Pee Bee

He took a drink of his water, set the cup on his swing-out tray, and then reached for his Kindle. After reading for a few minutes, he peered over the top of it. I acted like I didn’t see him.

“Ahem,” he coughed.

I looked at him. “What?”

“Don’t what me,” he growled. “It’s my house, remember?”

I brushed my hair from my face and rolled my eyes.

“So, your big dumb ass just happened by?”

“Yep.”

“In the neighborhood, huh?”

“Just stopped by to say hi.”

“You did that. We exchanged niceties. It’s over with,” he complained. “And, yet you’re still here, stinking up the place.”

“I don’t stink.”

“You smell different.”

“Well, it ain’t a stink. I showered this morning. More than I can probably say for you.”

“Are you wearing perfume?”

“God damn it, Pop. Get off me.”

“You smell like a turd that’s been rolled in tulips.”

Tegan came out of the bathroom with a towel, and stepped between us. “Excuse me. This will just take a few minutes. They’re getting long.”

He shifted his eyes from me to her.

She placed the towel in his lap, then pulled a pair of fingernail clippers from her pocket. As she carefully steadied each of his fingers in one hand, she methodically clipped the nails with her other. I watched as she performed the task, making note of how gentle she was during the process.

I recalled my mother clipping my fingernails as a child, and how much I hated it.

In a few moments, she had finished. As she gathered up the towel, she met my gaze and grinned.

I smiled in return, then looked ahead.

As she walked away, I stared at her ass out of the corner of my eye.

My father raised his right hand, looked at his nails, and nodded a few times. “She does good work.”

Tegan walked past. Preoccupied with watching her walk to the kitchen, I didn’t comment. The sound of water running in the kitchen let me know it’d be a minute before she returned. I shifted my eyes to my father.

He cleared his throat. “Your mother will be home soon, so I’ll say this now. Save you a little embarrassment.”

“What now?”

He glanced over his left shoulder, and upon satisfying himself that we were alone, looked at me. “You do one thing, and I mean only one, to hurt that girl emotionally, physically, or spiritually, I’ll get up out of this chair and kick your ass up between your shoulder blades. You’ll have to take off your shirt to take a god damned shit. Is that understood?”

“God damn, Pop. I was just--”

His lips went thin, and he inhaled a long breath through his nose. With his eyes still locked on mine, he exhaled without opening his mouth.

“Is that understood?” he growled.

The tone of his voice was one that I was familiar with, and although I hadn’t heard it since college, I knew all too well what it meant. Anything contrary to his wishes would lead to him being seriously disappointed in me.

I couldn’t believe I was 32 years old, and he could still put the fear of God in me without touching me.

“Say it.” He glared at me and waited.

I looked away. “I won’t.”

“Don’t talk to me in the same tone you take with your little biker buddies, Son. I don’t like it, and you know it. Now, look at me when you answer me, and tell me you won’t do those things before she comes back in here. I’ll embarrass the absolute shit out of you, and don’t think for one fucking instant that I won’t.”

I took a deep breath and looked at him. “I won’t hurt her.”

“Ever,” he said. “I see the way you’re looking at her. And I see the way she’s looking at you. I don’t know what’s going on, but when you come in here smelling like a French whore on a Thursday afternoon, and then you’re staring at her ass, it leaves me to wonder.”

“I just stopped by--”

“To say hi.” He coughed out a laugh and shook his head. “You can tell your mother that shit when she gets here. She’s gullible enough to believe it.”

Tegan walked in. “Okay. That’s it. I’m going now. Anything else?”

He shook his head and raised his cast. She took his hand in hers, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek. “Until tomorrow.”

“See ya, kid.”

She glanced in my direction, smiled, and then headed for the door. I looked away as she walked across the living room, and it wasn’t easy, by any means. She opened the door. I faked a cough and shifted my eyes in her direction. As she pulled the door closed behind her, I lowered my eyes to the floor.

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. That was the sorriest excuse for a fake cough I’ve ever heard. You and that fuckin Navarro think you’re slick, and you can’t even pull the wool over my old eyes. Sorriest excuse for hooligans I’ve ever seen.”

“What exactly is a hooligan?”

