Father of the Rain (36 page)

“I bought a little bottle of bubbly to have with dessert. Can you have just a few drops, Gardiner?”

I feel like she’s just soaked me in ice water. I hold back. It is not easy.

My father shakes his head. “Nope. I’ll stick with my seltzer.”

I smile at him but he doesn’t look at me.

“Daley,” she says, handing me a silver water pitcher, “would you mind filling up the water glasses in the dining room? We’ll be ready to eat soon.”

In the dining room there are big bowls of orange and green gourds and place cards in the shape of turkey tails. I’m seated on Mr. Bridgeton’s right and Scott’s left. My father is down at the other end of the table, next to Mrs. Bridgeton. Everyone around him has a highball glass full of alcohol. Why were we here among people who could not see his struggle, who probably didn’t even believe it was a disease? I feel I’ve failed him, failed to find him an alternative set of friends, another way of living.

Eventually we all take our places and pile our plates with food. Scott and I ask each other polite questions. On the other side of
the table, Hatch and my father reminisce about the Pirates. Mrs. Bridgeton indicates with her napkin and the word
gooseberry
that Mr. Bridgeton has some gravy on his cheek. They all drink steadily but no one seems particularly drunk. No one gets angry. No one’s personality changes. They tease but they don’t snipe. They seem genuinely glad to be together. When I ask how often they all see each other, Hatch says not enough, but it turns out that none of them have ever missed a Thanksgiving or a Christmas, and they spend at least two weeks together every summer at their cabin in the Berkshires and another ten days in the Bahamas in March.

Afterward we all, minus Mr. Bridgeton and his bad foot, take a walk down to the water. The tide is out on the small beach, the sand a wet dark gray. You can see more islands from their point than you can from Ruby Beach. Hatch names them for me. The others have a rock-skimming contest. Scott leans back and flicks one across the shallows.

“That’s a beauty!” my father calls out as Scott’s stone bounces across the skin of gray water. “Nine.”

Hatch tells me about the software start-up he’s been working for in Boulder. I have no idea what he’s talking about. “What about you? How long are you planning to live here?”

“Not much longer.” I feel defensive and tired. “Maybe through the holidays.” Is this true? My future is the exact color of the ocean.

Mrs. Bridgeton picks up a stone and throws it badly, though it manages to skip twice before sinking.

“Not bad,” my father says gently. “You’ll get another try in a minute.”

Mrs. Bridgeton is flushed and smiling.

On the way home we see Jason Mullens standing at the window of a cruiser, talking to the driver. He looks up when our car passes and his hand shoots up in a wave.

“You going out with that guy?”

“No.”

“Why’s he looking at you like that then? And leaving messages.”

“Oh, it was stupid. I had a drink with him one night.”

“You had a
drink
with him one night? When was that?”

“Last summer.”

“You snuck out?’

“I didn’t
sneak
out, Dad. I couldn’t sleep and I ran into him and we went to Mel’s.”

“To Mel’s. He’s a real class act.”

“He’s a good guy.”

“Oh yeah? You going to marry a cop?”

“I’m not interested in Jason.”

“Who else have you had drinks with? You’ve got me going to meetings every damn night and you’re out boozing it up all over town.”

“One night, Dad. One beer.”

We turn down Myrtle Street. It is such a grim afternoon. I have to think of something to lighten our mood. We can’t go back to the house feeling like this.

“You better watch out yourself,” I say. “I think Barbara Bridgeton is getting a little crush on you.”

“What? No,” he says. I’ve amused him. “Now you’ve really lost your marbles.”

“You better watch it, is all I’m saying, or you’ll be eating a hell of a lot of quiche and casseroles.”

The next day I call Mrs. Bridgeton to thank her.

“Well, it was wonderful to have you both here. Perhaps we can start a tradition.”

“Next year, our house,” I say. Am I joking? I’m not even sure. “I think it was good for us to be with your family. Dad’s in great
spirits today.” I can see him out the window. He woke up full of energy, vowing to fix the garage door and rake up the last of the leaves, two things he’s been putting off for weeks.

“I’m pleased to hear that, Daley.”

