My Old Man

by Amy Sohn

  “But you get off so late.”

  “You can take a disco nap! It’s only five more hours till I finish. We could—do what we were doing before. And in the morning I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  He was quiet a while and then he said, “I’m not good for too many more hours anyway. Maybe I’ll come by around one.”

  “Great!” I said.

  I hung up. “You are so whipped,” Jasper said.

  “You can’t be whipped when it’s a guy. You can only be whipped when it’s a girl.”

  “You are so tipped, then.”

  “Not tonight,” I said. “I only have like a hundred fifty bucks.”

  That was when my dad came through the door. He did not look good. His hair was messier than usual and he was wearing a T-shirt that said “Tabouli or not Tabouli,” with a pair of dark blue jeans, cuffed way too high, the kind you could get away with if you were James Dean or under thirty, but not if you were neither. His eye was looking better but there was a thin line below it like he’d gotten punched, and the overall effect was of a scruffy HIV-positive homeless guy. There was a shadow around his face, midway between a growth and a thin beard, and his face looked puffier than usual, like Alec Baldwin’s.

  He headed straight to the jukebox and put some money in. I didn’t ask what he’d put on. I just waited for him to sit at the bar and then I said, “Chivas and water?”

  “Nah, maybe just a Harp.”

  “Really?” I said. “You don’t want a Chivas? Or a martini?”

  “No, Harp’s good.”

  I poured the drink, set the glass. He didn’t seem to want to talk so I checked on one of the hipster couples and fixed them a second round.

  “You remember Jasper, don’t you?” I said when I came back.

  He nodded at him. “Good to see you.”

  “You too, Mr. Block. How you holding up?”

  My dad gave me an angry look like I shouldn’t have blabbed. “I had to tell him,” I said. “We spend like thirty hours a week together.”

  “It’s cool, Mr. B.,” Jasper said. “I’m a moral relativist anyway.”

  My dad nodded like it was all a little too deep for him and then he leaned in and said to me quietly, “I have to tell you something.”

  Liz was preggo. I knew it. She’d abandon the baby and I’d be left to raise it, like a surrogate Hester Prynne, forced to pretend it was my own illegitimate Powell-child, as my dad became the most doting and active grandpa the world had ever known.

  “What is it?” I asked hollowly.

  “I think I’m going to try to work things out with Mom.”

  I levitated a thousand feet up into the sky and bumped my head against the midnight moon before parachuting down to my feet. “Really?” I said, choking on a sob. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in—”

  “Get ahold of yourself,” he said, handing me a napkin. “You don’t want your customers to see you crying.”

  “It’s nothing they haven’t seen before,” I said.

  “She’s right,” Jasper said.

  “I’m so happy for you! What brought on this sudden flash attack of wisdom?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth nervously. “I guess I just realized Mom and I just have a lot more in common.”

  “You realized this all of a sudden?”

  “Elizabeth and I were watching a Saturday Night Live rerun, I mentioned something about Jewess Jeans and she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “You see?” I said. “You see? Shared reference points!”

  “But it wasn’t just that. We didn’t find the same things funny. She would make cruel comments about women on the street, about their clothes, or bodies, and I found it disturbing. Not to mention her family issues, which would have taken Freud himself half his life to figure out.”

  I was such an idiot. His eyes were blazing and his lips pursed together tightly. It was all painfully obvious. “Dad,” I said. “Liz dumped you, didn’t she?”

  “Last night,” he nodded. His nose flared out further than Ali MacGraw’s and his eyes brimmed over. “She thinks we’re…” He bit his lip and cleared his throat so he wouldn’t crack. “Incompatible.” A fat tear trickled down his cheek. “She says she was deluding herself to think we had any long-term potential, that we just don’t have enough in common and that the only reason she went for me was because of some unresolved issue with her father.”

  Jasper stood up and put his arm around him. “It’s definitely cool to cry, Mr. B. In fact it’s a sign of strength.”

