The Summer Son (5 page)

I
WORRIED THAT
D
AD’S
anger would splash over into the after-hours, but I guess I was fortunate. Larger frustrations awaited.

We dropped Jerry and Toby off at their place on the west side of town, then drove down the hill to the trailer park. Marie’s Skylark, which we hadn’t seen in a couple of days, was out front. Dad sighed.

“OK,” he said.

Marie bounded out and threw her arms around Dad, who tolerated a kiss before shaking her off and heading toward the door. If an army stood between Dad and his bath after a day’s work, he would find a way through it. A wife was no match.

I followed closely as he galloped up the steps of the trailer. The dining area and the couch that folded out into my bed were filled with shopping bags from seemingly every department store in Salt Lake City.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Just a few things I needed,” Marie said.

“What you need and what we can afford are two different things.”

“Really? You haven’t seen me in two days, and this is what you’re going to start in on?”

Dad’s shoulders slumped.

“I’m taking a bath. Put the receipts on the table.”

It’s funny the memories that survive the years, and the ones that don’t. I can remember the exact layout of Milford, and if you dropped me on a corner there today, I could find every place that lingers in my head. I remember the gas stations, and I remember the bars. I remember the songs on the jukebox and the radio. If I hear “Sad Eyes” on an oldies station, I’m back in Milford.

Then there are the things I have forgotten. I couldn’t tell you the name of the diner or the name of the trailer park. The physical aspects of that little town cling to my memory, immovable even as I pile a lifetime of experience on top of them. The names are just trivialities.

I can also remember that Dad smelled of Aqua Velva when his fight with Marie chased me into the fading light.

Dad emerged from his bath and sat down to his ledger, ready to assess Marie’s damage and to cut checks for Jerry and Toby, pay the various notes on his equipment, and settle his fuel charges and the other invoices that trickled in. I sat across from him, watching the black-and-white TV with the sound down so only I could hear it.

Dad recorded each entry, and I saw him rub his face more and more as the unfavorable math piled up. Finally, he turned to Marie, who was reading.

“Five hundred and twenty-two dollars.”

“What?”

“Five hundred and twenty-two dollars. That’s what we have for the next couple of weeks. For me to keep this crew going, to buy bits, to stock up on supplies, to pay for this spot, and for you to do whatever the hell it is you do. Shit, Marie, it’s not enough to cover the fuel.”

“So you’re saying that because I did a little shopping, we’re broke?”

“Because you did a lot of shopping, we’re broke.”

“What do you want me to say, Jim? What am I supposed to do around here all day?”

“You don’t have to come at all. If all you’re going to do is break us, I’d prefer you didn’t.”

“You’d rather I sat up there at that ranch?”

“That’s what we bought it for.”

“I’m not sitting up there for weeks at a time while I wait for you to come home.”

“No, you sit around here, bleeding me dry.”

“Fuck you, Jim.”

“Fuck me?” he said, standing up and advancing on her.

Marie stood up to meet him.

“Yes. Fuck you.” She reared back with a haymaker, which landed harmlessly against Dad’s arm. That pissed Marie off more. She shoved past him into the hall and began chucking toiletries. He ducked under a can of shaving cream. It hit the table in front of me and caromed off my forehead.

I bolted. Dad yelled for me, but then a soap dish whizzed by. It crashed into the window at the back of the trailer, and Marie had his full attention again. I heard them screaming at each other as I sprinted down the gravel road, across the street, and up the hill into the park. Atop the hill, where the rows of houses picked up, I stopped and put my hands on my knees and tried to corral my breath. Once I had air again, I zigzagged through the streets until at last I found Jerry’s door.

I gave it four raps. I leaned on the doorbell for good measure.

Jerry, looking irritated, threw open the door and saw me standing there, my chest heaving. He stepped aside and waved me in.

By eight o’clock, I could no longer fight a collapse into sleep. My own run-in with Dad had been bad enough; a lingering battle with Marie, I knew, could make things exponentially harder on us all. Dad’s urgency about work hit overdrive when he felt stressed, and that impatience would surely get pounded out on the people around him. Half-sick with worry, and having eaten just a few handfuls of potato chips at Jerry’s, I fell into a fitful sleep on the floor in front of the television.

Around ten, Jerry shook me awake and told me to answer the phone. I padded into the kitchen, bleary-eyed.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mitch.”

“Marie?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about tonight. I’m heading back to Montana. It’s for the best. I just wanted to call and make sure you were all right.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Good. I wanted to let you know that you shouldn’t ask for too much from your dad right now, especially not money. It’s a bad time.”

“OK.”

“I think we need to give him some room.”

“OK.”

“OK, kiddo. Have fun.”

I hung up the phone.

“What’d she say?” Jerry asked.

“That I shouldn’t bother Dad about money.”

“That’s rich.
You
shouldn’t bother Dad about money. That takes some gall.”

Jerry shook his head. I headed back to my spot on the floor.