“Look in the mirror,” he said. “It’s the opposite of what you see. You wouldn’t make a good pimple for a hooligan’s ass. Sometimes I wonder if they might have switched kids around in the hospital and we ended up with some dip-shit’s kid.”

I didn’t care one bit for his last remark. I narrowed my eyes and turned to face him.

He grabbed for his chest and closed his eyes. “God fucking damn it!”

I jumped up. “You alright, Pop?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said

“Pop…”

He waved his hand between us and opened his eyes. “It’s just indigestion.”

I searched his face for tells, but only saw how the skin beneath his eyes had become thin and translucent. “Don’t look like it.”

“And how the fuck would you know?”

“You look tired, Pop.”

“And you look like grizzly fucking Adams. Clean up your act and shave, why don’t you.”

The door opened and my mother walked in.

“How was your day, dear?” he asked.

“Just fine. How was yours?”

“It was like all the others. Dreadful.”

They kissed.

My mother worked at a safe house for battered women, and I couldn’t decide if she worked because she felt like she was offering a service to the community of women who needed her help, or if she did so to help pay for my father’s extensive medical bills.

They lived in a modest home – the same home I grew up in – but my guess was that in the absence of his bills, they could live in a much better neighborhood.

There wasn’t anything wrong with where they lived, but I always felt like they deserved more.

“Did you see who stopped in to say hi?”

“Well don’t just stand there, Brad. Give your mother a hug,” she said.

I hugged her. She looked me over. “You look thin.”

“Pop said I was fat.”

She glared at my father. “Bradley!”

“I didn’t call him fat. I said that little minibike he was riding would get exhausted hauling his fat ass around. There’s a difference.”

She set her purse down and turned toward the kitchen. “It’s almost time for dinner. Are you going to stay?”

“I should get,” I said.

“I think he’s sweet on my nurse,” Pop said. “Truth be told, he came by here to get a look at her. Trying to get up the guts to ask her on a date, but he doesn’t have the guts.”

God damn it.

She stopped and turned around. “Tegan? She’s so sweet. You should shave that thing off your face and have Rita cut your hair. Then you could ask her on a date. Nice girls don’t want to go out with heathens, Brad. If you want her to even consider it, you should cut that mess off.”

“Told him the same thing, Deann.”

“She’s a very, very nice girl.” She looked at my father. “How old is she?”

“Twenty-five.”

She looked at me and grinned a hopeful grin. “She’d be perfect for you.”

“I’m not looking to get in a relationship,” I said apologetically.

“Well,” she said. “You need to do something. And, you’re staying for dinner. We’re going to talk about this. You’re too old to be single.”

Sunday night dinner at my parent’s home used to be something I did with regularity, but in recent years, it had become very irregular.

Every opportunity my mother had to force me to eat at home, she took advantage of. Each time I complied with her wishes, the conversations ended up being my single status, and when I was going to bless them with grandchildren.

I looked at my mother. She was 66, and had married my father a few days before she turned 17. She was a petite woman, roughly Tegan’s size, and was as close to a saint as any woman could ever be.

Talking shit to my father was easy, saying no to my mother was not.

“I’ll stay for dinner, but we don’t need to talk about--”

“Go shave your face, Brad. Your father’s little clippers are in the bathroom, in the cabinet. I’ll have dinner ready when you’re done.”

“What are we having?”

“Fried chicken,” she said. “And maybe a potato. Your father still likes potatoes with his fried chicken.”

“Sit down, shit head,” my father said. “She’ll never get anything done with you standing there with your gob flopped open.”

“Bradley!”

“I’m hungry, Deann. Let’s get this show on the road.”

I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I hadn’t cut my hair in years. I hadn’t trimmed my beard in six months, and I hadn’t cut it in longer than I could remember.

I tried to remember what I looked like before I had the hair. I pulled it tight to my head with one hand, and pressed my beard back with the other.

I wondered if my mother was right, and if Tegan’s opinion on matters would change if I looked differently.

* * *

“Dinner’s ready!”

The bathroom door muffled my mother’s voice, but hearing her brought me back to my senses.

I’d been daydreaming about fucking Tegan again.

I looked in the mirror.

Only time would tell if my mother was right, or if she was wrong.