  “I love her,” my dad said, his voice breaking. “Loved her. I know you don’t think I do but I do. She’s so smart and not like how she seemed—on the outside. She made me feel—not young, but funny and handsome.” He kneaded the spot between his eyebrows and looked remorsefully down into his beer.

  I wanted to be sympathetic and concerned, but I couldn’t help but see his sudden desire to be with my mom in a slightly less positive light. “So you only want Mom because she’s better than no one?”

  “No!” he said. “I think I could actually be a good husband to her now, now that—and especially in light of the time I have on my hands, I could help her out with some of her projects. Elizabeth says part of my reason for straying was jealousy of how active Mom’s social life has gotten. I didn’t want to believe it at first but there’s some part of that that’s right. I feel like now that I’m more self-aware I might actually be a decent mate to my wife.”

  The word “wife” coming out of my father’s mouth sent a shiver of delight down my spine. But I was still nervous about his motives. My mom knew him better than anyone and if she suspected for a second that Liz had put him up to the reconciliation she’d freak. I had to help him out before he burned the only bridge he had left.

  “I think you’re right, Dad,” I said. “This is the best decision you’ve made since—since having me.”

  My dad nodded, not too confidently. “It’ll all be all right,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “You gotta have a little faith. You just have to convince her it was all a mistake. That you’ve changed.”

  “What if she doesn’t believe me?”

  It was a possibility I didn’t want to entertain. But I had to sound hopeful or he wouldn’t try at all. “She will,” I said. “You have changed, haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have!” he said, with so much fire it was apparent he hadn’t, or at least not yet. He wiped the tears from his eyes, stood up, pulled his T-shirt down, and headed for the door. I gave Jasper a look and he got up and dragged my dad back.

  “Why don’t you chill out here for a while, Mr. B.?”

  “No, I think I should go. I’ve made my decision. I should go home and wait on the stoop until she comes home.”

  “That’s a really bad idea,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because—because you’re wearing a shirt that says ‘Tabouli or not Tabouli’.”

  “I think it’s charming,” Jasper said. “But Rachel’s just saying you might want to plan your speech a little. It can’t hurt to be prepared.”

  My dad looked down at his shirt, got a somber look, and said, “I guess you’re right.” He sat back on his stool and I fixed him a water with ice. He seemed so tormented, so off balance. Maybe he’d seen something in Liz that no one else could see: a heart.

  “I’m sorry she dumped you,” I said.

  “No you’re not,” he said.

  “OK, I’m not. But I’m sorry you’re in pain.”

  “I guess I should try to think positively,” he said sullenly. “If it had all worked out I would have gone through the rest of my life thinking there was nothing wrong with what I did.”

  I’d never seen him show such insight. Was this what it took for a person to have a wake-up call: running the risk of losing everything he had?

  His eyes were turned down and he looked way too old to be sitting in a hipster bar. “It’s all going to be OK, Dad
,” I said, placing my hand on top of his. “I promise.”

  “I forgot to ask you,” he said. “Can I stay at your place tonight? Liz wants me out pronto. I’ve slept on the couch the last three nights and she says she can’t take waking up and—seeing me there.”

  What could I do? I’d convinced Powell to come over, I didn’t want to cancel. And if I asked to go to his place, he’d beg off, saying he needed his space.

  “Can’t you stay at the Brooklyn Marriott or something?”

  “You’d make your own father stay at a hotel?” my dad moaned.

  “You can stay with me, Mr. Block,” Jasper said. “I have a futon. There are some pretty dubious stains on it but—”

  “Jasper!” I said, and reached for the phone.

  “Hello?” Powell said.

  I turned my back so my dad wouldn’t hear. “Liz dumped him,” I said.

  “That didn’t take long.”

  “He needs a place to sleep tonight.” There was silence. “So I was thinking maybe I could come over to your place and my dad could stay at mine.”

