My Old Man

by Amy Sohn

  IT took a week for him to get all his stuff moved in. Once I promised my mom he wasn’t going to try to contact her again she scheduled time for him to come and collect his belongings. I cleared a few shelves for him in the armoire and pushed all my winter clothes to the side of the closet.

  He got to shower first in the morning but he had to make coffee for both of us, and he started buying cereal, which was better for my diet than bagels and cream cheese anyway. He helped me wire my stereo system so that the sound from the TV came out of the speakers, and I taught him to hang his towels on the hook on the back of the bathroom door instead of over it, and to light a match after he’d taken a shit. He bought some T/Gel dandruff shampoo, which I reluctantly began to use once I got over the tar smell, and I even borrowed some of his hydrocortisone when the eczema on my elbows flared up.

  I changed the message on the machine to the automated one so headhunters could call him about jobs, and he set up a table for his iBook where he could use my Internet access to e-mail résumés. I bought him the Sandy Koufax biography, which he devoured in just two days, and at night we would rent DVDs. One night I made the mistake of selecting Blame It on Rio, thinking it would cheer him up, and halfway through he got so upset I had to eject it.

  Powell and I still had breakfast together but when I asked to see him at night he always begged off, saying he was busy with Nora and The Brother-in-Law. I wound up spending all my free time with my father instead, listening to him recount his sob story, helping him shop for interview clothes, and trying to insure he didn’t do something really stupid like kill himself.

  My mom started taking my calls again and a few times we went to dinner to talk about things. She was still folk dancing and leading Koffee Klatsch, and when I suggested that maybe it was a good time to lighten her extracurricular load, she said the groups helped her because they gave her distraction from her problems. Although she never said she forgave me, she stopped implying like the affair was my fault and once in a while she even asked about him, and his job hunt, which I thought was a decent sign even if it was rapidly becoming clear there was no way they were getting back together.

  For a while Liz seemed to have disappeared. I didn’t know whether she was trying celibacy or living at her parents’, but I stopped hearing her footsteps in the morning and she never seemed to be around the building.

  One night at dinner, my dad and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating takeout from the Fountain Café. He was flipping through a New Yorker chuckling at a Roz Chast cartoon when there was some spirited moaning from up above. He jerked his head up to the ceiling like he’d gotten a shock to the chest, and a male voice cried, “How’d you like me to come all over your tits?”

  “Why don’t you do that?” came the response. “Why don’t you do that and then I’ll rub it in with my hands!”

  “You could use a little moisturizer!” the man said, and by the way he pronounced the word “moisturizer” I realized it was Gordon, the cowboy.

  “Oh brother,” my dad groaned, his face frozen in anguish.

  “Keep jerking it!” Liz said. “Jerk that shvantz!”

  “I am. I’m jerking it for you. You see me jerking it?”

  “This is torture,” my dad said.

  “It sounds like it’ll be over soon,” I said.

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” he howled, angling his head up like he was afraid the ceiling was going to drop in.

  “Mmmmmmmmm,” Gordon said.

  “I can’t believe this!” my dad cried. “I was trying to console myself with the thought that she might have some regrets, but the girl’s like Edith Piaf!”

  “Maybe she’s just trying to forget you by throwing herself into something else before she’s really ready.”

  “This one’s gonna be a good load!” Gordon said. My dad’s brow knotted and he looked like he might have a seizure himself.

  “Why don’t we go get a beer?” I said, and before he could argue I ushered him quickly out the door.

  THAT whole night I kept tossing and turning. I always kept my window open a little bit because otherwise I couldn’t sleep and around one in the morning I heard someone tapping at the door. I pulled the window shade open and saw Liz crouched on my fire escape, beckoning me out. She was smoking a cigarette and the smoke was coming in through the window.

  I heard my dad murmuring faintly in his sleep, something like twenty-eight K, and I worried he might wake up if I talked too loud so I climbed out. Her hair was messier than usual and she was wearing a tight blue T-shirt that said PORNSTAR with a rainbow decal underneath it, and a hooded Juicy zip-up she was holding around her body. It seemed strange that someone so skinny could be capable of ruining three people’s lives.

  “Hey,” she said, lighting a cigarette and taking a long, deep drag. She waved the smoke away from my window like it would make a difference.

  “What do you want?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “I wanted to talk. What happened with your parents? Are they back together?”

  I shook my head no. “He’s been living with me.”

  “What?” she said.

  “You should keep your voice down. He’s in the next room.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I told him he should try to reconcile with your mom.”

  “He did. But unfortunately it’s not a one-person decision.”

  “She wouldn’t have him?”

  “Would you?”

  “I figured after this many years they’d find a way to stay together.” I shook my head no. I hated her figure, her gaunt evil cheeks. “This—this makes no sense,” she said. “I thought she was still into him. I knew she’d be mad for a while but I thought she’d find a way to forgive. This really sucks.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a lot worse for me than it is for you.”

