by Chris Lynch
Not that he didn’t love coming home to us, too, because he did. We had the best of times when he would come home, and the best of those best times were when he came home at those odd hours. Because then it felt like there was nobody else on the whole ball of earth but me and the old man.
And we would cook and eat together. Just like him and his pals at the station. Always, it was breakfast when he came home. Scrambled eggs and fried tomatoes and bagels and sausages and pancakes from a special batter that he taught me only after I promised never to reveal it to anyone who was not a member of the firefighters’ fraternity. My mother steamed when I wouldn’t tell, even though her pancakes are nearly as good.
And here’s something that happened. I developed a sense of when he was coming home. I knew when his shift would end, but that wasn’t hugely helpful since he could come home one or two or five hours after that. But whenever he was finally on his way, I would pop up, right out of my bed like somebody was cranking the crank and I was jacking out of the box. For real. I was always up just when he got there.
He loved that, I think. You should have seen his moods when he would come home and I would be there waiting. Usually I’d have all the gear for breakfast all lined up and ready to roll. Should have seen how he loved it.
But now, sometimes, I wake up like he’s coming, and I completely forget that he isn’t. Like this morning, at five thirty, I am standing at the stove scrambling eggs and I don’t even remember getting here. I am staring at the eggs as they start to burn just a bit, and the burning shakes me, the smell and the crust developing on my usually perfect scramble.
When I finally fully realize what I am doing, what a stupid thing I am doing … I continue doing it.
I leave the gas on high, and I stand there, staring at the eggs as they crust up, as they curl and harden and blacken, as the smoke goes thick and comes up to me and I breathe it in as deep as I can, and I’m choking and blinded with it.
“Russell!” my mother says, rushing into the kitchen and bumping me away from the stove. I reel, stagger back, coughing and hacking and rubbing madly at my eyes. She takes the disaster of a frying pan and shoves it out the back door onto the porch.
“Oh, Russ,” she says, rushing back to me, “are you all right?”
“I burnt the eggs, Ma,” I say to her.
“So I smelled,” she says, inching closer with her arms wide.
I don’t let her get at me, holding out a stiff arm like I am a running back trying to evade tackling. With the other hand I rub busily at my smoke-wicked eyes. I am so stuck right now, so hopelessly stuck between I don’t want to be babied and Christ I am such a baby.
“Can I not even cook eggs now without him?” I ask. “I thought I was doing all right. I thought …”
“You’re doing all right, Russell. You are doing much more all right than anybody could ask.”
I am embarrassed. Needing this, I am embarrassed. My mother doesn’t need this. She needs a man around here and I am supposed to be that man.
“I’m sorry, Ma. Go to bed. I’m just being dramatic. Jesus. I’ll clean up. I’ll take care of everything. Just, go on now.”
She stands at her short distance, the smoke smell filling the air between us along with everything else. She doesn’t say another thing, doesn’t try to touch me again.
But thank Christ she doesn’t leave either.
Ma goes to the refrigerator and takes out the carton of grapefruit juice, collects two glasses on her way, and sits at the table with them.
It takes us about a silent half hour to get through that carton of juice. She’s good company, and helps me a lot just by being there, and she of course knows that.
But it isn’t anything at all like sitting down to very early or very late breakfast with my dad, and she of course knows that as well. Dad’s mood across this particular table was something so sky-high in the morning, I sometimes found myself wondering how to re-create it during the normal daytime hours when he would sometimes go all quiet and unexplained dark at mealtimes. I tried, a couple of times, to surprise him with breakfast in the middle of the daytime, hoping to make our special thing happen, but it never quite worked. I guess that’s what makes special times special, the fact that you can’t just whip them up.
“It’s at night mostly,” I say.
She reaches across the table and puts her hand around my hand around the empty juice glass.
“I am mostly okay in the daytime now,” I tell her. “Mostly.”
“I know. I do. Nights, I’m afraid, may be tough for a while yet, Russ. But I’ll be here, so I’ll hold you up, and you hold me up, and maybe we’ll agree that neither of us will burn the house down in the meantime. It’s a modest plan, but a good place to start, huh?”
It’s a very good thing she didn’t go to bed when I told her to.
I nod. “Now, lady, you can go to bed. I’ll clean that pan.”
“You, your father, and God together couldn’t clean that pan,” she says, getting up and patting my head on her way by. “But good luck.”
I’m in the gym. We have a deal, a sponsorship really, with the local Ramada. The Young Firefighters have free membership. It’s not state-of-the-art, but it’s got enough, though the pool takes about a hundred and fifty laps to make a mile. You get dizzy before you get winded.
I have just finished working out for a solid two hours. I would still be going if I could. My head likes the workout at least as much as my body does, but there is a limit. So now I’m steaming. I go back and forth among the steam and sauna and whirlpool after a good workout, and the well-cooked-pasta sensation I get, barely able to crawl out of the building by the end, well lately it suits me just fine. It’s almost peaceful.
I always think straight thoughts in the sauna especially. The sauna seems to do to my head what a hot iron does to a wrinkled shirt.