I
AWOKE JUST AFTER FIVE A.M.
, and as hard as I tried to coax a return to sleep, I couldn’t get back to it. Finally, after a half hour of futile fighting, I threw back the covers and grumbled a greeting at the day.

In the hallway, I leaned in close to Dad’s door and heard his bass-drum snore. The summers that I spent with him, particularly when we would share a motel room or that small trailer, I would have to adjust to his nighttime gasps. Gradually, sleeplessness ceded to assimilation, and his coughing cacophony morphed into white noise.

I couldn’t scare up anything reasonable for breakfast, just a hardened heel of bread and some cereal that was a month beyond its best-by date. A peek out the window revealed morning bathed in darkness.

I decided to take a walk.

A few blocks from Dad’s place, I stood in the empty parking lot of the Elks Club and watched the sun make its climb. Here, near the nexus of summer and fall, I found it easy to grasp the appeal of Billings and Montana—the cool morning, the early sunlight slowly finding and diffusing the dark. In San Jose, most of the year brought pleasant reliability, warmth, and clear skies. In Montana, you could never quite be certain what you were going to get. Long ago, I had seen snow in June in this part of the world. That had been quite the sight.

The city found its breath again after its slumber, and behind me on Lewis Avenue I heard a rising flow of traffic. I thought about calling Cindy and telling her that I missed her and the kids, but halfway through dialing, I caught myself. It was five a.m. back home. She wouldn’t be pleased to hear my half-baked thoughts about time, place, and weather at such an hour.

I pressed on.

I made a loop through the heart of Billings, into the residential neighborhoods that buffer downtown, across Grand Avenue to Billings Senior High and then Pioneer Park. I ventured west several blocks, huffing through the uphill climb. I passed joggers and moms with strollers, and I greeted each with a hearty “good morning.” I was exhilarated at being out there, breathing in the crisp air, and I resolved to make more of an effort at such things once I returned home. In San Jose, as work piled upon family time upon other obligations, I found it too easy to brush off exercise. My expanding gut and strain at climbing Billings’s small hills served as penalties for such inactivity.

Up on Grand Avenue, I ducked into Albertsons for a half-dozen doughnuts and a couple of cups of coffee, and I hoped that when I arrived back at the double-wide, Dad might be awake to enjoy breakfast with me.

I found him in his recliner. He wore a blue terrycloth robe well past its prime and watched the local morning show.

“Hey, Pop. Brought you some breakfast.”

Dad grunted an acknowledgment and said, “I figured you’d had enough and had gone on home, until I looked and saw that your car was still here.”

“Is that what you want? For me to leave?”

“Do what you want. It’s a free country.”

I shook my head. “Whatever, man. I have breakfast. Have some if you want. Or don’t. I really don’t give a shit.”

He joined me in the dining room and swiped a jelly doughnut and a cup of coffee. I poured sugar and cream—lots of both—into mine.

“Why don’t you drink it like a man?”

The anger rose in my throat, and I swallowed it.

“Like this?” I said. I grasped the cup of coffee, then pushed my elbows out and tightened my body. I paced around the room, my torso moving back and forth herky-jerky. In a cartoonish deep voice, I said, “You there. No dairy products in your coffee. Be a man like me. Straight caffeine. Fuck taste.”

“A comedian,” Dad said, and he waved me off. But I saw a glimmer. He had difficulty hiding his amusement.

I sat on the couch and dialed home on my cell phone.

“You can use my phone,” Dad said.

“Unlimited minutes,” I said.

He went back to watching his program.

“Hi.…I got up around five and took a walk.…Yeah, really, me, a walk.…He’s doing fine. We just had breakfast.…He’s watching TV.…How are the kids?…Oh, I’m sure you’re enjoying the solitude.…No, no big plans. Just going to hang out around here, unless there’s something he wants to do.…I will.…OK.…Bye.

“Avery and Adia are still asleep,” I told Dad.

“Uh huh. What’s that wife of yours up to?”

“Cindy.”

“Yeah.”

“Her name’s Cindy.”

“I know.”

“Being a mom, keeping me in line. The usual.”

“She still a tree hugger?”

“You mean an environmentalist?”

Dad spit out an “ugh.”

“Yeah, she’s still involved with that. She’s part of a mayor’s group that’s looking at green policies, in fact.”

“Green—I hear that word all the time. I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means sustainable living and business practices. Reducing greenhouse gases, more recycling, alternative energy, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like a bunch of goddamned hooey to me.”

“It’s the way of the world now, Dad.”

“Tree huggers make me sick. They’re why my job went to shit, you know.”

I shook my head. “Everything went to pot in ’82, ’83, right?”

“Around there, yeah.”

“Natural gas and oil prices. They hit bottom, huh?”

“Yep.”

“People out of work. Housing went all to hell. Right?”

“Yeah, Mitch.”

“But it’s Cindy’s fault that you lost your job. You’re a genius, Pop.”

His eyes blazed. “Just shut up.”

“No, really. An amazing show, Dad.”

“You’re probably going to raise those two kids to be granola munchers too, aren’t you?”

