by Lori L. Otto
One April night, when I was ten, I woke up to the sound of my mother screaming. I sat up and huddled in the corner of my bed, against the wall, my blankets pulled up to my chin. I cried, too afraid to get up until her wailing turned into quiet sobs. The phone rang a few times without being answered. My over-active imagination created all sorts of scenarios, each one more horrible to think about than the last. I never heard my father.
I couldn’t hear my father. That single thought is what eventually lured me from my bed. Why wasn’t my father answering the phone? Or helping her? Could he not hear that she was in pain, hurting, upset? I pulled myself together and decided I needed to help her. Not knowing what was waiting outside of my bedroom door, I picked up a baseball bat that had been given to me by one of my mother’s friends. It was the first time I had ever held the bat in my hands, having no interest whatsoever in sports. I gripped it tightly and cracked the door open until I could finally see my mother hunched over on the steps. I could still hear her crying, although it was obvious she was trying to keep her noises to a minimum.
I tiptoed to the top of the steps and watched her, my presence unbeknownst to her. She sat on the very last step with her head in her hands. She was still in her pajamas, her hair messy. I immediately knew something was wrong. No matter what time of day or night, my mother’s hair was always perfect, her make-up applied. She always wanted to look her best for Dad.
I peeked into her bedroom before I started taking the stairs down, one by one. My father was not in there. His side of the bed was still made.
“Mom?” I had asked her quietly from a few steps behind her.
She jumped, startled, but didn’t turn around. “Nathan,” she began, her voice monotone, “can you go back to your room?”
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I pressed for more information.
“Nathan.” Her voice was more stern. “Grandma will be here in a few minutes. Can you go to your room please until she gets here?”
“Mom, where’s Dad?”
She grabbed her legs and buried her head into her knees. She wouldn’t answer me, even once I repeated the question.
“Dad?!” I yelled upstairs toward the bedroom they shared, where he should have been, where I already knew he wasn’t. Mom started crying harder. I turned around and ran up the stairs, screaming for my father. He didn’t answer.
I entered the bedroom and looked around everywhere, as if he would be standing somewhere in a corner, in the closet, under the bed. He was nowhere. I turned around and headed back down the stairs toward his office, the only other place he might be.
“Mom, where’s Dad?” I repeated. She sobbed louder, unable to hold her emotions in any longer. “Mom?” I felt the lump in my throat growing, growing so big that I couldn’t swallow and tears began streaming down my face. I ran down the stairs past her, but she grabbed my arm before I could round the corner down the hallway that would lead to the study. I dropped the bat immediately and turned around, examining the look in her eyes intently. “Mom, where’s Dad?!” I yelled, my face just inches from hers.
She stared at me with a glassy look in her eyes. I put my hands on her cheeks and made her focus on me.
“Where is he?”
“He’s gone, Nathan,” she said, pulling my hands from her face and holding onto them tightly. I knew immediately that she didn’t mean that he had left us. My dad would never leave us. He loved us more than anything. I knew at that very second that he had died. A minute later– or maybe it was an hour, I couldn’t tell, as time had stopped when the realization hit– my grandmother walked in the door and ran to my mother and me. She cried heavily as she pulled us close and hugged us tightly. The embrace was warm, but could never comfort me. My grandfather followed in a minute later. He, too, had tears welling in his eyes.
“Donna, baby, I’m so sorry,” he said as he sat down on the step with my mother.
“It was him?” my mother asked quietly. I looked at both of them, back and forth, watching him nod and watching more tears push their way out of her eyes.
“What was him? Who was him? Where’s my dad?” I couldn’t control my emotions anymore. My grandfather, still strong in his older years, caught me in his arms as I began to collapse. He carried me as if I weighed nothing to my father’s study, leaving the women on the steps to console one another. Grandpa sat me down in dad’s large leather chair. I looked around the room, a room that was off limits to me, a room that never interested me before. I saw it through new eyes that night.
As Grandpa told me he had just come from the morgue and identified my father’s body, he also revealed to me the truth about his alcoholism. The pretty crystal glasses and ewers that lined the cabinet across the room came into focus. The cabinet doors were always locked, and I never even questioned what might be concealed behind them. My grandfather continued to fill in the blanks as I stared with curiosity at that cabinet. My father had died in a car accident. He had driven his sedan into a tree. No other cars were involved, no one else was hurt. I still couldn’t comprehend what happened. How could someone just drive into a tree? Had he fallen asleep? Lost his way? I couldn’t stop asking him questions. I wouldn’t let it go. Finally, Grandpa connected the dots that my innocent brain could not. Dad had been drinking when the accident happened. He was drunk.
Still, I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen my father drink. I fought the idea and was convinced he was lying to me. I didn’t understand why he would make up something like this. I can remember the rage I felt, the anger that propelled me to run back into the foyer where my mother and grandmother sat. I grabbed that baseball bat and ran back into the office. I busted up every piece of crystal, every glass, the cabinet itself. I broke the doors open and discovered the immense collection of bourbon and whiskey and wine and...
