Dad, 68

Chapter Eight

Dad, 68

Most of the time I turn to my mother for guidance when faced with a personal or moral dilemma, or if I just need a rational opinion about a matter. Sometimes I’ll go to my sisters, or Steven and Nelson - even Luke and Leia… but there are other times when I need to talk to someone else, when I need a different perspective, maybe from someone who can see the gray area in situations. There are moments in life when, despite my better judgement the other ninety-nine percent of the time, and knowing that whatever I’m told must be taken with a grain of salt - I turn to my dad for advice.

While I can easily characterize my mother as a categorically amazing person �" my dad possesses a mixed bag of qualities that make him amongst the most complex characters in existence, and the personification of juxtaposition - a real Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. 

He can be the coolest person in the world one second, the dumbest the next. One day he’ll give you fifty bucks, then the next day he’s calling and asking you if he can borrow a hundred. He’ll sit down and watch a baseball game with you and buy you a few beers, then he’ll have a few too many drinks (then two more for good measure) and he’ll turn into a complete prick. He’s the kind of guy who makes uncomfortable jokes at a funeral, gets you kicked out of restaurants, thinks taxes are optional, never puts more than five dollars in his gas tank at a time just in case his car breaks down, but would give you the shirt off his back, the last dollar in his wallet - but can be such an unbearable jackass at times that he might tear holes in the shirt before he gives it to you and he’d rip the dollar in half and send it floating into the wind all for a good laugh.

My parents divorced when I was three. I don’t remember them ever being together and they are so different in every conceivable way that I can’t imagine them being together. My mom is logical, rational, down to earth, consistent in her approach and dealings. My dad’s imaginative, lives in the clouds, a dreamer - but one who lacked the motivation to ever make his dreams a reality. He was always in bands when I was growing up, could play ANY instrument you put in his hands - and my god, could this man sing. He could belt out Steppenwolf, melt you with his renditions of Eric Clapton, and would leave you in awe at his range when he sang Roy Orbison. 

As a kid, my dad was my hero. He was the coolest parent who ever lived.My sisters an I spent the weekends with him growing up �" experiencing an extraordinary sense of culture-shock between Friday night when mom would drop us off at his apartment (which oftentimes changed on a monthly basis, because rent was also apparently optional) and Sunday afternoon when he’d bring us back to mom’s.

     I used to hate that drive back. I’d beg and complain to him that I never wanted to go back there again. My mother was strict, there were chores, rules, things you were expected to do - but on the weekends at dad’s, rules were non-existent and I loved going there because I could do whatever I wanted. He didn’t know how to be a parent and preferred to be a friend. As I got older, of course, this led to a steady flurry of memorable, and oftentimes terrible life decisions that I made because rules and guidelines, and standards of acceptable behavior didn’t exist on the weekends. 

Thanks to my dad’s absentee parenting, I smoked pot for the first time when I was eleven, got drunk for the first time a week later. When I was in eighth grade I used to go to high school parties with my sister Jess, and she’d get me hammered, and I’d stumble back to my dad’s house drunk as a skunk, and he’d either be passed out drunk himself, half-asleep on the couch with a cigarette dangling from his mouth that was seconds away from setting the house ablaze, or he wouldn’t be there at all - out drinking at the bar, or at some strange woman’s house. I could fill a novel with the wild tales of all the crazy, bizarre women he used to bring home �" witches, weirdos, whack jobs, women with three teeth and fewer brain cells, but that’s another story for another time.

><><>< 

    I pull up to my dad’s apartment and wonder why I decided to come here instead of just making a simple phone call, and I’m already regretting my choice. Then again, school starts tomorrow and I’ll now have a good excuse to make more phone calls and fewer home visits, so the regret doesn’t last long. Besides, there’s something I need to ask him �" a gray area question, his area of expertise. I open the door and climb the stairs, already hearing his TV blaring from two floors down.

As I make my way up the steps, reminiscing about all the times his car used to break down, or he’d run out of gas, or ship me home to my mother with some horrendous injury, I think about how it might have been around the time I turned twelve or thirteen that I surpassed my father’s maturity level. Sure, I made some bad decisions even after that, but I was always a pretty smart kid, and as soon as I realized who and what my dad was, a funny guy who was cool to be around, but not suited to be a parent, this opened my eyes more to who and what my mom was and I spent less time around him and strived to not make the same mistakes he did.

I was a kid who needed rules like all kids need them, even if they resist every step of the way. I needed the guidance, and to be taught responsibility, and how to behave in public and I thrived on the structure my mother gave me but my father either couldn’t or didn’t. I needed someone who made sure I got my homework done, and did my chores - someone who with a look alone could put the fear of god in me �" all with love, all because of love.   

