The last time we left my father, he grabbed me by the arm as I went out the door. I stopped and looked up at him. His eyes sparkled in that familiar way. His world was always as glossy as a noon drunk sunshine. He said, “Sweetheart, life is short. Whether you live to be thirty-five or eighty-five, it’s not enough. Don’t spend your life, like your mother, trying to be satisfied. There’s not enough satisfaction in this world for everybody. Odds are you won’t find it. It’s a waste of time, something we don’t have much of. In the sheer size of it all, we’re only a second or two, if that.”
She met a man that was going to be her next husband on the computer. It took us two and half days to drive a U-Haul with her car hitched to the back from Sparkling, Arkansas to Seattle, Washington. I drove part of the way. My younger sister did some driving too even though she doesn’t have a license yet.
We’ve been here two months. Christmas is in two days and someone has to go visit my father so I’m going. I volunteered since I’m the oldest of his two daughters. My mother says that’s my present, a roundtrip ticket to Little Rock.
My mother becomes this temporarily happy version of herself when she has a new man in her life. I don’t get it. I’ve never met a boy that makes me feel that way. Usually I can’t wait until they take me home.
Her new boyfriend is her latest miracle, hand-delivered from destiny, which she believes in. There’s a master plan, she says. Everything has already been set in stone. Like a movie, she once explained, it’s two hours long and only the creator knows how it’ll end but we don’t. We’re just characters. Everything around us – this world of ours – represents something like five minutes into a two hour movie. That’s what we are, the opening scene.
This one’s name is Terry Grumbles but he tells everyone to call him T-Bone.
My mom cuts hair. Our apartment has two bedrooms. My sister, Amber, has one and my mom, the other. I sleep on the couch, which is fine because the TV is in the living room. I stay up late, often with the sound completely off, watching the characters play their roles.
My mom drove me to the airport and said, “You and your father have a good Christmas, okay?”
“Yes, mom, we will. Thank you again for this wonderful gift. I’ll never forget this Christmas for as long as I live.”
“Oh, hush.”
My mother didn’t say anything else the rest of the way and I got out of the car, checked in, departed from Sea-Tac and after a half-day layover in Houston was in Little Rock by dark.
I called my father when I retrieved my bag and he said he was about an hour away. I said, “So you haven’t even left yet?”
“I just left,” he said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”
My father works at a nail polish factory. He’s been there longer than I’ve been alive. For as long as I can remember he talked daily about the unstable economy, the immorality of politicians and that the threat of nuclear war never went away like we were told to believe. The demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union collapsing, just means that nuclear war is more imminent, not less so. I’m sure he’ll have even more enlightening and morbidly depressing things to talk about.
When we’re living with him life is normal enough and predictable. On Sunday mornings my mother hauls my sister and I off to church and when we get back he’s watching sports, already a row of empties in the bottom of the trash can. But you wouldn’t know it if you talked to him. Drinking made him happy, which pissed off my mom. He only smiled when he’d stomached enough to start belching.
For him, the beer offered his only glimpses of hope. It worked effectively as a balance, dampening his gloomy outlook with the occasional cheerful spurt of enthusiasm. He’d sometimes get chatty and start ranting and raving about things, oftentimes quite hilariously. And he’d have these crystal clear insights into human nature he liked to only share with me. But then it’d pass after fifteen or twenty minutes and the world would go back to conspiring against him. As he saw it, the best bet was to hide out, lay low and as he famously phrased it, “stay the fuck away from people.”
He grew up in Michigan. He did the Army thing for a few years. He ended up in south Arkansas because there weren’t a lot of people around. Got a job pouring hot chemicals into giant vats, then moved to nail polish quality control and now he’s a shift supervisor and it’s a job that unintentionally turned into a career. It pays the bills and he doesn’t have to deal much with people, still.
T-Bone smoked cigarettes down to the filter. He had tattoos and my mother was greatly excited by his presence, just being in the room with him made her face permanently flushed like she was suffering from heat stroke.
