Father's day
He’s standing in the doorway, my father, baggy pants and slim. His white shirt rolled to his elbows; forearms like girders. Compact, springy, his eyes flicker like butterfly wings. His slicked black hair making him sleek all over.
I’m inside the door frame opposite from him. I’m standing beside my wispy mother. Unease coats the space between them, then twists and turns around the contours of the house.
My father smiles at me, his presence a magnet, and I want to go to the places he inhabits. But behind us, in the depths of the dim foyer, like a phantom, my grandfather lurks in silent judgment: “A man with no education.”
But it’s the second Sunday of April, and today I shall be under my father’s powerful wings and my legs are springs prepared to jump into his world, but I wait for the unspoken negotiation between the parties, my body caught in a hurricane’s eye.
I regard my mother’s face, then turn timidly to grandfather whose penetrating eyes show realms of doubt. I hide my enthusiasm, for fear my thoughts will betray me though I’m all set to shift from the dull monotony of this house to the reverie of the road that leads to my father’s seaside home.
I feel the secret tension ease. My mother says her tentative good-byes, but with a discomforting stare in her eye that puts a sty in mine. Grandfather approaches, stops and coyly hides his frown, and my father’s fights to keep his vitality live. But when the old man shakes the younger one’s hand, father regains his composure like a boxer recuperating from a hook.
I’m thinking--come on come on come on come on let’s go all ready. I hear a dim “goodbye” from nowhere, I edge to the door, and cross the border to stand beside my father and toward the anticipation of what will be. Released, I wave, turn, and dash out. My father nods, then scampers behind me. It’s now a race to the car.
“Nice day,” he says as though he means that but means much more in that gleam in his roving eye as though every day is an adventure, because part of the world always escapes him, and he is always catching up. We reach his convertible and he jumps over the door into the seat. I imitate him and feel connected.
The car eases past the tenement streets and their claustrophobic corridors, then out onto the avenue that leads to the highway by the sea. He drives deftly and though I imagine my mother shaking her head in anxious anticipation, and grandfather’s grave demeanor, and despite stories about how father fled in the night long ago only to reappear years later at the doorstep, Stetson hat in hand, a black belt with longhorn buckle holding up his jeans, and a string tie, saying “howdy” in mock innocence, he’s still the best father who ever could be cause he’s mine and even in school, when the guidance counselor says how do you feel, I say just fine and he shakes his head and asks “Am I sure?” and I say sure I’m sure. Who knows better than me?
Parked at a light, we see a flick in the wetlands that line the parkway. Father smiles and stutters “hoppergrass,” then squeezes a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, deftly draws one out, plunges the lighter into its socket. It pops out, he retrieves it, letting its hot ember kiss the tip of the tobacco. He inhales deeply and nabs a peek at the tip of the cigarette.
“Ready to see the fireflies?” he says. His eyes gleam like free birds catching glints of sunlight, and his winky smile makes me feel even I could light up and fly. He nimbly shifts gears, and we’re off again. We ease onto the highway, the sand and aqua tide beside us, accelerating like a rocket. The wind hits me hard and brisk. The stuffiness I’ve left behind is but a memory.
I want to be in this current forever, lungs loving the air, salt scent, ears entranced by seagull cries. I stick my hand out the window and my palm caresses the current. My eyes now dazzled by the green blue sea. People along the dunes come alive because with father, everything picks up speed and energizes. I love that every swerve and swoop and turn of the car is made for me. My stomach churns in delight like when I’m on the roller coaster, but it’s just me and him now: our own private ride—him and me co-pilots of delight.
Then thoughts of the other side intervene. This is why they warn me. Because father makes things fun and that’s not good because I’ve been taught the world must be somber. I imagine Ely the retard plunking along the sand with his sad mother beside him in her perpetual agony.
But here where freedom reigns a sign in the water reads “no trespassing.” Paint slapped on an old crusty plank of wood floating in the sea, from some magical island far away. Maybe father will hide me, put locks and bolts on the door, chains around the house, and I’ll make faces at anyone who calls the cops or tells Mr. Genneti, the bored walrus of a guidance counselor, with his big bald head and moustache.