My dad’s a jovial guy for the most-part. He’s short and round, bald, wears glasses, and has puffy red cheeks. He looks like Santa Claus meets Danny Devito. He’s not a bad man, because he has enough good qualities that they just slightly tip the scales in that direction �" but unlike my mother, he’s simply a lousy parent most of the time.

But it’s precisely that lousy parenting I need today, just a tinge of morally questionable advice so that I can follow through with a decision I’m thinking about making �" a decision that I suspect might make mom at least a little bit disappointed in me. 

Standing outside his door, his TV roars through it like there’s a parade on the other side. When I knock and it swings open, it’s enough to burst an eardrum (which would be the second time in my life he’s caused a burst eardrum �" the first being when I was a baby and he held me in his arms during his band practice). My father wraps his arms around me, squeezes, and like I’m still two years old, he makes a popping sound before he releases. 

“You want a beer?” He asks. It’s not even noon and I can already smell from his breath that he’s had a few. He might not be the best parent in the world, but I still love this man to death. He taught me to play catch, gave me my first beer, took me to Red Sox and Patriots games even if the car did sometimes break down on the way. Most importantly though, he showed me that not every situation can be reduced to black and white. 

“No thanks,” I say, taking a seat as far away from the deafening TV as possible. My dad sits on the couch in front of a stack of folded sections of newspapers on the coffee table.  He doesn’t read them. He buys them for the crossword puzzles - two, three, four a day - and he almost always finishes them. I remember being a kid, really young, like five or six, and sitting down with him to complete the puzzles every Saturday and Sunday. This continued for years, and was one of the things I always love doing with him. He taught me that a four letter word for a sword used in fencing is an epee, that a needle case is an etui, that ere means before. I’m sure it wasn’t his intent, but in a way, like a blind squirrel finding a nut - he gave me my first vocabulary lessons through those puzzles, and taught me to love and appreciate words. 

“Scrabble?” My dad asks.  In less than twenty-one hours I’m back to school, and while I want to tell him about the predicament I’m in with Madison, I can’t turn down a game of Scrabble. 

“Sure,” I say, as my dad clears the table and sets up the board, “But I need some advice. I went out with this girl last weekend, and ever since… I don’t know. My conscience has been eating at me…” 

><><>< 

    Madison may be cute…but she laughs like a drunken horse. It’s the single most obnoxious sound I’ve ever heard. If I were teaching my students onomatopoeia, I would write it as being something akin to “ha-na-na-neigh-phaw” and it’s about eighty decibels louder than it has any reason to be. I thought I could combat it by being uncharacteristically serious and not saying anything funny, but it turns out she’s the type who laughs at her own jokes.

It’s almost unbearable enough to make me walk out of here. I know there’s no long-term potential with her for reasons even behind the neigh, but this is a complex situation, one in which I won’t allow something as insignificant as an obnoxious laugh, or any of the other little annoying things about her I’ve noticed, to lure me away from - not because there’s a particular quality she possesses that I can see helping me overcome the sheer cringe-worthiness of her laugh alone which is worse than nails on a chalkboard - but because she has two tickets to the sold-out Lumineers two Fridays from now, and she doesn’t have anyone to go with. 

The teacher in me can’t help but equate this situation to the many novels I’ve taught over the years, and the Common Core standards that suggest that during reading students will be able to: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.

    Now, If I were a character in a novel, I’d find myself as one with multiple or conflicting motivations. I’m truly torn here. If it were some random band, there’d be no conflict whatsoever and the equine guffaw would have me running out of here �" but it’s The fricken Lumineers, the greatest band of our generation in my mind, and for that, I can stomach the laugh. All I have to do is survive tonight then hold off on seeing her until that Friday. That’s less than two weeks, and with school starting, I have the perfect excuse why I can’t see her. 

For now, I’ve subdued the laugh and kept it at bay by conjuring up somber topics of discussion. Funerals, death, malaria, inequalities in the education system. These are things that normal people just don’t laugh about, and given my knowledge of the darkest facets of human experience and history, I can keep going all night if that’s what it takes to keep that laugh contained. These grim conversations carry us through dinner and suppress her very ability to even let out a single giggle. But how could anything be normal about a girl who laughs like a damn stallion

The topic of conversation as I anxiously wait for the check to arrive is a real doozy - Spanish Influenza. I lay my knowledge on her. I speak of the tragedy, the horror that so many people faced, and I end with the catastrophic death toll. 

“So, we still don’t know how many died. Twenty million, a hundred million �" huge amounts of people. Horrible, isn’t it?” 