This wouldn’t last though. My sister and I knew the drill. Passion, romance and lust leads to resentment, anger and hatred. It’s called love. We’ve seen it many times before.
Last week he took us to downtown Seattle. He thought we should be impressed by the size of the buildings being from a small town in Arkansas.
“I’ve been to Chicago before,” I said. “I’ve seen bigger buildings than this.”
“We lived in Chicago for almost a year,” Amber said.
“Well, hot damn,” T-Bone said out of the corner of his mouth, cigarette smoke criss-crossing everywhere. “She can talk.”
We walked around downtown for about ten more minutes and then left.
Then, as if he’d discovered something, T-Bone said, “I didn’t know you lived in Chicago before.”
“Yep,” Amber said.
“When was this?”
“Two years ago,” she said.
“Your mother didn’t tell me that.”
“There was this guy named Bruce. We lived with him for awhile. He had a big house in Naperville, a three-car garage. He was a software engineer. What do you do again, T-Bone?”
“I work in food distribution.”
“That’s right,” Amber said, simultaneously thumbing a new message on her keypad. “For that generic food company.”
“It’s called Bestest Ever Brands Foods.”
“The one with the black labels on everything, right?”
T-Bone tossed his cigarette out the window, only smoked halfway down and gassed it into the passing lane. Then he began doing bizarre deep-breathing exercises that inadvertently produced a high-pitched whistling sound. He said they were anger management strategies. “Breathing exercises,” he said, when he caught me staring at him.
“I gathered that,” I said.
“I’m a little, I mean, I was a little angry. But I’ve worked past it. It’s over.”
“Angry about what?”
“I was angry that your mother hadn’t told me about her relationship with this man, the one in Chicago.”
“That’s mom,” Amber said, from the backseat. “She’s very secretive.”
T-Bone lit a cigarette after getting into the middle lane and resuming a safer speed. Then he began to talk, the entire drive. He talked about his past life or past lives – apparently he’s had several incarnations. Not literally, but in the way he views his life. There was the alcoholic T-Bone. The angry T-Bone. The drug addict T-Bone. The violent T-Bone. There were a lot of T-Bones he talked about. There was even the spent time in jail T-Bone. He was quite candid, suspiciously so.
“Who are you now?” Amber said.
“I’m the living today to its fullest T-Bone,” he said, the ever present cigarette dangling from his lip. “No! That’s not it. I’m the grateful T-Bone. That’s right. I’m grateful. Very much so.”
The way he said it was indisputably sad, like he really meant it. And for the first time I believed him.
T-Bone dropped us off at the apartment complex and told us he couldn’t wait until we moved in with him. Our mother hopped down the rickety steps from our second floor apartment and shouted, “T-Bone!” loud enough for the entire complex to hear.
“You girls are great. I had a good time. Angela, I’m glad we finally had a chance to talk.”
“Her name is Amber,” I said, closing the door.
Our mother studied our faces for a reaction. She mumbled, “How it’d go?” expecting me to answer.
“Fine, mom. He’s all yours.”
“What did y’all do?”
We were already stomping up the stairs. Amber giggled at something she read on her phone. I wondered if the sun ever really did come out in Seattle. Someone at school said it shows itself in July and August. Great, I thought, I get to see the sun in six months. I won’t even be here.
Driving away from the Little Rock airport my father suggested we hurry home and get something eat, noting that I was probably hungry, which I actually wasn’t. I said, “Sounds good,” even though there weren’t any other options than to go home.
He honked at a car for no apparent reason. He hated Little Rock, thought it was too big of a city, people everywhere.
In the close confines of his pickup I detected a soft sweetness in his breath. As he drove he occasionally reached down for his coffee carafe and took gargling drinks from it. The tiny slot meant to keep hot coffee from spilling out too rapidly was a frustration for my father who thought pouring his beer into it was a good cover but a lousy way to get a good pull. The beer lapped out of the tiny slot in awkward cadence. It was horrifying to watch.
