What You Have Left (21 page)

Once the Bomber race started, I understood why the Drome had no infield. Instead of circling the oval's perimeter, the cars traveled in a figure eight. By the fourth lap, they were crossing paths in the middle of the track. How the drivers
avoided colliding, I don't know. Some barreled into the crossfire at top speed while others were more timid, stutter-braking their way through the oncoming traffic. My father was the most timid of all. He started the race in last place and finished in last place, completing only eighteen of twenty laps. Not that Claire minded; she never stopped cheering. She even jumped up onto her seat the one time Wylie passed another car, which he managed to do only because the other driver spun out. But I was too distracted to ask her to sit down. Despite the fact that my father's driving was cautious as a nun's, my palms had begun to sweat against the aluminum seat. It annoyed me that I cared, but I hadn't come all that way just to see him get killed.

After the race, we headed for the pit area along a pocked concourse that ran behind the bleachers. The smell of gasoline hung in the air. Above us, clouds parted to reveal a silvery slice of moon.

“Why'd he leave?” Claire said, pocketing her earplugs.

I stared up at the sky, thinking about all the time I'd wasted wondering the same thing. “I don't know,” I said. “He never told me.” And I didn't plan on asking. After all these years, I wasn't going to give him the chance to make excuses.

“Maybe he didn't think he could raise you all by himself.”

“Or maybe he thought Cal would do a better job,” I said. “Maybe I reminded him of my mother. Maybe he was punishing himself. Or maybe he never wanted kids in the first place. It doesn't really matter, does it?”

Claire took my hand as we approached the fence that encircled the pit area. A rent-a-cop sat on a stool by the gate, but he didn't bat an eye as we strolled past. Inside, the place looked like a cross between a junkyard and a swap
meet. Drivers were busy hitching up cars, loading up tool-boxes, sweet-talking their girlfriends. My father had just finished winching his Bomber to the back of his pickup. He spotted us coming through the crowd. For a moment he stood stock-still, a grin slowly creasing his face, then he turned to open the door of his truck. I thought he was making a run for it, just like he'd done the last time I came looking for him, but he was only retrieving something from the glove box—a video camera. He filmed us right up until we reached the truck, then set the camcorder on the hood and opened his wiry arms to gather us in for a hug.

Of all the footage from that weekend, that's the part I've watched the most: the big reunion scene. I'd often thought that when I finally found him, the first thing I'd do was haul off and give him a knuckle sandwich—his phrase— but as I closed the distance between us, I opted instead for a look of stony indifference, one that would make clear I wasn't buying whatever it was he was selling. The tape tells a different story, though. On the screen, dragging Claire behind me, I angle straight into his arms like a homing pigeon, hard-wired instinct overriding all else. He's thin, yes—I can feel ribs through the back of his shirt—but there's nothing frail about him. And then, as he's holding us tight and I'm left gazing over his shoulder at the camera, the look on my face is positively desperate. Suddenly I'm five years old again, clinging to his neck as he trundles me away from the hole in the ground where they've just put my mother.

•   •   •

At first, of course, I assumed he was drunk, just as I assumed he'd been drunk since the day he disappeared. How else to account for his confusion, his utter bewilderment during those first awkward moments we spent standing around, trying to figure out what to say to one another? I started by introducing Claire, who immediately asked for a ride in his Bomber. He said no, the car wasn't street legal, but she was welcome to sit in it. In the course of five minutes, he proceeded to ask her three times how old she was, and then he asked if he'd already asked. But even as he bumbled along, there was a sliver of self-awareness about him—a twinkle in his eye that said,
I'm not quite right, but don't worry, folks, it's okay, because I
know
I'm not quite right.
Maybe that's why, instead of being freaked out, Claire took a shine to him. The third time he asked how old she was, she rested a forearm on the steering wheel and squinted up at him. “I'm ten,” she said. “Same as the last time you asked.”

“Maybe so,” my father said, “but you'll be eleven before I remember it.”

