I remember saying, “Pal! You either got to quit drinking or you got to lose weight!”
(everyone is laughing)
(I think it’s okay)
(we get to know so little about our parents)
(we only get to know them as our parents)
When Mom got home from High Tides, Low Tides, the first thing she planned to do was get groceries. “Okay, so, to buy,” Mom dictated, like one of us was writing it down, “uhh … bread? Vegetables …”
“Do you want to get more specific with the vegetables?” I grabbed a pen and started writing. She was on to things like “batteries.”
“Mm, just jot off to the side ‘favorite.’ ” She laughed. She pulled her head back from the pantry. “Honestly, I think the only thing we have left to eat here that isn’t expired is the shredded wheat.”
“I hate to break it to you. But that shredded wheat is almost definitely expired.”
She tossed the box aside. “I don’t really want shredded wheat, anyway. Let’s have a real breakfast.”
We chose a new donut shop that had opened downtown. We shouldn’t have. When we got there, they were serving donuts called things like “the cock and balls” in the shape of actual cock and balls.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. She said, “Well, hold on a minute.” She looked at me like, what is wrong with you? “I want a donut.” She was messing with me.
“Mom …”
“New restaurant in town, Avery. We gotta support. Yes,” she said to the guy at the register, “I think I’ll have a voodoo doll, please.”
The voodoo doll came jelly-filled, with frosted facial features and a pretzel stick signifying an erect penis.
“My,” Mom said. She took out the pretzel and lay it on its side.
“Did you ever want a pet?” (I remember this is one of the early conversations we had after she got back.)
“Yes,” I said.
“I would really love a little kitten,” she said.
“Would you still love it when it grew into a cat?”
She laughed. “Mm, maybe. Do you remember when that baby bird died out back? Behind the house?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Remember, we heard something fall, and we went to check. It was that little potted plant we had hanging that Babs gave us and it fell, and there was this little tiny bird inside it, and it was alive.”
“I thought you said it died.”
“Well, it died later. It couldn’t make it on its own, of course. When it did, we buried it.”
“Mom, why are you bringing this up?”
“Okay.” She stopped. And what was really, really weird, we heard the sound of a potted plant drop, in the distance. We looked at each other. “Time really is a construct,” she said. “Everything really is all happening at once.”
We forgot about it for a little while, and somewhere in that span of time, a car door closed and an engine cranked. We missed it. Babs was leaving. We finished emptying the fridge. She was gone, she was gone, she was gone.
She had left him—left us.
(when everyone’s gone)
Let’s get out of here—leave the window up a while. It’s hot in here to me. Does it feel hot to you?
(there is still some light left in the evening)
(we walk around)
(I think she wants to talk about Babs)
(maybe I do too)
(but we don’t)
Let’s do the labyrinth.
At Pal’s house: “Dad? Dad, what happened?” Mom called. And I could hear him behind a door, sobbing. “Dad, are you okay?”
“Pal?” I stepped into the hallway. White bread slices scattered along the floor. I walked to the garden room. He was in there. He had the door closed.
“Dad, if you don’t open the door, I’m going to break it in just like you did to our back porch that day. Remember?”
It nudged open then. He was posed against the doorframe, looking wobbly, tired, sad, his blue eyes.
Mom and I stepped to either side of him. Vodka smell, like the taste in my mouth the morning after orange drink night. “He’s diabetic you know, so.” Mom’s hands shook as she balanced. “It doesn’t take much. I think I, I might be going to be.” She looked at me. “Sick, Avery. You might have to—”
I took the full weight of him then. “I was in the kitchen,” he started to explain, “making sandwiches. She walked in and just said she was plum leaving me. She didn’t say—”
Mom returned. She put a hand up. She stood perfectly still for a few seconds.
“Okay, I think it passed. I think I’m going to make it.”
Was it the liquor smell that was getting her? We got Pal over to the couch.