  She looked at me with a kind of strange compassion and her face contorted into something foreign and anguished. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Her eyes were lonely and sad and she didn’t look like a raging bitch so much as a really fucked-up person. “Why did you do it?” I said.

  “I’m not totally sure. I’m trying really hard to process it right now with Dr. Fromberg. She says I violate boundaries because I’m afraid no one will like me if I don’t relate to them sexually.”

  “It’s just the opposite,” I said.

  “I know, but it still takes a while to figure that out.”

  She was acting like I was supposed to feel sorry for her. It was completely unfair. “I just don’t understand why you did it,” I said. “I mean you can’t pretend he was just some random guy. So what did I do to make you hate me so much?”

  “I dunno,” she said, curling out her lower lip and taking a deep drag. “Dr. Fromberg thinks I felt some weird jealousy of you because you didn’t seem to have any of the problems with men that I did.”

  I snickered. “Yeah, right.”

  “I know that’s not true now, but I didn’t then. And that night on Smith Street when your dad asked me out for a nightcap I thought, Well, let’s just see where this goes, and then we started talking and there was this chemistry, and it all…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t like consciously trying to hurt you. I guess I just—I felt like you were so superior all the time—”

  “What did I ever say that gave you that impression?”

  “When I’d talk about guys you’d look at me with pity. Like I was completely psycho for being attracted to blue-collar men. Or for fucking on the first date. You never said anything but I could feel you judging me.”

  “But I didn’t!” I said. “It was the opposite. I always thought you were so cool for being able to fuck like a guy. I wanted to learn how.”

  “Well, I don’t think it was all in my head. Sometimes I’d tell you a story and you’d just look at me like I was trash. So I guess—I decided to prove you right.”

  “I don’t think you’re trash,” I said, �
��but I wish you’d said something to me so we could have talked about it or something. That might have been a slightly simpler solution.”

  “Look. I’m not saying what I did was justified. For goodness sake, Rachel, I’m the one who’s going to have to live with it for the rest of my life, cringe every time I pass your mom in the neighborhood. It’s not like I was thinking this whole thing through. I just—fell for him.”

  I still couldn’t see it, couldn’t make sense of what they had. How could anyone use the term “fell for him” when referring to my dad? “I know it’s hard to believe but he treated me like he cared. And he made it sound like there were problems at home anyway. For all I knew, you knew they were struggling. And then I ran into him that night, and it—started, and then your mom found out, and before I could decide if I wanted my unborn child’s father to be eighty when she graduated college, he had already moved in.”

  “So if you cared about him so much then why’d you break it off?”

  “Because as soon as he moved in I realized we were just too different. I mean, did you ever think the two of us were actually compatible?”

  “No! I just wished you’d cut it off before you two got spotted!”

  She looked out at the sky and flicked some ash down onto the pathetic garden behind the building, which consisted of some sad-looking grass, a slab of concrete, and a couple picnic tables. The wrinkles between her eyes seemed prominent in the moonlight and her skin was pale and blue.

  “I did a shitty thing,” she said, “and I had suspicions of its shittiness early on but sometimes even though you know you’re making a big mistake it’s hard to turn back.” She sighed and licked her lips. “I know you can probably never speak to me again. And if I were in your position I probably wouldn’t either. I’m really sorry, Rachel. I know it sounds trite and probably doesn’t count for anything but I didn’t know it would end like this.” It had gotten chilly and she pulled her sweatshirt tightly around her. “Do you think I’m a total cunt? Do you think I’m a home wrecker?”

  “Definitely at least one of the two,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said sullenly. “You know what the worst part of this is?”

  “What?”

  “I was really thinking of getting out of analysis and now I’ll never be able to.”

  There was a groan and then a yawn from upstairs and a voice said, “Liz? Where’d you go?”

  “I’m down here!” she called up to her window. “Talking to Rachel! Be up in a second!”

  “I hope you and the cowboy can be a little more quiet,” I said. “We heard him coming all over your tits.”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Rachel,” she said. “I swear to God I didn’t know your dad was living here.”

  “Please get some eggshell. His heart just isn’t that strong.”

  “I will. I promise. I’ll go to Canal Street tomorrow.” I knew she wouldn’t but it counted for something that she probably thought she would.

  “So are you two, like, a couple now?” I said, pointing up to the ceiling.

  “Not officially,” she said offhandedly, “but judging by the stinging sensation in my ass, I’d definitely say we’re seeing each other.” She gave me a wink and climbed back up the stairs to her apartment.

  A COUPLE days later when my dad was out at a job interview, Powell called and said he wanted to come over. His tone was urgent. “Are you OK?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just wanna see you.”

  I ran to the bathroom and checked to see if there was any spinach in my teeth but all was clean for my dirty old man. At the door he seemed sweaty even though it was a chilly day. “The subway ride did me in,” he said, leaning against the jamb. “It always takes a lot outta me.”

  “Then why do you ride it?” I said.

