The three of us sit at the old kitchen table. The wooden chairs have gone rickety with the years, the same chairs we sat on when my mother was alive, and fighting the good fight for my soul.
My father has kept the walls freshly painted and the house is surprisingly clean, but all the furniture and appliances are the same stuff I grew up with. This tiny, boxy house is like a well-kept museum, with an eighty-year-old curator.
He"s taken three longneck bottles of Rheingold beer from the refrigerator, and we all drink straight from the bottle. n.o.body proposes a toast. My father wipes foam from his lips with the back of his hand and says to Jake, "Still got that double last name going?"
"Hey, Dad-"
"I"m just asking! I"m not allowed to ask?"
Jake nods and says, "My last name is Perez-Sullivan."
My old man winces, quite theatrically. "It"s a h.e.l.l of a mess."
"Why do you say that, Danny?"
"Well, Jacob-do they call you Jacob?"
"I prefer Jake."
"Good! Well, Jake, look at it this way. You"ve got two last names, right? Now let"s say you fall in love with a girl whose feminist mother also refused to surrender her her last name. You marry, you have a kid, and that kid"s got last name. You marry, you have a kid, and that kid"s got four four last names. I mean, where does it end? A generation later it"s last names. I mean, where does it end? A generation later it"s eight eight last names, then last names, then sixteen. sixteen. Christ Almighty, what the h.e.l.l"s the phone book gonna look like fifty years from now? It"ll be two feet thick!" Christ Almighty, what the h.e.l.l"s the phone book gonna look like fifty years from now? It"ll be two feet thick!"
I duck my face so Jake can"t see me smiling, but it doesn"t matter. He"s actually laughing out loud over his grandfather"s perceptions.
"Good point you got there, Danny."
"Well, it"s just common sense, isn"t it? At some point you gotta stand in front of the bulls.h.i.t wagon, put your hands up and say, "Enough!""
He delivers this rant to Jake, but of course it"s intended for my ears. I never liked the fact that my kid had two last names, but like so many fathers of my time I let it slide, let the bulls.h.i.t wagon run right over me.
Jake gets to his feet. "Danny," he says, "is it okay if I take a look at my father"s old room?"
"You do whatever you like." My father points toward the staircase. "Second door on the left. Toilet"s the third door, in case you need it."
Jake leaves. My father and I drink in an excruciating silence I feel compelled to break. "Charlie"s Bar burned down?"
"Few years back. Charlie forgot to turn off a s.p.a.ce heater one winter night after last call."
"Anybody killed?"
My father laughs. "Always the reporter, eh, Sammy? No, n.o.body was killed. But the last bar in Queens that refused to serve "light" beer was gone forever, I"m sorry to say."
"How"s Charlie?"
"Dead. Cancer got him about a year after the bar burned down."
"Must have been rough on you, losing a friend like that."
"Yeah, well, you get to be my age, you"re gonna attend some funerals.... Did you ever darken Charlie"s doorway?"
Was this a trick question? Or did he really not know about the night I went in there looking for him, and wound up getting laid for the first time?
"I was underage," I finally say.
He nods, shrugs. "Well, it"s too bad we never hoisted one together at Charlie"s."
It feels funny to know that the place I first got laid out of is gone. Why hadn"t Fran mentioned it? A little bit of my history is ashes, and I"m tempted to tell my father about it, but what for? Why bother? He hardly knows anything else about me, so why should he know this?
My father gulps more beer, clears his throat, and gestures toward the stairs Jake has just climbed. "What"s with the hair and the beard? Your kid starring in A Pa.s.sion Play?" A Pa.s.sion Play?"
"He likes it. I figure it"s better than a tattoo."
My father shoves his shirtsleeve up toward his shoulder, revealing a blue tattoo of an anchor with chains beneath faded letters that read U.S. NAVY. "What, may I ask, is wrong with a tattoo?"
"Please don"t show him that."
"Why not?"
"Dad-"
"All right, all right." He rolls the sleeve back down. "What"s it been, fifteen years?"
"Seventeen, Dad. Almost eighteen. Since the day Jake was born."
"Christ!" He shakes his head. "You know, I thought you might"ve picked up the phone to give me a call on 9/11, just to let me know you were alive."
"Funny, I was waiting for you to call me on that same day."
"I guess we were both wrong."
"I guess."
"How come Doris didn"t come with you for this little reunion?"
"We"ve been divorced for thirteen years."
"It didn"t last, eh? What a shock."
"I guess it just wasn"t a marriage made in heaven, like you and Mom."
My father sits back, studies my face, drinks more beer. "You happy since you split?"
"No."
"How about Doris?"
"Probably not."
"So nothing changed, except you"ve been sh.e.l.ling out for two apartments all these years, and shuttling the kid back and forth."