  “Oh no,” he said. “I got stuff to do in the morning. I can’t have you here.”

  “I’ll leave early!” I hissed.

  “No, we’ll do it another night.”

  I couldn’t say what I was thinking, that I didn’t know if there would be another night. “I thought you might think it was good for me to leave him alone. I thought you said I had to separate from my parents.”

  “Not in a time of crisis. When things are rough you don’t turn your back on family.” It was incredible. My father was like a human condom.

  I made my dad stay at the bar till he sobered up a little and then I made Jasper walk him back to my place. When I came home at four-thirty AM he opened the door in one of his old undershirts, a pair of black sweats, and his old 1970s glasses. His shirt was V-neck and frayed at the bottom and his stomach protruded out a little. It was strange but I found myself enormously buoyed by my father’s belly. Maybe the old him was back.

  “I’m sorry to wake you,” I said.

  “That’s all right,” he mumbled, and yawned.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “OK,” he said, and turned his back. He had turned the couch to the side, away from the tennis window, so there was room for the bed to fold out, and I had to sidestep around it to get to my bedroom.

  As he hauled himself onto the sofa bed it creaked. “Good night, Dad,” I said through the archway.

  “Good night, Rach,” he said. I lowered the Pearl River shade until I couldn’t see him anymore and then I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I put on my Gowanus Canal Yacht Club T-shirt and got in bed.

  I was tossing and turning, wondering whether he was asleep or not, when I heard the sofa bed creak again and the pitter-patter of his feet as they came up to my doorway. There was a knock. “You awake?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I have to…visit the loo.” If only I’d lived in a place where he didn’t have to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom.

  “Go right ahead,” I said. The shade went up and he walked past the bed to the bathroom. The bathroom door was cut unevenly and never closed all the way, so you could hear everything going on inside. The toilet lid went up and made a loud crash as it hit the side of the tank, and then my dad began to pee. My father had the loudest and most aggressive flow of any man I ever heard. He could be the Foley artist for drunken men’s urination scenes. The flow halted and then came the shake. There were a few drops, the toilet flushed, and he emerged.

  He started to move past me into the living room but then he stopped and sat down on the bed. He was quiet a second and then he said, “I—there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “OK,” I said. He was having second thoughts. He wanted to get back with Liz. He wanted to know if I’d serve as a character witness in divorce court so they could split their money equitably.

  “What?”

  “I just—I’m a little concerned about your relationship with Hank.” So was I, but I wasn’t going to share.

  “What concerns you?” I asked, pulling the covers up to my neck even though I was in a T-shirt.

  “Well, I consider myself a liberal individual but when I saw those marks on your wrists—”

  I sat straight up in bed. “Dad. Let’s not talk about this.”

  “If I didn’t know it probably wouldn’t matter,” he said, “but since I saw, I feel the need to ask whether he’s treating you in a way you deserve to be treated.” He wasn’t, but that had nothing to do with the marks. “Are you all right? I just want to know if—”

  “Dad. Who was the one running so much equipment with his girlfriend up there that my lights flickered?”

  He jerked his head back in surprise. “They flickered? Really? You should put in a call to your landlord. There could be something wrong with the circuit.”

  “I don’t think you of all people are in any position to pass judgment on what I do. You have forfeited the right to play the dad card with me.”

  “I’m not saying I haven’t made mistakes,” he said. “But as your parent I have a right to ask. Does he force you to do things against your will?”

  “No!”

  “It’s just—as much as Elizabeth educated me as to the ways of—desire—when I saw those marks, it made me feel like—like a failure as a father.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “That made you feel like a failure as a father but sleeping with your daughter’s best friend and then being found out didn’t?”

  He paused with his mouth hanging open and then he patted the blanket, stood up, and said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s best we not explore this area of conversation.”

  He ducked under the shade. I heard the sofa bed creak as he lumbered in. We lay there in the darkness. I could hear him breathing through the wall since there wasn’t a door. Every time he turned over it made a noise and I lay awake another hour before I finally drifted off.

