With three beers and French fries rumbling away in my gut, I’m more than a little over my limit; I hope to God that the patrol’s not out… but my anger does much to take the edge off my buzz. Anger at Teresa for interrupting my evening with Tom and now at my father, anger at the way the evening with Tom ended, anger at myself for… having to be angry, maybe.
Town falls away behind me as I head back to Teresa’s. I haven’t seen my father since before I’d left Kentucky; I know that my image of him is not the one I’m going to face when I show up. I try to add age to it… gray here and there, lines here and there, an older man’s body and voice. I’ll still be shocked when I see him, I know.
I twist and turn along the dark byways until I meet back up with the road going to Frankfort and I know where I am; the house is just a mile down the road. I can already see the scattered lights of their subdivision.
—
Sure enough, there it is, a battered pickup I don’t remember but sporting Texas tags. The truck’s obviously third- or fourth-hand, parti-colored bits and panels cobbled from other trucks, diagonal slash of a crack across the windshield.
I park Teresa’s wagon in the garage, get out, head towards the house. I have enough of the beer left in me to give me a bit of courage to confront whatever version of my father is in the house.
—
As I slip into the kitchen, I can hear voices. One voice, in particular… a thick, burry kind of voice overlaid with a drawl that I don’t remember; gift of a life lived elsewhere, I guess.
“… got as much right as anyone to live in that house.”
Teresa’s voice, next… thin, tired, tired of once again saying something that she’s probably already said more than once this evening. “Daddy, please, I… let’s just wait until Mark—”
Heads look around as I step into the living room; Teresa, Duane and my father are seated in a loose circle. The kids, luckily, aren’t here, but I’m sure that they’re eavesdropping. I would be. I can see relief on Teresa’s face as I enter.
I’m shocked to see him, but not as shocked as I thought I would be. He’s sixty… something, at this point; I’ve forgotten his exact age, don’t care to do the math. Hair gone white over the gray I’d expected, wrinkles fanning out from eyes and mouth. Age spots freckle and dot his face from a life lived outside. I wonder what he does, now, for a living. He needs a haircut and a shave, but, then, he always did.
He stands up and I go to him.
“Son.” We embrace; his odor permeates my nostrils, a combination of soap, tobacco, sweat… all of it tantalizingly familiar from my youth, minus the—no, there it is, a fusty, alcoholic tang to his breath. I’m not as angry to see him now as I thought I would be; there’s something about family that grabs you, even when you don’t want it to. I feel some kind of disconnected lightness in my movements, in my voice. Walking on eggshells, perhaps.
“Daddy.”
After we break apart, I go over to sit next to Teresa on one of the couches; two against one, perhaps, with Duane in the middle to deflect the fireworks I know will come. My father and I look at each other across the room, and I remember how much of him is in me: the same long, bony, horsey face, the same hooded eyes, the same wide slash of a mouth, the same beaky nose, the same lanky build. I will be this in twenty-five years or so, give or take an odd and self-destructive habit or two. But I already have some of my own, as well.
I realize, as we stare at each other, that I have nothing to say to him. Or, rather, too much; how does one catch up on nearly twenty years’ worth of distance and time? Duane looks at each of us, then stands up and goes into the kitchen. We can hear him rattling around in cupboards, in the freezer… a rattle of ice clinks down into glasses, and then the reedy trickle of liquid being poured follows.
He’s back, with four glasses arranged on a tray; I suppress a chuckle at his expense… an image of Lucy Ricardo in an apron, heels and skirt trotting out canapés and Cuba libres to Ricky’s band members, back for a nightcap at the apartment after a swingin’ time at the club. Wordlessly, we all lean forward and take a glass.
My father essays a sip; admiration glances across his seamed face. “That’s… very good bourbon, Duane. Thank you.”
“No problem,” Duane answers. “You’re welcome, JD.”