High school diploma or GED, minimum. Must be at least eighteen years of age. Volunteer work helpful. Firefighting and EMS training highly desirable but not required. Military service preferable but not necessary.
A life. A firefighting life, you would think they would mention. I have a lot of qualifications to gain and a lot of time to get there, but I am already part of the service in profound ways that cannot be measured. They should know this, and should be able to factor it into my case. But I am no kid, certainly in this world at this stage, I am no kid. I realize they have to have their requirements and I have to put in the time and effort to reach those requirements because they cannot have just any old scrubs signing on to the service. You have got to be special. You have got to be special, and I have got to be patient.
But I am growing the mustache. It might sound stupid, but it feels important. I am building the body and the mind as hard as they can be, and I am growing the mustache. Nobody is going to confuse me for an 1890s baseball player yet, but getting started on this is my quiet, for-myself way of feeling that little bit closer to the service, to the guys, to the team. That much closer to the man.
I am staring at my shadowy reflection in the smoky glass door, opposite my high bench seat in the sauna. I can almost see the man.
“Somebody’s getting ripped,” The Girl says, slipping in through that same door.
“Hi,” I say.
She climbs up to the top bench next to me, sits right close. She is wearing an electric blue bathing suit, Olympic swimmer type. Her figure is Olympic swimmer type. I was not previously aware.
“You been doing triple sessions at this place, or what?” she says, lightly squeezing my biceps.
We are the only two people here, but it’s still extremely embarrassing.
“A little more than usual, maybe,” I say, and politely pull from her grip.
“’Roids? I’m betting ’roids.”
I feel far too weak for this. I start to stand.
“Jeez, it’s getting awfully hot in here,” I say, and lean to leave.
She grabs the seat of my shorts and pulls me back down with alarmi
ng ease. I am weak.
“Don’t be antisocial,” she says.
I lean back against the scalding wooden slats of the bench. Remarkable, how if you move off them after getting accustomed to them, they instantly become foreign and searing again. It’s not the worst feeling.
“So, you enjoyed the party,” I say.
“I did. Thank you very much for inviting me. What a great group all around.”
I suppose I do expect her to go somewhere with that. She doesn’t. We sit and become one with the heat. It’s almost like a sound, it’s so baking. The Girl leans back alongside me, feels the same hot slats across her back.
She makes the sizzle sound, “Tssssz …” but she doesn’t flinch.
I am no good at this. “So, DJ …” I say.
“DJ,” she says.
We sit and listen to the heat some more. That’s it.
I stand for real now, and The Girl is happy enough to let me. “I’m completely noodled,” I say, stepping down to more breathable air. I see my ghosty reflection again as I approach the door.
“Look out for him,” she says as my hand rests on the door handle. I turn. “Just keep an eye. He’s not as strong as you are, I don’t think.”
I shake my head, and head out of the heat. “Don’t be fooled. I’m not as strong as I am either.”
Firefighters insist on doing stuff. Everything they do seems to require bigger motion, more action than the regular one-foot-in-front-of-the-other routine of most people’s days. And since these days are anything but routine, they are now insisting on doing something big.
They are being honored, DJ’s dad and mine. By the Hothouse, at the Hothouse, with a big public show-off of a permanent memorial.
There is to be a big department-sponsored t’do for the two Outrageous Courageous heroes of the community. T’do is my mother’s term for any organized gathering we are required to attend, especially if she would really prefer not to attend.
“Sheesh,” she says after getting off the phone. “This is one t’do I could really do without.” She plunks herself onto the couch. I plunk beside her.
“Well you can’t just t’do without it, Ma,” I say.
“I know that, Russ. I understand there are a lot of situations where you have to do things you don’t want to do, because people feel they are doing those things for you.”
“Well they are doing it for us.”
“Yes. Yes, of course they are. And because people do something nice for you, you do something nice, for them, by attending. Everybody thinks they are doing the nice thing for somebody else, while all parties would probably rather stay home and watch TV, but in the end something nice has probably been achieved even if it might be hard to identify what that was.”
It’s a different sound coming out of my mother now. Weary. Burnt.
“It will be great,” I say, slowly rising from the couch. “I know there has been a lot of stuff we have had to do, but this one feels different. This one’s going to be about the good stuff. I don’t think people would rather be at home watching TV than doing this, and I know I wouldn’t. I’m going to let myself get a little excited about this one.”
She smiles. “Okay. I’m just glad I don’t have to go.”
“Like hell you don’t have to go.”
“Of course I’m going to go,” she says, still weary, but a little less weary. “I wouldn’t want to miss your happy, beaming little proud face.”
“Okay, lady, if you need to mock me to feel better, that’s fine with me.” It’s a price I’m willing to pay.
She slowly tips over sideways on the couch, tucks her legs up, and settles way deep in. Sweet and innocent is how she looks as her smile turns vertical on me.
“I wasn’t mocking. I do see your happy, beaming little proud face. And it is making me want to go now.”
