampoo; it was that warm, milky scent of her skin alone, in the nook where her neck met her ear.
Some days she didn’t have a day shift to follow her long night, and she would nap for three or four hours. She slept as little as her body allowed because she knew my morning routine in the parlor—the one with Care Bears and Pee-wee Herman and Cap’n Crunch. It was her motherly guilt, her intensely giving nature, I suppose, that rustled her from any stretch of deep sleep to join me.
She’d smile and kiss me, lingering, breathing into my curls, beaming to see her baby girl, even through exhausted, bleary eyes. She’d remind me that the coffee table wasn’t a chair and that I needed to move away from the television set if I wanted to preserve my eyesight.
Most of the times when she was home during the day, she had a house that needed cleaning. For years, she made a steady but small income scrubbing and scouring stately homes in affluent neighborhoods near our home. I tagged along on almost all the two- or three-hour-long jobs when I was young. I suppose I could have stayed home with my toys, but I didn’t mind spending a string of hours watching my favorite shows at whatever family’s home needed disinfecting. And Mom, well, she just had to picture me spending a full day in the same pajamas, sitting on the coffee table in front of the TV, to make her mind up that toting me along with her cleaning supplies was more worthwhile than not.
I came to know the families who owned those homes. I’d sit, watching Punky Brewster in movie theater dimensions with surround sound. Mom would come into the room from time to time to again remind me that coffee tables weren’t chairs, and I’d turn up the volume so as not to miss a word of my show. When she left, shaking her head, the stench of bleach and ammonia lingered in the room. Those chemicals and all the constant washing dried her hands so severely that they cracked.
It Was Me All Along Page 2