Two years ago
That teacher lady Dad slept with last year never was pregnant. Dad told me one night when he had a decent load on. The whole thing was a false alarm. When I lay in bed in the dark, I got bummed out that my mother died for nothing. I mean, her car crash was ruled an accident, but I knew better. The last thing I’d heard her scream at my dad was “I can’t take this anymore, Steve. I want out!” Then our back door slammed, and the tires of her car squealed down the street.
I think she turned that steering wheel on purpose. She knew her car would crash into the tree. I was pretty sure my dad and my brother both thought the same thing. We never talked about shit like that though, so I guess I’ll never know for sure if I was the only one.
I dropped my backpack on the floor of my dad’s office and put on my apron. He was behind the bar taking inventory. “Yo!” I shouted to him from the doorway.
He looked up from the clipboard and tossed his head back in a silent hello. I grabbed the dolly and got to work loading it with cases of beer. As I finished stocking one of the coolers and turned to go load up again, I saw the half-empty glass sitting next to the cash register. My father’s back was to me, so I leaned in and took a sniff. Straight vodka. “Hitting it hard today, huh?”
“How about you mind your own damn business! I had a headache,” Dad barked. He never talked to me like that. What was with his crap moods lately? Maybe the hard alcohol was really messing him up. He swiped the glass off the counter, threw his head back, and drained the vodka. With a scrunched-up nose, he swallowed it down. “Haaaaaa.”
“I’ve got practice in twenty, so Oscar’s gonna have to finish this up.”
Dad crossed his arms and swayed a little to the left. “Your mom never understood me.” The sink underneath the bar was in the perfect place to steady him, and it did a great job of stopping him from falling completely over.
Okay. Wow. Random. I nodded because I agreed with him, but I had nothing to say, because what could I say to that?
“Remember that time we went to the zoo?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “We had a good day together. You guys got your faces painted, we went up in that zoo balloon thing, ate cheesesteaks by the elephants. Great day. Great family day.”
I did remember that trip to the zoo, all of it, but none of what he’d just said made me understand his “your mom never understood me” comment.
He grabbed the rag and wiped the bar. “I like being a dad. I-I do. It’s not easy for me, but I like it.”
He really wasn’t making any sense now.
“Your mom always wanted more from me. I never ever got it right, being her husband.”
Why was he drunk-mumbling his feelings to me?
“Mom got so pissed at me that night when we got home from the zoo. She didn’t like how I was talking to the cheesesteak girl. The cheesesteak girl! Who cares, right? She said I embarrassed her. I didn’t mean to do that.” He threw the rag into the sink. “Shit, I p-probably did. Live and learn.”
Dad dropped his head and walked back to his office. That was some heavy, hard-to-follow shit. I grabbed the bottle of vodka and poured myself a shot. The front door was locked so there was no chance anyone would come in. I downed the shot and followed it with a second. It wouldn’t be the first time I was buzzed at practice.