The bourbon makes itself at home with the beer—perhaps unhappily—but it also takes a bit of the edge off. I choose the most innocuous of many pawns I can advance onto the board. “How’ve you been, Daddy?”
“Good, good. No complaints.”
“Where are you, now?” Tiptoeing on water-smooth stones through fast water.
“Midland. Texas. Workin’ in the oil fields.”
That explains a lot of the roughness I see in him; a life lived outdoors, under a brutal sun. “You like it?”
He smiles. “It’s okay. Honest work.” He winces against some kind of twinge. “Gettin’ hard for an old man to keep up, though. Thinkin’ of settlin’ down.”
The twang interests me. My father is an educated man; my mother insisted on it when they married, and he got an undergraduate degree from UK. He was rarely in the habit of mangling his participles; now, it seems part and parcel of his speech. But something else in that run of sentences intrigues me; I pair it with the fragment I heard when I came in. I look edgewise at Teresa before I say anything, catch her eye; she rewards me with a frown, but I know she knows.
“I can see that. You, uh… have any idea where that might be, Daddy?”
“Mark… ” from Teresa, low and admonitory. But here’s caution, thrown to the wind.
Before he answers, my father leans back into the couch, crosses his legs, extends an arm along the back, smiles, expansive, sure of his position, and he knows that I know what he’s going to ask.
“Well, son… your sister ’n’ I were talkin’ about it before you showed up. Seems to me you got a house that you don’t know what to do with, and I was thinkin’ I might want to come back here.”
I risk another glance at Teresa before I answer; her face is neutral, but I can read beneath it and see that the prospect of having our father back here scares the almighty fuck out of her. I can see also that Duane’s put two and two together and is getting shitstorm as the only viable answer. I turn back to my father. “Interesting coincidence, that. After twenty years of not being here. After not bothering to try to make it to the funeral.” Of course, part of that argument could be leveled at me; I hope he doesn’t pick up on it.
“Not my choice not to be here, son. And I had a few things to wrap up in Midland before I could leave. I’d’a been here if I could.”
“Just waltz back in, pick up where things left off?” I can’t keep the edge out of my voice.
My father smiles, but it’s not pleasant. “Somethin’ like that.” He recrosses his legs, takes another pull of the bourbon. “And before you start shootin’ your mouth off, son, about things you don’t know anything about, I might want to remind the both of you that it ain’t your house, it’s your mama’s house. Which makes it my house, too.”
“How do you figure that, Daddy?”
“Your mama threw me out, and I probably deserved it, but she didn’t do anything more than that, like divorcin’ me. So, technically, that house is still mine.”
Teresa and I look at each other.
“That’s not what the will says, Daddy,” Teresa says, her voice tired and tentative.
A slow smile creeps across my father’s face. “Well, now, baby… I’m not sure that matters, at this point. I’m bettin’ that Nancy didn’t bother to change any of the paperwork on the house when I left. I also never got anything that looked like divorce papers. What do you guys think? Might be enough to throw the whole thing into probate, if you want.”
I myself think it’s probably true; Duane had said that he and Teresa had had to hire a lawyer to get Nancy’s will completed. And I’m well aware of my mother’s intransigence concerning other matters. I can see that Teresa’s still upset, though.
Duane can see it, as well. He clears his throat. “Listen, guys… why don’t we—well, let’s just see what the lawyer says, okay? We can’t figure anything out tonight.”
Teresa sighs; my father rolls his eyes, shakes his head… probably at what he sees as weakness on Duane’s part, which makes me smile. I wouldn’t want to bet against Duane; he’s tough.
Duane notes my father’s reaction, ignores it. “Why don’t we talk about something else?” he proposes. “JD? Where are you staying?”
“Well, I don’t know… ain’t had time to look for a room.”
I can see a look on my father’s face; Duane can see it, as well. My father hoped—still hopes—that Teresa will let him stay here.
“Well, I can make suggestions, if you’d like,” Duane suggests, his face blank, innocent. “Lots of… inexpensive places around.”