I feel suddenly close to her, hearing the sincerity in her voice. I think of the meals she brought over at the beginning and the hydrangeas for his party. A lot of women in Ashing ask about my father in passing, but Mrs. Bridgeton really cares about him. She might not understand about alcoholism, but she does want to help. I feel the need to apologize for my resistance to her.

“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

“Well, we’re right here when you need us. We’ve known your dad for a long time. I knew him before your mother did.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He was Ben’s roommate’s doubles partner. He had a number of different girls, you know. And then he brought your mother to the Harvest Dance, and that was it. You never saw him with anyone else after that.”

“What was he like back then?”

“Just like he is now. Kind, sweet, honorable. I hope you find a man just like him someday soon, Daley.”

Over the weekend it snows. The snow blankets the cover of the pool and lies in raised, even stripes on top of the plastic bands of the lawn chair.

Neal has gone to Vermont with Anne.

My father comes home from coaching on Monday with a large ziplock bag of cookies.

“Where’d you score those?” I ask.

“Barbara gave them to me.”

“Where’d you run into her?”

“I stopped by their house on my way home.”

Wednesday he’s got a coconut angel food cake. Thursday a shepherd’s pie. I haven’t seen shepherd’s pie since grade school: underlayer of overcooked hamburger, overlayer of mashed potatoes, sprinkle of paprika.

On Friday my father stands with another dish in his arms and tells me that he and Barbara Bridgeton are going to be married.

I burst out laughing. “What are you talking about?”

“I asked her and she said yes.”

“Dad, she’s already married. And so are you, technically.”

“She’s leaving him.” He looks at his watch. “She’s telling him tonight.”

“Dad. You can’t break up a family like that.”

“She loves me. She told me. She wants to be married to me.”

“Ben Bridgeton is one of your oldest friends.”

“She’s not happy with him. I can’t help that.” He puts the dish down and pinches the cellophane tighter along the edges. “That’s not my fault.”

“Remember in AA they say you shouldn’t get into a relationship for at least a year?”

“AA says a lot of things. Barbara doesn’t think I ever had a real drinking problem, not like the rest of them.”

I feel the blood leave my hands and legs. I try to keep my voice steady. “And what do you think?”

“I don’t know what I think. I don’t think I’ve been able to think for myself for a long time.”

My throat and chest start buzzing. The kitchen feels very small. “Because of me?”

“There’s just been a lot of noise. Everyone talking at me. Talking talking talking.” There is a look on his face that I recognize from the early years with Catherine, a sort of predatory flush. He’d had
sex with Barbara Bridgeton that afternoon. And then, like a good boy, he’d asked her to marry him. “And what does any of it matter to you?” he says. “You’re leaving after the holidays, aren’t you?”

Is that what started all this? “Do you want me to?”

He doesn’t answer.

“I just said that to Hatch because it was something to say. You need to get to your meeting. It’s late.”

He looks at his watch again. “Barbara’s going to call.”

“I think you should talk to Kenny, Dad. That’s what a sponsor’s for.”

“Fuck Kenny,” he says, but he drives down to the church.

Barbara doesn’t call. We eat a silent dinner. I go to my room and hear him yelling at the Patriots. “Don’t listen to those ass wipes!” And then, “You moron! You fucking butterfingers!” and finally, “Yes, yes, there you go,
yes
!” He stays up and watches the entire game and then the news.

At eleven-thirty the phone rings. He gets it before the second ring. He snaps off the TV but I can’t hear anything. I get out of bed and move slowly to the top of the stairs.

“It’s all right. It’s all right. Sweetie, it’s going to be all right.”

After a long silence, he says, “I do. You know I do. I always will. We’s gonna be okay, you and me.”

The next day Barbara Bridgeton arrives with two baby-blue hardshell suitcases. My father drags them upstairs while I make us some tea. Barbara stands near the dishwasher, her coat still on. I do everything slowly, to delay the moment when I have to turn and face her.

“I know how strange this must be for you, Daley,” she says to my back, “but I’ve loved him—I’ve loved your whole family—for as long as I can remember.” Her voice breaks, and I hear her drop into
a chair. “Please be on our side. Someone needs to be on our side.” The sound of her weeping is awful. I think of Thanksgiving and her boys in coats and ties and the brick covered in needlepoint. It had been their thirty-sixth Thanksgiving in that house, Scott told me.