T-Bone began spending more time at the apartment. It was normal procedure, slowly introducing the new boyfriend to his future family environment, warming him up to us. He told us more about his life whenever he could and like they all do continued to drone on when it was obvious that no one was listening. He told the same jokes – or what he took to be jokes – over and over again. “I grew up in Portland. But I like Seattle better. It rains more here.” Then he’d laugh like it was a joke. All of my mother’s boyfriends had terrible senses of humor. They all attempted comedy like it was a prerequisite to being a future stepfather. I’d much rather one of these men show me a believable magic trick or be really good at something like being quiet and remaining still.
My father could be very funny when he wanted, even vicious. I always thought if he wasn’t so anti-social and, well, anti-life, that he could’ve been more successful, using his wit to some advantage. To watch him zip out the zingers like Frisbees I can even see the raw materials for a potential stand-up comic sometimes. But that’s probably fantasy. It’s what I do when I think about my father. I imagine what his life could’ve been because I know he settled for something he told himself would work just fine. But I imagine when people make those decisions early on they fail to fully appreciate what the rest of their life will really feel like. My parents have taught me one thing and that is we’ll always remain children. Adulthood is a word, a fictional concept, a lazy category. I also wonder sometimes whether Amber and I inadvertently demolished his true aspirations, if he had any.
I think he wishes he had no children. He loves our mother, there’s no doubt about that. He withdraws from us, not her, contrary to her most popular grievance – that’s he’s withdrawn. She uses the word so much I don’t even know what it means anymore. But that’s where my mother is wrong about everything. My father doesn’t feel good enough about himself. He doesn’t think he deserves her. He gave her everything she wanted, including us. That’s why he lets her come back. Why he doesn’t care what she does and where she goes. I think he believes she truly loves no one else but him. That she’ll one day give up on these short-lived quests for excitement and adventure and grow tired and too old to play the games anymore or will run out of people who want to play back. Maybe when Amber and I are old enough to be on our own she’ll come home and stay for good. I think she keeps on with this way of living because it keeps us kids out of the house.
“What’s Seattle like nowadays?” My father looks at me, then the road.
“You been there before?”
“A long time ago before anyone knew it even existed.”
“I think it’s been around a while, Dad.”
“Wettest damn place I ever been. They get the same amount of rain as they do in Detroit, Michigan except they spread it out into a light drizzle three hundred days a year. In Michigan we’d get all the rain in thirty or forty days.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You don’t have to pretend to be interested in what I’m saying.”
“I’m interested.”
“Your mom, she’s doing okay?”
“I think so but I think she’s making another one of her mistakes. You know what I mean.” I looked at him but he continued to watch the road, one hand on the wheel, one wrapped around his coffee carafe. “Sometimes I think she’s just stupid.” I held my breath after it was too late to take it back.
“Most people are dumb. I’ve told you that before. You always hear it said that we don’t give people enough credit, that people are smarter than we give them credit for, right? Well, that’s upside down. We give people too much credit, especially in this country.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“If you’re a bona fide idiot then you better hope you live in the United States of America. You can’t get away with being as stupid as we are in other countries.”
I laughed.
“That funny to you?”
I couldn’t tell if he was angry.
“A little.”
He sipped the last of the beer out of his coffee carafe.
After some more driving he turned off of the highway into town. Even though I’ve only been gone two months it feels like much longer. It always feels that way. And when we come back it’ll be just a few days before it’ll feel like we never left.
“Things look the same as when we left,” I said.
“It’ll always look this way. Don’t worry about trying to remember it.”
At the house he’s got food simmering in the crock pot. He tells me to sit down and cuts off big slices of roast beef and scoops potatoes on a plate. He gets the BBQ sauce out of the refrigerator. That’s my condiment. Amber’s is ketchup. My dad’s mustard. Mom likes mayonnaise.
His voice trails off until I can’t hear what he’s saying, he’s still talking, telling me a story as he goes to the garage where he keeps his beer in a different refrigerator. His voice gets louder as he walks back to the kitchen. “I once knew a guy…” he said, then stops to open his beer before he sits down.
“You’re not eating?” I said.
