Dad surprised us by coming home for the weekend. He actually scared the crap out of Mom when he came in, because he came up the back porch, through the sliding glass door, and into the kitchen. Mom was doing dishes and caught his reflection in the window over the sink. She screamed and spun around, ready to crack his head open with a soapy pan. By the time Karen and I ran into the kitchen, Dad had pulled Mom into a hug and taken the pan out of her grip. Mom was saying in a shaky voice, “You said on the message you weren’t coming home.”
“Do I need an appointment to come to my own house?” Dad asked softly. “Well then, get your calendar, go to today, October second, and write ’Dad’s coming home,’” Dad said, and I could hear how he was trying to keep his voice friendly. “Kids, go on into the living room and let your mother and I talk for a minute.”
Karen didn’t move, so neither did I. She looked at Mom till Mom said, “Go on now.”
Then she turned and walked out, and I followed.
When they came out of the kitchen, Mom declared a family fun night. Seriously, she said, “I declare a family fun night!” It’s so obvious this is all about Dad. There’s no way we couldn’t hear him and his grumbly whine when they were in the kitchen, annoyed that we hadn’t planned a night of board games and heart-to-heart talks for him. We didn’t even know he was coming home. Asshole. Knowing he put Mom up to this, making her be the jerk that has to fake enthusiasm, Karen and I both make a (sort of) big deal about being excited. I hate to see Mom like this. She’s like an open wound waiting for salt.
Tonight “family fun night” means watching TV together, which differentiates it from every other night only because Dad’s here. A commercial comes on for a chain of ice cream places.
“Don’t we have stuff for sundaes?” Dad asks.
Karen and I lock eyes. You might think he was talking about ice cream. But we know that what he just said loosely translates into: “You are a rotten wife and you deprive your family of love by not keeping sweetened dairy products ready to serve at all times.”
“We did, but we don’t anymore,” Mom says. Translation: “Shut the hell up, you thankless bastard. Were you not here for the ’family fun night’ declaration?”
“It’d be nice. Sundaes,” Dad says, like it’s a deep thought, “Especially for family fun night”
Why’d he have to emphasize that last part?
“Well, let’s go out and get some,” Mom says, standing up, trying to stifle one of her tired sighs. “Friendly’s is still open.”
We all know Dad won’t go for it. It’d be too easy.
“I’m not going to Friendly’s with you,” Karen says. I glare at her. She shrugs. She’s not helping.
“We’ll get take out,” Mom says, holding a hand out toward Karen. “No one will see you with your horrible, embarrassing parents.”
“Why don’t we just make them here?” Dad says this like it is the most reasonable thing anyone’s said all night.
“I told you, we don’t have the stuff to make them,” Mom snaps, giving up on Karen and pulling me up off the couch by my arm. She tells me to get my coat.
“Why not?” Dad asks.
It’s like seeing two cars slide on ice, knowing they’re going to collide, and all you can do is watch.
“Why not?” he asks again.
“You’re honestly asking me why we don’t have ice cream sundaes at our house?” Mom puts all her effort into sounding incredulous.
“Yes,” Dad says, and then, “Sit down, Karen,” when he catches her standing up and heading toward the stairs. Karen tried to make her exit too early. Maybe he’s been gone so long she forgot the rules. We have to wait till they’re so into tearing each other apart that they don’t notice us leave.
“Why don’t you go make yourself brownies or Popsicles or popcorn, or any of the other five hundred billion things we have to eat in the house?” Mom’s voice is almost at fight volume.
“I just don’t understand why we had stuff for sundaes and now we don’t.” Dad has a fight voice too, except it’s the opposite of Mom’s. He keeps his as quiet and calm as possible. It means that if Mom’s voice raises above a whisper when they fight, she sounds like a raving lunatic.
The rage in Mom’s eyes tells us we’re free to go. Karen grabs her coat and heads for the front door, for Amanda’s. I watch her walk out and then I go upstairs and lie on my stomach in the hallway outside of my bedroom so I can see through the space between the railing. It’s warmer than the stoop would be, and it’s not like Karen would sit out there with me anyway.
“Because!” Mom’s so mad she’s shaking. “Because I bought all the stuff for sundaes three weeks ago, when you were supposed to come home and you didn’t. So, since then Karen and Amanda ate all the cherries and got bellyaches, the bananas went bad, Donnie ate the ice cream, and I dropped the goddamn jar of chocolate sauce and it broke.”
“We could have gotten more,” Dad says. I can’t see his face from where I sit, but I can hear he is full on into a man-pout.
“Goddamn it!” Mom yells. “Why do you do this? Isn’t it enough that you’ve got us all here tonight! Why do you have to ruin every attempt I make to pull this family together? Watch the movie! Enjoy that fact that you are here and you are with your family! You can’t make us be like those families you used to watch on TV! I know that’s what you want, but that’s not real life, and I can’t give that to you! These ideas you have about what a family should be, you hinged them on the wrong person, buddy. I didn’t sign on for this.”
She starts pacing around the room, straightening up and slamming things. “That’s not what I want for my life. I don’t want my sole purpose to be making sure there’s chocolate sauce and ice cream, or to take some satisfaction in the way laundry smells when it’s done. My sister Janice and I worked ourselves to the bone cleaning up after Daddy when Mom died. I lived that life once, and I don’t want to do it again, and yet . . . here I am.”
Mom looks around like she’s been brought here against her will.
“Well I’m sorry I didn’t have a ’real’ family when I was a kid,” Dad says. “I’m sorry all I had was television to show me what a family should be, and I’m sorry you feel so trapped in our life.”
Dad had a weird sort of growing up. His mom and dad died when he was eight, and there was no one to take him in except for his grandmother. She lived in an old folks home, just for women. They let him move in as a special exception, so he grew up surrounded by old ladies. I think it seriously messed him up.
“If I’d had a real family,” he says quietly, “I’d know how to be a real father and not drive my own children out of the room every time I come home.”
“You are a real father.” Mom sits next to Dad on the couch, touching him on his arm. “I don’t know why you can’t just be real with them.”
“What is that?” Dad asks, leaning away from Mom. “To be real? What do I teach them? How to clean dentures and play bridge? There’s nothing I can teach them.”
Mom folds her hands in her lap and thinks for a moment. She says in a slow, soft voice, “It’s sad you didn’t know your dad, it’s terrible they put you in that place with those old women, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn. Why don’t you even try? Can’t you just try?”