The details of my father's medical condition came out later, back at his place. He was living in a cedar-shingle bungalow in a quiet neighborhood not far from the Drome. For supper, he fixed us pancakes. Claire asked how come we never had pancakes for supper. “Because pancakes are for breakfast,” I said. We were sitting at the kitchen table, watching my father pour batter into a skillet. His hands shook. Occasionally he paused to consult a memo pad he kept in his shirt pocket, one time adding a note with a small, blunt pencil, just like the ones he and I used to pilfer from Putt Putt. The camcorder, now mounted on a tripod, recorded our every
move, and each time Claire noticed it, she fell into a conniption of fake preening.

“Mind if we shut that thing off?” I said.

My father pulled a plate of bacon from the microwave. “Ever hear of Korsakoff 's syndrome?”

I shook my head.

“How do you spell it?” Claire said.

He spelled it for her as he served us stacks of buckwheat pancakes. For himself, he'd prepared a bowl of rabbit food— a salad of kale and radishes and baby spinach dressed only with vinegar. Once he'd arranged his napkin in his lap, he tapped the side of his head like he was testing a cantaloupe and told us it all started with his old buddy Jim Beam. “What I'm saying is, I had a drinking problem.” A serious one. Near the end, he'd pretty much stopped eating. The result was a severe thiamine deficiency, which was what triggered the seizure. This was last summer, a Friday night. Luckily, a neighbor called 911 after stumbling, literally, upon my father, who was lying on the sidewalk still clutching a bottle in his fist. At least this was what they told my father. He woke in the hospital with no recollection of the seizure, his wallet missing, his short-term memory shot to hell. “It's screwy,” he said. “I can still remember the name of every kid in my kindergarten class, but half the time I can't remember what happened five minutes ago. And it was worse—a
lot
worse—right after the seizure. Now it's not so bad, unless I forget my pills. Unless I get flustered.”

Claire nodded along solemnly as I surveyed the color-coded Post-Its that covered the fridge, the bottles of medication on the counter. I hadn't seen so many pills since my grandfather's last days. This was, as Cal would've said, like déjà vu all over again—the difference being my father seemed determined to live.

“So I get it,” I said. “The camcorder's for when you forget we were even here.”

This came out sounding meaner than I intended, but my father didn't seem to mind. “Repetition helps,” he said. “If I watch the tape enough times, it'll take. And this”—he spread his hands, like a statue of a saint—“is something I don't want to forget.”

On the TV screen, my father and I sit side by side in wicker chairs on his front porch, awash in grainy, yellowish light. He hasn't touched a drop of alcohol since the seizure. Even the fake beer we're drinking is officially off limits, on account of his diet. Tonight's a special occasion, though. “You got to kick up your heels sometime,” he says, clinking his bottle against mine.

Actually, I could use a real drink. I've just put Claire to bed and joined him on the porch, intending to discuss his letter. For once, I'm glad the camcorder's there. I want this on the record. But before I can raise the subject, my father's off on a long dissertation about his diet. He credits his miraculous, albeit partial, recovery to something called calorie restriction, which he's quick to point out isn't about weight loss but about fighting disease and slowing the aging process. He says there's proof that calorie restriction leads to longer, healthier lives in lab animals, the theory being that it somehow forces the body to tap into dormant, little-understood powers of self-healing. “Some of these rats are living
forty percent
longer,” he says. “Think about it. That's like a person living to be a hundred and twenty.”

I'm not convinced living that long is such a good idea, but I have bigger fish to fry than debating the merits of
starving yourself. I drain the last of my beer and stare for a moment at the camera. “You didn't really try to get in touch with me,” I say.

“Pardon?” He's in the middle of a detailed description of his meals—something about “alternate-day fasting”—but he stops short as I pull the letter from my pocket and hand it to him. He holds the page up to the light. I lean over and point to the offending line.

“That's not true,” I say. “The last time you called me was July eleventh, 1978. Cal answered the phone.”

My father squints as if he's having trouble keeping me in focus. In fact, the camcorder has autofocused on the window behind us, so we're both a bit blurry.

“But I did,” he said. “Right after I got out of the hospital.”

“I was listening at the top of the stairs. Cal told you to stop calling and getting my hopes up. By the time I got to the other phone, you'd already hung up.”