  Tshuvah

  MY dad decided the way back into my mom’s heart was gradual. He spent the next week on the phone to her all the time, having long, drawn-out conversations on his cell, down on the stoop so I wouldn’t hear. I only got snippets—things like “give it another shot” and “not a good-bye affair” and “happy to come in and talk to your therapist”—but it was obvious from the way most of them ended that she wasn’t budging.

  One night, though, he informed me she had agreed to let him come over, because she wanted to talk face-to-face. He took this as a sign that there was a tiny crack of hope so he got really dressed up in a collared shirt and Dockers with a belt, and slicked his hair back with gel. I told him he looked great and said to call me if he needed me. An hour went by, then three, and he finally came back around eleven looking twenty years older. He hung his head and sat on the couch.

  “It’s over,” he said dully, like he didn’t believe it himself.

  “She won’t even agree to couples therapy?”

  He shook his head no. “She’s reading some book, on infidelity, and she’s decided that this was the kind of affair she couldn’t forgive. She says she’s realized how small I made her feel for so long, and how enriched she’s been with all her groups, and she said the best thing she can do now is be on her own. She said she doesn’t need me anymore.” He wasn’t even crying, which for my dad was a really dangerous sign. He seemed numb, shell-shocked, like someone had grabbed him by the throat.

  I knew that if she really felt this way then it didn’t have to do with Liz but I couldn’t help blaming her anyway. I could tell myself this was best, that my parents had problems anyway, but I didn’t really believe it.

  “I hate her so much,” I growled.

  “Mom?”

  “Liz! It’s all her fault. She drove you apart.”

  “You can’t think of it that way. I had a choice to make and I made the wrong on
e. I knew I was playing with fire when I started. Mom was always a one-strike kind of person. But when it ended I held out hope that Mom would love me too much to reject me. Shows how much I know.” He ran his fingers through his hair and said, “What’s left for me, Rach?”

  “What do you mean what’s left for you?”

  “I mean who am I kidding? I’m a loser.”

  “You’re not a loser.”

  “Yes I am! I’m beginning to feel like I destroy everything I touch.” He put his head in his hands and then lifted it, his eyes wild and desperate. “I’ve made such a mess of my life!”

  “No you haven’t.”

  “I have! I’ve been unemployed for almost four months, I’m fifty-five years old, and I’m living with my twenty-six-year-old daughter.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Who said you’re living with me?”

  “Where else did you think I was going to go?”

  “To your own apartment!”

  “One-bedrooms start at fourteen hundred,” he said, “and I’m living off my unemployment. I had the checks forwarded to Elizabeth’s but Mom froze me out of our joint account.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “How should I know? I guess eventually we’ll have to start”—he choked a little—“proceedings, but until then I’m living on $405 a week.”

  “I can’t have you here! It’s barely big enough for me!”

  “You won’t even notice I’m here,” he said. “I promise I’ll be neat. I’ll make the sofabed every day and close it up. Whaddaya say, Rach? Please?”

  Though his face was poised in questioning mode, eyebrows knit, there was a hint of a glint in his eye. I knew why. My father had gotten exactly what he had wanted from me since the moment I left for college: proximity. He could never get enough of me. When I saw them once a week he’d ask me to come twice, when I saw them twice a week he’d call every other day. On one level he was falling apart but on another he’d gotten his heart’s desire.

  This was every parent’s fantasy: to live four feet away from their kid, close enough to be able to watch her every move. Now everything I did would be on display for him to evaluate and judge. Every night I’d have to fall asleep to the sound of him peeing and shaking. He’d feel he had full license to nag me about my bartending job and try to convince me to get back into Jewish education. He’d harass me about Powell no matter how little I told him. It was his greatest fantasy and my greatest nightmare. He’d flown out of his empty nest right into mine.