The Tender Bar: A Memoir

by J. R. Moehringer

  Uncle Charlie was working. We drank a shot of Sambuca and I told him I was going to visit my mother, stay with her a while, then go see my father, who was living in North Carolina, doing a talk show on the radio. When Uncle Charlie asked why, I told him something was wrong with me, and I wanted to figure out what, which meant going to the source.

  Smoke shot from Uncle Charlie’s nostrils. He put a hand to his temple. “Your father was in here once,” he said. “Did I ever tell you?”

  “No.”

  “He came to Manhasset to talk with your mother right after they split up. I think he was seeking a rapprochement. On his way back to the train he stopped in for a drink. Scotch. Neat. Sat about there.”

  I looked at the stool where Uncle Charlie pointed. I asked what they talked about, what my father was wearing, what was his attitude. “It’s funny,” Uncle Charlie said, elbows on the bar. “The only thing I remember about your old man was that amazing voice. That beautiful set of pipes. Isn’t that strange?”

  “Not really. That’s all I remember too.”

  Uncle Charlie lit another Marlboro. He couldn’t have looked or sounded more like Bogart if he’d tried, and it hit me—he was trying. The resemblance was no accident. He must have started when he was a boy. He must have discovered Casablanca, as I had, and fallen under Bogart’s spell, and started talking like him, acting like him, until the imitation became second nature. Which meant that my occasional imitation of Uncle Charlie had been a secondhand imitation of Bogart. I perceived how complicated these chains of imitations could become. We were all doing our private homage to Bogart or Sinatra or Hemingway, The Duke or Yogi Bear or Ulysses Grant. And Steve. Since all the bartenders were partly imitating Steve, and we were all partly imitating the bartenders, maybe Publicans was just a hall of mirrors filled with Steve impersonators.

  I didn’t stay until last call. I had packing to do before my flight left the next morning. I kissed Uncle Charlie good-bye. He smacked the bar and pointed at my chest. I went down the barroom shaking hands, a lump in my throat. I hugged Bob the Cop, and Cager, but they weren’t huggers. It was like hugging two old cacti.

  Keep in touch, they said.

  I will, I said, walking out the door. I will.

  forty-four | MY FATHER

  I was dying for a drink, but I couldn’t order one. My father had been sober for years and I didn’t want to seem disrespectful, downing a double scotch in front of him. We sat in a corner of the restaurant, sipping Coke, and I told him about Steve’s funeral, and leaving New York, and my recent visit with my mother. Seeing her was great, I said, but awkward, because living with my mother, even for a few weeks, made me feel like Uncle Charlie, which made me feel bad about myself and Uncle Charlie at the same time.

  I didn’t tell my father about the long talk I’d had with my mother, in which I’d apologized tearfully for being unable to take care of her. I’d wept against her neck and she’d assured me it wasn’t my job to take care of her, that it had never been my job, that I needed to stop feeling responsible for her and find some way to take care of myself. I wanted to tell my father all of this, but I didn’t, because the subtext of the story was the continuing legacy of his disappearance, and I was still determined to avoid that topic with him.

  I talked about McGraw, who had graduated from Nebraska and moved to Colorado to live in the mountains with Jimbo. I envied their closeness, I said, and their freedom. My father grunted. As I rambled on, as I struggled not to think about how delicious a glass of scotch would taste, I tried not to notice or care that he wasn’t responsive. He wasn’t listening. He was digging at his cuticles, breaking the long breadsticks into little breadsticks, ogling our waitress’s ass. Finally he reached toward her. I thought he was going to grab her ass, but he tapped her arm. “Can I get a double vodka martini?” he asked. “Up. Two olives.”

  I stared.

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. I forgot to tell you on the phone. I’m letting myself enjoy a cocktail from time to time. See, I realized I’m not really an alcoholic. Yeah. It’s good. When the mood strikes me, now and then, I can enjoy a cocktail.” He kept repeating this phrase, “enjoy a cocktail,” possibly because he thought it sounded reassuringly banal.