“Have you talked to your children about all this?”

She nods. Her crying quickens.

“They’re having a hard time with it?”

She nods again more vigorously. “Scott hung up on me. Hatch and Carly listened, but they think I’m being rash.”

“You are both being very rash.”

“We’re not teenagers. We know what we want.”

“My father does not know what he wants. You have to understand this. He has a lot of work ahead of him.”

“I don’t want him to do any work. He’s perfect the way he is.”

“I know to outsiders he appears that way but—”

“I’m hardly an outsider, Daley.”

Somehow he has hidden vast swaths of his personality from people who do not live with him. We hear him cross the dining room, enter the pantry. She wipes her face and stands up.

He hugs her and she starts crying again and he tells her he has cleaned out a bureau in his room for her. I slip out of the room.

Barbara insists on making dinner that night. She says she needs something to do with herself. There is a tenderloin in the fridge, but she has me go down to Goodale’s for cubes of lamb and some heavy cream. It’s clear she doesn’t want to go herself. Word has probably already gotten out about where she’s shacking up. She is right. I can tell by the way Mrs. Goodale greets me, her voice a bit louder, with just a hint of mischief in it.

When I get home with the groceries, they are upstairs again. They already took what Barbara called a siesta after lunch. I take the dogs for a walk to the beach. It’s freezing. I don’t like sand and
snow mixed together. It seems unnatural. I don’t let the dogs off their leashes; they’ll try to swim. They strain toward the water. We are the only beings in sight.

If I move out now, my father will stop going to AA. It won’t last with Barbara. They’ll have their fling and she’ll return to her good solid family. I need to stay right here and hold his place so he won’t have to start all over again after she leaves him.

When he puts on his coat for the meeting that night, Barbara asks, “Why is it held at seven? Why right at dinnertime?”

I wait for my father to tell her that he never eats before eight, but he doesn’t. He just shrugs.

“Maybe it’s because that’s when people really want a drink,” I say.

“I see,” she says with a pout.

When he comes home she wants to know if anyone she knows was there.

“That’s the anonymous part,” I say.

My father separates the lamb from the sauce, eats a few bites, then says he’s full.

He leans back in his chair and looks at me. “You don’t wear your hair back like that very often, do you?”

“No.”

“That’s a good thing. You’ve got some big ears.”

This is the first criticism of me he’s made in a long time. It burns a little, but I don’t let him see that. “I’m pretty sure I know where I got them.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

“Garvey’s got them too. We measured once. Whose do you think were the bigger, Garvey’s or mine?”

“Yours.”

“Nope. Garvey by three-eighths of an inch.”

He gets up and rustles around in a kitchen drawer. “Here we go.” He holds up a ruler to my left ear “Two and three quarters.”

I do the same to his. “Three and one-eighth.”

He raises his arms straight up. “The biggest ears in the world!”

“Don’t I get a chance to compete?” Barbara asks.

We look at her ears. They’re tiny.

“Nah,” we say at the same time, and laugh.

The next morning Barbara wants to help me unload the dishwasher. Dad is outside shoveling out the cars. I tell her to sit and finish her coffee, but she wants to know where everything goes. I don’t want to show her. I don’t want her tell me it would be better to have the mugs closer to the coffeepot. But she doesn’t. She holds up a plate with pink flowers and a gold rim and tells me it was the breakfast china my father’s mother gave my parents for their wedding.

“I remember your mother opening up the boxes of it at the shower.” And then she puts the plate on the counter. “I wish you wouldn’t focus on your father’s flaws, Daley.”

“What?”

“It’s not good for his self-esteem.”

“Are you talking about his ears?”

“Yes, that’s one thing.”

“I think it’s great to be able to laugh at your own small irregularities.”

“He has beautiful ears. And so do you. If you really want to help your dad, build him up, don’t knock him down.”

For the first three nights, my father doesn’t watch sports after dinner. But on the fourth night the Patriots are in some important game and he asks her if she wouldn’t mind if he watched a little.

“Of course not,” she says, and goes to fetch her needlepoint. My father is trying so hard to watch passively, without leaping to his feet and hurling expletives at the screen, that his hands twitch.