  “Because one year when I was doing my taxes I saw that I’d spent five thousand dollars on taxicabs and I realized I had to rein it in.”

  “You rearranged,” he said when he came inside. My dad and I had moved the couch to the opposite wall, at the end of the entrance hallway, so there was room for it to open up at night. His pillows and blankets were stacked on top of it and I delicately carried them into my bedroom.

  We sat on the couch and Powell said, “So how’ve you been getting along with your pop?”

  “And I was just getting in the mood to see you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and put his thumb in my mouth. I sucked that thumb and turned my head so I could suck it deeper. I liked him looking up at me with those watery blue eyes. I slithered my way down and unbuckled his buckle. It only took me a few seconds to get the pup out of the kennel. “Maybe we can pick up where we left off that time,” he said.

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  I felt so happy to see him, so happy he’d come over voluntarily. It made me feel like maybe things between us would be romantic again and that sometimes when men said they were busy they really meant it. I rubbed his cock, which was already hard.

  “Did you take a Viagra?” I said.

  “Don’t ruin this,” he said.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I’m a natural man!” he said. “My cock does not require the assistance of synthetics!”

  I bent down to suck it and he said, “Oh that’s good,” and rubbed the back of my neck. I moved my head up and down like a seasoned whore, working the spot on the bottom of the shaft just below the head, and then he put his hands under my armpits and pulled me up on top of him. “You wanna be a guy again?” he said.

  “Way to put pressure on me,” I said.

  I got a condom from the bathroom and rolled it on him quickly before he could complain, and then straddled him and ground around. He sunk his hands into my ass and buried his face between my breasts. I could see the jail out the window and imagined I was imprisoned in an all-women’s facility and Powell was a warden I was fucking in exchange for a good-behavior write-up.

  He got harder inside me and kept moving his face from breast to breast, making a muffled growling noise, and then he said, “I’m right on the edge.” I knew this meant it was my turn to come, so I pressed my pelvis hard against his. I sniffed the sweat in his neck and clawed at his hair and ten minutes later I came. It wasn’t as good as the first time but still I saw it as a hurdle.

  I made a noise so he’d know and he grabbed my tits really hard, threw his head back and said, “Oh, I’m right there, I’m almost there.”

  “That’s good,” I said, my hand on his back.

  “It’s coming up inside me,” he said, and as his mouth fell open and his eyes rolled to the back of his head, I heard a key in the door. I jerked my head over my shoulder to spot my father standing in the doorway, his mouth forming the O Powell would never have.

  “Whoops a-daisy,” he said, and shut the door as abruptly as he’d opened it. I leapt off of Powell and threw on my shirt, while he jumped to his feet and yanked on his pants. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “It’s impossible for a guy to get his rocks off in this apartment!”

  “But I wasn’t expecting him!”

  “You shoulda had a system,” he said, straightening his hair. “Something on the door. I’m gonna have blue balls.”

  “There’s no such thing,” I said.

  “Tell that to my prostate!”

  “Can I come in now?” my dad called.

  “Just a second!” we both shouted at the same time.

  “I can’t take this,” Powell said. “I’m too old.” He threw his coat on and stormed to the door, where my dad was still standing with the same rattled expression he’d had before. “How you doing, Hank?” my father said, but he brushed past him down the stairs.

  I chased after him but he yelled, “Just leave me alone!” I stormed back into the apartment past my father into my bedroom and threw myself down on the bed.

  “I know ‘I’m sorry’ won’t cut it,” my dad said, coming in and sitting on the edge. “But—”

  “
I thought you’d be home at four!”

  “My interview was canceled. I would have called to tell you if I thought I might be interrupting something.”

  “You’re ruining my life!” I sat up in bed. “I can’t live like this!”

  “I’m prepared to let go of what I saw today,” he said. “Just block it out.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I—I don’t understand,” he said. “Haven’t these last few weeks been fun? I mean, playing Scrabble at night, and going to the Fountain Café and listening to Garrison?” I loathed Garrison Keillor and his arch-narcissism and nose breathing but saying that would be like saying something anti-Semitic or anti-Brooklyn; I just couldn’t do it.

  “It’s not that they haven’t been fun,” I said. “It’s that I can’t have a life. You gotta leave.”

  “Can’t you just wait till I get a job?”

  “No.” As I spoke it I felt stronger and more revved up. “I think you gotta get out or I’m going to kill you.”

  He looked at me like he was hearing me for the first time, his eyes wide and wounded. “You’re—evicting me?”

  “Yes. I’ll help you find a new place but you gotta get out. As soon as possible.”

  He didn’t say anything and then he looked at me and said, “Rachel, you know that if there were any way I could press rewind, go backward, and undo the whole thing I would. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you hate me? For everything that’s happened?”

  I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t. He was intrusive, clueless and stagnated, self-hating, parasitic, and unemployed, and still I loved him. Maybe this was what family meant, that in the precise moments you felt most misunderstood and violated, you were angry not because of what your parents did but because you loved them in spite of it.