  I was alarmed at first, but by the time my father had enjoyed half a cocktail, he’d begun to enjoy me. Suddenly he was responsive. He was listening. More, he was offering advice, making me laugh, doing his funny voices. Before my eyes he was turning into a different man, into one of the men at Publicans, and so I urged him to enjoy another cocktail. Hell, I told the waitress, as if the thought had just occurred to me, I think I’d enjoy a cocktail myself.

  I spent a week lying around my father’s apartment, reading his books, smoking his cigarettes, listening to his show on the radio. It was the realization of a boyhood dream, hearing his voice and knowing that when he signed off he’d come home. We’d go for dinner, enjoy many cocktails, stagger home late at night, arm in arm. We’d listen to Sinatra, have a nightcap, maybe catch a rerun of The Rockford Files. My old man loved The Rockford Files. There were old publicity photos of himself around the apartment, and I saw that at his best he’d once looked something like James Garner.

  He was still a chef, and a gourmand, and after a night of drinking he often liked to whip up some dessert, like Amaretto cheesecake or cannolis. The desserts were delicious, but the real treat was assisting him in the kitchen, learning from him how to cook. We were pals, doing stuff together, like Rockford and his dad. I knew that cocktails were the cause of our newfound closeness, but so what? Cocktails helped us relax and overcome whatever guilt we felt about loving each other. Cocktails made it possible for us both to forget all that he’d done, and all that he hadn’t. What objection could there be to cocktails if they could accomplish all that?

  At the start of the weekend my father said he wanted me to meet his girlfriend. We had a few cocktails at a roadhouse before going to her place, a low-slung shack in the woods. She opened the door and her jaw dropped at the sight of us, arms flung around each other’s neck, grinning. “I see y’all started the party without me,” she said.

  She was painfully thin, all right angles and bones. Not pretty, but very sexy. Her twelve-year-old daughter, standing behind her, was extremely plump, as if she’d eaten all the meals the mother had skipped.

  We went into the kitchen, where the daughter resumed her seat at the table, bent over a book. It was a Choose Your Own Adventure, she told me. Each time you came to a turning point, she said, the book made you choose. Want to go into the forbidden cave? Turn to page 37. Want to float down the river? Turn to page 42. “I only read Choose Your Own Adventure books,” she said. “Because I’d rather make up my own story.”

  While my father prepared dinner, his girlfriend gave me a tour, which took three minutes, since the house was no bigger than Publicans. Hanging in the hallway was a framed and shellacked jigsaw puzzle, which the girlfriend showed me as though it were an original van Gogh. Returning to the kitchen we both knew something had happened. My father had changed. His eyes were smaller. His cheeks were flushed. Had the daughter said something? Had she nattered on about her Choose Your Own Adventure book and annoyed my father?

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  The girlfriend remarked under her breath about my father’s “mood swings.” Big mistake. He called her a name. The daughter told my father not to speak that way to her mother. He called the daughter a name. I tried to step in, tried to calm him down, and he told me to “shut the fuck up.” I’d had about enough of men telling me to shut the fuck up. I told my father to shut the fuck up, and that was the moment everything changed forever.

  He rushed toward me. Like Smelly, my father was bull-necked, swag-bellied, and surprisingly lithe. I stepped back and got set. This time would be different, I promised myself. This time I wouldn’t let my attacker get the jump on me. When Smelly attacked, I’d been sad and unprepared. This time I was mad,
and loaded for bear. All the fighters I’d ever known flashed through my mind. Bob the Cop, Joey D, Cager, even Uncle Charlie swinging at his imaginary Haglers. I tried to recall the pointers Joey D had given me about bar fights, and all that Don had told me about wrestling. I wondered if my father and I were going to punch it out or wrestle. I looked down to see if he was cocking his fists and saw the carving knife in his hand.

  In some remote corner of my mind I realized this was the very same specter my mother had once faced—my crazed father wielding a blade. I’d always assumed that I understood how frightened she must have been, but I didn’t have the foggiest idea until I saw that knife in my father’s hand. Was this my chance to avenge her? Was the universe telling me to settle an old score by disarming my father and chasing him around the woods with that knife? I knew that my mother wouldn’t want me to do anything of the kind. If she were here she’d tell me to run. But I couldn’t. There was no turning back. Whenever my father made his move, something bad was going to happen, and whatever that something was, I only knew one thing for sure. I was going to be the last one standing.