I put my head in my hands just as the food is delivered to our table. I could still remember the expression of shock on my mother’s face as she watched me destroy my father’s office. I look up to see the waitress giving me a sweet smile. It’s almost enough to draw me out of the memory, but not quite.
The adults stood back as I threw every bottle across the room, spilling the contents of each one on the plush carpet and textured walls. The stench in the study was sickening when I was finished. I had cut myself a few times, too, as my bare feet found shards embedded in the rug.
“You’re thinking about the glasses, aren’t you?” my mother asks, interrupting my reverie. I stare at the delicate flute of ice water in my hand, rubbing the condensation beneath my thumb.
“Yeah.”
“They were just glasses.” And even as she says it, I can still hear the sadness in her voice. “It didn’t compare to losing him.”
“No, I know.”
I would find out years later that I had destroyed the champagne flutes that my parents used to toast at their wedding. They were heirlooms, handed down for generations.
“I’ll never stop being sorry for destroying those, though, Mom.”
“Don’t be silly, Nathan. I was only saving them to give to you for your own wedding. At this rate, you may never have gotten them anyway,” she tries to joke with me. “You’d have to pick a girl and keep her.”
I roll my eyes but smile anyway. “Yeah, yeah... keep it up and I won’t stick around for coffee.” It’s a hollow threat and she knows it.
My mom reaches across the table and takes my hand into hers. We both bow our heads, each sending our own private message to the man we both loved, before eating our lunch.
As we dine, we’re both silent with our thoughts. When I got a little older, I had been so angry with my mother for keeping such a secret from me.
As a child, when Dad was alive, Mom had always been concerned about creating the perfect vision of the perfect family. Alcoholism had no place in that vision. Over the years, as I tried to cope, I learned from her that she didn’t realize he was an alcoholic when they first met. She knew he drank often, but he was always so happy-go-lucky that she did
n’t realize it was a problem– until she realized that he couldn’t go through a day without a drink or two, or ten. All those nights he retired to his study, it was to hide his drinking from me.
Dad was a happy drunk, apparently. He was never abusive to Mom or to me, and because of that, my mom never encouraged him to seek help. He seemed to be able to still do his job, and do it well, until the last few months before he died. My grandfather had taken him aside a few times to try to talk some sense into my father. Dad was a good liar, and although he told Grandpa that he was fine, that he could quit– in fact that he had quit– the frequency of his drinking increased. He began to go out to drink instead of drinking at home. This worried my mother, but if any fights arose from it, they kept those from me, as well.
I was angry with my parents for quite some time. Mad at him for dying; mad at her for hiding his alcoholism from me. After a period of rebellion in high school that put my mother through hell, I eventually went to therapy and sorted through the issues. Some time later, I forgave them both. I learned that alcoholism was an illness, and that Dad had just been sick. And I knew that my mother had only the best intentions. She thought she was doing what was right for me. When faced with peer pressure in high school, I thought better of things and decided to never become an alcoholic like my father. If someone as strong as him could be addicted to such a vice, then how could someone like me resist the temptation? I vowed to never drink.
As an adult, though, I became less rigid in my rules. I drink on special occasions, and never to excess. It’s not something I find pleasure in, or seek solace in. I don’t particularly like the taste, and the smell of hard liquor tends to sicken me, reminding me of the day that I found out he had died.
“Your father was such a good man,” Mom says, her voice bringing me back to the present. “He loved you so much,” she adds.
“He loved you, too, Mom. You could see it every time he looked at you.” I’d never seen two people so in love with one another. They set a good example, the way they revered one another.
“He did love me, I know,” she smiles wistfully. “He made me very happy.”
“I know.”
“You’re very different from your father, but you still remind me of him in some ways.”
I laugh inwardly. I’m nothing like my father. He was a polished business man. Me? An artist who, on some days, can’t bother to brush my own hair or put on a clean shirt. Dad knew what he wanted in life and went for it. I tend to struggle with direction and motivation. I’m single and keep to myself. He was always the center of attention.
“How so?” I ask my mother curiously.
“Your passion for what you do...” she starts. My father loved to work, and his hard work paid off monetarily, just as my grandfather’s hard work had paid off when he ran the company. Both men left my mother and me everything when they died. It’s not the best way to get money, but it’s afforded me a lifestyle that I enjoy. It’s also probably hindered any sense of urgency to succeed in many facets of life, professionally or personally.
“...and your capacity to love,” my mother continues, smiling. I raise an eyebrow at her.
“You put so much energy into your relationships. And the way you are when you’re in love... it reminds me of the way your father was. It reminds me of the way he looked at me. So adoring, so sweet... I know you love with all of your heart, just as your father loved me.”
I sigh heavily and fight the urge to roll my eyes. I love too well for my own good.
“I just wish you could find one girl to look at so sweetly, so adoringly,” she says. As much as honoring my father was a yearly tradition, so, too, was this conversation about my love life, which always ended up with the same question. What about Emi? “What do you think about Laney? Am I going to get to meet her?”
