Songs my father sang
this story appeared in red fez issue 93
this story appeared in red fez issue 93
“Dad, what are you looking for?”
“My keys”
“Your front pocket, remember?
“You sure?”
He’s checked three times already,
for his keys, which are always in his front right pocket. The bus ticket is
inside his coat, buttoned up. His wallet is in the back right side of his old
baggy jeans.
“Here they are,” he nods, smiling.
I nod back, smiling.
“What did you order?”
“A burger”, I say, “you got a Reuben”
“Right, sure,” his spoon stops
stirring. “Hot tea is good”, he says, “with lemon.” He brings the steaming
ceramic mug to his lips. His hand trembles. The tea bag string dangles in mid
air.
“What’re you drinking?”
“Scotch” I say. To be honest, it’s
not my first.
“I used to drink scotch,” he says,
“I loved a nice whiskey”.
He did love his liquor. In his day, he was a drinker, a hard drinker,
the funny, happy drunk, most of the time.
There were other times. Like mornings when we tiptoed past him as he
dozed, passed out on the kitchen floor, with his one shoe on. Those were days
we were leery to waken him, because we knew better.
I am sitting across the table from my father,
in a loud, brightly lit spot on Mass Ave. College kids are whooping at the bar.
A Patriots game blares from five huge screens, which captures his attention
while we wait for our food. His fingers tap on the table top. He hums a bar of
a song, Stardust, I think, one of his favorites. He loves the old songs, all
the old songs: hillbilly ballads, folk, country, rock and roll, Rogers and Hart.
In my earliest memories, he is always singing. He sang while he stood at the
sink , naked, in the upstairs bathroom while he shaved with a safety razor. He sang when he drove, with his arm dangling
out the rolled down window, regardless of the weather. He sang on Sunday mornings,
when we skipped church and he’d make us fancy breakfasts of French toast, or
pancakes, or crepes, with sausage and ham. “I Just Want To Be Your Teddy Bear,”
he crooned with a sneering lip and swiveling hip as he dished out our plates.
“You gonna put on some pants,
today?”
He would look down at his saggy once
white boxers, and shake his head at my mother, “I don’t think so, no not today,
“ and then standing in the middle of the gingham curtained kitchen, with a cast
iron skillet in his hand, he’d belt out: “Born FREE, as Free as the Wind BLOWS!”
“Well don’t let the neighbors hear,
for Christ’s sake. “
“…As free as the Grass goes, Born
FREE!” He’d go on, not hearing, apparently.
“Just pass the syrup, would you?”
He’s still humming, still tapping.
I look at him, at his shaggy white
shoulder length hair, his brown eyes, his moustache. People say, since I grew a
beard, that I look like him. My mother calls me the Turk. “Say what you will,”
she says, still begrudgingly, “despite a number of moral deficits, you father
has always been a handsome bastard.”
I watch my dad, still handsome, as he chews a
mouthful of sandwich. I watch him blot his face with a tiny paper napkin. I know
him, this man, my father. At least I think I do. His hands, old now, were strong hands, the
hands of a hardworking man, a boilermaker. Those hands would wrap you in the head
if you got smart, and gently put on a bandaid if you scraped your knee when you
fell off your bike. He always carried a rough white handkerchief to wipe faces
clean with a good amount of spit. He tweaked noses.
Some Saturday mornings, that last
year he lived with us, my dad would take me to his office on the outskirts of
Providence, and on the way we’d stop at a diner for Western omelets and thin
white buttery toast. These were special days, when I was allowed to drink
coffee, a scoop of Nescafe, some hot water, Cremora, and three whiffs of sugar
from the heavy glass dispenser. At the boiler works, my dad was the boss, and
owner. Sitting in his swivel chair in
the paneled nook where he did his business, I loved playing secretary. I banged
out letters on the Selectric typewriter, I answered pretend phone calls: “I’m
sorry Mr Belanger is in an important meeting, may I take a message?” I tapped a
sharp pencil on pink ‘While You Were Out’ notepads, scribbled, “Mr Spock” and
checked off the box “returned your call”, and circled “urgent”. One time while
I was playing, I used the White Out to paint my nails, because Carol Burnet,
when she played Mrs Wiggins on her show, would always be manicuring herself
when her boss wanted her to do something, which was hysterical.
Nelson, one of the pipe fitters,
stood in the doorway, “What the Hell are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
He nudged Randy, his buddy, and
rolled his eyes. “Freakin’ Queer” he said, and Randy laughed. He stopped
laughing when my dad walked in from the next room. He had heard. There was a
look on my father’s face I did not understand, but it was more than sadness,
more than anger. “Go on, son,” he said to me. “Go get in the car, I should take
you home to your mother now.” Half way down the corridor from the office, I
could hear him yelling, but I don’t know what he said.
I was not brought to the office on
Saturdays, after that.
In the spring of that year he would
leave us behind, to start a new life with a new family, a girlfriend with two
young daughters. There would be no more singing in our house, no more fancy
breakfasts, no more tiptoeing after the fighting. “You’ll be man of the house
now,” he said, the day he left.
He’s going through his pockets again, whistling
“Begin the Beguine”, this time emptying the contents next to his plate and
saucer. There is the handkerchief, neatly folded, and his change, about three
dollars in quarters, dimes, and pennies, the wallet, a black plastic hair comb,
his keys on a ring that says ELVIS LIVES, and then, he places down a rock, a
round flat smooth green stone, in the center of everything.
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“The rock.”
“Oh, that’s my rock.”
“What’s it for?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Did you always have that?”
“I don’t remember,” he says, “but
for a long time. It’s just a thing.”
From my own front pocket, I pull out
a grooved stone. This is the secret talisman of my heart. I picked it up, one
perfect day on Race Point. I’ve carried this rock for years, decades, I don’t know
why. Its ridges are worn from the
rubbing of my hands, worn by daily anxieties, fears, heartbreaks, griefs. It is
warm with prayers. It is charm and superstition.
I look at him, how peculiar, how
strange, these two objects in the middle of the table seem to be, inert, imbued
suddenly with something new I don’t understand.
My dad sits there. “Would you
look at that?” he says. “The apple never falls far from the tree.”
I nod, wondering at the mysteries
of the man across the table, as elusive and familiar as the lyrics to an old
song, as he smiles at me.
“Let’s get some pie,” he says, and
he puts his things away.
note: this story, about me and my dad, is creative non-fiction. while elements are factual, details are the creation of the writer.