  He dropped the knife. The blade hit the kitchen floor with a sickening clatter. He stormed out of the house, got into his sports car and sped away. The girlfriend looked at me. I looked at her. We both looked at the daughter, who was shaking. We all held our breath, expecting him to return any second. When he didn’t, I asked the girlfriend, “Can you drive me to the airport?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you take me to his place first? To get my stuff?”

  “He’ll be there!”

  “No. He’s not there.”

  I knew with certainty that within minutes my father would be at some bar, and that he would be at that bar for a very long time to come.

  We sped to my father’s apartment. The door was locked but I climbed in a side window. I’d barely unpacked in my week there, so it took minutes to throw everything into my one bag. Then we drove along dark roads. As if in a horror movie we kept checking the rearview, waiting for headlights to materialize behind us. The daughter was lying on the backseat, either asleep or rigid with fear. The night was moonless and uncommonly dark and I couldn’t see anything but stars, though I knew we were driving through farm country because I smelled freshly turned soil and manure and every few hundred yards I glimpsed in the distance the yellow lights of a farmhouse. When we reached the airport the girlfriend pulled up to the curb and yanked the parking brake. We sat for a few moments, trying to gather ourselves. “You know,” she said at last, “I gotta say—y’all don’t seem nothin’ like your dad.”

  “If only that were true.” I kissed her good-bye and wished her luck whenever my father returned.

  The airport was closed, no flights until morning. All the stores and bars were closed too. A janitor ran a waxing machine over the linoleum floor. I stretched out on a row of plastic chairs in the waiting area and closed my eyes. When I opened them again it was dawn. I smelled biscuits and fresh-brewed coffee. Stores were unlocking their gates. I bought a razor and shaving cream and went into the men’s room. In the mirror I saw a different face. There was that familiar scowl—but the eyes were more aware. Of what? I wasn’t sure.

  I thought of Bill and Bud. They had warned me that disillusionment was the great danger up ahead and they were right. But that morning, rid of lifelong illusions about my father, and about a few other men, and about men in general, I found myself whistling as I patted shaving cream on my jaws, because being disillusioned meant I was on my own. No one to worship, no one to imitate. I didn’t regret all my illusions, and I surely didn’t shed them all in that airport men’s room. Some would take years to pare away, others were permanent. But the work had begun. Your father is not a good man, but you are not your father. Saying this to the young man in the mirror with the shaving-cream beard, I felt independent. Free.

  I bought a cup of coffee and sat with it in the middle of the airport, under the board that listed all the arrivals and departures. So many cities, so many places to start over. Maybe I’d go back to Arizona and tell my mother about braving my father. Maybe I’d go back to New York, watch the men’s faces as I walked in the front door of Publicans.

  Then those four oddly emboldening words ran through my head. Choose your own adventure.

  I phoned McGraw and Jimbo in Colorado. As I told McGraw about my fight with my father, he giggled. McGraw had gotten his giggle back. The sound of him giggling made me giggle, and I knew just where I wanted to be.

  “Junior!” he said, hugging me as I stepped off the plane.

  “Jimbo,” I said, “you’re saving my life.”

  Only eight months had passed since I’d seen him, but he was barely recognizable. Bigger, older, redder, he no longer looked like a young Babe Ruth, but like a young Steve. He had that familiar swagger, that take-charge quality, and he was developing his own Cheshire smile.

  “Where’s McGraw?” I asked.

  “Working. Your cousin is the newest towel boy at the local hotel.”

  I laughed, then caught myself. “What am I laughing at? Do they need another towel boy?”

  It was a brilliant June afternoon. The sky was a hard sheet of blue, the air tasted like ice water. Jimbo had the top off his Jeep and as we climbed into the foothills outside Denver our hair whipped around crazily. Coming over a steep ridge the Jeep made a jarring, thunderous noise. I looked to the right and saw that it wasn’t the Jeep making that noise but a herd of buffalo rumbling alongside the highway. Then, straight ahead, I caught my first sight of the Rockies. Camelback was a pimple by comparison. I howled, and Jimbo smiled as if he’d put the mountains there. I hoped those mountains, like certain men, weren’t more impressive when viewed from a distance.