I found towels in the bathroom, brought them out just in case. “You don’t have to do this, Ave,” Mom said. “Can you bring us some water?” Pal sagged against the armrest. I brought a whole pitcher and cups. We filled a cup for him, and he drank. And Mom drank a cup, and so did I.
It was so dark in the house, so unusual then. “He needs some good bready food. What would you like to eat, Dad? A turkey sandwich?” He shrugged. His head bobbed. Mom pulled some cash from her pocket.
“Well, what about spaghetti, huh? How does spaghetti sound? Spaghetti sound good? Avery, do we have the stuff for it? Christ, we only need three things.” We didn’t have three things to make spaghetti. Gia knocked on the door with them later. She stood hugging Mom in the doorway for a while. I cleared the room. They sat down together.
I went into the kitchen to brown the meatless crumbles. Pal was in bed. I wished Luca had come over, and then wondered if all of this was too adult, if Gia had told him not to come. While the meatless crumbles browned, I heard Gia ask Mom if Mom had heard from Babs, and Mom said that no, she hadn’t and that she hadn’t tried.
Gia left and we woke Pal for dinner. The three of us ate sitting on his bed, watching A Walk in the Woods. Pal owned it. He had bought it not too long ago. I think the last movie he bought. He loved Robert Redford, and I liked the movie. I was already seeing the story as some kind of future for Pal once we got through this. A little rougher for the wear, maybe, but still moving.
(there’s this place called The Healing Garden)
(in our neighborhood, behind the hospital)
(the labyrinth isn’t much)
(takes minutes only)
(little memorials)
(stones)
(angels)
We have to do something like this for him.
We’ll talk about it.
I like this one.
(In memory of Billy Stern, please feed the birds)
He’d probably like something more to do with water.
(Mom laughs)
A buoy on the lake with his name on it.
Exactly. All his fishing buddies will sail by and be like …
They’ll say, “There he is.”
(we sit a while)
(Mom points)
That one is nice.
(some bird shit on it)
(a placard)
(There are healing angels that walk with us)
It’s good to have this place here for people.
“Okay, he drove off!”
“Did you look away?”
“I had to go to the bathroom!”
Mom didn’t get angry with me. She just grabbed the keys off the hook. “You coming?” she asked. “He can’t be driving if he’s drunk.”
I didn’t know what we’d do if we found him. I didn’t ask. “I’m driving carefully,” she told me, “so I need you to keep your eyes peeled. Let me know if you see him.”
“Where first?” I asked.
We tried Jay’s first, since Jay’s was the closest. But he liked that ABC Package Store because of the drive-through.
“Right,” I said. I acted like I knew. We turned by the hospital and rolled up toward Jay’s. New parking on the side. I could barely see. My hands were shaking. “I don’t see him,” I said, but knowing it was possible that I’d missed him.
It didn’t feel real enough, though. None of it did. We didn’t want him to lose control over his own life, so even though we’d gotten rid of all the alcohol in the house, we hadn’t asked for his truck keys.
We found him at ABC Package, where there was a line at the drive-through. We pulled into the gas station across the street and parked up against the edge of the lot. We spied.
“This is what he does,” Mom said. “Look.” He had done this before; she had witnessed. She had followed him once before, and then followed him right back home. It had made him angry.
He was one car back, and then he was at the window. I made a video in my head. “Vodka,” he went, wrongly. The way he spoke. Drawling, tugging on vowels. “Vodka,” with its two short syllables and hard consonants, didn’t work.
But that’s what he ordered. I saw the clear bottle appear in the window, just long enough for me to imagine it dry, and place a ship inside. And then the clear bottle disappeared. Then I saw a bright green bottle appear and then disappear. “What was—”
The truck went forward a short distance. Pal tipped the Mountain Dew bottle out the driver’s-side window. The bright drink fell in a stream, and splashed against the asphalt. “Then he pours the vodka into the bottle,” Mom said, when the Mountain Dew retracted, “and mixes it.”