“We’re going to raise them to be their own people,” I said. “Their names are Avery and Adia, by the way.”

“I know their names.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know much else. I’m going to tell you something, and I hope it matters to you. When I was packing up to come here, I told the twins where I was going, and Adia said she doesn’t like you.”

“She doesn’t even know me,” Dad protested.

“Yeah, well, that’s sort of the point.”

“That’s pretty goddamned judgmental.”

“You seem hurt.”

“I’m not hurt. But that’s not very fair.”

“She’s just a child, Dad. And you should recognize the logic, seeing as how yours is no more advanced than hers. She calls ’em like she sees ’em. Sound familiar?”

The conversation was done. Dad swatted his paper at me and looked away.

A
FEW HOURS
after we retreated to our neutral corners, from which we stared at the TV, Dad asked if I wanted to play a game.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Helen and I used to play
Sorry
a lot.”

“The board game?”

“Yeah.”

Dad went to his bookcase. The game sat atop his preferred reading, mostly Westerns and a few Grisham titles. As I helped him sort the game pieces and the playing cards, I saw three sheets of plain white paper, each filled with hundreds of slash marks in units of five—four vertical, one horizontal bisecting the group—under the names “Jim” and “Helen.” Dad wasn’t kidding; he and Helen must have played thousands of games.

He caught me staring.

“She was up two games when she died.”

I wondered what the point of keeping score could possibly have been, and then Dad said, “We’ll start a new sheet of paper for you and me.” The answer was clear: there was no reason to play if we couldn’t crown a winner and a loser.

Survival of the fittest in
Sorry
struck me as an absurd notion. The game doesn’t require much skill or strategy. Mostly, it’s the luck of the draw. If you pull a 2, allowing you to bring one of your four pawns onto the board and get another card, and then pull a 4, allowing you to move back to the mouth of the chute leading home, you can make short work of things. If you draw a 2 and then a 3, you face a longer trip around the board.

I wondered how this game of chance could hold such appeal for Dad, whom I recalled as more of a strategy man. In my youth, his games were poker,
Risk
, and chess, pursuits that played to his agile, tactical mind.

And yet, I quickly found the game pleasantly addictive. The
Sorry
cards—allowing you to move from the starting pod and knock out an opponent’s pawn—could fast change the complexion of things. With an 11 card, you could switch places with an opponent, perhaps sending him back to the starting point just as he seemed set to bring a pawn home. After an hour, Dad led four games to three, the last of his victories coming on a huge rally. I’d had three pawns home and one on the board while all of his were in limbo. He still managed to win.

“I’m just better than you,” he said.

“Seriously, man?” I said. “You’re trash-talking me on a game of chance?”

It wasn’t just trash talk. Dad was cheating.

At first, I dismissed the errors as innocent. I would see him take nine spaces on an 8 card, and I would reach across the board and move his man back a square. He complained about the light—“I can’t see the board”—or just played dumb.

Then came other transgressions. Instead of taking one card, he would take two, peeking ahead at what I had coming.

“Stop looking at the cards, Dad.”

“They’re sticking together,” he protested.

Once, on a 7—a useful card that allows you to split your move between two pawns—Dad counted five spots, slid down a chute, and then, with the same pawn, took two more spaces and killed one of mine.

“You can’t do that.”

“Sure I can. Seven.”

“Seven spaces between two pawns, Dad. You can’t take five and slide, then take two more.”

“Yeah, I can.”

“You can’t. It’s against the rules.”

“Rules? We’re just playing a friendly game.”

“Friendly, my ass. You cheat. You keep redundant score. You trash-talk me. There’s nothing friendly about it.” About ten games in, convinced that I wasn’t giving him proper credit for his victories, Dad began keeping score on his own sheet of paper.

“What are you so wound up about?” he said.

“I’m just not letting you get away with a bullshit move.”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“It is bullshit. It’s always bullshit with you. You’re cheating. You’ve always been a cheater.”

Dad sprang to his feet. “Fuck this,” he yelled. He grabbed the board, slinging it off the dining room table into the kitchen. The pawns bounced off the refrigerator and skittered across the floor.

I shook my head, stood, and went to the kitchen. I dropped to my knees and started picking up the pieces. Dad fell back into his chair in the dining room and said nothing.

“I think I should just come home. This is pointless.”

I stood outside, well away from the double-wide as I talked with Cindy.

“You’ve got to hang in there, Mitch. If you come back now, this will be it with him. Your last interaction will be a stupid kids’ game. Is that what you want?”

I could say nothing, and that was my answer. The day before had seemed promising; I had hoped that he would open up about Helen, and that I might take such an opening as a chance to talk with him in a deeper way about loss. We both had some experience with that. Hell, I had even allowed myself to dream that he might accept an invitation to spend some time with us in California. Pure foolishness.

“If you’d seen what happened, you wouldn’t want to stick around,” I said.

“You’re probably right. But then, he’s not my father.”

“Sometimes I wish he weren’t mine.”

My wife sighed.

“I know. This is your cross. Grin and bear it.”