“Already did, anyhow, listen to me. I once knew this guy who liked BBQ sauce so much, just like you do, that he’d put a piece of meat in this mouth lathered in sauce, right? Then he’d chew it until the sauce was gone, then spit out the meat and dip it in more sauce. He’d do this two or three times before he’d finally swallow the piece of meat.”
“That’s disgusting, Dad.”
“It’s true.”
I fed myself a forkful of potatoes. “So things been quiet around here?”
“The quieter the better.”
“And work?”
“Nail polish is still in high demand. That and the beer business. I can’t think of any better business to be in, especially considering this shitty economy and all. If I opened a store that’s all I would sell.”
“You wouldn’t find me shopping at your store.”
“Yeah, you never took to wearing nail polish. Hell, you don’t even wear make-up. Most girls your age wear too much make-up. And you dress like a boy half the time, too.”
“I’m not the only seventeen year old girl who doesn’t wear make-up.”
“First one I ever met.”
He toasted me with his can, hoisting it in the air. “To nail polish and beer,” he laughed. I imitated the gesture, pretending to hold a can in the air too. After a long drink he said, “You want one of these?”
“No, no. I’m fine, Dad.”
“You sure? You can have one.”
“I don’t want one.”
He watched some television and I went back to my room. I called mom, told her I was in Arkansas. Everything was normal. It was Christmas Eve. My mom sang me a Christmas song over the phone and I pretended to listen. Her voice was emotional when she said Merry Christmas. It meant something to her. Everything meant something to her; everything had significance, its own fate, its own special part in our cosmic movie.
Dad was relieved this year that he didn’t have to endure Christmas lights and the dread of a blinking tree near his television for six weeks.
On Christmas morning he read the newspaper and I watched his channel flipping for two hours until it became highly aggravating and I asked to borrow the truck. “The keys are on the kitchen counter.” I jumped up and just as I had them in my hands he asked where I was going.
“See a few old friends.”
“They’re not old. They’ll be here when you get back.”
No one knew I was back in town. I wasn’t in Seattle and I wasn’t yet here. I didn’t drive very far before I turned around, realizing I didn’t mind not being anywhere.
Christmas dinner was leftovers from the night before, congealed roast that I warmed up in the microwave. For two more days nothing changed and I wasn’t anywhere.
On the third day we watched more TV and I helped him clean up a bit. He had vacation days he was required to take. He wouldn’t be back to work until the first week of January. I rode along with him to the post office and gas station. On the way home we stopped by the liquor store. I waited in the car. When he got in he opened one and tucked it between his legs before he drove off.
“I’m going back tomorrow,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
He picked up his can, took a drink. “You’re looking at it.”
At the airport he parked and walked inside with me. I got in line and quickly processed my ticket at one of the self-service kiosks. He made a comment about how he hadn’t flown on an airplane in twenty years or more. “The last time I flew on an airplane the smoking section was in the back.”
“You can’t smoke on an airplane anymore, Dad.”
“I know that. That’s why I’m telling you the last time I flew the smokers sat in the back. It’s the safest part of the plane too. Imagine that.”
“Mom’s new boyfriend smokes. He smokes all of the time.”
Dad shook his head. “Bad habit.”
“I don’t mind cigarettes when they’re burning, it’s the smell that’s left behind after they’re done smoking that smells so bad.”
“I never cared for it either way.”
“I know, but we all have our bad habits.”
“Yes, we do,” he said. “I have mine. Your mother has hers.”
I nodded.
“You’re young,” my father said. Then he didn’t say anything else. I figured he was finished and was about to leave. “Don’t get any bad habits if you can help it, okay? You can do anything. You know that, right?”
“Sure, I guess. I don’t know what I want though.”
“Remember what I told you before you all left?”
“I remember everything you tell me, Dad.”
“Well, what I said before you left, I only told you. I didn’t tell your sister. She’d never understand. She’ll end up being like everyone else. But you don’t have to be like everyone else if you don’t want to be.”
He smiled, then playfully pushed me. That was the end. He was done.