There was this woman at High Tides, and she, I’m not supposed to share really, but she was a mom. Is a mom. She had tried to commit suicide, and
I mean, it was so sad, sitting there listening to her. She had bipolar disorder—has bipolar disorder—but she hadn’t been diagnosed at that point, and she said that she had the thought:
Okay, so if I just do this, if I just get it over with.
She loved her kids, but she was saying sometimes how like her body couldn’t, you know, let her love them.
So it was like if she could just get rid of the body, then all the love she felt would finally be free to just
be, you know? Exist in its own right. Free of selfishness and sickness and … human stuff.
She was convinced her kids, her babies, would still be able to feel that love without her there, and a better version of it too, that love. And I was just sitting there, listening, thinking about how badly I wanted to come home to you, how I missed you, how I am just so grateful to
There was one night when he called Red Lobster. He placed an order for over $80. He asked Mom to go pick it up.
Mom paid. When we got to the house, I arranged plates on the card table on the porch. We all sat. He’d ordered three lobster dinners, each with a baked potato, side salad, cheddar biscuit, and little plastic cup of melted butter.
“Y’all eat up,” he instructed. He forgot we didn’t eat lobster. But we ate our baked potatoes and cheddar biscuits and side salads. When she was done, Mom leaned back. The sun seemed to be warming her face through the screen of the porch, and she seemed okay.
Pal ate slowly, wiping his hands with a napkin between each bite. He only spoke once to say, “Good to have a little treat every once in a while, huh?” He never lifted the napkin to his mouth, so some food collected there.
Even though I know I’ll like to keep the good days in my memory, I know I’ll like to remember him like this too. Having ordered too much from a chain seafood restaurant, with butter on his whiskers, and grunting as he chews. In the grip of his heartbreak, still trying to make us happy.
He wasn’t himself after she left. After the Mountain Dew trip, we took his truck keys. He didn’t want to come stay with us, and we couldn’t stay there. It was almost like a horror movie, walking in. He kept the lights off.
He’d be sitting in his chair. “Partner,” he’d go. And I would sit with him, and if he’d made a mess of something, I would clean it up. We brought him each meal and sat at each meal with him. Mom had tried to convince him, but he wouldn’t go to therapy. We didn’t think he was drinking during this time. We don’t think he was.
An old friend would stop in and pay visits sometimes, but really only just one friend. She walked with a cane. Didn’t come to the funeral. But she did send a card. It said she was heartbroken. Mom spoke to her a few times. Mostly, she and Pal would just catch up.
She sent a card to us this week too, so it’s been a year.
It says she is still heartbroken, that she thinks of him every day. I don’t know much about her and Pal’s relationship, even now. It got murky for me. The depth of the past, of relationships, of sickness. His days. It did get too adult. I couldn’t fathom it. Just the depth of it all.
If I started to try, it started to hurt me. I had to stop. I just worked on what I’d learned. Two feet on the floor. To be present, be. Listen when he was talking to me. To go along with him thinking that I didn’t know a thing about what was going on. To let him believe I was still protected from it.
(From what? How bad life gets?)
“Why make a plastic jig silver? Well, I’ll tell you. Silver is one of the most successful colors for specifically the bad days, and by bad days, I mean the dreary days. The gray days. Days when the fishing ain’t going to be any good, and you’re out there trying anyway because that’s just how it worked out, you know?
“I realize it might seem contrary to make a gray jig for a gray day. But truth is, the darker the color you use on a gray day, the better.”
Luca said one day, “I guess life doesn’t level out the way you think it will, ever.” Because the thing is, you always have a body. And with it, you have need, you have desire, and you have love, and it all changes.
As we live. Changes.
The matter we’re made of, that connects us to stars, in constant motion.
And all of that, even after the body quits, still changing. Disappears here, reappears there. Some nights I can’t sit still. He had that too.
He had one really good weekend left. We went fishing. He was lucid.
One night he fell.