“I left five or six messages on your machine,” he said. “I tried you at work. I even sent a certified letter, but nobody signed for it.”

“Nobody signed for it because it never came, and it never came because you never sent it.” I'm rising from my chair now, wagging a finger at him and looking slightly crazed. It's not my finest moment. “I can't believe I'm even having this conversation.”

My father slumps into his chair and makes a soft hissing sound, like a radiator giving up the ghost.

A couple weeks before Cal told him to stop calling, I spoke with my father for the last time. He was renting a room in Beaufort, working at a Texaco. By then he'd been gone
almost two years, time I'd spent wondering what I'd done to make him leave and what I could do to make him come back. When pleading didn't work, I tried lies. I'd been diagnosed with leukemia (a classmate's misfortune), I was running off to South America to join a commune (something I'd seen on TV), Cal beat me with a rake (he'd only joked about doing so).

But on this day—the day of our last conversation—I tried a different tack. In my time with Cal, I'd come to understand it wasn't so easy for a man to raise a little girl all by himself. So I tried bargaining with my father. If he let me come live with him, I said, I'd cook his meals, clean his room, iron his shirts. I'd get a job after school to help with the bills. I'd keep him company now that Mom was gone.

Usually, no matter what I said, he'd just tell me to hang in there, he'd be back soon. Not this time, though. “Goddammit,” he said, cutting me off. “Stop it, honey bun. Just stop.” It was the first time I could remember him talking to me like that. I held my breath, afraid to breathe, afraid he'd hang up if I said another word. Outside, Cal was cutting the grass, turning circles around the weeping willow atop his little John Deere. Our coon dog, Leo, followed close behind, barking at the mower. Finally my father spoke. “Look,” he said. He wasn't angry anymore. “You're not the reason I left, okay? Do you understand, Holly? None of this is your fault. No matter what happens, I want you to remember that.” I was still too scared to speak. Something about his voice wasn't right, the way it rose and wavered. By the time he got to “I love you,” it sounded as though the words were made of water.

•   •   •

Before I went to bed, I called Lyle and filled him in on my father, his illness, his plans to live forever, his stubborn insistence that he'd tried to get in touch with me. I told him I was ready to come home. Lyle offered to catch a plane to Indianapolis.

“No,” I said. “I'll be fine. It's just one more night.”

“Of all the things to lie about,” Lyle said. “I still don't get it.”

“He just wants to pretend he finally got off his ass and did what he should have done years ago. He wants credit he doesn't deserve.”

Lyle said, “How's Claire holding up?”

When I woke at six, Claire wasn't in bed. I found her at the kitchen table with my father, who'd just finished giving her his spiel on calorie restriction. It's not easy, he was saying, but when the hunger started getting to him, all he had to do was think of me and Claire, the extra years he'd have with us. As I walked in, he cleared his throat, studied his corned beef hash.

“Grandpa has a surprise for us,” Claire said, slathering butter on toast. “But we have to get there early.”

“‘Grandpa'?”

My father held a chair for me. A cup of coffee sat waiting. “Claire informs me I failed to mention the surprise last night. I probably thought I had and didn't want to repeat myself. That's the problem with poor short-term memory. You either say something ten times or you forget to say it at all.”

I stared at the fried eggs atop his hash. I wasn't going to let him get to me again. He knew I didn't believe him; that
was enough. I put on a bright smile. “What happened to Grandpa's wonder diet?”

He reflected the smile right back at me, but it was Claire who answered. “It's a nonfasting day,” she said. “He gets to eat like a hog.”

My father's dream was to be a mechanic for a big-time NASCAR outfit, and in the early 1980s, he headed for North Carolina, center of the NASCAR universe. While he waited for an opportunity to present itself, he put in time at various garages in and around Charlotte, but it's hard to hold down a job when you're too hung over to come to work, and eventually he found himself repairing minibikes and gokarts instead of real cars. He was good with the little engines, though, and his boss liked him, and soon he wasn't just repairing karts, he was building them. Their scale and simplicity spoke to him. The miniature engines were a perfect puzzle. When he got the chance, through a friend of a friend, to move into custom racing karts at a dealership in Indianapolis, he didn't hesitate. That was eight years ago.