I suppress a smile; Duane knows on which side his bread is buttered. If he allows my father to stay with them, Teresa will blow up.
“Well, now… ” my father starts. Clearly, he’d expected to crash here.
I don’t want to hear the end of it; I get up and splash some more of the bourbon—buy them a bottle, I remind myself once again—and go out onto the deck.
—
A minute later, Teresa follows me out. “Fucking hell,” she mutters.
I chuckle. “Tell me you’re not surprised to see him,” I counter.
She sighs. “No, not really. If there’s money to be had… ”
“Yep. JD Davenport comes running.”
Teresa eases herself into a chair; with a clunk, she sets down Duane’s bottle of bourbon onto a table between us.
I chuckle. “Remind me to buy us a case of that, next time we go by a liquor store.”
She sniffs out a laugh. “Remind me to buy stock in the company. Sales are gonna go up. Real soon.”
“Duane in there paying for his motel room?”
“Probably. The best of a bunch of shitty choices. I don’t want him staying here.”
“Well, at least he’d be gone in the morning. With whatever he could fit in the back of that truck.”
I hear her laugh, then a clink as she upends her glass. “Might be worth it,” she says. Then she sighs again. “What are we going to do with him?”
“Well… I’ve been thinking.”
“Okay.”
I take a deep breath. “You’re not going to like it.”
She glances at me. “You want to give him the house.”
I tap the side of my head. “Ding, ding, ding. You win the prize.”
She sighs. “Hell, it probably is his, anyway.”
“It probably is. You know how she was. She probably forgot she never divorced him. Or didn’t want to, maybe.”
“It just seems… wrong.”
“Of course it is,” I answer. “But, Teresa—” She glances at me. “Let him have all of it.” She frowns, and I know I’ve lost her. I start ticking the list off with my fingers. “The utilities, the maintenance… the taxes. All of the repairs it needs. The very expensive repairs.”
She smiles. “You know he can’t afford any of that.”
“Exactly.”
She shakes her head. “He’ll just ask me and Duane to help him out.”
“You can always say no, Teresa. Don’t let him do to you what Mom did. You don’t owe him anything.”
“He’ll just sell the house, then.”
“He probably will. Is that a bad thing, Teresa? Do you still want that house?”
“No. I don’t know. Fuck,” she ends up with. “I just don’t want him living in the same town as me. I don’t want him around my children.”
“Well… I think Daddy might learn a thing or two from Duane if he tries anything.”
She turns to me and grins. “I noticed that.” She pours another finger of the bourbon into her glass. “It’s easy for you, though. You’re going to be a million miles away. I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with all of his shit.”
“Well… ” I demur.
She looks at me. “What?”
“Well… ”
She grins. “How’d your date go?”
I grin back. “Okay… until you texted me.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want to, but I needed you here.”
“No, no… it’s fine. It’s just… damn.”
“He got under your skin again.”
“Yeah.” I blow out a frustrated breath. “Looks like it.”
“If there’s any way… ”
“I just… well, I can’t just quit, you know? It took me a long time to get to where I’m at, and… well, I’m proud of it, you know? We’re doing good work, people are talking about us. We’ve won some awards, and… ”
“And your loving and supportive partner is extremely proud of you and all that you two have accomplished together.”
“Teresa… c’mon… ” But she has a point.
“I’m sorry, but… Mark. Really. You’re all by yourself up there. You need somebody. You deserve somebody.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
I reach out, grab her hand, squeeze it. She squeezes back. If nothing else, the closeness Teresa and I are discovering makes all of this worth it. “I’m going to have to go back soon, you know. Maybe in a couple of days.”
She releases my hand. “I know.”
I start to say something, but there is then the sound of an engine cranking… and dying… and cranking again… and dying. On the third try, it takes; the sound settles down into a rough rumble of noise that fades slowly into the night.
“Guess he found a place,” I mutter.
Posted 21 December 2024