The wood clappered house is in sight and we pull up fast. Sandpipers and seagulls swirl and scamper. Father swerves into the driveway, crackling gravel, then comes to a sudden jolting halt. He bolts out, rushes to my side, and pulls me out with arms as strong as Hercules.
At the screen door of the old peel-paint wooden house, a fluffy dog smacks at the dilapidated wood; thumps like the sound the bulls make at the rodeo when they’re stuck in their stalls waiting for the cowboys to pull the latch. My father yanks at the frame and the big wolf mutt springs in the air, his attention caught by a squirrel who dashes up an old telephone pole, then scoots across the wire.
My father hands me an old chewed bone, and I toss it. The dog lunges, brings it back, and soon we are playing in a world where boundaries dissolve and I feel an excited peace—with Scott the Hound dog, dragonflies buzzing, crabs raking their fingers across the rocks, waves breaking in on the cool mucky sand, translucent jellyfish floating unfathomably, and all around in dazzling swirls, the birds—half menacing, half wonder.
My father calls me inside. I go in and among the odds and ends, the plates piled in the sink, the picture of a battleship tilted on the wall, photos of my square-jawed uncles all in sailor suits.
But there on the sofa, legs crossed, cigarette between her fingers a woman with red hair so dazzling the room’s black and white and she is in color. Painted up with red lipstick, powder blue mohair sweater, tight, a black skirt that hugs her thighs, blue eye shadow and charcoal eyelashes so thick I feel them brush my skin. I turn to father and he smiles like howdee-doo, like nothing’s wrong, like a cowboy with a guitar, but now I see there’s three of us and this picture seems wrong. And I’m a stranger once again even though it’s she who should be the odd one out. A frown pops on my face like an opened jack-in-the-box.
My father asks “what’s wrong.” I want him to know but he can’t. Why should he? But I can’t contain my grief for I feel betrayed and I run outside toward the surf as the sun is setting. My father hollers “What about the fireflies?”
“I hate fireflies,” I say, and run up to the foam and let it rise to the eduge of my shoe. The froth is a giant tongue. Suddenly it’s just me and the sea and the glow of the orange disk in the distant sky with clouds treading by so slowly they seem to ease the world and all my pain. I hear my father but his words are sounds from far away. I turn to him, shyly, and see he is waving. Beside him on the porch, the woman stands in the doorframe, leaning, smoking, wondering: languidly and luxuriously. She draws me in, repels me. My father between us. It’s a tug of war, and I fear she’ll win. I think of home that’s not a home, not a place to go. I gaze at the sea and wonder what would happen if I just ran in and escaped forever, but then I say not yet, there must be some reason I’m here, not just now on this spot of sand but here on this globe, like the one the size of a basketball Randy the science whiz held in his hand, the one that all of us must share unless we go into outer space and that’s just in comic books and movies.
I’m stuck at the edge of the earth, and I look at my father, but he’s at a loss, not sure, confused. I remember how my mother said that in the War when he wrote home he made “b's into “d's and how that always bothered him and made him feel apart and I see my father wanting me but I see him not finding a way for the words to come out, just like he couldn’t get those letters to face the proper way. I want to help him but I can’t because I’m not the teacher.
The woman flicks her cigarette, and flings it through the air like a shooting star. She smiles and calls my name.
“Evan, why don’t you come into the house with your father and me?”
“Food,” my father says. We’ve made you your favorite meal.” My mind sees well-done hamburgers. I smell them grilling.
“And we have your favorite ice cream for dessert.”
I regard my father who nods like what she said was what he would say but he doesn’t quite know the code. So it’s not that I’m not wanted here. It’s not that my father is silent because he doesn’t care. It comes to me that the rules aren’t important because you can abide by them and not be true, but you can not know them and not be false. And I look at the sea and the dying sun once more and understand they’re for being grateful, not for escaping. Then I turn and walk toward the house. As I approach, my father smiles. And in the dark the fireflies are sparking. And it’s a happy time. And the fireflies know I like their glow. I reach my father and he puts his arm on my shoulder, brushes my shoulder. The woman relaxed, slinking against the door. The three of us smile, the way I wish the world could always smile.