    Her face is frozen, and she’s dead silent �" but then she smirks, and I fear I’ve said something that might unleash the great stallion’s booming roar.

    “Did you ever hear the one about the doctor who told a guy he had the flu, so the guy says he wants a second opinion?” She’s already telling the joke, and yes, I’ve heard it before and there’s nothing I can do to stop from hearing it again, nor the laugh, which I know will follow. “So, the doctor says to him, “Yeah, you’re ugly, too.”” Ha-na-na-neigh-phaw! Ha-na-na-neigh-phaw! Ha-na-na-neigh-phaw! Ha-na-na-neigh-phaw! Ha-na-na-neigh-phaw! Ha-na-na-neigh-phaw!

><><><

I’m cringing just thinking about that noise, but I survived the night, and presently find myself in this pickle. “So, she’s invited me to go with her and I told her I’d let her know as soon as possible. So, what do you think? Is it wrong of me that I’m thinking about going?”

My dad folds his arms, makes this face that looks like he’s either constipated, or that it physically hurts him to think so intensely. He goes quiet for a moment as the limited brain cells compute something, then asks, “How good looking was she? I mean, on a scale of one to ten?”  

“I don’t know dad, like a five, maybe a six…” 

“Are you talking like a nine body and a three face here? Give me a breakdown.” 

Finding relevant points in any conversation with my dad is like finding a needle in a haystack, but there’s animal s**t mixed throughout that you have to filter along the way. It’s infuriating, but it’s easier to just answer. 

“I’d say like a four face, and maybe a seven and a half body.”

“Four face?” He asks. I nod. “Seven and a half body?” He goes back into ponderance. “And this band… the Hoomanhairs… they’re pretty good?” 

“Lumineers, dad,” I correct him. I don’t know if he can’t hear me even though I’m screaming over the TV, or if he does it on purpose sometimes. Given his random moments of lucidity, I’d have to lean towards the latter. 

“You got any of the Lumineers on your smartphone?” He asks, unwitting to the fact that everyone has a smartphone now and the word “smart” has been rendered obsolete, well, everyone but him. He’s had the same duct taped together flip phone since I was about six. 

“Yeah.” I open up my Spotify and put on “Sleep on the Floor”. He nods his head as he listens. 

“Well, I don’t see the problem,” he shrugs as the song ends. 

“You don’t think I’m leading her on?” 

He laughs, shakes his head as though the notion itself is preposterous. “Of course not,” he chuckles. I’ve gotten exactly what I came for. “Those Lemon Airs are pretty good.” 

I’m about to correct him, but I can tell from his face he’s joking. “Thanks dad.” 

“You got any more of their stuff on your smartphone?” He asks.

“Yeah,” I say, letting Spotify take over. By the end of “Walls” he’s humming along - then asks me to play it again. 

We finish our game, which is close until the end when he hits me with the word “squeeze” for a triple score, game ending, soul crushing defeat. 

“I gotta get going, dad. I love you.” 

“Love you too, son.”

I leave with a departing hug and “pop”. 

><><>< 

    As I get back to my minivan, I think about how sometimes I go to my dad pretending to need advice just so I can see him or talk to him. I don’t really need his wisdom anymore, and haven’t since I was about eight but he’s in his sixties and smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years. He has heart issues, lung issues, diabetes and I know he won’t be around forever. Still, sometimes I go to him for validation �" so that I know that I’m not the only person in the world who sees the gray area sometimes. 

In the end, I’ll probably listen to my mother, though, because even though I never asked her about it �" I swear the voice of reason and conscience in my life has never belonged to me. It’s her voice �" and right now she’s telling me that even though it’s the Lumineers, it’s wrong to lead her on, that I can only go if I am forthright with her my feelings and let her know upfront the truth that I don’t see us going any further. 

Just thinking of my mom’s disappointed face compels me to send the message as I’m sitting here, as much as it pains me to turn down this opportunity. 

     I head home for the last waning hours of summer freedom. I try to get some writing in, but it’s a struggle. My mind is elsewhere �" on the burial of the best stretch of my life in the morning. I try to tell myself that it’s something to be proud of. When the summer started, my novel was just a seedling, a little speck, no more than an idea, but over the course of those two and half months it started to blossom into this real, tangible �" almost complete thing, and each day I feel like I’m an inch closer. 

Two more weeks of freedom, that’s all I would need to finish it, but it’s not going to happen. It’s getting late, just after 8:30 and I watch from my window as the sun sets on summer. Goodbye, my dearest friend.  I close my computer and jump in the shower, the first step of preparations for my funeral tomorrow.