I walked away and stepped on the elevator and turned around and watched the airport lobby expand before my eyes. My dad stood still; he hadn’t moved. He wasn’t watching me; he stared at the list of destinations on the departure board. I imagined he wished he were going somewhere. If he could go anywhere, I know where he’d go. He’d go back.
When I get to the top of the escalator I watched as he dabbed at the corner of his eyes with his thumbs. I knew he wasn’t thinking about the family he’d lost, the one he let run away and come back. The one he largely ignored and probably never wanted. The only real thinking he’s ever done in his life was about him. I know he’s human enough to have weak moments when the full force of his choices and the rushing blood of memories come at him like a wild punch. But he’s figured out how to dodge it. He gets himself some more beer and withdraws into the place he carved for himself, his meek existence, all of it, his very own two seconds.
When I land I call my mom. “You on your way?”
“Actually I asked T-Bone to pick you up. He should be there. He left early so you wouldn’t have to wait.”
I said goodbye and walked through the sliding glass doors and see him standing there, itching his arm, smoking a cigarette.
“Let me get that for you.” I handed him my bag and followed behind as we walked to the parking lot.
“I don’t fly much,” he said. “I got here thirty minutes ago and got a spot right here in front of your airline’s gate but then an airport cop tooted his horn and told me I couldn’t park here, had to circle or go to the lots.”
“Yeah, it’s been that way for awhile now. This post-9/11 world we’re told to never forget.”
“I don’t fly much,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time I flew.”
We find his car and head out. A few miles from the airport, he looks at me, “Kansas City. My mother’s funeral. That was the last time I flew.”
“How long ago was that?”
“That was ’98. March. March 19th.”
“I thought you were from Portland.”
“I am but my mother was from a small town in Missouri, outside Kansas City. She wanted to be buried there with the rest of her family.”
“What about your dad?”
“I have no idea. Don’t know anything about him. He left when I was a baby. I guess he didn’t want to be bothered with a kid.”
After dinner I sat on the couch. Mom and Amber had fallen asleep and T-Bone stepped outside to make phone calls, something at work had happened that required him to check in every half hour. When he came inside he forced a series of hard rattling coughs into his fist.
“You smoke a lot,” I said.
“I know it.”
He sat down next to me and we watched TV together.
I shifted my body so that I was facing him. “So what’s your real story, T-Bone? Why do you like my mom so much?”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You know about her husband, my dad, back in Arkansas. You know she’s married. You know that, right?” My voice was steady and unwavering like I was reciting the Miranda Rights.
“I know all about that.”
“Okay, just checking,” I said, then turned to face the TV again. But I continued, “I just can’t figure you guys out. That’s all. It’s like you’re all the same. I just wish I knew where she finds you guys so I could keep her away from y’all.”
He nodded. “I don’t really have any answer to that.”
“I didn’t think you would. You guys never have any answers.”
“Look, I don’t know,” he said, his eyes fixated on the TV. “You’re young. Someday you’ll understand how easy it is to make mistakes.”
I threw my head back, closed my eyes. “This is like a bad nightmare that never ends. It’s the same thing over and over. The only thing that changes is the face on my mom’s new boyfriend. I’m so tired of it. T-Bone, you know this isn’t going to work, but here you are, still acting like y’all have some future together. It just creates more pain for everybody involved and I’m sick of it.”
His phone vibrated. We both looked at it. “The only thing I can say and it’s probably the only thing I’ve figured out in my fifty-two years, never mind. It probably won’t even make sense.” He stood up, the phone still vibrating.
“Yeah, what? What did you figure out? That you ran out of room for more tattoos?”
He laughed. “No, I figured out that pain, like anger, is temporary, that real pain hurts only because of memory. The memory of it is what deteriorates us.”
His phone stopped vibrating and he sat back down on the couch, and didn’t say anything else or get up for the rest of evening.
About the author:
Matt Baker’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in the Cimarron Review, Texas Review, Tampa Review, FRiGG, Saint Ann’s Review, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere. He’s the author of a novel, Drag the Darkness Down.
How’s about a toast to removing nail polish stains?
Thanks for the read!