I don’t let my mother meet very many of my girlfriends. Early in my adult life, I would take women to meet my mother early on, as soon as I started thinking she might be the one. After about ten women, though, I began to hold off on introductions. I put a time limit on the relationship since I seemed to fall in love rather quickly. My own self-imposed rule would require me to be dating a woman for six months before I’d introduce her to my mother. Since I made that decision, Mom had met exactly one woman– and she and I broke up about a month later.
“I don’t know, Mom,” I answer. I know she won’t. I’m fairly certain I’ll never see Laney again. After the way she acted last night, I’ve already begun to accept that she’s not right for me.
We finish our meals and order coffee. I watch the waitress– Samantha, her name badge reads– as she walks away. She had smiled at me again, her eyes eager and bright. She was very attractive.
“Well, I’d like to meet her if she’s someone special to you. I want you to find someone who makes you as happy as your father made me... and as happy as James makes me now.”
“I’ll let you know, Mother,” I retort, short with her. Through my tone, she knows I don’t want to talk about Laney anymore.
“How’s Emi?”
“She’s doing well. She’s been really busy with her freelance stuff,” I answer. “I haven’t seen much of her lately.”
“Is she dating anyone?” she asks less-than-innocently.
“No, not that I know of.” Emi dating– such a foreign concept to me. It was funny and sad at the same time. She was so quick to write off men. Rarely were there second dates with her. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t amiable, attractive, desirable. She was all of those things once people got to know her. Men always asked for another date, but she rarely allowed for them. She was such a dreamer, and she was in search of “the one.” She had her one requirement. One standard that I didn’t find to be realistic, but it wasn’t a topic either of us cared to discuss anymore.
“She’s such a sweet girl, Nathan. You know how much I like her.”
“I do. And it’s never gonna happen, Mom.”
“Never say never,” she warned playfully. She cut me off before I could argue. “I just don’t know why you say that. I’ll never understand you two,” she says, frustrated.
“Then please just stop trying. She’s my best friend. It’s fine with me.” It’s fine with me for now, anyway. “I don’t think she’ll ever be anything more than that.”
“Is that because you don’t want it? Or because she doesn’t want it?”
“It’s both,” I tell her, sounding more agitated than I mean to, but we’ve had this exact conversation every year for the past ten years. I know that Emi wants something that I can’t give her. I tried. I failed.
“Well, you’re both silly. If you could see yourselves together, Nathan, you’d–”
Samantha brings our coffees to us.
“Thank you, Samantha,” I tell her, lightly touching her hand, glad that she interrupted my mom’s train of thought.
“You’re welcome,” she says with a blush, “Nathan?”
“Just Nate,” I correct her, smiling.
“Nate,” she nods, her blue eyes staring into mine.
“You can bring our check by any time, dear,” my mother instructs her.
“Yes, ma’am,” Samantha responds politely, backing away nervously.
“Nathan,” Mom says as I turn my attention back to her. “You know I only talk to you like this because I care so much. And I know you make one another happy.”
“As all friends should,” I answer. “Who’d want to be friends with people who make you miserable?” I mumble sarcastically under my breath.
“I just wish you’d be open to the possibilities.”
I shake my head and laugh at her. “That’s enough, Mom. She’s more than happy to be your ‘adopted daughter’ without having a romantic relationship with me. She adores you.”
“She adores you,” she counters.
“Not like you insinuate. Trust me.”
“But–”
“Mom, come on. Please? Leave this alone. It’s not meant to be.”
> “Okay, Nathan. I’m sorry. Oh, but before I forget, when I spoke with her last week, she mentioned you have a performance on Friday.”
“I do. When’d you talk to her?”
“Christmas Eve. She called to wish us a Merry Christmas.” Of course she did. “Where is your performance?”
“At a dive bar in Brooklyn,” I tell her. “It’s not a place you’d enjoy, or I would have invited you myself.”
“Well, James and I don’t have plans...”
“Really, Mom. I think you’d feel really out of place. I promise next time we play at that coffee house you like, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay.” We exchange smiles.
We both sip our drinks in silence until Samantha finally brings the check. She sets it in front of me, but my mother leans over the table and takes it before I have a chance to pay. Samantha’s cheeks turn bright red as she watches my mother put cash in the folder. Mom pulls out her copy of the receipt and folds the leather holder closed, handing it back to our waitress.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Samantha says, bowing her head and taking the money from my mom. She walks quickly away from the table without meeting my eyes again. I’m a little disappointed.
“You ready?” I ask my mom.
“Sure,” she smiles.
Before we get into her car, she stops me and tears her receipt in half.
“I believe this belongs to you, not me,” she says, handing the scrap of paper to me and climbing into the back seat. “If things don’t work out with Laney.”
I look down and see a note written in neat, cursive handwriting. “Here’s my number,” it says with a phone number beneath. “I thought you’d like to call me sometime. Sam.”
“She seems a little young for you,” my mother adds as I get in the car next to her. It definitely makes for an awkward ride home, but inside, I’m looking forward to calling her anyway.