I make a point of beaming just a bit more as her eyes close and I leave her, surely with the both of us thinking about the fine Outrageous Courageous t’do to come. Outrageous Courageous was also not my phrase. It is common speech now, in the newspapers, shouted at us from cars, even spray-painted huge on a wall of the fire station, erased, and painted right back again. It is the shorthand for my dad and DJ’s, used as often as people speak their names. I love to hear my dad’s actual name, and don’t want it ever to fade away.
But I love Outrageous Courageous.
“How come you’re not a better bowler, Dad?”
“I am a better bowler.”
He gets in moods like this, where he doesn’t make any kind of sense at all. It tends to be a funny nonsense, but I can never tell where it comes from or where it goes to again, so the erratic part I don’t care for. Sometimes it makes me a little angry.
“Better than what?” I ask, deliberately interfering with his release.
His fourteen-pound ball squibs off right and just barely clips one pin before toddling off into the gutter.
“Better than that,” he says, staring for a long time at the lane and the confident pins and what went wrong.
“If you’re better than that,” I insist, “then bowl better than that.”
His ball rolls back up the feeder. He collects it and turns to me.
“Are you angry with me?” he asks, holding his ball up high like a big fat second head.
“I just want you to be better,” I snap, gesturing for him to address the lane instead of me.
I see sad disappointment flicker across his face, then he turns toward the pins again and I feel like crap.
“I’m sorry,” I call out, again just in time to wobble his release, only this time unintentionally.
He knocks down three more.
I have no idea. I have no idea why I need him to be better at this. I have no idea why his weird slanted smile at knocking down only four pins in a frame of tenpin bothers me so much.
“Relax,” he says, taking the seat next to me at the scoring desk. “That’s why they call it bowling.”
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I have no idea why it makes me so angry to hear it that I want to just walk right out and leave him there.
But I don’t. I do the better thing, and I bowl. I knock down eight pins with my next ball and my dad is clapping enthusiastically for me. I know he means it, but I don’t even look around at him.
“What is wrong with you?” I snap, waiting for my ball to return.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” he says, the cheeriness of only a few seconds ago vanished. Killed, actually, by me.
My ball returns and I use it to pound down the last two pins. He doesn’t clap. We don’t talk. The mood remains grim for the rest of the game, and the inappropriateness of it bothers me every bit as much as the inexplicable cheer that came before.
Adrian and I have finally gotten back to something like our regular bowling rotation. We normally go at least once a week and often twice but with the things that have happened, bowling slid down the list of priorities, even though with the things that have happened bowling would have been as welcome an event as any I could think of. One of the beautiful things about the nature of bowling is that when I am at it, I can almost leave all the rest of the stuff behind. And that happens to be one of the beautiful things about Adrian’s company, too—that he can make me feel like I am somebody other than that guy who lost his father. So the combination of Adrian and bowling is like some great sensory deprivation tank in my life, only with scorekeeping.
Unless something unusual gets in the way.
First, we go to pay for our two strings and our joker shoes, and the guy behind the counter, a guy I have seen hundreds of times over the years, with his timeless ageless sad acned face, just shakes his head grimly and backs away from the counter. He looks almost spooked, treating the money like it’s a live grenade or some voodoo thing that will haunt him forever if he touches it.
“Thank you,” I say, but he just shakes his head again and waves me off like I shouldn’t even be doing that much.
“I could get used to that,” Adrian says.
“You probably shouldn’t,” I say.
We walk up to lane eight, toting the goofy shoes. “Check it out,” says Adrian, pointing.
It is a poster, and it is posted here in our private getaway from everything. It’s on red paper with black lettering and looks like a seven-year-old did it with a marker and made photocopies. It’s taped to the ball polisher, with several others distributed around the place:
OUTRAGEOUS COURAGEOUS BARBECUE
MEMORIAL DEDICATION
SATURDAY NOON TILL AFTERNOON
MUSIC BY THE LEGENDARY
HOTHOUSE HEROES
BRING EVERYONE, COME OUT AND PAY
TRIBUTE TO TWO OF OUR OWN
“What’s with firefighters and barbecuing all the time?” Adrian asks. “Whenever they get together they’re firing it up. You would think hot coals and flammable liquids would be the last things they’d want to see on the day off.”
“One of ours,” I say out loud, staring at the cheap poster.
“Nice of you to share,” Adrian says.
“Well … you’re welcome,” I say. “And really, I’m happy to share, and I love the fact that everybody wants to share my dad....”
“Right,” he says, “it’s like, a community thing. Like they are part of this community and this community is proud—”
“And that’s really great. But I have to say, seeing it here, right here”—I tap the words on the poster—“I just get this little jolt, this shock of, selfishness is maybe what it is, but part of me thinks, well the community’s dads didn’t have their faces burnt off, did they?” The way I fire-breathe the word community, I could be aiming to burn unfortunate Adrian’s face off. “The community goes home at night and eats supper with dad, and dad is there and so is his face. So the ‘our own’ thing … it’s great, but it’s … no, it’s great.”