"That"s one way of looking at it."
"Tell me another way."
"Two people could not get along. If they"d stayed together, the misery would have eaten them alive."
"You"re miserable anyway."
"It"s a different kind of misery."
"Bulls.h.i.t. Misery is misery. All in all, you might as well have stayed together. It worked for your mother and me. It"s not as if we had the perfect union."
"Mom was good enough to drop dead on you, old man. It would have been interesting to see how things would have shaken out if she"d lived. My gut tells me you"d have wound up in a furnished room in Kew Gardens."
He tightens his big-knuckled hand around his beer bottle. "Watch who you"re calling an old man."
There is true menace in his voice. We have not so much as shaken hands, and suddenly it looks as if our first physical contact might be his fist flattening my nose. As family reunions go, this one could use a little work.
I swallow some beer and say, "Been a long time since you painted the house, I notice."
"It"s next on my list, after the front path."
"Got a color picked out?"
"Same as last time. Canary yellow. Benjamin Moore, the best stuff around. Got eight gallons in the garage."
I shake my head in wonder. "It"s so nice how you uphold traditions, Dad. Mom"s dead, but you"re still going with that color she despised."
"You got a problem with it?"
"I"m just amazed at how long you can stay spiteful. You picked that ridiculous color because you were so p.i.s.sed off about me going to Catholic school."
"I picked that color because I like it. Yellow, like b.u.t.tercups, like sunshine. You got something against b.u.t.tercups and sunshine?"
"Paint it with polka dots, for all I care. Mom"s dead. You can"t hurt her anymore."
"What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?"
"Enough, Dad. This was a mistake. We"ll drink up and get the h.e.l.l out of your life."
"Suit yourself."
I drain my bottle, set it down, and start to chuckle.
"What"s so funny?"
"I"ll tell you what"s funny. My son thought maybe you"d remarried. n.o.body who ever knew you would think such a thing."
"I"ve had plenty of chances."
"Yeah, sure. Women just line up for the chance to be miserable with you, don"t they?"
"Not lately. They did for a while. But I only ever loved your mother."
It"s almost a paralyzing thing to hear, and for a moment or two I can"t move, and I can barely breathe.
Can there be any truth to what he"s just said? And if there is, how different might his life have been if my mother had lived? Maybe time would have healed their wounds. Maybe they would have grown into each other, a pair of lovable curmudgeons spending too much time together, griping away on their trips to the mall. Maybe it could have worked. Anything can work, if love is real...right?
"You loved her, Dad? Is that what you said?"
"In my own lousy way, yeah. Don"t get me wrong here. She was a pain in the a.s.s and a religious fanatic. She liked getting her own way. I liked getting my my way. And poor you, always stuck in the middle. Did I ever apologize to you for that? If not, I apologize now." way. And poor you, always stuck in the middle. Did I ever apologize to you for that? If not, I apologize now."
"Don"t bother. Doris and I did the same thing to our son."
"Well, there you go. Maybe we all do it. Maybe there"s no such thing as compatibility. Not if your last name is Sullivan."
Just then Jake bops back into the room, shattering the mood as he sits down, grabs his beer bottle and takes a swig. "Who"s that girl on that poster in your room, Dad?"
"Poster?"
"Her name is Debbie Harry," my father says. "A singer. Your old man was obsessed with her. He pleasured himself on many a night, staring at that poster."
The two of them laugh out loud at my expense. I can feel my face burning. "The Debbie Harry poster is still hanging in my room?!"
"I haven"t touched a thing since you left. Go take a look."
"I don"t need a look."
"Go ahead. You seem tense. Go relax yourself. Jake and I will respect your privacy."
Jake tries to suppress a giggle.
I roll my eyes. "Jesus, Dad!"
"All right, all right, it was just a joke. A bad joke."
A silence falls over the table, so severe a silence that the ticking of the kitchen clock seems to get louder with each successive second, ominous as a fuse burning toward a bomb. Jake can feel it, too. He"s struggling for something to say, and at last he says it.
"Danny," he begins, "how come you smashed up the path to your house?"
"He"s going to build a moat," I say. "Fill it with pirhana. Keep everybody away for good."
My father ignores me, turns to Jake. "It was in lousy shape. I"ve been meaning to replace it for years. Finally getting around to it, replacing it with something that"ll last."
He"s deceptively optimistic, my old man. He"s eighty years old, and determined to build a path that will last another fifty years. Why? Who will walk on it, besides the mailman? Who comes to visit this hard-bitten, angry old man?
My father leans closer to Jake, as if to confer with a conspirator in a shady deal. "I"m not pouring cement this time. Ohhh, I"ve got a beautiful plan for that path."