  Over the Jeep engine Jimbo shouted a question about the gang at Publicans. I was all set to tell him about Smelly, but I felt as if I’d been in darkness a long time, and now I wanted to bask in this glittering mountain sunlight and say nothing to cast a shadow over the moment. Besides, we were meeting McGraw later at a bar. I’d tell them both then.

  I sat back and listened to Jimbo’s tape in the stereo. Allman Brothers. “Blue Sky.”

  You’re my blue sky.

  You’re my sunny day.

  Lord you know it makes me high

  When you turn your love my way, yeah

  Jimbo picked an air guitar, steering with his knees, and we both sang as the Jeep ascended into alpine meadows. Rams, perched like haughty ballerinas on the high rocks, looked down on us. My head started to feel like a balloon on a string. Jimbo said it was the altitude. The Jeep groaned as it crested a steep pass, which I assumed was the Great Divide.

  “Got a surprise for you,” Jimbo said. He pulled out his Allman Brothers tape and slammed in another. Sinatra’s voice burst from the speakers. Jimbo laughed and I slugged him on the shoulder.

  A few miles farther the Jeep sputtered. Jimbo looked at the gauges. “Shit,” he said, throwing the wheel to the right and bouncing onto the shoulder. He jumped out and popped the hood. Smoke billowed from the engine.

  “We may be here awhile,” he said, peering at the sun lowering on the horizon.

  He sounded worried. For once I wasn’t. While Sinatra’s voice echoed off the sheer slopes of rock, I was perfectly content to sit on the roof of this unavailing star and savor the sun. I didn’t care how much time we had until it disappeared behind the mountains. For one beautiful moment—and who could ask anything more of life?—I needed and wanted for nothing.

  Epilogue

  Keep me away from porter or whiskey

  Don’t play anything sentimental it’ll make me cry

  I’ve got to go back my friend

  Is there really any need to ask why

  —Van Morrison,“Got to Go Back”

  epilogue | ONE OF MANY

  On September 11, 2001, my mother phoned me from Arizona with the news. We stayed on the phone together, watching TV, and when we were able to speak we wondered with
dread how many people from Manhasset must be in those towers.

  It was worse than we feared. Nearly fifty people from Manhasset died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, among them Peter Owens, the bartender who had been such a kind editor and friend to me. Also, my cousin Tim Byrne, the strong, charismatic son of my mother’s first cousin, Charlene. A broker at Sandler O’Neill, Tim was in his office on the 104th floor of the south tower when the first plane hit the north tower. He phoned his mother and said he was fine, not to worry. Then the second plane hit his tower and no one heard from him again.

  I was in Denver at the time. I drove to New York for the funerals and memorials. Along the way I listened to radio call-in shows, stunned by how many people were calling not to talk but to sob. Outside St. Louis I tried to tune in McGraw, who was a talk show host for KMOX, one of the largest stations in the United States. I wanted to hear what he’d have to say about the attacks, and simply to hear his voice, which I felt would give some comfort. I’d lost touch with McGraw. When Grandma and Grandpa got sick, several years after I left New York, my mother and McGraw’s mother battled over their care, and the bitterness of that fight, which landed in court and didn’t end until both grandparents died in 1997, split the family in two. McGraw and his sisters, Sheryl included, no longer spoke to me, because they sided with their mother, and I sided with mine. Driving across Missouri in the middle of the night, I turned the dial back and forth, and thought for a second I had found McGraw in that welter of sobs and voices. But then I lost him.

  I shut off the radio and phoned everyone I knew in New York. My college roommate told me that Dave Berray—the supremely confident Yale student I’d dubbed Jedd Redux—had been killed in the attacks. He had a wife and two young children. I phoned Jimbo, who was living outside New York City. “Remember Michelle?” he asked. I hadn’t talked to Michelle in years, but I could see her face as plainly as the Coca-Cola billboard up ahead. “Her husband is missing,” Jimbo said.